Disclaimer: All non-original characters are property of SEGA, Egmont and/or their respective creators.
Inescapable Past, Act 8: Rogue Agent
"Okay?" grunted Espio. "Now pivot."
"I'm trying," whined Amy from the other side of the vertical mattress.
"Try harder," snapped the chameleon before he could stop himself. Unsure he had a convincing apology in him, Espio swore himself to silence for the next few minutes, or at least until they'd moved this damned mattress up these stairs.
This wasn't really what Espio had had in mind when he'd confronted Shadow about their urgent need to find a new refuge. Alas, excessive use of his Chaos powers during the dust-up with Jet had left the black hedgehog barely able to stay awake, let alone teleport. By rights, he and Amy should've been resting up too. His fight with that kooky lemur had left him bruised and aching all over, and the kid's back was cut up almost as badly as her dress in places.
Perhaps the only upside of being where they were – in a deserted suburb of New Tek City – was being able to literally move next door. However, whoever had last lived in this new house had rather inconsiderately taken all their furniture with them. Hence why Espio now found himself shouting at a twelve-year-old as they tried to maneuver a mattress around a ninety-degree bend in a flight of stairs.
By and by, the bend was traversed, and the duo proceeded speedily up to the landing. So speedily, in fact, Amy reversed through the first open door they came to. She let out a mournful groan when she noticed a bathtub.
"Let's not go giving the poor guy nightmares," said Espio, gazing in horrified awe at the bathroom's ceiling.
It bore an amateur's attempt to replicate an iconic mural from one of Soleanna's grand palaces: a cloudscape dotted with frolicking Chaos, arranged in a loose circle around a pair of togaed ibexes locked in a doting embrace. He could imagine Princess Elise's ancestors turning in their mausolea at the sight of it.
Once they'd had backed out of the bathroom, Espio led the way across the landing to a bedroom as barren as the rooms downstairs. There wasn't so much as a rug covering the pine floorboards. Mindful of what'd happened to the last window it was placed beside, the duo dumped the mattress in the middle of the room. Springs squeaked as Amy swan-dived onto it.
Happy to take a breather before they went back for Shadow, Espio took the opportunity to stretch out his aching limbs. While doing so, he looked down at Amy, gauging the extent of damage to her purple gingham dress. One sleeve was entirely shredded, the skirt's hem was frayed, and he could see plenty of pink fur through small rips dotting her back.
The chameleon added it to the list of reasons he planned to put to Shadow when he spoke to him about the pressing need to get out of New Tek City. As if the biting winter air wasn't reason enough. He was still debating whether to mention his growing unease about leaving Vector by himself for too long. After all, it wasn't like Charmy was due to visit from boarding school this weekend.
A glimpse of the pink light of sunset through the bedroom's window prompted him to lean down and ruffle Amy's braided quills. "C'mon. Better go get him before he freaks out and teleports over here."
〜
"Sorry, Cyrus. All good now," said Sonic sheepishly, stepping out onto the stage of Trillium City's Queen Alicia Arena under batteries of bright lights.
Up on a balcony between the arena's upper and lower bowls, a lion put down his clipboard, picked a pair of headphones up off the mixing desk in front of him and gave the blue hedgehog a thumbs up. Sonic grinned to himself. If only Mina and his siblings could be so patient. As things were, Mina's bass, Sonia's keyboard rig and Manic's drums all stood silent while their respective owners chowed down backstage.
Not that Sonic blamed them. Soundchecks were a chore at the best of times, and he wasn't even sure how long his call with Sally had lasted. Arriving at his guitar, the hedgehog flexed his shoulders in preparation before lifting the triple-necked monstrosity off its stand and over his head. The time it took him to ensure the instrument's eighteen strings were all in tune was sufficient to make him ever regret agreeing to Ash's 'no roadies' policy.
Once he'd finished adjusting machine heads, Sonic set about tearing up the three fretboards in what amounted to a three-minute speed metal solo. There weren't actually any songs in this style on the tour setlist. It was simply the most expedient way of putting the arena's sound system through its paces.
As he finished and removed his in-ear monitors, Sonic heard slow clapping echo around the 10,000-seater auditorium. Amazed (and a little oddly thrilled) that the businesslike Cyrus would do something so brazen, he looked up to find the lion busily adjusting sliders on the mixing desk. The lone applauder was standing on the balcony behind the one-man roadcrew: Mighty.
"Who let that jailbreaker in?" shouted Sonic like someone from arena management was in earshot.
"They were asking for a volunteer to come and pull the plug," the armadillo fired back.
Placing his guitar on its stand, the beaming Sonic jumped nimbly offstage and strode up the lower bowl's sloping center aisle. A grinning Mighty met him halfway, whereupon the one-time cellmates threw their arms around each other.
"What're you doing here?" wheezed Sonic, caught off-guard by Mighty's robust embrace.
"I saw one of Mina's bus vlogs. Thought you might need some help getting through all that beer."
"Freeloader," said the blue hedgehog, slapping the armadillo's red carapace.
〜
Dark had descended on New Tek City. In the loungeroom of the house one door down from Shadow's old hideaway, Espio sat cross-legged on a salvaged couch cushion, contemplating the smoldering embers of a fire he'd started. He think recognized some of the wood as part of a table he and that lemur had smashed. Right now, he had half a mind to go see if there were any spare table legs he could pummel Shadow with. Stubbornness could be beaten out of Mobians, right?
The black hedgehog had been in the house three hours, and it was like was already ready to start picking out carpets and drapes. Like hell was he teleporting away from New Tek, never mind the contacts Espio had in the United Federation and beyond, hundreds of miles to west of Metropolis and the Acorn Kingdom. Evidently, Shadow preferred to languish here with a hole in his leg and shiver. Oh, and starve, too.
Three plastic bowls were lined up on the fireplace's tiled hearth. Two contained dregs of a pale gruel-like substance. The third, Shadow's portion of the gloopy GUN-made rations, was practically full. Espio couldn't remember seeing a Mobian so resistant to eating something since Mighty tried introducing a toddler-aged Charmy to avocados. Compared to the black hedgehog, the little bee felt like a gourmand.
Feeling his eyelids grow heavy to droop as he gazed at the fire, Espio straightened up and reached for the dogeared copy of Princess Blaze & The Flames of Disaster. After he'd helped her take the obstinate Shadow upstairs, Amy had made the chameleon promise to come get her in case he got too tired. Sure, he was closing in on three days without sleep, but he'd been on stakeouts longer than that for Chaotix clients (mostly suspicious spouses).
If the thought of waking up a child to go and sit alone in the dark was the thing putting Espio off going upstairs, he really needn't have worried. Unlike the comatose Shadow beside her, Amy lay wide awake, lost in thought about goings-on six thousand miles away. If it weren't for warmth of the blanket the hedgehogs were sharing, she would've gone and joined Espio by now. Wiping her eyes, she flipped over her damp pillow and curled up under the blanket.
"Rise and shine, hedgehogs!" shouted a female voice as the bedroom's door slammed open.
In an instant, Amy had extricated herself from the blanket and clambered to her feet. Momentarily dazzled by a flashlight, she toppled backwards onto the mattress.
"Damnit, Whisper!" hissed Rouge, shooting a glance at a cloaked Mobian beside her.
"Rouge?" murmured Shadow groggily, roused by the unconscious preteen landing on him.
"Good evening," said the bat casually, gritting her teeth as she watched him try to shake Amy awake. A second later, the black hedgehog was pointing a handgun at her and her accomplice.
"What did you do?" he growled.
"Calm down," said Rouge flatly, shining her flashlight on the boxy grey rifle-like object her cloaked companion had levelled at Shadow. "I can't remember what sexy codename Wave gave this doodad, but it's basically a stun-gun. Don't ask me how it works, but it does. You can ask your friend downstairs. Just as soon as he wakes up, that is."
"Who's that?" asked Shadow, motioning at the 'stun-gun'
"You mean Whisper here?" replied the bat. "Meet my babysitter."
"Your what?"
"See that lens?" said Rouge, directing her flashlight at her accomplice's face.
Rather than a face, Shadow saw a grey shield-shaped mask bereft of facial features. On its right side were three small holes which put him in mind of a bowling ball. On its left side was a large, unblinking, and perfectly round blue-green eye.
"If it makes you feel any better, we're being watched. Go ahead, give Jet a wave."
"Jet?" said Shadow, too groggy and confused to manage multiple syllables.
"Yeah, he's my new boss."
"Since when?"
"This afternoon, I guess."
Scarlet eyes widened. "Don't tell me you had something to do with today?"
"Okay, I won't."
"Why?" he asked, bewildered. Given how she'd effectively saved his life in Metropolis, it felt utterly incongruous.
Wordlessly, the bat left her masked companion's side and sauntered across the bedroom. Shadow tracked her with his handgun, thumbing back the hammer as she parked herself at the far end of the mattress.
"Let me try and explain."
〜
"Pickup-pickup-pickup-pickup," Sergeant Topaz whispered breathlessly to herself while a cellphone's ringing tone purred in her ear. Twenty seconds later, the line went dead.
Growling in frustration, the lioness slapped the device down on her desk. It joined an assortment of other cellular devices – smartphones, flip phones, brick phones – that she'd accumulated over the year. All were still functional, all were fully charged, and yet, all the calls she'd made on each one in the last hour had gone unanswered by Rouge.
Topaz reached for the tumbler of whisky that'd helped her through the ring-a-thon and took another swig. The alcohol nearly ended up all over the cellphones when someone knocked on her barrack-room's door. Swallowing her mouthful, she went to get up, paused and necked the rest of the whisky. Then, wiping her mouth on the fur of her left forearm, she stood.
Upon opening the door, Topaz saw her face mirrored in a pair of purple sunglasses. "Dingo?"
"G'day, sarge," said their wearer, a muscle-bound orange Mobian in black camo pants. He held a submachinegun in his hands.
"That's Lieutenant Urchino to you, sergeant," remarked a blue wolf, appearing from behind the dingo.
"C-colonel Sleet?" stuttered Topaz, reflexively snapping to attention. The wolf was GUN's unofficial third-in-command, although his gold-fringed epaulets and ever-present peaked cap led many to assume he was the new Commander.
"The very same," said Sleet impassively. "Sergeant Topaz, you're under arrest. If you would, lieutenant."
"Nothing personal, sarge," said the burly dingo, stepping behind the lioness to handcuff her wrists behind her back.
"Can't I get dressed first, sir?"
"Why? You've already got more on than the lieutenant," replied the wolf, looking the half-dressed Topaz up and down. She was wearing a light-gray tanktop and shorts.
"Are you at least going to tell me what this is about?"
"I thought it was obvious, sergeant, but for future reference, Commander Volta prefers to be consulted before the Intelligence Wing go involving mercenaries in top-secret operations."
"Hypocrite," murmured Topaz, drawing an amused grunt from Urchino before he placed a cloth bag over her head.
Feeling the barrel of the dingo's submachinegun prod her in the back, she obediently started to walk. Despite her best efforts, Vice Commander Trusk had apparently still found a way to add her name to the list of subordinates he'd sacrificed for the sake of his own career. Why fight gravity?
〜
Six thousand miles away, Shadow had put down his weapon. Not that Rouge had said anything to magically regain his trust. Quite simply, keeping up with everything she was saying demanded too much concentration for him to simultaneously keep his finger on the trigger of a cocked handgun.
According to the bat, her new boss Jet and his fellow Babylon Rogues had recently been taking steps to reinvent themselves as friends to Mobiankind. To that end, the hawk had appointed himself as the benefactor of Westopolis, paying for the shattered city's reconstruction with his ill-gotten fortune through the charitable arm of the Rogues' new corporation, Babylon Enterprises.
Supposedly, it was Jet's commitment to his personal rebranding project that led Rouge to approach him with a bogus GUN report, linking Shadow to the recent theft of a Chaos Emerald from Angel Island. Paired with her own 'suspicions' that the Ultimate Life Form may be plotting a 'revenge tour' of the United Federation, Jet had suddenly taken it as his sacred duty to retrieve the Emerald.
"How did he know where to find me?" asked Shadow, his mind still reeling.
"Thanks to this," said Rouge, reaching something shaped like a cellphone out of her violet overcoat's pocket. She tossed it to him.
The black hedgehog turned the device over in his hands. Its screen was blank. "What is it?"
"As far as GUN knows, it can lock on to your DNA."
Shadow's head snapped up. "Can it?"
Rouge smirked. "Relax, it's an old Emerald finder. The idea was Jet would grab the gem and then GUN would think you'd gone Super or gotten on a plane or whatever."
Her smirk faded as the hedgehog clenched his fist until they heard plastic cracking.
"Well, I hope that made you feel better," she said curtly. "GUN still has one, though."
"All thanks to you, no doubt," muttered Shadow, sweeping the device's remains off the mattress. "Dare I ask how you and GUN knew where I'd be in Metropolis?"
The bat sighed. "Remember that tablet I gave you with all those maps on?"
Shadow nodded slowly.
"It was bugged."
Scarlet eyes widening, the black hedgehog grabbed for his handgun. Before his fingers could even touch the grip, he blacked out.
〜
"Was that really necessary?" complained Topaz, coughing as the cloth bag was taken off her head.
"All part of the experience, sarge," said Lieutenant Urchino jovially.
While Colonel Sleet set about punching a code into a keypad, the lioness looked around. This wasn't the same stockade where she'd spent a night last week, following a barroom brawl over a spilt whisky. The walls were all steel girders and bare concrete. Not a window in sight.
"Nice dungeon you've got here."
"She's a beauty, ain't she?" agreed Urchino, slapping the nearest wall like he'd built it himself.
"Glad you like it, sergeant," said Sleet, finally heaving open the door to what Topaz assumed was her cell. "Lieutenant."
"Righto," said the burly dingo, steering the half-dressed lioness towards the narrow opening with his submachinegun's barrel digging into her back. She was still cuffed when the door closed behind her.
Kicking the cell door with a bare footpaw, Topaz's anger ebbed as she took stock of her new surroundings. The cell was essentially a brightly-lit concrete cube. Steel benches jutted out of two of the four walls. One was empty. The other was occupied by Vice Commander Trusk, dressed in nothing but a long towel wrapped around his rotund waist. Like her, the warthog's wrists were cuffed behind his back.
"Get lost on your way to the sauna, sir?" she said, flashing a devilish smile.
〜
"Espio, he's awake!"
Amy's holler stung Shadow's ears as he came to. Despite his fellow hedgehog's presence, he neither moved nor turned his head. Instead, he just stared at the white ceiling. The fact he could tell what color it was could only mean there was a modicum of daylight coming in through the window. The next thing he knew, Espio was looming over him.
"Any chance of you telling us what happened last night?" asked the chameleon, looking down his horn at the supine hedgehog.
"Rouge is what happened," muttered Shadow.
"See!" Amy piped up triumphantly. "I told you I didn't dream that bit."
"Huh," uttered the chameleon. "I just thought I passed out."
"You tried blaming my book," said the pink hedgehog reproachfully.
Espio glanced up at the preteen.
"That chapter was nothing but exposition for ten pages straight. That Silver loves the sound of his own voice," he countered before looking back down at Shadow. "Can you make any sense of this?"
He thrust a piece of crumpled white paper in the black hedgehog's face. Snatching the note, Shadow tried to find an angle where he could make out whatever was scrawled on it.
"Got a flashlight?" he asked. Amy obliged.
Shadow recognized the handwriting in a heartbeat. He'd seen it on dozens of notes Rouge had left for him on her refrigerator, coffee table and elsewhere in her Station Square apartment when he'd been convalescing there. They'd rarely been more than a sentence long, informing him she had 'urgent business to attend to' or whatever. This one was longer.
Sorry about earlier.
Don't have the luxury of dying right now.
Got someone counting on me (no, not Jet or GUN!)
In case you need somewhere cozier to hide out, see below.
Shadow looked down at the sketchiest hand-drawn map he'd ever seen. The scratchy lines just about corresponded to the basic shape of the Emerald Hill Zone. Underneath, she'd scrawled two strings of numbers, one with a minus symbol in front of it. Coordinates maybe? He read on.
P.S. Say hi to Omega for me.
Shadow stared mutely at that last scribbled line until Amy turned off her flashlight and shook him gently. "Err, Shadow?"
"I think I know where Omega is," said the black hedgehog quietly, as if stunned by his own words.
"As in your robot friend?" asked Espio, cocking a brow. "How?"
Shadow sat bolt upright, flipped Rouge's note around and repeatedly jabbed the postscript with an index finger. "That's how."
The chameleon frowned. "And you believe her?"
"You still want me to get us out of here, don't you?"
"Well, now you put it that way-"
"Where is he?" Amy piped up.
"The Emerald Hill Zone," replied Shadow.
"Give me a minute to get our stuff together and we'll get gone-"
"Wait a second!" squeaked the pink hedgehogs, startling both her companions. "Look, I know you, like, really really really want to see Omega, Shadow, but, uh, if we're going to be that close to Station Square, could we maybe, like, make a super quick visit somewhere else first?"
Espio's gaze shifted from one hedgehog to the other.
"After everything you've done for him?" said the chameleon. "I reckon it's the least he can do."
Note: For the purposes of this continuity, Princess Elise and the Soleannese royal family are indeed ibexes (AKA mountain goats with a bitchin' set of horns).