Shadow stepped down onto the roof of GUN's headquarters. In the sea of neon below him, he saw a clock blinking in the corner of an electronic billboard. It was three in the morning. He rubbed his eyes and winced. It hadn't been that late when he'd first left. How many times had he used Chaos Snap?

It was raining again. Rouge was gone. Even though he'd watched her leave, part of him had wondered if he would still find her here, waiting for him. But she'd finally heeded his advice and gotten out of the rain.

Shadow stepped under the overhang and opened the rooftop door. The soldier stationed inside – a different one this time – let out a startled yip and stepped aside, crashing into the wall. He covered his grenade pouch with one hand. Shadow gave him a half-hearted nod, walked past him and trudged down the stairs. 'At ease.' He heard the door seal shut behind him, shutting out the outside world.

GUN's headquarters was only manned by a skeleton crew at this hour. He skated off, taking ramps, stairs and elevators as he descended into the bottomless concrete abyss beneath GUN's headquarters, below street level. As he skated, the water dripping from his fur evaporated into steam beneath the flames of his shoes' thrusters.

Team Dark's shared living quarters were in one of the sub-basement levels of the base. Shadow glided to a halt outside their door, keyed in the passcode – 2005 – and walked inside. The military-grade blast door sealed shut behind him. Rouge wasn't there, but presence still filled the common room – a jazz record had been left on the turntable, a silk negligee had been left draped over an armchair, and a necklace that he knew belonged to the national museum lay on the coffee table. He sank into one of the armchairs and picked up the necklace, examining it. He still didn't know whether she was able to be a thief because of or in spite of her government position.

He heard mechanical clunking and whirring as Omega exited his room … though it was less of a room and more of a vehicle bay. He still didn't know how Rouge had convinced the higher-ups to let them keep a military mech with a ballistic payload in their quarters. Maybe a bribe had changed hands.

'How was the meeting?'

Shadow set the necklace down. 'It … was …'

'Suboptimal?'

He grunted. 'Sure.'

'Do you want to go to the shooting range?'

'The shooting range?'

'I guessed that your mood would be outside of its usual parameters.' Omega held up a sheaf of paper. It looked like a cluster of sticky notes in his clawed metal hands. 'I have printed out the faces of everyone who attended the meeting. Some target practice may return your mood to its normal state.'

Shadow raised his eyebrows. Then he laughed. It hurt his throat, but he couldn't help it. He got up and took the print-outs, setting them down on the kitchen counter. 'I … need to sleep. But thank you.'

'I thought you did not require sleep.'

'I don't. But I'll recover faster if I do.'

'Recover? Have you been in combat?'

Unbidden, the memory of kicking Sonic so hard that he broke the Green Hill loop-de-loop came to mind. '… Not exactly.'

'So no target practice?' Somehow, Omega's synthesised voice almost sounded disappointed.

'If you want to go to the shooting range, then knock yourself out. But use the standard-issue targets.'

'The last time I used a Gatling gun at the range, I was reprimanded.'

'Then use a smaller weapon.'

Omega's red eyes blazed. 'Smaller weapons are inferior. Go big or go home.'

'Sometimes you have to work with what you've got.'

'What I have got is a Gatling gun with explosive rounds.'

Shadow picked up the printouts again and fed them into the kitchen garbage disposal. Better to be safe rather than sorry. 'Then you may want to save that for a field operation.' He scooped up the stolen necklace and passed by Rouge's room. To be fair, 'room' was also an inadequate descriptor for Rouge's living space – it was more of a boudoir, filled with enough jewellery to put a magpie's nest to shame. He threw the necklace through the doorway, and it immediately disappeared into a metallic void of stolen goods.

'Omega, have you seen Rouge?'

'She notified me that she was going out. I have not spoken to her since.'

'All right. Don't cause any problems until I wake up.'

Omega perked up. '… Does that mean I have permission to cause trouble afterwards?'

'We'll see.'

Shadow stepped into his room, closing the door behind him. He rarely spent time here. As much as Sonic was a drifter, Shadow couldn't say that he was any better. He'd had enough of sleeping in the confines of metal and glass to last him the rest of his life. In the rare instances when he did sleep, he usually found himself outside, in the field of white flowers beneath Space Colony Ark – his personal Elysian Field.

But the last time he'd fallen asleep there, his dreams had been haunted by Black Doom, eventually leading him to return to the Ark, where he was then transported to White Space. He couldn't bring himself to return … at least, not yet.

A flickering light caught his attention, and he looked up. He sighed. The screen panels on the ceiling were malfunctioning again. This time, they were showing a starry sky, but each panel showed a view of the cosmos from a different location, with varying luminosity and colour grading. The panels were meant to provide agents who inhabited the lower floors of the headquarters with a semblance of daylight or moonlight. They were meant to provide a sense of normalcy. His finger hovered above the off switch. Then he turned away and lay down on the bed.

Shadow raised an arm, covering his eyes with one hand. The coldness of his inhibitor ring burned against his skin. Before Gerald had given him the rings, his power used to overload his system, causing him to become exhausted and involuntarily phase through time, not to mention that he would endanger everyone around him.

Most people removed their jewellery and wedding rings in order to sleep, didn't they? But the last time he had taken his rings off hadn't even been by choice – he'd lost them when he'd fallen to Earth. He'd refused to take them off even in the most dire circumstances. Removing the rings might unleash his power, but it also rapidly drained his stamina. It was a physical war of attrition, one that he wasn't willing to risk fighting.

He gazed at the sliver of digital sky that was visible between his gloved fingers.

As much as Maria had been fascinated with the Earth, she also used to spend countless hours staring at the stars. Maybe she knew, subconsciously, that she would never get to see them from Earth. Maybe she knew that seeing the stars from Space Colony Ark was as good as it was ever going to get.

'Were you happy?' he whispered.

Or was his ability to remain stoic and put on a brave face a reflection of Maria's soul, which was the basis for his own?

All he could hope for was that she had felt joy while she was alive, even if it felt like that part of her soul was missing from his.

He closed his eyes.

Sayonara, Shadow …

No matter how often he insisted he had moved on, his subconscious always insisted otherwise. Maybe that's why he tried to avoid sleeping if he could help it …

To be continued…