Disclaimer: All non-original characters are property of SEGA, DiC and/or their respective creators.
Inescapable Past, Act 17: Those Left Behind
Tangle craned her neck, trying for a better view of the minivan's windshield over Infinite's towering ears. She could see flashing red lights up ahead. Several, in fact. Storm's broad shoulders stopped her seeing precisely how many, or what vehicles they belonged to.
"Take it easy, sweetie, you'll pull something," said Rouge softly, placing a hand on the lemur's shoulder.
Tangle glanced down. The bat gave a faint smile.
"Okay," she said, dropping back into her seat.
Rouge's smile vanished, replaced by the same haunted expression she'd been wearing since Sonar told them about Shadow. Tangle looked away, lest the bat catch her eye and force another smile. After what she'd done for Mighty, not staring was the least the lemur felt she could do.
Storm took the minivan as close as he could to Westopolis University Medical Center's main entrance. While the albatross parked, Jet looked round from his place in the passenger's seat.
"Infinite, lose the sword; Sonar, one phone will do; now let's go."
"Can I come?" Tangle piped up.
"You're here, aren't you?" said Jet. "Just be a good girl and keep away from any more stray Freedom Fighters."
Once the hawk and his entourage had piled out of the van, Infinite led the way towards the line of police cars surrounding the hospital's entrance. Jet and Rouge strode along behind him, followed by the dawdling Sonar, her eyes glued to her cellphone. Tangle slowly brought up the rear, feeling way more self-conscious than she'd expected in her black sweater vest and yellow plaid skirt.
A puce genet in a khaki police uniform stood guard outside the hospital's doors. He didn't try to deny the party entry. Inside, the foyer was crowded yet eerily quiet. A small crowd of Mobians - many in scrubs - stood below a sign suspended from the ceiling that read 'Waiting Area'.
Two more police officers stood between the crowd and what Tangle assumed was the waiting room the sign indicated. Amid the rows and rows of empty seats, the lemur noticed a fourth cop scribbling furiously in a notepad as an antelope in burgundy scrubs spoke to her.
"Sonny, where even is Whisper?" said Jet, halting his entourage as the back of the foyer.
"Just a sec," said the fennec, hastily typing out a text, "Err, the Emergency Department, wherever that is."
"I know!" blurted Tangle, spinning on her heel to head out the way they'd come in.
A miffed Infinite watched as Rouge and Jet followed her out. "Why couldn't he just fire her?"
"Let it go already," said Sonar, rolling her eyes as the jackal ran off to retake the lead.
After a short walk round the hospital's exterior, the quintet encountered yet another police officer – a brawny turquoise coypu in a too-tight uniform – guarding the Emergency Department's side-entrance. He raised an arm to block Infinite's way.
"You don't appear to be in need of urgent medical assistance, sir. Please step back."
"How would you like to be?" said the jackal, "Get out the way."
"No admittance to non-patients at this time, sir," said the coypu. "Please step back."
Tangle watched her fellow bodyguard reach over his shoulder where his sword would usually be.
She dashed forward and attempted to put him in an armlock. "He's only doing his job!"
"What would you know about that?" said Infinite, countering the move he'd taught the lemur.
"Please step back from the schoolchild, sir," said the coypu, tapping Infinite's shoulder.
"Problem, officer?" said Jet as the rest of the party caught up.
The cop looked up and suddenly stiffened. "Sorry sir, no admittance to non-patients."
"Then you'll just have to make an exception, officer," said Jet. "Make that five exceptions."
Without breaking eye contact with the hawk, the coypu reached for the radio clipped to his ill-fitting khaki shirt. "We've got a Code Green out here. Copy?"
"Copy that, Miro," the radio crackled. "Code Green is ago. Let 'em through."
"Code Green?" Rouge wondered aloud as Jet led his entourage inside in single file.
"Just a little…understanding the boss has with the cops," said Sonar quietly, "He gets to go where he wants, when he wants. It started as more of a traffic thing."
Keen to her distance from Infinite, Tangle brought up the rear again. She flinched as the coypu patted her on the head in passing. "Have a good day, little girl. Tell your parents they raised a good 'un."
"Th-thanks," she said, momentarily feeling a lot younger than her fifteen years. She wasn't sure her parents even knew she'd run away from school. Their woodland home was so remote, she'd spent the majority of every year since third grade in Spiral Hill boarding houses.
Whisper awaited her colleagues inside. She carried her hard-light rifle in spite of the police presence.
"This way," said the wolf at a volume that took them all by surprise.
She dashed off up a corridor and they followed in kind. Tangle lost track of many corners they rounded before coming to a door guarded by a khaki-clad police officer. The violet skink stepped aside without any fuss.
"I thought I said no—oh…"
A brown muntjac in a white coat stopped short as the sextet wandered into the private room. Tangle sidled up to Rouge as they both took stock. Shadow lay tucked up in bed, unconscious but looking relatively peaceful. There was a plastic oxygen mask over his mouth, but no ventilator in sight. Reassuringly, the bleeping vital-signs monitor was in fine voice.
"What's that thing?" said Tangle, eyeing a tall, thin machine quietly humming away at his bedside.
It had two red winding tubes coming out either side of it. Both ends were connected to Shadow's left forearm.
"Is that…blood?" said Rouge, taking a step towards the machine.
"Keep away from that!" the muntjac snapped as Tangle instinctively wrapped her arms round the bat's waist to restrain her. Rouge relented without a fight.
Jet looked to the muntjac. "What happened here, Dr…?"
"Leaf," said Dr Leaf. "I'll try to be brief."
This latest attempt on Shadow's life had taken place in an operating theater. During the procedure to extract a bullet from his leg, it appeared a nurse had 'accidentally' nicked the hedgehog's femoral artery while the surgeon was distracted. The damage was promptly repaired, but copious blood loss in the meantime had required a substantial transfusion of HemoSynth.
"HemoSynth?" said Rouge under her breath.
"It's, like, fake blood that works like the real thing," whispered Tangle. She'd actually paid attention during that biology lesson.
The teary-eyed Rouge glanced down at the lemur. She put an arm around the fifteen-year-old and held her close as Dr Leaf disclosed what she could about the nurse who'd wielded the scalpel. The suspect had lost her EMT husband in Black Doom's initial attack on Westopolis. Purportedly, he was tending to injured civilians below an overpass upon which Shadow was battling a platoon of Black Warriors. No one survived the overpass's eventual collapse.
"What's with the machine?" asked Jet, apparently determined to preempt any follow-up questions.
Leaf hesitated, as if the query represented one confidentiality breach too many.
The hawk sighed. "Doctor, please, Rouge here is the nearest thing to next-of-kin this guy gets."
"Very well," said Leaf, "We've never deployed so much HemoSynth in a single transfusion before. We're keeping him on a dialysis for now. Strictly as a precaution, I should add."
"Sounds like he's had an oil change," said Infinite.
The jackal staggered backwards as Rouge slapped him across the muzzle.
"Go tell Storm to bring the van around," said Jet, motioning for Sonar and Whisper to kick Infinite out of the room. As they did so, Rouge made her way to a chair in the far corner.
"Call Sonny if you need anything," said Jet, patting the bat between her wings as she passed him.
"We're leaving already?" said Tangle, dabbing at her eyes with a sleeve of her white polo shirt.
"Shadow's alive, stable, and has a familiar face to wake up to," said the hawk. "What more do you want?"
〜
"Rise and shine," said Jian, pouring a bucket of ice water over Espio's head. "Movie time."
The drenched chameleon blinked awake, looking at the white tigress through half-open eyes as water dripped off his horn. She looked poised to attack, as if expecting violence on his part. In truth, the soaking was more refreshing than infuriating.
"No chainsaw?" he said weakly.
Jian bared her teeth but backed away. Topaz stepped forward, holding a tablet computer up to Espio's face. The screen bore an image of Metal Knuckles. The lioness tapped the screen with an index finger.
"Guardian Unit of Nations, your time is up. You have outstayed your welcome. Return Metropolis to us, return Robotnik to us, go back where you came from, and live. Stay, and die. We will not be stopped. We cannot be stopped. The Eggman Emp—"
Topaz silenced the synthesized staccato voice with another tap of the screen.
"One hour ago, that was playing on a loop on every monitor in this base," she said. "How?"
Espio lifted his head to meet her expectant gaze. He shrugged. To his surprise, it wasn't immediately struck by a flying bucket. Jian merely glared at him as Topaz turned heel and headed for the starkly-lit interrogation room's only door.
"You'll talk," said the tigress pointedly, "Everyone talks eventually."
Espio scoffed to himself as she left the room. If that's really what she thought, he would be all too happy to disappoint her.
〜
In a broom closet somewhere in the Babylon Enterprises Research & Innovation Complex (AKA The Waveplex), Mighty was starting to regret ever having seen that tour bus vlog by Mina. Not that the concert hadn't been worth the drive, especially the afterparty. But everything else since had been a letdown.
Be it smuggling Sonic into Station Square under cover of darkness to see to his stressed-out girlfriend, or stopping by the Chaotix Detective Agency, only to find Vector and Espio were both out of town. The real kicker, though, had been learning Charmy had been packed off to boarding school in Soleanna.
According to Sonic, he'd gone there to keep Tails company. That brainy little fox had apparently accepted a 'hybrid scholarship' that allowed him to be an ordinary fifth-grader, whilst also teaching advanced aeronautical engineering to college postgrads. The bee's motives were beside the point, though.
The fact Charmy wasn't in Station Square anymore undermined Vector's original premise about setting up the agency to put down roots and give the kid some stability. Much as he still loved the chameleon, Mighty had stepped out of that helicopter earlier itching to take Espio to task for this sham. As things stood, he had to hope GUN didn't deny him his reckoning.
Just then, the broom closet's door slid open. A white ewe in an olive-drab tanktop and camo pants stood over the reclining armadillo.
"Are you room service?" said Mighty.
"I'm delivery," said the ewe, pointing a sawn-off shotgun into the closet. "Now get up."
"Yes ma'am," said Mighty, raising his hands as he stood.
With the sawn-off shotgun pressed against the red carapace covering his lower back, Mighty let the ewe shepherd him along some gloomy corridors and up a flight of stairs. She used his face to push open a door at the top of the stairs. Finally, they stopped at a door. The ewe kicked it open and kicked the armadillo inside.
"Take a seat," said Jet from the far end of the conference table Mighty now found before him. The hawk was sitting between a purple swallow in a white bandana and that albatross who'd clobbered him with a hoverboard.
"I'll stand if it's all the same to you. That closet was cramped as—hey!"
"As it happens, it isn't all the same to me," said Jet as a black jackal and teal fennec grabbed Mighty by the arms and forced him into a chair facing the Babylon Rogues.
"Suit yourself," said the armadillo as his coercers stepped back. "So, am I on trial or what?"
Jet slid a ring binder folder across the table. "Take a look."
With one eyebrow raised, Mighty obliged. He leafed through several grainy images of early Badnik models – Crabmeats, Caterkillers, Balkyries and so on – he hadn't seen in years.
"Err, nice scrapbook," he said, closing the binder. "When did you take the photos?"
"Those are all screengrabs from a newsreel earlier today," said Wave.
"Today?!" blurted Mighty, flipping the binder open again. "Where?"
"Don't you read the news?" said Storm.
"I happen to value my mental health," said Mighty, looking up from a picture of a Newtron scaling a lamppost. "Is there a point to this?"
"What do you think?" said Jet. "Look, I was happy to leave you stewing in that closet for a couple of days, but Wave here thought you might be of some use on a nocturnal expedition she's plotting."
"Use as what?" said the armadillo. "Bait?"
"Muscle," said Wave.
Mighty blinked. "Seriously?"
"Seeing as it's your fault Tangle's off our team right now, I dare say filling in for her is the least you could do," said Jet.
The armadillo looked around the conference room. "Say, where is that kid?"
"On a special assignment," said Wave. "Now, will you help us or not?"
Mighty frowned. "What's in it for me?"
Jet chuckled. "How very un-Freedom Fighterly of you. I'm almost sad the kid missed that."
"To quote an old friend of mine: I'm waiting," said Mighty, folding his arms.
"Well, if you're really so hard up for a date that you need to go breaking your ex-boyfriend out of prison, it just so happens that Infinite and Sonar over there have some GUN connections of their own. Us three wouldn't be involved, of course, but if all goes well, they may be inclined to help facilitate a jailbreak of some kind."
Mighty looked round at Infinite. The jackal winked his yellow eye. Suppressing a cringe, he turned back to the Rogues. "Deal."
〜
"Can you feel the sunshine? Does it brighten up your day? Don't you feel that sometimes you just need to run away?" sang Tangle under her breath as she lumbered up the Waveplex's front steps.
As it happened, she couldn't feel the sunshine and she wasn't about to complain. Lugging two heavy bags across ten city blocks in a sweater vest had left her hot enough. Having the sun on her back as well would've just been unfair.
As for feeling the need to run away, she'd certainly thought about it. However, the two bags of Soleannese takeout she was carrying - one full of pizzas, the other of spaghetti boxes – weren't only for the boss. Whisper and Sonny had to eat too, and they weren't the ones who'd made her put on a yellow plaid skirt.
Conquering the steps, Tangle hefted her burden inside and collapsed to her knees.
"Need a hand?" asked a feminine voice across the lobby.
The gassed lemur looked up. A white ewe named Sab, the Waveplex's head of security, was on her way over. Fearful she might face further sanction if she didn't personally deliver the food, Tangle made a half-heartedly effort to hold onto the bags, but the insistent sheep took both.
"Thanks," she said, getting to her feet.
"How was the walk?" asked Sab, leading the way to the security door alongside the reception desk.
"Err, warm," said Tangle, ill-prepared for small talk. She still had Can You Feel The Sunshine going round and round in her head.
"Well, if will wear one of those in this weather," said the ewe, eyeing the lemur's sweater vest.
Tangle felt the sudden urge to stick up for her own fashion sense, bristling at the implication she was wearing this outfit by choice. Before she could find the words, Sab stopped and turned to her.
"Would you mind taking a couple of these up to fourth-floor lab?" she asked, nodding at the bag of spaghetti boxes. "Tekno's on her own up there.
"Sure," said the lemur, grabbing an armful of boxes with different sauce labels.
"Here, let me get that for you," said Sab, summoning the elevator.
Three floors up, the laboratory wasn't hard to find. A set of half-open blast-style doors greeted Tangle as he stepped out the elevator. Weaving through the gap between the doors, she found Tekno kneeling on a workbench, her head inside Emerl's open chest cavity.
Seeing the inert Gizoid gave the lemur pause. She'd been aboard the airship when they had raised the 4,000-year-old robot from the seafloor. Back then, it'd been encrusted with sand, salt, and barnacles. Here and now, it looked fresh off a production line.
"Tekno?" said Tangle.
"Yeah?" said the canary, peering at the visitor from under rather than over her shoulder.
"You hungry?"
"Uh, sure," said Tekno, shuffling off the workbench. She still wore the Alicia Acorn Academy uniform Amy had gifted her: white button-down, purple blazer, pleated grey skirt and red necktie.
Trundling over, she relieved Tangle of the box labelled 'meatball & mushroom', sat down cross-legged on the lab floor, opened the cardboard carton, and chowed down with the plastic fork provided. Glancing about at the abundance of unused stools, Tangle shrugged, picked a 'garlic & mushroom' box and joined Tekno on the floor.
"So, is that thing, like, working now?" asked Tangle, eyeing the Gizoid.
Tekno was caught mid-chew. "A tiny bit. The Chaos Emerald we've got is a bit low on energy."
The lemur tilted her head. "Is that even a thing?"
The canary shrugged. "It's a theory. Maybe we just need another Emerald."
"Simple at that, huh?"
Tekno giggled. "Yeah. Rouge can just ask Knuckles to loan us—"
"Tangle?" said a voice across the lab. "Why're you in here?"
The lemur cocked her head towards the lab door. Wave was standing with two pizza boxes in her hands. Beside her stood Jet.
"J-just eating," said Tangle. "That's all, I swear!"
"Good," said Jet, "Now get out."
Mouthing 'see ya' at Tekno, the lemur scrambled to her feet and across the lab, spaghetti box in hand.
"Thanks for the food!" the canary called after her.
Once she was out in the hallway, Tangle turned to acknowledge the thank-you, but the lab doors were already shut.
"Oh," she murmured as an odd feeling came over her. It wasn't sadness exactly. More like numbness.
Mindful of the horrors of cold spaghetti, she trudged off in search of somewhere to finish her meal. In a welcome stroke of luck, she found a balcony, complete with rattan couches. Spreading herself out on one, Tangle propped her cellphone on her knees and immersed herself in shaky phonecam footage of Sonic and Mina's Trillium City concert.
During the fifth consecutive video of Mina singing Living In The City, she heard what sounded like Wave shouting. Pausing Mina, Tangle got up and followed her ears to the railing behind her chosen couch. As it turned out, the balcony overlooked the Waveplex's executive parking lot.
The purple swallow was indeed down there, trading barbs with Storm as he and Sab heaved a casket-like crate into the back of a white van. Elsewhere in the lot, Sonar and Tekno were hanging out by the minivan they'd visited the hospital in.
While Sab and Storm went on loading a selection of smaller crates, Whisper came out to join Sonny and Tekno. Next came Infinite, followed closely by Jet and Mighty. Tangle watched wide-eyed as her colleagues interacted with the armadillo like he was normal member of the boss's entourage.
Just then, the white van's rear doors slammed shut. That seemed to be the cue for everyone but Sab to pile into either of the two vehicles. The white ewe waved them off as they left in convoy, Wave driving one and Storm the other.
Once Sab had gone back inside, Tangle practically tore off her sweater vest and threw it off the balcony. Only a nightmarish vision of catching a hover-tram in her polo and undies stopped her yellow plaid skirt going the same way. She would wear it to get home in, but never again.
She might keep the polo (it was actually quite comfy) but she wouldn't wear it to any weird schools she'd never heard of. Wherever the boss had taken everyone, she wouldn't be here to welcome them back.