Chapter Seventeen: The Digital Exodus

When Tails came to, everyone within a ten-yard radius was staring at him.

He felt someone strong- probably Knuckles- remove his hands from his shoulders once he sat up and took a brief look around. Sticks regarded him as if he had a contagious disease, keeping her distance and looking him up and down. Shadow looked as stern as he always did. Rouge's usual easy smile had vanished, replaced with an expression of concern.

His first question to all of them wasn't "Why the heck are you all staring at me?", even though that might have seemed more logical to some. Instead, he asked everyone, "Were you guys all dreaming, too?"

Rouge and Shadow both nodded. Sticks went above and beyond, saying, "Heck, yes! The freaky thing controlling Sonic tried to take over my mind! It was awful!"

Tails turned to Shadow. "When you were dreaming, did you get your arm ripped off?"

As much as Shadow hated to admit that he was wrong, he managed a slight nod, causing Tails to tie everything together. "Unless this was about a seven-million-to-one coincidence, there was something artificially manipulating our dreams. Let's just hope the rest of the village isn't affected by this…"

Rouge decided to keep pushing, and say, "Okay, how do you think this thing gained the ability to jack with our sleep?"

"I'm not certain, but if I had to guess, it's the same way he gained the ability to shoot lasers out of his hands," Tails said. "Before any of this happened, I had a program designed to shoot a similar laser out of the side of the computer, although I was only going to use it for cutting things. I also had an unfinished program designed to replicate and analyze someone's dream on a screen by reading their brainwaves. Thus, it's only logical to assume that since this thing uses my computer as its power source, it inherited the ability to do anything my computer could do. And since it used to be a computer virus, it can probably alter the code and intent of the things I already have on there."

"Hold up," Knuckles said. "Is there anything else on that computer that could potentially get us all killed?"

"Unfortunately, yes," Tails said. "There are at least two things I haven't even mentioned yet that could be potential threats. One of them links computers together so that when you use one, all of them change- it's pretty well-hidden, but let's hope he never finds that one. The second one is a power-saving improvement I implemented, which allowed it to charge faster and lose battery far more slowly. I'm pretty confident that one's already being used; it would explain why he's soaking up way more damage than he should be whenever we fight him, and why he heals much faster than anyone should be able to."

"Good to know," Shadow said. Then, he changed the subject. "I know this isn't that relevant, but now that our sleep schedule is royally screwed up, what are we supposed to do for the shifts?"

That question never got answered.

In the distance, there as a muted crash, followed immediately by someone screaming. A second crash immediately followed. Then a third. Tails turned to face the source just as a streak of blue flashed between the dwellings for a split second

"Crap," Tails said. "Guys, I think Sonic's back for round two!"

Shadow didn't bother responding. "It's less about whether he's back and more about whether we can stop him. Come on!"

He led the charge towards the source of the noise, the others running flat-out just to keep up. Several lives had already been lost to get to this point. No one in the village wanted any more people to die.

However, their desires didn't matter to the psychotic killer on the loose.

They saw Sonic before he saw them.

He was surrounded by fallen-down or otherwise destroyed shacks that used to be homes for villagers. A sickening smile was plastered across his face, revealing that the teeth that had been knocked out in the last fight had inexplicably returned. His gloves and shoes were still falling apart and bloodstained, but other than that, he looked good as new save for the crimson eyes.

It took Sticks managing to smash him in the face with a boomerang before he finally noticed their existence, though. When he did, he smirked even wider, saying, "Well, well, well. Look who's come out to play!"

He started to say something else as well, but Shadow didn't give him the satisfaction of finishing his sentence. Instead, he slammed into Sonic with a homing attack, knocking him backwards into the rubble that he'd created. Despite making a dent in the ground, he'd hit it so hard, he got up like nothing had happened and proceeded to return the favor, causing Shadow to crash into the sun-baked dirt and get the wind knocked out of him.

Rouge had something kind of like a weapon on hand- a high-voltage electric taser. She fired it now, hitting Sonic's back. Sonic seized up for a second, but quickly shrugged it off, preparing to attack. Rouge would have liked to just fire it again, but the taser was not one of the newer models available, meaning it had to reload after each shot for a few seconds.

Sonic used that time to dart away from them, stopping in the center of the plaza. As the others, confused as to what he was doing but knowing that it couldn't be anything good, chased after him, the familiar red glow began to surround his hands.

Shadow realized what he was about to do a split second before he actually did it. He managed to yell "Stop him!", but by then, it was too late.

The lasers burst out of his hands, cutting into several cottages and hits from his left and his right. More screams filled the air. In a quick, fluid motion, Sonic turned a full 180 degrees, slicing through every dwelling within a half-mile radius. Tails and Rouge instinctively took to the skies, while the others hit the dirt. As the lasers shut off, a slight sheen of sweat now coating Sonic's face, a number of the screams died with it.

Tails' heart plunged down an elevator shaft. For all he knew, half of the population of the village had been slaughtered, just like that.

But then, some of the screams of terrified villagers resumed, signifying to Tails that there were more survivors of that attack than that. And that was all the motivation he needed to take a flash grenade from the belt he'd been wearing since that morning and pull the pin before hurling it at Sonic.

It went off too early, as expected. However, it did its intended job quite well- for a few seconds, Sonic screwed up his eyes in pain, standing stock-still. Unfortunately, so did everyone else, save Tails, which negated any real advantage it brought. Tails wasn't deterred, throwing another one as he moved closer.

This one had less effect, because Sonic had an idea it was coming and shielded his eyes. It worked the same in the opposite direction, though, and the blast allowed Tails to inch closer and closer to his former friend, along with the others.

Just as Sonic was no longer blinded, Metal Sonic launched a homing attack of his own, this one connecting and knocking Sonic down briefly. It only worked for a second, though as Sonic leapt back to his feet to prepare for another attack.

Knuckles threw a punch at him but missed. Rouge fired another burst from her taser, but her shot was about six inches too far to the right. Sonic tried another homing attack, this one on Shadow, but he'd grown wise to his tactics by now and dodged almost effortlessly.

For some unknown reason, Sonic didn't attack them for a few seconds after that, instead choosing to apparently retreat. For a second, no one knew why- sure, they were still in the fight, but they'd barely scratched him.

However, it came to Tails in a hurry. "The helicopter!"

They rushed to try and stop what they knew was going to happen, but by the time they got there, it was too late. After Sonic had finished with the helicopter, it was so bent, broken, and twisted that it would have been near impossible for an outsider to figure out what the heck it used to be. Even worse, both the pilots, who had been asleep beside it, lay dead with singed, smoking holes in their bodies, looking like they'd never even woken up before Sonic had ended their lives via lasers to the chest.

Speaking of Sonic, he was nowhere to be seen. He wasn't behind the helicopter, and the village was too flat and had too many missing dwellings for someone to easily hide. So what was he doing?

However, their thoughts were interrupted by the sound of cursing, immediately followed by several small explosions. Tracing the noise, they found that Sonic had become visible again, this time attacking Eggman as he fired missiles at him. Neither attack was proving very effective- Sonic's homing attack kept bouncing off Eggman's flying machine and his lasers couldn't cut through it no matter what he tried, while Eggman's missiles were much slower than Sonic, especially when he wasn't leading his shots.

The others rushed in again. Sonic was so busy dealing with Eggman in front of him that he didn't notice the others coming in from the side until they were almost on top of him. He whirled around, trying to dodge the attacks and hit his attackers, but failed on both aspects. Shadow hit first, then Knuckles, then Rouge. Sonic's lasers faltered, he collapsed to the ground, and he was buried under three strong bodies.

It looked like they'd won, for a second. But that was far from the truth.

Sonic, while weakened, still had enough energy to charge up the lasers again. Shadow, Knuckles, and Rouge knew what was coming after that, so they quickly got off him, at which point, he ran. Not away, which was what they expected. Instead, he ran straight for his wreck of a cottage.

Tails' heart leapt into his throat. "Oh crap, Amy's in there!"

Before they could get there, Sonic bolted out of the cottage. Fortunately, it didn't look like he had Amy with him. Less fortunately, he definitely hadn't come out empty-handed.

Sonic proceeded to break into another cottage, then several more. Tails and the others chased after him, but he was going in and out of dwellings to fast for even Metal Sonic to keep up. A few screams rang out from then, but none of them cut off abruptly, which was a small consolation for the rest of them. After his eighth break-in, in the split second where he was facing Tails, he noticed that Sonic was carrying what appeared to be a pile of small gray boxes.

Before Tails could analyze it further, Sonic bolted away from the village, trying to put as much distance as he could between himself and the others.

"Metal Sonic, go after him," Rouge commanded. "Everyone else, let's check the homes Sonic broke into and see if everyone in them is safe."

Metal Sonic complied and was gone in a flash. The others split up, trying to enter the homes as peaceably as possible.

As Knuckles entered one of them, his first words were, "Don't worry, Sonic's gone. You can come out now."

Three terrified kids, none of them looking older than eleven or twelve, edged out from hiding spots- in a closet, behind a pile of boxes, and behind the shower curtain.

Knuckles asked them a simple question. "Did he hurt any of you while he was in here?"

"No," one of them managed to choke out, "but he took the laptop sitting out on the counter."

"No injuries, but took a laptop," Knuckles said. "Thanks for the information."

He emerged from the place to find that most of the others had beaten him out. After he convened with the others, they quickly noticed a similar theme among every home Sonic had broken into. Nobody had appeared to be hurt during these invasions, by he'd taken any computers that he'd found with him.

Last (but most certainly not least) came Sonic's own cottage. As they entered, they noticed that the place was even more of a mess than it had been before Sonic had whipped through it- almost everything was broken, ripped free from the foundation, or otherwise not where it was supposed to be.

"Amy?" Tails called this out, hoping that she hadn't been hurt or killed by Sonic. "Are you okay?"

Suddenly, there was a muffled groan, appearing to come from behind a door painted a faded brown. Tails threw open the door, revealing a tired, shaking Amy pinned against the far wall of a closet, behind a coat she'd gotten Sonic a few months ago.

"As soon as he was seen in the village, I hid in here," Amy said. "It was a pretty painful hiding spot- not nearly enough space- but that's better than being dead or kidnapped."

She hobbled out of the closet, taking in the carnage for the first time as her mouth fell open. "Wow. Thank goodness I wasn't out there."

Tails' face fell again. They'd won again, but it was a hollow victory. With Tails' plane sunk and the helicopter destroyed, they were stranded on the island for the time being. The helicopter pilots made for at least two definite casualties, and Tails didn't yet have the heart to go searching through all the dwellings to look for bodies.

However, he did want to look for one thing while he was here. He turned towards where he'd placed his safe, and it was still there. But its door had been thrown wide open, and the electronic lock that had kept it shut was nothing more than a singed, sparking mess. But the worst part of it all was revealed once he looked inside.

Tails' computer was gone.

Author's Notes:

-I hope you all had a happy New Year's Eve and have a happy New Year as well! And thanks for sticking with me all this way.

Review Zone, Act XVI:

-Linz2: Thanks, as always, for your review! Is there hope? Or is this all a trick? I guess we'll find out, sooner or later.