Chapter 17: Going Up
March 21st, 2314 – 2:50 PM – Robotnik's Base
Sonic and Tails reached the end of the hall, and turned right as Dr. Skeleck had directed. They now stood before a broad bank of elevator doors. The number "10" was stenciled on the wall next to the floors, which told them they were on the tenth floor. Nine sets of elevator doors stood in a line along the wall, waiting for a passenger to step up and press a button. The corridor here was empty of enemies, but Tails doubted it would stay that way for long.
"Well, here goes..." Sonic said, pressing an "Up" button next to one of the elevators.
They waited for about twenty seconds, but nothing happened. They didn't even hear the sound of the machinery behind the elevator doors. Sonic walked down past each elevator and pressed all the other buttons. Even after a few minutes, no elevators had arrived yet.
"What's wrong?" Tails asked. "Are the elevators broken?"
"Probably..." Sonic said, pacing alongside the doors. "To tell you the truth, I really didn't think it would be just as easy as riding an elevator up to Robotnik. Maybe we should find another way—"
There was a soft ping behind Tails as the middle elevator's light came on, and the doors opened up to reveal a utilitarian elevator car. The car didn't look like much more than a large metal box, with a naked light bulb in the ceiling and buttons next to the door. A metal crate was also pushed to one corner. Tails mouth hung open in surprise, and the fox turned to face Sonic. The hedgehog too looked a bit taken aback by that elevator suddenly arriving like that.
"Well, are we going to take it up?" Sonic asked.
"Are you crazy?" Tails said. "What if this is another trap? Like that laser hallway?"
"That's a good point, but we just don't have the time to look for another way to Robotnik's rooms."
Tails contemplating what they should do. While doing that, he examined the elevator car closely, trying to imagine all sorts of ways this thing could be a trap. The cables could be cut while they were going up. The car could be filled with nerve gas. The buttons would be rigged, so the elevator only dropped them off on a floor where dozens of robots would be waiting for them.
Sonic suddenly stepped up beside Tails, and pointed to the ceiling of the elevator car.
"Hey look...there's an escape hatch in the ceiling," he said. "If there's any trouble, all we gotta do is open that thing up, and we can get out."
Sonic started to step inside the car.
"Sonic! Don't!" Tails shouted. He feared doing that would spring some sort of deathtrap.
Fortunately though, nothing happened, at least not yet. Sonic pushed the metal crate in the elevator under the trap door, and grabbed for the handle on the hatch overhead. The latch turned easily, and Sonic opened up the small door. After he looked around outside the elevator car for a moment or two, he looked back down at Tails.
"Here's an idea," Sonic said. "Instead of taking the elevator, we can just climb up the shaft straight to the top. That way we won't be stuck in this car if there's trouble."
"How far up do we gotta climb?" Tails asked.
"Looks like ninety floors," Sonic said, pointing his finger at the elevator buttons. "The highest number here is one hundred, and we're on the tenth floor right now."
Tails let out a moan, as he shook his head back and forth.
"Well you're the one who doesn't wanna take the elevator," Sonic shot back.
"I know...but I didn't think we'd have to climb that high."
"Let's just do it now. Sitting here complaining about it isn't going to get anything done."
Sonic climbed up through the escape hatch and disappeared onto the top of the car. Tails let out a sigh, and followed after him. As soon as he was on the roof of the car safely, he looked up.
"Wow..." the fox mumbled.
This shaft was quite a sight to behold. Tails could barely even see the ceiling at the top, since the vertical corridor was so long. All along the shaft, they could see hundreds of closed elevator doors, in addition to all the metal machinery that let the elevators run. Suddenly, Sonic grabbed Tails' arm.
"Come on...less gawking, more flying!" he said.
"Right," Tails said, twisting his tails.
The pair lifted off from the elevator car, and they were on their way up to the top. It wasn't too bad at first, but as they passed the doors marked with a "36", Tails realized he was starting to get quite tired. Even if Sonic weren't coming along, this would be really tiring. They'd have to stop on the way up and rest. Tails started glancing around the shaft, looking for a place where he could sit down. Fortunately, there seemed to be platforms at intervals along the shaft, probably for maintenance. Tails started to move over towards one of them. While the fox was tired, he was still happy with the decision of going this way to the top. At least they were avoiding whatever traps were in the elevator car by doing this...
A laser blast sizzled right past Tails' eye, and the fox shrieked in surprise. He looked around to see where the blast had come from, and glanced up. Some of the elevator doors above them started opening up, and robot soldiers took up sniping positions in the open doorways. It looked like this shaft was dangerous, no matter how they chose to get to the top.
"Oh dammit!" Sonic screamed.
The robot soldiers opened fire again, as Tails dodged left and right to avoid the shots. He was so focused on keeping from getting hit he didn't notice his grip on Sonic's hand was loosening.
"Tails!" Sonic yelled. "Don't let go of me!"
The scream caused Tails to look down at Sonic. However, that turned out to be a big tactical error. One laser blast nearly hit Tails when he wasn't watching for it, and he crashed into a wall. Sonic and Tails fell down a couple dozen feet before they crash landed on another maintenance platform. Sonic groaned as he got up, and then he extended a hand to help Tails up as well.
"How bad are you hurt Tails?" Sonic yelled, trying to be heard over the shooting.
Tails shook his head, rubbing the spot where he'd hit it against a wall.
"I'll be okay, but I'm feeling kind of dizzy," Tails said. "I don't think I should try flying for a little while. We should climb the rest of the way."
"Magnificent..." Sonic mumbled, looking at how much higher they still had to go.
Tails glanced at the numbers on the nearby doors, and saw that they were on Floor 49 right now. There were still more than fifty stories left to go. However, as he glanced up the elevator shaft, he noticed something. The maintenance platforms were positioned at just the right heights, so that they worked together like a giant staircase. If they kept jumping up and forward along the platforms, they could use the platforms like stepping stones to get higher quickly.
"Sonic, do you see that?" he said, pointing at the platforms.
"What?" the hedgehog asked.
"Look how the platforms are positioned... It's like they make a gigantic staircase we can use to jump up to the top!"
"Good eye Tails! Let's get going!"
"Righto!"
The two of them took a flying leap up to the next level of platforms. It was a bit tricky, but they easily got on the ledges at Floor 50.
"All right!" Sonic said. "If we just keep doing this over and over, we'll be up at the top in no time!"
More laser blasts hit the floor around their feet and Tails gasped in fright.
"We gotta keep going, or they'll hit us!" Tails said.
"Rght!"
And so, they rapidly jumped up the stair-like ledges as they continued to climb. In a short amount of time, they had reached Floor 60. As they went up, Tails realized that while there were a lot of soldiers, they had horrible accuracy when it came to hitting fast-moving targets like the two of them were. It was easy to dodge the shots as long as they kept moving fast.
However, as Tails was about to leap up to reach Floor 72, Sonic yelled out at him.
"Look out Tails! Beneath you!"
Sonic was too slow to scream out his warning though, and Tails had already jumped. The fox looked below him to see that an elevator car was rapidly coming up from below, and it was about to hit him. Tails couldn't do anything about it though. The elevator car smacked right into Tails, and that sent him bouncing up into the air. Tails tumbled end over end as he started to fall down, unable to control how his body was moving. By pure luck tough, he ended up crash-landing on the platform he was leaping for.
Tails was quite banged up from his brush with that elevator car though. A big bruise was on his head, and so were his knees. The concussion in his head made everything look blurry, although it was already receding. His injuries felt like they'd recover fast enough, and so he got back up onto his feet again. Meanwhile, Sonic jumped up beside him.
"You all right!" he yelled over the shooting.
"I'll...I'll be okay..." Tails said.
"You sure?"
"Yeah Sonic."
Several laser shots ate up the platform they were standing on, and the two jumped back a bit to avoid them. They nearly fell off the other end of the ledge in the process.
"Sonic, there's just no time to check!" Tails yelled at him. "We gotta keep moving!"
Sonic reared back a bit, looking surprised by his outburst.
"Sorry," Tails said, quickly apologizing.
"Save it for later!" Sonic said, jumping up to the next floor. "Like you said, we gotta go!"
Tails nodded and followed him up. A few moments later, they made it to at Floor 81. This time, it was Tails who spotted an elevator car coming up from the floors far below. Sonic was about to jump into its path.
"Don't do it Sonic!" Tails yelled out, jumping up to where Sonic was. "There's another car coming up!"
Sonic nearly jumped, but then he stumbled as he stopped.
"Whew...thanks Tails," he said, looking over at the fox.
Sonic glanced down.
"You're a bit early... It's still a ways down."
Tails looked over the edge, and saw that while the elevator was moving fast, it was a bit far down.
"Hey though, this could be useful," Sonic said. "We could ride this car the rest of the way to the top, if that's where it's going."
"Great idea Sonic!" Tails said.
"Get ready to jump then..."
When the car was three stories below them, Sonic yelled, "Jump now!"
The two leaped onto the car easily. Its destination did indeed seem to be the top floor. The car smoothly stopped right at the doors marked "100". Sonic and Tails smiled at each other. The hedgehog scooted over and opened the hatch into the elevator car itself. A robot soldier was just stepping out through the doors, but it heard the clanking of the two intruders climbing around on the car. As the robot saw Sonic through the open hatch, it brought a blaster rifle to bear. Before it could fire a shot though, Sonic had easily gone straight through its chest with his spinball attack, shearing the robot in half. The pieces clattered to the floor as Tails followed him down.
"We made it!" Tails said.
"Not yet...we still gotta deal with Robotnik."
"Oh yeah...you're right," he said, as he looked around the top floor they were in.
To be honest, it wasn't much to look at. The elevator had let them out in a small hallway. There was a door off to the left, but it was locked. That was probably Robotnik's personal quarters. Sonic was about to break down the door when he decided to look down the other end of the hall. He saw stairs leading up, and just had an instinctive feeling that this was the direction they needed to go in. Once again, Sonic and Tails looked at each other, and nodded. They were behind each other all the way.
Without hesitation in their steps, they marched down the corridor next to each other, towards the stairs. As they got closer to the steps, Tails realized he could hear thunder. He almost immediately saw why. It was coming from a storm that was gathering outside the building. Glass windows lined the stairs, and gave them a view across Robotnik's entire base. They were all the way at the top now. However, they could also see the thick storm clouds coming together outside. Lightning bolts flashed past the glass, briefly lighting up the corridor with a blinding light every time they struck. This was followed by loud thunder, which gave the passageway a very ominous feeling.
Still though, Tails hardly wavered in his steps as the two finally reached the top. A large metal door stood only a few steps away, marked by the golden insignia of Robotnik's face. Tails just felt that Robotnik was right behind this door, but he felt himself wavering a bit. All their hard work was about to pay off...but what if something horrible happened? It was a terrifying, and yet amazing feeling. Even though he was worried about what was behind it, he felt himself anxious to keep going.
Once again, Sonic looked at Tails and nodded. Tails hesitated a bit, but he nodded back within a couple seconds. Sonic placed one hand on the handle, and turned it. Then he slowly opened the door...