Chapter Text
“You hungry, kiddo?” Tom asked, driving through the town. He’d agreed to take Shadow to work with him again, and they were currently heading down a long street, just on the outskirts of town.
“Not really.” Shadow said, looking out the car window, watching trees and empty road pass by when something caught his eye. They were quickly approaching a small cluster of houses, one of which seemed to have smoke billowing out from an open window on the second floor. His eyes widened, and he quickly tapped Tom’s arm to get his attention. “I think that house is on fire.”
“Shit.” Tom hissed under his breath when he saw it.
He and Shadow clearly weren’t the only two people to notice it, as a small group of people were stopping in front of the house when they noticed the smoke.
Tom changed his course, parking his car on the side of the road a safe distance from the house. “Stay in the car, okay?”
“Got it.” Shadow agreed.
Tom exited the car, talking to someone Shadow couldn’t see on a device he didn’t have a name for. He left the car on so the air conditioner would keep running, which Shadow found unnecessary (he’d been extremely cold since he entered the car, not enough to be detrimental, though still a source of discomfort) but it was too late to protest.
Shadow watched as Tom guided the group away from the house. The fire was still confined to the inside of the house, but that could change, becoming dangerous to the onlookers at any moment.
Movement on the second floor caught Shadow’s eye as someone backed up against the window. The human looked too small to be an adult. He stuck his head out the window, coughing as the smoke grew heavier. Was he trapped?
Shadow knew he’d been told to stay in the car, but he didn’t think any of the humans could get the boy before the fire spread too far. After only a moment of consideration, he held his breath and teleported out of the car.
Thick smoke obscured his vision when he arrived in the same room as the boy. His eyes watered, but he tried to ignore it, searching for the window. He could feel the heat of the flames closing in, and walked away from the worst of it, reaching a wall.
He could just barely make out the sound of coughing over the crackling fire, and he followed the noise until he finally reached the boy. His lungs burned, but he refused to breathe in the smoke. He was used to holding his breath past the point of comfort, anyway.
Once he found the boy, he reached out and grabbed one of his arms before teleporting out, both of them landing on the front lawn.
Shadow gasped for breath as the boy continued to cough, heat clinging to his fur even as the cool air surrounded him.
He blinked tears out of his eyes and looked up, seeing Tom approaching him with a controlled expression, though Shadow could see the fear in his eyes as he knelt down beside Shadow and the boy.
“I-I know I dis-“ Shadow choked on his own breath, “disobeyed, b-but I-“
“You’re not in trouble.” Tom said quickly, a nearly unnoticeable tremble hidden under his words. “Just breathe, kiddo.” He turned to the boy next. “Paramedics are on their way. Was anyone in the house with you?”
The boy shook his head.
“Where are your parents?”
“At w-work.” The boy replied, voice raspy. His answer made Tom frown, but he didn’t say whatever he was thinking.
The paramedics were quick to arrive, and Tom instructed the boy to let them take care of him. He went with them without protest, though Shadow could see the way he was shaking with every step, terrified.
Tom and Shadow were left alone on the lawn. Shadow opened his mouth to speak, but Tom quickly pulled Shadow into a hug.
“Don’t ever do something like that without talking to me first, okay?” Tom whispered, holding Shadow just a bit too tight.
Shadow suddenly remembered the story Tom had told him the last time he’d gone to work with him; a house set on fire, claiming the life of a young girl and the woman that tried so hard to save her. Shadow’s ears folded back guiltily. He must have reminded Tom of that day, scaring him when he realized Shadow had gone inside the burning house.
Shadow wrapped his arms around Tom’s tense shoulders. “I won’t, I promise. I’m- I’m sorry.”
Tom’s shoulders slumped, and he sighed. “I’m not mad, just- it scares the hell out of me when you boys pull stunts like that. I’ve almost lost you boys too many times.”
“You won’t lose me.” Shadow murmured against his shoulder.
Tom just sighed again, pressing a kiss to Shadow’s temple. “Get back in the car, kiddo. And stay there this time, please. Firemen will be here soon.”
Shadow nodded, reluctantly leaving Tom’s embrace so he could get back to work. He went back to the car and waited, heart racing as he watched the fire get stronger. It sort of reminded him of-
The base. He hadn’t even been thinking of that when he rushed into the house, uncaring of the flames. He hadn’t thought about how familiar the heat was, or the scent of smoke. He’d just been focused on helping the boy.
He’d managed to completely ignore any fear he would have felt to help that kid.
He wondered if Maria would have been proud.
***
Shadow woke up in the middle of the night to something covering his mouth, and his wrists getting locked together.
He kicked his legs blindly toward whoever had entered his room, paw connecting with something hard. He heard a quiet grunt, but other than that, there had been no reaction.
He was dragged out of bed, leaving his blankets and pillows skewed. Every attempt to drag his feet or halt his unwilling movements was unsuccessful, and he only succeeded in kicking Daisy halfway under his bed. The room was too dark to see who had woken him, but he could make out vague outlines of armor in what little light his nightlight provided. The armor was horrifically familiar.
An odd looking yellow door was opened within his room, and the armored humans pulled him through it before it closed.
It was immediately clear to Shadow that he was standing inside one of the rooms of a GUN base, and the small group of humans that had dragged him out of bed were armored agents. He recognized the cuffs around his wrists to be the same cuffs - or a replica, at the very least - that Sonic had once tried to capture him with.
The base’s metal floor was cold against his bare paws, but the cold wasn’t the cause for the way he immediately started to shake. They’d put a muzzle on him to keep him from calling for help, preventing him from letting out the sob building in his throat.
GUN found him.
***
They shoved Shadow into a metal cage, the bars of which electrocuted him every time he touched them. Even an accidental brush of his quills resulted in blinding pain rippling through every nerve in his body.
He couldn’t curl up into a ball properly with the cuffs around his wrists, so the only position he could force himself into that wasn’t absolute agony was hunched over on his knees and elbows, lying over his legs with his head hanging near his paws, arms tucked as close to his body as he could manage. It made his shoulders and legs ache, slowly growing more painful with each passing hour, but it wasn’t as bad as getting electrocuted, so he endured.
His cage was left in a sealed room that was surrounded by armed agents at all times. Every hour or so, someone would enter to make sure the cuffs and cage were holding strong. They never said a word to Shadow, and in turn, he stayed silent when they entered. Begging wouldn’t help him here; it never did in the past.
Shadow had been in a constant state of panic since he was first dragged out of bed, and his heart continued to beat frantically even hours later. He could barely breathe, as deep breaths raised his quills up too much, making them bump into the cage. He sucked in rapid, shallow breaths, feeling lightheaded.
He wanted to cry. He wanted to scream and sob and beg to be returned to his parents, but he couldn’t, even though they’d removed his muzzle before locking him up. He hadn’t forgotten his training. It had been pushed to the back of his mind, locked away even tighter every time Tom and Maddie gave him another piece of freedom that GUN refused to offer. But it wasn’t forgotten.
He was not allowed to cry; crying was a weakness, and he was meant to be strong- to be perfect.
He was not allowed to beg; he would take what he was given and follow orders without question.
He was not allowed to scream; his anger was dangerous, and when monsters like him grew upset, they hurt people. He knew better.
Shadow didn’t cry, even when the pressure building behind his eyes started to hurt. Even when the little needles in his throat threatened to close it if he didn’t let out the sob caught within it. Even when his body shook with pain and fatigue and terror.
He didn’t cry.
He ducked his head as low as he could get it, just barely within reach of his paws, and began stroking one of his ears in the same way Tom and Maddie always did to calm him down. A pathetic attempt at self-soothing, one that he immediately halted when a human entered the room.
It didn’t make him feel any better, but it was still a distraction.
***
Nobody could find Shadow.
It wasn’t the first time he hadn’t come out for breakfast, but it had been long enough since the last time it happened that Maddie automatically assumed the worst. She went into his room to make sure he was feeling alright, only to find the room empty. Shadow hadn’t told Tom or Maddie that he was planning on leaving. Sure, the boys tended to come and go often, racing through the forest or sneaking off in the middle of the night (though Sonic hadn’t done that in a while), but they usually gave some sort of warning if Tom and Maddie were home so they wouldn’t worry.
Maddie asked the other boys if they knew where Shadow was, but none of them had known that he was even gone.
Right before breakfast, Sonic ran out to check if Shadow had gone back to the spot in the forest where he used to train in secret, then checked the surrounding areas when he found it abandoned. He checked the cave as well, finding it empty. He didn’t find anything suggesting Shadow had even been in those areas recently.
Maddie tried not to worry, but Shadow never disappeared like this anymore. The only times he’d ever run out of the house was when he was deeply upset, but he’d seemed okay when he went to bed last night. Maybe a little shaken up from the house fire, but Tom had seemed more upset about it than Shadow had.
She decided to check his room again for any hint at where he’d gone.
His bed was messy, which was unusual for him. He always remade his bed in the morning, a habit he’d picked up from Maria, as she’d apparently hated how a messy bed looked.
His blanket was skewed in a way that sort of looked like he’d fallen out of bed sideways and just… left the blanket like that. One of his pillows was crooked, almost falling off the bed, and when Maddie’s eyes roamed over the floor, she spotted something sticking out from under the bed.
Kneeling down, she grabbed the object, her hand meeting something soft and squishy.
Daisy had been left abandoned on the floor.
Shadow never would have left her there.
Maddie’s heart sank.
***
It had been a full twenty-four hours since Maddie first realized Shadow was gone, and he still hadn’t returned home. Tom and Sonic had both searched the whole town (several times, in Sonic’s case). Not only did they not find Shadow, but nobody they asked had even seen Shadow recently.
Maddie was slowly becoming more and more desperate for any sign that Shadow was alright. He’d been doing so well recently, going out in public more, going to all of his therapy appointments without issue, even his troubles with sleep had gradually been lessening. He wouldn’t have just run away without a word, she was certain of it.
Her mind kept going to one specific place, but she didn’t want to believe that something terrible had happened. She wanted to believe that Shadow had just decided to leave unannounced, and would return at any moment… but she couldn’t stop wondering if someone had been involved in his disappearance.
Green Hills was generally a safe town; in all her years of living here, there had only been a handful of cases of violent crimes. Other than the Robotniks, nobody had ever tried harming any of her boys.
Well, nobody but GUN.
But they didn’t know Shadow was here. He’d spent nearly ten months in this town, and nobody had come for him. GUN couldn’t have found him… right?
Maddie wasn’t sure what compelled her to pull out her phone and check recent news on everything relating to GUN. She didn’t want to think that they’d done something, that they’d somehow found Shadow, but she just couldn’t let go of the thought until she checked for herself.
All recent news on GUN was just the same things Maddie had seen for the past few months; thousands of articles, posts and videos talking about all of the secrets Stone had revealed when he leaked GUN’s files. She tried to avoid everything that mentioned Shadow, not wanting to accidentally learn anything he didn’t want her to.
She was about to put her phone away when a video caught her eye.
Alien involved in Project Shadow saves child from burning house.
This video was posted only a few days ago, yet it already had hundreds of thousands of views. She clicked on it, and watched in numb horror as someone recorded Shadow - very much alive - rushing out of an on-fire house with a little boy in his arms.
Why would anyone do this? After the way Sonic had been attacked by Robotnik that first time, the whole town had silently agreed to protect the alien residents, so why would someone upload a video of Shadow now?
This… this was bad, but it could be much worse. There was nothing in the video that hinted at where Shadow was. Even if someone working for GUN found the video, what were the odds that they’d know the video was taken in Green-
Tom walked into the frame, kneeling down beside both children. The boy Shadow saved was taken away by paramedics soon after.
And Tom hugged Shadow. GUN knew what Tom looked like, and his face was clearly displayed in the video.
Ice filled Maddie’s veins.
***
Nausea twisted in Shadow’s stomach, but he swallowed it back, knowing he didn’t have anything in his stomach to puke up apart from his own stomach acid. Still, he feared what would happen if he threw up in the cage. He didn’t know if he’d be let out so it could be cleaned.
The agents hadn’t let him out for any reason since they first captured him. His throat was dry and sore, he was starving, at that point where hunger just became pain, and his abdomen ached from holding his bladder for longer than what was comfortable, as they wouldn’t even let him out to use the bathroom.
His muscles had grown stiff from being locked in this hunched position for so long, leaving him exhausted and in pain. He kept falling asleep without meaning to, which always caused him to shift just enough to bump the cage’s bars. He jolted awake again with every painful zap delivered to him.
He’d tried so hard not to cry, but he couldn’t hold out any longer. He bit into his lips hard enough to draw blood, silencing the sobs that wanted to burst from his chest. His tears dripped silently, hitting the floor of the cage in little puddles.
He wanted to go home. He wanted to curl up between his parents and fall asleep in their arms, safe, comfortable, warm. He wanted to feel them pet his ears and kiss his forehead. He wanted to hear them reassure him that everything would be alright; that they would protect him and take care of him.
He just wanted to be with his mama and daddy.
***
“C’mon, please pick up.” Maddie whispered to herself, listening to her phone ring. She’d already been sent to voicemail twice, meaning her sister was either busy with work or ignoring her.
It took far too long, but Rachel finally answered her call.
“Rachel-“
“I can’t help you.” Rachel said immediately.
Maddie’s breath hitched. “Wh-“
“Maddie, what the hell were you thinking, taking that boy in? Do you know how much danger you were putting your family in?”
They had him, Maddie realized, heart crumbling to pieces under the weight of the horror that crashed down on her. She hadn’t even gotten the chance to tell Rachel why she was calling, but she already knew it was about Shadow. GUN had him.
“Rachel, he isn’t dangerous-“ Maddie tried to argue, eyes welling up with tears, but Rachel cut her off quickly.
“I’ve read the files, Maddie.” Rachel sighed. “Honestly, I don’t know what to believe about that boy. But regardless of whether or not he’s dangerous, you knew GUN was after him, and you still chose to take him in. If GUN wasn’t so desperate to deal with him quietly, all of you would have been arrested on the spot.”
“I-I need him back.” Maddie said, voice weak. “Rachel, I need your help. Please.”
“I don’t know where we’re keeping him. Hell, I shouldn’t even be telling you we have him at all. You weren’t supposed to find out. You were supposed to just… think he ran away.”
A sudden bolt of anger tore through Maddie, realizing Rachel knew from the moment Shadow was taken that Maddie had just lost one of her boys, but she suppressed it. Screaming at her own sister wouldn’t help Shadow.
“There has to be something you can tell me.” Maddie began pacing in the kitchen, barely holding back her panic. “They tortured him. You know what they did. Are you really okay with leaving a child in the hands of the same people that hurt him like that?”
Rachel was silent for a long moment, then Maddie heard a quiet sigh from the other end of the call.
“All I know is, he was brought outside of the country. Commander Rockwell wanted to see to it herself that he was… properly disposed of, but she’s been out of the country for a couple months now. The file leak caused damage for GUN both in and out of the States, and she’s working to fix it.” Rachel paused. “…Honestly, I’d be surprised if he was still alive. I really am sorry, Mad-“
Maddie hung up the phone, dropped it onto the kitchen counter, and burst into tears.
***
Shadow finally became desperate enough that he’d asked one of the humans if he could be let out to use the bathroom, to which he’d received no response. In his hunched over position, he was constantly putting pressure on his bladder, making it that much harder to hold everything in.
He’d tried so hard to hold it.
By the time another human checked on him, his legs were soaked, forced to sit in the puddle formed at the bottom of the cage. The room had a pungent, acidic scent that immediately gave away what he’d done. Humiliated tears spilled down his cheeks as he whimpered into his arms.
The human gave him a repulsed look, not even bothering to check the cuffs around his wrists before leaving the room.
The human returned a couple minutes later with a small group of armed agents. He dragged Shadow out of the cage, giving him a stern glare, a silent command not to cause trouble. He couldn’t even enjoy the feeling of stretching his legs when open air hit the moisture clinging to his fur, a reminder of his failure.
Shadow’s ears were pinned to his head during the entire walk down a couple long hallways. The walk was difficult, not just because of the humans scowling at him like he was the most disgusting creature they’d ever encountered, but because he’d gone long enough without food that he was starting to feel like he could faint at any moment.
The humans brought Shadow to a large bathroom with several showers built into the side of the wall. With a hand around Shadow’s upper arm, the unarmed human dragged Shadow into one of the shower stalls while the agents stood and watched, ready to attack Shadow if he showed any signs of aggression.
Freezing water poured down Shadow’s back as the human scrubbed his legs harshly, all without saying a word to Shadow. His nose wrinkled in disgust as he cleaned Shadow, clearly unhappy that he’d been forced to deal with Shadow’s mess.
Shadow wanted to snap at him, to blame him for not letting Shadow out sooner, but he couldn’t. All he could do was bite his lip and try to stop crying.
When he was returned to the cage, it was clean, the sharp smell of chemicals surrounding it. The scent made Shadow want to gag, burning the back of his throat. That was probably the point. Shadow had made a mess and embarrassed himself in front of the humans, and this was his punishment for it.
After he was locked back up, he buried his nose in the crook of his elbow and tried to breathe through his mouth, eyes watering for an entirely new reason.
***
With no other options, Maddie did the only thing she could think to do; she went to Stone for assistance. She’d never said a word to the man before today, but she didn’t know who else she could turn to. He’d somehow managed to leak millions of GUN files in a single night, if anyone could find Shadow, it was him.
Maddie arrived at his coffee shop and explained the whole situation to him. He was absolutely devastated to hear what happened, and immediately agreed to help in any way he could.
The coffee shop closed early, and Stone promised to contact Maddie as soon as he found something useful.
She spent the next couple of hours at home, pacing anxiously. She couldn’t stop thinking about what her sister had said, wondering if Shadow truly had been ki-
No, she refused to think like that. He was alive- he had to be. He’d survived years of GUN’s abuse, survived the Eclipse Cannon explosion. He could survive whatever they were doing to him now.
Her eyes stung with fresh tears. She couldn’t even imagine how they were treating him. She doubted they were any kinder to him now than they had been decades ago. They might be hurting her baby right now, and she had no way to protect him from it.
She hardly felt any relief when Stone finally called her. He’d managed to find where Shadow was being held, and gave Maddie the location.
She, Tom and the boys were soon piled on the couch in the living room as Tails hacked into the cameras in GUN’s London Headquarters (of course he’d been brought back there, as if that place hadn’t caused their family enough harm). The plan was for Sonic to use a ring to reach Shadow, wherever he was inside the base, and bring him home. But he couldn’t open a ring to a specific location unless he knew what it looked like, otherwise he’d just end up in a random spot in the base, left searching for Shadow manually.
Tails searched through the cameras rapidly, checking every room in the base for any sign of Shadow. In his search, he uncovered an empty metal room, the only thing inside being a tiny cage in the center of the room. Maddie could only assume that this was where they’d been keeping Shadow, but nobody was inside. Her heart broke when she saw the cage, too small and cramped for Shadow to even lie down in.
The base was massive, but Tails did eventually track Shadow down, finding him in what looked like an office.
He stood in the center of the room, wrists locked up in the same cuffs GUN had once given Sonic when they’d asked for his assistance in catching Shadow. He stood over a tarp on the floor that Maddie refused to guess the purpose of.
Standing in front of him was Rockwell. She had a gun in her hand that she was quickly lifting toward Shadow.
Sonic gasped beside Maddie, then he was gone, rushing upstairs in a flash of blue to retrieve his rings.
***
Shadow wasn’t sure how long he waited in his cage before he was forcefully dragged out by two agents, one on either side of him. Several other agents followed behind them as they made Shadow walk down another long hallway, weapons pointed at him.
Shadow tried his hardest to hide his trembling. As terrified as he was, hidden underneath all of that was anger. These were the humans that had kept him in stasis, that hunted him when he’d dared to leave their imprisonment. These humans hurt him for the simple crime of daring to exist.
And he hated them for it.
Even before he’d been willing to accept that GUN’s - Gerald’s - treatment of him had been abusive, he’d resented these humans for hurting him. Regardless of whether or not it had been for ‘his’ sake, to make him ‘stronger’, he’d hated the pain they caused him. He hadn’t understood why they needed to hurt him to make him stronger, even when he’d believed everything they told him. They never bothered trying to justify it beyond saying it was ‘for his benefit’ because they knew that they could easily shut him up with a single command.
Deep down, part of him had always known it was abuse. The scientists’ treatment had left him terrified of Tom and Maddie when he first moved in with them, fearing that they would treat him the same way he’d always been treated by adults, or just hand him back to GUN without a second thought. He knew it was wrong, even if he’d been unwilling to say it out loud during those first few months. It was always, ‘the scientists hurt me’ and never, ‘the scientists mistreated me’. There was a time when he’d genuinely believed the worst thing they did to him was keep him away from Maria, but that certainly wasn’t what had caused his fear of them.
(Maybe it wasn’t that he couldn’t see the scientists’ treatment as abuse, but Gerald’s. During those first few months, on the very rare occasions that he let slip any information on how the scientists treated him to Tom and Maddie, he only ever spoke of the other scientists in a negative light. He hardly ever mentioned Gerald, like part of him felt the need to hide Gerald’s role in the abuse so they wouldn’t try to tell him it was wrong. He’d still loved Gerald so much, he wouldn’t have been willing to listen to them when they tried to get him to see the truth. Not until they showed him how parents should actually treat their children.)
He refused to show these humans how terrified he was. He glared at anyone that mistakenly made eye contact with him, and growled every time they touched him, no matter how brief and light the contact was. He wished he could take satisfaction in every flinch he caused, but just being near them had him on the verge of a panic attack.
The agents didn’t tell him where they were taking him, and he didn’t dare ask. Despite his forced aggression, he obeyed their silent command to follow, knowing that it would only hurt worse if he didn’t.
He was brought to a room with a thick metal door that could only be opened with a keycard. One of the agents opened the door and pushed Shadow inside, nearly causing him to stumble.
The room looked like an office, sparsely decorated with GUN’s symbol plastered along the wall. A large, dark blue tarp was laid across the floor, which the agents forcefully guided Shadow onto. The sight of it sent a fresh wave of panic through his mind.
A single human stood in the center of the room, a woman Shadow vaguely remembered seeing when he assisted Gerald in retrieving the keys for the Eclipse Cannon. She wore the same uniform Walters used to wear, and he could only assume that meant she was the current GUN Commander. He fought against the urge to shrink in on himself.
The Commander’s eyes narrowed as the two agents entered with Shadow. He didn’t miss the gun holstered on her hip. She gave a short nod to the agents, and they both stepped away from Shadow, keeping their weapons pointed at him. Without his Chaos energy, he wasn’t nearly fast enough to outrun them, and it wasn’t worth attempting.
“What do you want with me?” Shadow hissed, quills bristling.
Something flashed in the Commander’s eyes, a deep, familiar resentment that Shadow knew all too well. “We don’t want anything to do with you, Project.”
He stiffened at the name she used. “Then, why am I here? I haven’t done anything.”
“No?” The Commander hummed, and the fur on Shadow’s neck stood on end. “We have evidence suggesting otherwise.”
She grabbed some sort of tablet off of her desk, taking a few short steps toward Shadow. She turned the screen toward him.
A brief video played, showing Shadow saving that child from a burning house. Shadow’s ears twitched when he saw it.
“I didn’t hurt anyone.”
The Commander’s uncaring expression didn’t change. “Do you think the public will believe that?”
“…What do you mean?” Shadow asked, heart stuttering.
She set the tablet back down. “The way GUN sees it, a rogue weapon escapes custody, tries to blow up the planet, goes missing, and appears again months later in a small, nowhere town. It finds a way to leak its files, revealing information the public was never meant to know in the hopes of drawing sympathy, so the public will protect it. Then, it lights a house on fire and makes itself look like a hero, saving a child that it put in danger, proving that even all these months later, it still wants to hurt people, like the weapon it is.”
Shadow’s breath hitched. “That- that’s not what happened!”
“The public doesn’t need to know that.”
They were going to frame him, make that accident look like his crime to convince the public that GUN had been protecting them from him the whole time, covering up the truth.
Shadow’s eyes strayed to the tarp below his feet, then the gun at the Commander’s hip, and realization dawned on him.
He wasn’t leaving this room alive.
Shadow swallowed, every ounce of willpower abandoning him, replaced with absolute terror. “All I wanted was to be free.”
“Walters was right in believing you were too dangerous to set free.” One of the Commander’s hands lowered to her hip, right over her gun. “But he made a mistake when he chose to keep you alive. That stunt you pulled last year was proof that your power isn’t worth the danger.”
“…Please.” Shadow said, voice trembling. “I-I just want to go home.”
The Commander pulled the gun out of her holster, leveling it with Shadow’s head. Her face was emotionless as she said, “That place was never meant to be your home.”
Three sounds rang out simultaneously, echoing in the large room; an unfamiliar warp from behind him, someone shouting his name, and a single gunshot.