BLOOM
-CHAPTER 8-
The dumbwaiter turned out to be anything but comforting. Amy could feel its grey walls crushing her from all four angles. The chilly steel floor beneath her body numbed her nerves. Her thick apparel did little to protect her shuddering frame from the dipping temperature within.
Amy Rose, flustered with confliction emotions, chose to remain inactive. Few paths of escape were available for her in this predicament, and she didn't have much to push on with. Her possessions were limited to the three flares she'd been gifted from that charming GUN agent, her overtly oversized trademark hammer, and a leftover piece of soggy raspberry pie. She'd been planning to make a run for it down the hallway, following Tails and Blaze in their footsteps. Unfortunately, she fell astray and ended up searching for them in the dark corners of the facility. Given to pounding emotions of distress, she sought refuge in a small dumbwaiter she'd found down one of the multiple branches of the hallway she'd traversed. Without an ounce of thought on what to do next, she remained there, isolated and adrift in misery.
Her piece of the raspberry pie had a greenish spot growing near one of its edges, with cobweb-like strings of mold spinning outwards. Amy ought to have chucked it away, but she'd grown quite famished during her time down here. As her cravings grew, her self-discipline diminished. She'd had it wrapped up in a roll of Lampar kitchen towel. The kind of brand you'd see in dollar stores, that cheap type that sticks to everything.
"I'll keep this for later," she said on their flight, refusing to mention the sour berries or the crunchy bread to the 'aspiring' fox chef. Tails had been quite apathetic towards her expression of displeasure, he'd busied too much of his mind with research. Amy only wished he'd taken his cooking more seriously, or give up entirely and let her handle the crew meals from now on.
It was of no use now, the privilege to be picky vanished with Sonics apparent demise. Now was not the time to grumble about nutritional quality, rather, it was a time to eat and mourn. She took her first bite with careful ease, avoiding the decaying spots as much as she could. Her tongue could taste the bitter folds of kitchen paper, glued by the now soggy clumps of berries deep within the thick crust of pie. They burst open from the sharp pressure of her fangs, splashing against her lips, soaking the fur around her mouth in wet red liquid mush.
An absolutely despicable sensation.
After a few seconds of agonized chewing, Amy simply gave up and hurled. Spittle and partially digested pieces of home-cooked pie splattered against her jeans and the grey steel platform. She smothered her mouth with her elbow and rubbed against it with brute repetition.
Hot tears streamed down her face, blurring her once sparkling green eyes. A small coughing wheeze escaped her throat, followed by a choking gasp and finally a wail of sorrow into the gloom.
"Sonic," she cried. "Oh God, Sonic!"
Mucus clogged her throat. Tears slipped into her mouth, providing her tongue with a bitter salty taste. Her speeches became incoherent. She delivered her thoughts in small sputters as her depression worsened.
"I should have-" she paused for a sniff, "I should have paid attention"
Amy buried her head deep within her gloved palms, burrowing her fur with tensed fingers.
"Why am I such a coward?" she asked herself.
A bit of the usual silence followed, with sniffles and saddened grunts echoing through this prison cell of a shaft.
"You're not a coward, Amy Rose."
Bewildered, she shot up, gripping the edge of her weapon.
"Wh-Who said that?" she asked, zapping her gaze around every possible corner of the dumbwaiter, "Hello?"
It was nothing but eerie silence.
Her body began to shudder violently as agonizing fear gripped her thoughts and held her captive to dismay. She'd believed some manner of evil just pierced through her zone of safety, with the desire to cause some permanent misfortune.
"Go away!" she yelled, "Go away, or I'll crush you, I mean it!"
"I bring you no harm," the voice replied.
"What do you want?" she asked.
"I witnessed your tears, and I was moved, despair brings me great discomfort," the voice continued, "Despair drives me to do horrible things."
"Please, leave me alone"
"I wish I could, but you plucked me from my place of comfort, and now I am forced to watch you, through turmoil and distress"
Amy lapsed into some introspection at this accusation.
What's it talking about?
"You were moved by my cold heart, and desired to save me," the voice continued, "but I can guarantee you, salvation was not what I desired."
"You're either going to have to be specific or stop messing around!" she spoke with a sharp, near screaming tone. Her patience was rapidly dwindling into insanity.
"'Uproot' was the term I believed that blasted blue ball used"
It clicked. With quivering hands, she reached into her jacket, rummaged its contents in a frenzy, and extracted a gleaming daisy, with a thick stem and amber petals. It'd pulled through the chilly blight and the heavy fall they'd suffered. There wasn't a hint of wither on its body. From the hour she'd plucked it, to the hour she cried, no harm had come upon it. In fact, it looked even better than it did before.
"I would have rather you'd eaten me first," it said, generating an illustrious voice from thin-air.
"Dear me, it's a talking daisy," Amy sputtered. Inane it was, the whole thing was insane.
"I suppose,"
"What's your name, little fella?"
"You dare belittle me,"
"Belittle?" Amy's lips began to shiver with anticipation. Her gloomy eyes brightened, she let her weapon hit the floor with a large thud and burst forth into a chorus of immense laughter.
"I'm not bemused by your amusement, but I do prefer it to the incessant moaning."
"I'm sorry," she sputtered between hearty chortles, "I'm so sorry, it's just, wow, a talking Daisy!"
"'Oh wow, a talking animal'," the daisy replied, mocking Amy in near-perfect imitation, "You won't find that so inoffensive would you?"
Amy's face slowly eased into an expression of grim sincerity, she smudged the tears from her eyes with her berry splattered jacket, folded her frail legs, used both her arms to grip the little thing, and dragged it closer for better inspection. Her curious widened pink eyes locked itself to its captivating radiance.
She paused for a bit, before resuming this peculiar conversation.
"I'm not hallucinating am I?"
"No"
"I'm not just developing some horrible sense of trauma-induced psychosis"
"Maybe"
"You-," she stopped to let the revelation settle in, "you're real?"
"Regrettably so"
"And, what might I call you, you peculiar thing?"
Radiating light began to emerge from the petals of this enigmatic creature. It increased the intensity of its voice, boldening its presence. It prided itself on being asked such a question. Identity demanded respect.
"When I was created, they gave me the title 'NUMBER XIII'"
"And who would those be?"
"I cannot say, and it doesn't matter, they deemed me a failure and left me to rot"
"You poor thing"
"It was for the best, I wasn't very stable, in fact, I think I'm responsible for all this, but I can't know for sure"
"What do you mean?" Amy asked, with gripping desire. A great sense of pity blossomed within her. XIII reminded her of something, a particular black hedgehog.
"As I said, doesn't matter, I'm already beyond redemption"
"No one's beyond redemption"
"Don't kid yourself, Amy"
It knew her name and uttered it with such warming graces, like an old friend that brings comfort in dark hours.
"Give me a chance," she said, "Let me help you, get back to wherever it is you came from"
"You could put me back on top, whenever you get that opportunity, if you do get that opportunity"
"But you'll perish in that horrible storm"
"That's the idea"
Amy shook her head in furious refutation. Her tears began to re-emerge.
"What the hell is wrong with you?" she cried, "Don't say things like that!"
"Why not, why should I care when life has given me no reason to? I'd rather choke to death in my own sorrow"
She stuffed the thing into her right breast pocket with care, equipped her hammer, and tried to stand up straight. Her head collided with the steel ceiling, causing some mild pain.
"Please don't do this," XIII said, "don't be compassionate, compassion kills"
"If you really wanted me to die, you won't have protested my cowardice"
"I was aversed to your mourning"
"And I'm aversed to the idea of people letting their lives rot away because of a few bad apples"
"'A few'"
"It doesn't matter, you're coming with me now, I'll find a reason for you to live in this hellhole"
"Why do you care?"
"Because I've seen one too many kind souls perish today, and I'm not going to let that number grow."
"What's your plan?"
"Firstly, I find my boyfriend, I beat the crap out of him for being stupid, then I put you back where you belong"
The vivid glow of the daisy diminished a bit, almost like it'd lapsed into its own introspection.
"It couldn't have been some cross-eyed goat, or a savage with no remorse, it just had to be you," Number XIII said.
"Yeah, it had to be me," Amy gripped one of the flares and began looking around the dumbwaiter for controls. "Mrs. Pink and manic."
Blaze's quaint legs were crossed and her body was firm. Anything less than a thoroughly anchored pose would make her abilities waiver. Just half a meter from her position, the orange fox was tinkering away at an electrical panel underneath the Captain's desk. A series of deafening booms emerging from the room's externals had forced the duo to forage for a solution. Imminent peril was at hand.
"I hope the sparks from the flame aren't a burden," Blaze said.
"Not in this biting cold," Tails responded, his teeth clenching on to a steel wrench they'd found in the tool-box. He actually found the flickers of the fire to be quite soothing.
Balderdash, the word ricocheted off every edge in Tails's racing mind as he pushed his fingers through various clusters of multi-colored wires and cables. If any of these would produce so much as a shock on his end, it would be a reason to have some kind of hope in their current predicament. It was quite a brazen tactic, using faulty cabling to get a voltage reading. Any sensible electrician would smack him in the head if they'd caught him in the act. Yet, what options remained? With his equipment either shattered or missing, he didn't have much of a choice but to risk getting himself electrocuted if he was to get results.
A system like this should be anything but functional, he thought.
An immense source of energy would be required to keep a facility of this magnitude in constant operation. There should be a protocol in place to ensure that everything gets locked in for efficiency's sake, especially given the desolate, isolated, and remote nature of this facility's location. It shouldn't be active, it should be dead. Dead, decaying, or obsolete.
"Brook picks up, pressure experiences massive decrease on its end, the facility's system kicks in and tries to stabilize everything," he struck the desk with his bruised knee to release some pent up frustration. "Too bad some dullard didn't initiate a proper differential pressure algorithm!"
"Are we going to be alright?" Blaze asked.
"Don't open the door, stay away from crevices, and distance yourself from the walls."
"Yeah?" Blaze asked.
"Make the wrong move and you'll be contorted into strings of fur and flesh in a matter of seconds"
"Dear,"
It was a horrific predicament, but Blaze had to keep her sanity in check. There was a minute nagging sensation within her that wanted to cause some panic but she refused to let it blossom. It was the boy that was on her mind. He'd taken the rougher of both tasks. She'd love to take his place, so he could spend more time licking his wounds, but unfortunately, she didn't possess an eight of the boy's intellect for machinery.
Another deafening boom shook the foundations of the facility.
"Tails?"
"I heard it."
"They all seem, sequential"
"That's the algorithm trying to kick in at a set pace, every fifteen minutes it runs the stabilization protocol, tries to balance the pressure on both sides of the facility," Tails let a broken screw drop to the ground, "every fifteen minutes it gets closer to our end"
"It's clearly not getting any results"
"That's how these stupid things work, you give them a command, they do it, if it doesn't work, they do it again, they don't have the human intellect to check to see if there's someone on the other side of all that screaming," he dropped another broken screw, "if you're as smart as me, you learn to account for that kind of stuff."
"Quite unreliable"
"Yep," he paused a bit so Blaze could hear him through all the racket, "would you kindly keep it down now, I'm jittery enough as it is"
"Oh I'm sorry, I didn't know-"
"No, no, no don't do that, I'm fine," Tails said with a short nervous laugh, "I just need some, I just need silence alright?"
Blaze nodded her head and kept her mouth hushed. Genius had to work, the feline pyromancer had to keep hush and provide his guiding light.
Fourteen minutes passed, and another booming smack of destruction rocked the fragile facility. The captain's room was greatly affected, various decorations and souvenirs began to topple, including one hanging polaroid camera which fell and shattered upon impact.
Blaze and Tails stood their ground, facing danger with boldened ferocity, liberation was at hand if they remained steady in their determination. Just like Sonic would in the heat of any battle.
This was going to be a bit longer, but I just wanted to push something out since I hadn't updated in a bit.