Tails wiped his glasses for the third time, squinting at the corrupted data stream on the Mirage Express terminal. "It's no use," he muttered, echoing a certain hedgehog's favorite phrase. "The XCI is fragmented. The timestream split again."
Shadow said nothing. He pressed play.
"I said possibly . But the file's labeled '01_Chaos_Control_Origin.' If we can unpack it without triggering a paradox..."
The screen flickered—then showed a girl with a quill in her hair, reaching toward a shattered capsule. Maria's voice, warped but clear: "Shadow... let them live in peace..."