Slow Train
By Formerly Known As

Ever wondered where nightmares go? Where do they reside when people no longer let them haunt their heads?

And what happens to those people who can't let go of a nightmare, who never let it escape? What happens to them, when the nightmare returns home?

This is a story of the places that nightmares flee to when the world tries to destroy them. This is the story of the land of nightmares and the people who sometimes get stuck there.

It's a Slow Train, baby. You ready for the ride?

Disclaimer: Sonic the Hedgehog and company are all copy right Sega. This story is copy right me. Feel free to take the nearest station off, if it so appeals to you.

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Prologue
When Dreaming Ends

There was cold metal all around him. Cold, icy steel, sometimes woven into grid patterns, sometimes just smooth, dull sheets. Bordered with lifeless white plastic on occasion. He looked to his right, nothing but cold steel. He looked to his left. Cold steel again. He glanced behind him. A wall. A dead end. A sheet of cold steel. He looked ahead.

Blackness.

He was in a hall, he realized. The end of a hall. And ahead of him the hallway stretched, all cold steel and white plastic.

But there was no light at the end of this tunnel. Everything was black. Except for where he was standing.

He shivered and tried to move away from the darkness. But all he did was press his back into the cold, rigid steel wall behind him. He shivered again as the cold steel sucked away what little warmth he had left in him. But he didn't move away from the wall. Because away from the wall meant closer to the darkness.

And he really didn't want that.

Suddenly, the cold silence around him that he hadn't even realized existed was broken by a scream.

His eyes widened. He knew that scream. He didn't know from where, but he knew that scream and he knew it well. It was a high pitch scream to begin with, but growing shriller as time went by. The volume was increasing as well.

She was in pain. Yes, she, he realized. The one screaming was a female. And she was in pain and the pain was increasing.

His fist clenched. They were hurting her. He wouldn't allow that.

But looking forward, he realized that to reach her he would have to pass through the darkness. The black, unwelcoming darkness.

He growled, clenching his teeth. It didn't matter.

He had failed her once. He wouldn't EVER do so again.

So taking a deep breath, he bent his knees and pushed off from the wall and ran forward into the darkness ahead.

The darkness closed in instantly, fitting tightly around him like a glove. But the scream ran through, piercing the gloom, telling him which way to go. Reassuringly, beneath his feet he could hear the clang of his shoes hitting the metal floor. He used the sounds, of her scream and of his feet to keep him sane. To keep him from giving up in the darkness.

There. The scream changed directions. It was to the left.

He turned swiftly, feeling the faintest brush of cold metal on his arm as he passed through a doorway. He kept running, focusing on the scream and the clap of his feet.

Her screaming was growing louder still, more intense. His eyes narrowed.

He wouldn't let them hurt her. Not ever again.

He took a sudden right, still following the sound of her scream. He was closer now.

But something was going wrong. The scream continued strong as ever, louder even. But cold steel walls had begun to capture the sound. They began to throw the sound around, to bounce it off the walls. To twist it around and make it sound like it was coming from a completely different direction.

But he wouldn't give up. He HAD to find her. To stop them from hurting her. To save her as he hadn't been able to, so long ago.

A tiny part of his mind, detached and lost cried out inside of him.

Who?! It cried. Who am I trying to save? Who is screaming? And why, oh, why can't I find her!?

And he realized that in that, at least, the voice was right. He should have found her by now. Her voice, her tortured scream, it was so close. But the bouncing echoes were confusing him and he kept taking wrong turns, moving away from her screams. But he couldn't turn around and go back. He couldn't slow down. If he did, the steady rhythm of his feet would be lost and the darkness would have him.

And he really didn't want that.

But he listened to the scream and tried to follow it. Tried to find her.

Where was it coming from? Was it coming from the right, from the left? Had he passed the very door that led to her?

Panic began to rise.

Where was she? Right? Left? Straight ahead? Where was she?! Where?! Where?! WHERE?!

There she was! He could hear her! She was to the left. She was close! He could hear her!

He turned left then, turning sharply and quickly. But he judged wrong. She wasn't there. There wasn't even a door there. The echoes had won, the steel had won. The darkness had defeated him.

He slammed into the solid wall and bounced off again, hitting the floor.

He lay there in the dark, panting softly, tears spiking the corner of his eyes. The darkness lay around him, upon him, heavily. Her scream had stopped, no longer there to guide him. Even the echoes began to fade out, though not without a few parting taunts. His footsteps tapping against the metal weren't there either.

It was silent again. Only now it was silent and he was in the darkness.

He felt like crying.

He heard it then. A soft, almost inaudible sound. Like dry parchment scraping across concrete. He shivered, but pretended he hadn't heard it.

But it came again. Dry parchment on concrete.

No. Like scales on steel.

He froze. He thought suddenly of the wall. It hadn't felt like metal, now that he thought of it. Too rough. Not smooth. It felt a little like the grid patterns that sometimes occurred in the metal on this cold heartless place. Only, not so even.

And not as cold. Not nearly as cold as steel. In fact the wall hadn't felt cold at all. It hadn't been warm, but it hadn't been cold. In fact, it felt sort of like…like…

Like a living thing.

His breath catching in his throat, he looked up slowly, not really wanting to.

The darkness had not changed at all around him and yet he could see everything perfectly. Every detail, every curve.

Every cold, black scale.

He could see perfectly the sightless beast towering over him. He could see where the eyes should have been, but weren't. He could see every wire and bolt that filled that sightless eyehole. In all its horrid glory, gross magnificence, he could see the creature he thought he had destroyed once and for all long ago.

The Biolizard.

He screamed in fear and kept on screaming and screaming, as the massive toothless maw opened and lowered towards his head.

His screams echoed upon the steel walls and fell back upon his ears his ears. They echoed through all the empty halls and he wondered if they reached her own ears and he wondered if she knew to whom the screams belonged.

He felt its tepid breath soak his face and its hot, sticky gums close upon his head and he felt himself being lifted up and up and…

With a start, Sonic the Hedgehog woke up, his heart pounding, his breathing ragged. He reached up and gently touched his head, but felt no sign of giant lizard drool upon it.

"A dream," he whispered. "Just a dream."

His green eyes searched the dark room desperately, seeking any signs of enemy or danger.

Then he sighed. Of course there wasn't any danger. The Biolizard was completely destroyed, as was its second incarnation, the Final Hazard. It was gone and couldn't come back. He had made sure of that.

It had all just been a dream.

Sonic lay back down, slowly, trying to relax and go back to sleep. But sleep didn't want to come to the blue hedgehog and even after he finally sank back into a restless sleep, his ears still twitched backwards and forwards, trying to pick up the sound of screams echoing on cold hard metal.