Sonic was placed in a "control group." At least, that was what the robot arms had said when they restrained him, in a slew of other babbling that hardly made sense. Scourge kept yelling at the machine to "speak English, damn it," but Sonic didn't mind too much. After all, he was used to it. Living around Tails, he was used to the kid talking at length about some new theory or an idea he had for a machine. He usually just smiled and nodded. He couldn't bear to have him stop because when he spoke about it all, Tails' eyes would light up like stars, and he'd have so much energy he could hardly stand still. What kind of jerk would he be if he made him stop just because he may not know about Onsager reciprocal relations or what the heck a polysymplectic manifold was. He asked once if Hamiltonian mechanics were made by the same guy that musical was about, and Tails only sighed. He knew then that sometimes it was better to just let people talk about the things they loved, and they would be grateful that someone heard them out. Then when it was your own turn to talk about something you love but they might not care about, they would respond in kind.

He rolled his head in a circle, hoping that would make it feel less stiff. His vision swam, and he felt the beginnings of a headache coming. Sonic wondered where Tails was now. Would Tails even know what happened to Sonic if he weren't to get out of this? What kind of state he was in? Surely, once Shadow got out, he'd say something, right?

Nevermind that for now.

Sonic wasn't the most book educated guy around, but he had seen enough science - good, bad, and ugly, mostly the latter two - that he knew "control group" in this case was probably a good thing. It meant that whatever they were doing to Scourge right now with that black goop, they weren't going to do to him. At least, not right now. And that was a small blessing. Sure, they injected him with something at the same intervals, but it appeared to just be cold water, not the murky dark color of the other test subject. They even said "placebo injection." What was the point of a control group or a placebo if they told you it was a placebo? But he wasn't going to say anything about that - even Sonic could hold his tongue when he was backed into a corner.

The talkative metal arms actually bothered him a lot at the beginning of his capture. He had learned - eventually, after a lot of distraction-screaming and spouting out whatever questions he could think of - that through some strange quirk of the United Federation's legal codes, detained subjects could be legally considered to give consent to each step of an experiment performed on them so long as it was dictated to them and they were able to respond. What the actual response was didn't matter, a fact both Sonic and Scourge had learned quickly after screaming "I do not consent!" over and over again to no benefit. He wondered what kind of backwards thinking lawmaker would leave in such a cruel loophole. Then he wondered what lengths GUN may have gone to in order to have that loophole, and to keep it there. His mouth felt like it was full of bile at the thought of it. Or that may have been the hours without drinking water.

"Blue, it's squirming in there! Why the fuck is it squirming in there?"

When he looked at Scourge, Sonic wanted to ask questions like what and where and do I want to know the answers to those questions, but when he looked at Scourge,s face, it seemed painfully familiar. He had joined Sonic in yelling, although his words were spat with venom. They had stopped around the same time, but the look in Scourge's eyes worried Sonic. He had seen that face in the mirror many times - usually, it was in his own bathroom mirror after splashing water on his face in the middle of a dark night. The water would mix with the unmistakable sheen of old sweat, both liquids rolling off his face as he'd sharply shake his head like a kaleidescope he wanted to reset. Not quite able to escape some terrible dream or memory, but not able to remember it either. A panic without a measurable cause. It was the most horrible kind of fear in Sonic's mind, and if he could do anything to make it better, he would. But he couldn't. So he wouldn't try.

Instead, he was honest with Scourge, shrugging as much as his constraints would allow. "I don't know, Scourge-"

"It's, like, tingly. Like it's crawling under my skin!"

"Think about something else, then, if it's so weird."

"All I'm thinking about is how your fucking boyfriend-"

"-he's not my boyfriend-"

"-brought us both into this place-"

"-and you were fighting me. I had a cast on and everythi-"

"-to be treated like marionettes."

The comment made Sonic shut up, tilting his head quizzically. Scourge groaned and tilted his head to the ceiling, as if he wanted to give up his soul. "Puppets, Sonic. Read a freaking book, will ya?"

Sonic glanced around the room, which started to spin like he'd just come out of an overly aggressive spin dash. It may have been the opposite, actually - being bound in one place, not being able to move, made him motion sick. Or lack-of-motion sick. It was like standing on still land after spending months at sea, rocking and swaying without any remorse. He wanted to cry out to Shadow to see if he could please oh crap please hurry up with the escape plan so they could get the hell out of there, but that would be stupid. All calling out to Shadow would do would get Shadow caught, and then all three would be stuck in this torture device. Maybe his would be even worse, since he was already an experiment, and not particularly well liked by anybody.

Well, except Rouge and Omega. And himself.

Sonic's face turned bright red, thinking Shadow all of the sudden. He was embarrassed, but it was true; he had never been much of a reader until there wasn't another means of escape. "But I do," he replied to Scourge, lamely.

"Do what?"

"Read. I read."

Scourge laughed. "Yeah what, like comics? Picture books? The odd magazine?" This last bit Scourge said while wiggling his eyebrows, and Sonic suppressed a growl. It was good Scourge was feeling up to making a joke, but right now, he himself was so not in the mood.

"Gross," he said, rolling his eyes. "No man, real books. Tales of King Arthur, Arabian Nights, The Divine Comedy…" Scourge didn't have to know those were all ones he read in the past two months, he told himself.

"You've got a thing for the adventure stories, huh?"

"Well, you know me. Just a guy who loves-"

"Shut it, you blue stack of needles." Scourge laughed, but not with any derision. In fact, there was a smile on his face that seemed… almost genuine? Nah, Sonic thought to himself, it couldn't be. Scourge hasn't been happy like that once in his whole life. "But… I don't know. The Divine Comedy. Why are you reading stuff like that? It's all… religious and woe-is-me?"

"They were a friend's. Beggars can't be choosers."

"Like that ever stopped you from being picky. Your friend has got some weird taste."

"Yeah, I told him that too."

"And you don't have any of your own books?"

"…I guess that's true too."

Scourge sniffed loudly in the air, and the conversation lulled. Scourge screwed up his face, and Sonic was desperate to talk about something, anything, other than what was happening with his body.

"What were you doing with Eggman, Scourge?" he asked. "You were never the outright evil type."

"Maybe you don't know me as well as you thou-"

"Nope, I know you pretty well too. You're a jerk, but you aren't evil."

Scourge huffed, avoiding eye contact. "He was looking for machine parts. Transmitters, strong ones."

"But why?"

"What makes you think I ask those kinds of questions? He was paying me, that was what mattered."

"And now you're trapped in here, with nowhere to go. Might as well tell me any hints you've got."

Scourge stopped. He looked off in the distance for a second or two, then sighed. "He said that he wanted to disrupt some kind of signal. I thought he just wanted to screw with the government spying on him or something. Figured I could do it for the right price."

Sonic furrowed his brow. Disrupting a signal? What did that have to do with a virus? That didn't make any sense. Unless there was something mechanical about it-

He didn't have much time to think about it before Scourge starting whining again. "Wait, whoa whoa whoa, this is- no, nononononono, get away from me!"

"Scourge, you need to keep talking!" Sonic interjected,

The arms extended from the wall with needles in them. Dry needles. They were going to draw blood again. Sonic winced as the needle plunged in his bound arm and braced himself for the inevitable screams from Scourge. But no screams came. Scourge just looked straight ahead, his mouth gaping open in a wide 'O.'

Subject Sonic has a conversion rate of 0%. Subject Scourge has a conversion rate-

"Sonic, your distraction bit isn't working! This… it's like sand! Sand pushing through me, going through my insides!"

-of 82%.

Sonic started to look around the room frantically. It was getting faster, the conversion. The last time it measured, it had said 46%. It wouldn't be too long now before whatever that stuff was doing to Scourge would be done. And then what? They'd both be here, facing each other. Scourge seemed to know it too, because he stared down Sonic with those sharp blue eyes of his again, smile gone. "You… you look like you've seen this before. Like you know what's happening to me."

"What, no I-"

"Cut the bull, Sonic. I know what you look like when you lie. You're incapable. What have you seen? What do you know?"

Sonic didn't know if he was making the right decision, telling Scourge. What good was it going to do for Scourge's last few conscious minutes of himself be filled with more fear and panic?

"I told you shit, remember?" he was saying, almost babbling at this point. The fear had gone from dormant to immediate, and he was hyperventilating. "Client secrets. Now you tell me shit. Don't you remember how this works, you… you fucking goody two shoes!?"

But if he lied to him, it would only give a false sense of security. He didn't want anyone's last minutes to be a lie, even if it was Scourge. Determined, Sonic looked Scourge in the eye and spoke the truth. "It was a virus, we think. People had it all over the hospital when I got my cast off - they were talking in unison, trying to give it to Shadow and me-"

"Shadow being the boyfriend?"

"He's not my boyfriend!"

"But you want him to be!"

That caught Sonic off guard. "What does that matter right now?"

"So you admit it?"

"Admit what?"

"You want him to be your boyfriend?" Scourge blinked several times in a row, very quickly, but Sonic barely registered it.

"What are we, twelve?"

"Do you?" His gaze bore down on the other, intense and focused.

"Argh, yes, okay! I do, and it's weird, and confusing, and he doesn't feel the same way so it doesn't matter anyway. I like Shadow, and there's nothing I can do about it. Are you happy now? Got what you wanted?" The sentences flowed like storm water, rough and unrelenting. His filter was long gone, eroded by hours of containment, his present company, and the sinking feeling of hopelessness he was getting about his own situation. In a weird way, it felt freeing to say it out loud - but his embarassment immediately set in. "…N-Now do you want to know what's happening to you or not?"

"But I do know what is happening to me."

Those last words came out calm and smooth, with almost no tone to them. Sonic had to shake his head, the change was so subtle, but once he saw it, it was unmistakable. He had been more quiet for a while now, less agitated, more friendly. His eyes were clouding over, and Sonic cursed himself for being so preoccupied in his own mind that he didn't even notice. "I know I am fighting something that's going to win," he said without affect. "I know you are fighting something you do not have to. Your problems are so easy to solve."

Subject Scourge is exhibiting behavioral and verbal-

"Shut up!" Sonic yelled out to the room. "Scourge, what do you think is happening to you?"

"Scourge, Scourge. Scourge." he repeated, not acknowledging the question. "The word is new. Scourge. I can… I can find it."

Sonic stopped, his blood running cold. He was looking around the room with those glazed over eyes, but his expression was different from before. He wasn't panicking or angry. He was… curious? It was like, instead of being in this room for several hours, he had just woken up from a sleepless dream.

"A scourge," the green hedgehog said, "is a whip used as an instrument of punishment. That is not me. Next."

"Hey, buddy-"

"A scourge," he continued, "is a person or thing that causes great trouble or suffering. That is not me. Next." A small pause, as he took a deep breath. "There are two verbs from the definition that are the same, and no other definitions. This isn't…"

"Scourge-"

"Why do you call me Scourge?" he said. "Why am I Scourge? Is there a reason for the word I do not know?"

"That's your name. Or that's what you call yourself. I guess."

"Oh." He started to blink heavily, but otherwise went very still. "This body is called 'Scourge.' Yes. That is understandable."

The lights shut off in the room. The robots stopped chattering. The computers let out a low hiss as they unwillingly went to sleep. Scourge's eyes shone in the dark, but aside from the distant sound of an alarm and small cracks near the floor, the rest of the room was plunged in black. "You." He said, words staccato. "Sonic. The Hedgehog. I know you."

Sonic wondered, in his own head, if the 'I' that was speaking was Scourge or whatever… this… was. The words that came from him earlier bounced in Sonic's head. This body. This body. What did he even mean by that?

"So many know of you. They had seen you before. Didn't know at the hospital. Didn't know."

"The hospital?"

"I saw you there. I was not fast enough. Blaze, Silver, Amy… those bodies could not reach you."

"What do you-"

"You could give it to others quickly. Your body moves fast. More than others."

Like a puzzle piece clicking into place, Sonic put all the pieces together. "You're all connected. You talk like all of you are one person."

"I cannot put it inside you now. I do not know where to send another body. Can you tell me where this body is? I want to know. I want to find it."

"And you said… Blaze. Silver. Amy. You… you took all of them! And now you want to take me too!"

"I want to send a body. You need to have it put inside you. This body cannot do that from here."

Sonic thought of all those people at the hospital, shaking in anger. How so many people had been doctors, nurses, patients, only to turn into another part of Eggman's sick plan. How Scourge's entire being had slowly seeped away from him, until he was no different than any other part of this… collective. How it said Blaze and Silver and Amy all were nothing but bodies to it, and how that meant it probably had taken them too. And when he thought about their goal to do the same thing to him… to make him into someone other than himself… he wanted to scream.

Focus.

He tried to detach himself from the situation. You're okay, he told himself. He had been scared before. He had been captured before. How did he get through it again?

This body, he thought. That's it. Squeezing his eyes shut and ignoring the racing of his heart. Sonic tried to focus on his own self. He paid close attention to the tips of his fingers, which were starting to feel like they were being pricked with dozens of tiny needles from the stillness. He felt the movement of his tongue inside his mouth, tasting the slight bitterness of dryness. He felt the weight of his spines falling behind him. Faster than he thought it would, it started to calm him down. It was a small refuge, he knew, but one that he always could fall back on was his own body. When he told Shadow about it once, he said it was called a 'grounding' exercise. When the whole world was against you, he said, you could always depend at least on yourself.

Thinking of Shadow brought a pang to his chest that he tried to ignore. Could he depend on him? Of course he could, he told himself unconvincingly. He's on his way back. He has to be-

"You and the other one ran. Why did you run? It feels so much better. You could both be with us."

It felt strange to hear the words come through Scourge's voice. None of the cockiness, the bravado, the sneering judgement. Just flat voices. He found himself longing for Shadow's deep, rumbling tones. He wanted to feel that sensation from the helicopter, to feel the vibration from his chest go to his. "Nothing can feel good if you aren't yourself," he found himself saying. "I don't know what's going on or what happened to you. I don't know how you think it feels. But if you're going to take away who I am? Who he is? You're not going to do it without a fight."

In the first show of emotion from the new Scourge, he heard a small rasping noise. Was whatever it was trying to laugh? "You and Shadow the Hedgehog. Yes. It is only a matter of time."

The room suddenly went pitch black with a loud cracking sound. The arms let go of them both, and they slammed to the ground hard. Sonic felt a sharp pain and crack in his leg, and let out a yelp. No… he had just gotten the cast off! It couldn't break so easily again… could it? He looked through stinging eyes at his look a like. Scourge fell flat on the floor, he realized, but that would only buy a few seconds before he recovered. His pulse raced again, and he started to fruitlessly flit his eyes around the room, looking for some exit. In vain, he realized he couldn't do anything. This darkness! It was going to kill him!

A bright light shone through the door, now open. A red blur cut into the room, and he felt his weight lift from the floor. The pain in his leg turned excruciating from being moved so fast, but he smiled and laughed regardless as he was rushed out of the room. The metal door slammed shut, and in the red siren lights of the hallway, he saw his saviors. Rouge, dressed in field agent gear, including her signature pink heart bombs. Doctor Eggman, keeping a surprisingly brisk pace and visibly conflicted about not killing him on the spot. But most importantly, his current transport - Shadow, holding him close to his chest. They stopped, and though Sonic was out of danger, Shadow wasn't letting go of him. He could feel the other's heavy breathing, as though he had just finished running a great distance.

Sonic looked up at him, almost not believing it. Nothing was really registering, between what happened to Scourge, all the alarms, and being so close the the one he just confessed to liking, it was a miracle he could have any kind of cohesive thought. That may have been why, instead of thanking Shadow or the others for saving him, he could only pant out, "What are you doing?"

"Saving you, idiot," the other replied. His voice was filled with anger, like it should have been obvious. "Are you okay?"

"I… I think my leg got messed up in the fall. Like, more that it was."

"We'll find a medic once we get out of here, but we have to move quickly. The Doctor told me more about his invention that caused this, and it's only a matter of time until-"

The metal door the two had just come from began to creak and bend, as though it were melting from the inside. Sonic could see the outline of Scourge's body.

"-that happens," Shadow finished. "Brace yourself."

"For what?"

"For this."

Shadow started to run, then shifted to face backwards. He was fumbling in a pack on his side, but Scourge was starting to go through the rapidly expanding hole. He had poked his arms through and was starting to step across the threshold when

BANG!

Sonic felt a small but searing burn on the bottom of his leg, causing him to yelp. When he turned to look at the cause, he gasped. It was Fang's gun, with its one bullet. Shadow managed to pull the trigger even from underneath Sonic, hitting Scourge right in the leg . It was the same leg that Sonic had broken, and despite all the circumstances leading to this moment, Sonic had a moment of sympathy. Scourge's looked so much like how he pictured his own when his break had happened - contorted in pain, small tears at the corners of his eyes - and the wound was already beginning to bleed profusely.

The expression didn't last long, though, before he plunged back into the blankness of the imposed He stared at it, and the bullet deemed to dissolve in the hole until it was only a gaping wound. "What the hell?"

"Don't ask questions, just run! He's injured, but he's almost as fast as I am normally!"

Shadow didn't have to be told twice. With Rouge and Eggman at either side of them, the four bolted forward and out of the base. Only Sonic could look back, seeing his mirror image left behind. The figure stared, eyes hollow, still shuffling slowly across the floor.

"Commander, the subject has escaped confinement after full conversion."

"What? How could you let this happen!"

"He was accompanied by Sonic and Shadow, sir. The Project had escaped first, then took down our defensive measures in order to take Sonic with him."

"And our securing devices did not hold either of them?"

"It appears the Project had never been detected, and had enabled the emergency protocol which-"

"-releases all containments. This is terrible. He should know better than to interfere with something like this. And you should know better than to leave that kind of exit! I should have your title revoked and demote you to lab tech-"

"You can lecture both of us later. What matters is that the subject used the temporary lapse to evade our monitors, and now he is dodging our containment measures."

"How long until he reaches our level?"

"It's uncertain. He doesn't appear to understand where he is or what he is doing here. He had converted some of our lower level guards on his level, and they are beginning to behave erratically as well. I would give us four hours to get to a secure shelter, but we would have to go though the rapidly growing population of infected to get there."

"So because of Project Shadow, we're looking at an outbreak?"

"Yes sir."

"May God help us all. It's times like these I wish we could just have martial law. It would make so many things easier. Not so many annoying legal boundaries."

"Sir, I'm getting a report from our outside guards. Doctor Eggman has escaped the building along with Shadow and Sonic. Agent Rouge is also accompanying them. Apparently the surveillance system shows them boarding an unregistered civilian aircraft of some kind."

"I should have known it was her. Traitorous-"

"Sir, the paths to the shelter are starting to fill with converted and the building has enabled quarantine procedures. If we are going to make it there and have any hope of remaining unconverted, we have to move now and hope we can beat them there."

"Fine. Let's hope they haven't anticipated us, and we can stay another day."