Aquatic Base Act Two

The Tornado's wheels made the soft sound of rubber against sand as Sonic brought the biplane down on the beach and let it roll out to park it almost exactly where they had left it last time.

Sonic darkly looked at the control panel before him as he cut off the engine. Last time Tails had flown the plane, as he usually did. They'd have to quickly make sure he would be flying them back home.

The hedgehog heaved himself out of the narrow cockpit and jumped down to the sand. It was soft enough to let him sink in past the ankles and Sonic spent a few seconds pulling his feet back out and shaking the sand off his sneakers. When he turned around, Knuckles had climbed out of the plane as well and was looking across the beach, shielding his eyes from the sun.

"Just like last time," he said. "Nobody to see. It's like he's begging people to sneak in."

Sonic walked up to his friend's side and gazed over to the small hut at the opposite end of the beach that hid the entrance to the high-tech underwater base. "I guess he's trying to be not too obvious. I mean, if he'd have robot guards patrolling the beach, people would notice. Nobody looks twice at an old shed like that."

Knuckles nodded. "I suppose you have a point."

The blue hedgehog cocked an eyebrow in surprise at the echidna agreeing with him. "Then let's get going and hope that rusty blue tin can doesn't expect any visitors."

"I'd hardly call us that," Knuckles remarked, the growl that wasn't quite hidden in his tone hinting that he wasn't planning on being a friendly visitor at least.

Sonic's intentions were similar. In his mind, he dreamed of finding Tails and breaking the whole place down behind them as they left together. The idea of an enemy base blowing up, burning and falling apart had something strangely pleasing if you were angry enough. Now, he was angry. Very much so. But given the layout of the place, he knew he wouldn't get to tear it down as easily as any other base he'd smashed in his life. If you smashed the wrong parts of that crazy underwater maze, you'd drown right inside of it all.

Shaking himself at the mental image, Sonic fought to return his attention to the surroundings. It was almost midday by now and the sun was standing high up in the sky, heating up the sheltered beach fairly well even for the generally cooler autumn air. Down here, with just a mild breeze from the sea, you didn't feel much of the approaching colder season yet.

The water was shining a deep blue in the distance that smoothly turned into turquoise as it shallowed near the coast to turn a light green that flowed into white as the gentle waves rolled out on the sand. The slow rhythm of the sound would have felt peaceful to Sonic at any other time, but right now neither the beautiful scenery nor the soft noises would feel comforting. Instead, Sonic felt misplaced among them. The holiday looks of the place just didn't fit at all what he felt inside. Worry, a bit of fear, anger. Nothing like sandy beaches and palmtrees.

Going back into the underwater building also wasn't a top favorite on Sonic's list of plans. He hated the idea of getting under the surface of the sea, and doing so inside a building wasn't much less bad than doing so in open waters. He felt like he was running right into an idiotic trap. Maybe that was what Metal was after? Lure them into the base and then open up a couple of hatches to let in the ocean and drown them all? A mild shudder ran down the hedgehog's spine. No, he couldn't do that, right? He was a robot, he would get damaged in water.

Right?

Sonic's morbid thoughts were interrupted when they reached the shed and opened the door, passing the automatic doors hiding behind it without problems. The tunnel looked like Sonic remembered it, blank and long and quiet. In the silence of the place, the echo their footsteps caused on the metallic floor seemed ridiculously loud to Sonic's ears. Like Metal Sonic would be able to hear them already now, no matter how far away in the center of the base he might be.

The first thing that registered to the hedgehog as different from their last time taking this way was that the laser fences were active. The first few they encountered switched on and off periodically and it was relatively easy to get past them, the ones that followed didn't turn off anymore and they had to search around for switches to shut them down to pass. They actually managed to squeeze through one of them, but the gap between the lasers was so small Sonic almost cut off his quills on them and the broader-framed Knuckles hardly fit through at all. Tails might have it easier… but Tails wasn't there.

The silence was starting to feel really uncomfortable and Sonic cast about for a good way to start a conversation. Knuckles, since he was living on an isolated island all alone, never really seemed bothered by long silences, so Sonic couldn't expect his companion to help him out with a distraction.

"Why do you think he turned on the fences?", the hedgehog finally asked, stepping on another switch to turn off the pink lasers blocking their way.

Knuckles shrugged. "Beats me. To keep people from going in or out of this friendly place?"

"Yeah, sure." Sonic walked into the next part of the corridor that was still slowly winding downhill. "I just mean, it was pretty much an invitation for us last time. I still can't believe he stole the Master Emerald just to lock me in it and let you get it back. That doesn't make sense, you know?"

Silence.

"Knuckles?" Sonic stopped walking and turned back to face his friend. The echidna stood stiff and upright, head tipped slightly to the side and the amethyst eyes wide in… shock? Surprise? Sonic couldn't place the expression properly. "Knux? What's wrong?"

Knuckles moved his hand slowly through the air before him as though he wanted to feel it was still there. "I… Don't you feel that?"

Sonic turned his head around a few times cluelessly. The air felt cool on his skin and the atmosphere was as tense as it had been since they'd arrived, but he couldn't quite find much of a difference in anything. "Feel what?"

An oddly stricken look darted over Knuckles' face. "I'm not sure. It's like… the Master Emerald was nearby. I can feel the pulsing of the chaos field."

Sonic frowned. "But… the Master Emerald is back on your island, you know that. Right?"

The guardian nodded. "Yes, of course. It can't be here. And whatever is here has been here for quite some time already. Several hours at least. That's a residual field, and they only form over time."

Feeling compelled to scratch behind his ear just so he was doing something, Sonic looked at Knuckles. "Aha. So, what is it then?"

In a sudden gesture of helplessness, the echidna threw up his arms. "I have no idea, okay?! It's a chaos field, we're still at the edge and it's weak here, but whatever causes it has to be something really powerful. It feels like the Master Emerald on the surface, it feels a little like a Chaos Emerald too, but it's neither of them. I don't know what it is, but it is dangerous!"

"Hey, okay, easy pal." Sonic shook his head, for a moment watching his friend. "And you're sure it's not because the Master Emerald was here not too long ago? Maybe it, dunno, stayed? The field, I mean, not the Emerald."

"Yes!" Something reproachful lingered in the echidna's tone.

"Okay, just asking to be sure, you know?" Sonic looked around again, then back at Knuckles. "Where's it coming from?"

"I don't know." The red guardian seemed helpless again. "It's weird, even for a chaos field. It comes and goes and it's not strong enough for me to place it."

"Fine." Sonic shrugged. "Maybe it'll get clearer if we go on, huh?"

Knuckles nodded and followed Sonic as the hedgehog continued down the path. "Yeah, I think so."

For a few minutes they walked on in silence again, Knuckles preoccupied with the weird energy he picked up every now and then, and Sonic busy checking if the walls were still safely keeping all that water behind them outside and if he maybe could feel Knuckles' odd energy too. A few times, the hedgehog thought he'd felt a brief twinge at his nerves, a short shiver of chaos, but then it was gone again and he wasn't sure if it was really energy he felt or just his own nervousness. Chaos energy was easier to pick up when you were calm, or focusing on a strong enough emotion to actually tap into the power of it. Just that the unclear, subtle and somewhat dormant fear Sonic felt of the environment clearly wasn't as suited emotion to sense out for chaos energy on.

When the path started branching they picked random directions, left, right, straight ahead, whatever seemed somewhat logical to them. Quite frequently, they had to double back and pick a new route because their chosen track turned out to be a dead end.

It was at the sixth or seventh of these branches that they started to disagree on the way to take, Sonic wanted to go left, Knuckles obviously considered straight ahead the better choice.

"Where do you think you're going?", the hedgehog complained.

"Where do you think you're going, hedgehog?", Knuckles mimicked. "That totally looks like a dead end!"

"Does it? And who named you chief navigator?" Sonic folded his arms. In his eyes, left looked much less like a dead end than Knuckles' way.

The echidna was of course not sharing his opinion. "And who made you leader of the Tails rescue squad to decide where to go? Huh?"

Sonic suddenly chuckled. "Tails rescue squad?", he repeated. "Sounds good to me. If I can be leader, I'll let you be navigator."

Knuckles blinked, not quite catching up with the turn of events. "What?!"

Sonic grinned. "Get going and find Tails."

Knuckles stared at him for a little longer, then turned around and walked on, still seeming quite confused with Sonic. The hedgehog smiled and strolled after him.


The self-proclaimed Tails rescue squad had reached another intersection. They'd seen a felt thousands of them already, each time stopping their walk to discuss which way to take no matter that Knuckles had been named navigator ("You chose last time!" or "We've been going left three times in a row now!"). To be fair, both of them knew they had no idea where they were going.

The weird energetic feeling Knuckles had picked up when they came seemed to come and go at random and from everywhere around, the echidna was angry with himself for not being able to place it more clearly and angry with Sonic because he kept asking about it.

Sonic on the other hand was, like last time, quite nervous with the knowledge that there was a whole ocean full of water everywhere around them and logically he as well wasn't in the most cheerful of moods.

Additionally, both of them were worried about Tails and wanted to find him as soon as possible. Sonic considered they'd probably be getting along better if they'd run into any robots yet, not only because it would tell them they were probably heading in the right direction, but mainly because it would have given them both something to smash and let out their frustration on something else but each other.

"How about we spilt up for a moment?", the hedgehog suggested , interrupting a lengthy rant Knuckles had started about what he thought was Sonic's lack of orientation.

The suggestion was in so far a success that it caught Knuckles enough by surprise that his accusing Sonic of running them in circles stopped in mid-sentence. "What?"

"We could split up," Sonic repeated. "Not completely, I mean. Seriously, most of the ways we've taken so far after just a minute turn out to be dead ends or lead back to where we came from. How about you go right, I go left, we try each way for let's say two or three minutes and then come back here. Maybe we found out one is a dead end by then, or we find out where to go to find Tails."

Knuckles looked at him for a moment. "Okay." He took a slow breath and gazed along the right corridor up to where it ended at another water-tight automatic door. "Okay," he repeated. "Maybe you're right."

Sonic smiled a little as the echidna turned away. "Oh, and Knux? My sense of orientation doesn't suck."

Knuckles turned back over his shoulder, looking abashed. "I know," he said quietly. "I'm sorry, it's just…"

Sonic nodded. "I know. We really have to find Tails; someone has to stop us from arguing just because of nerves…"

The echidna flashed a grin. "There's just one of us here who's got problems with nerves because of a bit of water around."

Sonic grimaced. "At least I've got a reason to be nervous…"

For a short moment Knuckles looked first unsure if he should be insulted again and Sonic was worried he'd started another stupid, pointless argument neither of them needed right now, but then something else darted over the echidna's face and to Sonic's surprise he let it go. The amethyst eyes looked almost as if he wanted to say something, though.

"What?", Sonic asked.

"Nothing." Knuckles shook his head. "Not now. Three minutes Sonic. Don't be late." He turned around and ran into his corridor.

Sonic shrugged to himself and walked into the other one. The way seemed straight forward and the next doors he passed opened automatically as he approached them. After just a minute, he found himself entering another one of the large, round and high rooms. There were three doors on the ground level aside of the one he'd come from and another one on a platform close to the dome's ceiling. He knew by now that there had to be a second floor and maybe even more than two levels, but there didn't seem a way for him to get up there. If the other doors turned out useless he would need Knuckles to climb up there.

But first he would try out the three he could reach himself. Eyes sweeping the room for anything suspicious, Sonic walked up to the first door to his right. Unlike the most of the others, it didn't open automatically but had it switch on the floor next to it. Sonic stopped in front of the door. A sign was pinned to it.

"Restricted. Trespassing prohibited," the blue hedgehog read aloud. He frowned at the sign, twitching his ears. "Uh… worth a try." He walked towards the switch. Most other the places that had been restricted he'd seen in his life had either been shortcuts or directly led to something someone wanted to hide.

He stepped on the switch and it lit up in bright blue, followed up a light buzzing sound when the seal of the door released and it started to open.

A second later Sonic wished he hadn't stepped on the switch. A flush of water leaked out the slit in the opening door that creaked as if a great force was pushing against it. "Nonononono!" Hastily Sonic jumped off the switch, on it again, attempting to close to the door before it had fully opened.

But the switch didn't seem to work anymore and with a loud crash the two halves of the door shattered out of their frame. The rushing and splashing sound that followed it poured icy dread through Sonic's body and he scrambled backwards into the room in the utter anguish only one thing in the world had even been able to provoke in him.

There was no escape however. The water that flooded the room past the broken door in one mighty wave pressed Sonic against a wall with a force he couldn't resist. Pancaked against it, he tried in vain to struggle past the pressure and free himself. The roar of the rushing flood was deafening even past the panicked pounding of his heartbeat in his ears. Within mere seconds the water had covered him completely, and fully submerged in the cold liquid from the outside and even colder panic that froze his blood from the inside Sonic was too paralyzed to move even when the pressure finally slackened and the current of the flood slowly dragged him away from the wall.

Sonic struggled then, his eyes burning in the salty water, rowing his arms and kicking his legs in a futile attempt to reach the stirred-up surface. But it was climbing higher and higher, his chance of reaching it retreating ever faster as the large room flooded with more and more water.

Lungs threatening to burst and his head pounding and dizzy, the blue hedgehog fought against the water's force with the strength of total desperation. Air… He needed air. It was the only thing on his mind anymore.

But the current was strong, pushing him around as it pleased, and his water-logged body was heavy. Even his quills alone seemed to weigh a ton.

The urge to breathe was growing to where he could hardly fight it anymore, but at the same time he was losing feeling in his body and his muscles slowly refused to struggle. He felt almost as cold as the water around now and the light that had filtered down from the surface was dimming rapidly.

A last bubble of air escaped Sonic's lungs as he floated with the current, was pushed against a wall again and then just hung there, life draining away, but he didn't care any longer.

He felt a cold hand grip around his left ankle, there was a short jerk and his body pressed against the side of something. The shadow held around his waist and dragged him along and darkness swallowed Sonic up in its cold silence.