Author's Notes:
-Thanks to talicinx for the favorite, it means a lot.
-I hope you enjoy this chapter!
Chapter Seven: Descent into Darkness
Sonic quickly figured out that while Silver's top speed was nowhere near his or Shadow's, he could still be pretty fast if he wanted to be.
Thankfully, that meant the trip to where Shadow remembered the factory being wouldn't be too lengthy. Silver didn't take long to reach the highest speed he felt could maintain, with Sonic and Shadow sticking by his side the entire time.
Along the way, they passed by other ruined cities, these ones showing even fewer signs of life than Silver's had. Furthermore, their damage was even worse: fallen buildings, streets and sidewalks still stained with dried blood, weeds beginning to grow over everything. Each time they saw one, they passed through, both to check and see if this one also held a factory or if there were any survivors. And each time, they were disappointed on both fronts.
Once the sun had fully gone down, they stopped, if only briefly, for a bite to eat. Three hours after that, they stopped to take a power nap, which Sonic felt barely had done anything. Now, the sun was rising, and Sonic was starting to suspect that the location Shadow had been talking about was nothing more than a fantasy, some half-memory he'd retained from his time in Eggman's clutches.
But then, they began to hear a bell ringing, and Shadow came to a hard stop, nearly sending Sonic and Silver tumbling.
"I remember this," Shadow said. "I heard that bell when I was exiting the factory. Come on, this next one has to be it."
"It better be," Sonic said under his breath as he sped up once more.
However, it sure didn't look the part. This city, if anything, was in even worse condition than all the others they'd seen so far. Buildings had collapsed in the streets, forming piles of material that would be quite unpleasant to cross barefoot. All of the closest streetlights were bent and looked like they'd join the buildings they were meant to light up any second. Of the ones remaining intact, none of them had any obvious signs that they were inhabited, and furthermore, there weren't even any buildings that looked like it could handle the demands of a factory like the one Shadow described.
"Shadow," Sonic said, "you sure you're remembering this right?"
"Positive," Shadow said. "It's close. I don't know how close, but it's close."
"Wait," Silver said before they could get any further. "If you'd been brainwashed into working for Eggman earlier, and you can correct me if that's wrong, how do we know he didn't tamper with your memories so that we'd be led straight into a trap?"
"It wouldn't be the first time," Sonic added.
Shadow groaned. "Do you want to at least have a chance to end this or not?"
Sonic would have made some snarky remark there, but he was stopped by the sight of three Shadow clones appearing from around a corner. The instant he spotted them, he pointed them out to Shadow and Silver, who quickly got into attack mode.
Thankfully, these things were pretty easy to take down one on one, at least for the three of them. Once more, they didn't kill them, but they wouldn't be attacking anyone else anytime soon.
"Wait," Shadow said the instant they were done. "What direction were they coming from?"
"I think down that street," Sonic said, pointing to the street on the right, about a block away. He saw Silver nod to confirm that.
"If we go the direction they came from, we can find out where the factory entrance is that way," Shadow said. "Let's go, and keep an eye out for any more."
The three of them turned the corner, slowly walking about a block before a group of five or six more came from another street, this one on the left. Once more, they were quickly dispatched, with the three of them turning a corner once more.
The clusters of enemies were starting to get thicker and thicker, implying that the entrance was getting closer. Once the groups started to become unmanageable, Sonic pulled up close to the others and whispered, "Guys, I don't know about you, but I think attacking everything we come across is a bad idea. Let's try avoiding them if possible from now on."
Shadow and Silver nodded assent. Silver even said, "I'll scout ahead, I can fly. Once I find the entrance, I'll come back and we can rush it."
Shadow objected to that almost instantly. "That's a really risky plan. What's stopping them from just following you and not giving you a place to land? Furthermore, that'll just allow monsters to track where we are."
"Never mind, then." Silver gave up the ghost on that plan, and the three of them slipped forward, dodging out of sight of the groups, which was pretty hard. Even if the clones weren't inclined to look into buildings (which the trio made frequent use of), they still were looking in all directions at once, meaning if they got even close to one of them, they'd get the whole cluster set on them. And once that happened, chances were another cluster would be attracted to all the commotion. That'd lead to a vicious cycle with no easy way to end it, which absolutely none of them wanted.
After what felt like an eternity, they managed to locate what appeared to be the entrance, even if it wasn't anywhere near what they expected. Instead of an abandoned complex, store, apartment building, or even a house, the entrance appeared to be nothing more than a manhole with no cover. On occasion, several new clones would pop out, each group moving away in a seemingly arbitrary direction before the next group followed. Besides the clones, there wasn't anything notable about the area: no significant landmarks, no places to hide or convene- the road wasn't even a main street, for crying out loud.
"Well, there it is," Sonic whispered. "But how are we supposed to get down there?"
"I'm guessing that the manhole leads to the sewer system," Silver said, "just because that's how it used to work back where I lived. The sewer systems in a city are all interconnected, so we shouldn't have to use that specific entrance, we can just find another manhole that's reasonably close and enter through there. Only problem is that chances are it's going to be dark down there, and my night vision isn't the best."
Shadow smiled a little, appearing to be at ease now that his hunch had been confirmed. "Let's go, then. There has to be a million manholes in this city, we can find one more."
The three of them dashed off, careful not to alert any of the monsters that just kept coming. Once the crowd had thinned out, Sonic darted over to the sidewalk of what actually appeared to be a main road, pointing out another manhole that happened to be slightly ajar.
"Hey, guys," Sonic said, "I found an easy one to get into."
"If it's easy, it's probably a trap," Shadow said. "Let's find another one."
Sonic grumbled under his breath, but accepted that Shadow was probably right about that one.
The next fifteen minutes focused on nothing but finding an entry point Shadow approved of. They kept getting further and further away, with Shadow dissatisfied with every point they found. Not until they were nearing the city limits did Shadow look at one and say, "This one looks good."
"Okay," Silver said, "why here in particular?"
"It's far enough away that they'll never see us coming, but it's close enough we'll be able to find our way back without much trouble," Shadow said. "Plus, this one's not opened at all. That means that it was probably never used as an exit."
"Let's go, then," Sonic said. He initially was going to look for a stick to pry the manhole open, but Silver made that unnecessary by lifting the cover for them, dropping it in a cluster of scraggly weeds that were poking through the pavement. Then, the three of them slipped into the hole left behind as quietly as possible, first Sonic, then Shadow, then Silver.
While the sewer system had clearly been out of use for quite some time, it still bore a resemblance to those Sonic was used to, at least in the brief periods he'd seen one. For starters, it literally smelled like crap, amongst other things Sonic couldn't identify and really didn't want to. Beneath them and slightly to their left was a river of stagnant water, a brownish-green from filth and full of floating debris. The walls were mostly spared, but a few tiny plants were beginning to peek out of the walls in the places the light reached, and graffiti from who knew how long ago made its presence clear with its neon colors. One of them was a mural that actually looked kind of cool, but the rest was nothing more than symbols of a bygone era and crude sayings. (Funnily enough, one of those sayings told Shadow to do something both physically impossible and quite disgusting.)
Even if the lack of light made it hard to see, Shadow putting his finger to his lips was still quite visible. "We need to be quiet here. The goal is to keep from being detected for as long as possible."
Sonic nodded assent, and Silver appeared to do the same. With that, they began to slink back in the direction they'd come from.
Surprisingly, the sewers seemed to be empty. Not a single creature or even a single sign of movement outside of the three of them made itself clear for the first stretch, which initially just had them backtracking, then following the noise of a thousand footsteps as it grew louder and louder.
This phase ended as Shadow stuck his hand out, stopping Sonic and Silver from making their way around a sharp corner.
"They're all coming from the side of the junction currently parallel to us on the left side," Shadow whispered. "We can wait a few minutes to see if the flow thins out at all, but I don't think there's a way to get any further without being spotted. It's going to get rough from here on out, be prepared."
They did as Shadow suggested and waited a few minutes, but if anything, the rate of creatures exiting increased while they sat there. Thus, the three of them set down just about everything they were carrying as quietly as possible (if they had made noise, they couldn't hear it over the sound of monsters climbing out of the sewer) and prepared to rush the entrance.
Even in the dim light, Sonic could see Shadow holding up fingers, counting five, four, three, two-
Before he got to one, Silver burst out from behind the corner, Sonic and Shadow leaping into action behind him. The closest opponents were stunned for just long enough for the trio to take them down easily before bolting into a corridor jammed with bodies. The creatures nearest to them didn't have time to attack before they bolted out of range, but the ones at the back had plenty of time to prepare, and unfortunately, they didn't waste it.
Sonic felt about half a dozen Shadow knock-offs slam into him at once, stopping him dead in his tracks. Based on the two grunts he heard nearby, Shadow and Silver had been subject to something similar. Several vicious lances of pain shot through him, but he still popped back to his feet just fine. Shadow and Silver did the same, with Silver flinging his arms out to knock his closest opponents back. This caused a domino effect, with the creatures in front crashing into the ones behind them almost all the way to the back, allowing Sonic to shoot right past.
Wanting to save his energy as much as possible, he stopped, although he waited for Shadow and Silver to catch up, which they did in a hurry, although they had what was probably several hundred angry Shadow knock-offs on their tails. Before they got too far, though, Sonic shouted something unintelligible before screeching to a stop and windmilling his arms to keep balance.
Now, Sonic was staring into what might as well have been an abyss. The drop was too far down to risk jumping, and the only way down appeared to be a single rickety-looking ladder swarmed with clones, which the possibility of being able to use all the way to the bottom was near zero. The passage framing that drop was almost certainly Eggman's work, as it looked too hastily-made and uneven to be a proper extension to the sewer, and it wasn't like the tunnel even connected to anything.
"We've got ten seconds, maybe," Shadow said. "Any ideas?"
"Wait," Silver said. "I can-"
He never finished the sentence, instead having a creature crash into him and send him tumbling into the abyss. With a cry, Sonic jumped in after him.
Suddenly, the feeling stopped, and Sonic found himself encased in the same teal glow that had been his introduction to Silver, albeit in a less binding manner. He was even able to look up and see that the real Shadow had been subject to the same treatment, clones plummeting past them as they descended.
"That was too close," Shadow said.
Silver didn't say anything back, merely nodding with a strained expression. Clearly, defying the law of gravity was much harder than merely knocking things down.
Unfortunately, the area they were going to land in was so packed with enemies that they couldn't even see it. Sure, the trio had the advantage of not being lined up shoulder-to-shoulder, but that was about it. However, as Silver stopped them about fifteen feet up, his straining looking worse by the second, Sonic had an idea.
"Silver," he said, "just drop us."
Silver probably would have shaken his head if he wasn't concentrating so hard on keeping the three of them floating. "Wait… why?"
"We'll knock them all down, then we can keep going," Sonic said. "Do it."
Silver obeyed. In what felt like an instant, the force keeping them aloft disappeared, sending the three of them dropping the rest of the way. Sonic curled up into a Spin Dash as he did, crashing almost directly on top of an enemy with a loud crunching noise. Two near-identical sounds following implied that Shadow and Silver had done the same. Before anyone, including his allies, could react, Sonic saw where the hall led and bolted down it.
In what felt like a second, he was no longer in a crowded space, instead in a much more open area. However, this one, if he ever escaped it, was going to haunt Sonic's dreams for the rest of his life.
This was clearly the factory Shadow had remembered, as evidenced by the glowing blue Chaos Emerald screwed into the ceiling casting a faint light across the room and occasionally flaring up. But what the light showed almost made Sonic wish the room was pitch-black.
A dozen machines, six on each side, dominated the room, each one about the size of a backyard shed. While each one was mostly made of gleaming steel, a section in the front was made of glass so he could see what was going on inside. In the few brief seconds he was able to watch one, a blob of fleshy, pulsating material swelled into a Shadow clone, albeit one with enough disfigurements that it was still easily recognizable. Then, the machine opened and expelled the monster, with more material being slopped into its place to repeat the process again.
The new creature saw Sonic, blinked a couple of times, and then charged him, which Sonic dodged. All around him, all the other new arrivals did the same.
Shadow screamed, "we need the Chaos Emerald to shut this down! Someone get up there!"
"Well, duh," Sonic thought, even as he ducked and wove around a dozen attacks at once, even as Silver and Shadow did the same. However, more and more bodies just kept piling into the room, stuffing it to maximum capacity.
And before anyone could react, Sonic was swallowed up by a sea of foes, with no way out but to go through.