Four months earlier

Scourge couldn't think much right now. His blood felt like a cocktail of grit and adrenaline, and what's more, the grit was cold. Foreign. Disconnected from him. A robot voice in this screwed up lab read out numbers. Percentages of conversion rates, while rising, sure felt like a countdown to him.

He hated being clamped down like this. Sure, Scourge had a knack for jumping into precarious situations headfirst, not thinking through things, and yet somehow managing to escape free of negative consequences. He supposed, in the far back of his head, that was what made Sonic so attractive to him all those years ago – they were the same back then, plunging into the cold pool of opportunity, damn the consequences.

Now, it seemed Sonic remembered he was afraid of water.

He managed to turn his head – though doing much of anything on his own now, mind as foggy as bustling as it was, took all his concentration – and saw Sonic. He was shaking, the space between his eyes tense with worry. But at the same time… he didn't seem surprised.

"You… you look like you've seen this before," Scourge barked out to him. "Like you know what's happening to me."

A flash of recognition – or maybe shame – came across Sonic's face. Bingo, Scourge thought. "What, no I-" Sonic started to say, but it was no use to even attempt to fake this. Sonic was too honest for that. At least, this new Sonic.

It pissed him off.

"Cut the bull, Sonic. I know what you look like when you lie. You're incapable." The shame grew deeper in Sonic's face, and Scourge couldn't help but have a moment of sick happiness. Yes, he thought. Let him squirm. Least he could do for me. "What have you seen?" Scourge barked at him. "What do you know? I told you shit, remember? Client secrets."

Sonic's face looked as though he was trying to harden his resolve. Another thing he used to be so good at, back in the day. What a laugh it was now, to think of the kinds of things he'd do to get away from the consequences of his actions. He was quick back then – well, still quick now, for sure – and knew how to avoid cameras. Then when he would get caught, that same face would show. It was almost comical, and Scourge used to imitate that face to him over drinks. The face where he'd put up an invisible barrier, almost as if to dare the other person to figure out what he was hiding.

Scourge wanted to break through that glass barrier of his, one last time. This wasn't the time. "Now you tell me shit," he snapped at Sonic, making the other wince. "Don't you remember how this works, you… you fucking goody two shoes!?"

The reply was quiet. "It was a virus, we think. People had it all over the hospital when I got my cast off." Sonic spoke slowly, and the words sunk in. What did this have to do with a 'conversion rate'? "They were talking in unison, trying to give it to Shadow and me-"

"Shadow being the boyfriend."

"He's not my boyfriend!"

The grit was overpowering now, feeling like it was scratching him from the inside out. The worst part was, it didn't even feel bad. Not causing pain at all, but like scratching an itch that had long been unsatisfied. And the thought of that, of grievances long left unsettled, broke into his head.

Sonic and Scourge had never been a serious thing. It was true what he said to Shadow – one night tangled together in the bed, letting off the steam of another Casinopolis day, just two guys having a light, carefree night.

That is, until it became more than that.

Gentle hands that had just held him down and pushed him to his limits had then gently grazed over Scourge's spines, trailing over the sides of his neck, his back, his ribs. He planted little kisses on the other's collarbone, on each little bruise. He murmured quietly about how glad he was they had finally taken the plunge like this, how he was happy to go at Scourge's page.

Scourge had never had anyone touch him like that before. They'd never been so vulnerable. And he knew he didn't deserve it.

When the blue hedgehog finally dozed off, Sonic snored quietly in the bedsheets. His body laid out long, not delving into the smallest amount of nerves. Hedgehogs curled up when they felt stressed or in danger.

Maybe it was all for the best, he thought. He couldn't keep this up. He couldn't make such a peaceful space for him again. Scourge just wasn't that type of guy.

So he left. He didn't answer Sonic's calls. He tried to forget.

And now, seeing Sonic here with another guy – this 'Shadow' – he tried to remember that it was probably for the best. But the idea of that kind of thing with another guy… it hurt more than he cared to admit.

"But you want him to be," Scourge told Sonic. It came out with more venom than he could have liked, admittedly. But even as he said the words, he knew they were true. That black and red hedgehog's face spiked in his mind. He didn't look much kinder than Scourge, or more affectionate. What was it about this guy, anyway?

"What does that matter right now?" Sonic said, and Scourge's blood hit a boil.

"So you admit it?"

"Admit what?"

"You want him to be your boyfriend?"

"What are we, twelve?"

Whispers crept into Scourge's head, and he blinked hard to try to dispel them, like a horse with a fly on its head. "Do you?" he said, trying to focus on the words being said. Not his own regrets. Not that black and red face in his head, a mild scowl pressed on it. Not picturing the two of them, intertwining the fingers in the way Sonic and Scourge once did.

"Argh, yes, okay! I do, and it's weird, and confusing…." Sonic kept babbling, but I could no longer hear him. The whispers were voices, and the voices were mine. I knew, with my own fading mind, that they were here to take me away. That I was becoming part of something different. But somehow, I didn't mind that much. The black and red face was fading away.

It was beautiful, in a way. He had been alone for so many years. He had longed for connection, though he would have never admitted it. Here, now, He felt it. He let himself go. He let himself drown in the voices. The chorus. The throng.

"N-Now do you want to know what's happening to you or not?"

"But I do know what is happening to me," a voice said, echoing out of his – no, our – throat. It was no more me that one instrument was an orchestra. "I know I am fighting something that's going to win. I know you are fighting something you do not have to." He – no, we – could still be connected to him, some part realized. We could share a mind. We could share a vision. Even Shadow. All this body needed to do was find a way to leave. Or to get another.

Those were the final thoughts Scourge had on his own. It was doable. They could not flee The Purpose forever.

"Your problems are so easy to solve."

Present day

It took some time for the two of them to figure out a way of sneaking past The Taken. Every nook and cranny of this place was likely under surveillance – if not from literal cameras, then from the eyes of those in the building. They tried not to think about how many of those in the building may have been the ones taken all those months ago, back when they were still here. How close had they come to being in the same position? If Sonic hadn't been the "control" and Scourge had gone free, how would things have been different?

There was no use dwelling on that.

There were lesser-known passages, of course, but the problem was that it only took one high-clearance person being taken to have the whole network be aware. The question than became not where they wouldn't know something was going on, but which paths would take them the longest time to catch up.

There was crawling through vents again, of course – there always had to be crawling through vents, scraping knees and covering fur in dust – but as Sonic followed Shadow, he was surprised by how open he could be in particular areas.

They had decided to stick to the plan. Find a way to send out a signal to GUN's satellites. Broadcast the disrupting signal. Save the planet. Then go on a real date. Odds were next to impossible, but hey, Sonic had beat worse odds before. After all, he was still here, wasn't he?

The thing was, there were only a few rooms where such a signal could be sent out, and they would likely be swarming with former GUN agents. While they wouldn't try to kill the two of them, they would try to take them into the fold of their hivemind. If that happened, it was all over. It was true what the ones he encountered said – between Shadow's knowledge and his speed, they were perfect vessels to transmit the nanites to new people. The world wouldn't stand a chance.

So how to get in, then? Well, there were plenty of places that held explosives, machinery, and acid. Any one of them could make a distraction. Divert enough people, and they could take on who remained more easily. It was one fight, one they'd have to make count, but the chance was better than they had anticipated. The closest place they could do that, Shadow said, was a lab with minimal activity surrounding it. Shadow lead the way, but Sonic, having a history of improvisation, would be the one to see what all was around and make it into a spectacle absurd enough to draw the attention of the guards.

They rounded the last turn, seeing that the lab was up ahead. Sonic vaguely remembered something like this. "Shadow, is this the same one Scourge and I were in?"

Shadow flinched, not responding right away. "…yes." He admitted.

"Why here of all places?" Sonic said. He tried to sound unaffected, and with almost anyone else it would have worked. Shadow, though, could see through it. He knew it bothered him.

"I'm sorry, but it really is the closest place we can do this. And besides," Shadow said, a small smirk coming on his face, "wouldn't it give you some satisfaction to blow the place up?"

Sonic laughed. "Okay, maybe a little. But once I do, we have to book it. I can't race you because I don't know where we're going, but just know that if I did, I would win."

"Like hell you would, hedgehog." The smirk was a full on grin – the first Sonic had seen in what felt like hours. It almost was enough to make the pain melt away. Losing Amy, and Tails, and everyone else… he had to do this for them. And at least in this, he knew he wasn't alone.

But the smile was short lived. "Sonic, look out!"

He screeched to a stop, leaving skids on the floor. The face went back to being stern, but shock also painted it. Sonic turned quickly to see what could have caused that reaction, and he was confronted with a peculiar sight. Standing in front of him was a machine, but one unlike any he had ever seen before. It was humanoid in shape, elegant and poised to move. The body had a smooth metal chassis covering all of its limbs. It wasn't like Metal Sonic, or Tails under the influence of the Zeti – it was smooth, unbroken, a perfect imitation of the living form. The eyes had retinas that adjusted like camera lenses, and though the face remained expressionless, the voice that came from its mouth had an attempt – albeit a poor one – at mimicking excitement.

"We told you that you did not need to fight us. It is time to fix both of you. It is time to see The Purpose that binds the world together."

Sonic shivered with recognition. He didn't know how he could tell, metallic as the voice was, but it was still recognizable to him. A memory reverberated through him, now twisted like the metal cords forming the body's muscles in front of him. It was the same voice that, all those years ago, whispered to him in the dark of a seedy Casinopolis hotel. The same green spines that he had worked his fingers through, giving an unspoken plea to stay that went unfulfilled.

Now Scourge wasn't just gone, he was fully gone. And if he had his way, he'd take Sonic and Shadow with him.