Shadow stood outside the hospital, leaning against one of the electronic billboards next to the sidewalk. Even though it was the height of summer, the early morning air had a chill to it. He adjusted the zipper of his jacket, fastening it against the cold, and looked out over the street. Businesses were getting ready to open, and students were walking down the street toward one of the nearby public schools. Steam wafted from the lid of the coffee he'd gotten from the hospital cafe. It tasted like dishwater – he'd expected nothing less – but at least the cup warmed his gloved hands.

News footage cycled through the billboard at his back, casting a blue-and-yellow glow over his shoulders. He knew what he would see if he turned around, but he didn't. He shifted his weight, fixing his gaze on the pavement in front of him. He didn't know what he would become if he didn't look back, but he also knew that he had already moved on … even if the rest of the world still hadn't. He mustered his resolve and looked up.

A girl with blonde hair and a blue dress dashed past him.

His coffee cup fell out of his hand and landed on the pavement, rolling until it came to a halt against the side of his shoe. Startled by the noise, the girl glanced sideways and noticed him. She nearly tripped. Once she had regained her balance, she turned to face him. 'O-Oh my gosh. I thought you were … y'know.' She trailed off and pointed to the billboard at his back. 'I didn't realise.'

A red glow spilled over his shoes. Shadow could only assume that the billboard was now showing images of him, but he was too stunned to turn around and check.

He'd wanted to tell himself it was a coincidence – but it couldn't be. The similarities were too distinct. A blue headband held her hair back, and the sleeves of her cropped jacket were puffed. As he leaned down to pick the coffee cup up, he noticed that she was wearing blue lace-up shoes. The laces had silver stars on them.

He straightened up again and set the cup down on the low wall that surrounded the hospital grounds. '… She didn't wear sneakers.'

The girl blinked and looked down. 'They didn't have sneakers back then?'

Shadow felt a twinge in his chest. She knew who he was referring to. His instincts had been right – the fact that she looked like Maria was no mere coincidence. 'Why … do you look like her?'

She shrank back, squeezing her hands together. 'I-I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. Please don't be mad.'

'You didn't answer my question.'

'I-It was for a school project. We had to give a presentation for history class.' Her hands were shaking, and she looked down at her blue-clad arms with regret. 'And we have a non-uniform fundraiser today, so I thought …' She buried her face in her hands and shook her head. 'Oh, what am I saying?'

Shadow's brow creased. 'You may have been doing a "history" presentation, but it wasn't that long ago.'

The girl paused, and she seemed uncertain. 'But my teacher told me that the standard minimum for something to become history is 50 years.'

'That's …' Shadow stopped, and her words slowly sank in. It may have been more than 50 years since the ARK Disaster, but for him, it had only been a few years at most. In the blink of an eye, his past had become a mere bullet point in a state curriculum, and Space Colony Ark had become no more than a footnote in a textbook.

Her face fell, and she said, 'But I guess it's not really history to you, though. Is it?'

He gave her a sidelong glance and exhaled. 'Be careful.'

'What do you mean?'

Shadow tipped his head towards GUN's headquarters in the distance. 'There have been a lot of protests in Central City over the past few days. With the way you're dressed, you could attract the wrong kind of attention.'

She gave him a nervous smile and tugged on the straps of her backpack, tightening them. 'I guess I should have thought of that, but I don't have time to go home and get changed.'

He pushed off the billboard and took a step towards her. 'There was a terror attack at one of these protests.' There was a bitter irony to what he was about to say, but she also didn't seem to understand the risk she was taking. He steeled himself and said, '… At the rate things have been going, you could get shot.'

She shrugged and continued to walk down the street. 'What else is new? I've got a bulletproof backpack. I'll be fine –'

'Wait!' Shadow's thrusters ignited and he grabbed hold of her arm, forcing her to stop. 'What the hell are you talking about?'

She looked down at him in surprise. 'It has an insert panel made of Kevlar.'

'That wasn't what I meant!' As he tried to gather his wits, a faint glitter caught his eye. Her bag was studded with enamel pins – hearts, stars and speech bubbles. His chest tightened. 'I'm not asking how the bag works. I'm asking why you have it in the first place.'

Her expression fell, and she clutched the bag straps with both hands. 'Oh. Some students wear them in case there's a school shooting.'

Shadow's grip loosened, and his arm fell back to his side. His mind went blank, emptied of everything except for the knowledge that the bag she was wearing would only be able to stop a handgun round.

'I'm sorry.' She avoided his gaze and said, 'This must be a difficult topic for you.'

'Who cares if it is? It's not just a topic for you, is it? It's your day-to-day reality.'

He'd thought that Maria's death was a unique tragedy, and in a way, it was. Hubris, greed and love had created a perfect storm – one that he had been born out of, and one that she had perished in. Yet history kept repeating itself, but this time with different actors on the same stage.

Shadow stowed his hands in his jacket pockets and walked past the girl with a sharp nod toward the road ahead of them. 'I'll escort you there.'

'You don't have to do that.'

He looked back over his shoulder, and she followed his gaze to the billboard, which was emblazoned with the image of Maria's vandalised portrait from the terror attack. 'I do have to. So hurry up.'

She dashed forward and fell into step beside him. She flickered at the edge of his vision like an illusion – hints of blue, flashes of gold, with her hands clasped in front of her like she had used to do. He gritted his teeth. 'There are countless historical figures you could have chosen. Why did you choose … her?'

'I just thought she was really cool.'

'Why?' Shadow asked, and his voice had a sharp edge to it.

'She was a hero. I guess that's how a lot of people would describe her, anyway.' She wound one strand of her hair around her finger as she walked. 'But there were other reasons. I found out that she was an engineer. She loved the stars. She had a little sister. There was so much, and –' She abruptly cut herself off and said, 'Sorry, I don't know why I'm telling you this. You're the one who knew her.'

Shadow didn't respond. In truth, he had lost so many of his memories that it was possible that this girl might know more about Maria than he did. He glanced up at her. It suddenly occurred to him that she had to have done her history presentation before Maria's name and story had become the subject of current news. It was a selfish thought, but it slowly dawned on him that keeping Maria's memory alive may not always have to be his burden to bear.

Shadow saw a glint of light across the street, and he stiffened. But it wasn't the glint of a rifle sight; rather, it was the gleam of a camera lens. A flash went off, and he glared at the photographer, raising a middle finger and blinding them with the light reflecting off his inhibitor ring.

'What happened?' the girl asked.

'Nothing. Don't look at them.'

The girl winced and lowered her head, hiding behind him. 'Are they photographers?'

'They're not just here for me,' Shadow said pointedly. 'Do you even realise how this looks?'

A car drove past, and the two of them were reflected in the window. Their faint reflections were all too familiar to him. In another life, it could have been the reflections of Maria and his old self staring back at him from one of the windows of Space Colony Ark.

'You don't have to come all the way with me, then.' She pointed down the road. 'Look, my school's at just the end of this street.'

Shadow's earpiece beeped, and he hesitated. Even if he didn't walk with her, she would still be within his line of sight. 'Fine. Go. And wear your damn uniform tomorrow.'

She darted off, pausing briefly and smiling at him. 'Thank you.'

'I didn't do anything.'

'You were nice to me. You didn't have to be. I thought you might have bitten my head off, to be honest.'

He shook his head and forced a weary smile. 'It's still a possibility. Get out of here.'

She grinned at him. 'Hey. What kind of shoes did she have?'

The question caught him off guard, and he froze.

He thought he knew. He remembered her running down the halls of Space Colony Ark in a pair of royal blue pumps with navy soles, but he had no way of knowing whether those memories were real. But he also remembered seeing a pair of blue shoes in the window of a store on a winter's evening in Central City and thinking that they looked … familiar.

'Does it matter?' he asked.

'Maybe not. I was just wondering.'

He glanced at her sneakers. He would never know for certain, but he thought that … 'She would have liked those.'

His earpiece beeped again, and he turned away, watching her run down the street out of the corner of his eye. 'What? It's not even nine in the morning.'

'I was hoping I'd catch you before you start your next stint at the hospital.' Shadow heard the rustle of papers on the other end of the line, and Abraham said, 'Shadow … Have you been rewinding time?'

Shadow stiffened. Rouge hadn't agreed to help him obscure the reports coming out of the hospital before she had returned to GUN, and he had no idea what her decision had been. 'What of it?'

'It's a yes-or-no question.'

'If I were you, I wouldn't be so willing to forfeit your plausible deniability –'

'I don't know why I even bother asking, but could you listen to me for once? I'm not questioning what methods you're using over there. I'm questioning whether those methods are going to tear a hole in the spacetime continuum.'

Shadow sank against the wall beside the sidewalk and exhaled. If the reports had been left undoctored, he and Abraham would be having a completely different conversation. Then he realised what Abraham had just said. Shadow rubbed his face with one hand and said, 'You've got to be joking,' A yellow bus rolled past, heading towards the T-intersection between the hospital and the school. 'Do you have any idea how much energy it takes to turn back time on a universal level? I'm only doing it for myself, not for anyone else.'

Abraham was silent for a moment. 'Shadow, we haven't had time to discuss this, but GUN's scientists have been looking for spacetime anomalies in the wake of the Time Eater's attacks.'

'Godspeed to them,' Shadow muttered.

'Shadow,' Abraham warned. 'According to their assessments, the spacetime continuum is currently in a "fragile" state.'

'Your scientists couldn't assess their way out of a wet paper bag, even if their lives depended on it.'

Abraham groaned. Shadow heard him get out of his chair and begin pacing. 'I think I've had more arguments with you than I've had with my wife and children combined.' Shadow narrowed his eyes and reached up to pull his earpiece out, but then Abraham spoke again. 'Look, GUN's military doesn't have the resources or weaponry to deal with a threat like the Time Eater if it reappears again.'

Shadow began to tap one foot against the ground. 'You already have a weapon. You have me.'

'What we don't have is a guarantee that you'll have access to all seven emeralds in the event of an emergency.'

'You're assuming that I would need all seven emeralds.'

'Sonic did.'

'I'm not Sonic. But regardless – the fact that you apparently need to design new weapons isn't my problem.'

'We're working on it,' Abraham said, and his frustration was evident. 'But in the meantime, we haven't even identified the locations of all seven Chaos Emeralds since you and the others returned from White Space. We have no backstop if there's another crisis. Do you understand? I'm just asking you not to do anything drastic, at least for a while.'

'You can ask all you want.' The traffic lights turned green, and the bus accelerated, passing through the T-intersection in front of the school gates. 'But it's not going to stop me from doing what needs to be done in the meantime.'

'Shadow, you were the one who warned me about the risks of reversing time and travelling back to the past,' Abraham said sharply. 'What kind of catastrophe would justify taking that kind of risk?'

It happened in an instant. There was no blaring horn or the grinding of failed brakes. A gas tanker hurtled down one of the steep side roads and slammed into the side of the school bus, tearing it in half. For a moment, the only sound was that of splintering metal. Then, a fireball bloomed. The flames were white-hot and silent. Then the shockwave hit, knocking Shadow to the ground and filling his ears with a deafening roar. The windows of nearby buildings shattered, and glass rained down.

Shadow braced his hands against the ground, gasping for breath. His vision was blurred, and thick black smoke swirled through the air. A faint, tinny voice rang in his ear. He couldn't make sense of the debris scattered across the sidewalk. Fragments of yellow metal. Pens. Pencils.

A blue sneaker sat on the pavement. The laces had silver stars on them.

He looked up.

A girl lay on the ground. She had blonde hair and a blue dress.

How many times are you going to make me watch you die?

He got to one knee and forced himself upright, holding his Chaos Emerald in one hand.

'Chaos Control.'

The world turned green. Then it shimmered, bleeding light, and turned gold. The facets of the emerald dug into his hand, and the ticking of a clock rang in his head. The smoke dissipated, and the flames dwindled. Traffic began to flow in reverse. Bystanders rose to their feet as though pulled by a puppet master's strings. The shattered windows became whole. The girl in the blue dress stood up again, and shrapnel fell from her body.

The bus slowly rolled backwards, and the fuel tanker disappeared. With a few sharp, swift strokes of his skates, Shadow dashed around the corner, and his heart began to pound.

The truck's brakes hadn't merely failed. The fuel tanker had barreled down one of the steep hill roads of Central City, building up unstoppable momentum before it had crashed into the school bus and burst into flames.

The ticking in his head grew louder, and the truck slowed to a halt in the middle of the road. The school bus was reflected in the grille. It had already been 10 seconds. He braced one hand against the grille, and the thrusters in his shoes roared to life. Fire bloomed beneath his feet. Ten seconds was more than enough. It had to be.

With a loud crack, time resumed.

'Shadow –'

'Not now, Abraham!' Shadow snapped, and the truck slammed into him. He braced both hands against the grille, blasting his thrusters at full force as the sound of the truck's horn rang in his ears. His shoes scraped against the road, and he dug in his heels, cutting two deep gashes in the tarmac. The pedestrian crosswalk flashed beneath his feet, and he put up a hand, slamming it against the side of the car in the intersection. He felt his wrist begin to buckle. With one violent, white-hot flare of his thrusters, he brought the tanker to a halt.

He heard panicked shouts, and his chest tightened again. He slammed one hand against the side of the car again. 'Keep driving! Move!'

The car rolled away, revealing a girl with blonde hair and a blue dress. She stood in the path of the tanker, frozen in shock. In another timeline, she wouldn't even have survived the initial explosion. 'What are you waiting for?' he demanded. 'Go!'

'T-Thank you.' She sprinted off, giving him one last look over her shoulder. 'Thank you!'

Arms burning, Shadow let the tanker come to a halt in the middle of the intersection. He could hear the sounds of minor collisions all around him as other drivers slammed on their brakes, gridlocking the road. He strode over and climbed onto the truck's running boards, wrenching the door open. The driver wasn't conscious.

He heard the wail of approaching police sirens, and he looked up to see several paramedics from the children's hospital sprinting down the sidewalk, passing the school bus as they ran. He dropped back down into the road and stowed his hands in his pockets, walking back towards the hospital.

'Are you injured?' one of the paramedics asked.

Shadow shook out his wrist and kept walking. 'No. But it looks like the driver had a cardiac event.'

The paramedics ran off, and Shadow followed the sidewalk back to the children's hospital. As he passed through the main entrance, he realised that he could still smell burnt rubber.

'Shadow!' Abraham snapped, and Shadow nearly jumped out of his skin. 'For heaven's sake, report your status. Don't make me come down there.'

'I'm fine.' Shadow followed one of the corridors out into the hospital's internal courtyard. Everything was too saturated. The grass was too green, and the sky above was too bright. He sank onto one of the nearby benches and shook out his wrist again, wondering if he'd sprained it.

'What happened?'

'Nothing.' He sat back, listening to the creak of metal chains as several young children played on one of the swingsets in the courtyard. 'What were you saying before?'

Abraham paused. 'We haven't had time to discuss this, but –'

'We have.'

'What?'

'We have had time to discuss this.'

There was silence on the other end of the line. 'You can't be serious.' After a moment, Abraham said, 'For the sake of my sanity, I'm going to choose to believe that whatever you just did was necessary.'

'You can believe whatever you want,' Shadow said. 'I did what I had to. '

'I don't know what happened, but was it really worth the risk –'

'Your grandson starts school this year, doesn't he?'

'… Yes. Next month. Why?'

'How would you feel if he was killed in front of you on his way to his first day of class?'

Abraham didn't respond, and Shadow ended the call.

He folded his arms and rested them on his knees. He could hear the rattle of wheelchairs and the sound of children talking. The windows of the hospital rooms on the floors above the courtyard glittered in the early morning light.

If he continued to defy time itself, then maybe there would be consequences one day. But unlike everyone else, he would have to live with the consequences of his failures forever. He had already failed to prevent one catastrophe, and he would be reminded of that fact every time he looked at the night sky.

Suddenly, a rift opened in front of him, tearing a hole in spacetime itself. The wound bled aberrated starlight, and Shadow tensed. His muscles were coiled tighter than steel springs. Without warning, someone dropped out of the air, landing on their feet with a slam. The rift disappeared, leaving behind a cyan afterimage that distorted their appearance. The person stood with one foot drawn back, poised to strike. Their metal cuffs were unlocked, and they glowed with unreleased power.

Silver turned around, and his eyes widened with recognition as he saw Shadow. 'What year is it?'

'No.' Shadow sat back and put one arm over the back of the park bench, dismissing the concerns of the alarmed bystanders with a sharp wave of his hand.

'That wasn't a yes-or-no question –'

'That's damn right.' Shadow raised a foot and ignited the thrusters in his shoes. Maybe if he roundhouse-kicked Silver hard enough, then he could kick the wayward time traveller all the way back into the future. '"No" as in, "No, we're not doing this." I've got enough problems to deal with as it is.'

'W-Wait, wait!' Silver held up his hands, and every object in a fifty-metre radius began to shimmer. 'I didn't come here to fight you. Tell me what year it is, at least.'

Shadow narrowed his eyes. 'I'm not a calendar. We were both at Sonic's birthday party last week. Work it out yourself.'

Silver's eyebrow twitched. 'Do you have any idea how little that piece of information narrows it down?'

'What?'

Silver slapped a hand against his forehead. 'Don't ask. Is it 2011 or 2024?'

Shadow dropped his foot, and the thrusters in his shoes extinguished. 'It's 2011.'

'Oh, thank God.' It was barely noticeable, but Silver's posture relaxed as though an enormous weight had been taken off his shoulders. His expression softened, and he lowered his hands. 'You know, people in the future think that the early '10s was one of the best times to be alive.'

'Good to know that it only goes downhill from here,' Shadow muttered.

Silver walked over and sat beside him on the bench. 'Come on. The future's not all bad. I'm doing my best.'

Shadow scoffed. 'We just saw each other last week. Whatever you have to tell me, couldn't you have told me then?'

Silver stared at him. 'That was years ago for me, and I couldn't tell you what I didn't know at the time. But that's neither here nor there.' He adjusted his gloves and grimaced. 'You weren't in the … best mood, either.'

Shadow glared at him. 'I'd just gone to hell and back. You'll have to forgive me if I seemed a little terse.' He stood up and said, 'I don't have all day. Is the world going to end, or is it not?'

Silver turned pale and abruptly got to his feet. 'Oh. Right. I mean, the world is always ending, but we've got bigger problems for once.'

'Spare me the dramatics. You have five seconds, and then I'm leaving.'

'I'm not being dramatic.' Silver reached out with one hand. 'Shadow, you're …' His amber eyes, normally resolute and hardened, flashed in the early morning light, betraying a hint of fear. 'You're going to die.'