Sonic, Sonic Forces and all other various Sonic The Hedgehog characters are Copyright SEGA, Sonic Team, Archie, and all other associations affiliated with the Sonic the Hedgehog game/literature/anime/manga. Names used for other characters are random. Any people bearing the real name, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

3

With a sudden gasp as if having been underwater for far too long, Infinite bolted upright in the bed, panting, trembling, eyes wide open, struggling to understand what it was he had awakened from, and whether he was still in the dream state or not. Eyes darting to and fro, he noticed that the room he was in was bathed in a dark orange sunlight, with long narrow shadows that looked like fingers stretching across the walls courtesy of the blinds that hung in the windows, reaching for him.

He began to somewhat calm, and he bowed his head, closing his eyes in confusion and distraught, for he had been deprived of sleep for quite some time from having suffering the torment of the recurring nightmare where he would find himself wandering alone among a desolate landscape scorched by the tides of war, devoid of all life. A blood-red haze swirled about him, driven by howling winds that carried with them the voices of the deceased that cried out in despair, creating a hauntingly eerie chorus that echoed within his ears and wrinkled his nose with the pungent scent of death that complimented it.

Such a sight should have brought him a sickening sense of delight, for that was the endgame of his dark desires once the power of the Phantom Ruby was his to control. But it did not. To him, something seemed amiss, and it troubled him mightily; and it was always near the end of the dream where his wanderings would take him through ravaged cities and open fields littered with skeletal remains covered by the thick red dust until he would happen upon a mysterious array of body bags aligned in a hauntingly organized fashion, as if prepared for him to see.

And as if he could never control his actions, he would always approach the bags as they flapped haphazardly in the wind and begin peeling them back, revealing the lifeless faces of his former squadron one by one, each bearing the mark of a single bullet hole in their forehead, as if they had all been mercilessly executed. Though overcome with grief, he would move on, as there were three more to uncover, but before he could take hold of the bag, he felt a presence watching him from afar, and he would turn to see a shadowy figure staring at him, its eyes glowing, fixated.

The figure would begin to laugh sadistically, maniacally as the sky would suddenly darken and be torn asunder with streaks of lightning and thunder before a torrent of dark blood-like rain as if the sky itself had been slashed by many knives would fall. The shadow would begin to slowly approach him, its evil laugh piercing his soul, stinging like venom while it would grow in size, looming over him like a vast wall of storm clouds; and though he would turn and run, the shadow would overtake him, and the face he would see come at him would be his own, though nothing more than rags of skin upon a skull with eyes that gleamed a fiery red. Closer and closer it would get, and he would try to run faster, harder, only to lose ground; and he would hear its deep, bellowing voice that sounded as if a thousand demons from the pits of hell had melded into one scraping his ears as he felt the coldness of the void grabbing hold of his shoulders and begin to swallow him.

"You will never escape me," it said over and over until he would look up and see the face above him, long fangs extending from its mouth, ready to strike like a snake upon its prey. But before it could happen, the nightmare would abruptly end, and he would awake in a cold sweat like so many times before.

But the last one he would awaken from seemed so different, more sinister, more realistic than before, perhaps exacerbated by his mind being in a panicked state when he was on the brink of actual death. He opened his eyes and saw the blanket covering his lap, albeit cold, damp, and stained red. He could feel himself breathing, though difficult.

I'm...alive? But how? How is that possible? I thought I was dead...I felt myself...dying...

He began to scan the room again, but more thoroughly now that he had calmed. The orange sunlight had darkened into red, and the shadows had grown along the walls and ceiling of the unrecognizable room indicating that the day would soon be ending.

Where am I? How did I end up here?

He began wincing from pain that started to throb in his chest, and he brought a hand up to it, feeling the soft cloth of the crisscrossed bandages that covered it. His face hardened into confusion.

What the...? I...I don't understand this. Who brought me here and did this?

The throbbing pain began to intensify, and he grit his teeth to try and fend it off, but to no avail, and a coughing spell triggered him to vomit upon the bed, though mostly blood. He clutched at his chest tightly as he began coughing again, his breaths now gurgling as blood trickled from his mouth. Slowly, the wave of pain began to settle, as did his breaths, but as he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, he felt an unnerving feeling inch up his spine, as if he were being watched; and as he slowly raised his head, he saw Amy standing at the doorway staring at him holding a tray containing rolls of bandages and medication, her eyes wide open.

The air in the room tingled in tension as the two stared at each other for several moments, each apprehensive of the other as if waiting for a sudden move to occur. She could feel her heart beginning to beat rapidly as pangs of fear began to wrap themselves around her lungs, causing her to take deeper breaths. But she silently told herself to remain steadfast, for he was in no shape to try and take an initiative; and that doing so would likely kill him.

But she was also aware that if he knew he had nothing left to lose, there would be little she could do to stop him from trying, regardless of the consequences. It had been borderline miraculous that he had even survived the night, let alone awaken with the cognizance to know that he had survived and that he had been brought to the room he was in, and his injuries tended to.

Her brow furrowed a little, for it was a chance she was just going to have to take because the impasse was wearing thin on her patience, and after exhaling lightly in preparedness, began to cautiously approach the bed, taking a long way around the room, never taking her eyes off of him as did he off of her. "Look," she finally said, attempting to deflate the room of its tension, placing the tray on a nearby table. "I know who you are. I'm not here to judge or rehash anything. I'm not going to hurt you. I'm just here..."

Infinite's eyes narrowed as she stopped mere feet from him. "You?" he asked with a slight groan. "You did this?"

"Yes. I was on my way back home after helping with the recovery efforts when I happened to see you on the hilltop in the rain. I didn't know it was...you...until I saw the mask. A part of me wanted to just walk on by and leave you, but I saw the wound, and how bad you were bleeding. No one should ever suffer like that. Not even you."

Infinite's mouth fell agape, and his eyes suddenly flashed. "Don't you dare patronize me with your pity!" he snarled, "I am not the weakling you think I am!"

Without warning, the jackal suddenly lunged at her, wildly missing as she quickly jumped away from his outstretched hands bearing sharp claws. He fell to the floor hard, but he immediately scrambled to his knees, gasping, blood oozing out of the bandages and between his fingers as he clutched his chest tightly.

"I know who you are!" he said amid breaths while rocking back and forth to try and ease the almost intolerable pain. "I know you were with that incorrigible group of rebels!"

He winced, crying out in agony as the blood began to drip onto the floor, spurring another coughing spell until a trickle of red could be seen escaping from the side of his mouth.

Though startled at first by the unprovoked attack, Amy looked upon the fallen jackal with pity as he writhed in pain, his bandages becoming smeared with his blood. "Infinite, stop!" she said, cautiously kneeling down by him. "Your stitches are starting to rip!"

"Let them!" he groaned. "I'd rather die than be seen as this weakling being helped by the likes of you!"

"Well I'm not about to just sit here and watch you die!" she retorted before reaching over toward him only to have her hand swatted away by him.

"Don't you dare touch me!" he hissed, glaring at her between the strands of his hair that had cascaded over his face. "Just get away from me!"

"But you're hurt!" Amy said, reaching over again, blatantly ignoring his simple request.

"GET BACK!" Infinite yelled, but this time, he angrily swiped at her, catching her arm with his claws, leaving two long marks that quickly began to fill with blood.

He watched her recoil back to a nearby wall, holding her arm, seeing her in a state of fear that should have brought a sadistic smile to his face, but such was not the case. Instead, a curious change began to wash over his face the longer he stared at her, and his once-hardened face twisted in fury began to soften, and his mouth began to drop open in shock, for he no longer saw Amy cringing before him, but himself as a child. The room seemed to almost melt away in a sea of blood red marked by intermittent appearances of glitch-like interferences, and the memories began to flow into his mind like an angry river swollen by torrential rains until he finally recognized the surroundings, making him gaze at the frightened younger version of himself as he had been turned to stone, allowing the memories to come flooding in like an angry river swollen by torrential rains.

No...no, no, no...

He remembered it being a typical night of turmoil when his father would take to alcohol and drugs as methods of coping with the passing of his beloved wife when Infinite was much younger, but that night was different. Past outbursts of anger under the influence would usually subside after a few moments when he could sneak away to his room and hide in a spot only he knew of, but that night, he could not get away, and the anger was far more violent than he had ever seen.

He remembered seeing his father sitting in a chair by a table, weeping as he normally would when memories of his life partner would consume his thoughts. But there was a strange needle resting upon his arm, and his bicep had been tightly bound with a piece of cloth, his leg and his hands were shaking madly much like an uncontrolled tic; and he heard his soft, innocent voice asking his father if he was okay and if he was taking medicine, only to be met back with rage-filled blame for her death; that she would still be alive if he had never been born; that he wished he had not been born.

The words stung him to the very core, and he remembered that he had started to cry out loud, asking why, which seemed to only further infuriate his father, causing him to scream and curse before he would grab the young jackal by his arm and throw him to the floor, kicking and punching at him. He remembered finally screaming for his father to stop, which he did for a moment, but his face had twisted into sheer rage he could no longer control, and he grabbed a bottle off of the table, broke it upon the wall before striking Infinite's face with it while screaming at him to be silent, its jagged edge cutting deep into the skin around his eye, leaving behind an angry, gaping wound that would eventually take his sight away and leave behind its permanent reminder.

He remembered scrambling to a corner of a room in a confused state of panicked retreat, holding his profusely bleeding eye, wailing uncontrollably from both the pain of the injury and of the onslaught of hatred his father continued to spew at him. Again and again, he begged his father to stop the assault, but his pleas fell upon deaf ears. He saw him tower over him like a menacing shadow, then felt his father's hand around his throat, aggressively lifting him off of the ground until he could see directly into his father's eyes: they were not his own anymore, for behind the glittering and fiery gleam were dilated pupils indicative of loss of cognitive control.

But before he could deliver what might have been a final blow, a strange transformation had begun to occur mere moments afterwards: he began to suddenly sweat profusely, and his eyes seemed to return to normal; and the hand that was around his own son's neck began to tremble before he lost his grip and his son tumbled back down to the floor where he quickly retreated back to the corner, his terrified stare still fixated on his father despite the blood that had mixed with his tears, staining his face.

He remembered his father staring at him, then at his blood-soaked hand before falling to his knees as reality had begun to sink in where the drugs in his system had once been in control. His mouth dropped open, and an agonizing scream of sheer horror echoed throughout the small house they lived in. His father began sobbing uncontrollably, and he began to beat the floor with his fists before suddenly grabbing the broken bottle covered with his son's blood and without so much as saying one word, stared sorrowfully at the young jackal before dragging the jagged edge across his throat.

He remembered crying out in shock as his father lay dying before him, his last few gurgling breaths echoing through the kitchen until they finally ceased, his lifeless eyes still staring at his son, who was frozen in terror, panic-stricken, and alone.

He remembered it all, and on the back of the fading memory, he could hear the same sadistic voice as he had heard from within his dream.

Infinite...you cannot escape me...

"Infinite?" Amy asked, gently shaking his shoulder, for she had seen his stare stray from her and onto something seemingly far away, and she had crept back up toward him as his reaction to what he had done took perplexed, as if a sudden wave of regret had washed over him.

She eventually managed to shake him out of his stupor, and for a moment, he still stared at her, as if trying to understand what had happened before closing his eyes and quickly turning his head. "Just go away," he said. "Stop wasting your time on me."

He felt her hand tighten somewhat on his shoulder, as if stating that she was not about to give up on him. He quickly jerked it away. "What is wrong with you?" he said, angrily fixating his stare back upon her. "Did you not hear what I just said? Get your hand off of me and go away!"

She saw what looked like tears welling in his eyes. "I just want to help you," she said.

"I said get away!" he cried out, jerking his shoulder away from her, his mouth beginning to tremble. "You sit there and stare at me like you know me. You don't know me. You'll never know me! You took the one last thing I had that kept me going, and that was vengeance against this godforsaken world that's done nothing but take from me my entire life! Because of you and your stupid friends, I now have nothing to live for. Nothing!"

He slumped up against the bottom of the bed and buried his face into his arms, caring not for the blood that continued to soak through the bandages. "It's all gone. Everything I had, everyone I ever knew...all of it...it's gone forever."

She looked upon him with unrelenting pity as his back began to heave with sobs, her presumptions of something about the black jackal being different slowly coming to fruition through his reactions scathed in anger and violence, only to end up in crumpled heap of emotion that she was not sure how to react to. She wanted to comfort him as his long suppressed feelings of loneliness, anger, hatred, and sadness poured out of him, yet, she felt reluctant to - knowing who he was, what he had done, and what he could still be capable of should she help rebuild his strength; it was quite the predicament, indeed.

But the words of Sonic rang again in her ears that no one should ever have to suffer, even a known enemy. She nodded slightly, and without saying anyting, gingerly put her hand upon his back, causing him to slowly raise his head from his arms, and look up at Amy's face, confused as to why anyone would ever lend a helping hand knowing of the atrocities he had committed. "Why? Why are you doing this?" he asked softly, a light grunt escaping from feeling the burn from the wound. "After everything...everything I had done..."

But she noticed that he had begun to sway, and his eyelids were closing unevenly, almost as if he were in a state of advanced inebriation; a sign that he was losing too much blood as she noticed that a pool had begun to form by his legs from where the chest wound continued to bleed, almost freely now from the failure of the stitches under the red-stained bandages. "We'll talk later. I've got to get this bleeding stopped."

He grimaced despite his crumbling state of consciousness as she began removing the soiled bandages one-by-one until the wound had been uncovered in its still-angry state. She lightly shook her head in despair at the ugly sight before her as she doused a cloth in the clear liquid that emit a putrid mediciny aroma, preparing to clean it, warning him that it would likely burn, but was necessary to prevent infection from setting in. Though nearly to the point of succumbing to the weariness overtaking him, he gave in with a simple nod.

Slowly, and with utmost care, she began to blot at the outside of the open wound, working her way to the middle, silently noting to herself that its appearance had become much worse despite her earlier attempts at suppressing it. She wondered how he could have even survived this long with such a horrific injury, remembering that she had seen the large ruby upon his chest in the brief moments she had seen him, wondering if perhaps Sonic had somehow removed or destroyed it during one of their battles, but quickly discarded the notion as he had convinced her during one of his return visits to assist with the cleanup efforts that he had simply disappeared, leading her to wonder how he ended up on the hill in the first place.

I don't get it. Sonic said he disappeared, so, how is it that I found him on the hill with? There was no sign of the ruby anywhere, and the only evidence left is this awful wound that's getting worse despite the bandaging and the medicine. I've got to get him proper medical help, but who am I going to find that will actually be willing to help knowing that it's 'him'?

With one last blot, she noticed something peculiar happen: a slight glitch of sorts that appeared by her hand, just like she had seen when he unleashed his reality-shifting waves except that it was much smaller, and definitely ineffective. She frowned in concern, but silently classified it as perhaps just a trick her eyes were playing on her, and began applying a fresh round of bandages until the wound was completely covered again. But as she stood, she noticed that he had finally lost consciousness, and his head slumped down upon his chest.

"Infinite?" she cried out, lightly shaking him. "Infinite, wake up!"

He never moved; and his body seemed to go limp.

Oh, this isn't good. This isn't good at all.

She ran out of the bedroom and into the kitchen where she found her phone on a small table next to a portrait of her bear-hugging Sonic; and she quickly grabbed it and began dialing.

"C'mon, pick up, pick up," she said, impatiently tapping her hand on her side.

After several rings, she heard a voice finally answer. "Amy?" scratched a tired voice over the speaker.

"Tails!" Amy yelped in both relief and panic. "Tails, I need you over here quick with a Medi Bot*!"

"What?" Tails replied as he yawned, as if struggling to process what Amy was saying. "Medi Bot? For who? What's going on?"

"I'll explain later. Just get over here as fast as you can! I think I'm losing him!"

Amy's last comment seemed to snap the young fox out of his sleepy state, and his brow furrowed in seriousness. "Losing him?" he said. "Okay, stay calm. I'm on my way."

She closed the connection then looked sorrowfully down the hall at the bedroom where Infinite was.

Don't give up on me.

End Chapter 3

Chapter 4 will be here soon.

* I know the MediBot was part of Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood, but it makes for a nice little morsel of a cross-over, doesn't it? :)