9.
The rain deepened as the evening went on. Although it didn't yet blossom into a downpour like she expected, the droplets soaked the fabric of her cloak nonetheless, threatening to run into Gemerl's exposed circuitry. She stuffed the hole with her cloak as best she could as her heels pounded her through slick back streets. Her hem dragged behind her like a shadow on the wet stones.
Shadow… Her jaw hardened. He'd lied to her. The doctor had likely assigned him to get into her good graces to retrieve Gemerl on his behalf, and she wasn't feeling particularly forgiving about having been deceived. If he intended to report back a successful capture, surely he could report a critical failure as well.
She entrusted the Consul would further sort out the matter. If not, then perhaps the delay would keep Shadow from hunting her down. She skirted enough trouble eluding the doctor's demands as it was.
Still, she should have detected the signs far earlier, shouldn't have let the situation culminate into such a horrible meltdown. Anyone who emerged from obscurity claiming news of her daughter's whereabouts was bound to harbor ulterior motives, and in this case, she simply considered it fortunate that poor Gemerl could be fixed. If the doctor had had his way, she wouldn't have had a single piece to carry back.
Gemerl shivered in her arms. The OS he carried inside his consciousness as a result of Shadow's interference had stopped its ranting, at least for now. Must have burned itself out. Mentally she resolved she'd have them survey the extent of the damage once she—
Hurts… Curling up like a small child, Gemerl buried his head in the crook of her arm.
"I know, dear. We're almost home."
Promise?
"Of course."
She hugged the eaves of abandoned buildings and slipped behind hidden fences, following a complex system of clues that had eroded too much for even the keenest eye to recognize them; chipped signs, bent vanes, scraps of cloth tied to doorknobs.
Vanilla ran, oblivious to the fact that across the city, her daughter was collecting rainwater in an empty jar.
"Hmm," Cream mused, pressing her nose to the foggy glass. "Do you think we could get more, Cheese?" Her Chao companion flitted around the jar while she swirled its contents. Five minutes of chasing the rain's erratic gusts had filled the container a little less than a quarter full.
Her nose tickled. She sneezed, splashing some of the water on her dress. Before she could lament the waste, however, the screen door flew open.
Amy propped her hands on her hips. "There you are, you two. Come inside or you're gonna catch cold." Once she ushered them in and barred the door with a spare plank that leaned beside the counter, she handed them a moth-eaten towel. Cream gave it to Cheese to rub his bulbous head dry. "I've been calling for you everywhere. What were you doing?"
Cheese darted out from under the towel and carried the jar over to her. He seemed eager to reveal their spoils, but his excitement dropped when disappointment seeped into Amy's features. Taking the jar, she poured it into the sink, where the gray froth writhed down the drain.
"Oh… " Cream stopped patting herself, the towel poised behind her ear. "I thought… "
You were only trying to help. Whatever irritationAmy might have felt at having hunted through all the rooms of this filthy duplex melted.
"It's not your fault. Eggm— Uh… This rain is acidic." She had to remind herself to relax her stiffened shoulders. Only three hours had passed since they'd been attacked, but already she'd grown an intense aversion to even mentioning him. Even the thought that a little girl's efforts to gather drinking water would go to waste because of his selfishness was enough to darken her mood.
Putting on an apologetic smile for Cream, she set the jar on the counter and ruffled her little sister's damp scalp. No reason to burden her friends with unpleasant thoughts, after all. "Thanks for trying, though. I know you're doing your best."
Cheese pouted. "Cha-a-o."
"Yep! And let's not forget Cheese'll take care of us, too."
His indignation forgotten, Cheese squealed a delighted note and fluttered in orbit around the girls: a sight that made Cream giggle behind the towel and lifted their spirits a little in this decrepit place.
The kitchen was long abandoned like the rest of the house. An empty cooling pipe and a patch of dirt showed where a fridge would have stood. The sink flaked rust and the lower cabinets hosted roaches. One scuttled over Amy's toe earlier and she'd writhed in revulsion, squealing: "Oh, gross!" before attempting to stamp it out in vain.
The floor's white tiles were bleached an unsavory yellow hue, like that of decaying teeth. Cans and empty glass jars lay scattered across the floor; cabinet doors leaned crookedly on their hinges. Spiderwebs glistened inside them.
That left the pantry, which was oddly clean, if not exactly what one might call organized. Amy couldn't tell if what she held in her hand was beans; most of the cans had no labels on them, and the writing on the metal had long since flaked beyond legibility. She gave the lid a cursory sniff, detecting nothing especially offensive.
"Amy," Cream said finally, "I think these are expired." Cheese agreed.
"Maybe we're not looking hard enough," she replied, and stuck her head back into the pantry. "There's got to be something we can use." A few more minutes of aimless rummaging through the back shelves produced a small can of tomato soup.
Best by: seven years from now.
Amy blinked. Wait. Had she read that right? There it was on the label, stamped in plain print, seven years. If it had been canned beets or something she might not have reeled, since preserved vegetables tended toward long best-by dates. But not that long, and never for a can of soup. Not that she'd ever heard of, anyway, unless this particular company wanted it to ferment into slush.
She ripped the tab open.
Perfectly good soup.
She looked back at Cream and Cheese's expectant faces, and her lips twitched in a nervous compulsion to smile. Even though the thought chilled her like an updraft, it was such a small discrepancy, easily waved away. As such, her rational mind refused to accept the bigger implications at hand. Probably was a misprint. At this point she felt it better just to be grateful that she had one edible can of soup in her hand.
"Um." She set it on the counter, rubbing her palms on her sides. "Well, I guess we ought to eat now… Would you two mind getting T—"
"We're on it!" Cream dashed off, leaving Amy to call after her and Cheese.
"Now don't run up those stairs! Your shoes are still wet!"
Of course, her warning was moot as the two scamps darted out of earshot. She decided she had better not dwell on the matter. Tails would probably be able to explain why, in a house where the potted hyacinth had crumbled and dust lay thick on every piece of furniture, the kitchen stocked soup dated to expire years in the future.
Her fingers trembled as she snapped the pilot on, letting gas hiss through the stove's front burner. Suppose she did humor herself, though. If this really were an abandoned old house, wouldn't the lines have been cut long ago? Rusted pipes explained why this place had no water, but gas implied someone must have kept it, and for a reason. Someone who could return at any moment and think they had broken in.
As much as the notion of another unpleasant run-in disturbed her, she knew they had even less of a chance out in the open. Not where drones patrolled for vulnerable targets among smog-choked streets.
She looked up to the sound of feet pounding the floor on the level above. Cream's laughter wafted down, cheerily oblivious to the dread squeezing her heart. Outside, the rain gained speed with the wind, pelting the glass in fat, exploding droplets, leaving the shutters to quake hard on their locked hinges.
Amy struck a storm match from a pack she'd found. Something dangerous in that long, pointed flame made her heart thump against her ribcage.
She lowered it toward the burner.
"Here goes."
"Mr. Tails?" Her knocking heralded no response. Cream poked her head through the door, her long ears dangling as she peered quizzically into the room.
The lack of a reception desk had led them to believe this place was a forsaken house. But the more Cream considered the matter, the more she thought it might have been an inn instead. The front room, a foyer, hosted two staircases that led toward an extended balcony. The door underneath it opened into a spacious kitchen, equipped with multiple pantries and an adjoining cellar. The moldy smell that wafted up from the latter's gloomy, earthen depths made her a little hesitant to explore that particular area. Amy agreed (with pinched nostrils).
Upstairs, hallways branched off to the east and west, though some rooms were mysteriously lacking doors or else bricked-in. The beds mostly resembled each other, fitted with quilted covers. Most floors consisted of bare wooden planks floured with dust.
Earlier that day, she and Cheese had discovered an old-fashioned bathroom. Curiosity prompted Cheese to yank a chain hanging from a steel pole that was attached to a porcelian bowl.
Unfortunately, nothing happened. Further examination of faucets that had rusted dry compelled them to gather water as quickly as possible, a goal they hopped to when they heard the first opportune rumblings outside.
Tails was working on a project inside one of the bedrooms. Sitting cross-legged, he hunched over a plate-shaped device, his lips murmuring quietly as he performed mental calculations. He decided to affix a dish-like addition to the plate when she wandered in.
A few more tune-ups found the antenna whirring; it produced a short-lived dome that enveloped him, its shine an iridescent glimmer before vanishing into dimness.
"A shield," she said, startling him out of his reverie. "It's so pretty."
He nodded.
"How long will that protect us?" she asked, and found her gaze drawn across the trail of Nocturnus tech he'd rejected for practical use. She wondered aloud: "Maybe we should leave some of this alone. It doesn't belong to us."
"It's… okay," he rasped. "These are… tools. Help us… fight."
Cream left him to work until Amy trudged into the room, offering three words to explain her sour grapes. "Soup blew up." She plopped facedown on the bed next to Cream. Puffy baby-blue checkers hugged her body, sinking with a prolonged hiss of air.
Pushing herself up, she realized: "Hey… that was actually kinda fun." The springs squeaked as she pressed down on the coils. Naturally, that flight of whimsy led her to yank Cream and Cheese up with her.
She chucked a pillow at Tails, which raised dust from the patch of bare floor it smacked. "Hey, take a break from that stuff a minute and get on up here!" Tails shook his head and continued tinkering with the machine, enticing a pout. "Come on, don't be like that! See, Cream and Cheese have got the right idea."
At one point she towered over the unsuspecting fox, her hands planted on her hips. "I say," she declared with authority, "someone in this house is being a wet paper bag. And as president of the No Wet Paper Bags Club, I say we get him!"
She launched another pillow at his back. It missed him as well, except it smacked his project square on its console instead. The antenna whined. Seconds later an intense blast ripped through the air, shredding the pillow into a maelstrom of feathers and shoving Tails onto his stomach.
She scrambled over the edge of the bed, panic fluttering in her chest.
"I'm sorry," she shouted. "I'm so sorry! Are you hurt?"
As he pushed himself up, broken pieces peeled from his stomach. The shield mechanism lay in dozens of shards underneath him, wires splayed flat where his impact crushed them. Slowly he lifted the snapped antenna. The tiny dish slid off the bent pole with a plunk.
He sucked in his bottom lip.
Amy covered her mouth. "Tails… "
Feathers drifted down, smelling of singe, evidently the last straw. He climbed to his feet amidst Amy's gushing and bundled the pieces in his arms, leaving the two girls to follow down the east-wing corridor.
"Tails, wait, I didn't mean to— Maybe we can put it back together—!" Amy winced as he slammed the door with a definite bang. An uncomfortable silence ensued. After a while of jiggling the knob and imploring him to open the door, to just let her apologize—dejection hardening into anger and then melting back down into a soft, wounded ore again—she left.
Cream remained.
The door was quiet, devoid of the tinkering sounds that had filled the other room. Just when it seemed he'd refuse to speak to either of them for the rest of the night, she heard a low, grainy hum followed by a tearing noise. A rumpled piece of paper poked underneath the threshold, its perforated edge brushing the side of her shoe.
Sorry, Cream. I just want to be alone right now.
She asked, timidly, "Are you upset with us?" then knelt and slid the paper back under. It returned with a short reply.
No.
"Are you sure?"
Tails paused.
She thinks I'm some kind of baby.
Cream stood in the hallway, clutching the sheaf in her hands. Half-responses formed on her lips, but all of them felt wrong, ineffective at best. By the deep silence the locked door presented, it appeared Tails required no reply and wasn't particularly waiting on her to provide him one.
Reluctantly picking up a napping Cheese from his spot on the rug, she headed back downstairs. Amy would need help preparing dinner.
'Count down from one hundred.'
Tails remembered a surgery from when he was very young. A smashed elbow, which happens when you're four and fall out of a tree, and your big brother races you to the nearest hospital. A kindly nurse placed a gloved hand on his head while another nestled a cup over his mouth. He was instructed to count down from one hundred.
'Go to sleep.'
Next thing he knew, Sonic beamed a huge smile at him.
'Hey, bud! You did it!'
The time between Nocturne and Metropolis felt like anesthesia, a portion censored from his mind. As if his life was a film reel from which a good chunk of it had simply stopped.
Tails struggled to remember anything substantial after he'd blacked out. Fire lashed toward him; Shade had tackled him and crushed him, and from that moment on his memory cut out. Sudden, absolute darkness dominated his mind.
Except… that wasn't completely true. While he worked on figuring out these strange devices, memories dislodged from their hiding places. Occasional flashes swam toward his consciousness. Faint voices echoed in his memory, begging him to rest, to wake, to go and stay; contradictory orders pulled him in opposite directions. Through the confusion he could only think of the one person who could help him make sense of things.
(Sonic?)
It hurt when he tried to speak. His throat burned and swelled shut, as if someone had stuck needles through his vocal cords.
What bothered him even more than that were the passing, concerned looks the girls gave him when he muffled coughs inside his fist. He didn't want to burden anyone, really, but breathing inside this plastic mask was hot and cumbersome and didn't do much to alleviate the itching in his throat, even though letting Amy know was probably the last thing he'd want to do. It would hurt her feelings not to pretend it didn't help.
No smiles greeted him this time, though. No cast, no Sonic, no teddy bear hastily bought from the gift shop. How terrified Amy looked when he awoke, on the verge of tears. Their environment had consisted of darkness, and hard-to-breathe air, and Amy crushing him in her arms, and Metropolis, and Eggman. Which made him wonder.
Had things really been that bad?
Tails thought in terms of problems and solutions. It would stand to reason that his mind would try to seek the source of this problem, try to determine just what happened between memories. He knew it had to do with the fire and he knew that inhaling smoke would cause him problems, but—he hadn't been awake for the rest. Not for the crash or for getting lost, nor for being hunted down by the Nocturnus.
What were they doing here, anyway? Hadn't they fled? Hadn't the last of their numbers vanished with the sealing of the Twilight Cage? Neither Cream nor Amy seemed up to answering such pressing questions. Although he didn't want to push them, the urge for answers loomed in his mind.
Problem: he didn't know where they were.
What do you do?
You build something to determine your location. An echolocation device, a form of radar, something, anything. You tell Amy, in so many words, even though your throat hurts and she kind of stinks at charades anyway, that we need to find pieces to construct such a device.
Under normal circumstances, Amy would have said: 'This is a nightmare, Tails. Go back to sleep.' Just a dream, an unpleasant dream. Nothing bad ever really happens in dreams, right? You can't get hurt.
But she doesn't.
She follows you to a trash heap to gather parts.
Tails studied the broken pieces in his hands. He could only partially recreate the shield. After a while of uselessly prodding his screwdriver at a bent circuit board, he pushed the ruined device aside with a quiet sigh and reclined on the carpet.
This room used to be a nursery, connected to the other room by way of a small closet; the faded paint on the ceiling was the same powder blue as the toybox and the gingham quilt on the bed, and hosted a space design with large chalk-yellow stars. The rocket sailing through smiling planets reminded him of the Blue Cyclone.
His memories carried him there. Space was beautiful, full of living planets yet to be explored. But eventually the grandeur of the journey faded and he began to yearn for more familiar, earthly things. As he plotted out their next coordinates, he would suffer cravings for home. His desk, hard and sturdy, and his radio, and his noisy cartoons, and his tiny side-fridge stocked high with sodas he really shouldn't have had.
Even meals with seven other people (and one robot watching impassively) grew stale. Wild incidents where Knuckles jumped across the table at Sonic and spilled drinks over a misunderstood joke had dwindled into quiet affairs where the clink of plastic cutlery spoke louder than their words.
Someone was usually missing from the table. Someone else often occupied the med bay, getting bandaged. Shadow would clear his throat, excuse himself early. Rouge couldn't find the napkin she needed, why did it seem like they were perpetually running out? Amy gently reminded Tails he'd already told this story three times over just as he stammered out an anecdote to fill the quiet. The silence thickened so much that, over time, everyone began to retire to their own rooms to eat.
He didn't blame anyone for that; routine bred boredom, and they were too exhausted from their travels to care. Though he had done his best to make the vessel more as accommodating as possible, they simply couldn't fend off their restless longings.
When we go home, he would hear Amy tell Cream, everything will be all right.
A quiet knock rapped at the door.
"Tails?"
He sat up languidly, hugging his knees.
"We finally figured out how to work the stove. There wasn't any water, so we had to boil down some peach juice. And, um… it might help your throat a little," Amy added, the note of optimism in her voice as delicate as the porcelain cup she cradled. "Anyway, I'm gonna set this down here in front of the door and you can get it whenever you want. All right?"
She set the cup down. Instead of leaving outright, though, she idled at the door, her feet shuffling against the threshold. By the soft folding noise he heard, he deduced she must have been wringing the hem of her dress again, waiting for either of them to break the ice. Guilt squirmed in his stomach, compelling him to continue saying nothing.
Amy took a sharp breath. "Fine, then, let it go cold. See if I care." She marched roughly a quarter of the way down the hall before heading back.
"Tails, I'm sorry," she said softly. "I don't want things to be like this between us."
Neither did he. He reached for the notepad again.
It's my fault.
"What do you mean? I was the one who bashed you with that stupid pillow."
No, not that. I mean Metropolis. Eggman. All this started because I should have been checking up on him when we were working on the Blue Cyclone, but I didn't. I didn't know he was installing a lockdown or a program override. I should have run more tests just to be thorough, or… or something before the ship exploded.
At last she spoke. "Don't… " He could sense her thinking through her reply, confusion seeping into her voice. "Don't blame yourself for what he did…"
He almost killed us.
Silence chipped away at the minutes. That sentence stopped her cold, paving the way for Tails to disclose his guilt over their circumstances.
How could I have been so stupid? As team leader, it's my responsibility to make sure no one gets hurt. I let everyone down and now they're gone. Who knows where they are? Now I can't help but think Sonic and the rest of our friends are out there, hurt, or maybe even dead, while I'm safe from Eggman inside this house. It's not fair.
I'm so sorry I put you and Cream and Cheese through all this, Amy. Maybe it would have been better if you'd just…
Hot drops pricked at her corneas, ones she willed down with a hard swallow. "Tails… " Her spirits sank more with each sentence she read. She knew he was prone to beating himself up, but how could he honestly think he deserved the blame? "No… Don't say things like that… " She pressed the heels of her palms to her eyes.
I don't blame you if you don't trust me. I wouldn't trust me much, either.
"Tails, open the door." She rustled the knob. "Can you please open up?" For a few terse moments she lingered by the door, slumped against its unmoving surface. To her it felt like a miracle when a small click sounded in the lock and the barrier between them finally relented, opening to reveal him standing in the threshold, unable to meet her gaze.
"I'm not… " Fixing his stare at the ground, he sighed. " …A baby."
"I know you aren't." Gently, Amy drew him into a hug. A long time passed before he patted her once on the back. "What's wrong?"
He blinked drowsily. "Tired."
Amy slackened her grip a little, helping steady him with a hand on his shoulder. "No kidding. This has got to be the longest day ever."
"Cream… Cheese…" he asked. "They okay?"
Her lips flicked upward in the tiniest smile. "As much as they can be, putting up with us nerds."
Tails nodded absently, fidgeting. "Had a dream," he said. "Sky was… on fire." Unable to elaborate, he massaged his throat, prompting her to rub his back.
"Hush. Drink your juice."
He hesitated with the cup she placed in his hands, as he wanted to say more. All that in due time. He sipped a little of the beverage before that old light illuminated his eyes. Amy beamed at him.
"Good, right? Wait there," she instructed him. "I know something that'll make it even better."
"Look!" she exclaimed minutes later, twisting the lid off a can of shortbread cookies. "Still good! Doesn't it smell wonderful? …Tails?"
She slowed her pace; in the short time she'd dashed downstairs and back, he'd fallen asleep. Her enthusiasm sank even lower as she spotted his untouched cup sitting at the foot of the bed. He'd only humored her for her own sake.
Left with the tin, she bit into one of the cookies.
Stale.
Amy tried to smile at the irony. Not that it should have come as a surprise or anything, right? To her empty stomach, there was no difference. Her hunger came alive, bolstered by her blurring vision and her enclosing throat. She must have shoved at least half a dozen of the dumb things into her mouth, as if somehow that would have sufficed for her and Tails both.
Soon the tin clattered at her feet and the remaining cookies rolled out onto the dusty floor. With nothing else to hold back the dam, she cried.
Eventually Amy sniffed, smearing her puffy eyes on the back of her wrist. Delicately she climbed onto the bed alongside Tails. Her strength evaporated as she listened to him breathe, at last, in a steady rhythm. They weren't out of the woods yet. Far from. But… It was a start.
When Cream and Cheese arrived, shaking her by the ankle, their voices distant, Amy?Chao? she curled onto her side to give them a space on the bed. The quartet packed in together for the night, to the sound of rain slapping the roof.
Caught between the day's stress and tomorrow's worries, her troubled mind disrupted her sleep. She twitched awake on occasion, unable to drop off until exhaustion dragged her down. She'd tap Cream's back or Tails on the shoulder just to remind herself they weren't going anywhere, confirming all this had been indeed real and not some crazy dream. Hard to say what was what when so many images flashed before her, demanding she make sense of them.
(the Nocturnus broke through the door and they screamed)
She awoke once to discover Tails had tucked the suppression device under his head. He curled his fingers around the handle when she tried to wriggle it away from him.
Stubborn, she mouthed, and plopped back down to blink at the ceiling. She didn't peg him as the type to venture blind guesses in dangerous situations; he was always stressing the importance of weapons safety, even if he once fitted his walker with a cannon that could dismantle GUN Hunters in a single shot. If he didn't know what something did, he made certain to learn. She couldn't recall a time he'd rushed into a room blasting from a device he knew virtually zip about.
She had to stop replaying these hypotheticals in her head, they'd only drive her crazy, but the possibilities frightened her. Who could say what would've happened had things gone south? What if the device had blown up in his face? Wasn't there a chance that could still happen?
Heaving a quiet sigh, Amy supposed she ought to give him a break. Desperation shifted your priorities, and Tails really didn't have a choice in the matter. Without his intervention, that Nocturnus might have seriously hurt them… Or worse.
She knew that. So then, why was this so hard for her to accept? Why did she expect to close her eyes this time and find herself aboard the Blue Cyclone, resting on a hard bunk bed while the ship glided past a nebula?
Cream shivered. Not from cold; the heavy patchwork trapped body heat extraordinarily well. In fact, she might have admitted she was a little warm sharing the bed with her friends. Since it was a single bed, its width too narrow to accommodate them, the four slept sideways on the mattress. She and Cheese lay nearest the headboard, Amy in the middle and Tails at the far end.
She burrowed a little further under the quilt. She wouldn't be entirely sure what would happen wasn't a dream. One minute she had watched Cheese cradle the Emerald, its glow comforting them in the dark. Then, for lack of a better explanation, it blinked. Or pulsed. Its bright core winked, and an arrow of light shot out, startling them into sitting up.
It flashed so brightly it should have blinded her and roused Amy and Tails in an instant, but neither of those things happened. The Emerald's radiance bathed the room while leaving the bed in an odd bubble of untouched space. Each pulse spread out, transforming the rest of the room.
Cream and Cheese gazed around themselves in awe. All around them the gloomy room shifted into an amber-colored haze, the air sparkling motes like sunlight; its sleepy warmth touched the arm she raised to meet it.
The peeling paint grew smooth and vivid again. Amy's Piko dissolved. Chao plushies replaced the technology inside the toybox. Even the carpet softened, no longer encrusted stiff with dirt.
They slid out of bed with the utmost caution. A mirrored vanity appeared opposite the bed, and the bricked closet beside it regained its long-lost door.
She shoved the closet door aside, reeling instinctively in case something awful decided to spring with its teeth bared. No monsters accosted them… Though what she saw made her heart leap directly to her throat nevertheless.
Her mother's clothes inhabited the closet. Her white button-up shirts, her pastel dresses, the plum-colored pea coat she wore when autumn turned chilly: these were perfectly pressed and hung from the rack in immaculate condition. Her polished loafers stacked in a neat line on the floor, so organized that Cream used to imitate aligning her shoes in much the same manner.
She had no time to ponder the meaning, because her mother herself stormed in, a half-open suitcase clutched in her hand. She knelt before the closet at Cream's side, haphazardly stuffing clothes into the case. She glanced hurriedly behind her shoulder, as if expecting someone to follow.
It all happened so abruptly that Cream stood frozen for a split second. Then the excitement welled up inside her chest, threatening to spill over. Her mom was safe! She had so much to tell her!
She ran to hug her, but her arms encircled air. She phased through her mother's back and landed on her palms, utterly bewildered.
"Mama, we're here!" Cream reached out to grab her skirt, and her hand passed through the whirling folds. "What's wrong? Don't you see us? Oh, don't go—"
Cheese, too, tugged on her to an equally cold shoulder. Her mother continued to race around, heedless of either of them. She slammed the toybox shut, and then, turning, cast a rueful glance at a spot on the floor.
Pushing up a floorboard with her heel, she set aside a loose plank and dug inside the dark enclosure. An Emerald glittered in her hands, much to Cream's surprise.
She clutched it to her chest. Shook her head at something her daughter couldn't see.
"Mama," Cream murmured, "what are you… "
She squeezed her eyes shut, opening them to lightning burning into the walls. Thunder followed, shaking the house's frame. In the span it took a clock to tick off a single second, the room had reverted to its former bleak, rainy state. The air thinned. A gray chill reclaimed the world.
She stood there for a bit, confused, before Cheese alerted her to the floorboard in question. He fluttered around it; scarlet-colored threads eclipsed its crevices.
She held her breath at the sight. Was it still there?
Cream tested a foot on the board. It creaked like any other, but the light poured through at a rate that suggested it would erupt at any second. With Cheese's help she lifted the plank, and the light receded, drawing her deeper into the enclosure.
Taking a deep breath, she stuck her arm inside. Though hardly squeamish to creepy-crawlies—she often caught bugs on her own in the woods—something about this made her ears intensely warm.
She felt nothing particularly exciting at first. That made her a little braver. She prodded around the underfloor until she pricked her finger on a point.
Flinching, she tried again. Tentatively her fingers scraped past the point, sliding down the edge of the object, surveying its curve and texture. She discovered it was shaped like a dome, cut into facets.
And so she withdrew the same ruby Emerald her mother had.
Her face broke out into an enormous smile. "Look, Cheese!" she whispered triumphantly, raising it for him to examine.
Cheese cried out, and for good reason. The red Emerald quivered, falling out of her hands with a plunk. The green Emerald joined in its tremble. The two gems emitted a glass-like clatter, akin to the sound of plates shivering at the first rumble of an earthquake.
Both started shrinking.
She didn't think it possible; those things only happened in fairy tales, didn't they? And this was no fairy tale—was it?
Terrified, she stuffed the red Emerald under the floorboard and sat on the plank, thinking this would somehow reduce its influence on its green counterpart.
The board rattled violently under her, as if the ruby clamored to be set free. Amid Cheese's helpless chirps, the dwindling gem continued to shrink between his paws, to the point where, smaller than a pebble, it escaped him and wisped on the floor as less than a grain of sand. So too did the rattling dwindle. First to tremors, then a sporadic knocking, until it faded altogether into an eerie quiet.
Slowly Cream lifted the floorboard. Neither Emerald was anywhere to be found.
As she listened to her friends' exhalations, her stomach twisted and her mind buzzed. Her mother, now the Emeralds—what was the meaning of all this? And how could she have lost the Emeralds so soon? How could she have been so careless?
She remembered Sonic, trying so hard to keep both their spirits afloat, placing his faith in her small hands. So much more was at stake than he'd have willingly admit to her; and now, she thought, her mother must be linked to the Emeralds in some way, even though she hadn't the faintest clue regarding how or why.
They must have been trying to tell her something important. Her mother had inhabited this house some time ago, back before the decay set in. Maybe the Emeralds showed her this vision to point her the way back home.
If she found her mother, she could secure their safety.
That was why, despite her reluctance to leave Amy and Tails, she had to go. She stuffed a pillow under her side of the quilt, smoothing it down so her absence wouldn't raise alarms. The end product didn't look nearly as convincing as she'd have liked, but was time ever really on their side?
Cream gestured for the door. "They couldn't have gone far," she said. "Come on, Cheese."
Cheese's floating emotion ball spiraled. He pumped his stubby arms and legs before her, protesting his worries in a nervous string of chirps.
She hugged him close, lest the noise wake their friends. "I know. But we promised Mr. Sonic we'd protect his Emerald no matter what, remember?"
"Chao-o," Cheese uttered mournfully into her dress. She stroked his head.
"He's depending on us, Cheese. All of our friends are."
She tried her best not to sound doubtful, but was she just saying that to excuse her other, more selfish reason for chasing the Emeralds? She didn't know.
In any case, she resolved not to repeat her mistakes. Her friends needed to know it wasn't their concern. Her eye fell upon the writing pad Tails used to communicate, lying on the floor.
She turned to a tapping on her shoulder; Cheese had fetched her a pencil.
"Thank you." Balancing the pad on her knees, she huddled over the paper so closely the smell of grain wafted into her nose.
With the painstaking caution of a child who had just the year before learned how to write—and halted a few times when she rubbed the paper clean with eraser shavings—she produced a short letter in large, looping script, and tucked it under Amy's hand for safekeeping. She smiled as Amy's fingers curled around the note, as if by instinct.
Cream looked back at her friends one more time. Her expression solidifying into determination, she gave a firm nod. "Okay, Cheese. Let's go."
"Chao."
Together they pulled the door shut.
Dear Amy and Mr. Tails,
If we don't come back by the time you wake up, we would like to say we are very sorry. We don't blame you if you are angry with us. But there is something extra important we must do or else bad things will happen. I wish I could tell you more. Whatever you do please don't worry about us, OK? Stay in the house where it is safe and we promise we will be back soon.
Love,
Your friends
Cream and Cheese
This place is so big, she worried.
Her shoes clicked her heel-toe, heel-toe down the alley. She kept close to the lane's drier side while Cheese hugged her waist from behind. Despite her initial confidence, she was feeling more like a mouse lost in a maze with each passing second. Good thing the rain had washed a little of the smoke that obscured the city; she wouldn't have the first clue where to begin otherwise.
Reaching out, Cream trailed her hand along the individual bricks. Best remember their shapes. She entertained the naive thought that if she came across an odd brick, pushing on it might access a secret tunnel, just like a dungeon switch in the mystery books she loved to read in the Blue Cyclone.
Her instincts were crude at best and downright dangerous at worst. But what else did she have to rely on? Buildings loomed over the young girl and her Chao, providing no hint as to where the missing Emeralds might lie. Streets capped off at dead ends where neglected piles of rubble blocked various paths. They winced in the shadow of the occasional drone that sailed overhead, flashing needle-thin beams through the clouds. By dumb luck it seemed they were focused on more pressing matters than wanderers in dreary weather.
She patted Cheese on the head. "Stay close, okay?"
A little while later they arrived at a juncture where a scrap of cloth railed from a steeply-bent stop sign. It flapped like a ragged flag against the damp wind. Woven into it were three dark blue triangles against a black field. To a less keen eye, the pattern was almost indiscernible.
"It's going left," she remarked. "Cheese… You don't think… "
"Chao, chao. Chao, chao, chao."
Gently she let the scrap dangle back on the sign. "You're right," she said. "It's just… "
A thin, warbled groan caught her attention, made her stiffen in place. Cheese fluttered around her. Though her first instinct was to investigate out of an empathetic impulse, she also wanted to turn and run out of fear of an ambush. The groan grew louder, heedless; and as she flattened her ears against her head wondering what the right thing to do, a voice entered her mind:
(he's in trouble)
She pried her hands away, blinking as drops pattered inside her cupped palms. "I see," she said softly. The voice she heard was mild, as natural as a friend's gentle suggestion. She knew where it had come from. Cheese's emotion ball formed a question mark, and she clarified: "We didn't lose the Emeralds. They left on their own."
She took a few steps forward and turned at a ruined alley that hosted a chained tunnel entrance, shepherding a confused Cheese alongside her. The groan subsided for a bit, dissolving to the patter of rain.
"Um… " She peered at the tunnel's rusting sign. Oxidation had erased its warning to a blank steel plate. "Hello?" she called. "Is somebody here?"
They surveyed the desolate place. Rain swelled cratered puddles. An oil trail writhed through the concrete, twisting among the cloudy water like an iridescent eel. Piles of shattered bricks scattered across the way; one of them tumbled down, revealing the dim outline of a soldier's unlit helm. He lay facedown under the debris, terrifyingly still.
Ignoring her pang of apprehension, she asked, "Mr. Nocturnus?"
No response.
Cheese tugged on her. "Chao, chao."
"Maybe… but he might be really hurt." She straightened and put a hand around him, determined to show him how to resist their dread. "Cheese, I know you're scared. I am, too, but we can't let our fear win or else Dr. Eggman does."
Cream set about heaving bricks aside. Soon Cheese joined despite his initial reluctance, though he had to carry them singly and at times floated down to take a brief rest. It was tedious work, cold work, with rain slipping over them, making them trip or drop things on occasion. Once they freed the Nocturnus' dusty body, they set on turning him over.
No small feat there. Her arms burned as though she were attempting to flip over a bus. Even with Cheese pushing on his back while she pulled in tandem, they barely managed to get him supine.
Squatting over him with held breath, at length she heard a small, watery voice filter through an electronic crackle.
"Did he save the Gizoid?"
"Who?"
"My friend," he said, and coughed. "Did he save it?"
"I'm very sorry, but we haven't seen any Gizoids." Honestly, she was relieved—a little amazed, to tell the truth—that he could still speak through utterly dead armor. The Nocturnus who'd attacked them earlier that day had struggled just to stand when his armor had blinked out for a brief moment. Here, his armor ebbed light at the point of near-darkness. "Cheese, do you—"
" …Cheese?"
She cocked her head. "Haven't you seen a Chao before, Mr. Nocturnus?"
"Oh," he said. "A Chao. Once, when I was very young." He sat up with great sluggishness, looking around him before trying, and subsequently failing, to shaking his head. The joints in his suit were so rigid they clicked. He couldn't move his head more than a few degrees. "I… I hate to ask, but I can hardly move like this. Would you be able to take my helmet off for me?"
"You won't hurt us?"
"No," he said. "I promise." After a short pause, he said, "There's a latch in the back. Just twist it a little to the left."
Cream complied; the helmet struck the ground and he exhaled at the sensation of the rain washing down on him. "Finally," he said, "fresh air." Sans helm, he was a yellow-orange echidna with striking pink eyes. He used them to look up at her, gave her an exhausted smile. "Thanks. It gets cramped in there sometimes."
"My name is Cream," she said, picking up one corner of her damp skirt to bow in a polite curtsy. "It's a pleasure to meet you."
"Same. I'm Teukros."
He attempted to stand; it seemed the helmet controlled some of the immobility. Once off, he moved in short, taut gestures, much like a robot made of clinking parts. Granted, he couldn't move too freely without it on, but it was far better improvement than being rendered a living statue.
She scrunched her ribbon, hoping not to be rude. She'd be remiss if she alienated a potential friend, but her curious mind needed to know. "Pardon us, but why were you lying here all alone?"
"I was… " He wrung his wrist. "Sleeping."
She'd had enough people try to sugar-coat their circumstances to her that she was beginning to develop a sense for it. He might have been lying in a similar vein, softening a harsher truth. Nevertheless she shook her head, channeling her inner Amy as she propped her hands on her hips. "This is no place to make your bed. You'll catch a terrible cold." Cheese echoed her stern admonition with folded arms as he bobbed in the air beside her. "Chao-chao."
Teukros managed another smile, and grasped the wall to climb weakly to his feet. His knees bucked like a newborn fawn's. "Guess you're right. But I could say the same for you two."
That caught her off-guard. "Huh?"
"You came from somewhere around here, yeah? Don't you have a home waiting for you? Someplace nice and warm?" His question went unanswered as a nearby object caught his attention. "There," he said, pointing. "I think that's the Gizoid."
Sadly, she recognized the 'Gizoid' right away. "Mr. Omega?" She cleared the rubble from his body, caked underneath layers of dirt and mortar. "Oh, no, Cheese, he's all smashed up." Cheese murmured a contemplative Chao as she brushed more dirt off him.
"We never meant to inflict this much damage." Teukros laid a gentle hand on Omega's bulky shoulder. "Forgive us."
"Where did his head go?"
"That must be what he took," he said. "My friend, I mean. We were assigned to recover this Gizoid when the creature caught up with us. But … I wrote it off as a joke. I didn't think it would get so angry—" He sucked in his bottom lip. "Before we knew it, there was this enormous blast. Must've been incredible to cave in the entire wall like that."
A creature? She wasn't sure what he meant by that. Normally she'd have pictured a monster, complete with teeth and claws. Although, she was loath to admit … monsters in this case made her think of someone else …
She looked earnestly up at him. "I wish you didn't have to return to Dr. Eggman."
A flicker of sadness passed his eyes, like a glimpse of a candle carried past a window. "I've been wishing the same ever since we got here."
"Would you like to help us, then?" she asked. "We made our friend a promise. We can't let him down."
Stiffly—like an unoiled tin man—he waved them on toward the shattered brick road.
"Lead the way."
"Sonic! Wait for me!"
She was gasping for breath by the time she caught up with him. Placing her hands on her knees, she glanced down at his bright red sneakers which ended the long trail of prints they'd left on a dusty mountain road. There was a reason they weren't tapping impatiently: at the seat of the hill, past a guarded tunnel, sat Metropolis.
Oblivious, her dream-self wondered what could have possibly led him here. She'd chased him wordlessly through sloping island trails, down crashing beaches, into wooded forests, past torrid deserts with no discernible path but the keen puffing his soles made slapping the sand. She'd followed him day and night without rest and nothing had stopped them.
Until now. Their world ended where twisted factories began. She saw the division that halted him dead, the writhing boundary where nature shuddered away from Eggman's ruin.
Their side shrank under an invading metallic crust. She recoiled at the sight of the grass around her hardening into ragged nails, leeched of color and vitality as they bent and snapped. The flower she'd tucked behind her ear dropped with a clang, crystallized into a knifelike saw whose petals burst apart as gnarled blades. Everything around them was decaying, rusting, turning lethal. The city's buildings bled out smog as if their pollution tore the sky wide open. Neon lightning winked maliciously from the smoky distance.
As the thunder shook, Amy looked toward her hero, who stood rigid as a statue with his fists clenched at his sides. In fact, it was the tiny tremor they quaked that let her know he felt anything at all.
"Sonic," she said, touching his shoulder, "are you—"
He refused to budge. She couldn't so much as catch his eye. What was wrong? Why wouldn't he look at her?
The storm slammed toward them full-force. She buried her head in his shoulder as a vortex unleashed its fury around them, spitting vicious bolts that stripped the world of its shape and color. Even Metropolis was steeped in darkness by the time it dissipated. Before her watery voice could find its purchase, eyes surrounded them. Burning. Rows of them.
Eggman emerged from the shadowed crowd, wearing a grin to boil her blood.
"Sonic knows his place," he said, tucking an arm behind his back. In his left hand he wielded a luminescent tool similar to Tails' suppression device, his pointer finger tapping the trigger with a flourish. Glowing strings grew out of the barrel, reaching toward them like living tendrils. "It's about time you learned yours."
"No!" She planted herself squarely in front of Sonic. She vowed if the doctor took another step, he'd regret it.
Unfortunately, he saw little need. He fired, and to her horror, one of the strings flashed through her directly into Sonic, snapping back in a burst of light like the head of an electric whip.
She didn't feel it, didn't suffer an ounce, but it affected Sonic much differently. His eyes closed, and he swayed heavily to one side as if his unresponsive body still fought to stay grounded. He collapsed, which provided them a window of opportunity as she turned to tend him.
"Very well, then. Boys?"
"Sonic!" she screamed as Nocturnus grabbed her. She took a wild swing at them, but her hammer broke free of her grip and swept away.
She bucked and kicked them. Spat, bit, thrashed. Struggled to break free with all the force she could muster, but they were multiplying, obscuring her view as their sheer numbers entangled her. They were no longer entities of their own but knees and fists lashing out at her from every possible angle.
A dozen. A hundred. A thousand. They swarmed her, thoughtless, endless. One grabbed her mouth, another wrenched her ears. Vise grips anchored her arms and dragged her under. Her lungs burned like she was drowning.
"They're crushing me," she cried, "can't breathe, Sonic—help—"
With a flick of his wrist, Eggman drew up his inert body like a puppet.
The shuffle of a closing door jolted her awake.
" …Sonic?"
He wasn't there.
Amy sat upright, pressing a hand to her thumping heart before looking toward the window. Illuminated by sparse moonlight, droplets glided down the glass.
She trembled in the drafty air, then cast a rueful glance at the cotton tufts scattered across her lap. While dreaming, she'd wrung the quilt so tightly the stuff had spilled through the newly-rent tears; one of her toes wiggled through a rip.
Little by little she forced herself to uncoil the tension in her wrists. "Just a bad dream," she assured herself.
After taking a few moments to listen to the hushed trickle, she shook her head and buried it in her skirt, drawing her knees close to her. Though her fear had quieted some now she knew she hadn't been in any immediate danger, Sonic lingered in her mind like an afterimage. The rain reminded her of just how far apart they were.
Please be okay. Amy lifted her head, threading her fingers over her cold cheeks so the friction between her gloves and her skin warmed them. She rocked softly back and forth, as she used to do when she was little and the monsters flashed their claws in the darkness. Oh, Sonic, please tell me you're doing all right.
She sat awhile to gather her bearings. Then she glanced down at Tails, who had curled under his namesakes in a far more peaceful sleep. His mask, which she had tied tight behind his head to keep it from slipping off during the night, produced a steady white puffing upon his slow exhalations. His chest rose and fell with an assuring regularity.
Looking to her right, Amy prodded the quilted mound. No response.
She peeled back the edge a little, revealing a pillow, but shook off her gut-pang of apprehension rather than jump to the worst possible conclusion as she'd been doing all day. The pillow had shifted places on the bed… Maybe Cream was using the bathroom and didn't want to disturb them? Plus, she had fallen into a habit of wandering all over the house. Maybe she'd indulged her curiosity, gotten lost…
"Cream?"
Footsteps. They didn't come from the bathroom down the hall. Rather, they seemed to waft up from the kitchen.
She pressed her ear to the hardwood floor, but didn't pick up any vibrations footsteps would have emitted through the ancient boards, even for a child as light as Cream. She did perk at the faintest clink of metal, though. Like a spoon scraping worn china.
"Cream," she whispered tentatively, "you there?" cocking her head to the silence that answered. A loud clangor followed, so salient Tails murmured.
Amy pulled her boots on and took her hammer from its place beside the toybox. Something told her she wasn't the source of that particular noise.
When she reached the foyer, she hid behind a support beam under the balcony. The door to the kitchen, which was shut when they'd retired for the night, now swung slightly ajar. A trail of watery mud dragged across the tiles into the kitchen; she followed it to peer through the crack in the door.
Initially, she couldn't see much through that narrow strip. As her vision adjusted to the dim, she caught sight of a Gizoid stretched across the table. With narrowed eyes, she realized it was clutching its own severed arm, that wires spouted from the socket.
Just then a cloaked figure swept into view. Bowing its head, it placed a hand on the Gizoid's forehead. That dimmed the light flickering in its irises, and it slackened as if it were being put to sleep.
Though she didn't know what to make of this, she watched for more clues, hoping for a mere glimpse of the identity the darkness shrouded.
Fear flooded her system as she saw the cloaked figure freeze—and swivel around, making a beeline in her direction. The intrusion gave her little time to react. She ducked away, pressing her back against the wall, clenching her fist around the handle of her hammer.
Things fell ominously still. Each heartbeat led to another pointed, fragile silence, and she didn't move, didn't dare.
The doorknob shook.
Amy scrambled upstairs as quietly as she could, taking the stairs in a frenzied leap-frog to cover the thumping her boots made against the stairwell. A discernible voice inquired aloud about the noise, though she wanted to put as much distance between herself and their new 'visitor' as possible. She stumbled into the bedroom and shook Tails.
"Tails." Harder. "Tails, wake up. Someone's in the house."
He mumbled awake. Blearily he peered up at her and whispered, "Noc… turn… us?" in his cracked voice. He wandered his hand over the suppression device, which had wedged itself between the mattress and the footboard during the night.
"I don't know, but Cream and Cheese aren't asleep, and—" She picked up a yellow piece of paper rumpled under her pillow, and… "Oh, no." Her stomach sank. "No, no, no—"
Before he could ask what was the matter, she yanked him onto his feet. They flew downstairs, their legs carrying them through the foyer. She punted the front door and it all but slammed on its hinges, battered against the frame by the harsh wind. Soon it became a dwindling sight in their rearview. Amy tugged harder on his wrist to keep from losing him in the storm.
Precipitation slapped the street in heavy gusts, lending the empty asphalt a menacing glint. She raced around the corner into a dark side-alley, toppling over a garbage can in her wake. This city was so lifeless that all that poured out was sawdust, turning to useless slosh in the rain. Tails hopped over the muck as she frantically hunted her way through a landslide of trash.
"Cream? Cheese? Where are you?"
Tails tried calling for them as well, though his voice cracked and she discouraged him further with her fearful look. She wrung her dress hem, now sopping wet. Whirling around sprayed mist from the edges of her body. Amy cupped her hands around her mouth and strained her voice to produce an even louder call. "Ohh, this isn't happening, this can't be—Cream?"
As her own voice echoed back at her, panicked thoughts darted through her mind. She'd been so wrapped up in her own drama that it never occurred to her to keep her vigil up for Cream's sake. Why had they worried her enough to spur her to write this note? Why had they saddled her with that burden? She was just a kid, she shouldn't have to worry about clean water and their safety and keeping their rapidly-vanishing peace of mind… Now… Oh, now she and Cheese could be stuck anywhere in this good-for-nothing city—
Tails trailed behind her, offering her a helping hand. She skidded down the pile and flung her arms around him.
"Tails, I'm scared." She tightened her hold on him, as if that would protect him from whatever compelled Cream to venture out on her own. "She's all alone out there. What if— What if Eggman gets them?"
"I promise you," a soft voice said, "he'll regret it."
They reeled back, pressed shoulder to shoulder, when a patch of bricks from a condemned building sidled back. Vanilla, donned in a dark green cloak, crawled through the rough window-shaped hole. Once grounded she pressed a hand to her chest and took a few moments to steady her breathing, a bit lacking for oxygen as though she'd been chasing them down.
Amy was speechless. Likewise, Tails blinked hard, uncertain the raindrops misting his vison weren't part of another dream. A cold gale whipped through them, told him otherwise.
Emotions struggled for expression in Vanilla's eyes. Looking down at them, she seemed to want to ask them a great many things, but what she finally settled on was the most pressing question. "Where was she last?"
They both pointed toward the house, where the unattended door banged and creaked on its jamb. Vanilla deigned a single glance at it, her half-smile a fatigued one. Its loneliness seemed poignant now with the rain splashing into the open foyer.
"We should've taken turns," Amy said. Tails shuffled a toe at the ground. "Maybe if one of us was awake, she wouldn't have—"
"No, don't berate yourselves. You're not the ones to blame." Vanilla tugged her hood back on, letting the water stream rivulets over her dipped head. "I've made a terrible mistake."