Chapter Text
A mind as active and sharp as Professor Gerald Robotnik was always on alert. Always in focus. Even after decades trapped in a cell far beneath the sea, his mind was never lost. He recalled changes and patterns of the day to day. Twice a day, twelve hours apart, would come the sound of approaching footsteps on the sterile, metallic floors. The sound of his prison’s tray being slid out, and the gruff call of,
“CHOW TIME.”
As cold, gray mush slid to him through the tray shoot. It was the only sustenance that blessed his miserable existence. An existence of Sleeping, dreaming, and waiting.
Three separate soldiers would deliver the mush in shifts throughout the week. He could tell them apart by the sounds of their feet alone. A heavy-Walker with a voice like a smoker; a light Walker who sounded as skinny as he was nervous to approach the infamous prison cell. He always slammed the chow tray so violently that the meal would fall to the floor. Gerald didn’t like him very much. The third worker was newer, young in voice and in stride.
But the one approaching his cell was none of those workers.
The steps advanced with purpose— quiet purpose. A steady march, like a soldier into war. Light steps; someone who didn’t want to be heard. But the professor heard everything, and his mind snapped from the darkest pits of its inane thoughts to focus instead on this new task. This new person.
The tray opened, but no food was slid through. A voice spoke instead,
“Professor Gerald Robotnik?”
Gerald Robotnik mused. A male, no younger than his 30s but no older than his 50s. Well spoken— he pronounced the surname with as much ease as a man speaking his native tongue. And in mentions of native tongue, this man’s certainly wasn’t American English. Perhaps Canadian, with the slightest twinge that suggested something more exotic, maybe middle eastern.
Gerald decided to test it. He responded, in the flesh, in Arabic; of course, a man such as himself had much time to perfect his language skills while he was trapped for decades upon decades.
The new man spoke with the slightest hesitation, but he responded in English. Gerald felt the slightest twinge of sick pleasure; he had made the man uncomfortable.
“I need you to tell me about Project Shadow.”
The professor hadn’t laughed in so long. Doing so now made his throat almost sore.
“How much time do you have?”
“Enough.”
“The guards don’t come for another six hours.”
“I know.”
“…it began over fifty years ago…”
It was just a day, as any other. Until the phone rang. Professor Gerald Robotnik, recently widowed following the death of his beloved wife Martha, had barely made it home before he had heard the familiar, buzzing ring. He raced to answer it.
In the span of ten minutes, his heart swelled with weightless joy— and then gravity came swiftly crashing back down upon him, dashing his dreams upon the sharp edges of reality.
“What do you mean, Project Shadow? My colony ark is meant to expand our understanding of space travel, not— whatever this is!” Gerald felt the rage brewing inside, and he had grown far too old and far too tired to bother holding it back. “I simply won’t do it!”
“Then you simply won’t get the funding.” The Commander on the other end of the line was just as old and just as ruthless as Gerald himself. “And we both know you can’t afford to fund this expedition yourself.”
Even the smartest man on earth, to which Gerald proudly held title, couldn’t dispute that he was just flat broke. Funding an overseas wedding for his son and a college degree for his daughter, not to mention the medical treatments that had sucked his bank account like a leech and yet still failed to save his wife, had cost him more than he cared to admit.
“But… the colony ark isn’t meant to be a research facility. It’s meant to house families!”
“It can do both— it would just be the researchers' families. And yours. In a secluded area orbiting the earth. If we’re to fund this, you will heed to our demands. I’ll give you twenty-four hours to make your decision.”
The phone was hung up on the other end. Gerald stood alone in his kitchen, listening to the dial tone, wrapping his fingers around the cord as he thought.
This was a chance he could not miss. An opportunity he’d dreamt up since he was a boy and his father filled his head with stories of their ancient and powerful bloodline.
“Each Robotnik born faces two fates” his father had always told him, “they either die young and happy, or die successful and callous.”
Gerald had lived this long. He was no longer young, but he was still happy. Even with the loss of Martha, he still had their children, and their home, and his dreams to show his descendants the stars.
But to do this? The cost of what they had ordered of him. Playing god wasn’t something he was prepared to do.
But he remembered he didn’t believe in god, so he was going to do it anyway.