The room was hot. Shadow barely had any fluid left inside of him to sweat. With each laboured exhale he was expelling precious water vapour from his body. Shadow tried to stop, many times, but each time he felt like his heart and lungs were burning. If he tried to use his Chaos powers, his insides burned. If he tried to pull himself free, his insides burned. If he wasted any breath at all to call out to Black Doom, his insides burned.
Shadow tried to hold his breath for longer, to see if he could endure the burning long enough for him to finally die, but his body healed at such a rate that he was in stalemate for too long. He didn't have the strength in him anymore. The hedgehog just hung, cuffed to the contraption on the wall, heaving in pain and weakness, waiting. He was waiting for someone, anyone to let him out of this room that was starving him of his life force, yet keeping him alive just enough for him to feel the pain of this pathetic existence.
There was a flash. Shadow closed his eyes; in the dim lighting, such a bright light shocked his dilated pupils.
"So much for the ultimate life form," a familiar voice grumbled.
Shadow winced, not wanting to open his eyes. Please… don't be…
"You're pathetic…" the voice hissed. That was unmistakable… Mephiles.
"What do you want?" Shadow's voice broke as he hung in shame, still gasping for the oxygenless air.
"To see how you are doing since our last encounter," Mephiles said.
"To see me suffer…" Shadow rasped, still not giving Mephiles the satisfaction of eye contact. "You got what you wanted," he sneered, his muzzle wrinkling in disgust. "Do me a favour; kill me." Shadow would have spat if he had the saliva left to do so.
Mephiles folded his arms and raised an eye ridge, looking up at Shadow with extreme attention.
"You're in pain…" Mephiles aired. "You want that pain to end. But I'm afraid I have a lot more planned for you, Shadow."
"This isn't enough!?" Shadow choked. His eyes were wide open now, his pupils small and his irises grey. The white sclera of his eyes were tainted with dark green veins.
"Save your breath, Shadow…" Mephiles said in a dark, eerie tone, craning his head to look up at the displayed hedgehog… but still pointing his gaze down towards him somehow. The gaze made Shadow shiver.
Mephiles' crystal form floated up towards Shadow, becoming level with him. "Still mourning over the loss of your planet, by any chance, Shadow?" Mephiles taunted.
Shadow closed his eyes again and said nothing. He felt a twang of shame in his heart and a lump in his throat.
"The human race… deserved it, you know," Mephiles said, eyes glowing with a sense of delight as he looked closely at the way that Shadow was grimacing with mental pain. "You mourn so much for them, despite what they were planning to do to you."
"What…" Shadow murmured softly, "Prison Island? Execution?"
"Something like that," Mephiles said. "Perhaps it's better to show you." The demigod clicked his fingers. Shadow twitched an eye open. On the opposite side of the room, he could see… himself.
The Shadow across the room was a mirror image to him, except he was in much better condition… encased in a tinted glass, and completely unconscious.
"Looks cozy," Shadow remarked, head hung low, ogling his alternate self in envy. "Cryo would have been better than this."
"But you failed to save the human race, so this is your fate instead," Mephiles said. He clicked his fingers again and the image vanished. "You brought this upon yourself, hedgehog." Mephiles looked down at Shadow's declining form. His fur was paling, skin cracking, the muscles underneath it getting eaten away by time. When Shadow breathed in, his ribs expanded, showing through his chest so clearly. What was once a wispy, soft tuft of fur in his chest, was now thin, dry and falling out.
"You did this to me," Shadow growled, his breaths were getting shallow and fast. "You need to undo this with your time powers!"
"It cannot be undone. There is already a timeline where you succeeded in defeating Black Doom. Your alternative self is living it… any change made to the past just splits the time stream."
"Then kill me," Shadow said in desperation, his breath becoming shaky.
"That would be an unsatisfying end. I have much more for you Shadow. Unless you'd rather me pass the pain onto one of your alternate timelines…" Mephiles hissed, looking him in the eye with a tempting gaze. Shadow returned his gaze, taken aback.
"Would that…" Shadow gulped, ears drooped. "... save the Earth."
"No. This timeline is written now. There is nothing that can be done to change it."
Shadow's eyes closed and despaired.
"Then no. There's no point," Shadow said. "I can't rest in peace knowing that someone will suffer in my place."
"Very well," Mephiles said. A portal opened up behind him and he floated away, eyeing up every second of Shadow's pained expression until the portal closed. The hedgehog was alone again.
oooooooo
Shadow heard the door hiss; he cracked open one eye feebly to see who had so kindly graced him with their presence after all of this time. It was, of course, Black Doom.
"Not faring so well, I see, Shadow," the alien overlord observed. He hovered to a control panel on the wall. With a loud clunk, the restraints on Shadow's ankles opened, which left him dangling by his arms. He winced until the cuffs on his hands detached from the wall. He dropped.
Shadow's weak body did not handle the fall gracefully, and his legs gave out under him. Crawling across the floor, he desperately pulled himself towards the door. The air was beginning to feel cleaner. Black Doom slammed the control panel and the door shut.
Shadow grasped at his throat and chest… he was so close.
"You will not find what you are looking for out there, Shadow. I can tell you are desperate but… the ship is running low on oxygen, and I will not waste it on you."
Shadow took shallow breaths and looked at the floor, his eyes wide with trauma.
"Let me die…" he heaved. "Why won't I die? I've been suffocating for… forever."
"You are a resilient one," Black Doom commented. "Mere oxygen starvation cannot kill you."
Mere? … That word pulled on Shadow's nerves. He twitched.
"I can sense that you are growing stronger. This ordeal will feel like nothing soon."
Shadow grit his teeth and began to tremble as he growled with fury.
"Tell me this is just… nothing!" Shadow roared, then looked up at Black Doom with his wide open eyes. His sclera was completely a dark blood green, and his irises were white.
"Ah, your body is in conservation mode," Black Doom. "That is very natural for our kind. Your Black Arms DNA seems to have awoken from the stress."
Shadow clutched at his head and bit back a scream of frustration.
"My Hedgehog DNA's still complaining about it…" he groaned.
"In a few moments, we will land at our first destination," Black Doom said. He revealed a small, round control panel made out of dark material with a glowing purple center. Shadow's cuffs started to glow purple, then, like magnets, they crashed together and remained locked there. Shadow tried to pull them apart, but it was no use. The cuffs did not budge, instead, they acted like they had never been apart.
"Come now, Shadow," Black Doom said. Shadow twitched from the anguish of his destroyed body. Black Doom suddenly expected him to walk? The hedgehog felt like a corpse.
The door hissed open again. Shadow mustered the strength to rise to his knees, then stand on two feet. With his arms out in front of him, ready to protect himself if he were to fall, he shuffled through the door. A thin spray of oxygen tickled his lungs. Shadow could feel his eyes stinging with dry tears of relief.
Each step became easier, and he soon made it to the main door. The ship no longer seemed to be moving, but he was unaware of the landing sequence they had just gone through. The world around him had vanished, and all of his consciousness concentrated on the first life-sustaining breath he wouldn take in almost two years.
Shadow hit the 'open' button with a feeble fist and leapt from the exit at the first chance. There was a small drop. Then, with his first inhale on solid ground… he started to feel high. His pupils dilated and his heart started beating faster. The air… was rich with oxygen. The tormented hedgehog proceeded to breathe heavily as if he had just sprinted a marathon without stopping.
"Calm down, Shadow…" Black Doom said, approaching the hedgehog from behind.
Shadow was trembling, his eyes shut to hold back tears.
"Let's just… get this over with," he panted. "So I can go home."
"Very well, Shadow," Black Doom said, looming over him. "Our mission will begin soon."
The sound of many footsteps approached from the ship, closer to Shadow, and then stopped behind him. The hedgehog's breaths were getting deeper and slower. He cracked an eye open to check what was happening around him.
Dozens of Black Arms foot soldiers were filing out of the ship and marching in unison to line up into a grid formation. The soldiers in the lines at the front looked exactly how Shadow remembered. Apprehensive, Shadow stood up and walked around the formation, staring the foot soldiers down. His eyes narrowed in scrutiny as he looked up and down at foot soldiers in the back rows.
The aliens in the front had rough, jet black, aged skin, with fading red markings. Towards the back, these aliens looked fresher, with smoother skin and a dark grey appearance, with the red markings clear and saturated crimson.
Shadow straightened his back and looked up at Black Doom with open eyes of realisation. The green tint on Shadow's sclera was fading, and the redness in his irises returning with each deep breath he took. He stood for a moment, unsure of how he'd ask the question. Shadow looked down at his cuffs, thoughtfully. Black Doom's demeanor became defensive; he was reading Shadow's thoughts, so he knew that Shadow was piecing things together.
"You… have new offspring," Shadow said, solemnly gazing at the floor.
"Shadow, stand to attention, it's time to go," Black Doom ordered.
"Make me." Shadow's teeth were grit and he was biting back a malicious smile. "Go on."
"Last chance," Black Doom said, holding out the hand that he held the device in. Shadow's glare intensified. Black Doom pressed his panel.
Crackle and flash! Shadow jolted from an electrical assault that rattled his body. Electrical waves buzzed from the cuffs, through his arms and torso. Shadow stumbled backwards, biting his tongue and shaking uncontrollably. When Shadow collapsed, the pain stopped. Then, he coughed out a mouthful of blood, shivering on his hands and knees.
"I know what you are thinking, Shadow… do not get any ideas, or I will make life a lot harder for you," Black Doom.
HARDER? HOW? Shadow's mind was screaming. Black Doom's finger hovered over the button. Shadow rose to his feet and marched towards the front of the group. He bit through the pain, hunched over with his arms hanging from the weakness.
"I can't retrieve the emerald with these," Shadow rasped. "Why are you doing this?"
"You are locating the emerald; we will do the rest," Black Doom said. "Now." He pointed forward. "You can sense it, go."
"I'm… your sniffer dog!?" Shadow snapped, craning his head to glare at Black Doom. "No! I refuse-" With a choke of fear, he silenced himself. To avoid another dose of excruciating electrocution, he began to trudge forward in the direction he could sense the Chaos Emerald.