Chapter Text
"MARIA!!"
She slumped against the console, blanching as blood poured into her lung. Shadow tried to haul himself upright, but the wheels on his shoes betrayed him as the floor rocked once more. Whatever GUN were doing to the artificial gravity, it was going to start metronoming soon; the instability was growing with every new tremor.
The troopers kept their feet, and advanced on Maria as she desperately clung to the console with weakening arms, turning tear-filled blue eyes on him. "Shadow, please-" she gasped out, throwing a hand out and slamming her palm down onto a button with all that remained of her strength. ARK's systems were perfect in their targeting as the EEV's transparent-aluminium and synthetic-diamond casing slammed down around him. The modular flooring shifted beneath his hands and heels as he scrambled for purchase, the vehicle's heat-shield prow automatically attached by semi-intelligent ARK systems that had been the pinnacle of some unsung genius' career. Sound had grown muffled as the airtight seals engaged, but he still heard the soft slither and thump of Maria's frail body sliding off the console and sprawling across the floor. Panic, unrelenting in its grip, seemed to slow time around him as she hauled her gaze around to him, coughing out a quiet plea. He could barely make it out.
"Please - for all the - people on that planet-" she coughed, and red spattered the deck beneath her. At the doorway, the GUN troops were fanning out, and sudden fury coursed through Shadow - one of them had killed her, she was dying because one of them shot a little girl, he'd kill them all, as soon as he could get out of here and get his skates under him-
"Give them a chance to be happy-" Maria rasped out, and another voice rang out over her.
"Secure the specimen! Get that glass open-" Bullets spanged off the cylinder imprisoning Shadow, and with a sick lurch he knew what was coming next. He hadn't made the connection in his terror and poisonous, adrenal rage, but this was an EEV - an Emergency Escape Vehicle - and it occurred to him now that those only had one purpose. He threw himself desperately against the casing from the inside, numb with horror as something connected above him. A bullet lodged in the machinery at the upper end of the cylinder, out of his field of view, but it didn't stop the fusion turbines spinning up - and then the floor vanished from under him as the capsule launched.
The last he saw of his sister, his first and only friend, the reason he'd been born, was her tear-streaked face and the blood pouring down her chin…and the faintest hint of her fierce, triumphant smile as she grew certain that she'd saved him. The sudden change in inertia from the EEV launch threw him against its ceiling, but even as it impacted, the word was losing meaning. Stars wheeled around him, blood pooling in his head and threatening to force him into unconsciousness as he fought to stay aware. Below him, through the already-visible flames of atmospheric friction, Earth loomed blue and imposing. Fractured bursts of open-channel radio reached him through the capsule's transceiver, as his hands braced against the side of the chamber. Someone, nearby, was sobbing in a voice he'd never heard before. He couldn't figure out who.
Track it, TRACK IT - we can't, the transponder's down, must have taken a bullet - then use its radio, triangulate - Sir, we can't! Plasma sheath forming, we're losing - the words dissolved into static as the thickening atmosphere outside the EEV ignited into superheated, ionised gas and turned everything outside the container into shimmering golden light. Waves of light and heat and force danced across the outside of the capsule, filling Shadow's vision with strange and nonsensical patterns as the pounding in his temples grew too great to withstand. A memory drifted by and he clung to it, desperately, watching the shimmers pass by his darkening, tunnelling vision.
It's the Aurora Borealis! You can only see them from certain latitudes down there…He felt heat and wetness streak his cheeks, and his throat burned and ached. The sobbing was louder, now. He swallowed hard, and it stopped, only to tear wretchedly from his throat once more afterward. He was crying, he realised, staring blindly at nothing as that last bit of clarity came and went, until all that remained was a final, fading plea.
Maria. Don't be gone. Please, don't be-
Blackness.