The shuttle's main cabin was eerily quiet. Oh, there was the constant throbbing hum of the little ship's engines in the background, but Tails was so used to that sound from the Tornadoes and Typhoon that it barely deserved a mental footnote. As for human noises, the fox's escort must have been either asleep or completely apathetic. He'd had a chance to wander the entire cabin, such as it was, and none of them had said or done anything to rein him in. Of course, it wasn't like there was anything he could have done to the ship, after all.
It had been the realization that Sonic's screwdriver was gone that did Tails in. Oh, it made sense that his captors would have confiscated it, sure, and from what he'd seen of the local engineering it wouldn't have actually fit any of the fasteners, but all of that was beside the point. His big brother had given him the little tool with its translucent green handle during their first year together, right when he had realized Tails's affinity for machines, and the little fox had carried it tucked into his tail fur quite literally every day since. He'd even slept with it stowed away, a little reminder of home and of safety. And now it was locked away aboard a ship he'd probably never see again, right there next to the little black bands Sonic had plucked from his own shoes to fasten Tails's very first pair of gloves six years ago.
The fox was already curled up in a corner of the ship between two walls and an empty flight couch, and as the negative train of thought bulled through he pressed himself harder against the three walls. The dull vibrations of the engines flowed through him, keeping him awake even as the deep comforting pressure from the bulkheads lulled him to sleep. When he'd been a kit he'd been able to dig a little nest anywhere, even in the deep winter snow, which had served him well considering he'd had no choice until Sonic had found him. He hadn't lost the skill since then, but nowadays there were too many thoughts for even a cozy den like the one he was in now to give him peace. If nestling into something was enough I'd never have gone out here in the first place!
Well, if he wasn't going to be sleeping anytime soon he might as well focus those thoughts on something productive. What is there to think about, though? Half the people I've met hate me for what I am – nothing new there – and the other half just see me as a prisoner anyway. I was so happy when I got in the shuttle and now I can't even remember why! The plating was cold and harsh against his bare pads. Sonic gave me those shoes too, and all the ones before them. He's going to be so upset that I lost everything.
Oddly enough it was that thought that broke the spiral. No. Sonic doesn't give up on people no matter how many times they mess things up. You're living proof of that, Tails. But he can't help you if you never see him again. So start thinking! He popped himself out of his little corner, spine shifting and popping as he stood. Let's see, there's the entry hatch on the wall across from me, which means this door on my right ought to be that stubby little cockpit I saw from the outside. I don't see the engines though...wait.
Now that he was actually looking instead of just moping around and trying to hide, the wide rectangular discolorations in the back corners of the shuttle stood out clearly. Got to be downstairs, the fox nodded to himself. And if I was a sane designer – no guarantees – I'd put an access panel at chest height, although I guess I'd need to jump to hit it on a human ship. But there wasn't anything after all, not a lever or a button or even a little light switch, just a flat monochrome bulkhead. "Not sure whether I'm the crazy engineer or they are," Tails muttered under his breath. "Weird that people can't get to the engines from the main deck, but maybe they've got a reason."
"Keeping too-curious kids out, that's the reason." Tails felt his heart, ears, and tails leap straight up as the sergeant's altered voice rolled across the room. The fox looked slowly over his shoulder, guilt flooding his face. The troopers were definitely all awake now, he could see their shoulders shaking with snickers he was glad were muted. And now that he saw it, the sergeant's carbine was aimed right at him from the man's lap. "I used to think that every prisoner we'd ever take would try to blast their way into the hyperdrive, at least take us with him. But here we were asleep on a crash couch and all our guns are right where we left them. Still not letting you in, though," he added as the relieved Tails started to look back at the sealed floor hatch. "You might not want to sabotage us but you'd probably get wedged in a power conduit or something."
"Hey!" Tails puffed up a little. "I know what I – "
"If you knew what you were doing, fox," one of the plain-armored troopers cut in, "you wouldn't be wasting your time looking for the switch. Anyone else'd know exactly what a Lambda looked like."
"And don't bother with the cabin door either," the sergeant told him. "Same set-up. Now go curl up again like the good throw rug the Commander wanted to turn you into. We'll hit Kessel's hyper point in probably another five hours."
Tails meandered back to his corner with one last sulky look over his shoulder. No matter how he tried to pad the walls with his namesakes this time, though, he couldn't get that sense of shelter back again. I thought I was at least a good engineer, a good mechanic. What'll I do if I'm not even that anymore?
For five hours a silent ball of yellow fur stared longingly at a rectangular hatch in the floor, imagining what was beneath it and knowing he'd never be trusted enough to find out.
Tails hadn't managed to get to sleep, so he was the first person in the cabin to feel the shuttle leave hyperspace. The vibrations in his pretend den's walls stopped for just an instant then revved up again, but slower and heavier this time. He felt himself sliding into the metal legs of the flight couch as fresh acceleration pressed him away from the forward wall. Must have left FTL behind. Wonder if it works like the ring-gate then, where it keeps the same speed from one end of the jump to the other? Doesn't sound like it from the little bits I've heard though. The thoughts were a welcome distraction to everything else that had filled his skull while he'd wound himself tighter between his soft tails.
The fox levered himself off of the floor, stretching his arms above his head and winding his tails luxuriously. He felt his spine decompress as he moved and wished yet again that his mind was as easy to deal with. Since reentry was bound to be a unique experience, he locked himself down in the flight couch and rested his head against the bulkhead again. The crash webbing – oh, call it what it is, Tails – the seatbelt pressed an X into his white chest fur and held his hips down snugly, an arrangement that was almost as comfortable as his nest in the corner. As the acceleration eased up the troopers started looking across the cabin at him again.
"Well, look who hasn't crawled into a power line yet," the sergeant muttered, sleepiness obvious in his voice even through the helmet. Still, it faded fast and he snapped what looked like a couple of plastic bracers open lengthwise across his knee. "You've got maybe twenty minutes of freedom left before I have to slap these on you, fox. Enjoy them."
Wonderful. If there was any doubt as to what was going to happen to me, well, there it goes. Still, he might as well make the most of it. "I'd have a lot more fun if I got to tour the engines," he said with a too-wide smile. "Or the cockpit."
The smile sagged into shock as the sergeant cocked his head. "Cabin should be fine, actually, as long as you're willing to wear these now." He jangled the wrist cuffs by the length of segmented cable that joined them. "I'm sure you understand."
Tails swallowed hard but nodded anyway. "I do, sir." No reason to push things. I'd never get away even if I could go through with it in the first place. "If you're going to tie me up you'd better have a second pair of those for my tails though."
The troopers' reactions were gratifying. Somehow they managed to whip their heads around to stare at him even though they'd already been looking his way, and it wasn't hard at all for the little fox to imagine the wide-eyed stares behind those gaunt black visors. I'm more likely to live through this if I get them to trust me. Might not get to use my hands for a long time anyway, but I think I'd rather wait than get blasted away. "I'm almost tempted to see what you can do with them, fox," the sergeant said with an unmistakable chuckle. "But if you're going to let me get away with not shooting you I think I'll take your advice." I'd like that too. "Well, come over here then."
Tails fumbled around for a moment before finding the release for his seatbelt, and then popped upright and walked tamely across the cabin. He felt himself blushing, his ears sticking straight up and his tails trying to do the same as he turned around and let the trooper bind him. It had happened before, of course, but for whatever reason the thought of letting himself be bound voluntarily was more embarrassing than actually getting captured had been. More embarrassing, but less humiliating. He scuffed the decksole awkwardly, the coarse pads on his toes and the ball of his foot catching the metal more than the smooth-worn rubber of his sneakers ever had aboard the Typhoon. He jerked his hands away reflexively from the tickle when the man grabbed them – it wasn't deliberate, but he'd gotten so used to wearing his gloves that the skin beneath them was too sensitive for its own good. Nothing came of it, at least, and by the fifth or sixth try he was able to hold himself steady enough to let the soldier do what he was there for. As much as he hated the foreign weights on his tails they at least went on much more smoothly, and with that he was as restrained as he was going to get. I'd feel a lot better about this if I'd actually been smart enough to beat the Metarex. Smart enough to save Cosmo. Why would I be smart enough to save myself now if I couldn't do it for someone else?
"Deal's a deal," the sergeant grumbled, standing up behind Tails and nudging the brooding fox forward. The unexpected push mercifully jostled him out of his thoughts again, and he flashed the big man a grateful smile neither of them quite understood. Don't I want to remember Cosmo? I'm supposed to, after all. It was my fault. "Do foxes have a thing for binders? If you're going into the cabin you'd better start moving, or I could just change our terms and tell the men to look away instead."
If Tails had been blushing before it must have been visible through his white cheek fur after that comment. "No, sir! No, sorry, I'm just thinking about...something." Me and Cosmo – I'd never – besides, I only know what he's talking about because Rouge always brings it up! Ever since that silly battle festival...
"I hope you both enjoyed it," the sergeant replied with a low chuckle. He thinks he's joking, Tails. Don't blame him for not knowing what you really did to her. "Come on, then, fox." He placed a hand on Tails's shoulder, once again reminding the fox of Sonic's touch past the jagged weight of the armor. Why do they put strips of armor on their people's palms? Their designer really must have something wrong upstairs. Tails's natural curiosity – and rationality – momentarily outweighed his moodiness. Then he let the man steer him towards the hatch.
To his surprise – and, judging from the noise over his shoulder, the sergeant's as well – the door hissed open before they even came up next to it. "I heard you talking. Should I start making wedding plans for you two, Davizen?" The voice had that same aristocratic drawl as the major's had, but was as light and upbeat as Sonic's.
"And people wonder why you're still an ensign, Quinn," the sergeant grumbled back, but even through the filtering Tails could hear the laughter in his voice.
"They do?" the pilot asked in a tone of genuine surprise, spinning his high padded chair around to face them. He had a sharp, severe aspect torn apart by an ear-to-ear grin that came together in a face that would have been terrifying if the man's voice hadn't been so disarming. "I thought I'd made it obvious, myself. Do you think I should try harder?" he asked Tails directly, light brown eyes meeting the fox's blue ones.
For a moment Tails could only blink. Then he shook his head. "No, no, I think you're doing great as far as irreverence goes." Sonic never quite figured out that word. Then again, maybe he did and just took it as a complement anyway – that sounds more like him.
"Told you so, sergeant." Quinn stretched his smile even wider somehow. "What is it, Storm Commando Ninety-Five now?"
Tails let their conversation fade into the background as he looked around the cockpit at last. There were three other chairs, all of them empty for whatever reason. Maybe just not worth it to take one fox and a few soldiers to this Kessel place. The monitors that loomed out from each of the control consoles were all grey and lifeless – he couldn't see through Quinn to see the main one, though – and the controls themselves were labeled in a script that Tails couldn't make out. Couldn't all be easy, could it? That's weird, though, since we all speak the same language. A question for another time.
And that brought him to the big sunglass-polarized canopy that surrounded them. The stars shone bright and clear around here, and although the constellations – if there even were any – were foreign it was just a relief to see natural light again. Two stubby round ends of a ruddy asteroid loomed ahead of them. "Is that Kessel, then?" he asked to no one in particular.
"That it is," Quinn answered promptly. "Well, one of the two, anyway. Big asteroids rich in crystals that can be processed into half the pharmaceuticals in the galaxy, with silica spiders that get you the other half."
"Careful what you tell him, Quinn," the sergeant – Davizen, was it – muttered.
The pilot just tossed his head. "Wardens'll tell him soon enough anyway. Besides, only people who don't know what Kessel is are the ones who don't know what Kessel is."
The sergeant growled something Tails and Quinn both pretended not to hear. Good thing Cream isn't here. Her mother would kill me if she thought I exposed her to that kind of language. The fox smiled a little despite himself. Vanilla the Rabbit really would have been more concerned about people swearing in front of her little daughter than either of them being imprisoned by armed soldiers on a mining colony. After all, they'd both been through situations not too different in the past anyway. Wonder if Eggman took lessons from these guys. Or maybe the other way around.
"I see you're easily distracted, fox," Quinn said. Tails shook off his thoughts and looked the grey-suited man in the eye again. "That's why the commander won't let me have a copilot myself. I'd talk all the way through the flight and buzz through a star or something on the way there."
"Does hyperdrive let you do that?" Tails asked. He got a strange look from the pilot and a tightened grip from the soldier in reply. Work harder, Davizen. You're not even going to leave a bruise, and that's with the armor! Wait, why am I egging him on?
Quinn eventually gave him a reply, but his tone was a little more guarded this time. "I thought you came in on your own – figured since they didn't send any other shuttles and you're the only one here –"
"You think too much," the sergeant warned him. Quinn swallowed heavily.
"Always my problem, never yours," he shot back as lightly as he could manage after a challenge like that. "Anyway, I guess your tech's a little different if that's even a possibility to you. No, we're out of trouble unless our calculations are off, in which case we can pop back into realspace pretty much anywhere. One of the reasons the Maw is such a thrill ride for smugglers and yet so dull a post for patrol ships like ours."
Tails couldn't see Davizen but he still felt the man's subtle nod behind them. A little tickle at the tips of his ears, maybe. Regardless, he felt certain there was something false in the pilot's answer, something he'd carefully kept concealed. Not that he had any clue what or how it affected him, of course. Thanks for giving me something else to think about, though, the fox thought very sincerely at Quinn. The man's bizarre grin was back to full stretch; whether he'd done that deliberately to take Tails's mind off of things or to cover his own tails against official retribution – or both – he clearly knew exactly what he was doing.
"All right, you've had your little tour. Sorry it's just a glimpse, but we're out of time here," Quinn said after a moment as he spun his chair back around. "Control's going to call me up in just a few minutes and I don't think any of us want them to see a prisoner out here in the –"
A little buzz cut him off and it was his turn to swear, much less quietly than the sergeant had. Tails tried to cover his mouth as he giggled but only succeeded in pulling something in his left upper arm and throwing himself off balance. "Shuttle Condor, this is Kessel Control," a bored-sounding man said from somewhere to Quinn's right. Tails could see a blue-white light glowing from that same area and wondered what was behind the pilot. "Confirming receipt of one special package and five stormtroopers for a week's leave. Wait one," Tails did not like the way the man's voice sharpened, "what in Death's name is that?"
Quinn chuckled nervously but Sergeant Davizen stepped forward and dragged Tails up with him. A little blue statue of a man, presumably the traffic-control officer they were talking to, blurred and fuzzed from a circular platform just below the pilot's eye level. "This is the package, control. I want no evidence of unusual treatment for him right up until he gets steered into the separate cells, understood?"
"Understood, sergeant," the man said dazedly. "May I ask what the prisoner is doing in a restricted area?"
The sergeant grunted something that might have been a chuckle. "Call it a last request. No need to report it; besides, we were just leaving."
The control officer sounded skeptical. "Of course, sergeant. Very well, Condor, yours is Berth Eighty-Seven in Hangar Twenty-One. Transmitting weather and flight plans now." With a final blur the man blinked out of existence and Quinn sagged back in his chair.
"Well played, sergeant, well played. Hope it doesn't come home to roost for you, though."
Davizen grunted. "Too far above his pay grade. Besides, I've got the green armor now. Nobody lower than Moff who's not in my chain of command is going to do anything I might turn back around on them."
"Sounds like you know what you're doing for a change. Good to hear it, Davizen," Quinn replied far too airily for a man who'd been shivering in his seat less than a minute before.
The sergeant just snorted and guided his furry charge back out into the main cabin. The other troopers had gathered in a semicircle to listen in. "What're you people staring at?" Davizen thundered, causing Tails to duck his poor abused ears. "Strap in and get ready for landing!"
Tails did the same, wavering a little without the soldier's gauntlet to steady him. But he'd been tied up enough by Eggman and the other kids in Emerald Hill to know how to stay balanced with only two or four limbs free, and so his only problem now was the fact that he was minutes away from a long-term prison cell.
This is going to get interesting.
From the harsh orange glare that filled the prison approach Tails's mind expected a blast of desert heat, but his body was shivering in an arctic canyon wind. Right. Asteroid. Artificial atmosphere, which is why I'm a step away from hyperventilating here just trying to breathe. Not to mention freezing my tails off. The sooner they got to the dull metal building that loomed out of the cliff ahead of them the better as far as the fox was concerned.
That clearly wasn't going to be for a while though, not judging by the sixteen white-armored soldiers and pair of flatbed trams just downslope from them. Or from the helmetless, greying man charging up the hill past them his face just as craggy as their surroundings and much more severe.
"This is it?" he growled at the sergeant.
"This is him," Davizen confirmed, placing a subtle but unmistakable emphasis on the pronoun.
"Not much, is it? Twenty kilos, maybe? Forget spiders or rockfalls, the other prisoners are going to tear it apart long before."
The sergeant straightened. "Unrest, Warden?"
Another growl. "Hardly. The men haven't had weapons-free in almost three months standard."
Davizen whistled, or at least Tails assumed he did behind the rattling buzz that his speakers gave off. "I'm actually impressed, Warden."
"I'm glad," the old man replied in a tone drier than the wind flaying the canyon. "Take your people on the left train. The rug's coming with us on the right. Make sure it knows that."
Tails bristled but the sergeant placed a hand across his furry chest before he could open his mouth. "He's fully sapient, Warden. And he understands and speaks Basic fluently, although we haven't tested literacy yet. Command likes it when your prisoners at least get to the first transfer block alive, you know."
The warden sighed heavily. "Command can like whatever they want, but I can only deliver based on what they actually give me. Which in this case clearly isn't much. All right then, follow me."
The next three minutes or so were some of the less pleasant in Tails's ten-year life. Black holes were intense and shooting his girlfriend still hurt, but flying at what felt like transsonic speeds on an open-topped platform into the teeth of a sub-zero sandstorm was a new experience in pain. But finally the tram ducked into an oily dark hangar of its own and one of the troopers yanked the dazed fox off the platform by his tail-cuffs. His heels skidded backwards through the not-quite-familiar thickness of motor oil, a sensation almost every part of his body but his hands and feet knew. And then the floodlights flared back to life and illuminated a red-rock corridor, and the worst of the transit was over.
For a certain definition of worst. There was a fork in the tunnel ahead and the soldiers shunted the bound fox down the wider left passage. For whatever reason they refused to follow him, though, so he squared his shoulders and forged ahead into the darkness. And then suddenly it wasn't dark anymore, not really, and the startled kit whipped around to see a pulsing blue-white barrier across the hall behind him. As he stared at it a strange vibration filled the corridor, setting his fur drifting as it eased out dust and debris from the trip. Unfortunately, it also set his jaw trembling through his ears no matter how far down he tucked them or how hard he ground his hands into them.
At least the audio barrage was short, and he could close his eyes against the light show that followed. White, red, and blacklight-purple rippled across the dark brown walls, and it was the last color that finally tipped Tails off. Ah, well, if scanning me makes them feel better they might as well do it, he thought with a sigh as he remembered Earth's airport security. Besides, if worst comes to worst, what's another mutation on top of what I've got? He tried to swish his tails out in front of him, nearly overbalanced, and dusted himself down ostentatiously instead in his best "I meant to do that" act. Nothing followed the deep scan, so after a moment he made his way further into the darkened hallway ahead until the soldiers swung back out to surround him once more.
As Tails was marched further down the hallway they started to pass blue-white barriers like the one in the capital ship's hangar, and inside each were between four and two dozen prisoners. At least, he assumed they were prisoners, they wore ragged jumpsuits without the armor or uniformity of the guards and clearly came from a wide range of species. He felt his fur stand on end as more and more eyes turned to his escort. There was anger in those looks, and not all of it was aimed at the soldiers. Anger and desperation and fear and, most unsettling of all, hunger. He wasn't sure if it was the ones who looked like they might actually eat him or the other type that unnerved him worst, but he screwed his eyes shut and just trotted along with the column as best he could.
Things came to a head when they came to their first halt. The intersections to a cross-corridor were themselves walled in by other shields, which Tails started to look at in more detail in the absence of other things to do. Little cylinders protruded from the ceiling and floor, with the shield running tangential to the inner edges of each. Only people outside the shields can bring them down at all, I guess. Clever. The warden was doing just that when a ripping snarl echoed through the halls. Something with far too many eyes and even more fur than Tails hurled itself at one of the prison doors, fanged mouth wide open. The fox winced at the harsh electric discharge that roared back at it and threw it to the ground, but despite the impact the creature stood up again and charged once more. It came again and again even as spots in its fur started to smolder, and when Tails started backing away he realized that the troopers around him had already ducked past him instead. His tails wound and unwound nervously around the cuffs, nearly tripping him more than once, and then he smacked one of the soldiers' helmets by mistake and the man shoved him the rest of the way down in reply.
"Oh, for Sith's sake, shoot it!" the warden growled. Suiting the action to the word, he unholstered a skeletal-looking pistol, looked longingly at a dial just above the grip, and fired straight at the berserk prisoner. A blue lightning bolt crackled from the gun to the victim, a faint cone rippling around it as well, and finally the big furry creature lay still. "Idiot Talz don't know when they're beaten." Energy weapons? Good to know. Guess it's better than bullets. Or hedgehogs. He wasn't sure whether to laugh or cry at the memories that thought brought with it.
He settled for watching the Imperials at work instead. One of the troopers hustled forward, checking the shield generator closest to the enraged creature. "It almost wasn't, Commander. Another few swings and the shocks would have overloaded the shields instead."
The warden shook his head angrily, by now leaving Tails with the impression that he made few movements that weren't angry. "Just for that he's our decoy. Lower the shields. The rest of you, cover them. Eighteen-Eighty-Four and Twenty-Eighty-Nine, bring the Talz."
The designated troopers scurried forward, hefting the mammoth creature with significant difficulty. Tails gave them the most sympathetic grin he could muster from his spot on the ground before the man behind him hoisted him back up by his cuffs again. But once the convoy and its new member were moving again, he had something to ask.
"Sir," he spoke up diffidently, "did you...kill that, uh, Talz?"
"No such luck," the warden replied laconically. "Just a stun shot. And the shield was in the way."
Tails's mind was racing. "So you can shoot someone and be sure it won't kill them? That's –"
The warden didn't even bother looking back at him. "I could take you apart three different ways just with this blaster, and the rifles have even more. I could hit you with an AT bolt, a meter of energized Tibanna gas that'd give you maybe a quarter-second to realize you were dead before it ripped your guts out and packed them into the man behind you. Or since you're standing around naked," Tails looked down at his furry feet in embarrassment, "I suppose I could save on energy and just fire off a few lighter blasts. Each one's an orb of plasma traveling just under light-speed, and each one explodes when it hits something solid enough to be worth killing. That's got me wondering how your fur smells while it burns, actually." Tails looked frantically around, trying to keep his balance on the harsh gritty floor with his arms and tails behind his back. The other soldiers were watching impassively, clearly used to this speech or others like it. "Probably not something I want to find out, although I wouldn't mind at least watching it happen." Okay, calm down, Tails. You've already smelled that a few times before – a long scar along his right side twinged in memory – and he's right, he doesn't want to. "But since Command can be so fussy about things like that I've got this locked on stun. So you're lucky. The worst I get to do to you is bypass the gas cell and just pump your nervous system full of electricity. People always scream for a few minutes when they wake up but it doesn't do anything the med-probes can't put back together."
Okay, I get it. You didn't have to give me that whole performance, Tails thought as he tried to put a plug in his building hysteria. All the same he appreciated the information. There were quite a few things one could do with a gun that made lightning strikes on demand, and knowing it was nonlethal meant he might actually be willing to get behind a trigger if he had to. Maybe. "Thank you, Warden," he said after a minute, his voice still a little more shaken than his mind was.
"Good, you know the right answer already," the man replied in that sun-dry voice. "Now keep moving, all of you. We need to be two junctions up before the Talz knows what's going on."
By the time they actually left the first intersection, though, six soldiers had broken off from the pack to cover the weakened shield and two more had dropped back to help their comrades cover the Talz. That left Tails with only eight guards and the warden. Heh. "Only." Despite the changes there was nothing remarkable about the rest of the walk, just more and more shielded caverns he refused to look into and an increasingly rough floor he bruised his toes and gashed his pads against. He never cried out, though; the last thing he needed to to down here was make the only people who might protect him think he was a crybaby. He heard someone behind one of the shields – he hoped – mutter something about "a nice piece of tail" as he passed and hoped it was a bad joke. Rouge had explained the other meaning to him after it showed up on an old movie back on Earth and he'd promptly gone red in the face, something that happened most of the time the bat was around.
Finally, though, they came to the third junction. Tails let himself look around again as he shifted from foot to foot to take the pressure off some of his injuries – my fault for letting my feet get soft like this; I'd never have noticed back in Emerald Hill. Still, the shoes were gifts from Sonic. I had to use them! There were no cells in sight anymore and this time there were only two corridors instead of three, one stretching out in front of them and the other branching off to the left. Actually, the bit about the cells wasn't quite true, the fox realized as the doors made their booming crack and shut down. There were several further down the hall ahead of him, barriers wanly lighting an otherwise pitch-dark hallway. The other wing didn't even have that much. Tails shivered uncontrollably as the convoy moved out into the intersection.
"Drop the Talz past the door and seal it," the warden snarled at his troops. The fox relaxed immensely as the big furry alien was hurled bodily down the black corridor and locked off, only to feel tears bead up as he realized what he'd just thought. You'd condemn someone to...to that when you could go instead? At least if it's you you'd know what was happening. You'd probably mess things up and in here that probably means you'd die, but it's better than wishing that someone else would so that you don't have to.
Besides, I've already done that once.
The warden saw to Tails personally, dragging him backwards down the hall and exposing the kit's bare heels to even more abuse than the rest of his feet had taken. This time the fox couldn't help it. He yipped his pain and confusion and earned a sharp rap from the man's armored knuckle. Not as good as Knuckles though, he thought somewhat deliriously as the warden paused to look over the six cells in the little cavern. All of the ones Tails could see were occupied by at least one person, generally three. "Right, in here." The warden slammed a metal spike into a slot in the generator in question and after chirping for a moment the barrier wooshed away. He shoved the fox in and Tails pitched forward over his cracked and stubbed toes with a wail, landing hard on his face without his hands or tails to check the fall.
The shield crackled to life behind him almost immediately and with a whimper the fox pulled himself up into the closest thing he could manage to a comfortable ball. Red dust stained his fur from head to toe, caking most of it into little knots, and his bangs sagged across his face as he kicked his way into his new den. At least he could see his single cellmate now, sleeping on a low metal table just next to him. So much for cushions and a library. The man looked young, with a smooth round face and black hair that wanly reflected the shield's glow. The orange jumpsuit the man was stuck in was thicker than it had looked from outside the cells; it was so thick, in fact, that Tails couldn't tell whether or not the other prisoner was even breathing.
Well, I'm here. Now to see how to get out.
But there were perks to being clever enough that your friends called you a genius. Tails already had a few ideas buzzing through his head, and for the first time in more than a month the first things he saw in his dream were not wood and water and death. No, in dreams he'd exhausted even longer ago there were now rock and metal and blazing energy – the start of a new design.
