Light and Shadow

Chapter 10

Shadow walked slowly, his hover skates making little clanking sounds against the metal. Every inch of this place screamed "Evil". The Ark hadn't been touched in so long that that that everything looked ancient and forgotten. That didn't take away the flood of memories that overtook the onyx hedgehog. He caught sight of a faded photo of Maria and his chest squeezed. He looked away quickly, trying to avoid any more memories. The only reason he had forced himself to come here was because he thought the old Dr. Gerald Robotnick might have known something about a way to another dimension. He wasn't sure, since the Dr.'s research was mostly centered around Maria. But it was worth a try.

Shadow found the room he was looking for and took hold of the handle. Oddly enough, it was locked! Shadow frowned. Certainly the people who had killed Maria would have searched here. Shadow build up his power and released a chaos spear on the lock. It made a mess, but the door opened. The second Shadow walked in, his adrenaline kicked into hyper speed. Someone had been here recently, but hadn't disturbed the rest of the area. That means whoever was here had somehow teleported! Shadow shot a small chaos spear at the drawer set in case they were locked and yanked them open. Inside, they were stuffed with blue prints and plans. Some formulas, some experiment data. A lot had to do with Shadow, which didn't surprise him. What did surprise him was that none of it included Maria.

Another interesting fact was the hand writing. It wasn't the quick, clumsy chicken scratch of Gerald's but some sort of elegant script. Shadow read through everything whether he understood it or not and put it all back. Now to figure out how this person's gotten in here. Shadow looked around, noting the obsessive tidiness of the area. His eyes caught a green potion labeled, "Teleport."

"Hmm. Nothing's ever that easy. What have you been doing?" He asked himself as he took a whiff. None of his senses told him it would kill him to drink, so he took a swig and felt an instant convulsion. He dropped the potion, the glass shattering into a million pieces and his knees gave out. An intense pain spread throughout his body and he screamed, then everything went dark.

When Shadow awoke, he was in a very different place. The sky was a a mixture of gold and silver that swirled in an almost magical way. The ground shimmered in a million colors, and Shadow felt an almost warmth spread throughout his body. It was like the second he arrived a small flame grew inside his chest, but it wasn't painful or even unpleasant.

Where is this place? Shadow thought, dazed. Everything's so bright!

"Who are you?" A young, innocent voice asked. Shadow sat up and turned around slowly, his head aching. The voice belonged to a young girl that looked like she belonged in the Victorian Era. She had silky- black, shoulder length ringlets that were tied back from her face with a blue, silk bow. Her eyes were like a liquid silver; sort of unnatural for an eye color. She wore a Victorian dress of many shades of pink. Shadow guessed she was about ten.

"I'm Shadow, Shadow the Hedgehog," He said slowly, rubbing his throbbing head, "Where am I?"

The girl looked confused, "Are you feeling pain?"

Shadow nodded.

Her silver eyes widened to almost horror, "You shouldn't be here! How did you get here! Go away! Now!"

Shadow opened one eye with irritation, "Look kid, I've clearly been thrown through a loop here. I took some sort of potion that was supposed to lead me to someone and I ended up here. Can you please take me to someone who has answers for me?"

Her silver eyes hardened, and shifted from silver to gold. Shadow frowned, "What's up with your eyes?"

Her hard expression softened to a proud smile, "I am next in line to be the Watcher of course! But you don't know that, since you're not supposed to be here. Come! I will take you to Mia (M-ee-a) who will see what she can do about you."