The empty gray room was empty and gray. The hallway was a conduit, carrying sounds to their destinations. The railway opened its doors to allow the sounds to board, and then, as invisible as its passengers, moved swiftly down the hall and the sounds disembarked. The invisible train arrived, and footsteps stepped from the invisible platform. Another train; another train. Each train brought the same sound, yet louder. Now figures appeared on the tracks, unafraid of the invisible train which traveled less and less far but did not hit them. They fearlessly walked the train tracks; perhaps they did not see them.
They came to a door and opened it. They stepped inside, knocking the echidna to his knees and turning around, closing the door behind them.
Dr. Robotnik was standing here, and he turned around. The echidna rose to his feet. "You… are Robotnik?"
"Yes, my friend."
The echidna, Knuckles, shouted: "What do you want with me?"
"Well, you see, we both have need of each other. You have something I want, and I've something you want."
Knuckles didn't respond, only glaring coldly at Robotnik.
"You are—are you not?—of the house of Edmund?"
Knuckles blinked.
"You are the Guardian, no?"
"I… am guardian."
"Well, then, guardian, I have need for a certain something. The emerald, of course. There happens to be some kind of seal on the chamber, and I can't seem to break it; herein lies the problem. I need you to break the seal."
"I… should have… known."
"Known what? That I needed the emerald?" Robotnik laughed genuinely. "Yes, dear lad, you should have."
"I… can't… let you."
Robotnik laughed acerbically. "Then would you prefer to be slain at the hand of your own friend? The crocodile, perhaps – or perhaps the armadillo?"
Knuckles was taken aback.
"What… do you mean?" said Knuckles through bared teeth.
"I take it you haven't been yet introduced to the roboticizer?"
Knuckles stared blankly ahead.
"Allow me," said Robotnik, turning to the wall with a grin. He pressed a button and an image of a roboticizer materialized on the nether wall. "With this, I can turn living animals into machines—machines which do my bidding."
"No."
"Oh, yes," said Robotnik like a knife. "Now, will you help me get into the Chaos chamber, or will you need some more persuasion?"
A great knife struck Knuckles at the top of the skull, and sliced through his body, cutting him clean in half. He was torn. One half of him, with half a mouth, cried, "I'll do it!" but his other half screamed out: "No, I can't!" Knuckles staggered backward.
Robotnik turned back to the panel on the wall and pressed a button. Perhaps ten seconds later, the door opened and two SWATbots stepped in, each grabbing Knuckles by one arm. "Take twenty-four hours to think about it. I'll speak with you again then. Remember, the Chaos, or your friends' lives – and your own."
The SWATbots dragged Knuckles writhing out the door.
THE FLOATING ISLAND…
A speck buzzed through the sky, humming a tune of nonmeaning, screaming abstraction. This speck came closer to the serene locus, and was a bee. Then the empty air moved, and was all around itself. Nothing was shouting: "Wait!"
The speck, the bee in the huge, huge world, stopped.
Nothing was shouting.
"Wait!"
And nonentity was calling.
Fading in, or was the world fading out?
Fading in, the chameleon was; or was the nonentity just fading away?
"Espio!"
"I see you did get away, as I thought."
"What… where's everyone else?"
Espio faded out, and then back in. "Gone."
"What?"
"Knuckles was taken; Mighty was taken; Vector was taken. All before my eyes."
There was nothing more to be said.
Walking, fading, fading, walking, accompanied by the buzz of the trivial speck of dust in the air – the one that had spoken – was the half-there entity-nonentity. They walked in silence. The world rose up before them, and seemed only a distant dream. They walked to busy themselves; there was little other reason. And then the barren world yielded something else. A huge legion. It was familiar, but of greater volume than they had seen before. The two saw it, and looked at each other for a moment before scampering ahead, together, without words, to watch the proceeding from cover.
There was a carrier. And there were lines and lines of robots, marching into the carrier. The carrier's door was a funnel, a bottleneck, and the robots, sand, poured into it, gradually leaving the one world and disappearing into the carrier. Eventually all the sand got through the finite-width mouth of the siphon. And when it did, the carrier lifted off, full of sand, and the many lines, many bodies, were gone. So many had stood but minutes before, and now the place they had only minutes ago occupied was empty, naked.
"They're… leaving?"
"Not all of them, I'm sure, but I think they got what they came for."
"What's that?"
"Knuckles."
"What comes next?"
"All Hell."
The door of detention opened; the red guardian pierced the invisible barrier the door's frame defined. It was the divider between half-freedom and complete detainment.
The door slammed shut. Knuckles did not move. His mind was too busy racing to allocate time to his arms and legs, so he was frozen. His mind was warring itself.
"He can turn them into machines. Slaves. The roboticizer… can make them just like the armies that invaded the Floating Island. The island…my duty…to protect it…and the emerald. Without the emerald, the island will die…fall to the ground…be destroyed. But how do I even know? Why am I guardian? My father told me so…but he is not here. How can I trust a dead man? My friends. All I know…"
Knuckles' own voice was running through his head. All he heard was the sounds within his skull. And now, within his head, his voice was interrupted. Inside his head, another foreign voice, yet strangely familiar.
"Koukennin! Kouken-san!"
This voice was in his head. And he did not create it. Knuckles was started. Where was this voice coming from? The answer: his head, but not his mind. He did not forge it. Someone was speaking within him.
It came again. "You mustn't give in to Robotnik, Koukennin."
Knuckles now shouted aloud in response to the voice in his head. "Who are you?!"
"In time, all will be revealed. Now is not the time. Just listen: you must not help Robotnik."
"But my friends!" Knuckles was covering his face with both hands, kneeling on the ground.
"You must not let Robotnik get the Chaos emerald. Do you understand?"
"How can I understand?" cried Knuckles. "How can you understand? I have nobody but for them! I can't let them die!"
"You are guardian! Do not abandon your duties!"
"I am guardian over an empty place and I don't even know why!" said Knuckles, half-sobbing.
"That will not always be. Now listen; you must not open the Chaos chamber for Robotnik! You must defend the island of which you are guardian!"
"I can't!" shouted Knuckles, tears running through his fingers. "I must save them; they are the only family I know!"
Knuckles wept, and the cold gray walls were cold and gray. They were as empty as he was.
Through the night, Knuckles twisted and turned. He was unsettled. His dreams were vivid monochrome. They were nightmares. He writhed. His father was there, shouting at him, in his dreams, his nightmares. His father was disparaging him, telling him overtly how he had miserably failed. Knuckles, in his dream, turned from his father, and he saw his friends. They were dead. Bloody. Their corpses were battered. Knuckles rushed to them, but as he did, Mighty's bloody corpse rose, and it transformed. It was now changed into machine, yet still bloodied. The wraith of what had once been Mighty reached and clenched Knuckles by the throat. From the ground, he saw the bloody, dead corpse of Vector. Dead, it spoke, lifelessly and ghastly: "You… murdered… us… Wicked, you vile…"
Knuckles screamed. He jolted upright, free from the horror, the agonizing torture, the terrible pain. Knuckles wept like a child, drowning himself in his tears. His eyes swelled and his hands buried them. The tears pooled around Knuckles on the flooring. He cried himself back to sleep.
The war was still invisible to the world, but in his head, another war had already begun. His head was filled with entropy; his senses atrophied. Nothing was alone anymore; even he, alone in the cold, dark room, was accompanied by myriad clashing pains and feelings and confusions which kept him company. Alone, he desired nothing more than to be truly alone, for all the things that had happened to just go away, for the voices to shut up, for normality to return and comfort him. He wanted the pain to die.
It would not die. Knuckles had perhaps slept, but if he had, he was oblivious to the fact. Knuckles wouldn't have known, for if he had consciously slept, subconsciously the agonies had kept him awake, heart pounding, so within his dream he was anything but asleep. He had, under his own volition, agreed to meet with Robotnik, he remembered. "Why?," thought Knuckles. "I followed the general by my own will. I brought myself here. And for what?" Knuckles remembered: "To save my friends." That was why he had come. He had come here. If he didn't save his friends, his bringing this pain upon himself, the four walls cold and steely around him, his following the general and walking into the airship: it would have all been for naught. "I didn't know what I was doing. I let my heart think for my head. I didn't reason about it before I said I'd meet Robotnik. I fell into this trap. I fell into this snare with no way out. I should have just run. I should have turned and fled." Knuckles was tearing himself apart. He had been stupid! He had to put the blame somewhere, and what better place than himself? No, not Robotnik. It never even passed through his mind to blame Robotnik; not yet, at least, despite how culpable Robotnik was, and how vindicated the blame would be if it rested on Robotnik. Only Knuckles was in this room. Knuckles couldn't exact revenge on Robotnik; Knuckles was alone in this room, so he must take the blame. "If I had stayed there, Robotnik wouldn't have gotten the emerald. I came here. If I had fled, he couldn't threaten to kill my friends…and if he had killed them out of spite, he would have killed his source of blackmail, and then he'd never have any footing against me in getting the emerald. And if he didn't kill them, they'd still be alive, and I could save them! But if I went to save them, then he'd be able to threaten me and force me to where I am now…but at least that would be later. I could have had a chance. You idiot!" Knuckles' thoughts were flowing like a great river in his head, ideas slurring together; his thoughts were as one current in his mind, rambling silently.
The door opened. Knuckles was robbed of his time of self-admonishment and self-hatred and cold shame. Two SWATbots came in. Robotnik would see him now, they said, grabbing him each by one arm and pulling him abruptly from his dual prisons: that of the four walls, and that of the mind.
Robotnik turned around in his chair as Knuckles was brought in. "Ah, echidna. Have you decided to accept my proposal?"
"What proposal is that?" shouted the echidna, still writhing within the grip of the two SWATbots.
"You are to open the Chaos chamber for me; you remember this, of course."
"And in return?"
Robotnik laughed coldly. "Don't worry, echidna."
Knuckles fiercely thrashed, trying to step forward to feed Robotnik the pain Robotnik had fed him, but the SWATbots held him firmly. Knuckles felt the effect of recoil as he hit the end of his proverbial leash, like a dog, but the leash was tied to SWATbots, not a tree, not a doghouse. Knuckles stumbled backward an inch. "Just you remember, Robotnik. I am the only one who can open the Chaos chamber for you."
"And I hold your friends' lives in my hands." Robotnik clenched the empty air in his fist as he closed his hand. "Or, at least, I have their minds. …Their souls, and their will!"
Knuckles let out a howl, and pulled against his leash's end again.
"Free them now! Free them now or I'll never help you!"
Robotnik smiled.
"You listen to me! Listen!!!" Knuckles was shouting, begging to be heard, to be acknowledged.
"I'm listening, echidna. It's quite entertaining, in fact, to hear you bawling as you are."
"Bastard! Do you not want the emerald? I can only make myself tolerate talking to you for so long."
Robotnik chuckled. "Very well, then, echidna. I guarantee your friends' freedom in return for your service."
"I trust you about as far as I can throw you. I'm not taking your word for it. Free them first; then I'll do what you ask."
"I'm afraid the nature of this transaction doesn't leave itself open to that option. They'll be freed afterward; you have my word."
"I'd have to be a fool to believe your word!"
Robotnik nodded, but not to Knuckles. Snively, who had entered the room at some point during the quite-apprehensive conversation, if it could even be called a conversation, responded to his uncle's signal and stepped up to Knuckles, raising a gun to his head.
Knuckles' pupils flicked for a moment to dart to see the gun at his head, and then flicked back to Robotnik. Knuckles said angrily, "You kill me and you'll never get the emerald. Remember that."
Robotnik smiled. "Unfortunately for you, that's not the case. If I kill you, there are others I can use to get into the chamber. You're simply the most convenient."
Knuckles was enraged. "What are you talking about? I'm the guardian!" Knuckles looked from side to side. "I don't see any other guardian here!"
"You must be quite oblivious, my friend. Rest assured that I will kill you if I must, and that I'll still get the emerald. There are others like you that I can use to get into the chamber."
"There are no others like me anymore!"
"It's quite sad that I know more about them than you do, being that you know nothing."
Knuckles had no words. Snively armed the gun; it clicked.
"So, echidna, will you cooperate with me, or will you die and your friends become machines?"
Inside his head, he was screaming: "I must protect the emerald! I mustn't cooperate!" Inside his head, he was screaming: "I must save my friends! I must!"
Knuckles couldn't hear anything over the sound of his own voice upon itself upon itself upon itself. Deafened by his own screaming, he forced himself to decide, in order to silence the screaming and the bleeding of his ears. He decided; his decision: not to decide. The screaming voice – his own – was not satisfied with the decision of indecision.
"Do you guarantee the freedom of myself and my friends?"
"Genuinely, I guarantee it. I'll have no need of you or your friends after I have the emerald, and you pose little threat. You'll be the least of my concerns."
Knuckles nodded. "Take me."
He had no power. He was worthless to Robotnik. He couldn't even stop Robotnik from getting the emerald if he tried; Robotnik had other means, he had said. Knuckles realized that Robotnik could easily be lying, but it didn't matter. Knuckles felt himself powerless, and thus without power he was without choice.
Knuckles sat, wrists shackled, in a corner of the grand airship as it descended. He had seen Mighty and Vector be led onto the airship ahead of him, but hadn't been able to catch sight of them once he himself was aboard. He heard the rumbling of the engine pale and then die. There was a loud sound, and shortly after, he was pulled to his feet by two SWATbots, perhaps the same two as before, perhaps not; they were all but identical, so he could only speculate.
The ramp lowered from the grand ship's exit, and Knuckles, at the manmade hands of the two SWATbots, descended. Shortly after, Dr. Robotnik descended the ramp. Behind Robotnik, shortly after, came Mighty and Vector, each held in submission by SWATbots.
"The Chaos chamber is just over there," said Robotnik, pointing to the place of which he spoke.
"I know where it is," said Knuckles through his teeth coldly with little emotion, but perhaps with annoyance.
"The Chaos chamber?!" Mighty shouted, rousing from the grip of the SWATbots that held him but unable to break free of it. He, like Knuckles, was leashed.
Knuckles lowered his head and did not speak.
"Why are we going to the Chaos chamber?!" shouted Mighty.
Knuckles did not speak.
Robotnik spoke, but ignored Mighty's words. "March!"
They marched.
They reached the chamber. There was a looming sense of unease. It was in the air. It existed. It flew with the breeze and drifted and brought unease to all it passed over. It would soon explode.
The marching stopped.
"Arms!" shouted Robotnik. Instantly, the SWATbots holding Mighty and Vector raised their weapons and aimed them at their captives' heads.
"Shall we, echidna?" said Robotnik with a smirk, shifting his gaze to the guardian.
"They'll be free?"
"Yes, I truly intend to keep my word. I will have no more need for you or them after this."
Vector shouted: "You… you're not going to… give him the emerald?"
Knuckles was silent.
Mighty reacted: "No, no… no, Knuckles! You can't! You must protect the—"
Knuckles reeled around; his back had been to them, but it was no more. "I can't! I must! You're the only family I know!"
Robotnik laughed mockingly. "Aw, how touching…"
Knuckles turned back around, without emotion, and followed Robotnik.
They came to the entrance. "Break the seal," ordered Robotnik.
Knuckles looked back over his shoulder, to see Mighty and Vector pleading with their eyes for him not to do it, but then he saw Mighty and Vector themselves, and this was his reason for doing it.
Knuckles turned back, and placed his hand upon the seal. He uttered ancient words. The seal flashed blindingly, drowning the world in pure saturation of nothing but all-white. Once it had been done, it could not be undone. When the color was gone, the seal was gone. Robotnik pushed Knuckles aside and entered the chamber.
The Chaos chamber hummed with incredible power; its walls had a crystalline quality about them despite being of stone, reflecting, or trying to reflect, all that was thrown at them back about the chamber, like a many-faced mirror that had been dulled with age. The emerald radiated its green light and the walls of the chamber flickered with the green light as if it were the reflection of a green ocean, the light bending smoothly and reflecting in varying hues, its bends oscillating smoothly. It was beautiful. Even Robotnik, with his heart ironcast, was taken aback by the beauty of it all for a moment. That did not stop him from taking it. Robotnik stepped to the center of the great chamber, with the emerald on its clawed pedestal at his knees. He bent, and seized the power, pulling it from the clutches of its clawed dais, which did not want to give it up.
As Robotnik took the emerald from its place, the chamber's anger and sorrow and resentment at having its prized possession taken from it was heard loud and clear. The sobbing of the chamber shook its walls, and its booming anger came in rumbling from near and from far. Robotnik quickly turned and ran from the chamber with the emerald.
As his shoulder passed Knuckles' shoulder, Knuckles shouted: "You will free my friends now?"
Robtonik had forgotten about Knuckles in his hurry to escape from the anger of the place he had violated. Knuckles' voice reminded him, though, and Robotnik turned to face Knuckles. "Oh, yes, I do intend to keep my word. You and your friends shall be set free." Robotnik now ordered the SWATbots: "Off the edge!" The SWATbots understood, as they now went into motion responding to these words. Robotnik fled hastily toward the airship, turning his back on everything else, leaving his slaves to finish the deed.
Knuckles and Mighty and Vector were still in the grips of the SWATbots, and now the SWATbots were taking them somewhere.
The island was shaking. Knuckles looked up for the first time to see that the clouds were running away.
He realized: the island was falling.
"Shit!" cried Knuckles.
No sooner had he said this than he realized where they were being taken. The edge of the island was on the horizon and drawing nearer quickly. Time flew by Knuckles. He turned his head to see the time fly by but it was already long gone. When he turned his head back, they were at the edge.
Robotnik's voice came in through a transmitter/receiver on one of the SWATbots' arms. "Release them!" Knuckles looked up to see the airship in the sky, quickly fleeting upward. No, Knuckles realized; the island was fleeting downward. Knuckles had barely finished this thought when the SWATbots released him violently. He was in the air; his feet left the ground, and he was off the island. Knuckles looked backward to see Mighty and Vector heaved off the island's edge, liberated. As he saw this, he heard Robotnik's voice: "Now you are free!" and then Robotnik's laughter.
Knuckles could hardly even grasp what was going on. He was falling like the island, but he had no footing, no place to put his feet. He was falling. His friends were falling. They were liberated, from Robotnik, and from the island. They were liberated through slavery. Knuckles had to save his friends. He fanned his dreadlocks and slowed his fall. No sooner had he done this than he realized his mistake. He slowed his fall and reached for his friends, but they fell through his grasp and were now far below him. He had slowed his fall but now that his friends had passed him, far out of reach, falling like stones, he could not slow their fall, and he could never again catch up with them. They were gone, out of reach, unattainable, and there was nothing he could do.
Mighty and Vector looked up to see Knuckles fan out his dreadlocks and stop as if he had let out a parachute, taut. They were without parachutes. Knuckles bounded away upward into the firmament, and then he was gone above.
In a moment, the pain was upon them. The pain came instantaneously in one moment; the moment before they had felt no pain, and the pain felt cold, and for one single moment stinging and sharp, but for many many moments cold. They felt cold all around them, and the cold came with a great crashing sound. Their eyes closed when the pain lashed at them and they vomited as the sting had gutted them.
That instant, which brought the cold, was cataclysmic.