Speedy's note: I got carried away. Like, a lot.

But it could not have been intended as a death trap for a hedgehog in the far future, don't you think?


Eyes in the Darkness

The noise of thousands of liters of water rushing down the various pipes and washing through broad canals was all but deafening. The water level in Hydrocity was higher than it was normally… what was almost what Knuckles had been expecting when he went down here in the morning. Now it was almost noon and the echidna could tell there was a lot more water than there should be in here.

Walking on the narrow path longside a canal so filled to the very brim that the water gushed over the rim in regular intervals, Knuckles was keeping a firm eye on his surroundings. Hydrocity could be dangerous, especially under a condition like this. It was Angel Island's water reservoir, a network of tunnels carved deep inside the island's socket. Like most tunnels, the one he was in sloped in a rather steep angle.

In a way, everytime he was here, Knuckles marveled at the genius who had built all of this, so many centuries ago. After the island was lifted the first time, after it became the Floating Island it was known as now, the Master's energy field caused it to levitate high in the atmosphere. Only the invisible protective field of Emerald energy around it made for the possibility of life, providing an air density that matched that of any alpine region on Mobius' surface and a climate with almost tropical summers but harsh, long and cold winters.

Still, his ancestors had encountered a bad problem during the first few years of living on the island. Digging through the old scrolls left behind in the caves near the old Hidden Palace, Knuckles had found records of those first few years on the Floating Island. It had all but threatened to become a desert. A thing simple to explain if you thought about it. No need to be anything like a scientist. The water from the surface came from clouds. If Angel Island floated above the cloud layer most of the time, little rain could fall onto it. Droughts, decaying forests and many fires had been the results.

But someone had come up with a way to solve the problem. Also back then, a guardian had been present, a person like Knuckles, his mind closely linked to the Master Emerald. A person that had been able to control the island's flight and occasionally lower it under the clouds. In order to reduce the need for that, to be more independent, the Floating Island's inhabitants had begun to construct Hydrocity. A work Knuckles could tell had taken years.

In the end stood probably hundreds of kilometers of underground tunnels, gathering water from the surface creeks and the few lakes. Using the simple fact that all water flowed down a hill, the canals and pipes of Hydrocity led all of this water to the center of the water system, a large carved out space in the middle of the island's socket. The lowest point of Angel Island that wasn't solid rock. You couldn't go there because it was usually flooded, but Knuckles had seen the drafts.

The principle for Hydrocity's circuit of water was simple. Gravity let the water flow down to the core of the island where it was gathered. Being near to the center of the island also meant this place was very near to the center point of the mighty chaos field the Master Emerald reflected into it. And that again meant it was very near to the source of the antigravity field that kept the island afloat. The constructors of Hydrocity had sought out the places where this field was strongest and constructed a few tunnels leading back out to the top of the island's mountains. Using the residual chaos energy to pump up the water, they fed it back into the creeks in which it flowed down again, completing the circle.

Of course, water was lost to the system by evaporation and the few smaller creeks that flowed off the island's edge, but with Hydrocity's water Angel Island had become relatively independent of the rain. Every now and then the guardians used to lower it below the clouds to refill the reserves, and after a while it had as much become routine that the Master Emerald on its own initiated the regular descents.

Now, thousands of years later, all of the civilization creating this place were gone, and only Knuckles was left to take care of it, and he did so dutifully. In spite of its look, Hydrocity was one of the most sensitive parts about the island, and if something was off, here was the first place you'd notice it.

And something was off. Knuckles could feel it in the Master Emerald's energy field. It wasn't exactly unstable. But it wasn't really stable either. Something was off, too little to really get a grasp on it and identify the problem, but it was there and it was making Knuckles nervous. He knew it was most likely just a result the Emerald's displacement and would resolve itself on its own, but he was wary.

The echidna shoved his thoughts off when he reached the end of the tunnel he'd been following. Next to where he stopped walking, the water from the over-filled canal dropped a good twenty meters, met with several other jets of water from other canals and together they continued the fall with an ear-shattering roar until they cascaded into a larger tunnel and vanished into the darkness below.

Knuckles nodded to himself. All looked okay here, aside of the very high water levels. But he'd expected them and knew what had caused them. The water from all over the island came down here by gravity and was pumped back up using the Master Emerald's energy field. With the Emerald gone, the water kept coming here, but it didn't go back up to the top, and now that the system was working again the backwater was just beginning to subside. But Knuckles had seen worse; after the incident with Perfect Chaos the complete Hydrocity had been underwater. Now it was only about a third of it.

Satisfied with the canals here, Knuckles turned and walked back part of the way he'd come. He'd check on another level.

Lights were dim in the underground tunnels, but Knuckles had good night vision and progressed without problems here usually. He knew every corner, every tunnel here like the back of his own hand and unlike Sonic the one time he'd been here years ago, Knuckles never got lost. Actually, he even knew how to get through here without getting wet at all. But that only went for when water levels were normal. Since they weren't now, the echidna had been forced to swim and dive through a couple of flooded passages and by now he was freezing. Angel Island's water was mostly mountain water, from creeks that partly fed off glaciers, and it was cold as ice.

Reaching one of the small tunnels that connected the different levels, Knuckles began climbing up a ladder in it. His wet gloves and shoes easily slipped off the treads, his muscles shivered from the cold anyway and when he finally reached the top floor he was gasping for breath and had to sit down for a moment to recover. Luckily, being higher up, the floor on this level was dry.

For a few minutes Knuckles sat against the cool stone wall, waiting for his body to recover. He was, in all truth, worried that such a short climb could get him so much out of breath. It was hard to get him out of breath normally. Today, he'd hardly done anything but inspect the tunnels, and yet he was already feeling exhausted.

Knuckles sighed as he climbed back to his feet and slowly began down the tunnel he was in. Like the others, it had a canal running next to the path, but this one wasn't as big or noisy like the others, and it wasn't as full. Good so far.

The echidna gently rubbed his forehead as he walked along the water, following its flow. Ever since he'd stood up, the impression of a distant headache lingered behind his brow, but it hadn't changed throughout the morning. It had not gotten worse, but it had not gone away either. Probably he was just tired.

A grimace slipped over Knuckles' face at the thought. He'd not really had the best of nights, actually. After raising the island and setting it on a proper course, he'd found himself a simple meal and retired to the cave just a few minutes of walk from the Temple of Chaos he had furnished as a simple, but comfy houseroom. Especially in the colder seasons, it was not a good idea to stay outside all the time.

But no matter how tired he'd been after the long day he'd had, Knuckles had not slept well. He'd dropped off pretty quickly alright, but then he'd wakened up in cold sweat, shaking from the shock of a nightmare he couldn't remember a thing about after he'd opened his eyes. It had been difficult to go back to sleep afterwards, as it always was after you had a bad dream, and when Knuckles finally managed he'd tossed and turned more than actually slept. In a way he'd been glad when dawn crept into his house and ended the night.

Climbing a bridge that crossed another canal merging with the one he'd been following, Knuckles briefly stopped on it to gaze into the water. It was rather clear at this point of Hydrocity and he could see the bottom of the canal through the blur of the rushing water. For a moment the echidna stared into it, wishing you could look through everything as clearly.

The water stirred with the current as he gazed into it, and suddenly there was something at the bottom of it. Knuckles blinked, once, twice, and slowly the image cleared under the blur of the water surface. A shard. An Emerald shard. As he watched, the water around it seemed to fade away and the sound of it running down the canal below the bridge slowly muted in his ears.

All he could hear and see was the shard, brilliant green facets and razor sharp edges. And then, with a sickening noise, it split in two, right down the middle, a ragged gash in the glazed crystal shape.

In an act of desperate reflex, Knuckles wanted to reach out a hand and snatch the pieces, but as he stretched out his hand, the broken shard moved away from him, slowly at first, then ever faster, until he was running after it.

And then, suddenly, it was gone and the tunnel was back. Still running and not considering a stop, the echidna looked around hastily, searching for the mysterious shard, but instead of catching the smallest glimpse of it, he found himself suddenly falling.

The soft gurgling of the smaller canal had been replaced by the roar of fuming waterfalls again. Knuckles rowed his arms uselessly as he fell towards the white foam at the bottom of the drop, momentarily too disorientated and shocked to remember he could try gliding. Not that there would have been much places to glide to.

Impacting the water surface after a fall of roughly fifteen meters felt like falling onto concrete. At least it hurt as much. Knuckles bit his lip, barely containing a groan of pain as he went underwater. For a few precious seconds he was paralyzed from the impact, then instinct took over and he struggled his way back to the surface.

His head breaking through it, he spat out a mouthful of water and gulped in a lungful of air, paddling his feet to remain at the surface. He had to paddle hard to keep from being pulled underwater by the current that sucked the water to the reservoir in the island's heart. If he got sucked into this tunnel along with it, he'd be long drowned by the time he was returned to the surface somewhere at the mountains no matter how good a swimmer he was.

With a quick look around Knuckles assessed his situation. He had to get up to the path again. Three waterfalls, all coming from different canals, rushed down into the large pool he was in. Two of them were to close together to get past, but the third was a little separated from the others, leaving a few meters of wall free. Knuckles considered it was probably his only chance to climb up there. The water was cold and already he could feel fatigue hitting. He had to get out of here quickly.

The echidna rounded the area where the waterfall impacted carefully. The last thing he needed was being pressed underwater by it. He pulled through the most critical part with a few strong breast strokes and latched to the wall, digging his knuckles spikes into the rock. His body felt heavy and his climb turned out slower than he wanted it to. When he finally pulled himself up onto the path of the tunnel he sank to the floor there and leaned against the wall, staring numbly at the cascading water. It was the second time today he looked down there…

Knuckles shivered, only partly from the cold. You needed twenty minutes to get here from that little bridge. Why had he come back? And… why didn't he remember a thing of it other than that he'd been running, but surely not as far? He'd just lost twenty minutes. He'd zoned out, or something, and almost got himself killed with it. Had he been dreaming? Sleeping on his feet? If it was a vision of any sort, he surely failed to understand it.

Drawing a slow breath, the echidna let his head drop against the wall in his back, suddenly dizzy. Just what was wrong with him?


This place was weirding him out. Sure, Sonic had been to a lot weird places in his life. The Floating Island, especially its Sky Sanctuary Zone, haunted castles, places with giant pinball machines, the industrial hell of Eggman's bases, outer space, foreign planets… He'd travelled through time, gotten glimpses of the past and possible futures. He'd even been in a story book. But the weirdest places he'd ever visited remained the Special Zones. And this place here seemed like one giant cluster of them. It was like… yeah, the mother of all Special Zones and it appeared very intend on being even more strange than all the others combined.

The colorful tunnel had ended somewhat abruptly just a couple minutes ago. At first Sonic had feared he'd reached a dead end when a wall as flashy as the rest of the tunnel rose before him. For a few moments he'd stood in front of it, trying to spot anything like a door, a tiny hole that would allow him to get past. Then, more out of desperation than anything else, he'd felt for the wall, hoping if he knocked on it he'd maybe find a weaker point of it he could probably bash in with a spin.

But he didn't need to do any of this. Stretched out for the unknown material the wall consisted of, his fingers had just kind of phased through it without meeting any resistance. The wall, or what he'd thought was a wall because it totally looked like a wall, wasn't real. It wasn't solid. Very carefully, fearing he'd encounter a bottomless pit behind it, Sonic walked through.

Fortunately for the blue hedgehog, there was no such thing as a bottomless pit behind. At least not anywhere near enough for him to see, which admittedly wasn't very far. It was dark around, a little like the place where he'd landed after falling from… somewhere he still didn't remember.

It was another thing that unsettled the hedgehog. His memory had a gap, a blank space between that explosion in the underwater base and his fall that got him to where he was now. Sonic had no idea what could have happened in between and it was unnerving. Was this how Shadow had felt? As if he'd lost something, no, lost a part of his life? The worst thing about it was being so completely in the dark about it. What had he done in the time he didn't remember? Did he hit his head? What had happened to his friends that had been with him? Were they in this weird place as well? Was he alone here? Sonic wasn't sure which option felt worse to him. He'd never been afraid of being alone, quite the opposite even. Sonic liked alone time. There was something peaceful and relaxing about it.
He neither felt peaceful nor relaxed at all now. Wherever he was, he wanted out of here, and quickly.

The blue hedgehog looked around. An eerie quiet hung heavily over the darkness around, illuminated just by a faint green glow that came seeping down from somewhere above him, but even titling his head back and squinting upwards Sonic wasn't able to pinpoint the source. It seemed to come from everywhere at once, or from very far away.

The light was weak and Sonic stood for several minutes before his eyes began to properly adjust to the darkness and he could make out his surroundings. Unlike the first dark place, this one wasn't open. There were walls, vertically towering into the glooming space above where they faded from view. Either they ended there, or they were just too high to see the end of them.

Sonic walked up to the closest wall. Together with a second one, it former a kind of corridor that ran a few hundred meters straight ahead. He couldn't see any further.

I wish Knux was here, Sonic thought. It wasn't just that he would have liked company right now. It would be great to have Tails or Knuckles with him. Heck, he'd even take Shadow or Amy. But there was something that made him regret his echidna friend wasn't with him especially. Sonic himself didn't see overly bad in the dark. But even compared to a hedgehog's already good eyesight in dark places Knuckles had excellent night vision. Maybe not as good as Rouge's, but it by far surpassed Sonic's own. Maybe it was because echidnas dug into stuff and underground it was dark that Knuckles' eyes were sensitive to light even when it was very dim. Sonic didn't know and he didn't really care. He guessed that Knuckles saw so well in the dark resulted in his disliking for overly bright lights. Anyway, right now having someone that could see better in this dark place than he could would help for sure.

But since it looked like he wasn't in for any company anytime soon, Sonic examined the wall on his own. His fingertips encountered a perfectly plain, smooth surface. He knocked against it, but it gave hardly a sound or vibration in reply to it. Sonic frowned.

What is that stuff? Glass? If he looked up against it, he could see the light from above through it. Maybe it was transparent or something. There wasn't enough light to really say.

Taking a few steps back from the glazed wall again, Sonic was able to distinguish a dim reflection of himself, almost invisible against the dark background. On the whim of the moment, the blue hedgehog waved his arms at the reflection and watched it respond, then pulled a few funny faces at himself. He grew tired of it after a moment and decided to turn away, but the image suddenly blurred over. The space that had been occupied by his face seconds before turned pitch black for a second, then a pair of eyes stared back from the darkness in firm and deep red.

Sonic jumped, spines ridging on his back with the short surge of adrenaline. He knew those eyes. He'd seen them in a dozen nightmares, back when he was younger, when his war against Eggman began and when that much younger Sonic had been secretly terrified to end up encaged in a robot like one of the animals he used to free from the Doctor's mad machines. And then he'd met it, the metal hedgehog shell, and it had haunted him for weeks to come.
In the end, Metal Sonic had not been a shell at all. Not a walking (flying, rather) hedgehog prison. A weapon, built to mirror Sonic's own abilities, and to the day, even though he'd defeated the robot hedgehog several times, Metal Sonic remained one of the most threatening creations Eggman had ever made.

Unsure if it was an image he saw, an illusion cast by this mysterious wall, Sonic stood and gazed back at the red stare, body tense, ready to jump and defend himself.

He didn't need to. With a blink, the eyes were gone and only his own, familiar reflection remained, although it had gained a rather wary look all of a sudden.

The blue hedgehog kept his eyes on the reflection for another long moment, fully expecting something to happen, but it didn't, and he shook his head to himself.

Maybe it was nothing. Maybe he'd been imagining things.

"This place drives you crazy," he mumbled, then at finding the spoken word help chase off the eerie feeling he continued. "I hate Special Zones. I mean, yeah, they're fun for a while, but this one is getting on my nerves by now. Where's that damn Emerald, anyway?"

Of course, nobody answered his monologue, and Sonic turned away from the wall, looking down the corridor ahead. Well, the way out of here clearly wasn't behind him, so probably it was somewhere over there. It wasn't really a decision to walk into the dark space before him. There simply wasn't anything else he could have done.

Unlike that first place, there were no echoes here. Something, maybe the strange walls, seemed to be swallowing up all sounds he made. Even his footsteps sounded faint and quiet, as if walking on carpet, but the ground was the same smooth, almost polished feeling stuff like the walls.

Sonic walked slowly. He could make out the walls and floor only through the tiny reflection of the green tinted glow on them and this vague picture of his surroundings ended just a few meters ahead of him. With his feet making almost no sound at all, there was nothing to hear but his own breathing and it sounded overly loud. Another few minutes of total silence followed and Sonic became aware of the noise his heart made with every beat, of the rushing of blood through his body. He could hear it in his ears. He'd heard it before sometimes, after some heavy exercising you could hear your hard pulse in your ears. But now he was only walking slowly and his pulse was little more than resting level. Yet, every rhythmic beat, every inhale that drew air into his lungs suddenly seemed so loud he totally expected it could cause an echo and it felt weird that it didn't.

He saw the wall before him just in time. An arm length more and he would have run into it face first. "Whoa," he said and the quiet word was like a shout piercing through the silent darkness. Sonic winced and gazed around. He quickly discovered that he'd just reached a corner and the corridor continued to the left of him.

Carefully he continued his way, more alert now. He could barely see a thing and if he didn't watch out he'd maybe really walk himself into a wall. Or what if the bottomless pit actually did exist, hiding somewhere in this dark floor? The mental image of walking off a cliff without even knowing it and falling to his death was not really appreciated.

Sonic swallowed. It's just some dark tunnel thingy, he told himself, not daring to speak again. It's not like one of the tunnels under Knux' ruins on Angel Island either. Not build by crazy ancient pals of his that put traps all over the place… Right?

Thinking about the Sandopolis Pyramid, Labyrinth Zone or Lost World didn't really trigger many pleasant memories at the moment and Sonic cursed himself. Since when was he so great at talking himself into uneasiness? He'd never been afraid of the dark. That was something silly and childish. No, it was idiotic. Idiotic for someone who'd fought and beaten giant monsters and evil spirits before. Yes, it was. The reasoning made sense, didn't it? Sonic was somewhat sure he'd convinced Tails with it if the fox were here…

In front of him, the way forked into three. Great. For a moment Sonic stood undecided, glancing down each of the three corridors that went on from the intersection. They all looked the same. Dimly outlined walls and floor that after a short distance vanished into a black void. The hedgehog chewed his bottom lip. If he took the wrong way, he might get lost and never get outta here…

Lost.

Get lost?

No, he was lost already! The thought popped up suddenly and the realization dumped a fair amount of fresh adrenaline into his body.

He was lost. He'd been lost for… hours, days, weeks? He didn't know, he didn't remember when he'd gotten lost in the first place. He was lost ever since he'd first landed here! He had to get out of here!

No! Wait.

Sonic knew that panicking didn't help you when you were lost. He'd made the experience. If you panicked and just ran somewhere, you'd just get all the way more lost.

As if I could get any more lost than I already am, the hedgehog thought acidly. But it was a clear, conscious thought and it cleared his head for the moment. Think! You're lost alright. Now man up and find a way to get yourself un-lost, Sonic.

Great, now I'm talking to myself…

And that's a problem why? Nobody else to talk to, huh?

Sonic grinned a little. "I'm going crazy," he mumbled. But that wasn't a reason to stand around and wait until he was entirely loony, right? He might as well go on and check out the rest of this dark place.

"Yup, I'll do that," the hedgehog announced to the silence around. His look briefly flashed between the three paths, then he picked the left one and strolled onwards.

He reached more intersections every few minutes now, sometimes the way just split into two, sometimes there were six or seven paths that continued into the blackness. Remembering something Tails had said once, he kept taking the leftmost way all the time. According to Tails, and granted Sonic remembered correctly, if you kept taking the same way all the time, you'd eventually get out of a labyrinth. You systematically walked through every way of the labyrinth by following along the wall. Or something like that. So, Sonic picked the wall to his left, determined to get out of this weird place at once.