Pip. Pip. Pip. Pip.

Sonic was vaguely aware that he was awake. An irritating bleeping noise softly sounding from nearby had caught his attention, and he had found himself emerging from the murky depths of unconsciousness. He was unaware that he'd even fallen asleep. As far as he could remember right now, there'd been nothing before this moment of self-awareness. Just... nothing.

More noises caught his attention, weirdly distorted, as though listening through a cell phone. Footsteps. The tap of fingers on computer consoles. The soft murmur of voices.

"Sir? Sir, he's coming round."

"I'm here! Life signiatures?"

"Stable, sir."

"Take it slow, I don't want him going into cardiac arrest..." Sonic recognised this voice, the scratchy tones of a teenager, and the soft pad of shoes over concrete floor shortly followed. "Sonic? Can you hear me?"

All remained dark, Sonic unable to see the speaker, though he fought down a stab of worry and tried to smile. He couldn't. Couldn't even feel his mouth. Couldn't feel much of anything. "Tails..." the hedgehog somehow managed to say, "it's good to hear your voice, buddy."

Sonic's disoriented, groggy brain didn't have time to process how he'd bee able to speak so clearly before his younger brother replied. "Oh god... Sonic..." the fox sounded on the verge of tears, which wasn't doing much to dampen Sonic's fears. "Sonic... it's... so good to talk to you again, man..."

Yeah. Something was up.

"Ditto," Sonic replied, "not sure what's happening though... I can't see."

"That's okay..." Tails replied, sounding oddly relieved right now despite Sonic's disposition, "we'll sort that out for you now..." Sonic heard the fox move a couple paces somewhere to his right. "Give me a second..."

SNAP.

Suddenly, like flicking a switch, Sonic could see again. His brain sluggishly tried to figure out his position, the strange floaty sensation filling his body not helping orient him much. He appeared to be on his back, judging by the tiled ceiling and bright lights. And the orange-and-brown face that soon hovered over him.

"Hey buddy," Sonic said, vision locking onto the face of his little brother. The sixteen year old scientist-engineer smiled back, though his tear-filled eyes told a different story.

"Hi Sonic..." Tails replied, pushing his glasses further back up his snout. He sniffed, but the smile remained. He didn't appear in despair, more... relieved, overjoyed. "How do you feel?"

Sonic attempted to shift his position, finding to his concern that he was immobile. Like he was encased in cement. "Not much..." he replied, eyes unfeelingly swivelling in an attempt to see his surroundings. "I can't move."

"That's okay..." Tails replied, moving away to operate something nearby, "we'll sort that out too in a moment..." Sonic tried to frown, only to find that once again, no feeling there. He didn't feel like that was okay. This whole situation was very confusing, but he felt relatively calm despite his curiosity. "Bringing him up now," Tails said, louder this time, to whoever else was in the room.

With a soft whirr, Sonic's entire body began to tilt, the ceiling lights sliding over heard, bringing him from lying on his back to a somewhat standing position, though he remained locked in whatever contraption Tails had secured him in. Sonic's addled mind was very confused, though at least he was able to take in his surroundings. He was in some kind of small laboratory, computer consoles lining the walls, lab-coated mobians with Resistance Medical Technician insignia monitoring equipment and tapping at datapads. Sonic couldn't help but feel very confused, and was beginning to feel more panicked.

"Tails... not gonna lie buddy, I'm feeling a little freaked..."

Tails moved to stand before him, but before he could respond a door at the far end of the lab hissed open, a large red mobian with long spines marching in.

Knuckles' eyes widened as they met Sonic's, though the warrior's stride remained unbroken. "Is he... awake?" The Commander set his huge paws on his hips, lightly nudging Tails as he joined him before Sonic.

Tails nodded. "He's awake... we're bringing him around slowly though, we need to avoid any potential trauma-"

"Hey, I'm right here!" Sonic protested, suddenly angry at his friends discussing these matters right in front of him. The hedgehog's focus was returning now, stronger, and he was beginning to panic at the lack of sensation and inability to move.

"His heart rate's increasing..."

"Sirs I suggest reducing the flow of stimulants..."

"Knuckles?" Sonic's eyes locked on the echidna's, Sonic barely holding onto his composure as he began to feel trapped, "what's happened to me?"

Knuckles nodded grimly and set a hand on Tails' shoulder. "You wanna do it?" The younger fox's ears had flattened to his head, his hands tightly clutching his datapad, but he nodded timidly and cleared his throat with a step forward.

"Sonic..." the teenage prodigy said lightly, his voice shaking, "you... we..." some moments passed before the walls fell and Tails's hands raised to his face, eyes filled with tears. "I can't do it..."

Knuckles stepped forward, giving the fox a brief pat on the shoulder as he fell back. The echidna, commander of the Mobius Resistance, set his jaw and locked his eyes with Sonic's.

"How bad is it Knux?" Sonic said, noting how flat his voice sounded and how... digital his vision seemed. "Be honest. I can take it."

Knuckles, he knew, wouldn't sugar coat anything. "Sonic." The echidna said, not a trace of levity in his voice, "do you remember the battle at the Nervana Highway?"

Sonic sluggishly dug back in his brain, vaguely remembering a column of Badniks and a particular blue hedgehog-shaped robot in particular. "Not much..." Sonic replied. He remembered a brawl, the glowing red optics of a hyper-lethal machine... then extreme light and heat enveloping his body. "It's real fuzzy..."

Knuckles grunted. "We intercepted a raid by Robotnik's forces. You, naturally, got there first." The echidna normally would have chided Sonic for this, gotten angry with the hedgehog for his reckless behaviour there was none of that here. This was the most serious Sonic had seen him in years. "You were intercepted by a Metal Unit. There was a fight. It self-destructed with you in its hands."

This should have chilled Sonic to his core. Sickened him to his stomach, made his skin crawl. Instead there was nothing... just a cold spike of dread in his chest. The only place he had any feeling.

"How much..." Sonic said, his voice maintaining the same level of flat calmness it had since waking up to this purgatory, "how much was left..."

Knuckles' face was grim. "We saved as much of you as we could, but... Sonic, you've been on advanced life-support for nearly two months. We've done everything we can to keep you alive. You should be dead... but..."

Sonic was in shock. Too much shock to process what he was being told right now. Knuckles was having trouble finding words for him, and that alone would have told him enough. Now it made sense why Sonic couldn't move, or feel himself.

He tried to lick his lips. Tried to swallow. Tried to do anything to compose himself before Knuckles carried on, but couldn't. His eyes, or whatever had replaced them, scanned the room again, trying to catch a glimpse of whatever was on those damn monitor screens. "Where am I now, Knuckles. Tell me."

Knuckles remained stoic, knowing what he must do. "Sonic... I have to warn you. This will be a shock. You won't like it. But the solution we came up with was... all we had. The only alternative was letting you die." Knuckles seemed utterly lost now, the commander looking to Tails for assistance. "Miles... how do we..."

"Show me." Sonic demanded. His heart was pounding, his lungs inhaling and exhaling rapidly as his panic grew, though he knew no breath coming in and out of his windpipe. Knuckles and Tails remained still, weighing up their options, before Tails nodded solemnly.

"Okay..." the fox said quietly, "okay..." he tapped at his datapad, his face etched with resignation, stepping forward with the device in hand. "Okay... Sonic... please, this is going to be hard... but it was all I could do to save you..."

The screen was finally turned to face Sonic. And the hedgehog, once the fastest thing alive and hero of Mobius, knew his life was over as his world was turned upside-down.

...

"Ma'am? Surveillance reports from Sector 5-B are ready for your approval."

"I'll deal with it."

"Commander, Outpost C are requesting resupply now. What should we tell them?"

"Tell them supplies will be there 06.00 next thursday, not a minute earlier."

"Aye, ma'am."

The life of a Resistance Commander was a busy one, Amy Rose had discovered. She was used to it now, but the endless responsibility of running an army still kept her on her toes. Robotnik incursions had ceased in the two months since the last battle, but still. There was an entire world out there ravaged by the insane doctor's endless war on planet Mobius.

Still. Amy knew she had to make time. Especially for friends who returned from the dead.

The Commander marched through the halls of Resistance HQ, boots clapping from the concrete floor, faded salmon overalls bearing her rank and insignia. She ran a hand back through long quills, straightening her ponytail, as she approached a pair of Med-Techs hovering outside the door to an Officer's Quarters.

"Commander!" the two medics moved to greet Amy as she approached. "We weren't expecting you..."

"You know how it is, doctor..." Amy replied, gesturing the man to remain at ease, "if nothing else, restoring a whole planet after a war keeps you busy." Amy gestured toward the door. "How is he?"

"Doing well," the brown wolf, name tag Samson, replied, "we actually returned from physical therapy not half hour ago. You're just in time if you want to see him?"

Amy nodded. "May I?"

"You're the Commander," Medical Technician Samson replied, his face wearing a sad smile, "though I wouldn't expect much in the way of conversation..."

Amy merely looked into the green door, before thanking the med-tech and raising a hand. She lightly pressed her palm to a green panel. It was some moments of silence before the door hissed and slid open, and she was able to enter the cold dark room before her.

Amy carefully made her way inside, shivering at the cold. It was wintertime, and the rest of the HQ was presently warmed with artificial heating sources, but the occupant of these quarters seemed to neither notice or care about such things. The lights were out too, save for the emergency lighting which flickered dimly ahead. The room was bare, decorated sparsely, only a few framed photographs placed randomly on the wall mounted shelves.

There was no bed. There was no need. Only a large chair, equipped with all manner of strange mechanical systems, its occupant presently facing away from the door. Looking at a screen mounted on the wall, which currently displayed the Resistance News Network. The quiet hum of machinery accompanied the tinny voices from the screen... and the steady hiss of artificial breathing apparatus, emanating from the figure in the chair.

Amy approached cautiously, her nerves suddenly fraying. "Sonic?"

Silence. The steady breathing continued. "What are you doing here, Amy?"

The synthetic voice, modelled after Sonic's own, seemed calm and unconcerned. No emotion.

"I came here to see you," Amy replied, keeping her cool as she stared at the back of the chair. "I wanted to see how you were doing."

"Well I don't want you to see me," Sonic replied, remaining turned away.

Amy set her hands on her hips. "Tough." she replied. "Whatever happens Sonic, I am not leaving this room. Now you turn around and talk to me."

Sonic didn't reply, seemingly ignoring the request. Amy feared that she'd have to go to him herself, but before she could move the chair began to swivel. The whine of mechanics pierced the cold air, and Sonic the Hedgehog finally turned to meet his old friend.

Amy supressed a stab of fear. She knew what Sonic looked like, had overseen the construction and final design of the technology that would keep the hedgehog alive... but for a moment Amy had to fight back old memories of glowing red optics, inside a blank-faced black visor, as she set eyes on her revived friend.

The project to bring Sonic the Hedgehog back from the brink had been a desperate one. The hedgehog had been mutilated in the self-destruction of Metal Sonic. Only through the most advanced medical techniques and unwavering dedication from Resistance medics and his own brother Tails, had Sonic been allowed to live at all. Or what had been left of him, at any rate.

But it hadn't been enough. Even with the best medical care the Resistance could muster, Sonic was almost certainly to die within months. At best, he would be a vegetable. Comatose and unconscious for the rest of his days, no means of experiencing life outside his own mind with all the damage done to his body.

But Tails had come up with a solution.

It had been desperate, the genius fox spearheading a project that could not only bring his brother back, but give him back some mobility and quality of life. Through weeks of slavishly researching and reverse-engineering Robotnik technology, Tails and his team of engineers and doctors had finished their creation - a mobile life-support unit, in which Sonic's remains were to be interred. His vital organs, implanted into the machine, kept alive through hyper-advanced internal medical systems and external devices that would provide power for the mechanics, nutrition for the organic material.

It had been, technically, a success. Sonic the Hedgehog... was back.

Amy's eyes scanned over the fully-operating unit, remembering who it was she was looking at and doing her best to wear a smile. "It's good to see you again, Sonic."

Sonic merely glowered, green optics locked on her from within black eye-visor. He remained still. Movement, Amy understood, was still very difficult for him right now. "What do you want," the synthesized voice enquired, over the steady sound of Sonic's machine-assisted breathing.

"I wanted to see you," Amy said again, looking for somewhere to sit so she wouldn't remain standing over him, "I haven't had much chance, being busy and all. May I sit?"

The green eyes tracked her, as she moved to a chair nearby. "I don't care."

"Okay," Amy slid the chair around and sat down, leaning forward with her arms on her thighs. She looked Sonic over again, noting the dull layer of protective blue paint and smooth, unquilled cranium that encased his brain. She tried to think of something she could say to ease the tension. "So," she said, "I hear you just returned from physical therapy?"

"Yes," Sonic replied simply.

"The doctors say you're doing well," Amy continued, "I'm glad to hear it."

"Yeah," Sonic replied, "I almost walked three whole steps today. Amazing."

There was no sense of sarcasm in his response, Sonic's artificial vocals incapable of projecting such things, but Amy felt her quills bristle at the implication. "It's very good, Sonic. Very good." She looked him in the eye, her face set. "You have a long way to go. You've been through some major trauma. It's going to take time-"

"It's going to take time for me to adjust to operating this... thing..." Sonic cut her off, and for the first time there was movement from the former hedgehog. His head lowered with the quiet hiss of mechanics, green optics scanning his own legs. "Save it. I've heard it a thousand times already."

"Then you know I'm not bullshitting you," Amy replied. "Look. I know you've been through a lot. I know this is hard, but-"

"You," Amy flinched as Sonic jerked, head snapping to face her directly, one arm clumsily swinging from the arm of his chair. "Don't know anything." Sonic's eyes tracked to his stiffly hanging arm, and with clear difficulty he attempted to move it back.

"Here," Amy shoved her concerns down and stood, gently moving to take his hand. "Let me help you..."

"Get away." Amy stopped and remained where she was, watching as Sonic attempted to retrieve his own arm. The mechanical prosthetic, built in form and function directly after the machine's that had almost killed him, twitch and flopped. Sonic remained silent, glaring at the limb until, eventually, it clumsily smacked into the arm of the chair, sliding over and clattering to a rest on his lap. Sonic seemed to decide that was as much as he could handle, head bowing again. "Leave me alone."

Amy's heart sank at Sonic's obvious misery. She tried to remember this as the boy she'd crushed on years ago. The handsome and quick-witted hedgehog he'd become, with super-speed and a quicker grin, that she'd since fought with in the battles against Robotnik.

"Sonic..." Amy said quietly, taking another tentative step toward him to fix his now inert arm, "just let me-"

"You heard me." green optics glared up at her from the black screen, horribly reminiscent of a certain metallic blue killing machine that had threatened the life of her and so many others in these long wars. "I don't want you here. Get out."

Her eyes remained locked on his, until she knew he wouldn't compromise. She was, clearly, unwelcome. Without a word, Amy nodded and quietly left the room. She paused at the door, could think of nothing else to say, and disappeared into the hall.

Sonic was once again left alone. Optics scanned over mechanical legs, dull and blue and unable to feel, as the former hedgehog miserably regarded the metal prison his so-called friends had interred him in. Silently, his other hand clicked the chair controls, slowly turning the hero of Mobius back around to stare into nothing and continue his quiet brooding.