Chapter 5: Flux Combination

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Knuckles flexed his arms and yawned. It was six o'clock already, and he had made little progress on his translations. The dialect was ancient, and he had to keep looking up symbols he didn't understand. His mind kept wandering, as well. He had set the six emeralds that Sonic had left behind in a row on the table, and was working by their light. The trouble was that the gems flickered once in a while, and it annoyed him enough to break his concentration.

He rolled up the scroll in front of him and returned it to its jar. He was hungry, his eyes ached, and his brain felt like cold oatmeal. Yet he paused a moment and watched the chaos emeralds instead of leaving, trying to see which one was flickering. It was so slight that he could only see it with the tail of his eye.

There. The dark blue had flickered. He picked it up with a triumphant grin. "I'll put you somewhere else while I'm working," he said to it. "That way I can work in peace." He put it in a leather bag that the gems were stored in, and dropped the others in with multiple clinks. As he picked up the red emerald, it flickered, too. "Two!" the echidna exclaimed. "That's why it was so annoying!"

He moved to drop the jewel in with its fellows, but his hand wavered, and instead he set it down again and pulled out the dark blue. One flickered, then the other. How strange. He had never known them to flicker before.

He slung the leather bag over one shoulder, picked up the red and blue emeralds in either hand, and walked out of the library.

* * *

Sonic came to with the feeling that he had been sitting in the same position for a long time.

He blinked to clear his blurry vision and lifted his head. He was sitting in a padded chair with his hands chained to the arms. The room he was in was small and stacked with boxes. There was an empty chair facing his, and aside from a video camera on the wall, he was alone. His arm itched where the tranquilizer had struck him, but he could not move a hand to scratch it.

Minutes passed and nothing happened. The hedgehog's head was clearing, and he had time to worry about where he was and what his captors wanted with him. He gazed at the video camera's blank eye. "I'm awake," he said to it. "Hello? Is anybody there?" When nothing happened, he threw his head back and began to shred the chair's upholstery with his spines. That ought to get somebody's attention.

It worked, for a moment later the door opened and three humans walked in. Two were carrying tranquilizer guns, and the third carried an electrical stunner in one hand. Sonic stared at him. He had never seen a human with blue hair before--maybe it was dyed.

"Hello," said the man with blue hair. "I am Micare. Are you willing to stop shredding my chair, and answer a few questions?"

"Sure," said Sonic, as Micare sat down in the opposite chair, and the guards stood on either side of him. "Why am I tied up, and why did you shoot me?"

"Security," replied Micare, fondling his stunner. "All Mobians are considered armed and extremely dangerous so close to the Forbidden Zone."

Sonic blanched. "We are?"

"Yes," said Micare, eyeing him. "What are you doing here?"

"I donno," said Sonic. "A friend and I went through a weird teleport yesterday, but we got separated. I didn't know where I was. Could you let me call home?"

"Maybe," said Micare. "You say you're lost, yet you were travelling east, toward the Zone. Why?"

"I had to pick some direction to travel in," said Sonic defensively. "Would you have done so good if you were warped to the middle of nowhere?"

"That is not the issue," said the man, eyes narrowing. "Where are you from?"

"The Mobitropolis valley. I'm with the Knothole Freedom Fighters, if that means anything to you."

"Yes, Sonic, it does," said Micare. When Sonic looked surprised, he continued, "Oh yes, we know who you are. The Chaos fields are stronger here than elsewhere on the planet, and Chaos never repeats itself. Finding you here is logical."

"Okay, sure, that makes sense," said Sonic sarcastically. "How long have you been expecting me?"

"Not long," said Micare. "Only since the eclipse."

Sonic opened his mouth, then shut it again.

Micare went on, "Do you know anything about the Chaos Emeralds?"

"Yeah," said Sonic, rolling his eyes. "I've been training to use them. I've become Super and Hyper so much it's not funny."

Sonic had never seen someone's eyes bug out the way Micare's did. A second later Micare whispered to one of the guards, who left the room at once.

"What did I say?" said Sonic, amused. "Never met a Chaos Emerald wielder before?"

"How far has your training progressed?" asked Micare, leaning forward and peering at Sonic as if he had never seen anything so interesting before. When Sonic looked puzzled, he added, "What can you do?"

"Relocate, Timestop, and See, a little. But then the eclipse came and we stopped."

Micare waved his hand, and the remaining guard stepped forward and unlocked Sonic's bindings. "It may be enough," Micare muttered as he stood up. Sonic slid out of the shredded chair, and Micare stooped and shook his hand. "Pleased to have you with us, Sonic. Come with me."

The guard led them through the door. Sonic followed, and found himself in a room slightly larger than the one he had left. A table was set up along one wall with four glowing computer monitors on it, and underneath it sat four nondescript desktop computers among a snarl of cables. It looked grimy, souped-up and nerdy.

The first guard was seated before the end computer, and the second guard sat down at a console nearby. They leaned their weapons against the wall and peered into their screens. Sonic watched as Micare bent over another screen and watched. There was silence a moment, then Micare switched seats with one of the guards and began typing.

The guard looked at Sonic and smiled. "I'm Jordan," he said, "and that's Andrew. We're really just programmers."

Sonic looked them up and down. Come to think of it, they were all shorter and punier than most human guards he had seen.

"Sorry I shot you," Jordan went on, speaking with a slight lisp. "Orders."

"But look who you shot, man!" exclaimed Andrew, looking up from behind a shaggy mat of brown hair. "Only, like, Sonic the Dude himself!" He leaned back in his chair and held out a hand to Sonic, who shook it. "Dude, I'm like one of your fans, man."

"Cool," said Sonic, not knowing whether to feel flattered or repulsed. "I, uh, think the pleasure's all mine. What are you doing?"

"Oh, this is our Chaos surveillance program," said Jordan. "You saw our scanning hardware up on the ridge, with all the antennas."

"Chaos is, like, really funky out here," said Andrew, bending over his keyboard again. "So we're like studying it, y'know?"

There was silence a moment. Sonic watched the three technicians work, and folded his arms. They weren't helping him get home, and he was hungry. "So, what do you want me to do?" he asked after a moment.

Micare swivelled around in his chair. "Sorry about that, we had to get the program running. What we've done is synthesize a Chaos Emerald by duplicating its wavelength patterns by computer."

"Which color?" Sonic asked, suddenly feeling sick. Tails had made a synthetic emerald, too, which had been the cause of Shadow's death (or near-death, as he told himself).

"Generic," replied Micare. "We had to work from research, as we couldn't locate a real emerald to study. But it should work." He slid his chair back and motioned for Sonic to stand in front of one of the screens. "We need you to use the computers like you would an emerald and Chaos See. The trick is, this unit over here is set as an output. All we need is for you to catalyze it."

The hedgehog backed away, holding up his hands. "No way. Forget it. I saw too many horrible things last time, and it almost killed me breaking out of it."

"All we have to do is break your eye contact," replied Micare. "Do you think you could do it for us? Right now?"

Sonic hesitated, frowning.

"It'll only take, like, ten minutes," said Andrew. "And it'd help a ton."

"Oh, all right," Sonic grumbled, stepping up to the computer screen. "But you guys had better feed me afterwards. I'm starved."

He peered into the screen. It had a colored fractal pattern on it that he guessed was a model of the energy inside a Chaos Emerald. He focused.

For several minutes there was no sound but the humming of the computers, and the technicians watched him eagerly. Sonic narrowed his eyes. It was just a big Chaos Emerald, he told himself. It has the same layers. It's probably the green emerald ... He concentrated.

The fractal pattern began to change as the chaotic power in the room shifted its currents. The pattern moved faster and faster as Sonic peered deeper into it, and Micare, Andrew and Jordan watched in barely contained excitement.

Just as before, Sonic felt himself breach a barrier, and he was Seeing. Sweat broke out on his forehead as images flashed through his mind--chaotic information corrected and identified by his brain. As before, they were vivid glimpses of evil, waste and destruction, but this time they were more intense, owing to their proximity to the Forbidden Zone.

He cried out as a particular set of images swirled by. "No! No! Make it stop! Make it stop!"

"But it's only been forty-five seconds!" Micare exclaimed from behind him.

"Stop it!" Sonic gasped, trying to wrench his eyes away. He could turn his body, but his head was held motionless by the chaos power. Terrified, he wailed, "Stop!" and hurled himself away. He struck the chair behind him and landed on his knees, breathless and half sobbing. Hands groped at him and lifted him to his feet, and voices asked if he was all right, but he couldn't answer. He was shaking like a leaf. They helped him sit down, and a moment later a grubby blanket was draped around him. He huddled there, in shock and half blind.

It was thirty minutes before he came to himself and was able to understand his surroundings. Three voices were talking in an undertone.

"... this shape here, that could be Mount Pymore ..."

"Is that anyone we know?"

"Oh my gosh!"

"That is disgusting!"

"This is like a demented holovideo ..."

"What the heck is that?"

"Look, there's the human colonies."

Sonic lifted his head. The techs were huddled around the observation screen, playing back his fifty seconds of recorded madness. He wondered how they could be so heartless, and put it down to the cold-bloodedness of all humans. At once he was angry, and it made him stronger. "Hey," he said. "What's the big idea? You guys almost killed me!"

The three looked up, and Micare walked up to him. "I'm sorry, Sonic, we shouldn't have made you do that. But the results are fascinating! Would you like to see?"

Sonic muttered something, and Micare dragged his chair closer to the monitor. Sonic looked at the images scrolling by in slow motion. Captured this way, they were no longer frightening, and actually looked grainy and half-focused.

"Oh!" The word escaped him involuntarily, and he stared, open-mouthed. "Run it back!"

"What, to here?" asked Jordan, reversing the recording.

"There! Stop!" said Sonic. It was a snapshot of Slasher with Metal Sonic in a swamp. The next image was of a fanged demon attacking Knothole, flames leaping around it. No, that was no demon. He recognized its face. Then he saw a black hedgehog talking to Tails, who was bending over a machine with a drill in hand. He saw Velocity, a blue chao, standing at a window and wistfully peering at the street outside.

Sonic turned away. It was nearly as painful second hand as it had been the first time.

"Do you know what those things are?" Micare asked.

"Yes," Sonic breathed. "They're things from my life."

"The theory is correct!" said Micare, glowing. "Chaos See is customized according to what the viewer considers important, chaotic though it is!" He pulled out a notebook and scribbled something in it.

Sonic shakily stood up and dropped the blanket. "I gotta get home. If that stuff hasn't happened yet, then it will."

"Sorry," said Micare with a small smile. "We're in a Chaos-shielded bunker thirty feet underground. The locks won't open until tomorrow because of our experiments. You're stuck here."

When Sonic's jaw jutted out in rage, Micare added, "Want something to eat?"

* * *

"Are you Shadow?" Tails asked.

The fox was sitting on the cold concrete floor of the factory, a baseball-sized tangle of circuitry and computer chips resting on a stool in front of him. He blew on the cooling sautered shell that would fit around it, and looked at the black hedgehog sitting across from him.

Twilight had been watching him ever since he started working, and Beast lay beside him, its head lifted in a serpentine curl.

Now Tails asked his question, and waited for an answer. There was a long silence as Twilight gazed at him.

"Shadow," said Twilight, rolling the syllables over his tongue. "Shadow. I haven't heard that name in a long time."

"Well, are you?" Tails persisted. "And if you are, how did you survive?"

"Your friend Sonic would be the one to ask about that," said Twilight, scowling and fingering his torc. "There are gaps in my memory there. I was hideously burned and sustained a shocking concussion. I was so disfigured I adopted the nickname Twilight."

Tails eyed the scars on the hedgehog's face and eyelids. "It must have hurt."

"It did." Twilight stroked Beast's head, and it blinked its yellow eyes. "Beast was my only companion during that time. Deserted by all living things, I studied ancient arts of healing ... and so I seek the Chaos Emeralds. My vision and hearing were damaged, you see."

"The Chaos Emeralds are better at making people invincible, not healing them," said Tails. "Sounds like you want them for sorcery or something."

"If you mean by sorcery that I intend to study them and learn their ways, you are right," replied Twilight. "I am not wicked, Tails. I do not seek world domination or war. I seek to right the wrongs done to the world, and I mean to see it protected from the flux."

"What is that flux-thing?" Tails asked, lightly touching the cooling sauter and picking up the casing. "It's all you talk about."

"The flux is a discharge of energy," said Twilight. "Even I don't know much about it. It has only happened once, thousands of years ago. Then as now, the moons eclipsed, and Mobius stood on the brink of self-annihilation." He sank into thought.

Tails waited for him to go on. When Twilight remained silent, Tails prompted, "And?"

"And?" repeated the hedgehog, looking up. "The flux was directed by a young emerald user who did not understand what he was doing. But he had no time to prepare, or he may have better performed his task."

Something passed over the building in a rush of wind, darkening the windows and rattling the floor and machinery. The three leaped to their feet, but it had passed and the windows were brightening again. "Good grief, what was that?" Tails gasped.

Twilight cocked his head from side to side, a grim smile on his face. "That, my friend," he purred, "was the second preliminary flux."

* * *

As Knuckles walked through the ruins of Sandopolis, watching the sun set below the rim of the Floating Island, he carried a Chaos Emerald in either hand: indigo and red. The rest of the gems were in a bag slung over his shoulder.

He felt preoccupied, as if part of his mind had gone on a vacation and had not yet returned. He shook his head to clear it. "Wake up," he told himself. "You've been working hard, and all you need is some food." He thought of taking his notes down to Knothole and showing Sally--she would be interested--and maybe visiting Zephyer. He smiled to himself, glad that the Chaotix weren't around. It wasn't enough that he carried pictures of her; he had to see her all the time, too. Did it mean he was in love? he wondered nervously. No, no, he couldn't be in love with her. He just liked the girl. Was that so bad?

Suddenly he was aware that the red emerald's heat was scorching through his glove. "Ow!" he exclaimed, but instead of letting go of the gem, he dropped the bag of other emeralds instead. His hand wouldn't release the gem, and he found he didn't want to release it. Maybe it was too far away from the other emeralds. He pressed the blue emerald up against the red one.

Double flux!

Knuckles was blasted skyward, spinning, stunned, but still clutching the emeralds. He could smell burning fur and hear himself screaming, and all he could see was a blur. He was tumbling crazily, flailing in midair--

And then he was in control. The echidna righted himself and sank back to the ground as lightly as a feather. His body glowed a bright, poisonous green, lightning crackled over his body, and wind roared away from him in all directions. As he touched down, his forcefield blasted the ground, torching the sand and igniting the nearby desert scrub.

He floated on one foot, smiling. He still held the red and blue emeralds in either hand, now burning as brightly as he was. He did not notice that the sky had darkened above him, or that a ripple of darkness was spreading outward across the world from where he stood. All that he knew was that this Knuckles person had been a goody-goody for far too long, and it was time to show those Freedom Fighters who was boss.

He took one step and shot across the island like a bullet, grass and trees igniting in his path, surrounded by a whirlwind of searing heat.

* * *

Zephyer was sitting in her tent, reading a book, when the sky darkened as if a switch had been flipped. The echidna looked up and crawled out of her tent. Darkness lay over the camp like a blanket, and people were looking around, wondering what had happened to the sunset.

Shouts drew her attention to the east. Flames were leaping up in the grass at the far end of the plain, as if someone had lit a bonfire. But it was sweeping toward them, other fires springing up around it.

Then they saw the glowing green figure in the heart of the flame, flying like Super Sonic, kindling everything to flames as he came. "What is that?" Zephyer gasped as the first gust of hot wind struck the camp.

It turned aside and circled the camp, lighting fire in a ring around it to cut off escape. People cried out in dismay, not fully comprehending their danger.

Sally ran up to Zephyer as the fiery green figure circled around again. "Zephyer! Did you see who that is?"

"No," said the echidna, watching the red flames lick up in the outskirts of the Great Forest.

"It's Knuckles!" Sally exclaimed. "Something's happened to him!"

"No way, that's not Knuckles," said Zephyer as the creature flashed by. But as she spoke his name, he halted and whirled about, a foot above the ground, the earth melting beneath him. They were fifty feet apart, but Zephyer saw with horror that it was an echidna without pupils, and his eyes were pools of burning red. His dreadlocks blew about him like the writhing snakes of a gorgon, and his teeth were bared.

"That's not Knuckles," Zephyer repeated. "Not anymore."

The green monster flew off again, then cut straight across the camp. Fire leaped up amid the tents, and people scrambled to get out of the way. Knuckles flew off, and Zephyer saw that he meant to cross the camp again at right angles. She bolted toward the point where he would turn, her heart thundering under her metal. Her robotized body might withstand the heat for a moment or two, but if she got too close she would cook inside her metal casing. She had no plan, only the idea that she could stop him.

They met near the fire ring. Zephyer flung up both hands and yelled, "Stop!"

The green echidna glided to a stop ten feet away and floated, smiling an insane smile. Zephyer squinted against the blast of heat coming off him, and saw that fire was being fanned across the grass toward her.

"Knuckles, stop this!" she yelled above the roar of fire, wind and lightning combined. "What have you done?"

He didn't answer, but his smile changed to a sneer. The instant before he charged, Zephyer glimpsed the fiery emeralds in his fists.

Sally found her a few minutes later, dragging herself out of Knuckles' fire-path. "Zephyer! Are you all right?"

"Fine, don't touch me," the echidna gasped, stumbling to her feet. Her robotized body was blackened and burning hot, and Zephyer's long dreadlocks were scorched. "Sally, he's got two emeralds. That's what's happened to him. He's out of his mind!" She was half in tears.

The squirrel turned and stared after Knuckles, who was circling the camp again like a demonic whirlwind. "How do you stop Chaos Emeralds?"

"I don't know," whispered Zephyer, her metal ticking as it cooled. "He's going to kill us."

Suddenly Sally turned to the echidna, blue eyes bright. "I know! They did it on the ARK! The Chaos Emeralds can be neutralized by the Master Emerald!"

"Where's Sonic when you need him?" groaned Zephyer, not listening.

"Zephyer!" Sally barked. "Listen! The Master Emerald can shut down the Chaos Emeralds!"

"So what can I do?" said Zephyer.

"Get to the Floating Island and do something," said Sally, turning away. "I've got to get everyone away from here. Good luck, Zephyer!"

Zephyer was left alone in the fire-washed night, dazed and confused. "Think, girl!" she told herself. "You have to get to the Floating Island. And the way to do that is to get to the teleporter!" The teleporter was back in the woods, where it had been left near Knothole proper.

Shielding her face with her robot arms, Zephyer leaped through the burning inferno lit by her attacker and ran through the woods, half blind in the darkness, arms out to ward off branches and tree trunks. Where was the teleporter? She didn't think she could find it in the dark. Cool night air touched her face and cooled her metal body. She gulped it down in lungfuls and kept running.

She stumbled into Knothole and looked around, holding her side where a stitch was developing. It was so dark she couldn't see much, but she guessed where the teleporter was and hurried off to find it. Behind her, the black sky was lit with an orange glow, and there were crashes and cries and the roar of fire echoing through the trees. Knuckles made no sound himself, and it frightened her. One could not predict the actions of a madman, particularly not a madman driven by the red Chaos Emerald.

Her feet clanked against something solid, and she stumbled over the teleporter. She groped over the smooth lens for the activation switch, turned it and stepped onto the lens. As it lit up, she thought she saw an orange glow approaching from between the trees. "C'mon, c'mon," she said, clenching her fists. She would not survive another encounter with him.

The teleporter bathed her in blue light, and a second later she was beaming down in the darkness on the Floating Island. Where was she? She stood on the receiver plate, straining her eyes to see. It was darker than night, for no stars shone in the sky. She had been to Hidden Palace only once in her life, and had no idea how to get there.

On impulse she reached down and turned the location knob one notch. Now it would send her to the next teleporter in the network. She activated it and was warped to the next one. Still too dark, still the chirping of crickets. She repeated the procedure, praying that she was not wasting too much time. The next one was indoors somewhere, but it was not the cave she wanted. One more click of the knob, and she teleported into a tall cave with an opening in the top. She jumped off the receiver plate and ran for the soft colored glow coming from the next room.

Hidden Palace was lit by the Master Emerald in its bed of seed crystals, and the seven Super Emeralds, set on pedestals in a circle around it. It was cool, quiet, and soothing to Zephyer's tortured nerves. But as she started toward the Master Emerald, she heard the teleporter turn on behind her, and the rush of fiery wind as Someone entered the emerald chamber.

Oh no.

She arrived at the Master Emerald, gasping for breath, and peered over it as the insane green Knuckles swept into the room without touching the floor. She looked down at the vast surface of the Master Emerald, and at the soft light in its crystal depths. The power emeralds fried electronics like a lightning bolt, but she had no choice. She slapped her robot hands down on the emerald and screamed, "Stop Knuckles!"

The Master Emerald's glow brightened tenfold, and Zephyer fell to the floor where she lay panting, arms shielding her face. Knuckles leaped across the room like a tiger, fists foremost, ready to rend her limb from limb, for even in his madness, he still had the instinct to protect the Master Emerald. But as the ruling gem blazed with light, the two chaos emeralds in the echidna's fists dimmed as their power was switched off.

Knuckles landed on his feet and dropped to all fours as his green glow faded. The red light left his eyes. He was once more a mortal echidna, and sat on the floor, disoriented and nauseous. The sky outside returned to its normal shade of summer twilight, and the dark cloud vanished like smoke.

He sat up and looked at the emeralds in his hands. He let them plink to the floor and stripped off his left glove. The hand that had held the red gem was shiny and burned. It was painless, but he knew that stage wouldn't last long. Wait a minute. Things he had done were trickling back into his head, along with frenzied, violent thoughts, and his own aggression, magnified a thousand times. Had Zephyer really tried to stop him? Hesitantly, he said aloud, "Zephyer?"

He heard her move and clank against the floor. Unsteadily Knuckles stood up and had to grab the Master Emerald pedestal for support. He shakily moved around it and saw Zephyer crouched, as if trying to hide. She saw him and backed away, staring at him with such raw terror that he was startled. "Stay away," she breathed.

"Zeff," he said, "It's me. It's over, I'm myself again."

Zephyer stopped, but continued to watch him. She was trembling. "You set fire to the whole camp. The Great Forest is on fire. Then you tried to kill me twice. It gives me reason to feel nervous, don't you think?" Her voice cracked and she began to laugh, a hysterical laugh that was not quite her own.

"Zephyer," said Knuckles, wincing. "Please stop."

"I asked you to stop, too," she giggled, "but you didn't!" She sank to the floor and her laughter turned to sobs.

Knuckles had never seen anyone have hysterics before, but he guessed this was what they were. He limped to her side and knelt beside her. "It's okay, Zeff. It's okay."

She turned away from him, put her head in her hands and drew deep breaths. "I'm fine," she whispered. "I'm calm. Go help Sally. The Knothole camp is burning down."

Knuckles refused to leave her until she was quite calm, and the catch in her breathing had faded. "I'm going back," he told her. "The Chaos Emeralds are over there on the floor, and don't go near the red one."

"I touched the Master Emerald to save you," she replied. Once her fright and hysterics had worm off, she was sinking into a foul mood. "I'm never touching one of those emeralds again."

Knuckles paused halfway to the teleporter and turned back. "Zephyer ..."

"What?" She looked up peevishly from her seat on the floor.

"No one but me is supposed to be able to command the Master Emerald."

"I'm an echidna too, aren't I?" Zephyer snapped. "How much do you know about other echidnas? Nothing, that's what. Get going before I start getting mad."

Knuckles went.