Disclaimer: I don't own any of the Sonic characters... If I did, I probably would have been kinder to them...
Cruel and ususal
- Morning Doc
- Good morning Sadie. Is everything ready?
- In a sec; I'll fetch one for you now. What are we doing today?
- A neurological examination.
- Brains, then? OK…
Cheese was afraid. He didn't like the strange blue light this place was always bathed in. No not bathed – immersed, because like the waters of a bog it was dark and chilling. It seemed to creep in everywhere – even his dreams had adopted its unnatural gloom. An odd twilight: just enough for the humans to see by, just enough for him to sleep by.
Sleep. He sighed longingly at the thought. At first it had been his only escape; stolen glimpses of what used to be. Soft green grass, sweet-smelling meadows, the cool shade of a tall tree on a summer after-noon, laughter, friends… He shuddered at the remembrance and a sting in his chest made his eyes run red… Cream…
At least she was safe. At least her life wouldn't fade away slowly like his among dark light and an increasing number of empty cages.
In the beginning he had been completely surrounded by his kin – he hadn't been able to see them, the blue light had made them invisible, but he had heard them. At first it had been comforting, the knowledge that he was not alone. But then the voices had faded or seized altogether and ever-present whimpering had filled the world. Cheese knew it was days since the last voice had been silenced, yet those heart-rending sounds of pain beyond words remained with him.
He was the last one, the only one left. They would be coming for him too, soon.
Steps? Yes; the determined foot-fall of someone who knew their way around. One of the humans. Do not despair: they could be here for some other poor soul…
No, they were getting closer, turning down this row where Cheese alone was left alive. A row of ghosts. In the dark his heartbeat sounded like thunder in his head.
The footsteps came to a sudden halt just outside his cage. What happens when I die? Where will my soul go? What if there is no heaven? What if I have no soul?
His train of thought was derailed by a muffled metallic click from the lock of his cage. The top was thrown open. It almost seemed like the eerie darkness floated down into the small box, like water into a hole. Darkness to drown him.
For a second which lasted a century, Cheese locked up, only just able to make out the features of the looming human in the dark. It was a girl. Young. Barely out of her teens. She had a beautiful face; kind and sweet; nearly unbelievably so, "What angels must look like," he thought. But she sent him a glance so cold, so uncaring, as though he was less than dust. As though his life and death were too small for the noble attention of an ethereal being.
She reached down, her hand almost unnaturally white after the long darkness. Almost glowing. Cheese fought down the momentary desperation of animal panic, "Don't run. There's no escape. There's no point…"
The hand closed around him, soft, scented and warmer then he had expected.
In the anxiety of passing, he noticed even its smallest features; the tiny, almost invisible freckles that the girl properly hadn't even discovered herself, the carefully painted nails – not really pink, not really white, the tiny transparent hairs which felt like the whisper of a touch…
Her other hand held the needle. He knew without having to see it. Imagined how its slim form gave of a ghastly glimmer in the non-light.
With a slight shudder he felt the cool, sharp tip come to a rest on his shoulder for a moment while the girl adjusted the angle. She seemed to move ever so slowly, as though the blue darkness really was the clammy keep of a sirene at the bosom of the sea. "The angel lifts me up and the mermaid pulls me down… where will I end?" he thought, and winced involuntarily as the needle penetrated his skin. No blood; the girl had done this maybe a thousand times before. It was all part of the routine.
Numbness spread quickly from the point of pain through Cheese's small body, and brought with it a strange heaviness of breath, as though the air around him had become tangible. He gasped, almost suffocating. A strange sickening taste spread in his mouth and lights of all colours seemed to dance around him. His vision blurred and the world slipped out of focus, so that when the girl started to move, he was uncertain whether they were flying or floating. His body gave up and shut down. He went limp. Darkness spread before his eyes. He had an odd sensation of being weightless, but at the same time felt like he was falling. From darkness into darkness.
As the last electric impulse crept across his brain, it sparked off a thought about Cream: "At least she is safe…"
A few rows down, the young rabbit whimpered in her sleep.
Sonic was exhausted. Right at that moment he would gladly have given ten years of his life for one night of sleep. But he just couldn't stop. Without moving a muscle he sat slumped against the bars of his cage and felt his heart race. He was afraid that if he moved, it would explode within his chest; even thinking veiled his vision in a red mist.
It had taken him a long time, moving more slowly than he would ever had thought himself capable of, to get to this position. He had been dropped facing outwards, into the strange, almost live darkness, and what he had been able to see, once his vision had adjusted to the unfamiliar circumstances, had made him sick. He knew that Tails and Amy were on the other side of the hallway, that if he strained his eyes, he could only just make them out.
The three of them had been caught at the same time, which was probably why they were stored together. Amy had told him Knuckles and Rouge were on the shelf above him, along with Cream, but for some reason no sound could be gotten out of them. Perhaps it was simply this strange twilight – it seemed almost like an animal, a huge ravenous beast, who fed on the breath of all things living within it, slowly devouring them. All sounds seemed small and vulnerable in this world, fading nearly within a breath of their creation. Tiny lives so soon erased.
Sonic forced himself not to think like that – after a while the darkness got in your head. He had to fight. But his heartbeat was so painful, blood rushing in his ears like the murmur of the sea, driving him mad with desperation. He tried to relax. Tried to think of something else… His friends.
The three of them had talked in hushed voices of escape. Had made the perfect plan. Today should have been the day, but something had gone awfully wrong; the humans had taken him, Sonic, away. All he could remember was a sharp pain, and an even sharper light, and when he came back these odd, never-ending palpitations which made even the slightest movement unbearable pain.
His first pang of grief had hit him like a kick to the head some four hours ago: the realization that he would never run again.
He had wanted to scream, cry and most of all flee, but had been incapable of any movement whatsoever.
It wasn't until this point he had discovered: Tails and Amy were gone. He had jumped up in a sudden rush and fallen back again just as fast with a shout of pain. He was a prisoner of his own heart. He had no choice but to wait.
After what seemed like an eternity, a human arrived, pushing a trolley with two cages. She placed them on the shelf and walked back into the unreal light whence she had emerged. Her footsteps sent echoes bouncing around the rows long after she had gone, straining Sonic's nervous system to breaking point.
A low growl from the one of the opposite cages caught his attention. He narrowed his eyes in an attempt to focus. Movement. Tails, if he was any judge.
He whispered the name of his best friend, regretting instantly that he had done so. The pain of his body was nothing to the pain of his soul as he saw what the humans had done.
The bright, blue eyes that used to be filled with such sparkling joy and life were now burning coolly, like icy jewels from the ancient void. The voice, normally laden with the sorrowlessness of youth, had dropped to a guttural growl. The careful scientists' hands had been robbed of their white gloves to display the clawed paws of a predator.
Feeling a dark pit of powerless desperation opening underneath him, Sonic realized that the Tails he knew was irretrievably lost – the humans had taken his mind. What remained was the lean, bloodthirsty animal in front of him, which skulked in the darkness as though it had never known another home. A concoction of claws, teeth, muscle and instinct – no memory; no mind in which to keep it.
Tails lifted his head and smelled the air. With a movement like a snake discovering a mouse close by, he focused on Sonic. His eyes gleamed greedily. A red tongue lolled out of his mouth.
Frantic for something else to think about, Sonic turned his attention to the second cage. His heart was beating so fast in felt like it would break his rib-cage as he whispered into the darkness:
- Amy?
Silence. He tried and tried, again and again, until the red fog started to swirl around, making him dizzy. Until he tasted blood in his mouth.
He waited and watched, and as the world gradually crept back into his field of vision, the hedgehog across the hallway grew clearer too. He was surprised to find her smiling, sitting, apparently relaxed in the corner of her cage.
- Amy, I…
Then he noticed her eyes. Or rather; her pupils. At first he thought they were gone ("Oh, God they've blinded her") but a moment later he could see them, blearily, no bigger than pin-heads. Amy was caught in her own mind, in whatever drug-induced dreams that could make a girl smile like that. A waking dream. Looking at her, Sonic felt both relieved and infinitely sad; this whole nightmare was over for her now; she was in a world of light. He almost envied her. Yet he also knew that he would never hear her voice again, never see the light in her eyes, never reach her. His heart beat so furiously it sent spasms through his body. She was gone.
He felt like he was drowning. The darkness closed in on him, clawing at his consciousness, tearing him apart. On his arms he could see the veins stand out clearly from the pressure of the racing palpitations.
A soft, helpless whimpering flowed over the rows and rows cages, singing the broken song of so many kinds of pain.
Shadow was watching Cream sleep. Those pathetic moans of pain that had so annoyed him had suddenly seized. Probably whoever had been in agony would never have to feel anything ever again.
His finely tuned senses had picked up the suffering that filled this place from the very second the humans had brought him here. He could easily have evaded them, but was curious; everyone else had disappeared, and he had been unable to find them until now. Not because he cared, of course not, never, not him. It was just… strange not to have to deal with the faker and his annoying friends.
And then Cream had asked for his help. She had been the only one left, and so scared she had gone beyond crying and shaking, and had reached the eye of the hurricane. She had been calm – too calm.
And this had surprised him to such a degree, he had agreed to help her before he realized what he was doing. And here they were, seemingly at the very heart of human evil. Of course he could chaos-control out of there in the wink of an eye, but then he would have to leave Cream behind, and somehow, he didn't want the child to come to any harm. He had been unable to save Maria. He would not fail this one. His eyes glinted in the darkness, fired by the strength of his memories. In his thoughts he drifted far away – away from the misery around him and on to the misery within him.
Rouge woke slowly, as if she had to collect her consciousness from various places, far away and long ago.
The taste of medicine was on her breath and a horrid smell of old vomit stuck to her fur. She could feel the tangled bits of yesterday's meal on her cheek and chest. She so wanted to remember what had happened, but her mind was a complete blank. Walking to the small basin at the bars of her cage, she tried to call distant pictures to her mind, tried to solve the puzzle. When she looked at the reflexion in the grey plastic basin, she didn't recognize the face. Anxious to understand, she began washing herself.
A faint voice, like that belonging to the oldest face on earth, one not only touched but embraced by death, found its way to her ears from the cage on her left:
- Rouge? Rouge is that you?
She didn't answer. Didn't know who the voice was talking to. Rouge? Silly name. Yet she had a nagging feeling of having heard that voice before…
- Rouge – please answer… please…
The voice rose into a high-pitched sobbing, as if the one talking could only use half his vocal chords. The sound was even more pitiful than the voice itself, and she decided she might as well answer. Even though she didn't know who he was calling for, perhaps she could offer him some comfort. This dark place seemed to swallow and devour everything nice and pleasant, leaving only despair. Perhaps he had simply been here much longer than she had, and eventually they would both end up calling for someone who wasn't there, who had never been there.
Shrugging off the thought, she tried to pull herself together.
- Hello? Who is there?
She asked tentatively, fearing an angry outburst from next-door.
- Rouge? Thank God you are all right! When they…
The voice broke, cracked to pieces like ice in October. The frail, wheezing sobbing returned.
Rouge ("that's what he called me, so from now on, that's my name!") wrung her hands, considering what to do next.
- What is your name? Do I know you?
She tried, talking very slowly, presuming that whoever the voice belonged to was either extremely old or extremely ill. The sobbing was cut short by a tiny surprised sound, like that an ant would make before it is stepped on, could it talk.
- It's me; Knuckles
When she didn't answer he continued with an apologetic laugh, which sounded like a huff of air from inside a grave:
- I know, I known; my voice changed. In fact a lot of things changed… Oh Rouge…
She thought he was going to start crying again, but he controlled himself enough to continue, with only a hint of a tremor in his voice:
- I don't know what's happening. I don't know what they've done… I feel so… weak…
He spat the word, probably meaning to express his contempt, but in stead he was thrown into a violent fit of coughing. Rouge could almost hear how his rasping breath tore his lungs to shreds. In a voice weaker than before he continued:
- They got me on Angel Island. I thought they wanted the Master Emerald, but they didn't even look at it… Too late I realized they were there for me…
Rouge thought she ought to say something:
- I'm sorry…
It wasn't brilliant, but he seemed so sad, so pained. She just wanted to help – perhaps to ease his agony would take her mind off how her own head seemed to be a manuscript of blank pages.
- Oh Rouge, I so hoped they wouldn't get you… I'm the one who's sorry…
He started sobbing again, but managed to stutter through his tears:
- If o-only I ha-had been there… been there wi-ith you… I c-could have helped… I should 'ave…
The sobbing grew beyond his control, coming in short, panting bursts of sorrow. She could imagine how his frail form shuddered.
His awful sick voice returned. She feared to hear it now, feared that somehow it would infect her too with his illness.
- Why are you so quiet? Don't you remember? Don't you remember… us?
Rouge felt as though paralysed. She had tried to fit a mental picture to the voice for a while now. Father? Grandfather? But never had she imagined anything like this. In a fit of desperation she clutched her head in her hands, and that was when she felt it; a small metal disk, no larger than a dime, embedded on the top of her head, exactly between her ears. Someone had been in her head…
The world spun. She reeled and fell to her knees, gripping the edge of the basin for support. Nausea flowed through her, making her jerk her head involuntarily forward.
The thin voice, which put her in mind of a mausoleum, called her back:
- Rouge? Rouge?
It was like hearing an old demented man calling for the love of his life who died twenty years earlier. An old voice thrown hither and thither through dark hallways, losing itself without finding response, fading into the night.
Rouge had made up her mind, yet still something shattered within her as she answered:
- Sure baby… I remember.
It was only a small lie, but the words still seemed to burn in her throat.
Voices from far away resonated through Cream's dreams, turning them into nightmares. She thought she saw all her friends a little way off, and so wanted to run to them. But she couldn't – her leg was caught in a snare. Looking back at the others, she saw that they too were tied down. Then came the wolves. Grey, thin creatures with hungry eyes, beings seemed to be made purely from ragged skin pulled tightly over sharp bones. Winter followed on their heels and made her shudder. She realized she was in a forest; black pines and white snow.
The wolves ignored her, passing so close by her she could have touched them, and headed straight for her friends.
Screams of pain filled the clear, frosty air as red blood spilled unto the white snow. She didn't realize she was shouting till her voice was the only one left. The wolves perched their ears and turned to face her, walking calmly, slowly, menacingly. As they approached she saw their red mouths smiling fixedly. Human smiles in human faces. It filled her filed of vision, blotting out everything else. Red and white; lips and teeth, blood and snow.
She woke with a jolt, forgetting for a blessed second where she was. But the non-light pressed reality on the little bunny. This was a laboratory. Shadow had told her everything, including the states her friends were in. She had cried until she was out of both tears, breath and voice, left only with a leaden heaviness in her stomach. But he had said, a strange look in his eyes – pity? – that she had to know and might as well know now. He was right.
Fortunately no new about Cream's mother had reached them. By now the young bunny wasn't sure she could find room for any more grief – it felt like she was made out of glass and slowly breaking from the pressure as her insides froze.
Shadow had somehow managed to keep track of time in this horrible, bleak world, and he used to wake her up when it would be morning. Why, she wondered, had he let her sleep for so long today?
She could hear Knuckles hitting the side of his cage with his fists. The sound was so low and the time between the punches so long, it made her ache. They had destroyed him, the strongest person she had ever known. She walked to the bars and looked down. Tails looked up at her with cold, hungry eyes while Amy smiled her unchanging "mangled-doll"-smile. Cream didn't know which was worse, the empty grimace of the hedgehog or the sharp canine teeth of the kitsune.
Her bravest and most clever friends…
She remembered with a pang of grief the last glimpse she had had of Sonic. A human had walked down the rows of shelves with a clipboard and a bust bin. Every now and again she would stop, make a small mark on the clipboard, reach into the cage before her and remove one limp little form from within, throwing it unceremoniously into the dustbin. This gathering of the dead happened once a day; it was just part of the routine. Still Cream felt like a bullet tore through her heart every time one of those small bodies hit the metal bottom.
She could see Amy and Tails from her cage, and had guessed that Sonic was down there somewhere too. Every day she hoped and prayed that the girl with the dustbin, the grim reaper incarnate, wouldn't stop there. For about a week or so some kind deity answered her small requests and death passed them by.
But then, one morning or evening, she didn't know for sure, the human, the girl, that strange, pallid, luminous creature who was the only one to roam this twilight wasteland, stopped, made a small mark on her clipboard, and reached casually into the cage below Cream's. Her hand came back moist and she grimaced. What a mess – she should have worn gloves.
In her cage, Cream tumbled against the far wall, gasping with deadly dread. She had recognized one or two blue quills.
Cream shuddered at the memory; if they could destroy all these amazing creatures so completely and with such malice, what wouldn't they do to her?
- Shadow?
The word almost stuck in her throat, coming out as a croak in a voice she didn't recognize as her own. Something moved in the cage across the hallway.
- Maria?
His voice was pained, darker than usual. His eyes were unfocused. Cream broke down, sobbing Not him too – now she was all alone… Suddenly hope flared as his voice called to her, sounding strained as though he had to concentrate greatly on the present lest it slip through his fingers.
- I'm sorry Cream, I'm so sorry. They gave me some sort of pills and now I don't know… I can't keep hold of the now… the past keeps getting in the way… Maria…
Cream felt the world caving in. She was the last one… everyone else had been destroyed… They would be coming for her too, soon, just like the wolves in her dream… they would be coming with greedy, red mouths and sharp, white teeth, and they would… they would… soon…
This last thought stuck in her head and she pulled her own ears until tears streamed from her eyes. A way out. Anything. They cannot win.
- Shadow?
- Hmm?
His voice had a far-off quality, like a somnambulist or one in a trance. Creamed raised her voice, desperate to make him understand.
- Shadow! Can you use chaos-blast?
- Hmm? Now?
He looked at her with one eye closed, as though she was disturbing him during a well-earned rest after a hard day's work. She nodded frantically.
- No.
Her face fell. There had to be a way out. It just couldn't end like this. She concentrated…
- Could you teach me?
Shadow grapped the bars of his cage with unsteady hands. At least the shock of her outrageous request did something to keep his mind on present business.
- No!
Soft crying from across the hallway. He tried to explain.
- You weren't built for something like that! The tricky part isn't blasting everything to kingdom come, its being alive to see the end of it. You are just a little girl, Maria, you would never survive…
In the cage across the hallway, Cream walked up to the bars of her cage and grapped them with both hands, just like Shadow. She looked at hi with strange eyes and spoke in an unreal voice. No six-year-old should be able to conjure up such an expression. Fear, loathing, sorrow, death and pain mingled in her face and shone out through her eyes. Shadow realized that without even touching her, the humans had managed to destroy Cream.
- Shadow, listen to me; I don't want to survive!
It took him only an instant to make up his mind. As he threw the chaos-emerald across to her it managed, somehow to give off a spark of light at the top of its trajectory. The only light ever to break the rule of the deep darkness among the cages. The only light either of them had seen since they came.
- Just focus hard, as hard as you can, and say the words…
Cream nodded, silent. Shadow knew she was trying to find the courage. He so wished he could help. If only he could do it himself, but Maria kept floating past his field of vision or hiding just on the edge of it… If he wasn't already he knew he soon would be mad.
Cream turned towards him, smiling through tears.
- Goodbye Shadow…
- Goodbye Ma- … Cream…
…
- CHAOS-BLAST
… light…