Meteor Kid Chapter 20: Everything Dies, a sonic the hedgehog fanfic

A/N: As I said in the previous ending note, this will be the last chapter for the first part...I promise we are still away from the end but hey, congrats! We reached 20 chapters on the main plot! I plan to slow down a bit and maybe post some deleted pieces as an extra, or maybe just go directly into the next part.

Chapter 20: Everything Dies

Knuckles the Echidna woke up at 7 o'clock. The jet lad (lag?) thing Tails had been talking about wasn't affecting him much, to his surprise. He had a good dreamless rest last night, but it was a shallow sleep. He heard Tails go out once at night but couldn't tell when exactly he was gone and back. Now this friend of his was still sleeping.

It was still quite early in the morning, so Knuckles decided not to wake him up. He himself had the habit of waking up early to exercise and patrol around the Angel Island, to be sure there were no intruders—badniks for most of the time, sometimes could be Rouge, fewer times the Babylon rogues who stopped by and asked if they could charge their ark a bit or pick up some fruits for food supply. But recently he noticed that both the number and the frequency of Eggman's junks sneaking onto the Island had largely decreased. He hoped it was not because Eggman was on some huge malicious plans again, which these plans, without exceptions, all included stealing the Master Emerald from him.

...the Master Emerald. It was only over a week, and he missed it already. He wondered what time it was now on Angel Island, and whether Blaze had got used there. He had talked to Tikal's spirit to lend Blaze some help whenever necessary. And he hoped they would get along well with each other.

Well, it possibly won't go wrong anyways, not worse than what had happened here—

He admitted that he doesn't like Rouge—mostly because of personal grudges in the past and him despising her "style of work"—but he never wanted to see her this...dire. Not to even mention Sonic, who looked worse.

It had been almost a year since he last met Sonic. He could hardly believe it was him with the first glance he took through the glass. His unique blue hair and quills had fallen off to a terrifying level, and the bare skins were either swelling with pustules or festered. There were tubes everywhere, connected to his arms, nostrils and mouth, pumping in and out liquids or gas that he did not know.

Probably were some kind of medicine, blood and oxygen. He told himself. The doctors knew what to do with it.

In the next week, they recovered rapidly— thank god if there was one, definitely not Chaos— he still felt it, the first time that death had approached this close to them.

The alien crystal is extremely dangerous. That was his first impression to the whole damn incident. The thing almost killed Shadow, and then Sonic, Rouge...who's next? He could hardly keep himself away from thinking about controversies, just like how Sticks used to stubbornly think of some modern technologies as brainwashing/mind-control evil machines.

He had tried his best to understand, but right now the situation left unexplained just creeped him out. Why? How? Tails couldn't tell it clearly, nor could the doctor. The brown mink dude didn't know what they had done, and the white fluffy guide whose name he didn't remember was so ashamed and depressed that he hardly spoke. Amy started crying her eyes out the moment she saw Sonic like that, and Shadow was just pissed as if he'd chaos blast the hospital in the next minute. Omega first time expressed surprise ("holy shiiiiiit") in front of him (it was said to be a system update test for better communication), and he was quick enough to cover Cream's eyes to prevent her from seeing such a scene...to save her impression of Sonic. Cheese's cry in fear still scared her though. He really regretted they agreed to bring her along with them. She was still not old enough to witness the horrible side of the world.

Later, he was relieved that they successfully persuaded Cream and accompanied her back home.

What happened, Sonic? Why did you risk your life to go there?

What was in the mountain?

Fortunately, yesterday Sonic gained consciousness for the first time. Still, much later than Rouge.

It was a tormenting, disturbing long time to wait for him to wake up, but then he fell asleep again.

There was a moment when him, Tails and Amy feared that he wouldn't wake up again.

The doctor in charge said it was normal, so Tails suggested they leave some notes to him on the paper cup (because the hospital didn't have memo or notes, and self-brought ones weren't allowed for hygiene reasons). He tried to write something humorous but ended up feeling annoyed by his own bad joke and wasted the cup, so they had to re-write on a second cup.

Knuckles shook his head. He was never the one to think much about things around—doesn't mean that he doesn't do the 'think' work, he just relies on instinct most of the time, but then...

He realized he was standing in the bathroom with the lights off. How long had he been like this? Standing in front of the mirror in the dark, drowning himself in his own thoughts...he couldn't remember. He was so lost back in thoughts.

He hated losing himself in overthinking.

After about one and a half hours, Miles "Tails" Prower woke up. He sat up with sleepy eyes. The room was still dim with the curtains drawn, only a bedside lamp was on. Under the warm yellow light, he saw Knuckles sitting on the other bed, leaning back on the headboard. He was reading something on his phone, with his gloves off.

Tails felt bizarre witnessing such scene. Though he had seen Knuckles taken off his gloves from time to time, it was still rare to see his bare hands, as well as those red spikes. Not to even mention seeing Knuckles using his phone.

"Morning." Knuckles perceived his gaze and greeted.

"Morning, Knuckles..." he yawned and greeted in return. "What time is it now?"

"About 9:30," Knuckles moved away from his phone to reach the light switches, " I heard you went out last night. What was wrong?"

"I...I couldn't sleep, so I went and bought some hot milk at the vending machine." Tails explained, didn't mention his talk with Amy. The room was lit up, making him blink his eyes to get used to the environment. "What were you reading? Is it something you want me to know?"

"Right. Things happened when we were asleep." Knuckles turned around. He sat by the bedside to show him what he was reading on his phone. Tails walked to sit beside him and received his phone. On the large screen was the website of the local news, the headline was the report of an incident that happened only a few hours ago.

"Break-in in Icube Central Hospital at night...possible gang crimes, alarm cut, harassment of patients but nothing lost?" Tails rubbed his eyes and scrolled down the article in confusion, "What is this?"

"It's the hospital where Sonic and Rouge were in." Knuckles said. "The article was exaggerated. Just read the last lines."

"...multiple employees including medics, janitors and security, and a female patient, were found anesthetized by ether, a male patient was slightly wounded after being knocked out. The light system was cut out and two wards were rummaged through but no property was found lost. 2 volunteers who had offered help declined to be interviewed...patients had been transported to several local clinics for temporary settlement." Tails could feel his sleepiness replaced by annoyance, then anger. "What in the tarnation of the world could these people be so fuc...uh, I mean, foolish! To rob a hospital and hurt patients?"

"You were not paying attention to the points, Tails!" Knuckles became a bit more anxious at his response. "Look at the photos they took— those wards! Room 317 and 319. They were Sonic's and Rouge's—"

"—Wait, where?" Tails rolled back on and checked the photos— Knuckles was right. They were Sonic's and Rouge's wards. "That means...the injured patients mentioned could be Sonic and Rouge?! Screw it! These absolute jerks!" He stood up quickly, feeling the flame of fury growing in his chest. "The absurdity doesn't make any sense! Except...no!"

Half of his anger was put out by the incoming idea, and turned into fear.

"Exactly as you thought, Tails." Knuckles stood up as well. He walked to the windows to open the curtains. "That was what I was worried about— could it be GUN? You know those weren't brainless delusional robbers. If we're right about this, then they were probably sent for what Sonic and Rouge had seen and done, targeting them...which for f*ck's sake we still don't know!"

"Right...I know what they probably wanted, and they must be going after the crystal too! You should have woken me up earlier, Knuckles!" Tails had already put on his shoes. "I'm calling Shadow right now! You go and find Amy, and try to call Silver, check if they both are ok...this is bad, she probably knew about this already! I just hope she won't do anything rash in the heat of the moment..."

"Let's go and find Amy first then...come with me! It's too risky for any of us to act alone at the moment...we should stay together from now on."

Sonic woke up under the embrace of the morning sun. His new ward did not have curtains on the window, and the sunlight wasn't warm.

He blinked in slight confusion, wondering why he was here, inside this very brief and small room of nothing, but a bed and a clock on the wall. It was about to be 10 o'clock.

Ooooh, right. Shit happened a few hours ago. Too much bullshit. His mind sank into a fret.

The door squeaked and was gently pushed open. He looked in the direction and saw Amy enter, with a paper cup of hot water in her hand.

Sonic felt that his mood floated up through the annoyance. It was always nice to see her.

"Hi, Ames." He greeted, feeling that his lips and throat became dryer. "Top of the morning, huh?"

"Hi." Amy turned around to close the door. Then she walked towards his bed slowly, with the cup holding tight in both her hands. "I saw the news and came here."

"Wow, that was quick for the media." Sonic laughed a little awkwardly and sat up. "A lot of things broke out in the past few hours."

Amy didn't respond to him. She handed over the cup and saw him drink it up.

"Amy?" Sonic noticed her unusual silence.

"C'mon, don't worry too much, I'm fine, I look better than yesterday now." He pretended to be relaxed and tried to throw away the paper cup into a trash can in a cool way, but couldn't find one in this room and had to give up.

"...Sonic," Amy stopped his little tricks of playing with the cup and grabbed his hand, "I need you to be honest with me. I need to know what happened, what you and everyone else involved were doing...I need to know to stop worrying about you."

"Please." Her voice was low. He couldn't tell if she was mad at him. Her hands were as cold as the morning.

"Amy..." Sonic hesitated. He held the words back, feeling weird at the time. Something seemed unusual, he couldn't tell where.

What? What's the matter? I didn't do anything wrong...I've always been honest with her.

Sonic determined his mind. He was about to speak but the loud noise of the door opening interrupted.

Shadow kicked the door open. Standing beside him, shockingly, was another Amy, disheveled and panting. The anger on her face grew as soon as she saw the doppelganger, who had a trace of spite flashed across their face.

"Amy? AMY?!" Sonic's eyes dart back and forth wildly, he quickly realized something and shook off the cold hands forcefully. "Who the hell are you!"

"You! You stay away from Sonic!" The angry Amy standing by the door now was charging towards them at a high speed. But Shadow was faster with his chaos control. He came to the "Amy" by the bed in a flash and caught them by the neck, deadpan. Then he crushed it mercilessly without any difficulty, before letting them say anything else.

Machine pieces along with unknown green liquid droplets fell and split on Sonic's bed. The body that lost its commander collapsed on the floor, and the lifeless head with a surprise frozen on its face hit the ground hard, rolling away, stopped when touched the real Amy Rose's feet. Its dead eyes were still wide open, staring into her shocked and frightened eyes.

"A.I. Android," Shadow explained, beating off the debris on his hands. "Must be Eggman."

"Woah, Shadow!" Sonic almost jumped off the bed, "it could be a living person!"

"Must I tell you word-by-word my hatred towards androids?" Shadow growled back at him, "Or you tell me, that you're a better expert than me at distinguishing androids from the real ones?!"

Sonic choked on his furious words. He couldn't speak, surprise, anger and bafflement blended in his tight throat.

"Shadow..." Amy bypassed her doppelganger android's head and walked towards them, "I'm not...Sonic was just—"

"Enough! Shut up, both of you!..." Shadow shouted at them, annoyed. Sonic and Amy shook a little at the same time at his unusually high-volume roar, with an uneasy look on their faces.

Shadow frowned, frustrated at the awkward silence. He took a few steps away and closed his eyes to calm himself down for a moment. "Sorry, I..."

"Shadow..." Sonic got out of bed with Amy's help. "What happened? Something much worse must've pissed you off."

"..." He remained silent, avoiding their caring gaze.

"It was something about GUN, wasn't it?" Amy asked carefully in a small voice. "It's okay to tell us."

"C'mon, Shadow, no one would laugh at you even if you're fired! Plus I need to know what the heck just happened to Amy!" Sonic prompted. Immediately after he finished, he realized Shadow glaring at him fiercely.

"What? For real?" Sonic wilted a little. "I didn't mean it."

"You were damn close, Sonic, I got f*king suspended." Shadow left in a flash the moment he finished his words, not paying attention to Tails ("Wait, Shadow!") and Knuckles, who just arrived at the door.

...

(Part I ended, to be continued)

Well I planned to include more but it'd be too long to read so next time :/