Manipulation

Chapter 4 – Helping Hand

- Day 29/193 -

It's hard to tell how much time has passed.

The humans had kept me locked in the same room for days with no food and very little water. I was starving. I was shackled at the wrists and ankles, with only a small, barred window for light. My tallies on the wall say I've been in this room for about a week. How long I'd been with the humans, tested on daily, was a mystery to me.

I felt hollow, and my stomach ached, yearning for food. I had had barely enough water to keep me alive. There was a small mirror on one of the walls. My cheeks already looked shallow, and I had dark shadows under my eyes and my faded blue quills were a mess. Even my green eyes looked dull. Maybe it wasn't such a good idea to deny food when it was offered to me before this.

Suddenly, I heard a grinding noise, like metal against metal. The heavy door to my cell scraped against the floor as it slid open. A person in a white hooded suit stepped in, carrying a chain. I couldn't even tell if it was a male or a female. Those suits seemed to be all these humans seemed to wear here, besides lab coats. The human clipped one end of the chain to my shackles while I recoiled, acting disgusted.

I'm not an animal, I thought bitterly, though of course they saw me differently. It had become easy to hold my tongue.

The human led me out of the cell by the chain, like a dog on a leash. I cringed at the suddenly brightly lit halls. I was barefoot, and my hands were freezing from the lack of gloves. I felt strangely naked, since the humans had taken my only clothes, beloved red sneakers and all, for analysis. It made me anxious to know they had my shoes, specially engineered by my uncle to be durable and speed-resistant. I shuddered at the thought of them copying the design for their own footwear.

The last time I had been down these halls a week ago, I had been blindfolded and drugged. Now I could clearly see through windows into various cells containing other Mobians in the same condition I was in, or worse. Apparently the mirror had merely been a one-way window. I didn't know any of the locked up Mobians, but it disgusted me to see the torture they were going through. Some were younger than ten! I clenched my fists and resisted the chains pulling me, stopping in the hallway. I decided that for once I wouldn't take what they were doing to me and my people.

I'll give them some information alright, I thought. Information to show them that they're not to mess with me.

The human turned around and tugged me forward, urging me to keep going, but I stood firm, glaring at the person.

"Come on, don't be stubborn," the human said, pulling on the chains again. I could now tell that it was a woman.

I jerked myself away, startling the person handling me and pulling the chain right out of her hands. I picked it up and swung the end in a circle like a nun-chuck. My eyes were hard, and I struck out at the key pads used to open the cell doors. A large gash in the metal formed, revealing the sparking insides of the machine. The door buzzed and slid open. Alarms started going off. A little gray fox girl, about seven, stepped out of the cell and looked at me. Her aqua blue eyes were sunken, yet hopeful.

"Thank you," she mouthed to me silently. I gave her a brief, yet genuine smile, my first since I was captured weeks ago.

"Freeze!" the human woman shouted, pointing a gun at us. I had almost forgotten she was there. I struck out once again, hitting her wrist and making her drop the weapon. She cried out as the chain ripped the sleeve of her suit, whipping her wrist. I grabbed the little Mobian by her wrist and ran off at a normal speed, pulling her behind me. In case I didn't make it, I didn't want to show off my speed. Not yet.

I wasn't running long before I found an emergency exit. I tried to push it open, but it wouldn't budge. I could hear the footsteps of the humans coming by now. I grit my teeth and forced myself upon the door, trying to shove it open. Having lost weight and muscle, it hurt, and finally I resorted to my naturally strong legs, kicking it off its hinges.

"Go," I say under my breath, my voice hoarse. The girl nods and runs off. I'm about to follow her when I feel a sharp prick in my neck. I had let my guard down. I reached behind me and pulled out a feathered dart, one that was all too familiar. Almost immediately my vision started to go foggy. My immune system was weakened from malnutrition, despite how many times I'd been shot with this sedative. It was becoming faster-acting.

I stumbled forward, trying to follow the girl, but I tripped and collapsed. A human grabbed the chains of my shackles firmly, making sure I didn't make a last-ditch effort to escape.

"Project 21 obtained," a human said into a radio, "Project 172 escaped. Shall I call for reinforcements?

There was a muffled response on the other end, but I had already faded out. I prayed the girl was smart enough to evade the humans' search teams. I may not have been able to save more than one, but if word gets around that someone escaped, hope will spread like a wildfire.

I follow my friends down the streets of the Underground toward the Cafeteria, looking around me at anything I may have missed. It's a nice change of pace compared to the prisons and labs I had spent so much time in. Despite this place being underground, it's very bright and happy, and it feels safe. It's like a breath of fresh air after being suffocated for so long. There are kids playing in a little green space we pass, being called to eat by their parents. I think I see someone familiar, a little gray fox, but I shake my head, telling myself I'm seeing things. Then I smile to myself, glad to see so many happy people.

"Hey, Sonic! Hel-looo?" Knuckles waves his hand in front of my face, snapping me out of my reverie. "You're slippin', man," he says.

"Sorry," I mutter, scratching the back of my neck. "I'm still getting used to this place."

"Go easy on him, Knuckles," Tails says. "He just got here."

I smile a little gratefully. We stop in front of a rectangular building with the word "Cafeteria" painted over the doors. Knuckles pulls the double doors open and leads us inside. The Cafeteria is basically made up of one giant room with picnic tables lined up in rows. There's a line of people in front of the open kitchen windows, and delicious smells fill the room, making my stomach grumble. It's only then that I realize how hungry I am. It's been days since I last ate anything.

"The cooks made chili dogs for your return," someone says. I look away from the kitchens and see Alex walking up to us, who's smiling. "There should be a plate waiting for you up there."

I sigh with relief. "The one food I missed most."

Alex inclines her head slightly. "You go get your food, there're a few things I have to talk to you about at the table," she says.

I nod and get in line to get my food. After several minutes, with me bouncing on the balls of my feet impatiently, I finally get my reserved plate of chili dogs and a smile from the cooks. I head to a table where Alex is sitting, and my friends join me. I sit across from her and, before she can start talking, I start scarfing down my food. Amy giggles a little and my fast eating, and Alex smiles sadly.

"They didn't feed you much there, did they," she says.

I shake my head, both in agreement and disagreement. I swallow and look at her. "No, they fed me…most of the time. There were just a lot of times where I refused to eat."

Alex frowns. "Why would you refuse to eat?"

I just shrug and take another bite of my food.

"Not eating is not part of having a resolve," Tails says reproachfully. "That's starving yourself."

I close my eyes and take a breath through my nose. "When you're poked with needles and put through various pointless experiments until you just want to collapse and die, you see how hungry you are," I say stiffly.

Tails frowns and looks away.

"Still, though, it's over now," Amy says, cautiously resting her hand on my arm. I'm tempted to jerk away as an impulse. "And you're as skinny as a stick. You need to get your weight up."

I respond by eating more of my large dinner. My friends stay silent for the rest of the meal, concentrating on eating their food. It isn't long before my plate is clean.

"Hey, Sonic?" Amy breaks the silence.

"Yeah?"

"You never told us, but how exactly did you escape?" she asks. She seemed a little hesitant about asking the question.

I frown, trying to recount the events of last night, but nothing comes. I shake my head. "I don't know," I say. "I don't remember."

"You don't?" Amy sounds surprised, alarmed even.

"Nope," I say. "The last thing I remember is some human injecting me with a heavy sedative. And then I passed out. The next thing I knew, I was in a forest a few miles away from the labs, my shackles broken."

"I'm sure it'll come to you eventually," Alex said, but she sounded unsure.

"Probably," I say. Then I change the subject. "So what did you want to talk about?"

"How would you like me to show you where all the entrances are after dinner?" Alex asks.

"Sure," I smile. "We might as well go now, I'm done eating."

"Alright, just meet me at Entrance 6, where you came in," she says. I nod and she clears her place before walking out the door.

"I guess we'll see you later," Amy says.

"Yeah, after the tour I'm probably gonna hit the sack," I say, "but I'll meet up with you guys tomorrow."

"You rest easy, Sonic," Tails says with a smile, holding out his fist. I smile and perform our handshake, a bit surprised that I remember it.

"See ya later, buddy," Knuckles says, hitting me playfully on the shoulder. I laugh and they leave.

I'm about to pick up my place when I notice someone familiar. A small gray fox with her back to me is eating at a table with some other kids. Curious as to if it's who I think it is, I walk up to her and tap her shoulder. The girl turns around, and I'm almost startled by her bright blue eyes. They seem much more alive than the last time I saw them.

The little girl gasps happily and suddenly hugs my waist tightly. "It's you!" she exclaims.

I laugh lightly and hug the girl back. Indeed, this was the little girl I'd aided in escaping within my first month in the labs.

"I'm surprised you remember me," I say with a smile, looking down at her.

"How could I not?" she giggles, pulling away, looking up at me. "You saved me! And now you're out!"

"Yes, I am," I smile. "And I'm glad to see you're okay." I kneel down and look at her. "By the way, what's your name?"

"Anika," she says, bouncing on her toes. "I'm Alex's little sister."

I raise my eyebrows. "You are?"

She nods. "I've seen you hanging out with her. She found you outside, right?"

"Yup," I say. "She brought me here."

"Mr. Sonic," a chubby kid at her table says to me, "how did you help her escape?"

"Yeah, she keeps telling us this story with lasers and robots and stuff!" another small kid quips.

I laugh and Anika blushes beside me. "Really, all I did was get away from the person who led me, bust open the cell door closest to me, and led her to the exit," I say. "No lasers or robots, sorry."

The kids giggle a little and Anika pouts.

"So how did you escape?" one kid asks.

"Here's the thing, I don't remember," I say with a small frown. "I blacked out, and when I woke up I was someplace else."

"Maybe they set you free!" the tiny kid says.

"Maybe," I say, but in truth, that was about as likely as Eggman weighing less than 200 pounds. I stood up. "Hey, I gotta go, but I'll catch you kids later, alright?"

The kids at the table groan a bit but agree. Then Anika tugs on the cuff of my glove.

"I'm glad to see you're safe," she whispers, as if it were a secret.

I smile. "Right back at ya."

A few minutes later, I walk up the pathway to Entrance 6, where Alex is waiting for me.

"What took you so long?" she asks.

"I was talking some kids in the cafeteria," I say. "One of them was a girl I helped escape within the first month of my capture. Her name was Anika, she said she was your sister."

Alex smiles a little. "Yeah, she is. I owe you a huge debt for that."

I shake my head. "You don't owe me anything. No one had escaped at that point…I wanted to change that. Thank Chaos she's safe."

"Thanks to you," Alex says. "I could spend my life trying to repay you. She would have died there."

I just nod. "Don't try too hard."

She smiles. "Let's go, shall we?"

"Let's do it to it," I say with a small smirk.

She smiles and uses her key card to unlock the door, and leads me up the long, winding stairs toward the surface.

"We're 10,000 feet underground," Alex says as we climb the stairs, "Unreachable by the humans. We have yet for one of them to discover us."

"Do all of the passages have stairs?" I ask. "It's a long climb."

"No, some have ramps for handicapped citizens of the Underground. This one just happens to have stairs. We're working on an elevator system."

"That will be so much easier."

Alex looks at me with a small smirk. "Getting tired, hedgehog?"

"Seeing as I was cooped up in a prison for six months, unable to run, yes, I'm a bit out of shape," I respond defensively.

Alex laughs.

After a few more minutes of climbing, I give up on the slow route. I suddenly pick her up from behind and run up the steps. She gasps and looks at me with surprise. I smile at her.

"Walking got boring," I say.

She laughs. "I can imagine you're sick of it."

I shrug. I soon reach the top of the stairs and use my new key card to open the door. On the inside versus the outside, there is a little slot for it in the wall. I slide it in and the door slides open.

"Heading out so soon?" a familiar voice says from the device.

"You're kidding me," I grin. "Nicole?"

"Welcome, Sonic," Nicole, the AI program, says.

"It was Sally's idea to install her," Alex says. "Nicole runs all major technology in the city."

"So Sally is here," I say quietly, mostly to myself.

"Yeah, she just had to work and didn't get a chance to see you," Alex says.

"Guess I'll have to pay her a visit tomorrow," I say to Alex, then to the AI, "catch ya later, Nicole."

The two of us head out of the abandoned building in which the entrance was hidden. Out in the square, I noticed that the glow of the false Chaos Emerald was no longer present.

"They fell for it," Alex says excitedly.

"The fake Emerald?" I ask to clarify.

She nods. "You were told about that. Hopefully, in another week or so, we'll be able to access the base and free everyone."

"They don't have any real Chaos Emeralds, do they?" I ask.

"We have four of them," Alex says. "As far as we know, no, they don't. The other three are still missing. But if they do, and they compare energy signatures, we're screwed."

"Let's just hope all goes well," I say.

She nods. "It's definitely a wager. Anyway, let's get going, shall we?"

We begin walking around the city, and Alex shows me half a dozen secret entrances within Westopolis. In between places, I would pick her up and run her to wherever she told me to go, to cut down on walking all over the city. About an hour later, we stop in an abandoned park, standing near a drained water fountain where the last entrance was hidden, and she pulls out a map.

"The red dots pinpoint locations for entrances twenty miles around the city," she says as she hands me the map. "You hold on to this, it'll help you get around."

"Thanks," I say, folding it and putting it away.

"That's about all I can show you right now," she says. "Ready to head back?"

I don't respond. A piece of paper fluttering in the wind catches my eye. I walk over to a trash can where, blown up against it, was a new newspaper. I pick it up and shake it out. The headlining story caught my attention, and the attached photo was circled in red marker. This was the humans' newspaper, Earthland Gazette. The photo was a grainy, colored photo of me, sitting in one of the cells at the human laboratory, glaring at the camera that had been placed in the corner of the room. The story read;

Project 21 At Large

Last night, there was a great commotion in Lab 7 as Project 21, a blue anthropomorphic hedgehog, awoke from suspended animation and began an unprovoked rampage throughout the building. How Project 21 awoke from the state baffles the scientists who were running rudimentary tests on the subject. The subject displayed extreme aggression and intelligence in his escape, killing one man, Theodore Hutchens, by snapping his neck and using his hand on the scanners to open the door after he was dead. Hutchens's son was present, having been on a tour of the labs with his father, when the incident occurred.

Project 21 had shown only minor aggression in the past, scientists say, and has made several attempts at escape in the past. However, evidence of an unknown substance in the subject's blood stream suggests that unauthorized tests done on Project 21 may have been the cause of his erratic and somewhat unusual behavior. The matter is still under investigation.

Civilians are authorized to use caution while outside, as the subject has not been recaptured. It is estimated that Project 21 can move at upwards of 150 mph (241.4 kmh), as that is the speed at which the subject fled the labs. Any information regarding the whereabouts of Project 21 should be reported immediately to the number below. A reward will be given to informers.

Refer to Page A1, article Escaped for more details.

I suddenly feel lightheaded as memories from that night come flooding back. I gasp, leaning against a lamp post, my head in my hand.

"Sonic? Are you alright?" Alex asks.

I try to catch my breath and wait for my head to clear. "I remember how I escaped," I say quietly.

"How?" Alex asks.

I hand her the paper and sink down to the ground, leaning my head against the lamp post, looking at the stars above. I glance at Alex as she reads, watching her expression as it changes, her eyes slowly widening and her mouth opening in surprise.

"What do I do, Alex?" I ask in disbelief. I feel numb at all these realizations, after remembering watching the life go out of the man's eyes after I killed him…

"Nothing," she says. "There's nothing we can do. All that matters is that you're free now—"

"I murdered a man, Alex!" I cry suddenly, looking at her desperately. "I murdered him in front of his son! Sure, I always wanted to escape, and I hated the humans, but I never wanted to kill them!"

She frowns and kneels beside me, gently putting her hand on my arm. "I know," she says. "But it's over now. There's nothing we can do."

I sink down, curled in a ball, overwhelming despair consuming me. "Can we just go back…?" I mumble.

She nods and helps me up. She unlocks and opens the hidden trap door in the fountain and leads me down a ladder to the landing, the staircase before us leading down into darkness. Without waiting, I run off down the stairs and fumble with my key card to get the door open. Finally, it slides open, and I dash to my hut as fast as I can. It's a relief when I finally fall on my bed, burying my head in the pillow. I let myself lose my composure and scream.

((This is a really long chapter! I had a lot to cover; it took a full three days to write (with some distractions). I hope you all are enjoying this story, I'm glad to be rewriting it and sharing it. Leave your thoughts on this story in a review, I love reading every single one and they help out a ton!

Also, in case there is any confusion, the long, italicized part at the beginnings of these chapters are all flashbacks to when Sonic was captured, and is somehow relevant to what will happen in that chapter later on. I'll have them in nearly every chapter.

Thanks for sticking around!))

~SonicTheHedgehog-Nerd