Sept bolted upright, tiny heart hammering in her chest, tears streaming down white furred cheeks.
Miles was coming to kill her.
But... what remained of her broken mind struggled as stared up at the only ceiling this body had ever known, dim lights turned low.
He already did?
Her body relaxed. That's right. She had waved goodbye to him as they left home... after he killed her.
Well, that was alright. He'd had a good reason. Sept remembered being bad.
She didn't remember thinking it was bad at the time. But it was bad. Of that she was certain. She'd done something bad to Amy. She'd done something bad to all of them. And now they were rabbits. Like her. Or something even worse. Like the real Amy. Or...
Sept yanked at an ear, as though pulling the bad thoughts out. She was too old to be young and too young to be old. Her head was already too crowded for bad thoughts. Losing stuff all the time.
No. Miles needed her. Miles loved her. And she loved him.
Even though she was only a Sept.
Even though she was a Cream.
Unless he knew what she did.
Unless he killed her again for it.
If only she could push good thoughts in through her ears.
Too full of memories of faces no longer attached to names, minds no longer themselves. Too full of promises and plans it was all she could do to remember that she was Sept, all she could do to hold on to herself, to be bad and lie because that was what she remembered she wanted herself to do even if she didn't want it anymore and-
"Why aren't you sleeping?" The Cream pretending to be herself glared at Sept from across the aisle, the only other Cream awake. Sept blinked at her a moment, sluggish brain struggling. To forget. She was only Sept, after all. She only had to remember one thing.
"I'm sorry, Miss Cream." Sept shrank down against her chair, wiping her ear across her eyes. "I'll be quiet."
The biggest Cream silently raised her hand, beckoning roughly, and Sept crept from seat to reclined seat towards her, careful not to wake the others, ears held tight in her hands as though she still had tails.
"I had a bad dream is-"
Arms wrapped around her shoulders, pulling her close to the older rabbit.
"It's okay," Cream whispered.
Sept shivered against Cream's chest, thoughts corralled into confusion, safe, stable confusion.
"It's okay," Cream repeated, laying a hand against Sept's head.
Cream was kind, caring, and sweet.
Sept tugged at her ear again.
She couldn't be Cream. She had to be Sept.
"I'm sorry for yelling." Fingertips pattered across Sept's back. "I just… I have bad dreams too."
Sept flinched under those soft fingers, tears spilling down white cheeks.
"I'm sorry." She whimpered, tiny arms struggling to encircle the larger rabbit. "I'm so sorry."
But Cream said no more. She didn't throw her aside or yell. And eventually the soft drumming of her fingertips replaced Sept's sobbing apologies with the soft sounds of sleep once more.
And the Cream pretending to be Cream sighed, closing her eyes to return to her own nightmares once more.
"Is he back? Did you find him?"
Sonic streaked to a halt beside Amy, the words arriving shortly after he did, and the evening chill even further behind as the door banged shut.
"Not yet." Amy sighed from Tails' chair. "Tails' machine thing spat out something about an energy spike in Windy Hill awhile back." Amy held out a piece of paper with a scrawled line across it. "Could be related?"
"Huh?" Sonic stared at her. "How did you get Tails gizmo to work? Didn't he say never to touch it?"
"I am a lady of many talents." Amy snapped. "Also I never went near it."
Big let out a sudden rush of breath from his seat on the couch, where he was sat watching the broken TV's static with every sign of enjoyment. Amy cast a dark look in his direction.
"I was just sitting here, minding my own business. And it just spat out a piece of paper. While I was sitting here. Not sure what it might be, but could be worth checking it out with that scanner he gave you?"
"Great. I'm going to have to run to another lab to pick up a Tornado." Sonic shook his head, moving listlessly about the lab. "What about G.U.N? Did they send Shadow?"
"Why? Can't handle this yourself, Sonic?"
Sonic spun around to face the black and red hedgehog standing at the open lab door, barely visible against the night sky.
"Whoa, Shadow! Were you hiding waiting to step out like that?" He gazed at him half-lidded.
"Obviously I just got here." Shadow snorted, brushing snow from the thick white fur on his chest as he walked in. "You mentioned Black Arms. Talk."
"Tails first." Sonic returned Shadow's crimson eyed glare with one of his own. "What does G.U.N know?"
"G.U.N lost sight of the fox before he entered the Lost Hex. Believe me, they're looking."
Sonic clenched his jaw.
"We think someone grabbed him. Might be Black Arms." Sonic looked away, frowning. "I'd… really appreciate your help."
"Of course." Shadow nodded. "If it really is the Black Arms there's no time to lose. Where's your plane?"
"Uhh, you didn't come in a helicopter?"
"What are you talking about, wouldn't you have heard it? I came straight from Station Square."
"Oh. Well, y'see, we sort of crashed all of our planes. And Tails isn't here to fix them, so… Sort of hoping for a lift?" Sonic grinned weakly, rubbing his head.
Shadow rolled his eyes, slipping a communicator out of hammerspace. "Rouge. It's me… Yes." He sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. "Yes, you were. Just get out here."
He flipped the communicator away with a scowl. "You are pathetic. Let's go. The transport will be here in five."
"Race ya while we wait?" Sonic hopped from foot to foot. It would be good to burn off some frustration.
"...Fine. Beating you shouldn't take that long."
"Amy! Stay here for when Knuckles checks in, okay? I'll let you know as soon as we find anything."
"Okay-" The pair vanished out of the door, parallel blurs of colour. "... Bye."
Amy sighed, chair spinning from the force of their departure.
"Boys. No, not you, Big. Go back to… watching your… show."
Staring out of the window with a sigh Amy settled back to her tedious vigil.
How long had it been?
The last of his food had been and gone, even one disturbing burger that had dropped from an eyeball monster's hammerspace. There had even been a crumpled receipt from some unknown restaurant.
Miles was busily trying not to think too hard about what that meant about the many, many monsters he'd come up against over the last few days.
But still the endless sobbing beckoned him deeper.
Hopefully Amy wasn't too mad he missed their trip together. Honestly sitting in a café watching her smile as she schemed about getting Sonic's attention sounded pretty great right now, and not because he'd just had to fish a decomposing eyeball out of his ear. Okay, partly that, but not just that.
And the sobbing beckoned him deeper.
Hopefully Sonic was okay, too. He'd never had to worry about Sonic much before. His hero had earned that title many times over already, the fastest thing alive. The one who could beat every villain, slay every monster... Except possibly for Miles himself.
Miles slipped aside as an oily blob dripped from a ledge above, snapping his tails to slice it apart. The still animated pieces clung to him, and he could feel the dull burn as they started to feed before he flicked them off to splatter against the wall.
But... Robotnik's schemes now were a lot more complex than they were in the old days. It was rare for there not to be some trick involved that couldn't be solved by coming at it full speed. Miles sighed as he absorbed the remaining gel in his fur into hammerspace. And the rabbits would have arrived by now, too. Perhaps Sonic wouldn't ask too closely about them? It was all details. He hated details. He'd just help them and move on, same as always... right?
Miles rubbed the back of his head with his newly regenerated hand, still wrapped in the bandage he'd not bothered to remove. Another cliff ahead. How deep was he? Hundreds of meters? Miles? It didn't feel any warmer, but with physics effectively inverted that meant nothing. He frowned as he peered into the vast chasm. A dull red glow pulsed from the darkness below, rhythmic… fascinating.
He leapt.
If only Sonic was here. If only anyone was here. Anything not to be alone in the dark, stolen sleep saturated with nightmares, grudging wakefulness plagued with monsters even more horrid. Better yet, if only he wasn't here. Had he died? Had Zeena finally killed him dragging him into a black hole? Was this mad world his just desserts for the things he'd done? A consequence of all the necessary sacrifices that his rational mind had demanded?
The approaching ground interrupted Miles' growing misery. Spinning his tails a moment before impact, he alighted just before the glow. The girl's weeping grew in intensity all around him along with something softer… Deeper.
A heartbeat.
A crystalline heart, glowing with a light all its own, sprouting from the stone. The green light of his torch didn't reflect off its facets as he approached. A soft voice whispered unknown words just at the edge of hearing.
"Hello?" Miles peered around, but the whisper ceased, only to resume when he returned his attention to the glittering gem before him.
He reached out his bandaged hand, the fur of his fingertips standing on end to dance across its smooth surface. Miles lifted the heart aloft, feeling it pulse in his hand.
The whispers grew in force and intensity and fervour and stopped.
Miles bit into the heart.
The hard outer surface crunched away to a soft, pulpy interior, the taste of blood flowed freely down his throat. Dark vigour surged through his slender muscles, the aches and pains fading and replaced by a vile nausea, this time not physical, but instead a grim disturbance that coiled around his own chest, a wrongness. A violation.
The whispering voice had been his own.
"No!" Miles tore the remains of the heart from his lips, crimson liquid dribbling down his chin. The heart shattered against a distant wall as he dropped to the earthen floor, shuddering and retching, trying to scrape the taint from his chest with fingers too dull for the task.
The feeling didn't decrease, it diffused, spreading about his body with every beat of his own heart, as though the inky blackness that surrounded him now slipped in through every pore, expanded until every part of him was as wrong and as terrible as this endless tomb of rot and horror.
Miles crouched, clutching his head and shuddering.
"Sonic…"
His plea was lost in the dark, much as he was. Sonic was not here, could never be in a place so hopeless and grim.
But somewhere down here a girl was crying all the same, sad and miserable. In desperate need of a hero.
So Miles forced himself to his feet once more, feeling sickened but whole, compromised and bolstered all at once. Hardly a hero, but standing all the same.
Because the sobbing beckoned him deeper.
