They reached the shanties before they reached city-turned-industrial-plant and Sonic slowed to what was a jog even by normal standards to avoid blowing the windows and doors off everything they passed in the ramshackle village.
People here hadn't fled as far as Sonic would have expected when Eggman took the place over. Maybe some of them held out hopes to returning and reclaiming the place. Others, he knew for certain traded relative safety for technical expertise in the refineries and fuel depots.
Most just got by, caught between fear of staying and fear of the unknown of leaving. Scraping a living, just far enough outside of the zone of pollution to be able to raise some sort of crop. Pale corn and stunted orchards lined the roadside
Regardless of which category the inhabitants fell into, almost all ducked inside their rough homes and shut the doors firmly at the sight of Sonic and the others approaching.
"They're afraid of you here too?" Knuckles said. "Eggman's lies again?"
Sonic shook his head. "It's not that." It was an effort to keep his voice light. "They don't think I'm dangerous – but they know helping me is. They're living on Eggman's doorstep after all."
Tails looked around. "I never know why they stay."
Sonic shrugged. "I suppose it's home. Or was."
Knuckles made a sound of agreement.
Sonic glanced at him but he didn't seem to have any further comment to make. Sonic returned his attention to the road ahead and then to the flicker of movement from behind a wattle fence sheltering a vegetable garden.
A grubby, not-quite teenaged, seagull stuck his beak up, glanced over his shoulder and then quickly, waved.
Sonic grinned and tossed back a thumbs up and a wink
The bird leapt into the air and fled, swooping up and over the nearest house, but not before Sonic caught the returned smile.
"They'll be okay," Sonic said, turning his attention back to their route. "It's not forever. We'll stop Eggman. Even here. One day."
They were past the make-shift village and Tails reached for his hand for a speed-up almost automatically, Knuckles a moment after him. Evening was coming on although the lurid orange on the clouds owed more to the burning plumes from the smoke stacks ahead than it did the sinking sun. Sonic had no desire to venture into the industrial mire after dark and as soon as both of the others had a solid grip he opened it up and let all the frustration turn itself into speed.
He didn't slow as the filthy coast approached, merely adjusted course for one of the largest criss-crossing pipes that connected the huge refineries and drilling platforms to the shore. He felt Knuckles' grip increase to crushing intensity and glanced over his shoulder.
"Gonna need that arm back in one piece when we stop, buddy."
Knuckles didn't look up, from the newly-learned low-drag position he'd opted for, but ground out a reply through gritted teeth.
"Just… shut up and focus on where you're dragging us, hedgehog."
But his grip did ease up from imminently bone-breaking to merely painfully tight and he let go immediately Sonic came to a stop. He staggered a few paces clear and looked around. He was scowling but he looked more angry at the existence of the place than as dazed and shaken by it as he had been back at Chemical Plant.
Sonic couldn't quite see it as progress somehow but there was a more imminent problem.
"Knux, move! Get off that!"
He dived for the echidna in the same breath as the pressure-cap blew. Heat and movement tumbled them both into the air. Orange sky blurred together with green flame and his head struck the metal rim of the cap turning blurred to black for a moment and there was no way he'd get his legs back under him in time and no way of telling what they'd land on and they hadn't been here two minutes!
Furious frustration snapped his awareness back into focus and he belatedly realised he was falling way slower than he should have been. Slower even than the time-dilating adrenaline of the moment could account for.
And it wasn't just the soot and fumes in the air making it hard to breath. A crushing grip around his ribs made every breath a struggle. He glanced up to find Knuckles looking down and then Tails was above both of them and dragging Knuckles higher into the air.
The echidna smiled grimly down at him.
"Still want me to ease up the grip?"
Sonic drew breath with difficulty and glanced down. "Er. It's fine."
Tails lowered them onto the nearest stable platform and everyone caught what breath they could under the circumstances.
Knuckles walked to the edge and looked back at the pressure cap settling back into its place.
"Eggman's not big on maintenance." Sonic said. "Sorry. Me and Tails knew this already. Prob should have had a bit of a convo about the place before piling in here."
"Anything else?" Knuckles asked.
Sonic grimaced. "Don't fall in. Don't touch anything you don't have to. Don't linger. Watch your footing. Don't breathe too deeply. Really don't fall in."
"Noted." Knuckles voice was a monotone of rigid self control, the momentary humour vanished once again. "Do you have a direction?"
Sonic looked around, eyes coming to settle on the cranes that were in motion everywhere.
"There's so much new building… but yeah. I think so."
He led off, more cautiously this time.
They navigated their way among and over the cranes that were in the process of adding even more to the construction. The robots running them ignored the trio, even when Sonic diverged from their route to smash those in reach.
"How did it get like this?" Knuckles asked unexpectedly.
Sonic shook his head and shrugged. "I'm fast but I can't be everywhere. If I'm here I'm not in Chemical Plant, or Metropolis or chasing down massive flying machines. It's like trying to stamp out wildfire. There's always somewhere Eggman or his bots can dig in."
A pressure cap hissed near by and everyone leapt sideways to be clear of it as it blew. Thick sooty smoke filled the air and Sonic sped up in spite of the dangerous footing to be clear of it. Another blew somewhere nearby, out of site in the smoke and another from somewhere ahead.
Sonic hesitated, coming to a dead stop.
"This… isn't good."
The smoke was getting thicker, but the alternatives were press on, almost blindly or suffocate here.
"We need to keep moving," Knuckles said from somewhere at Sonic's shoulder in the gloom.
"We might be able to get above it," Tails said. "I can't carry you both for long but..."
"Fly up and check," Sonic said. "It might not reach far." They could get a best direction at least.
Tails started to answer, coughed instead and then took to the air, the down-draft sending the smoke spiralling around Sonic and Knuckles.
Tails was out of sight in seconds, although the steady swish of his flight was audible through the smoke.
"Its-" he began from above them but was interrupted by a thud and a yelp.
"Tails!" Sonic yelled, straining his eyes and neck to see up through the smoke, leaping up to try and catch a glimpse.
There was another crash of impact and something came hurtling out of the smoke. It clattered against the ground – an enormous wrench.
"Tails!" Sonic yelled again as another crash came from the smoky air. Sonic reminded him that Tails was clearly still flying, and there'd been no further cries. Knuckles was pacing beside him, eyes also upwards, seeking the source of the sounds. Both of them helpless to intervene
They both ducked as another crash came from what sounded like inches above their heads and a rotund and denting and smoking bot hit the deck between them. Tails was clinging to the back of it.
It sparked once and went still.
Sonic blinked in the eye-watering smoke and reached out to haul Tails back to his feet.
"Nice one."
Tails frowned in spite of the praise. "I'm not sure it was a good idea. It came at me so I couldn't do much else but I think it was meant to lock this lot down."
"We need to get out of here," Sonic agreed.
"The smoke is spreading everywhere," Tails warned him. "I couldn't see any safer way."
"We'll find one." Sonic said, more confidently that he felt. "Come on."
They were silent as they made their way along. Sonic wasn't sure if they were walking on actual walkways, or pipes, or parts of the construction machinery half the time. His only concern was that their next step would be onto something at least semi solid.
It was only a matter of time before it wasn't. Before a split in the pipe they'd been cautiously descending had spilled slick, thick oil to ooze down the surface. Sonic felt his foot slip a split second too late to change his mind. Knuckles yanked on his arm to pull him back but that only meant Sonic found himself tipped backwards, off-balance to land on his tail in the stuff and by then gravity was against them and Knuckles was sliding along with him, pulled face first into the same wild slide.
Tails launched himself into the air in pursuit. A breathless scattershot chase of flailing limbs and slippery misses. They shot out of the bottom layer of the smoke and Sonic would have been glad of that except they were on course to be tipped straight into the roiling oil-thick water beneath the drilling platforms. Sonic kicked and struggled to get himself into some sort of position to jump or reach Tails, and didn't manage either. Knuckles' was still loosely grasping one hand, apparently by reflex as it was helping not at all.
Then, at last, both of Tails' hands closed tightly on his kicking leg. He felt himself slide but Tails' fingers tightened, digging in and locking around his ankle.
Sonic looked down as he felt himself hauled out and away from the pipe. Knuckles' hand slid through his and dizzy and dangling, Sonic gasped for breath to shout.
"Knuckles! Hold on!"
Knuckles tightened his grasp but he was still slipping. This wasn't the solid wrist-locked grip they'd used before. Knuckles had barely managed to grab him at all, and under his own weight and slick with oil, his hand was sliding out of Sonic's own. Sonic reached out his other hand as Tails struck out for the nearest jetty. He wasn't sure Knuckles could even see his attempts, reaching out blindly and missing every grab Sonic made for him.
Sonic gritted his teeth. There was no more use yelling but Knuckles was going to fall any moment.
Something hit him hard In the ribs and it long a startlingly long moment for Sonic to realise it was deck of the jetty. They were down.
Tails landed half sprawled atop him, gasping and wheezing for breath. Sonic rolled out from under him and put an arm around him to pull him up to a sitting position.
"Good job, buddy. Take a sec."
Tails nodded, leaning heavily against him.
Knuckles rolled to his hands and knees, retching and scraping the oil from his eyes and nose and mouth.
"Knuckles?" Sonic said. "You okay?"
Knuckles coughed and spat, before sitting up on his knees and blinking at Sonic, eyes and nose streaming.
"That, hedgehog, is a damned stupid question."
Sonic laughed and stopped himself quickly at the mildly hysterical tone in it.
Knuckles scowled at him. "I'll live."
Sonic was preparing a suitable comeback when he was pre-empted by an electronically amplified crackle of laughter.
"Oh do you think so? I beg to differ. Such a waste of my beautiful octobot's time though, when you came so close to wiping yourself out for me."
The oily water below them stirred, mounding up and bursting into filthy scattering droplets as a robot submarine breached the surface. Metallic tentacles lashed about it and the glittering eye of a laser swung towards them so lazily low it was in clear mockery.
Sonic groaned. "Seriously? Now?"
All three of them staggered to their feet and Sonic played for time to at least draw breath.
"So how the robot rebellion going, doc? Your little metallic buddies looked they they were off doing their own thing a couple times we've run in to them lately. Sure this ugly dude's still on side?"
There was a pause long enough for Sonic to know that one had landed and then Eggman's voice snarled out of the craft's speakers once again.
"Let's see."
The laser fired but Sonic was already in motion and had snatched the others along with him in a dash that carried them to the brink of the jetty then into a leap that was dragged higher still by Tails.
Knuckles tugged at his his arm and Sonic released him into a ballistic glide that met the rising sub with both fists. Knuckles ripped into panels and clawed his way to the base of the laser as it spun and fired again. Tails dropped like a stone to avoid it and Sonic's feet touched the jetty for a split second before he kicked off and hurled himself at the craft, twisting in mid air into a spin. Tails caught him as he ricocheted off, swung around in the air and launched him back again for a second strike.
There was cursing instead of laughter coming from the speakers now. Knuckles' tearing up of panels must have compromised the thing's retreat into the oil. The laser swung wildly, unstable where Knuckles had bent the telescopic arm of it. He had an arm drawn back to finish the job when another panel opened and something unidentifiable struck like a snake, knocking him into the air to slam into the edge of the jetty.
Sonic turned to check he wasn't going to end up into in the mire but Knuckles had one set of claws dug deeply into the metal decking and was already pulling himself up. Sonic turned his attention instead to finishing off the laser with a spin dash. The lethal metal eye tumbled beneath the sludge and Sonic whooped but was interrupted by a yell not of triumph but of alarm from Tails.
He whipped round but it wasn't Tails who was in trouble but Knuckles – a swarm of metal tentacles was tearing down the jetty, dragging it under, into the lethal water. Knuckles was fighting to force his way past them to jump clear and Tails was fighting to make his way down to lift him off but neither was making much progress.
"Oh dear," chuckled Eggman's voice. "Smash me or help them? Poor little hero. It must be such a hard choice"
Sonic was already running across the top surface of the machine. Knuckles was knee-deep in the oily water already and Tails was reeling after a shot by one of the lashing tentacles.
"Not even a little bit!" Sonic leapt, catching hold of one of the tentacles in mid air and swinging off it run along the switchback of another and propel himself from there to land beside Knuckles who had torn one of them in half and was using it to swing at the others.
Knuckles glanced over his shoulder and gave him room, dropping the tentacles he was holding to resort to fists instead. Sonic exploded upwards in a trajectory that took out three and once and cleared the way for Tails to dive down, grab an arm each and haul them clear.
Behind them, an escape pod fired into the air from the sinking sub and disappeared out of sight. Tails shook his head as he dropped them on the next jetty over.
"He got away again."
"And where do we go from here?" Knuckles asked. He had a point. Sonic looked around. The jetty was the last one standing in eyeshot after the destruction by laser and the lashing tentacles. A single sub was secured beside it but underwater was the last option on his mind.
He sighed. "I guess there's only one choice."
Tails headed towards the craft. He tipped his head on his side curiously. "There's something… odd about the design here you know."
"Odd?" Sonic asked.
Tails nodded. "I think..." A grin spread across his face. "I think we need to do another bit of hijacking..."
Knuckles looked at Sonic who shrugged and let Tails run out the mystery until they were on board and Tails had found a way to activate it. The sub vibrated into life and started to move.
But instead of sinking, they rose.
Sonic laughed in surprised delight.
"A flying submarine?"
Tails grinned.
His amusement lasted until they were well above the zone and the craft started to move forward instead of up. Tails was peering at the controls and screens and abruptly spun round to face the other two.
"I've… kinda got mixed… news."
"Well?" Knuckles asked before even Sonic could.
"I can't steer – the autopilot is locked on a destination."
"Bad news but not awful," Sonic agreed. "We're not crashing, right?"
Tails glanced nervously at Knuckles.
"Right, but… The locked destination is the Floating Island."
Knuckles' eyes widened. "How? Why?"
"That's… news..." Sonic allowed, casting Knuckles a wary glance and waiting for the rest of the bad news.". "But we want to get back there at some point right?"
"But how could the location be known and stored here? What does Eggman want there? He knew I wasn't there. Is he after the Master Emerald? What's this thing carrying?" Knuckles sounded close to panic.
Tails winced. "That's also sort of more bad news." He pulled up a screen with a visualisation of the cargo area.
"Badniks," Sonic said.
"Hundreds of them," Tails agreed unhappily.
Sonic whistled through his teeth. "Yikes. That's not a raid, that's an invasion."
"We have to change course. We have to take this thing down. We can't go there like this. Not with those one board! We have to destroy them."
Knuckles was halfway to the door to the cargo area.
"You can't go back there, Knuckles. It's not pressurised and we're already too high."
Knuckles frowned. "But the Island's not that high. Not right now."
"I think he thought a high altitude approach would stop us intercepting him."
Sonic was watching Tails, who was fiddling with his ear nervously.
"What else, Tails?"
Tails stared at the controls in front of him before answering.
"I can't reprogram the autopilot and this thing wasn't designed to fly without it. But I can disable it. Prevent us landing."
"Make us crash?"
Tails nodded.
"Ye-es." If we wait until we're actually over the Island then disable it and bail out..."
"It could crash anywhere!" Knuckles protested. "The damage..." He cut himself off. "...is still better than landing hundreds of robots. Do it."
And then they waited.
Sonic paced in spite of a growing tiredness. Tails alternated dozing and fidgeting with the controls and screen, double-checking what he meant to do. Knuckles sat with his back against the wall, eyes shut though Sonic couldn't tell if he was napping or not. He didn't interrupt him to find out.
In any case he opened them a split second before Tails said, "We're here." Sonic walked to the screens and found Knuckles joining him.
"How tired are you?" Knuckles asked Tails brusquely. "Who's taking Sonic?"
Sonic bristled at being discussed like luggage.
"Hey," he said. "Hedgehog standing right here."
Knuckles shot him an unsympathetic look. "And unless that hedgehog has learned to fly or glide in the last few hours he'll still be standing there when this thing piles in to the Island, chaos-knows-where, so back off."
"Truthfully, Tails, there's no shame in knowing your own endurance." Knuckles, to Sonic's utter surprised gave the fox a smile. "Believe me, we're all close to the end of it right now. Even your blue buddy there."
Knuckles dashed Sonic a look, daring him to contradict him. Sonic shrugged instead.
"He's got a point."
Tails glanced at Sonic, then back at Knuckles and nodded.
"I guess… I could use the help."
Knuckles nodded and made no more of a deal of it than that. Instead he turned his attention to Sonic.
"How about you, hedgehog. Have you got enough left that I can carry you, not piggyback you? Without getting in my way?"
Sonic recalled how Knuckles had grabbed him when the pressure cap had thrown them in the air.
"I've skydived, Knux. I know what you want to do. We got this."
Knuckles stared at him. "I won't get myself killed because you lied to me about how tired you were, Sonic. I can't. I have responsibilities. I'll drop you first."
Sonic bristled again, glaring back. "I'm not a liar! If I say I can do it I can do it!"
Knuckles watched him a moment longer.
"All right. I believe you."
Sonic gave him a mocking bow but didn't push him any further. They were all tired and not only physically. Now was not the time to try anyone's patience too far.
"When, Tails?" He asked.
"Now," Tails said. "Almost. I'm working on it."
The first sign he'd succeeded was a rapid nose-over that sent Sonic and Knuckles skidding across the floor. Tails had held tight to the console and glanced back. "Sorry. This thing is horribly aerodynamically unstable. I'm not sure it even can fly without the computers. Let's go."
The spiral dive tightened as they hurried for the hatch. Sonic and Tails both hesitated glancing at the other and then Tails shrugged, smiled and took off. "See you down there."
Sonic stepped up to the hatch, holding on to the edge as Knuckles positioned himself behind him and hooked his legs around his and wrapped his arms across his chest.
"Arms out," he instructed. "Not quite sure how steering is going to go like this. Just… keep still."
"Got it," Sonic didn't bother to joke, the tension in Knuckles' voice too much of a warning against it.
He let go of the doorway instead, reached his arms out to the fast moving sky and let Knuckles' weight against his back topple them forward and out.
Wind and gravity instantly snatched at them in opposite directions and Sonic gritted his teeth, holding position against both as best he could, limbs and back protesting in unison.
For several moments they simply fell, Sonic didn't have breath to question it, or breath to sigh in relief when the descent slowed, though he heard Knuckles gasp at the effort. He tried to take in where they were. He wanted to look round for Tails but didn't dare move even that much.
He heard the fox calling out anyway. He was fine, flying and close by. Below them the ship spiralled into view outpacing them in its headlong descent. The ground below was dark, cut through with lines of glowing orange and red. The dark jungle beyond it in one direction and pale meadows in another might as well have been a hundred miles away, their descent was a lot closer to vertical than Sonic would have liked and Knuckles, if anything was steering closer still to the volcano.
Warm air joined the wind in Sonic's face and the descent slowed a little, a cautious gentle turn swung the view around and back again as they circled down.
Sonic reminded himself that it was only an illusion that the ground seemed to be moving faster as they approached it but he hadn't quite convinced himself by the time it was upon them and he was skidding along it. Dirt in his nose and the breath knocked out of him.
Knuckles let go, clambered back to his feet and then flopped down again, dropping his head behind his knees and breathing in huge gasps. After a moment he put both hands flat on the warm ground and looked up.
He gave Sonic a nod and Sonic grinned back, rolling onto his back, hands behind his head as though sunbathing. "See. We got this! Right?"
Tails touched down beside them, interrupting whatever Knuckles' reaction might have been.
Tails was wide-eyed but this time it was glee.
"The ship went in right in the volcano!"
"First bit of good luck we've had," Knuckles muttered. "I need to check on things here. I need to know how Eggman knew where to find the Island."
Sonic nodded.
"No problem. I'm curious about that myself!"
Knuckles stared at him and Sonic prepared to line up counter arguments when the echidna refused them entrance to his so secret shiny stone store room, but they didn't come.
"We 'got this' too?" Knuckles asked, sounding half incredulous at the words coming out of his mouth.
Sonic grinned. "Betcha!"
