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They’re getting closer.
They’re getting closer, and Shadow can’t tell if that means the soldiers racing up the hallway behind them or the door that’s rising up to meet them around the bend.
Either way, it’s the end of the line. It’s the end of the world, and no one down there knows it’s happening.
Why? Why are they doing this? We didn’t do anything. We aren’t hurting anyone. Shadow thinks, and risks a glance behind him. Maria’s grasp on his wrist is like a vice, small and white-knuckled; her blue-green veins jut out beneath the skin. The fear on her face is a wild, horrible thing to see. It’s not an expression he ever wanted to imagine. It’s not an expression he ever wanted to see.
“Sh…Shadow….”
“Just hang on,” he tells her. “Just hang on, okay? Don’t let go. We’re almost there. Just hang on.”
He looks away from her, from the pack gaining ground. The inhibitor rings sing their magic to him, urging him to let loose and go all the way; no one would be able to catch up to them if he does.
He tamps down on it, locks his hand tighter around Maria’s wrist, and keeps running.
Outside the window, the stars slide from the forefront into the future and retreat into the past, cold and indifferent. The little blue planet turns, turns, turns.
Light flashes in the corridor, followed by a loud bark. Maria shouts. Shadow ducks his head just in time for the high-pitched whistle to sail right by his left ear, shredding slivers of fur and quills in its wake. He inhales sharply at the sight of the hole the round leaves into the wall inches away from the seam in the door. Another bang, and Shadow gasps as Maria trips and bumps into him and nearly goes sprawling to the floor as the bullet whizzes by overhead.
He hauls her back upright, ignoring the stab of guilt in his stomach. “Come on!” he tells her, tells himself, and pulls on her arm, throws his legs as far as they can go. “Come on…!”
The door is right there. It’s right there. Just be a few more steps to freedom. Just a few more steps and it’ll all be left behind: all the blood and bodies and the cold dark expanse and its million million eyes that will forever stand watch over the ghosts that will now roam the halls of the Space Colony ARK until the heat death of the universe. Just a few more steps and Earth will be there, looming large but impossibly free and G.U.N. is just a dot and a name on the map and far, far away in another country across the sea, existing in the realm where thoughts and dreams may intertwine.
It’s right there.
It’s right there.
The panel above the door lights up at their approach, heat signatures and silhouettes scanned and relayed to the systems on the other side of the room, and opens. The escape pod sits, expectant and waiting.
Shadow’s breath hitches, hope gaining wings and taking flight beneath his breast. He tugs on Maria’s arm again. “Look,” he pants, and points his index finger at it. “Look, Maria, there it is. We’re gonna make it. We’re gonna make it…!”
“W-We’re gonna make it,” he hears her mumble quietly, voice tired and strained and exhausted and yet lilting up, up, up as she can manage. “Oh, Shadow…we’re gonna make it.”
We are! We are! He swallows past the lump in his throat and tightens his grip over Maria’s wrist. They cross the threshold into the chamber, toward the open pod. There’s just enough room for the two of them to fit inside. Just enough space for them to look out at all the stars go by and the planet become alive together – mountains and valleys and rivers and oceans and deserts and forests and cities galore. Just a few more steps. One two three four—
The world explodes in a bang.
Maria cries out, high and thin and choked.
The hold around his wrist goes slack.
Shadow breathes, and tastes copper in the air. His stomach wrenches, heart flying out of his mouth. He whirls around. “Maria—!”
She shoves him forward with both hands toward the escape pod and falls.
There’s a hole in her back, right by her spine – small, red, and running down the length of her blue and white dress. The pain on her face is horrendous.
Shadow wants to be sick.
No! he cries, but the only sound that comes out of his mouth is a startled grunt, and then he’s backpedaling away from her, away from the soldiers coming into view, away from the man taking point with his pistol raised and trained on Maria’s back.
Shadow hits the back of the pod, quills scraping on metal, and scrambles to push himself up, leap out of it, and get Maria inside. Away from all the guns, away from the carnage that’s going to ignite when he taps into the inhibitor rings and tear through every single body he can home in on.
The glass cover slams down right in front of him.
He ricochets off it, catches himself against the backrest, and throws himself against the door. “Maria!” he howls.
She’s slumped over the console, breathing coming in hard and shallow, body unsteady with paroxysm. Her fingers work across the touchscreens and keypads even as they struggle to tap in the proper input commands. Blood spots over the floor helter-skelter at the heels of her Mary Janes.
The pod issues a low hum and underneath Shadow’s fingertips the glass begins to grow cold. His breath comes out in a cloud. The realization makes his world spin. “No!” he cries, strangled. “Maria, no!” He bangs his fist on the door once, twice, three times. It doesn’t give.
“Shadow…please….” Maria croaks out, and looks at him. There is pain in her eyes, cracks in the corner like crow’s feet; in the set of her jaw; her smile. Sweat gleams on her forehead. The lights shine too brightly on her. “I beg of you…please do it…for me.”
“Get in here, Maria!” His breath grows into a bigger and bigger cloud. “Open up and get in here! Please!”
“For all the people…on the planet.” Her words take on a slurred edge. Each blink gets slower and heavier. Her throat bobs thickly. One small, frail hand hovers over to the center-most panel and suppresses one last key with a trembling finger.
He bangs as hard as he can in tandem with the storm approaching. “No!” he cries. “No, no…! Maria!”
“I'm sorry…Shadow,” Maria coughs. “Sayo…nara….” Her eyes slide shut, lips parting, and tips backward.
Shadow pushes up against the glass and opens his mouth in a scream; and then the pod drops. The walls and windows of the Space Colony ARK wrench and give way to the great, dark beyond. Ice roars in his ears, fills his vision with white-blue clouds misting and then frosting over in strong, powerful gusts, pumping relentlessly.
All it takes is one breath to be reduced to a coughing, hacking fit. He doubles over, slumped upright over the cover, and loses himself, saliva and sputum flying from his lips and painting his reflection until he gags and wretches and nothing but blood and bile and stomach acid come out. He presses a hand to his stomach. His knees buckle and bend. His lungs burn. His head splits. Tears prick at the corners of his eyes. He can’t breathe. His lungs burn. He beats the hand not buried in his chest fur over and over on the glass. Black spots and black swathes fill his eyesight. He thinks of Maria, lying face down on the floor, bleeding out and surrounded by G.U.N. soldiers. He thinks about her on the bed, hooked up to machines, IV drips in her arms and watching the stars turn, turn, turn. He thinks of the light in her eyes as she walked a little bit further and a little more steadily with each transplant he had given to her. He thinks of the planet and how it turns, turns, turns, blissful and unaware.
He stops thinking.
Until he dreams, and every dream begins the same and ends the same: with the bright, white lights in the void shining down upon them, the Earth the centerpiece of the galaxy that was so much smaller and no less grander than they could ever imagine. The professor had said once, long ago, when he had first been born, that space was cold – not just in the change of seasons as the Earth experiences nor in its poles but everywhere. You had to be protected when being out among the stars, for there were no gravity and oxygen systems that kept them tethered to the ground and allowed them to breathe aboard the ARK. No one could except for him, for he was purposed to not need air or sustenance to give him the nourishment and the energy that allowed him to go about his day. He was Ultimate, he was more than the sum of human genius and Mobian physiology combined, he was the pinnacle of miracles achieved and the greatest creation science had created and will have ever created. Not even the ills and maladies that would normally knock out the average mortal would keep him down for long, regardless if modern medicine or the Chaos energy residing within him and in the inhibitors was applied. Not even pain was beyond him, and some days were more painful than others, but he would give more than what the doctors on the research team required if they asked him to. They would not even have to ask him to, he would do it in a heartbeat; and she was close. That was the closest she had been to being removed off bed rest and allowed to walk among everyone else. She always wanted to go down there, to Earth. She wanted to see everything that little blue planet had to offer; no distance was too great for her. She was going to see the world with her own two eyes, and he would be there to follow her every step of the way. They had all sorts of ideas as to where to go, what tourist locations to visit, what cafes to eat at, what hills to climb up on, what boats and airlines they were going to ride on; and the professor would smile and laugh and tell them to take it one day at a time, there was no reason to hurry. They would have all the time in the world. And so he saw the sights and the places they would go to and the sounds he would hear and all the strange, wild, exotic food he read so much about he would eat in his dreams and would wander upon awaking if they would be the same experiences as he imagined them or something more alive, more vibrant, more magical than mere words could describe. And then the alarms would start screaming, the walls would paint red with their panic, and they would be running, running, running for the freedom the professor told them about, in the quiet of their shared room when the tension showed no sign of slowing down and morale was on a steady decline they could not recover from. To Earth they would go and to Earth they would run and hide, away from G.U.N. and the long arm of the law, where the United Federation’s reach was great and terrible and their eyes and ears were many. He would follow them, he assured, but their safety came first. Maria came first, and it was up to him to make sure the two of them escaped the ARK and make for the nearest safehouse as fast as they could.
And every dream starts the same and ends the same: they are running to freedom, to safety, and the soldier takes the shot. Maria stumbles. He falls into the pod. Maria keys in the release command and he plummets through space and the ice in the cryogenic hoses drag him into darkness. Then he wakes up again to the sound of the klaxons and he grabs Maria and they run, run as far as they can away from the gunfire and the dead and the dying. He worries about the professor. He worries he won’t have made it out. He worries about Maria. He worries that G.U.N. will be there waiting for them and doesn’t know if he’ll be fast enough to kill them all before the bullets start flying. He’s never killed before. He worries he’ll lock up and that split second will be their undoing and his fault. He wonders if he should pick her up and do the running for the two of them. He wonders if he should have gone another route that would have gotten them to the escape pod faster.
And he does pick her up, and he does take a different route, but every dream ends the same and he’s back in the pod. The glass doesn’t break. It never fucking breaks. He’s leaving the world behind for the one far, far below and Maria’s not there. Maria’s not there and the ice forces itself down into his lungs and then he wakes back up and it’s back to running all over again.
And in all his dreams, he hears the professor’s voice, whispering to him on the edge of coherence. He is never drowned out by the alarms nor the humans’ orders nor their panting breaths nor even through the pod’s cover. Even above the roar of winter. It’s a promise, a blood oath, a dream. It makes his heart thump even as it slows and his body shuts down to accommodate to the cryogenic freezing. It makes him float down into the sinking-drowning sensation that comes with the pull of merging with the tides of sleep. It makes him hold on to his every word, even as a quiet little flame in a quiet little corner of the darkness flickers and burns a little brighter. Even as he slips away and loses himself into the fugue state of the dreamer and the dying.
It’s so cold.
So very, very cold.
It’s as his lungs are filling with ice and the darkness is blotting out the sight of the stars and the planet below him that he hears the hydraulics disengaging, and the wind howling through his fur.
His ears crackle and pop with it. They perk and strain, picking up the churning of the gears, components clicking and whirling. His eyelids twitch. The darkness behind them turn bright red.
The sun, his mind supplies him with, and Shadow takes his first breath.
It tastes like steel.
His eyes snap open.
It’s not the forests Maria always pointed out to him – not the hills and plains that roll away as far as the eye can see, nor the jungles that are so cluttered with greenery and foliage it’s a wonder any wildlife could build their nests and burrows and dens among them. There are no tall trees towering before him, no lily pads for the frogs to laze upon or cattails poking out in the shallows or colorful flowers pretty and fetching to the eye.
There is no sun awaiting him. Only wires and tubing and panels incalculable all around him. The light of the flood lamps glare back down at him.
Warmth seeps into his arms, his legs, numbing yet life-giving. Each stuttering breath he takes banishes the sting of winter from the pod and spills out of him in billowing, cloudy wisps. He flexes his fingers, wiggles the toes in his shoes, listens to the way air rasps out of him, from ragged to slow and even.
Heart and temples thump loudly and rhythmically in his ears: thump-thump, thump-thump, thump-thump.
He inhales.
No more cold. Only steel.
Copper and iron.
Tungsten flying. Stars whirling past. Footsteps slamming, closer and closer. Maria’s hard panting in his ears. The stars blurring past him. Copper on his tongue and flooding into his mouth. The chill running down his back and not letting go. Night vision goggles and laser pointed sights on assault rifles glaring at them. The gunshot ringing in his ear and Maria hitting the ground, the bullet hole in her back small and dark and red. Red spreading through her clothes, red pooling beneath her as she dragged herself across the floor and closed the door of the escape pod between them forever.
His chest hurts.
His chest hurts so much. There’s a fist around his heart. There are hands trying to crush his ribcage together—
He bites the inside of one cheek, bites and bites and bites until he tastes blood and all the air bleeds out of him, long and steady and emptying.
The pod beneath lurches up with a stentorian, mechanical groan and begins to climb toward the ceiling, crank by crank by crank. He holds his arm out, fingers spreading as wide as they can go, framing the lights to rest within the palm of his hand.
And then it clicks: the glass front of the escape pod is gone.
And then it clicks: he is not on the ARK anymore.
And then it clicks: he is on Earth and he is alive.
Bile rises up in his throat, acid on the back of his tongue. His heart beats furiously against his breast. His eyes begin to sting. He grinds his teeth so hard his jaw aches. He throws his hand to clasp the side of the pod and wraps his fingers over the edge. He flings his free arm over the other side and does the same.
He draws his knees to his chest and stands.
He bites down on his tongue and ignores the cracks and pops his joints make. The tang of iron is strong.
From beneath him, someone gasps. “Sonic? Is that you? What are you up to this time?”
A man’s voice, low and scratchy – and familiar. A face comes to mind, unbidden, peering over at him, bloodshot eyes wide and feral from over the rim of his spectacles, repeating the words every time the world drowned him to sleep: Bring the Chaos Emeralds to the ARK and deliver them to the Eclipse Cannon. Only then will we have our revenge. Only then will the blood debt be paid.
Do this, Shadow, and we will be free.
Do this, and we will see her again.
Shadow turns and looks down, and – it’s almost like being back in time. The man has the same bulbous nose, the same rotund build, and the same strong set to his jaw; even his voice, clear and succinct, is similar. Except he is not old but young, close but not quite near the cusp of middle age, and his wild, untrimmed mustache is a shock of scarlet rather than silver. A descendant, then.
How…convenient. Shadow almost wants to call it fate.
The world really is much bigger than he imagined it to be.
“Wait a minute,” the man rumbles, leaning forward in his mech, fingers adjusting his glasses. “No…you’re not Sonic. That's not a disguise you're wearing. You…You’re not Sonic at all! That’s impossible! Then who…?” The words linger in the air, uncertain, searching.
Those words mean nothing. “My name is Shadow,” he says, inclining his head to the man. “As thanks for releasing me, I will grant you one wish.”
“Wh…What? A…a wish? What are you—” He opens his mouth to say more, only for alarms to blare. Their red light splashes intermittently across the walls. He jumps and grits his teeth, banging a fist against the mech’s panel. “Dammit! They caught up!”
He gets his answer, and Shadow’s curiosity: the sound of flight thrusters on full blast, and gaining closer by the second. By the time he turns around and looks toward the far end of the chamber, a large mech drops down from the ceiling and hovers into view. The caches on either side of the cockpit open their panels, revealing six rows of round-tipped missiles locked and loaded. Its front gun points its barrel right at them.
Behind him the man curses, but Shadow pays him little heed. There’s a symbol spray-painted on the mech – one larger on its chassis and other smaller on its right leg – that draws his eye, familiarity scratching like a needle to his brain. He notices it right away: a capitalized, white G.
G.U.N.
White hot rage wells up within him so fiercely and suddenly it chokes the breath out of him. Shadow clenches his fists, willing the energy contained in the inhibitor rings around his wrists to spread throughout his body like a shooting star. He scrapes the inside of his cheek raw again and lets the sharp tang of iron ground him, steady him, build him up from the ashes to be set alight. “Bastards,” he growls. “Bastards, all of you…!”
Chaos energy wells up in the rings, through his veins, fills his head with gold light and sultry iron. He licks his lips. Behind him, the man – Gerald’s kin – tells him he's low on ammo, tells him don’t just stand there, do something before all of Prison Island comes down on their heads.
Shadow ignores him, gaze locked on the G.U.N. unit. He swallows back blood, lets the boosters in his shoes flare to life and kick him up in the air.
They are going to wish they killed him.