Room Of Real Fear
Tails blinked against the harsh light emanating from his sole laptop as he concentrated on the withering workload he had set himself for each day. Every day he got up and immediately went to work, he had given up on getting up at a set time every day as time seemed to hold little meaning here. His days had slowly crept into the nights as he sleeplessly toiled and vice versa.
He had barricaded himself in this apartment for a week now and in the back of his mind gnawed the voice of Nicole, the freedom fighters artificial intelligence that insanity was already seeping into his thoughts and poisoning the many processes his genius intellect was capable of running.
Nicole's voice suddenly droned in Tails mind 'The results are not something you can believe, Tails. You are tired and likely making mistakes. Oops, there's another...' Snap! He clicked his laptop shut and rubbed his tired eyes thankful for the respite against the harsh light.
The room was pitch black and curtains pulled tightly over the windows. Behind the curtains lay many layers of hastily taped up newspapers and whatever else he could have found in such a hurry to make it appear as no-one lived in his apartment now. The room itself was dank and depressing now. The colorful yellow wallpaper adorned with faded stickers of various superheroes his childhood friend Cream had picked out for him was now a sad reminder of days gone by. It had long ago faded and tears had begun to form leaving dirty white patches. Patchy like his memory felt now of Cream.
Tails got up out of his swivel chair and paced about the room taking care not to step on any discarded soda cans for a minute trying to ignore the rumbling in his stomach from days of hunger. He had not anticipated that it would take this long but he had not had time to prepare. He knew exactly what he had seen. Some kind of virus maybe or perhaps even a new advanced robot from the terrors of Robotniks factories. Whatever it was it was NOT Mobian and that grin it had...it looked just like Sally but that grin and cold dead eyes, like a sharks. Tails thought it had seen him when it turned around suddenly but no, it was just a bird rustling in the trees above them that attracted its attention. Tails had crept through the Great Forest carefully that night lest he accidentally confirm his worst fears that Sally was in fact an imposter and suffered the consequences of exposing the beast.
What was that? Something brushed by the door surely? No, he must be hearing things again. Being shut in this room for a week was doing things to his mind to make him hear things that were not real...and see things.
Break-time over! Tails reopened his laptop and continued analyzing the DNA samples he had from what he knew was the real Sally and comparing them to the imposter. Any normal mobian would have just screamed 'She's an imposter!' but this one was good, too good to be ousted so easily. She looked the part alright and would likely just make Tails out to be crazy.
Tails was not alone however in this room entirely, before he had shut himself away and covered up the windows and barricaded the door he had taken a thumb drive containing essentially a small piece of Nicole. It had nowhere near her true processing power and he lacked the hardware to have her speak to him or communicate via any other method excluding text. She was scanning the DNA samples slowly, painfully slowly given the circumstances. If only she had more hardware...never mind, he'll make do with what he had.
'Sample analysis complete Tails' Nicole flashed up in her chatbox.
'What is the verdict?' Tails tapped in on the keyboard and pressed send.
'DNA matches Sally 99.8%. DNA from suspect is NOT Mobian. Subject appears to be a morphological being of a parasitic nature, exercise extreme caution'
Tails slumped back in his chair, finally, he had proof that this Sally was an imposter. He had to go and tell the others before it was too late.
Wait...there was that sound again outside the door. Tails silently crept over to the door avoiding any floorboards he knew that would creak and give away his presence. He kept a few inches distance from the spyhole just in case someone was on the other end and peered through.
What he saw made his heart leap into his chest. Sally was standing there completely motionless and expressionless. It felt as though she were staring right at him, as if she could see through the door...
Tails dared not breathe for a minute as she stood there expectantly as if waiting for him to open the door. But he was smarter than it. He would not be fooled by it.
Tails cautiously backed away from the door and crept back over to his laptop. The presence of the thing at the door that had Sally's likeness was unnerving but there was no way it could know he was in there. And if it did, which it probably did, meant that it was only a matter of time before it figured out a way to burst in and get him.
Tails quickly opened up his Knothole contacts and quickly flicked through them, all offline! Damn! What time was it? 04:03am his laptop said.
A sound that made Tails skin crawl broke his train of thoughts. A kind of sucking sound. Like something trying to breathe but their throat was partially blocked and it made a sickening sucking sound mixed with a kind of hissing.
He had to think fast. Tails opened up Nicole's chat box and asked her 'I am trapped in my apartment, it knows i'm here and everyone is offline, I need to get the message out so what can I do?'
'Hacking into Sonic's PDA' was the reply Tails got and a progress bar appeared on his monitor which begun to slowly fill up.
Tails silently cheered but the feeling quickly went away when he heard that thing start scratching at the door trying to get at him. He crept over to the door in the vain hope that it still didn't know he was here and peered through the spyhole again. The thing that looked like Sally was still there but now...oh god. Her lips were curled in a twisted smile that seemed to get wider. She had an impossibly huge mouth now that opened ever so slightly to reveal rows on razor sharp looking teeth of which saliva dripped off now. The thoughts of a rabid bear came to tails mind with shark teeth. The Things breathing got deeper and more laboured sounding as it stared still at the door and raked it slowly with its hands. That mocking grin still present.
Then Tails was broken from his trance by a flashing message on his computer.
'PDA hack successful, I have awoken Sonic and informed him of your location. Hacking other freedom fighters PDA's now, this may take some time.' Nicole's text flashed on the screen giving Tails a warm feeling from the meaning projected through them.
Any second now...yes! That familiar sound of a faint thunderclap and the rush of wind as Sonic accelerated towards the apartment. The breathing at the door had stopped and Tails dared to look back through the spyglass and saw that it was nowhere to be seen. Then a flash of blue...Sonic!
Tails immediately set about ripping the wooden panels off of the door as he felt his fears flood away in the presence of the brotherly figure that had looked out for him in his younger years and protected him from the darkness of the world.
'Tails! You in there?!' Sonic called through and Tails quickly finished ripping off the last of the wooden panels and burst through the door into Sonic's arms.
'Woah there little buddy, Nicole told me to get here as soon as possible, where have you been all this time and what happened?' Sonic calmly asked Tails and wrapped his arms around the young foxes shoulders reassuringly.
Tails opened his mouth to speak but felt himself freeze up. That breathing again...it was right in his ear! He pulled back and opened his mouth to say something to his savior but the words choked on forgotten breath. Sonic's head was tilted back and his jaw had oddly dislocated and his teeth had been replaced with dagger like shark teeth. The Thing breathed noisily and Tails feel to his knees and finally screamed as loud as he could as he felt the full extent of its cunning and betrayal. This was not Sonic. This was not home. Home was safety and well-being. This was hell.