The lobby of the hotel was quiet, almost unnervingly so, as Shadow, Sonic, and Rouge entered. The morning sunlight spilled through the large glass panes, bathing the pristine marble floor in a soft glow. Everything about the scene felt wrong: the stillness, the calm, the normalcy.
Blaze was gone.
"She didn't show up for her return back to the Sol dimension," Rouge said, her voice terse as she scrolled through her communicator. Her tone carried the kind of sharp edge that came with barely contained anxiety. "Her security detail hasn't seen her since last night. They've already checked her room—nothing. No sign of her."
Shadow said nothing. His crimson eyes were fixed ahead, his jaw tight, his fists clenched at his sides.
Sonic glanced at him, his own face unusually serious. "Look, maybe she just… needed some time alone. She's been through a lot. We all have."
Rouge shook her head, her wings twitching with unease. "She wouldn't just vanish. This isn't her."
"She's right," Shadow muttered, his deep voice cutting through the tension. "Something's wrong."
The elevator ride up to Blaze's suite felt agonizingly slow. Every second dragged on, stretching the silence between them like a taut string ready to snap.
Shadow's mind was a storm, replaying the events of the previous day over and over again. Her crestfallen look as he'd spoken to her, the way her hands had trembled at her sides, her amber eyes glistening with unshed tears.
He had been cruel to her. He hadn't meant to be, but his anger had gotten the better of him.
And why?
Because she mattered to him. Despite his own instincts, despite everything, Blaze had managed to break through the walls he had built around himself. And when he realized she had kept something so monumental from him—something that tied her family to the horrors of his past—it had felt like betrayal.
But now, as they searched for her, his anger seemed small. Meaningless. All he could think about was the way she had looked at him, the pain in her eyes, the way her voice had cracked when she tried to explain.
The elevator doors slid open with a soft chime, snapping him out of his thoughts.
"This is her floor," Rouge said, striding out with purpose.
The three of them moved quickly to Blaze's suite. The door was unlocked—her security detail had already been through here. Inside, the room was pristine. Her suitcase was packed neatly by the door. The bed hadn't been slept in.
"She never came back here," Sonic said, frowning as he scanned the space.
Rouge's wings fluttered again, her unease growing. "Let's keep searching. If she didn't come back to her room, she might've gone somewhere else in the hotel."
They moved floor by floor, checking hallways, stairwells, storage rooms—anywhere she could possibly be. Shadow stayed silent, his crimson eyes scanning every corner, his ears straining for any sound that might give them a clue.
As they searched, his mind refused to quiet.
He thought of the moments they'd shared—the way she had patiently taught him to use a smartphone, her soft voice guiding him as he fumbled with the touchscreen. He thought of the time he'd made her soup when she'd admitted she didn't know how to cook, how she'd looked at him with wide-eyed surprise, her lips twitching into a rare smile.
He thought of the softness in her hands as she changed his bandages, the faint pink tint on his cheeks when she'd helped him wash his back.
These weren't just memories. They were fragments of something fragile, something he hadn't even realized he wanted.
And now she was gone.
"Shadow!" Rouge's voice snapped him out of his thoughts.
He turned sharply, his body tensing. Rouge was standing at the end of the hallway, near a set of double doors leading to a balcony.
Sonic was already moving toward her. "What is it?"
"Just… come here," Rouge called, her voice tight.
Shadow's boots echoed against the floor as he approached, his heart pounding. Rouge's tone sent a chill through him.
When he reached her, she didn't speak. She simply pointed to the balcony beyond the glass doors.
Shadow pushed the doors open, stepping outside—and his stomach dropped.
Blood.
A lot of it.
The pale stone floor of the balcony was stained with fresh blood, the crimson streaks stark against the light-colored surface. It was everywhere—splattered across the railing, pooled near the edge, smeared as though there had been a struggle.
And then there were the scorch marks.
Dark, jagged burns marred the floor and the walls near the railing, the unmistakable aftermath of Blaze's flames. Shadow knelt beside one of the marks, his gloved fingers brushing against the blackened stone. It was still warm.
"She was here," he said quietly, his voice low and strained.
Sonic whistled softly, his usual carefree demeanor replaced with grim seriousness. "That's… not good," he said, his voice barely above a whisper.
Rouge crossed her arms, her face pale. "It's hers," she said firmly. "It has to be. The scorch marks… no one else could've left those."
Shadow's fists clenched, his crimson eyes narrowing as he scanned the scene. He could see it so clearly in his mind—Blaze standing here, fighting, struggling. She had tried to defend herself. Tried and failed.
"Fiona," he growled, his voice like a razor's edge.
Rouge nodded grimly. "She's AWOL. Everyone at GUN knows she's the traitor now. She's been on the run since last night. If Blaze is gone…" She trailed off, her wings twitching with unease.
Shadow didn't respond. His eyes remained fixed on the bloodstains, his mind racing.
If Fiona had taken Blaze—or worse—then this was his fault.
He had pushed Blaze away.
He had told her to leave, that he didn't trust her.
And now she was gone, and all that was left were the scorch marks and the blood—the so. .
"Shadow," Rouge said softly, her voice cutting through the silence. "We'll find her. We're not giving up."
Shadow rose to his feet, his crimson eyes burning with determination.
"We will," he said, his voice cold and sharp. "And when we do, Fiona will pay for this."
But even as he said the words, he couldn't shake the image of Blaze's face from his mind—the way she had looked at him the day before, her eyes filled with pain and desperation.
If this blood was hers, if Fiona had done this to her…
Shadow clenched his fists tighter, his body trembling with barely contained rage.
He couldn't lose her. Not now. Not like this.
—-
Blaze's world was unraveling.
Her body felt impossibly heavy, like it was tethered to the earth by chains made of lead, but she wasn't sure if she was even lying down. The stretcher beneath her—or was it a void?—remained elusive, intangible. Her entire being seemed suspended in limbo, caught between the pull of two forces: one clawing her toward the dark abyss, the other straining to keep her in the aching, unbearable light.
Her heartbeat.
It was faint. A hollow drumbeat echoing somewhere far away, each pulse weaker than the last, as though her body was testing the waters of death. Pain came and went in vicious waves, sharp enough to make her mind scream though her lips wouldn't move. Her chest—no, her whole body—felt crushed under the weight of something invisible, as if she were already buried.
The fire that defined her, that was her, was gone.
Cold. An overwhelming, soul-deep cold crept through her, the absence of her flames more terrifying than the pain. She tried to reach for even a spark, a flicker of warmth, but her body offered nothing. It was hollow, drained, broken.
The world around her was a chaos of echoes, distorted and strange. Voices rose and fell, crashing into her consciousness like waves against jagged rocks.
"You idiot!" a man's voice thundered, his tone sharp and merciless, cracking through the haze like a whip. "She's supposed to be alive! We need her alive!"
"She is alive," Fiona spat back, her voice a venomous snarl. "For now. You're lucky she's breathing at all after what she threw at me!"
Blaze could barely process the words, her thoughts a jumbled mess, but the anger in their voices seemed to carve through her like shards of glass.
"She's barely hanging on!" the man snapped, his fury palpable. "How many times do I have to tell you? The plans have changed. We don't need her dead anymore—we need her alive!"
"Oh, so now it's my fault?" Fiona shot back, her voice rising. "Maybe if you'd actually told me that before I went after her, I wouldn't have had to shoot her half a dozen times just to stop her from incinerating me!"
Blaze's chest tightened, a phantom pain flaring at the mention of the flames she had tried to summon. Her flames. Her body twitched—or maybe it didn't. She couldn't tell if she was moving or if her mind was playing tricks on her.
"You think I wanted her like this?" Fiona growled, her voice trembling with barely contained rage. "I didn't choose this! She gave me no choice. If I hadn't done what I did, I'd be the one on that table."
"And if she dies, you'll wish you were," the man hissed, his voice dropping to a low, venomous growl. "You don't get it, do you? She's not just some disposable pawn. We need her alive—now more than ever. If she flatlines again, it's on your head."
Blaze's sluggish mind latched onto the word: flatline. She wasn't sure if the memory was real or imagined, but she could almost hear the shrill, unbroken tone of a heart monitor, the sound of her life slipping away.
"She's tougher than she looks," Fiona shot back, though her voice wavered. "She'll pull through. She has to."
"Don't you dare gamble on that," the man snarled, his words sharp and cutting. "Fix her. Now."
Blaze wanted to scream at them, to tell them to stop using her like a bargaining chip, like she wasn't a person struggling to hang onto the frayed threads of her own existence. But her voice was gone, stolen by the suffocating weight of her body's failure.
The argument faded briefly as another wave of pain surged through her, tearing her apart from the inside out. Her senses sparked and flared, flickering in and out like a dying bulb.
Above her, a cold, artificial light burned into her closed eyelids. The sterile scent of disinfectant mixed with the thick, coppery tang of blood—her blood. She could feel it pooling beneath her, soaking into her fur, sticky and warm against the icy chill consuming her body.
"She's slipping again," the man barked, his voice laced with panic despite his earlier anger.
Blaze felt a sudden, sharp pressure against her neck—something cold, metallic. A needle? A tube? She couldn't tell, her awareness fading in and out. Her muscles tensed weakly, a futile attempt to push the sensation away, but her body refused to listen.
"I'm working on it!" Fiona snapped. "You think this is easy? She's half-dead already!"
"Then stop wasting time!"
The darkness pressed in closer, heavier, wrapping around her like a suffocating shroud. Blaze could feel her heartbeat faltering again, each beat slower, weaker, until it felt like her chest might stop rising altogether.
Fragments of memories surfaced, flickering like fragile embers.
Warmth. The heat of her flames dancing at her fingertips, alive and untamed. Shadow's face, his crimson eyes watching her with a mixture of irritation and quiet concern. The way his voice softened, just slightly, when he spoke to her. The faint smile he tried to hide when she teased him about the soup he'd made for her.
The memories were fleeting, slipping through her grasp like sand.
"Shadow…" she tried to whisper, but her lips wouldn't move.
A loud, shrill beeping pierced through the haze, cutting into her thoughts like a blade. The sound of the heart monitor—sharp, insistent, panicked.
"She's crashing!" Fiona's voice was no longer sharp and angry; it was filled with fear.
Blaze's body convulsed weakly, the pain surging one final time, brighter and sharper than before.
The cold void consumed her, dragging her down into its depths. For a moment, there was silence. Stillness.
And then, faintly, a warmth.