While G.U.N. security trusted Shadow's judgment, they began to draw the line when he tried to bring in a whole crowd of unauthorized Mobians. Eventually it was decided that the less the others saw the better, anyway; Shadow took only Silver and Tails with him onto the grounds and into the animal containment building. Rouge and Omega came along too, since they were agents themselves.
It was visibly difficult for Tails. For a while he just stood in silence, staring at the creature that used to be his older brother, and which was now foaming at the mouth and desperately trying to stab him through the bars of its cage.
"You all right?" asked Silver gently.
"Fine," said Tails, his voice a little too far back in his throat. He cleared it hastily. "I'm fine. Let me see what I can do."
"How do you plan to go about it?" asked Rouge.
"Go straight to the source," said Tails grimly. "I think I know someone who can tell us just what's wrong with Sonic."
"Eggman, you mean?" Silver leaned against an empty cage, his arms folded.
"Definitely Eggman."
"But how?" Shadow interrupted quietly. "He did know we were going camping, since I'd asked him about bringing Maria earlier. But he didn't even know the specific date, much less where we were going. How would he have known when and where to follow us, and done it without our noticing—not to mention, why wait for us to be isolated in the woods? He could cause a lot more trouble by turning Sonic into a fiend while in a highly populated place."
"So are you suggesting it's not Eggman?" Tails wrinkled his nose dubiously.
"I had assumed it was some unknown creature that lived in the woods where we were camping," shrugged Shadow. "It was my first impression, anyway."
"We could check in with Eggman, anyway," said Rouge lightly. "Shouldn't take too long."
Shadow nodded.
"Kid, you focus on trying to find a cure. I'll call Maria, and if she doesn't answer I'll Chaos Control over to Merkel Peak and sneak in somehow. If Eggman's been there all along, is it safe to assume this wasn't his doing?"
"Could have been one of his robots," pointed out Rouge.
"Mm." Tails twisted his mouth. "Most of them aren't smart enough to catch a squirrel, let alone carry out a stealth operation. Present company excepted," he added politely, nodding to Omega.
"Naturally," replied Omega loftily.
"But still, yeah, a robot is a possibility," continued Tails, sighing. "We should keep all our options open." He looked Sonic up and down again. "I'm going to need a blood test."
"Are you sure?" asked Silver, not sounding too keen on the prospect.
"Yeah . . . it seems likely that it's some kind of magic power, like when Dark Gaia transformed him into a werehog. Still, we can't rule out the possibility of poison or something," said Tails. "Would there be any way to hold him steady?"
Silver sighed resignedly.
"Okay. I'll grab him with my psychokinesis, you take the sample, okay?"
"I shall stand by in case he escapes your grasp," announced Omega. "He cannot harm me."
Shadow nodded, then flickered and disappeared. Reappearing seconds later, he shoved a blood-drawing kit into Tails' grasp. Tails nodded his thanks and turned expectantly to Silver, who sighed again, tucked his tongue into the corner of his mouth, and raised his hands. A snarling Sonic soon found himself floating a few inches off the ground, immobilized by a cyan aura. Shadow glanced at Rouge and tilted his head questioningly. Rouge gave a rueful nod.
"Hey, unless you need me around, I'll go make that call to Maria, 'kay?"
"Sure." Shadow turned back to the matter at hand as Rouge trotted out the door.
Meanwhile, Silver glanced over with wide eyes.
"It's harder," he whispered. "It's harder to hold him now."
"For you, maybe," said Shadow drily.
"No, I mean it. He's stronger, he's becoming immune to psychokinesis!"
"Just hold him," sighed Shadow, unlocking the cage and swinging open the door. Tails stepped in after him and approached Sonic cautiously, his upper teeth clamped over his lower lip. Ever so carefully he inserted the needle into Sonic's arm, slowly drawing back the plunger to extract a sample of blood. His fur was standing up every which way with tension.
Suddenly Sonic jerked violently, a growl rattling in his throat.
"Hold him!" barked Shadow, yanking Tails out of the way just before a claw raked at his ear. The little fox stumbled back, eyes wide. Silver hissed with exertion as he struggled to get Sonic back under control, but Sonic kept lashing out and breaking partially free, his eyes glinting with hatred. Omega finally stepped forward and flattened the growling creature back against the bars of the cage with one hand.
"He will not move now," he announced. "Proceed, small forest creature."
"I-I still have the blood I drew earlier," stammered Tails. "It'll . . . it'll be enough."
Nodding tersely, Shadow chivvied Tails out the door of the cage and gestured for Omega to step out as well. Sonic attempted some maneuvers, but Shadow hooked a foot around his ankle and sent him crashing to the floor.
"Close the gate," he remarked, and Chaos Controlled to the outside of the cage. Having a few spare Chaos Emeralds was nice; it saved a lot of complication.
"Thanks," said Tails quietly, capping the blood sample and turning away to head to his workshop. He braced noticeably as he stepped out the door, preparing for the others' questions.
The day slipped by. Maria claimed that Eggman had not once moved from Merkel Peak for the last week, so the raid on Eggman's station was postponed, in hopes that Tails might find something conclusive on his own. He ran several different kinds of tests, although he never ventured inside the cage with Sonic again. Silver's psychokinesis seemed to have less and less effect on the creature.
The others tried to help. Rouge snuck onto Eggman's abandoned main base and pawed through his papers and computer files, looking for any hints that he'd been planning something. She did find a couple of other interesting plot notions, but nothing that looked like it could lead to Sonic's condition. Amy tried a few of her confounding or dizziness-inducing moves, but they had as little effect as Shadow's Chaos Spears. Knuckles went through all the ancient echidna lore that he could think of, but couldn't find anything useful.
At six AM the next morning, Tails sat hopelessly next to Sonic's cage, mixing chemicals aimlessly back and forth without really caring what he was doing. A case full of raw medications and fillers was propped open beside him. Sonic watched, narrow-eyed, through the bars of his cage.
Tails sighed and more or less tossed aside another brew he'd created, no more than another listless theory. He'd hardly slept at all last night, and his recent paralysis certainly didn't seem to count as sleep time. His brain was becoming milky with exhaustion. He'd checked Sonic's blood, heartbeat, and brainwaves, and while there was definitely something off with that last one, he couldn't pin down what. Heck, he still wasn't even sure if there was a scientific cause for whatever had happened to Sonic—for all intents and purposes it sure looked like some kind of possession. There was no guarantee Tails would even be able to cure it.
Still, it had been an exhausting twenty-four hours, and despite his anxiety he couldn't fight back a yawn. His eyes dragged shut and open, his head bobbing slowly down to his chest. A flask full of beta-blockers slipped from his grasp and overturned, burbling its contents onto the floor as its owner drifted off into a doze.
Meanwhile, Sonic watched shiftily, his long nose twitching. The others hadn't fed him, not knowing what he'd like and getting the bad feeling that it would be raw meat. He hadn't eaten since the night before last, and he was perishingly hungry . . . so very hungry . . .
Presently Tails was awoken by a sharp snapping sound. Groaning, he rubbed his eyes and looked around groggily, feeling the back of his neck protest after the unusual sleeping posture. When he looked over to Sonic's cage, he saw his transformed brother pacing back and forth, like a caged wildcat in a zoo. His bloodshot eyes slid sidewise to rove over Tails, and his tongue suddenly lapped swiftly around the corners of his mouth. Shuddering, Tails got back to work.
Two minutes went by. Tails was still swirling a beaker mindlessly when he heard an odd metallic creaking. Looking up, he suddenly realized what the snapping sound must have been: the lock on Sonic's cage breaking. Now the gate was swinging blandly open, and Sonic was standing in the open gateway, his burning eyes fixed on Tails.
Time suddenly became sharply defined. Tails fell back onto his hands, hearing his heart pounding in his ears as he scrabbled backwards, overturning beakers and bottles. He backed into a cage and was forced to stop; his eyes never left Sonic's face, even as his hands groped blindly beside him, searching for something to defend himself with. All he could find was an empty flask. Clamping his fingers around the neck he waited, barely breathing.
Sonic didn't move, save for his ears. They swiveled slightly to the front and to the sides, as his gaze roved hungrily over the little fox, shrinking back in the center of the chemical carnage. Something like a snarl sandpapered up from the back of his throat, but still he didn't move.
Meanwhile Tails was on a rack of terror. His muscles screamed to flee, his throat burned with the urge to scream for help—but he knew either would trigger an instantaneous attack. So he waited, waited, trembled in anticipation of the roar and the lunge and the ripping claws, but still they never came. Each second seemed to build the horror, enhance the pain he knew was about to come. Strike! Strike already, get it over with! Please, just—
The suspense became too much. Something snapped, and Tails yelled at the top of his lungs, hurled the flask he'd been gripping at the creature's head, and threw himself mindlessly at the exit door, knowing he would be dead before he reached it—
And yet somehow he found himself outside, slamming the door shut and throwing himself against it, sobbing for breath. Inside he could hear nothing but the smashing and trampling of glass, mixed with howls of fury and the screech of claws dragging over concrete and the shredding of fabric—his medicine carrying case. Staggering to his feet—he could barely stand, he was so limp with relief—Tails stumbled into a run towards the main HQ building, shouting for help.
Shadow appeared the instant Tails got through the front door. The others somehow materialized from all over as well, bounding over from the outskirts of the grounds where they'd previously been biding their time. Trespassing on G.U.N. grounds could get you jail for life or worse, but right now the only thing anyone thought about was the uproar and cries for help they had heard.
"He's out!" gasped Tails, pointing back at the building, his eyes still wild. "He broke the lock!"
"Are you hurt?" asked Shadow swiftly, and barely waited for Tails to shake his head before breaking into a purposeful lope towards the shed. An earsplitting roar echoed from that direction, somehow tapering off into something flatter and thinner towards the end, as if it had been the crier's last breath.
Shadow, without once hesitating, strode to the door, booted it open, and plowed in. There was silence for a moment. The others, too wound up for caution, piled up to the door and looked through.
Shadow was standing motionless, one foot still planted forward defensively, head still down, arms still slightly spread—and before him, a slightly ragged, oddly small-seeming blue form was lifting its head from the floor.