Sonic Hill 2: DX

Chapter 18: Deep Into That Darkness

------

-Clopclopclopclopclopclopclopclopclopclopclopclopclopclopclopclopclopclopclop…

The never-ending darkness surrounded its new victim, feeding upon his vision as he ran deeper and deeper down the steps into the earth. It almost seemed, to Miles, that the stairs would never end. He'd already been running down them for six minutes, but there was still no sign of a bottom in sight. Considering how close the historical society had been to the lake, the stairs should have been entering the water by now, which confused him to no end. Was he just running in place or something? Would this lead him for an eternity deeper into the darkness of The Abyss?

Long he walked, deeper and deeper into that darkness, wondering when his journey would end. His trusty flashlight was beginning to dim, not lighting the steps ahead of him quite as much as before. A small bit of fear—nothing compared to what he had felt many times before, but still clinging to its own bacterial existence—was drifting through his soul, fear that the light would go off and leave him alone in the black this far underground. Part of him wanted to turn away and run back up the steps, but the other part of him felt the much stronger need to continue on and see what lay ahead of him. Besides, he wasn't even sure if he could walk all this way back upstairs without his legs crumbling below him from exhaustion at this point.

He felt very tired, not only from jogging down this endless stairs for the past seven minutes, but from all the running around he'd done earlier that…he wasn't even sure if it was the same day anymore. Time didn't seem to exist in Sonic Hill.

And if it did, it most certainly didn't in The Abyss. In any case, his legs felt weakened. He hadn't been into running, unlike Sonic who seemed to practically have a fetish for the activity. He was pretty sure he hadn't run this much consecutively in his entire life.

And he'd be running for a while longer. Ten more minutes of going deeper and deeper underground, the tired fox's hope was beginning to fade with the brightness of his flashlight. Like times before though, enough motivation to continue on came just in time to stop him from giving up completely – the bottom of the extremely long stairs came into view. A dark, shadowy steel door stood not too far ahead, which the young fox stopped at and held onto as he tried to catch his breath. He must have been at least a mile underground by now, probably even more…

Having an empty doubt that he'd ever see the light of day ever again, Miles grasped the handle of the door and opened it into a small dusty square room. A few desks lined the walls, and it looked as if it could be a checkpoint of some sort for visitors.

'Is this place still considered part of the museum?' he wondered. '…did people come down her all the time or something?'

Hell if he knew. All the desks were covered with dust, and had absolutely nothing on any of them, telling him that the place hadn't been used in a long time either – probably even more so than in most of the other places in town. In the back of the room was another steel door. Miles walked to the door and went past it, entering a long stone corridor with a few forks and turns in it, almost like a labyrinth. Luckily, there weren't many dead ends or anything, but all of them had locked doors. That is, until Miles reached a broken door in one corner, which looked like it were moments from falling off its hinges entirely. Placing his foot on the metal, he kicked it open, revealing another small square room like the other one. Dust-covered desks lined the place, but that was all that was noticeable, except for another steel door on the other side of the room. Miles went through that door and entered a second twisting and turning corridor. He was walking through this one for an even shorter amount of time than the last before he spotted the door in a dead end. Opening it, he shined his light into the new room.

"Whoa…"

It was just like the painting: a very small room with an even smaller square hole in the center. It was big enough to fit maybe six or seven people in at once. That was the only thing in the entire square cube, so Miles leaned forward and shined the beam of his flashlight into the hole. Only more darkness down below: no sign of a bottom at all…

'That painting…'

It scared him, but he knew what he needed to do. Just like with the stairs, he really didn't have any other choice anyway. Only one answer came to Miles's mind. It was suicidal, insane, but so was the town. It was his only way.

'Jump.'

Clenching his eyes shut, and trying not to think too much before he did it, Miles leaped off of the ground and down the hole. Gravity quickly dragged him down at blinding speeds, giving his body that horrible feeling of ground zero. Deeper and deeper he fell, until finally his furry body collapsed onto the hard cold gravel floor below.

---Later…---

Taptaptap, clink, tap tap, clink…

Taptaptap, clink, tap tap, clink…

"…ugnn…"

Moaning from the headache that overcame his mind the moment he regained consciousness, Miles eyelids slid open, only seeing blackness everywhere.

Sometimes, he wondered if he'd be better off if the jump had killed him.

He slowly got up, rubbing his head in the process, until he was on his knees. Somehow the flashlight had turned off, leaving in utter darkness, but he soon enough spotted the object clipped onto his chest and turned it back on, illuminating the dark well he was in and stinging his eyes with the sudden change in brightness. Miles waited for a few seconds for his pupils to adjust to the light, then looked around the place.

It was as if he'd fallen to the bottom of a very large and deep well. The dark stone walls circled around him, leaving no trace of a door or escape hole or anything. Looking up, Miles saw only blackness like he had seen before he had jumped.

'Shit, I'm stuck.' He realized rather bluntly, running up to the walls and feeling them to try and see if he could find a way to climb back up. There were none, the walls were far too perfected to do that. 'Not good…'

Now he really wished that the fall had killed him. He was stuck down here to starve to death, if he didn't blow his brains out first. Why would they build all this just to lead to the bottom of a well though? Miles didn't understand that at all…

In a final attempt to find a way out, Miles began to feel along all the walls, hoping beyond all reason that somehow he'd find a hidden door or…something.

…

…

…

-Crack!

A few minutes of desperately searching later, he placed his hand on one of the bricks on the ground level and was surprised to see it move the slightest bit. A quiet cracking noise emitted throughout the huge well, bouncing off the walls in unison with Miles's grunts of strain while he tried to push the large stone forward. Then, he got an idea. Taking the empty shotgun from behind his back, he put the handle of the weapon onto the brick and began repeatedly slamming it against the wall, pushing it a few centimeters each time.

Though he knew the gun was empty, pushing the handle against the wall with the barrel aimed at him made him feel very uncomfortable. That didn't really matter though, so he just kept pushing. Eventually, the large stone moved so far back that it fell out from the other side.

-Splash!

"Huh?"

Curiously, the baggy blue-eyed fox stuck his head through the new hole in the bottom of the wall and saw an underground steam of water, like some sort of pipeline or sewer. He couldn't tell – the water was clear enough to see through, but still didn't look very clean. Either way, it was the only way out. Miles was just small enough to fit through the tiny hole, so he put the shotgun back on his back and got down on his hands and knees, crawling through the gap. Since he crawled in head first, he ended up falling headfirst into the dirty water once he got far enough in.

"Ugh…" he said, getting up so he was kneeling in the knee-deep water. "Great…"

He remembered how much Sonic hated water…he didn't hate it as much, but that didn't change the fact that dirty sewage water was not fun to swim in. Where could this water be coming from, this deep underground? Getting up, Miles shook the wetness off his fur, not completely throwing it all off. He brushed the three long locks of hair that were plastered to his face out of his eyes and shook his head around again. His shoes and socks were already soaked, and they wouldn't dry out for a long while. Just when he thought he couldn't feel more unpleasant, it got worse. Figures.

Sighing, Miles decided to look on the bright—well, dimly lit is more like it—side: at least he wasn't still in that dark well. He looked down both ends of the rather short waterway. The end behind him was inaccessible because some metal bars blocked the way, letting only the water through into the shadows of the tunnel. The end in front of him though had bars too, but also had a ladder on the left wall leading up to a small corridor about ten feet above him. Sloshing through the knee-deep wetness, Miles grasped onto the rusted metal and climbed up the ladder, feeling the water increasing the weight of his carrying bag and side pack. Once he got to the top, he stopped at the edge of this tunnel and slid his hand into his pocket to find Sonic's letter and photo had gotten moist too, but not as much as everything else. Good thing – he didn't know what he'd do if he lost those too…

Miles pulled Sonic's photo out and stared at it for the first time in a while. Just doing that inspired him more to go on – he missed him so much…

The sound of running water echoed in the distance, becoming quieter and quieter as Miles walked farther down the tunnel until he reached the heavy steel door on the left wall. Grasping onto it, he pulled it open and entered the new place, shutting it behind him.

In front of him was another square hole in a room just like the last one, except this time the room was blocked off to him by a metal gate. The area he was in was a thin corridor that stretched both left and right. Since he couldn't go straight forward, he took the left hall. The right one seemed to just dead-end a few yards away. There was only one door on the left hall, which he opened up into an extremely small and cramped concrete cell, not too different from the one he'd found that freaky doll in at the hospital.

On the floor a few feet in front of him was a key, lying there like someone had placed it there on purpose. It seemed like a trap, almost, and this time if Miles got screwed over he had no one to save him. But he had no other choice, so he kneeled down and picked up the strange looking key. The words 'Spiral-Writing' were written onto it.

And the very second he laid eyes upon those words, Miles Prower was engulfed in darkness.

It took him a few moments to realize it, but his flashlight battery had finally run out, leaving him alone in the pitch-black cell. Fear overcame him again and he thought about what might happen if he couldn't see at all. Never before had he been in such a small dark place as this, and there was no way he could survive without some sort of light. As the batteries died, he feared he would too soon enough.

'Nonononono…'

And then he remembered, when he was in the mental hospital storage room he had picked up a dry cell battery! Reaching into his carrying bag, he grasped what felt like the battery and pulled it out, feeling very very glad that he had stumbled across it so long ago. Taking his flashlight, he opened the top and tried to jam the battery in, only accidentally putting it in the wrong way. Upon taking it out, he felt the weight of the flashlight leave his arms, and the sound of it hitting the ground was heard.

'Shit. Dropped it…'

Kneeling down blindly, Miles reached around to try and find where he dropped the flashlight. Hopefully it didn't break in the process, he'd have to find out soon enough—

—something small with thin needle-like legs crawled across his fingers.

"Aaah!" he cried, pulling his hand back. 'What the fuck was that!?'

That feeling he felt on his hand a second earlier moved across his feet, making him jump a bit and kick his foot around. Whatever it was, he couldn't see it. As fast as he could, he reached down again and blindly grabbed around for the flashlight. For a second he thought he had it, until the thing beneath his fingers squirmed and moved away, making him shake his hand away again. He reached around again, crushing the body of one of the small creatures on the way on accident, until he grasped what felt like the flashlight. Standing up, he jammed the battery into it and closed the lid, turning the flashlight on.

Hundreds of small cockroaches crawled the walls, ceiling, and floor of the tiny cell, coming seemingly out of nowhere. Seeing this brought Miles to a sudden panic, and he scrambled to the door—crushing one roach's body under his wet shoe in the process. In less than a split second he was on the door, trying to turn the handle. But it wouldn't turn. Lady luck seemed to enjoy fucking him over, because it had somehow locked from the other side. He muttered a few rapid cusses, terrified of the tiny little bugs surrounding almost every square in of the claustrophobic cell. Looking down at the knob, he saw there was a lock there that hadn't been there before. There were three number rolls, each with number one through four on them. It seemed he had to put in a combo, but he had no idea what it was. At lightning speeds, he tried rolling in several different combinations, desperately trying to escape the room before the cockroaches crawled all over him.

He felt one of the hundreds of roaches crawl up the back of his leg, sending shivers down his spine. Terrified, he kicked his leg in several directions, only catching a second roach in the process. Still randomly putting in numbers with his left hand, he flung the bugs off his leg with his right. More and more roaches began to crawl up his damp shoes as he rapidly tried the combos. As he continued kicking and squirming with terror, he heard a click when he finally put in the correct combo: 341. Immediately, he shoved the door open with all his might and ran into the concrete hallway, slamming to door closed behind him. He ran down the corridor, kicking the remaining bugs off his shoes in the process, until he reached the gate and unlocked it with the Spiral-Writing key, opening and slamming it behind him. He screeched to a halt just in time to stop himself from falling down the hole.

Trying to catch his breath, he shook his head. He hated cockroaches, and the very thought of being locked in a small room with a plethora of them made him shiver with fear. Amazing how those bugs could freak him out just as much if not more than the monsters in the town. He never understood why things were like that.

While he was still slightly on edge from the experience, Miles was overcome with an abrupt but strong feeling of unwanted solitude. He hadn't realized till just now how lonely he was. It felt like years since he left the hospital…the paranoid fox made a wish that he'd find some way out of this place soon, and more importantly, find Sonic…

In the meantime though, he was alone, and more than a mile underground. Looked like he'd only have to go deeper before he could get out – the hole in front of him looked bottomless, just like the last one did. He knew he still had to jump down it to continue forward. His mind wondered how many of these holes there were – he didn't want to jump down anymore. But he would if he had to.

'Sonikku, I won't give up…' he thought to himself, looking into the darkness of the pit. Wishing again that it'd end soon, Miles jumped down the hole into the dark depths of the underworld below.

-----

Deeper into The Abyss, he goes…

Will he escape…?

Nobody knows…