Chapter Text
If Shadow tried to remember how he got to Earth, if he cast his mind as far back into his past as he possibly could, he remembered the feeling of being underwater.
He remembered his eyes snapping open, cold water filling his mouth, tickling his quills, dampening his fur and seeping through to the tender skin beneath. He remembered trying to take a deep breath, only to feel the water rushing straight into his lungs. He remembered gagging and coughing and panicking and throwing himself forward, only to slam right into a pane of glass. He remembered realizing that he was suspended in a large, glass tank, neither floating nor sinking, merely hovering in place in some kind of mysterious fluid. He remembered his heart pounding when he saw something moving outside of the tank.
There were alien creatures on the other side of the glass, tall, slow-moving, and mostly hairless. They jabbered to each other in some unintelligible language, occasionally glancing towards the tank with a wary, apprehensive look in their eyes, at least until the tallest one pointed a finger towards the tank and clearly said, “Shadow.”
He tried to think of his name, his real name, not just what the aliens were calling him, but nothing came to mind. His pulse quickened as he tried to remember something - the place he was born, his parents’ faces, a childhood memory, anything at all - but his memories were gone. He had nothing - no past, no family, no sense of self, not even a name. He was a blank slate, a ghost, a specter.
He decided that “Shadow” was as good of a moniker as any.
Shadow remembered his heart racing, he remembered waking up in a cold sweat every night, wondering what the hairless aliens might do next, but the aliens were somehow even more scared of him than he was of them. He remembered them entering the room in large groups, he remembered them chaining him down every time they removed him from the tank, he remembered them avoiding his gaze, as if he could kill them with just a look. He remembered being poked and prodded by scientists in hazmat suits, he remembered the seemingly endless barrage of tests and experiments, he remembered dreading every time a new hairless alien came and approached his tank. He remembered hating them. He remembered feeling like a freak.
Shadow didn’t know how long he was there - it could have been months, or it could have been years - but eventually, he learned to decipher the aliens’ language, and he at least started to be able to tell them apart. The redhead was O’Connor, the one with the glasses was Reynolds, the young man in the military uniform was Walters. The tallest one with the bushy white mustache was in charge of the whole operation - the others called him “Professor Robotnik” or simply “the professor.”
(He would eventually learn that the professor’s first name was Gerald, but that wasn’t until well after he met Maria.)
One day, after his daily blood tests, an alien he hadn’t seen before slowly walked into his room, carrying a box labeled “Maria’s Stuff.” Shadow turned towards the new girl - Maria - and he gave her his best death glare, trying to scare her off before she could hurt him, but the girl nervously smiled, and when she refused to run away, he paused and took a closer look at her. The girl was smaller than the other humans, perhaps not yet fully grown, and she was wearing a blue dress and a headband. The expression on her face was something he hadn’t seen from the scientists before. Was it amusement? Playfulness? Wonder? Joy?
Much to Shadow’s confusion, she took out a marker and began to draw on the glass of his tank. She giggled and gave him a delighted smile when she was done, and it took Shadow a few minutes to figure out that she’d drawn a cartoon bunny rabbit over his scowling face. Shadow didn’t understand what was so funny at first, but then, she pressed her hand up to the glass and gave him a friendly, encouraging smile, and for the first time since his arrival at the lab, Shadow felt at ease.
For the first time, Shadow had met someone who wasn’t afraid of him.
(“But why?” Shadow asked her later. “Your grandfather told you everything. You knew about my powers. Why weren’t you scared of me?”
“Because I could tell you were just a kid who needed a friend,” Maria said. “And you were adorable.”
“I’m not adorable,” Shadow insisted.
“Shadow, you have the ears of a kitten, the eyes of a sad puppy, and the fluff of a baby harp seal,” Maria said as she gave him a bright smile and then affectionately poked him on the nose. “Objectively, you’re adorable.”)
Maria was like a big sister to him that summer, teaching him everything she knew about the world. She took him on adventures, swapping him out with a teddy bear every time she wanted to play. They went roller skating and stargazing together, they watched movies, they danced to every record in her collection, they told each other their hopes and dreams. Maria explained things when he was confused, she comforted him when he was scared, she was the only person who could make him smile. Shadow still didn’t know who he was or where he’d really come from, but he was Maria’s friend, and that was enough.
Perhaps Maria was starting to rub off on him, because Shadow picked up her habit of sneaking around the lab late at night, going into every single room in the facility that he’d been told not to enter. Whenever he and Maria weren’t throwing a slumber party, he stood by the doorway and eavesdropped on the scientists’ conversations, listening to them talk about ushering in a new age of humanity, trying to figure out where they’d found him or why they’d taken such an interest in him. He never got a proper answer.
One night, while he was standing outside of the professor’s office, Shadow caught a glimpse of Gerald hunched over the phone, quietly seething as he pressed the receiver to his ear.
“Hello? Department of Child Disservices?” the professor said. “This is Gerald Robotnik speaking…no, you don’t need the spelling, it starts with a ‘robot,’ ends with a ‘nik.’ I’m calling about a case file for my grandson Ivo, he was placed into foster care after…no, I just have my son’s and daughter-in-law’s death certificates…while I appreciate the condolences, I’d appreciate that file even more…you know, back in my day, telephone operators did their jobs instead of dilly-dallying and shilly-shallying and hemming and hawing and wasting the precious time of an old man with nothing to live for except for his darling grandbabies…oh, really, you found the file, that’s a first…Mrs. Slaughter’s Home For Orphaned and Abandoned Children…well, I’ll pick up that little ankle-biter when I have rest and recuperation next week. Don’t tell Ivo we’re coming, I want it to be a fun surprise for the grandkiddos. Une réunion de famille, if you will. My granddaughter will be over the moon about meeting him, but then again, she’s excited about just about everything these days. You know how kids are.”
“Maria has a cousin?” Shadow whispered, but just as Gerald turned in his direction, he teleported into the next room, a skill that he still hadn’t entirely mastered yet, and he pretended as if he hadn’t heard anything.
He thought about telling Maria - it seemed like something that she would want to know - but he never got the chance. In fact, Shadow barely made it down the hall before he spotted Captain Walters running by, his breath short and ragged, his boot laces untied, his uniform drenched in sweat. “Professor!” he shouted as he opened the door to Gerald’s office.
“Walters, can’t you see I’m busy?” the professor responded as he quickly hung up the phone.
“It’s important,” Captain Walters said before lowering his voice in a desperate attempt to keep anyone else from hearing him. “I just received word that G.U.N. is planning to conduct a raid on the Project Shadow facility. It’s scheduled for six o’clock tomorrow, could be sooner, could be later. The Army’s top brass believe that Shadow could be an existential risk to humanity if he falls into the wrong hands, so we’ve been ordered to shut down the program to ensure everyone’s safety.”
A few expressions quickly flickered across Gerald’s face - his brows pinched together in confusion, his eyes widened in surprise, and then, finally, the professor exploded with rage. “Those Pentagoons don’t know what they’re talking about,” he spat as he stormed across the room, his fists clenched.
“That’s why I wanted to talk to you, Professor,” Walters said. “They don’t understand the work we do here, they’re more than a little trigger-happy, and they blame you as the project director for allowing Shadow to leave his stasis chamber. And on an entirely different topic, my mother’s side of the family has a vacation home in Cape Cod, four bedrooms, great view of the ocean. They just moved back to Boston for the season. It might be a nice place to lay low for a while, if you catch my drift…”
“Yes, yes, indeed, that sounds lovely,” the professor said. “But hypothetically, of course.”
“Entirely hypothetically,” Walters echoed.
“On that same purely hypothetical note, could you perhaps tell your Army friends not to shut down my research program?!”
“I don’t want to lose my job, Professor.”
“What about falsifying records?” Gerald asked. “I just located my long lost grandson’s case file - he could use a legal guardian who hasn’t been charged with desertion.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” Walters said. He paused for a moment and whispered, “I need to maintain plausible deniability here, but I also don’t want you and Maria to get hurt, so if anyone asks, you and I never had this conversation.”
The professor nodded and slid his thumb and index fingers across his lips, as if he were zipping them shut, and as Captain Walters walked out of Gerald’s office, Shadow slumped down onto the ground, dejected.
They were cancelling the project. They were shutting it down because Shadow had been right all along, because he really was too dangerous to be let loose. When the soldiers arrived, he would surely be killed or imprisoned, and even if he wasn’t, Maria was about to run away to Cape Cod with her grandfather. Soon, she would be gone, and Shadow would still be here, still stuck in this hellhole, without the only friend he’d ever known…
All of a sudden, Shadow felt someone pulling him out of the room, and when he looked down and saw the professor’s wrinkled hand clasped over his, his eyes widened with surprise, but at the same time, he breathed a sigh of relief. “Where’s Maria?” Gerald asked Shadow, but before he could answer, the professor jolted him forwards, and the two of them sprinted down the hallway and opened the door to Maria’s room, where she was sitting on the floor, practicing her guitar. “We have to go!” the professor said to her. “Now!”
Maria immediately cast her instrument aside and took her grandfather’s hand, and the three of them ran through the empty laboratory, down hallways and corridors, past boxes, machines, trays of food, and canisters of Shadow’s chaos energy. “They want to take Shadow away from us, Maria!” Gerald shouted, and as Maria gave Shadow a worried look, the professor frantically pushed a button and then yanked the two of them through a large, open door. As Shadow’s heart pounded, Maria, Shadow, and Gerald rushed forward and then tumbled through the doorway, all three of them landing on top of each other in a pile. Shadow soon stumbled to his feet, and when he took a deep breath and looked up at the stars, he realized that they’d made it to the exit.
If Captain Walters had waited even twenty more minutes to warn the professor about the G.U.N. raid, they would never have escaped in time, but right here, right now, they’d made it out alive.
(Fifty years later, Shadow found himself in the lab break room with Maria and Ivo, sipping on a freshly brewed cup of black coffee as the three Robotniks talked to Agent Stone, or one version of him anyways.
“Maria…you died in my universe,” the alternate Stone said to Maria, his voice quivering ever so slightly. “When G.U.N. came to shut down Project Shadow in 1974, one of the soldiers shot a canister of Shadow’s chaos energy, and you were caught in the explosion.” He paused for a moment, looked directly towards Maria, and said, “I’m sorry you had to find out like this.”
The room went silent for a few moments. Ivo had spent most of the conversation effusively complimenting Stone’s lattes, but now, he was in a state of shock, his eyes wide and his mouth agape. Maria’s usual optimism had fallen to the wayside, a strand of gray hair falling into her face as she stared blankly at the wall, contemplating her own mortality. And as for Shadow, he took one more sip of his coffee, and he suddenly felt a deep stab of grief as he realized for the first time just how close he’d come to losing his sister that fateful day.)
“We’re not out of the woods yet,” the professor said as he led Maria and Shadow down the winding gravel path that led from the laboratory to the dock, using a pocket flashlight to illuminate the way. “Follow me.”
Gerald led them off the path and through the dark forest that surrounded the Project Shadow base until they eventually reached a clearing with an airstrip. Sitting on the runway, there was a massive, heavily armored warship with a white and gray hull and decals depicting a mustachioed face emblazoned over the windows. Maria looked up at the ship in awe, while Shadow nervously glanced backwards, hoping that they hadn’t been followed.
“Welcome to the Robotnik Carrier, kiddos,” the professor said as he opened the main door and climbed on board. “The ultimate getaway vehicle, designed, tested, and engineered by yours truly, in case we ever needed it.”
Shadow and Maria immediately climbed onto the ship, and as the professor headed towards the cockpit, the two of them entered the main cabin and sat down next to the window. Shadow pressed his muzzle against the glass, and as the carrier began to rise into the air, he noticed a group of soldiers on the ground below, running towards the Project Shadow facility, their guns at the ready. He watched intently as the soldiers broke down the door and sprinted into the base, but as the aircraft carrier continued to rise, he watched the Project Shadow base slowly shrink and then disappear beneath the clouds, and it suddenly hit him that he was leaving behind the only place he’d ever known. The Project Shadow base hadn’t exactly been paradise, but it was more than just a laboratory. It had been the closest thing he had to a home, and Maria was the closest thing he’d ever had to a family.
“What happens if they find us?” Shadow asked Maria as he sadly looked out the window.
“I don’t know,” Maria said. Shadow was hoping that she had just a little bit more helpful advice up her sleeve - she always seemed to know exactly what to say - but Maria just stared out the window, and Shadow realized that she was just as scared and confused as he was.
The two of them stayed silent for a while, but eventually, Maria glanced in Shadow’s direction, and she whispered into his ear, “I stole a cookie from the cafeteria while we were running out of the lab.”
Shadow tried to keep himself from laughing at his sister’s antics, but he quickly returned to his usual dour expression and then asked, “What kind?”
“Double chocolate fudge,” Maria said as she reached into the pocket of her skirt and pulled out the cookie. “Do you want to split it?”
Shadow nodded, Maria handed him his half of the cookie, and he took a bite, letting the warm fudge coat his tongue. He glanced in Maria’s direction and smiled, and for the first time since they left the base, Shadow felt at ease.