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I was awakened by a scream. When I opened my eyes, I could see sunlight pouring out of the window. I must've dozed off. I sat up on the sofa and stood up on my feet. My leg had obviously healed overnight because I didn't even feel a little bit of pain from it. That screaming I heard outside sounded just like...Amy!

I stood up wide awake and sped out the door to the location of the screaming. I screeched my feet to a halt when I found Amy out in the woods. She was clutching herself, sinking to the ground, and shrieking like a child that just had their shot. Whatever kind of terrible pain she was in would have made my hurt leg the night before look more like somebody had just kicked it.

As I looked at Amy, I couldn't believe what I saw. I started to notice what looked like smoke coming from her flesh. She stood up and moved over to the shade from a tree behind her. When she was in the slightly darker area provided by the tree, the smoke began to disappear. After it did, she let out a huge sigh of relief as she closed her eyes and let her arms release their grip on her.

This is weird! I thought.

I decided to walk over to her. When I had just reached the shade, she opened her eyes and gazed at me with her dark-filled emerald green pupils. I let out a yelp as I stepped back into the faint morning light in shock from seeing those eerie looking eyes of hers. Looking at them was like peering into ultimate darkness. Amy lowered her eyebrows in a look of scorn and began to walk over to me. For the first time in a real long while, I began to tremble
in fear.

"Sonic, you've been running from me the entire time last night! You are really starting to make me-." Before she could finish, she started to scream again.

She had walked into the sunlight and then retreated back into the shade. Why couldn't she go out into the sun? It's like it was burning her. Literally from the look of the smoke earlier!

"Sonic, you were always running from me!" Amy said starting to sound a little whiny. "Even when I helped you break out of your jail cell on Prison Island, you and the others always left me behind! Even we were on the ARK!"

I let out a gasp when I heard what she said. There was no way she could've been a clone! She and I were the only ones who knew about the time she freed me from my cell on Prison Island. It really was Amy! But what had happened to her? And why was she unable to go out in the sun without burning? I had to help her get away from the sunlight first before I could ask her.

I told her to stay in the shade before I dashed back to the house and got an ocean blue blanket from the closet in the living room. As soon as I did, I ran back out to the woods where Amy was waiting for me in the protection of the tree's shadow. I spread out the blanket and covered her with it, making sure that her entire body was protected from the sun. Then, I scooped her up in my arms and ran back into the house.

As soon as we were in, I placed her on the sofa that I had slept on the night before. Then, I closed the window blinds so the sunlight couldn't get into the room. When I made sure that there wasn't a way for the sun to come in, I took the blanket off of Amy. As I unveiled her face, I could see a sad, confused look in her eerily dark eyes.

Tears filled them as she began to cry into my chest, muffling her sobs. I looked pitifully down at her and wrapped my right arm around her.

"Sonic, why are you always being mean to me? After I helped you many times, you still continued to run away from me! And now look at what happened
to me!"

She's blaming me for what happened to her? I thought. Just because I told her that it was just supposed to be me and Tails that night?

I lifted my head up and gently pulled her away from my chest. She had her tear-filled eyes closed and was still crying uncontrollably like a child.

"Amy," I finally said to her. She opened her eyes which were still filling up with tears, but she kept her head down, refusing to look at me. It was like she was ashamed to let me see her crying that way. But then again, she probably did it because she knows that I don't like seeing people being sad. I placed my right hand under Amy's chin and lifted her head to look at me so we were making eye contact. She sniffled as she looked at my face while I wiped the tears from her eyes.

"What did happen to you? Why are you unable to go out into the sunlight?"

"I don't know!" she replied. "This is the first time that it's ever happened!"

"What happened to you last night?"

"After you left with Tails, I spent a while taking a walk around the woods. From out of nowhere, I saw this strange dark figure walk towards me. At first, I didn't recognize him. Then, when he stepped into the moonlight, I saw that it was Knuckles."

"Knuckles?"

"Yes. He said that he had to see you right away. Before I could ask him why, he started to look at me kind of strange. Then, he grabbed me and bit me."

"He bit you?" I asked in shock. "Knuckles bit you?"

"Yes. As soon as he did, he sucked on my throat and then he ran off. Not long after that, I started to feel pain all over my body. Then, you and Tails showed up shortly afterwards."

I couldn't believe what Amy had just told me! Her story sounded a little ridiculous, but I knew that she couldn't have been a clone. She tried to kill me just because Knuckles bit her? When I thought of that, I remembered what that red echidna said to me the night before : "Sonic, you have to help me."

The Amy I was with was really Amy. And that meant that the echidna I fought with that night was really Knuckles. What was going on here? What had happened to Knuckles that made him bite Amy? As I wondered about that, my thoughts were then interrupted by a familiar voice.

"Sonic, what's going on?" Amy and I both looked towards the upper right hand corner to see Tails walking down the stairs. He must've been awakened by Amy's screaming too because he let out a yawn and was rubbing his eyes.

"Oh, Sonic. I had a terrible dream last night. I dreamt that we found Amy lying on the ground after leaving the arcade and she tried to attack us! Then, we ran away from her and found Knuckles and you got in a fight with him! And then this-"

"And then some strange echidna showed up and Shadow took him out."

"Yeah, Sonic! How did you know that?"

I looked at my double-tailed buddy with a look on my face that showed how puzzled I was about what he said to me.

Tails, are you so freaked out by what happened last night that you're trying to convince yourself that it was just a horrible nightmare? I thought.

"Sonic, what is Amy doing here and why did I hear her screaming earlier?" he asked me.

I turned my attention back to the pink hedgehog sitting across from me on the sofa. When Amy looked at my face, she began to cry again. She must have been tired because she then laid down on the sofa, letting her head rest on my lap. She closed her eyes and in a few minutes, she let herself cry to sleep. As I looked down at her, I had a terrible thought. I didn't know what to do with her.

She couldn't go out into the sunlight, so where was she going to stay until nightfall? I couldn't take her outside and I couldn't leave her in the living room either. I thought about putting her in Tails's underground laboratory, but it probably wouldn't have been very comfortable for her. There was no place to sleep down there. And I didn't want to put her in the closet. What if she suffocated in there?

Just then, I decided where to put Amy. I scooped her up in my arms, dashed up to the bedroom Tails and I shared, and placed her on my mattress on the bottom of our bunk bed. She looked very peaceful sleeping. As a matter of fact, she actually looked kind of pretty.

I woke myself up from the trance that I was in and turned my attention away from her and towards the windows ; one across from her and the other to the right. I went over to them and closed the ocean blue curtains in order to prevent the sunlight from entering the room. The reason why I didn't do that before I put Amy in the room is because the sun was shining on the opposite side of the house which meant that there was no way for the sun to come in through the windows until late afternoon. Then, I walked back over to Amy.

What is going on here? I thought as I watched her sleeping on my bed. How could Amy not be able to go out into the sunlight after Knuckles bit her? Why did he bite her? And why do they both have that eerie dark look in their eyes?

"Sonic, what are you doing? Why did you close the curtains?"

I turned my head to see Tails whom had just walked into the room after I heard his voice. I walked over to him and then placed my hand on his shoulder.

"Tails, " I said to him as I led him out of the room and down the stairs. "There is something you really need to know."

(Knuckles)

I could see the rays of the morning sun shining on the island from the Hidden Palace's entrance. I knew I should've probably been sleeping until nightfall, but I just couldn't. The sunlight was always something that bothered me, but I missed the feel of the warm rays on my body. I started to wonder if I was ever going to go out into the sunlight again.

At that very moment, I realized that Typhoon never came back. I figured he was probably dead.

Good! I thought. He deserves it after what he did to Sonic and Shadow!

As soon as I thought of the two hedgehogs, I started to feel sad. Even though I felt sympathetic towards Shadow, I was more upset about Sonic. Not only was he my only chance to be changed back to normal, but he was also my friend. You can imagine how devastated I was thinking about losing a friend. Especially considering the fact that I've been living alone for several years.

I laid down on the cold, hard ground of the Hidden Palace and began to close my eyes. One final thought was in my head before I fell asleep : Typhoon, wherever you are, I hope you're suffering for all those things you did!

Yes, I know Knuckles's narration was short in this chapter. I'll try to get working on Chapter 8 in about a week or two.