A/N: i'm currently doing my best to keep up a mostly weekly cadence of updates on this story, with a new chapter every weekend or so. So hopefully you all are a fan of that!

Additionally, I just wanted to give a heads-up that the first two stories in this series, Metarex Rule and Darkened Chaos will soon be getting some updates. I wanted to make sure those two were cleaned-up in time for at least the back-half of this story (and we're not close to 50% yet), so I'll be throwing up some revamped chapters for those two stories here in the coming weeks. I'll let you know here as well, if you want to check them out (though the noticeable plot changes are small, so it's definitely not required).

In the meantime, we probably should check on Sonic here...

Chapter Ten: Dungeons of Our Own Design

Cold.

The kind that settles in your bones.

The kind that consumes all your thoughts so all you think about is cold.

And yet, I don't know that I have a body here.

How do you put a thought together that makes your body move? My thoughts are like pieces of spaghetti slipping from the tines of a fork. No end. No beginning. They just keep slipping away.

I know my hand must be there. I'd notice if it wasn't, right? There'd have to be pain or something there. But didn't Chris mention something about phantom limbs, about your brain telling you a limb was there even if it wasn't?

I'm so cold. I wonder if I have any limbs left at all.

The thought twinges in my skull for a second before I reject it. I don't know where it could have come from in the first place. That's not me. Not at all.

Maybe I'm tired. I am, but maybe that's why.

I don't understand how it can be dark, like I'm sleeping, and I can still be so tired.

Wait—

Sonic's eyes flashed open the moment he remembered. The roof of the space station. Green Fichus somehow…back from the dead? Because of the time travel? And then an arm at his throat. The edges of the world darkened. And then…that name…

Blue Seed.

Sonic shot up into a sitting position before he so much as took in his surroundings, before he so much as took a breath. He paid the price for that choice as soon as he was upright.

He choked. His windpipe felt no thicker than a straw. He reached up to press his hand against his throat, as if he could remove what was obstructing his airway. But he winced as his hand brushed against his skin and a twinge of pain fluttered across it. Bruises, he realized.

But that was the least of his concerns. He pressed his face into his hands, sucked in a slow breath—so that the breathing didn't irritate his windpipe—and lifted his head once more, bracing himself to face the world now before him.

It didn't help.

Sonic's stomached dropped out as if someone had opened a trapdoor at the base of his torso. He sat on a paper-thin mattress set at a careless angle on a metal floor. As Sonic eased weight onto the floor, it groaned beneath him informing Sonic there was no way he would be able to move without notice.

Against one wall was a dull metal toilet, unsettling in its starkness, unsettling in its reminding Sonic of his own mortality. Three metal walls. And, for a cruel heartbeat's worth of hope, he thought there were only three walls. But just one heartbeat. It didn't even last long enough for Sonic to jump to his feet. Even the fastest thing alive couldn't move that fast. Not before he realized the opening was simply a fourth wall. Not metal but completely see through. And solid. Save for a couple holes at the top.

Cool, he thought bitterly, at least they made sure I'd be able to breathe in this box.

And then his brain recovered enough from his earlier near-suffocation to actually contextualize who he meant by "they."

Strength that he had tentatively gathered, clutched tight like a held breath, spilled out of him in a sluice. Tension that used to keep his organs held in place fell away. His heart hung on by its arteries, drifting back and forth with all the heaviness of a grandfather clock. Counting down the seconds.

The seconds remaining of a life worth living.

Two jumps in time later, Sonic had once again ended up as a prisoner of the Metarex. He had been captured in the past by enemies other than the Metarex, of course. Eggman certainly enjoyed pulling a fast one on the hedgehog, though such imprisonments were often short-lived and no more than an intriguing twist. Once, on Earth, he had even allowed G.U.N. to capture him, though that had merely been to learn more about Shadow the Hedgehog while much of him still remained a mystery. But this…this…

This was real.

No grin sparked to life on Sonic's face, not even at his own urging. In no way could he find "entertainment value" in his current position. No clever comebacks. Not even angry declarations of proposed upcoming vengeance. No feigning nonchalance, lounging on a thin mattress.

Just fear.

Fear.

Because this was where he died. Whether it would only be his soul or if his body would follow in solidarity. It killed him a bit when his stomach twisted with hope that it would be the latter. He had never hoped for death before.

He wasn't sure what gave him the strength to rise to his feet but next thing he knew, he was standing. He dragged himself forward to the clear wall and lifted his hand. After a moment's hesitation, he reached out and pushed against the wall.

And fake Chaos Energy flooded through him.

The jolt of Energy thrust Sonic backward until he collided with the back wall of the cell. His vision flashed with white and pain kept the flash of color from resolving back into shapes. Dozens of freezing cold ice picks dug into his body. And no one pulled them out. They remained in his body, leeching cold into his skin as warm blood spilled out from the puncture points. The Chaos Energy in his core churned, sparking like it wanted to rise to the call of the fake Energy, even without a false Emerald present. He shivered in the cold. His windpipe had been crushed too recently to release anything more than a rasping sound.

The pain lasted hours. Days. Sonic wrapped his hands around his own Chaos Energy and dragged it down. It just wanted to save him, respond to Sonic's need and transform him into Dark Super Sonic. But no. No. He refused. He would not be made a monster for the Metarex.

It took a while for Sonic to realize the daggers were gone. Only the cold remained, racking his body with shivers. He peeled his shaking body off the floor. He swiped away sweat from his face, amazed at its forming while he froze. His throat stung with pain like fire as he gasped for air. And then—

"Sonic?"

Sonic's head shot up and a whole new horror flooded through his veins. "Cosmo?" he shouted in disbelief. But in his broken throat, his voice was hardly more than breath.

He dragged himself across the floor. His legs shook so much he wasn't confident in their ability to hold him up so he crawled. He drew as close to the fake Chaos Energy-fueled wall as he dared and then he collapsed on the floor again. "Cosmo, please tell me your voice is just a new Metarex trick," he begged. But his voice was so near non-existent that if Cosmo really was there, he doubted she could rationalize what she heard into a comprehensible sentence.

"Sonic, are you okay?" she asked. Her breathless voice coming from the left—probably in the cell next to his—implied she already knew his answer.

"Don't touch the glass," he gasped. If it was glass. He wasn't about to touch it again to know for sure. And while Cosmo wasn't a user of Chaos Emeralds, he really didn't want her to touch the wall to find out if the fake Energy would affect her anyway.

"Okay," she promised, though her voice shook. He heard a shuffle, like she took a step back from the glass just to be sure. "Are you hurt?"

"Nothing I can't handle," he lied. "You?"

"I would say about the same."

Sonic pressed his lips together into a grimace she couldn't see.

"Do you…" She hesitated. Sonic willed her to withdraw the question before she asked. But after a breath, she tried again. "Do you have any idea how we get out of here?"

He winced. Sonic lowered his head so he could press his forehead against the cold metal floor. Though with the fake Chaos Energy still coursing through his veins, the metal felt lukewarm at most.

"I don't," he finally admitted, forehead still pressed against the floor, eyes still squeezed shut.

Cosmo fell silent. Sonic imagined there was probably much more going on in that silence than he could see. His heart wrenched with pain. Was she thinking? Processing? Choking down tears? He wondered if he should try telling her not to cry.

But if there was ever a time, this was it.

"Do you know what happens next?" she asked thickly. He could hear tears bubbling at the back of her tongue when she spoke.

Sonic lifted his head off the floor and sat back on his heels. He sat like that for a moment, just staring through the benign-looking glass. What would happen next? Fear tried to spin him into a pit of despair but he wrenched his brain away from the edge. What would happen next? Not could, don't worry about could.

Because…why would the Metarex capture them rather than simply killing them? What was the point?

And why both Sonic and Cosmo? What was the benefit? Before, Sonic had been taken by the Metarex for the threat he represented to them. They had used Cosmo too but they used her. They made her a spy; they didn't capture her. And even when the Metarex had taken Sonic, they used him too.

So this couldn't just be imprisonment. Or even a step on the way to killing them—most likely (They had killed his Chaos Double after all, hadn't they? Why wouldn't they want to kill the real deal?). The Metarex must have some end goal. But what?

All the thoughts spun together into a whirlpool sucking him down into the depths of the ocean. Drowning and drowning and…

Stopping.

Because that was when he heard the crash of metal, the weight of Metarex footsteps. Step by step the volume increased. And each one shook in Sonic's very bones.

Despite his shaking limbs, Sonic shoved himself to his feet. His fingers brushed against the wall behind him for support until he caught his balance. And though he wished to hold on for dear life, he forced both arms down to his sides.

Even with his fear as a quaking monster inside him, even knowing how unlikely he was to survive the path stretching out before him, he refused to bow before the might of the Metarex.

The space between Sonic's shoulder blades tightened with tension at the sound of each footstep, as the Metarex grew closer and closer. Sonic's already damaged windpipe squeezed tighter until he could hardly breathe at all.

Until the Metarex Silver Fir finally stepped into view.

Sonic crashed into the wall behind him before he even realized he was stumbling backward. He pressed his palms against the metal wall to keep his shaking knees from buckling and sending him to the floor again.

This can't be real, this has to be some sort of sick illusion, he thought, the ideas surfacing unbidden to the forefront of his mind. First Green Fichus, now Silver Fir. For as fast as he supposedly ran, Sonic sure couldn't seem to outrun this fate, regardless of timeline.

"Ah…Blue Seed. It's such a pleasure to have you before me again," Silver Fir practically purred. The modulation of the metallic voice sent the surface of Sonic's skin sparking with goosebumps. "Or…I suppose this is actually for the first time. The intricacies of time travel are truly fascinating, are they not?"

Sonic's fingers curled, as if he could dig out chunks of the wall behind with no more than his bare hands and squeeze until the metal crumbled into dust. But if he could accomplish such things, he would use that newfound power to crush the metal skin of the Metarex into nothing more than a memory to drift in the wind.

Silver Fir crossed his arms against his chest. With one hand, his fingers tapped out a rhythm on his forearms. Sonic winced at the tink of metal against metal. Silver Fir made no comment about Sonic's reaction as he stood before the hedgehog's prison cell, assessing the quarry within.

"I'm certain that by now you recognize the situation in which you stand, Blue Seed," Silver Fir said after that long, assessing moment. He pulled the tapping hand away from his arm to gesture at Sonic's cell. "You are encased in the Energy of our Chaos Emerald duplicates, which will be impossible to surpass, even with the strength you bear now. A strength, I should mention, that will quickly diminish."

And then Silver Fir gestured to the cell beside Sonic, the one Sonic knew must hold Cosmo. "And you will of course cooperate with our demands, unless you wish your friend to pay the price."

Sonic's heart sank. His eyes slid to the wall beside him that separated him from Cosmo. She held silent, probably out of fear that if she spoke out of turn, there would be a price to pay. And though Sonic couldn't see her face, he could picture her wide eyes, pale skin. Just like when she had been held hostage by Black Narcissus so Sonic would be forced to engage in the experiments of that Metarex.

Sonic's eyes slid back to Silver Fir. His very heart ached. The corners of his eyes itched with tears he had no idea if he'd be able to hold back. His stomach rolled with nausea. Not for the first time, Sonic wished the Metarex had readable facial features so that he might read between the lines to what the Metarex wasn't saying. But no, all the Metarex offered were ultimatums.

And so in his raspy, damaged voice, Sonic asked, "What do you want me to do?"

Silver Fir's head tilted forward. Even though Silver Fir had no facial features, Sonic read the expression as a sneer. Then, the Metarex said, "First things first, you must once more be born again as Blue Seed."