Sayonara

Sonic doesn't fear dying. He's scraped through one too many close calls to punk out now. But what he's feeling right this moment, as his capsule begins to redden and quake, isn't so much fear as it is trepidation, a lingering doubt he can't escape. It creeps in like a chill at the base of his spine, tingling and burning, this nagging feeling that something—something—is about to whisk him away.

He grips the fake Emerald in both hands.

(work come on work)

Draws breath into his lungs for one last scream.

"Chaos—"

Tails clutches the walkie-talkie with a trembling hand, his thumb pressed down on the button, letting the speaker snarl static.

"Sonic… " His heavy shoulders sag. "I did it."

Bang.

Amy looks up from the faint noise, ears flattened as the lights flicker and rain down plumes of dust.

Bang.

Bang.

"Tails," she urges with a firm tug on his arm. "Someone's trying to get in—let's go before they—"

Above the control panel, a screen in a diamond-shaped frame sputters alive, transmitting the image of an old man wrapped in chains, surrounded by grime-covered limestone. She digs her fingers into Tails' arm. Who's that? I don't know—

Shadow enters the room.

His triumphant bout of laughter fades on the scream of neglected alarms. Agitated by the distraction, he spins around, fists balled. "What now?" he barks at the error screens. "Why doesn't the Cannon… "

He stops cold, letting the cinders of the overworked machine float past him.

There has to be a mistake.

Some kind of miscalculation, a hiccup in the system.

He jostles the keys.

An oversight.

An error.

Pulls back.

Rifes his hands over his head, his form hunched over the glowing monitor.

It doesn't waver.

The message, it doesn't waver.

The outer lock blinks green, and the darkness admits a sashaying form. Eggman stabs an incriminatory finger in Rouge's direction the minute she enters the central control room.

"Bless your rotten little heart, are you blackmailing me?" he demands amidst the Professor's monologue. Of course he's known her affiliations from the start, but to think she'd stoop so low as to air out his family's dirty laundry like this? GUN mole or not, she has some massive nerve walking in here. "Of all the lowdown, dirty, underhanded—"

"Drop the act, doc." She tucks her communicator away and approaches him with her head held high, a steely calm chilling her voice. "You knew this was coming sooner or later."

"So what now, bat girl? You clap the irons on me, everyone cheers and calls you a hero?"

Rouge flicks her eyes toward the screen. "Listen to what he's saying."

Eggman does, and slams his fists repeatedly against the fried console.

"Funny," she says. "You finally get what you want, and now you don't want it."

His blood thickens and churns. "Let me get this through your thick skull, bat girl: I'm not dying today. Or tomorrow, or fifty years from now. And certainly not at the hands of my own—"

This, says grandfather to grandson, is a death sentence for every human being on Earth.

With a strangled cry that seems alien to even his own ears, he storms across the walkway. Tears the Emeralds from the Cannon's receptacle and hurls them at Gerald, where they ghost through the fizzling screen and join their worthless companions at Rouge's feet.

It doesn't matter that the Emeralds screech in protest, that bursts of electricity threaten to scorch his hands as he rips them from their sockets. It doesn't matter that he's trying to unravel his own hard-earned victory. Anything, anything to stop the endless drone of his lying, treacherous grandfather—

"You ought to leave," Shadow says.

The children huddle together. The girl tightens her grip on the boy's forearm, pulling him back a little.

"Go now, while there's still time. I won't repeat myself."

Neither of them listen for a good half-minute, opting instead to watch him with widened eyes. Then, emboldened by the terse silence, the fox bristles, puffs his chest in a semblance of bravado that's belied by his shaking hands. He chances one long forward step. "Shadow," he says, his voice cracking as if afraid to risk his name, "was this what you really wanted to do all along?"

He turns away from Tails, who bravely, stupidly, continues.

"There might be a chance to save the colony, if we all just—"

Shadow tips his head toward the holographic video feed, lets his creator answer for him. Once I initiate this program, it cannot be disabled.

"Please," the girl called Amy clasps her hands in consternation, "you don't have to do this."

All of you ungrateful humans who took everything away from me will feel my loss and despair.

"The air within the colony will evaporate upon reentry," Shadow says. "If you're fortunate, you won't be conscious then."

Leaving them to absorb the implications, he turns toward Earth, its curved horizon looming upon them. Its shine seems to pierce through him.

What was it the Professor said long ago? That light is dual in nature, both particle and wave. It moves through us. Our DNA holds stardust; our cells keep warm with sunlight. At our darkest, we are all made of light.

Even you, Shadow.

He hears the Professor say this as clearly as if he's placed a gentle hand on his shoulder, no longer dead but as alive as the resolve that flows through him. Like Maria, whose afterimage floats behind his eyelids, his creator stands beside him. With him always.

Another hand tethers his shoulder, dragging him back toward the reality he is mere moments from escaping. The faintest sliver of awareness pricks a hole in his cloudy, swimming consciousness, like a needle pushing its first tear through cloth. His heart quickens. Too little too late do the fox's words register in his mind.

"No," Tails cries passionately, "Shadow, don't! You don't have to go through with this!"

This momentary rend of conscience must seal itself if he's ever to fulfill his mission, so he shrugs him off. He wants nothing more than to tell them how wrong they are. He won't be deceived. There is nothing more anyone can command him to do, the ultimate life.

Amy blinks. Fresh tears overflow down her cheeks, droplets bursting on the scuffed glass floor. Understanding trickles into her expression, into her quivering chin which she tries to keep steady. "Sonic—"

"He's gone," he says. "There's no way to save anyone." He glances out the frosty window, bathed in the humming pale blue light of overhead fluorescents. "I'm sorry."

There is a brief silence.

"Shadow," Amy says, her tone gone softer. "We need you. Please help us."

He pivots sharply as she reaches for him, his eyes glittering warning. "Leave."

Someone else dares disturb the ARK's sanctity. As it hurtles toward the radiant blue planet it orbits, a speaker shrieks through the void of space, shattering the absolute quiet.

"Did you know the Cannon would do this?" Eggman screeches with such force the feedback deafens them a moment, throbbing white noise in their ears. "Abort the program NOW, SHADOW!" Everyone but him winces at the punishing shriek: "SHADOW, YOU USELESS SWINE! DO AS I SAY, OR I'LL—"

The receiver crumbles under his heel, spitting out wire and filament.

A deep, tumultuous tremor shakes the colony down to its bones, nearly knocking the children off their feet while Shadow stands an eerie sentry, watching the planet encroach upon them at an unimaginable velocity. Amy buries Tails in her arms, huddling close to her friend. Almost hard to believe the Doctor considered them trespassers and the greatest threat to their plans.

At least they won't be alone, unlike his rival. Perhaps now they'll discover just how it felt to be inside that capsule as it blew, the results of the Professor's last great experiment.

Shadow folds his arms as the observation window begins to redden and quake.

"Sayonara, Sonic the Hedgehog."