A/N: Hi all! Man, this story is turning out way longer than I expected it to be . . . I realize it must seem like a total rambling wreck right now, but I promise you, literally everything that has happened so far is important and interconnected. If you've been hanging in there for this long, thanks; I appreciate your patience. ^_^'' And thanks to all who have been reviewing, faving, following, etc!
Disclaimer: I don't own Sonic and Co.! And I suppose I should have said this earlier—I don't own any of the songs or things I'm referencing in the chapter titles, either.
Early that same afternoon, Sonic awoke, blinking groggily at the ceiling. For a while he lay peacefully, trying to sort out his context. Then it hit him all at once and he attempted to spring from his bed and flee.
The attempt did not go very well; he merely succeeded in leaping fishlike from the bed and thudding to the floor. Squirming wildly, he realized his ankles were bound together with a sturdy metal loop.
Tails, evidently attracted by the noise, appeared in the doorway.
"Sonic! Are you all right?"
"Get this thing offa me!" protested Sonic, kicking both feet in tandem furiously.
"Sorry Sonic," sighed Tails. "I had to hobble you so you wouldn't run."
"But I've got to run! Please!" Sonic gave up trying to pry open the shackle with his hands and looked at Tails pleadingly. "You've got to let me go, Tails!"
Tails bit his lip, looking away; his heart bled seeing Sonic so uncharacteristically desperate, but he couldn't risk it just yet.
"Just a little longer, Sonic. I need to run a few more tests, and set you up with a safety device, and then you can go. You can wait just a little longer . . . right?"
Sonic groaned despairingly. As Tails bustled about fetching scanners and instruments, he continued to sit and fiddle with his fingers aimlessly, his eyes straying hauntedly to the window. His brain was linked irreversibly to his feet—running was his only way of dealing with things. And right now he had a lot to deal with.
"Just a little longer," murmured Tails soothingly, carefully fastening electrodes to Sonic's head.
Finally the tests were finished. Silver and Amy came over to see how Sonic was doing, Rouge dropped by asking for the sleep medication back (they had filched it from a fellow-agent), and the increasing number of Mobians was clearly making Sonic wild with anxiety. He eyed the others uneasily, seemingly waiting for condemnation, anger, disbelief. Wisely, they didn't attempt to talk to him.
"All right Sonic," said Tails at last, loosening the band slightly so Sonic could limp outside after him. "I'm going to attach this security bracelet to your arm. It should feel a little tight, but not too tight. Now, your arms were a bit thicker in your—other form . . . " he paused tactfully. "And this bracelet is quite fragile. If you transform again, it'll break and send me a signal, so we know to come looking for you. If you happen to break it by accident, let us know, okay? So there isn't a false alarm. You got all that?"
Sonic nodded feverishly—although he probably would have done the same if Tails had expounded to him in Gaelic. He was still straining silently in every fiber, his eyes fixed on the horizon.
"Be careful, Sonic. Don't push yourself too hard," continued Tails. His words fell again on deaf ears. Sighing quietly, he flicked a remote switch that sent the lock on Sonic's ankles snapping off.
Sonic bolted. A scream of gravel under shoes, he stumbled hard, caught himself, and was gone. Tails drew a deep breath and started gathering up the discarded restraint and equipment.
"Need some help?" offered Amy.
"Need some information," replied Tails tiredly. He looked up at Silver. "You and Shadow saw a lot of Sonic while you were fighting with him, right? Do you think you could tell me all about it? Maybe I can figure something out if I hear all the details."
"Sure, I can tell you what I know—but Shadow did see way more of him than me," shrugged Silver. "You'll definitely want to talk to him too."
Tails nodded thoughtfully.
"It would be good to have both of you guys telling the story together, so you can back each other up and fill in the blanks . . ." Hopefully he turned to Rouge. "Would Shadow have time to come over and tell the story, please?"
"He's not going to be happy," said Rouge dubiously, but relented at Tails' pleading look. "Fine, kiddo. I'll go ask him. Don't blame me if he's grumpier than a sunburned boa constrictor when he gets here."
Shadow did show up, indeed not in the best possible mood, but not in the worst possible either.
"Let's get this over with," he muttered, as Tails set up a tape recorder and a notepad. Silver nodded in his direction.
"You'd better start the story, I didn't come into it until later."
"And even then you were only in the way," said Shadow sardonically.
"What?! Hey—"
"Could've gotten the whole thing done much faster if I didn't have to look after you all the time," continued Shadow coolly.
Silver folded his arms and gave Shadow a look. He seemed to be considering saying something, but Shadow merely tilted his head in challenge and Silver backed down immediately, looking away.
"Okay then, Shadow, could you please start?" Tails broke in wearily. He had seen the alpha-wolf display multiple times before, and by now met it with quiet resignation. It was in Shadow's nature to dominate, and dominate still harder at those who gave way.
Shadow shrugged and began to slice methodically through the story, cutting in a straight line. He had not gotten very far before Tails raised a hand cautiously.
"Sorry," he said, when Shadow stopped his narrative and gave him a disgruntled look. "But you said that you got stabbed with the claws?"
"Multiple times, yes."
"And you're sure there was poison in them?"
"The fear chemical, yes. I'm immune to it; the lab boys tell me I'm immune to fear entirely."
"Immune to fear," murmured Tails, his eyes growing distant with thought. "That's really amazing. I wonder what . . ." He looked up suddenly. "Do you have an amygdala?"
Shadow raised an eyebrow at him silently.
"Sorry, sorry, I guess it's hard to tell," Tails backtracked. "It's just . . . it would be really helpful to know how your brain avoids the fear reaction. Think of what it could do for medicine! It could lead to advances in treating shock or PTSD or other anxiety-related conditions!"
"If that means you want to take my head apart, I'm still using it at the moment," retorted Shadow.
"No, no, I just wanted to run tests—see if I can trigger a fear reaction by different methods, but, uh . . . " Tails trailed off nervously, realizing that Shadow might not take kindly to the idea of being forced to feel fear.
Shadow, however, looked mildly intrigued—and mildly was a lot, for him.
"You're saying you could bypass the immunity somehow?"
"Maybe . . . ?" ventured Tails. "But you'd be, you know . . . scared. You wouldn't mind?"
Shadow shook his head.
"If I've been missing out on it all these years, I'd like to know what it feels like."
So it was decided. Shadow finished the story quickly, with a little hesitant input from Silver. Then Tails led Shadow into the workshop and started testing.
Rouge ventured into the room a while later, burning with curiosity, and found Shadow sitting on the floor, nonchalantly poking an electrode into the roof of his mouth. Apparently the gag reflex was something else he was missing.
"He's immune to carbon dioxide suffusion," announced Tails, looking up from the control panel of some bizarre-looking refrigerator-sized machine. "Not surprising, I guess; even most regular people don't get panic attacks from that."
"So . . . what are you doing now?" asked Rouge uneasily.
"I'm going to bypass the amygdala—I've run brain scans, he does have an amygdala—" chirped Tails, "—and I'll put a little electrical stimulation into some other parts of his brain, to trigger hallucinations and a fear response."
"Sounds lovely," said Rouge drily. She looked at Shadow. "You seriously want to do this?"
Shadow shrugged.
"If he fries my brain, it'll grow back."
Rouge rolled her eyes silently. Shadow caught her eye as Tails continued to bustle about, then nodded out the window, jabbed a thumb in Tails' direction, and twirled a finger briefly at his head: Besides, it'll distract the kid so he doesn't go crazy worrying about Sonic. Rouge smiled slightly, surprised. From Shadow, she would not have expected that.
"All right," said Tails at last, clipping a final external electrode to Shadow's head. "Are you sure you want to do this?"
Shadow decided against nodding, fearing that one of the many electrodes would come off if he did; as such he settled for an affirmative "mmh."
"Get ready," said Tails, and flipped the power switch on the machine. Shadow sat back and closed his eyes.
For a few seconds he thought nothing was happening. A few points on his head seemed to grow oddly warm, as if touched by the tip of a heated poker. Before he could think too extensively about that, the blackness of the backs of his eyelids suddenly melted into a thicker, heavier darkness, and he felt himself sink into unconsciousness.
It was a rather pleasant unconsciousness. He felt as if he were wandering peacefully through a cozy old house, too comfortable with the hallways to bother turning on the lights.
Abruptly the warm blackness shattered, and he was blinded by a flash of pure white. When it subsided, he was no longer in a void of pure blackness, but sprawled on the ground in a dark and brooding landscape. Above him, the sky churned with eerie black clouds.
He sat up, blinking around. Part of him somehow knew he wasn't really here, since he most definitely had fallen asleep in Tails' workshop. But the rest of him was quite happy to assume that he really was experiencing this and react accordingly.
Before him, the darkness seemed to thicken, until it condensed into a cloudlike form. Shadow squinted, trying to see the solid being at its center, but it wasn't any shape that he recognized.
Suddenly a pair of pure-black eyes flashed from the softer black murk, and pain ripped through Shadow's body, driving him back to the ground. He looked up and found the hard black eyes shining darkly above him, their owner nothing but an indistinct looming form, still shrouded in black mist. Shadow gazed up, struck by a sudden awareness of his own impending death.
Not that he'd take it lying down. He swung to his feet, teeth set, and lunged for the dark figure. It merely shifted slightly, and as Shadow was about to collide with it, somehow sent him tumbling to the ground again. Again Shadow got to his feet, tried a Chaos Spear this time—again he was thrown back, rocks scraping against his shoulders. Again—again—again—never the slightest success—it was worse than even Sonic's transformed state, there was something purely evil about it. Every blow seemed to send a cold, sucking draft through Shadow's body, leaching out his will to live.
At last the dark figure hurled Shadow down and attacked, the glassy black eyes plunging towards him breathtakingly fast—Shadow felt the briefest spasm of something he had never felt before—and he was bolting awake in Tails' workshop again, electrodes fizzing in protest as they flew loose.
"Are you all right?" cried Tails, shutting off the machine so it wouldn't short-circuit. Shadow looked around, squinting at his surroundings suspiciously.
"So? Were you scared?" asked Rouge.
"What did you see?" added Tails eagerly.
"There was this weird thing," said Shadow, rubbing his head and detaching a few more electrodes in the process. "And somehow I just knew I couldn't defeat it, and no matter how much I fought it, I couldn't. And then it was about to kill me, and I woke up."
"So you were scared then?" asked Rouge again.
"I don't know. I don't have anything to compare it against," shrugged Shadow. Picking up some loose electrodes, he began to clip them to his head. "Run that through me again, kid."
"Are you crazy?" demanded Rouge, staring.
"That thing—that was the best opponent I have ever seen," said Shadow, continuing to hook electrodes to himself randomly. "I've got to figure out how to defeat it."
"There is no way to defeat it!" protested Tails. "That's the whole point of fear—knowing you're outmatched and helpless, that there's nothing you can do to save yourself."
"There's got to be a way," said Shadow stubbornly. "Run it again, kid."
Tails looked at Rouge despairingly, but rearranged the electrodes to their proper places and started up the machine again. Rouge watched, disgruntled but resigned. It was in Shadow's nature to dominate, and dominate the hardest at those who didn't give way at all.
A/N: Yep, the amygdala is real. It's the part of the brain that initiates fear, anger, and other "primal" emotions. There've been real cases where people lost their amygdala to a stroke, for example, and completely lost the ability to feel fear. Brain science! Crazy stuff.