Disclaimer: I own nothing of the Sonic franchise. This work is for exploration

Part One:

The Tempest and Her Shadow

One of these Mornings

It Won't be very long

They will look for me

And I'll be gone.

–Moby

1: A Mourning Like No Other

The sickness had started three weeks prior before symptoms began to...

And Doctor Horatio Quentin Quack had stopped there in typing his notes of a patient that he felt he had just begun the first sentence of the poor kid's obituary. The thirteen year old fox, his fur having been red–having been–was lying in a hospital bed two floors up. He was the sole occupant of 3-East at Northeast Empire City University Hospital.

He was there to keep others safe.

Horatio pinched the bridge between his eyes just above his yellow bill and sighed. He had to finish his official notes, something he was purposely finding excuses not to do for the past three days. He had the triage information down pat: thirteen year old male, acute loss of fur, loss of weight, loss of appetite. He could almost recite it verbatim since he had gone over it several times to update the young Islander fox's condition almost every few hours. Looking back to his screen, his hand tracing the lips of his bill as he fought off a yawn, the diagnosis header turned his stomach once more.

Acute radiation sickness.

He hadn't lost this much sleep since the Egg War. Or the hubris plague of Doctor Starline and the Metal Virus. He was there for the aftermath of Sunset City, helping as many as he could, others he couldn't. The restoration of the city had up until that point had gone well, and it felt as if the planet had found it's footing once more. He had to give Amy Rose and Jewel their due. Yet, he felt guilty stepping away, landing his current residence in Empire City, his easier job as a physician away from conflict and chaos. A heart attack or stroke was waiting for him if he hadn't.

Until now.

He sat up in his chair, straightened his blue tie over his white shirt, his doctor's coat hanging up next to the open door of the nurses station. He hovered his fingers back over the keyboard, eyeing the first word over the scrabble of letters–

The phone next to the computer screen chirped a digital ring, a red light flashed. Looking to the screen, he only saw the word (UNKNOWN LINE) etched across it. He reached for the receiver, wondering if it was a telemarketer or a wrong number, and picked up and pressed it to his ear:

"Doctor Horatio Quack, Empire City University Hospital," he greeted, steering his voice as professionally as possible.

"Sir," came a sharp male voice that the duck guessed held a military bearing if he were to see the man standing in front of him. "My name is Major General Abraham Tower of the Guardian Units of Nations–" Quack saw the three point star with a G encircled inside it pop into his mind. "–Like to talk to you about a house here on the coast of Sunset City."

He took the mouse in his freehand and scrolled up the page of the Jeffery's chart. "That wouldn't be twenty two-five West Archie Lane, would it?"

His voice was low in timbre, but scratchy with age. Quack figured the man for a current or former smoker. "I'm afraid so. When did you receive your patient, if I might ask?"

Patient confidentiality law's, ethic's codes, and his medical license flashed in his head as he gulped down at the question. "Almost two weeks ago." He let out a sigh, hoping this phone call wouldn't get past certain people. "There is actually two."

"Is the other also in your care?"

There was a sincerity in the man's voice that time. "She is," Quack replied.

Heavy sounds that Quack shuttered slightly from filtered through the phone. He knew what a mecha-bot sounded like all to well. Tower's voice returned. "What's her–excuse me–" He heard a indistinguishable sound of the beeps from a heavy equipment machine in the background, Tower yelling over it. "–Set the DECON station over there, Lieutenant Commander. Make sure S-C-Pee-Dee holds the road and beach closed!" A short pause. "Excuse me, what is her prognosis?"

"It's hard to tell, but," Quack cleared his throat, "she is starting to see more of the same symptoms as her grandson."

A sigh from the other end. "Is she lucid?"

"At the moment yes, she is answering questions and able to move about. But her age and what I'm afraid she has...well–"

"Time will tell?" the man said somberly.

Again, he swallowed. "Yes, sir."

A short pause on the phone, Quack searching the small office with his eyes as if wanting to break the ice to another turn of the conversation. Tower offered it. "I have two agents heading to you to ask some questions to you and the grandmother. It's imperative, Doctor. We need to know what the young Islander had and where he got it.

"Does anyone else have it that you know of?"

Quack searched his fatigued mind but came up empty. "No. I don't think so. They were transferred from Sunrise to us due to the fact they didn't have an Eye-SO ward for something he got. Metal Virus is one thing, radiation is–"

"A whole different asshole. Yeah, I gathered." Another pause. "Excuse me again, doctor–Omega, take it all down, and place the debris in those dumpsters!"

"AS ORDERED, CHAOS!" came a booming digital voice.

"Sir?" Tower said, returning. "My agents will be there in roughly forty five minutes. They just left Station Square and are on Speed Highway."

His beak fell. They must be either in flight, or they had a very fast car. Reflexively, he looked to the clock on the phone. 9:14AM. With traffic around the city dispersed with its inhabitants probably on their second round of coffee, the outer loop to go from the west end to the Northeast District wouldn't be crawling. "Okay...well, I will be in the I-C-U nurses stations then. It's on the main floor from the Emergence Room."

"Thank you, Doctor. I will tell them. You have a good 'un!"

"Uh–you too...General." And the line went dead.

He shifted in his chair, hung up the receiver, and looked at his coffee tumbler next to him. It needed a top off, and so did he. Radiology also needed their coffee filters, and probably a quick eye at an x-ray for the department team to screw with the orthopedic surgeons later. Then he needed to get his notes typed up and printed off. No more excuses, now.

Grabbing his tumbler, he spun and stood from his chair, and grabbed his white coat and the coffee filters from his bag.

He pressed the print icon on the computer to send Jeffery Foster Livingston's chart to the big copy-printer machine just outside the door. Next, he requested the grandmother's chart to printed as well. Sipping at his tumbler, the walnut roast of the Sonic-U-Up coffee warming his tastebuds, he placed it down, and leaned back in his chair. He was about place his webbed feet and black slack covered legs on the only vacant spot on the long table between papers and the keyboard, when a knock came at the door.

An even voice came from the open door, male in tone, low in pitch, soft in reserve. "Excuse me, we're looking for a Doctor Quack?"

He turned and spun out of his chair like he had nearly fifty minutes before, though he still had his white coat on. In front of him was a lean black hedgehog, his fur black with red lines around his quills. His suit jacket matched his fur, along with his slacks and shirt, though unbuttoned to expose a white patch of fur Quack thought of as its own tie or a piece of his attire. He extended his hand to him, the black hedgehog seemingly extending his more out of courtesies than greeting. "Yes, Doctor Horatio Quack."

"Agent Shadow Hedgehog." His hand shake was firm through his white glove, yet quick from its inception to release.

A feminine voice, shy in nature, but firm with inflection that was opposite of the hedgehog's, announced from the door.

"Hi!"

Quack turned to see a rose pink-furred Islander, noting she was a particularly different species he was used to seeing in the flesh and fur. She offered her right hand, her fingers hidden in a three digit white glove, the index finger and thumb pronounced, the others hidden, her smile bright with a familiarity like she was seeing an old friend. Her right eye conveyed this, deep violet was the hue, but black was her left eye, the digital iris a soft red, Quack noting it a military replacement. Her left socket seemed whole, though it had a slight scare that was hidden from her pink fur, yet, his seasoned medical eyes couldn't miss it. She still seemed to have her eyelashes, and the ocular moved convincingly like she had never lost her natural eye. She even blinked with her eyelids, though the top had a slight blemish as well. The heavy toll of the invasion of the Black Arms, and the Egg War and Metal Virus had produced advancements in medical technology that it was almost possible to make a injured or severely maimed individual nearly whole again...not taking the mental trauma into account, however.

If she had any, she was repressing it well.

He took her hand in return with a smile, but still studied her.

"Agent Julie-Sue," she greeted warmly, taking her left hand and moving the bangs of her lavender hair over to one side. Again, he was taken off-guard of her smile. It was as if she was expecting something more from him.

"Sue. Are you from any of the Southern Islands?"

She tilted her head as if she had made a passing error, her smile not fading, however. "Well, an Island, but not from here," she began. "It's just S-U. No E at the end."

Memos of forgotten or skimmed over emails filtered into his head. "Oh, you are one of the new Echidna's that have come, if I'm not mistaken," he said, placing his hands on his hips.

"I'm one of 'em," she said. Her spines were the same pink fur color, running down past her back from what he could see, with one draped over her shoulder, and another looking like a crude prosthesis of metal and wires dangling over the other. When she turned her head to Shadow, he noted more wires and rings and metal clasps interspersed with her other six spines. They looked very different from the hedgehog's to her right. They didn't seem to be just quills to trim and style. He was certain her's was fur, flesh, blood, and possibly bone.

She was dressed in a loose skirt that was just below her knees, looking as if she preferred movement over current fashion trends, her blouse a mix of causal and conservative, black as well, her collar cut low just enough to subtly know she was a woman. No make up except a haphazard application of pink lip gloss. It seemed to have been applied only out of necessity.

But it was her metal spine that he kept staring at, her violet eye doing the same as if finding something hidden within him.

"That's a crude replacement of what I guess was a severed spine?" he finally asked.

"Spine?" she said, squinting, only raising her brows with what he meant. "Oh, my cybernetic lock!" She grabbed it with her right hand, her left holding a black leather case. "No, I didn't loose my original dreadlock."

A series of medical questions lined up to his beak. "You're saying that was..."

She didn't hesitate to answer him, her look counter to the abject curiosity of immolation he was beginning to suspect from her. "It was...volunteered. Tribute!"

"Tribute?" He turned to the black hedgehog, noting the red eyes staring off, scanning the small nurses office. "Tribute for what?"

"For Technocracy," she answered under reflexive assuredness of confidence. She had the air of being proud of what she done to herself. "At least at the time," she offered as if she had questioned her decision.

"And, how old where you?" he asked, hoping for a sensible answer.

"Oh, I had my lock severed when I was thirteen."

Quack eyes widened.

"But–" she pulled her left sleeve up from her black business blouse, exposing a mechanical arm "–my arm was replaced after I was injured by a mine over two months ago." She looked up, meeting his eyes with a offering of gratitude. "I have to thank G.U.N. for this."

This time he swallowed visibly. "But you severed your lock voluntarily?"

Her face lowered, a memory etching across her peached skin of her face that he felt the pain from it. "Except my eye and arm." Her natural eye and the black and red iris fell to the polished tile floor. "That was involuntary."

"Sir," came the hedgehog, slightly turning his head. His voice was absent of emotion. "What can you tell us about the family from Sunrise City?"

The near whisper Shadow offered him, Quack seemed to match out of sympathy. "Well, the kid's organs are failing–and–" he gave a cough mostly as to pause his emotions and keep his professional demeanor up front. "And he's lost almost all of his fur and hair–not to mention his exposed skin is showing second degree burns."

"Was he burned?" Shadow asked.

Quack shook his head, noting that the pink echidna's face was expressionless, saved for a trace of empathy in her eye. "No. No trace of skin contact. It's all radiation."

"Where do you have him?" Shadow asked next.

"Isolation ward. Apparently the hospital has only used it once before for something like this. He's upstairs, third floor, East Wing."

"Any other's come in with this?" Julie-Su asked, looking to Quack then to Shadow.

"His grandmother." The duck held his eyes to the floor. "She's starting to show the same symptoms, but her radiation levels are relatively safe compared to the young kid. Apparently, she didn't use whatever the kid found off the coast as a nightlight." He looked up to them. "I can take you to him, but–he won't be able to answer questions."

Shadow looked on, only to nod to him to lead them out of the office.

She had hoped the elevator ride up would have left the pang her heart was beating from through her chest at the ground floor, but the lack of eye contact from the very doctor who had examined her several times when she, the Chaotix...her Knuckles–were living and fighting their Eggman at Knothole Village–held the weight she possessed that wasn't making her stronger, but taking something else away. Those times he would make sure she was healthy, the times he and Rotor ran diagnostics on her inner enhancements to be sure she was functioning correctly. Before Knothole was leveled by the Eggfleet. Before Nicole had created New Mobotropolis.

Before Knuckles became something to right Mobius' wrongs.

She wanted to ask how Elizabeth was holding up; how his kids were when they had stepped out of the elevator. But there was no ring on his finger, and she didn't know how to approach a question that she knew the answer was going to burn through her instead of caressing her feelings. Desperation was on her lips, tears not far behind.

But they never were far behind in her new reality she was searching through. To feel her way into it would require her senses attuned to their fullest, but her hands and eyes were pins and needles of falsehoods and numbness. Waking to cold sweats in her air-conditioned room in her new apartment was a surreal experience counter from the waking nightmares from the Twilight Cage...or the desert of planet they thought was their Mobius in search of a phantom signal of hope...or the thick timbers of another false hope of a planet.

New nightmares were plaguing her, now. Old faces–faces she had never glimpsed but felt she knew.

Then...

Daddy? Where had he come from. Simon had told her Lien-Da had wiped her mind. Yet, she found herself being held by her father last night. In her room in the Twilight Cage. The same room she found after a month long search for the Legion's old base when they had been cast out the first time by Steppenwolf. The Legion–her half-sister in command–had returned home. But the rest of the echidna race had been exiled with them. Lien-Da had called it irony. Julie and Lara-Le saw it as punishment from Aurora of an sin they never knew had been committed.

To a purple Tasmanian devil, he knew of the sin. It was committed onto his people, and he exercised the revenge to the Echidna's centuries later.

Yet, her dream from last night...

Where had that come from?

Had it been real?

She didn't scream when she woke, her green nightshirt wet from sweat. Maybe tears as well? Would she run dry of them?

"What are you doing for him?"

Shadow's words snatched her back to the very spot she was standing on in her new black platform shoes. She wanted them teal, but Lieutenant Colonel Hugo Brass said to wait. He wanted them to start simple first, then push limits later with the dress code. And he was right, she conceded, although her heels were killing her.

"Right now," Doctor Quack said, her head turning to him at her left. He was standing next to a windowed partition separating them from the world of the dying. "We are just keeping him as comfortable as possible."

The view before her lurched her from the problems she was locked into, to a suffering she hoped the kid was sedated enough not to feel.

What she could discern as a fox Islander–finding the word Mobian no longer existing as a staple lexicon on Earth–was wrapped in gauze and bandages. She could see the hint of blood as small patches from the gauze that seemed to dapple his body and arms. His nose was covered, ears free of bandages and fur to what air was in the insolation room. The plexiglass she was looking through was coated, enough so that she flickered her left eye's vision from nightvision to x-ray, finding a black cloud in front of her. It must have a lead line, or some sort of coating, to keep the radiation from spilling out of the room.

A trach tube was down his throat, wires protruding from his arms and hands.

"How long does he have?" she asked almost passively. Looking to Shadow, she saw the same question was somehow on his face as well.

Quack shrugged his shoulders, still holding his gaze at the thirteen year old in a cocoon of bandages. "It could be anytime."

She looked to the papers in her left hand, her case on the floor. Studying the first page, she let her left eye scan the document, saving it in her internal storage drive in her replaced lock. She continued with the pages in sequence until she had scanned them all. She could read them and have a cleaner picture at that moment, but her mind was not steady for analytical deciphering today. And she didn't have her credentials as of yet.

"Quack," she said, realizing it was out of habit from the past. She handed him the pages.

He looked to them, then back to her. "Oh, those are your's to keep."

"Oh, I just scanned them for us," she said. The duck held a stare; she winking her left eye off. "Makes remembering for a test way easier."

Her quip got the chuckle she was seeking. He was the same Doctor Quack; easy to laugh, thoughtful for his patients.

But he wasn't the same...

She breathed in when her attention went to her new partner; someone else who wasn't the same as she remembered–yet still familiar in his mannerisms. He still kept an indifferent pose in his body and spirit. Crossed arms, face blank in thought. But it was the suit and pants that scraped at her mind. The Shadow she knew, the one she got to only interact with a handful of times, would never wear pants, much less a suit.

And yet, here you are, girl, wearing dresses and pants.

She looked down to examine her own attire. A new skin...a new pelt.

"I understand his grandmother is down stairs?" Shadow asked after his moment in thought.

Quack took in a breath. "Yes, she is."

"Can we talk with her?"

Julie-Su looked to Quack. The duck again nodded his head. "Yes we can. She may be sleeping but–"

"We need to talk with her," Shadow interjected. His voice was like a firm hand of caution to warn a friend of a danger.

And Quack nodded with it. "Right this way."

Shadow knew right off when he entered the room that the radiation levels were low, but something else lurked behind it. He could feel a whisper of chaos energy pick at him through his body. But something wasn't right of how he sensed it: foreign in language, pungent in breath.

The beeps of the monitor from the older grey fox's vitals made his pointed ears twitch. His eyes narrowed at the sleeping female Islander, her covers straight like she hadn't moved while she slept. He turned to Quack who was standing over her to his right side. Next to her bed to his left was a chair against the wall. Looking to his new assigned partner, he found her still standing, but she was eyeing the chair behind her. He gave her nod, and he went for the one by the wall.

"Misses Livingston?" Quack gently said.

Shadow took the chair and placed it next to the woman fox, looking up before he sat down.

"Misses, Livingston...ma'am," he gently called to her.

Shadow saw her eyes open, squinting when they were filled with the light from the room. He looked to Julie-Su, only motioning with his head and chin to the light switch. The pink echidna didn't hesitate when she stood up and turned them off.

Facing back to the grandmother, he leaned in slightly, his elbows on his thighs.

"Misses, Livingston," Quack began again. "I have a two Islanders who would like to speak to you, if you can?"

She blinked a few times more, looked to the Doctor with a nod, motioning to the tray table behind him. The duck turned and found what she was wanting: the large plastic thermos with a straw filled with water. He took it and let her take a sip, only nodding to him when she was done.

It was when she turned her head over to Shadow that he saw her green eyes dissolve with a fear he wondered if it was loathing. She held her stare to him, thoughts running behind her eyes; his knowing what she was peering into.

"Are–are you the demon that is hurting my Jeffrey?"

Her words were timid in strength, but it took more than that to say what she had to him. He knew it was his red eyes that brought it forth. He had grown accustomed to it.

"No, ma'am," he answered, his voice offering that he was an ally to her and not an enemy. "But I am hunting the demon that is."

She turned her head back away from him, breathing in as she did. "I knew he should not have brought that trinket inside our house."

Shadow turned to Julie. She had her tablet out, powering it on. "Can you tell us how he got it?" he asked, turning his head back.

"Oh...my Jeffery. He's so–helpful," she said, her face brightening. "He tries to help me any-which-way he can." She tried to sit up in the bed, but only got a few inches up from her pillow. "He goes and finds these little odd jobs to get a little money for us."

Again, he turned his head to Julie-Su who was tapping away at something on the tablet. "What type of jobs?" he asked.

"Oh...these trash divers. They take these impressionable kids out on these small barges, and they run ropes and things down to haul up sunken bits lost during the war." She turned her head forward to the echidna sitting ahead of her. "Do you have children, dear?"

Shadow's eyes followed to Julie. He saw the color from her muzzle fade, her lone natural eye tracing a pain the old fox may have inadvertently drudged up.

"No, ma'am. I don't," Julie answered, her voice soft. Shadow could feel a regret somewhere hidden in it.

"Well," the fox began again, "my Jeffery is my daughter's son. She was so eager to help me and my late husband Samuel. Jeffery is much the same, you see."

"What happened to his parents," Shadow asked with sincerity.

She took in a breath that he couldn't mistaken as a sigh. "They were both killed during the war. Eggman and that Doctor Starline took my Fran and Sam, leaving my with Jeffery. He...He's all I got left."

Looking to Julie-Su, Shadow saw her mouth was slightly open, her expression frozen. He gave a curt nod before turning his attention to the grandmother once more. "What was it that he brought home? Can you tell me?"

"Oh, it was some sort of gizmo that was like a block, but had wires hanging out of it." She cleared her throat. "It had a screen, and some sort of antenna or dish...and it glowed a little from where it was broken."

"Glowed?" Julie asked.

"Yes...it was glowing a green color." She turned her head to Shadow. "Oh, he opened the box to see what it was. Took a good deal of effort from him, but he is persistent."

Shadow had the mental image of the red-furred fox bringing in his new found treasure, showing it to his grandmother, possibly soaking wet from retrieving it from the ocean. "And what did he do with it then?"

"Oh, he placed it in his room, the machine still attached to it." She sighed. "He said it was a cool nightlight, so I let him sleep with it at night." She turned her head to Julie-Su. "My Jeffery is scared of the dark. Eggman's ships and bombings when he was younger, you understand." Shadow saw her eyes become distant. "How he lost his mom and dad..."

Maria's face flashed in his mind. She was there, brushing her hair, looking at him through the mirror of her vanity table. Her room was of dark wood panels–the lone window of the Earth they orbited then giving the only light to it.

"Can you describe the device and what was glowing in it?" he asked her. Maria's smiling face faded from him. Looking to the pink echidna, he saw her pull out a stylist from the tablet.

"Oh, it was square, like I said. But the thing that glowed. Well, I only saw it a few times. It was small and green. About the size of good size rock. It looked like it was–damaged. Rough in contour–like it was trying to be an emerald, but was incomplete."

Shadow's ears twitched at this. The feeling he was still grasping from her–that chaos sense–was becoming a little clearer.

"And then it stopped glowing," she said after a moment. "It stopped and Jeffery started getting frustrated with it."

"What did he do with it then?" Julie asked, still etching something on the tablet.

Shadow watched Quack shift in his stance, placing his closed hand under his bill.

"Well," the old woman fox began, "he said it was broken, so he posted it on that SmileBook social app on the marketplace, he said. Didn't think nothing of it–well," she trailed off only to give a small cough, then looked to Shadow. "Someone's junk is another person's treasure."

He leaned further forward, placing his hand on her bed. "Do you know who that person was?"

She nodded. "Oh, yes. They came to the house to buy it from us."

Shadow cocked his head. "Can you describe them?"

"Well, the big guy, he was a grey bull dog. Looked like he could play for a rugby team with humans. Wore a suit...he didn't say much."

Shadow darted his head over to Julie-Su to make sure she was etching on the tablet. She was, but her face had hardened in suspicion, her brows furrowing.

"You said they?" he continued.

"Oh, the man who was talking and being nice to me and Jeffery was a rabbit. Black in fur. Had a ring on his right ear."

"What type of ring?" Julie-Su asked, her voice pensive with a hint of dread.

"Gold, I think. He had this tan looking suit. Like he was trying to live back in the old days of Earth. Had a matching brimmed hat to go with it...but the sunglasses...anyways."

"Did he give a name?" Julie asked next. There was a foreboding tone Shadow was noticing rise from her.

"Something Downtown..." She sighed as she was searching her mind. "That's–that's all I can remember."

What color Julie-Su had on what exposed skin she possessed vanished when the was passed in the air, Shadow looking at the echidna with a quizzical look. She knew this Islander. Her stiffening jaw told him it was not on good terms.

"How much did he pay you for the device?" Shadow asked, turning his head back to the old woman.

"He gave us a few thousand for it," the grandmother answered. "It helped pay a few bills and got Jeffery a nice game."

She pulled her hand from under the covers and placed it on Shadow's. "Will my Jeffery be okay?"

The hedgehog looked to her, then to Doctor Quack. Breathing in, he offered a smile to her. It was subtle, but it was there. "Yes," he answered. "Yes, he will."

But she could see the lie in his red eyes. Even then, she nodded to him, tapping his hand before rolling her head over. "My Jeffery–he is such a good kid. He deserves good in his life."

"I wish you two luck," Doctor Quack said. "I hope you find that thing before it hurts anyone else."

Shadow turned to the doctor. All three of them were standing at the front entrance to the Emergency Room, waiting to leave but making sure they weren't in the way. It was painted white with aqua-green trim at the baseboards. Nurses wore deep blue scrubs. He could only breathe in with his conclusions his head was piecing together from the overly sterile air. "I think whatever it was that was glowing may have died or gone dormant."

"That means it can still be dangerous?"

"Possible," Shadow said. "We won't know until we find it."

Quack looked to Shadow then to Julie-Su. "Again, my best of luck to you." He shifted to turn, but stopped. "Any other radiation I need to worry about...mostly for my staff?"

Shadow closed his eyes then opened them. "Only the radiation that you've been dealing with." He looked to Quack, giving his best face to portray that what he was about to say needed to stay between them. "I detected chaos energy, but it felt...different. Like it was unnatural."

Quack shook his head. "If it came from something Eggman or Starline had created and was destroyed, who knows."

"He was always making things?" Julie-Su asked in a hush voice.

"Always," Shadow answered. The echidna's purple eye squinted in understanding to him.

She turned to Quack. "What now for you?"

He sighed. "Hoping to grab lunch soon and–well, just be ready..."

She gave a nod, her face smiling, yet she seemed to hold back something she wanted to say. Instead, she offered her hand to him. "It was good seeing you ag–, Horatio."

Shadow heard the stammer, saw the sadness melt back beneath her face.

The Doctor took it and returned her hand shake. "My best to you and your people and your new endeavors."

A tear did come this time, Shadow never letting his eyes leave hers when he saw it.

"Thank you, sir. That means a lot, right now."

She released his hand, smiled and turned to her new partner. Shadow nodded to her. He turned around and began to walk towards the double doors to the outside. Julie-Su had just come up to him, her leather bag in her right hand–when the overhead intercom came to life with a woman's voice:

"CODE BLUE, CODE BLUE–THREE-EAST ISOLATION! THREE-EAST ISOLATION! DOCTOR QUACK TO THREE-EAST ISOLATION!"

They turned to see the duck pivoting on his webbed feet, his legs powering back to the sea of white and green of the hospital. They were both sure he was going to be making a pronouncement.

"Do you know him?"

Shadow's voice pulled her from her thoughts, the road noise a drone that took her there, reminding her of the shifting whine and sing from the Twilight Cage when she was little. Her father's smile warmed her. A smile that wasn't there before. From a memory that had come to her in her sleep; one that was not supposed to exist.

It was what had made the drive over from the Annex at Station Square to Empire City a blur. The poison of her thoughts had inebriated her eyes and senses, not caring what the scenery they had passed through had been. She recalled a few tunnels, the high thunder scream of the V-10 beating at the interior from the cacophony of the twin exhaust pipes, wrapped in carbon fiber trim, just below the driver and passenger doors as they passed through. Emotions stirred with every imperfection in the road...then...and now.

But it was remembering the young fox lying the way he did in the isolation room not less than an hour ago, blocked off from the outside world to keep all others safe, then imagining Doctor Quack looking to his watch to give Jeffery's time of his passing–his time when his misery ended–it lurched her back to the current reality.

"Who?" she asked, her head turning to him from the passing concrete railing to her right. She could just see the water of the large channel below them and the raised causeway, the silhouette of the coming shore through the haze closing quickly. A larger concrete partition blurred by from Shadow's left side, the raised monorail expansion visible, dividing the ten lane Speed Highway they were racing over.

"Doctor Quack?"

The black hedgehog's posture was rigid in the leather bucket seat when he spoke; Julie's shifting here and there about every three miles to itch from the fabric of the dress and blouse she still wasn't thrilled in having to wear, though a thing called a bra was nice addition to her life–it seemed to be the only thing giving her support aside from Saffron and Remington.

He'd removed his black suit jacket before they had left the hospital, folding and laying it behind them in the meager backseat. His shoulder holster was nestled under his arms and black shirt, being more of a decoration than a tool. And she was amazed she could hear his low, soft voice between the rushing air and the screaming roar of the engine at its repressed tilt. The Dark Reaper was keeping a steady one-hundred and seventy miles per hour over the long causeway. She looked over to the dash once again to confirm their speed with a passing glance, the dividing lines on the road rushing past like specks of white on the grooved, grey pavement. The car never rolled or swayed when he passed by a slow moving truck or car. There was no speed limit on this highway; she never saw a sign this passing, her first being a distant memory.

"Yes, I knew him," she answered finally, her mind not truly wanting to do so. It was another pain being dredged up.

"From your time?"

She nodded her head. "Yes," she said, inhaling from her answer, closing her eyes–turning off her replacement–searching for darkness. Her left iris was mercifully in synch with her right eye when she blinked or just wanted to shut off from the world. She let the sound of the engine and the road take her in again.

"And what of this Downtown guy?" he asked after a spell with distance covered.

She let her vision return–he was running the left lane like he owned it.

"Him, too."

"What was he?" he asked, his voice still even. She was finding that this Shadow was close to the one she knew only briefly, yet, he was also particular. This Shadow's indifference held something else. It begged the question if the Shadow sitting next to her, his eyes intently focused on the road–and somewhere deep in his own mind–if he was much more different than the one she had known. Like he had no one–

"He was sleeze bag that pushed drugs onto people and kids," she said with disgust infused with malice. Mello's lifeless body came to her with her answer. The bee had been racked with the Lemon Sundrop Dandelion juice, killing him, and crushing her friend Charmy.

Saffron's Charmy, her soul let out.

It was the first time she got to work with the Chaotix. To make new friends all those years ago when she sought a better path away from the Legion.

And now...they were friends lost, only adrift in her heart.

"Is he capable of deploying weapons of mass destruction?" Shadow asked with an alertness that got her attention.

But she in turn laughed at his question. "That long-eared shithead couldn't deploy a coherent plan to poor piss out of a boot with the instructions on the heel."

Shadow slid the Reaper into the next lane over to avoid a car traveling too slow in the left. The quick maneuver tripped Julie's thought to getting a driver's licence at some point popped back in her head. To gain back independence and freedom that this Earth had to give beckoned the thing she feared, the touch that was still hitched to her heart. The hand that kept feeding her hope. For him. It wanted her to disappear, to find a hole and wait for either her salvation, or her end; and she didn't want to give it the means to compel her to do so. It would make a morning come, not unlike this, that she would be gone.

So much–

"And he has something incredibly dangerous," Shadow said, snapping her back to him. She was glad her seatbelt was tight. It kept her from jumping out of her fur, restrained against herself.

"What is it?" she asked.

"I–I don't know," he said, looking to her for brief instant.

"You told the Doc you felt chaos energy, but it was unnatural?"

"It was. Like it was synthetic."

She let her left eye turn her head, the red iris holding him in her stare. "Synthetic? Like Eggman and this Doctor Starline were attempting to make a chaos emerald?" The description the old fox woman gave them was saved in her tablet and in her internal storage data in her cybernetic lock...and in her natural mind.

But the black hedgehog made a face indicating that he didn't know for sure. "We'll talk to Tower and Brass when we get back."

"After I get my picture done," she said, giving a smile with it. "Interesting first day, eh?"

She saw him nod, his red eyes forward on the highway. "Congratulations, by the way," he said, pulling her off-guard from the sincere tone he offered. "Welcome to GUN."

Hope this is a good start for you all. Little different take on Julie and Shadow. Please fav and review. And thank you for reading.