Edited November 22

All canon characters belong to Sega.

Reincarnate
Chapter 9: The Soul Machine

The room takes its sweet time swimming back into focus in front of Amy's eyes. The first impression she has is of grey – a whole lot of grey. When her other senses start coming back to her, she registers the hard, cold surface she's lying on, and thus determines that she's lying on concrete. That can't be good.

Her head feels really heavy, and judging by all the problems she's having just struggling into a sitting position, her body must weigh a thousand pounds. But a quick self-examination quickly disproves that theory – she's her normal size and self.

Where's everybody else?

She sits bolt upright at the thought and instantly regrets it – her head throbs and her skeleton seems to cave in on itself. After a long minute, the dizziness ebbs and she feels a bit better. She looks around, her vision now completely clear.

She's alone in a cell, prevented from escaping by red lasers that crisscross the "door" of the tiny room: none of the gaps between them large enough for her to fit through. Not that she had been expecting escape to be so easy. She walks as close to the lasers as she dares and peers out through one of the openings.

It's not unlike the time she was held captive on the Egg Fortress. A long line of cells extend on either side of her, all blocked by lasers like her own. She cranes her neck, trying to see some of her friends. She can't see anyone – for all she can tell she's absolutely alone here.

If she was the type to curse without restraint, she'd be using every foul word she knew. She'd come this far just to be captured…again! What happened to independence? What happened to proving she's made of tougher stuff than she looks (because who'd think a pink, thirteen-year-old girl hedgehog could be fierce)? What happened to – wait.

There's always her hammer. She's surrounded by what looks like concrete. She's never tried busting through walls, but her hammer, despite its cheery color, is pretty sturdy. It's worth a shot, anyway. She whisks it out and sizes up the wall, preparing for a forceful swing.

Hard, metallic footsteps echo off the walls. She relaxes her stance, slides the hammer out of sight, and waits, hoping against hope that Tails somehow managed to get out and is coming for her.

No such luck. The robot's armor is black, and steely claws hang at the ends of its arms. A slot opens in what serves as its palm and a card slides out, which it slides through a lock on the side of the door. Amy smirks and prepares to yank out her hammer again. This'll be easy. She'll smash the robot, extract the card, and search for her friends. If she's lucky the card will work for their cells too, and she'll free them all!

The lasers deactivate around the door, her hand shoots towards her hammer –

But hard, metallic pincers crush her for the second time in too short a time period, clamping securely around her arms as well so she can't reach her weapon.

"Gah! Darn it!"

She struggles, but to no avail. She hadn't been expecting to wriggle out of the iron-hard grip anyway. The robot yanks her through the doorway and stumps off down the corridor and Amy counts one, two, three cells without lasers blocking the way out. She presumes that her friends had been fetched while she was still knocked out. But, hang on…

Three cells…there were five of us. Who wasn't locked up?

The robot carries her through several doorways and corridors, all made of some kind of metal and lit by lights activated by motion, meaning that while the area a few feet around them is brightly lit, the rest of the tunnel is dark. There are no doors in some of the halls. Amy's starting to get seriously creeped out by the time she and the robot emerge into a familiar chamber.

It's the one they reached through the outside tunnel! The odd-looking machine is still there, although this time it looks like it's turned on. Lights on it flicker randomly, and a faint humming fills the room.

The robot throws her away from it unexpectedly. She smacks against the wall and two claws shoot out of the wall around her, closing over her upper arms and torso, keeping her pressed against the wall and practically immobile.

"Oh, great," she snaps, wriggling unsuccessfully. A few doors on the other walls slide open, and three more robots enter, holding a struggling Sonic, Knuckles, and Tails in their claws. They're tossed against the wall and trapped like Amy is. She watches as Knuckles strains, but even he can't break through the iron holding them in place.

"You guys all right?" she asks, hating the high-pitched worry in her voice.

"Amy!" Tails says, apparently just spotting her. "You're okay! We didn't see you when the robots got us out of our cells."

"Yeah, I'm fine," she says, pleased that he was concerned. "You all right, Sonic, Knuckles?"

Sonic glances over at her and gives her a weak thumbs-up, unable to do it fully because his arms are pinned. Knuckles tosses her a curt nod and narrows his violet eyes at the machine in front of them.

"What's going on?" he asks, but no one knows, of course. The robots have left them alone.

"This is stupid," Sonic says. "We've got to get out of this and find Shadow. I didn't see him in a cell, either. Did you, Amy?"

"No," she says, the fact that there's only four of them just hitting her. She feels a wave of panic hovering near her, ready to swoop down. Shadow had tried to save her from the assault. He'd been the one to come to her rescue, who'd yelled for her when the dart hit…

She feels kind of good all of a sudden, despite the seriousness of the situation.

Snap out of it, she warns herself. This is bad. Where'd they take him?

"Hang on," she hears Knuckles mutter, and then he lets out a roar of effort. With a creak, the claws holding him in place budge a bit, a small gap appearing between them. With a squirm and another heave, they pop open and Knuckles stumbles out.

"Heh," he says, a slight grin appearing on his face. "That wasn't so tough."

"Yeah, great," Sonic says. "How about getting the rest of us out of here?"

"I don't think that'll be necessary," a cold, but familiar voice says from the doorway. Their heads all swivel to see Robotnik enter the room, a smirk playing around his mouth despite the fact that Knuckles is free.

The reason for that becomes apparent when another robot zooms in through a door on the other side of the room, and though Knuckles spins around and aims a punch at it, he's still knocked back and the iron pincers clamp around him. The robot forces him against the wall again, beside Amy this time. The echidna blinks and starts to struggle, but another set of claws extend from the wall and clamp around his ankles, keeping him firmly in place. Knuckles curses and ceases struggling as Robotnik strides to the center of the room, laying a hand on the machine.

He hits a few buttons, and a section of the wall opposite Amy and her friends slides away, revealing not only the glass tube they saw earlier, but another one similar to it, in which floats…

"Shadow!" Amy gasps, and Robotnik raises an eyebrow, glancing at her.

"Exactly. I ran DNA tests on your friend to determine exactly who she – or, as it turns out, he – is, and can you imagine my surprise when I discovered that it's none other than the 'ultimate life form'. In a girl's body, too…strange, but it doesn't change the nature of the soul within."

"Whatever, Eggman," Sonic says derisively, as always refusing to take anything the doctor says seriously. "Think we're impressed?"

"Oh, you will be," Robotnik says with a smile that's more like a grimace. He walks towards them a few paces, waving a hand casually at the machine behind him.

"This," he announces, "Is a machine that will allow me unheard of power! Power greater than the Chaos Emeralds could offer, although once my plan is carried out they'll be recovered…and used to power weapons that I myself have created!"

The drama of the situation is lowered by a loud snort from Sonic.

"Yeah, sure," he chortles. "You and a plan that works – soon pigs will be flying, too."

"Silence, fool!" Robotnik snarls. "You won't be laughing once you become merely another energy source."

Amy's confused by now – Sonic as an energy source? She doesn't see how it can work. Luckily, Robotnik's love for bragging about his plans hasn't diminished, and he clasps his hands behind his back and draws a deep breath to fuel his explanation.

"I call this, my newest invention, the soul machine! It's vital to my plot, for you see, the invisible enemy you nearly faced in Station Square, the key to my plan to crush this planet, only functions if well-nourished by souls with a bit of character. Using this, I can extract your soul from your body, it will be consumed by my 'assistant', and you will all become nothing more than puppets that will do my will!"

Amy's jaw drops. Tails looks worried. Knuckle grits his teeth, and Sonic rolls his eyes.

"Yeah, sure."

"Sonic!" Amy says, her voice high and frightened, "I think he's telling the truth."

"Of course I am!" the doctor snaps. "All of you, with your good-doer souls, will be excellent fodder for my ultimate weapon! Still don't believe me? I'll show you…"

With a cackle, he fiddles with the machine, and with a flash of light and a spark, it starts. Amy gulps as a beam of light shoots out towards the tube containing Shadow's female body, still unsure as to whether or not it's all a big hoax. But if he really is going to do something to Shadow's soul…

"Wait!" she calls. "Why are you doing this? You helped us on ARK…what made you go back to this, this mad inventor thing?"

Robotnik casts her an amused glance over his bulky shoulder.

"You're still as naïve as ever," he says derisively. "You've forgotten that working with you fools was the only way I'd survive. Nothing's changed, and now Shadow's about to pay the price for your meddling in my affairs…again."

"But–"

"SILENCE!" he roars, and the pincer around her squeezes tighter. She squeals a little and falls silent, sudden tears threatening to appear. Shadow just wanted to try a normal life…maybe he shouldn't have stayed around people he already knew. She should have thought of it before, and now he's going to suffer because of it! Robotnik turns back to the machine with a smirk, and presses a few choice buttons. The beam of light glows brighter, and the hum intensifies, making their teeth rattle in their skulls. To her horror, something brilliant, something completely ethereal, emerges from Shadow's body. In the form of several glittering sparks, Shadow's soul is drawn out from his body. Robotnik laughs triumphantly.

"Yes!"

"Shadow!"

His soul, which had been moving steadily forward, stops and hovers midway between his body and the machine at Amy's shout. Suddenly the chamber starts to shake, and the hum rises until it's almost deafening.

"What?" Robotnik shouts over the noise, and starts pressing buttons and typing nonsense (in Amy's mind) into the machine. "What's happening?"

"Shadow…" Amy says again, softer. The vibration builds.

Light bursts out and shoots in all directions, accompanied by a sound like thunder. With a monstrous jolt, Amy is slammed further against the wall, and if the yelps and grunts of pain beside her are anything to go by, so are her friends. The iron prison around her breaks, she hears the tubes shatter, as if in a distant dream. She slides to the floor as the light dies, and she opens her eyes a crack to see the green liquid pouring onto the floor and glittering shards of glass raining down onto the grey stone. A dark shape hovers a few feet above the ground, engulfed in light.