Chapter Thirty: Alternate Universe
Light…then darkness.
Warmth overwhelming the cold…then nothing.
I…
Amy's eyes flashed open, though she had no recollection of closing them. She gasped in a breath. The air tasted cold and sour, like metal. Wasn't this how it felt to be struck by lighting? She pressed a hand to her forehead. Still had the limb, so at least that was a promising development. She used it to push herself into a sitting position.
To find herself sitting in a long metal hallway.
It stretched impossibly out in front of her, as if it lengthened the longer she watched. She stared, waiting for the disorientation to pass. But then it didn't. And the hallway kept stretching.
Is this…real? Amy thought.
She climbed to her feet, even though her knees shook beneath her. Only then did she realize both her hands were empty. She stared down at them, closing them into fists, just to splay her fingers out a moment later. She had been holding a Chaos Emerald before, hadn't she? She remembered the warmth of the Emerald against her palm. Not to mention she had just been surrounded by the backup bridge of the Blue Typhoon and her friends. Now they were gone. And she stood alone in this strange unending hallway.
When she stepped forward, her footsteps echoed to fill the hallway around her. Like it came from everywhere rather than from her. Her skin was cold. She shivered. She wrapped her arms around herself. All there was around her was hallway stretching on in sameness in either direction.
But then, there was a doorway.
Amy hadn't blinked. She hadn't even looked away. But where there had been only wall, now there was a gap. Light spilled from the doorway to land in a puddle on the floor of the hallway.
She paused to stare at that puddle. Familiarity pricked at the top of her spine. Something inside her knew this place, but she couldn't call the memory to her conscious mind. Still, it was the only thing of interest in this endless hallway so after a moment's hesitation, she edged her way toward the open doorway.
And through the open doorway, she saw a glass capsule shooting up through the center of a room. It was the only thing in the room. And inside the glass capsule slumped Sonic. Eyes open but unmoving. Like a marionette with all the strings cut.
A heartbeat later, an electric bolt flooded the capsule.
The electricity jerked Sonic's body around. His limbs twisted unnaturally. Amy ached to jump forward and stop this, but her feet were cemented to the floor. All she could do was watch.
As Sonic died.
As Sonic died.
As Sonic died.
-X-X-X-
Nova's View
Nova blinked awake on her bedroom floor.
She was curled up on her side, like how she used to sleep as a child, when she hadn't yet figured out how to adjust her wings so that she could sleep comfortably on her back. She climbed to her feet, though her legs shook beneath her. Something deep inside her sparked with recognition of the scene surrounding her. But it was like a word hanging on the tip of her tongue. Light spilled through the windows of the room and she stood in the puddle of the light. Strangely, the sunlight failed to warm her skin. And despite the fact that she stood in her bedroom, the air smelled metallic.
Like blood?
The door behind Nova crashed open. She jumped and spun toward the sound. Rhea stood in the doorway, face drained of color.
The clawed fingers of a Metarex jammed through her chest from behind.
A scream tore at Nova's throat, but the sound choked there. All of Nova was locked and frozen in place so that all she could do was watch.
As Rhea died.
As Rhea died.
As Rhea died.
-X-X-X-
Shadow's View
Shadow was walking.
He didn't remember initiating the movement of his legs beneath him but still he moved forward. Ruins crumbled all around him. It was like he walked through the remains of a civilization that had fallen centuries previously. Though a small voice inside him told him this damage was recent. And while he was used to the sense that a part of his subconscious knew more than his conscious mind, due to an incident of memory loss in his past, this feeling was somehow different.
Not like he'd lost a piece of his memory but instead like it had been stolen from him.
The sun pierced through the gray haze but Shadow felt no warmth. How could he? The corpses of the fallen people of Majyk littered the ground. There was no warmth to be found in a world so cold. His footsteps were chillingly lonely. He experienced this ruin alone. That seemed wrong as well. But then again, everything here was wrong.
Shadow.
He froze. Without his footsteps to fill the space, silence descended like a heavy creature. But he had just heard his name called, hadn't he? Unless that voice had been in his head or somehow imagined.
Shadow.
He spun around. But there was no one behind him either.
Shadow.
It was just his name. But it was so much more. He closed his eyes, tried to picture the face of whomever the voice belonged to. He realized it wasn't one voice but two. Two female voices layered on top of each other. One was quiet, barely perceptible, a memory almost entirely lost to time. The second voice was clearer, louder. The first voice shaded the second but it was the second voice that actually spoke. Cried out for him.
Shadow.
It was Nova.
Shadow's eyes flashed open. Without another moment's hesitation, he sprinted down the road ahead of him. He scanned his surroundings as he ran. Nova was out there somewhere. Among the dead bodies was one alive, calling out for help.
Nova, he thought desperately. Nova, Nova.
He couldn't scream her name. Couldn't dare waste needless energy in his search for her. He saw his limiter rings glinting at his wrists as he ran. His fingers itched to yank them off. Was now the right time? Or would he exhaust himself too soon and fail Nova entirely?
Shadow!
He skidded to a stop. Impossibly, in front of a closet door. That's where he heard the voice coming from. It seemed so obvious now that he stood before the door. She was in there; he'd known the whole time. And then the door was open.
Nova lay on the floor of the closet. Her eyes stared at the gray sky overhead, lit by a sun that offered no warmth. Those eyes were full of tears. She coughed and blood erupted from her lips.
Shadow found he couldn't move. He could only watch. The tears slipped from her eyes and slid down the sides of her face, before the light in those eyes started to fade.
As Nova died.
As Nova died.
As Nova died.
-X-X-X-
Tails's View
Tails's fingers wrapped around the controls in front of him. However, he only held the controls for a heartbeat before his hands slid right through. He was in the pilot's seat of the X-Tornado. But his hands couldn't grip the controls. That didn't make sense.
Time froze. Twitched.
The scene changed.
Tails paced the cell that had once been Sonic's. It only took three steps to cross. Amy's damaged headset dangled from his fingertips but then it fell right through his hand. He stared at where it clattered to the ground. But that didn't make sense either.
Time froze. Twitched.
The scene changed.
Tails sat in the captain's chair of the Blue Typhoon. His friends surrounded him, for once utterly silent. No one argued. Tails blinked. All his friends vanished from his eyes. But Cosmo was in front of him. Far in front of him. Her roots stretched across the shadowy planet that Dark Oak had become. She held him in place with all the strength her adult form had. Tails knew what was supposed to happen next. Tails knew he needed to fire Super Sonic and Super Shadow from the Sonic Driver at Cosmo and Dark Oak. He knew he needed to kill Cosmo and Dark Oak.
Tails stared at the controls in front of him. He felt his memory fighting him in his mind. Hadn't he just been in the cockpit of the X-Tornado? And then in Sonic's cell? Hadn't both scenes crumbled around him when they stopped making sense?
Shadows hovered at the edges of Tails's mind. It fuzzed the edges of his memory. The memories in his head slid dangerously like they could slide right out of his conscious awareness if he wasn't careful.
He furrowed his brow. He held his breath, slid his shaking hand toward the controls that would fire the Sonic Driver directly at Cosmo.
Cosmo can't be here. She was taken by the Metarex, he reminded himself. A sharp pain stabbed through his head. He gritted his teeth against the pain.
He blinked and just like that, the control Tails was reaching for vanished. He jerked his head up and saw Sonic staring blankly ahead of him as the Metarex armada descended upon the Blue Typhoon.
Sonic can't be here either. None of this makes sense.
Tails's eyes flashed open.
He sucked in a sharp breath. C2's face floated hazily before his adjusting eyes. For a moment, he saw C2's mouth soundlessly shaping his name. Only when the buzzing in his ears faded did he hear her repeating his name over and over again. "What…just happened?" he mumbled. His tongue felt too thick in his mouth to form words properly.
Tails pressed the heel of his palm against his eye to try to clear whatever was making his eye so blurry. His head ached where it pressed against the ground. After another moment, he pushed himself upright. Only to find fallen similarly around him lay Amy and Nova and Shadow and Angel. He recoiled in shock. "What?" he gasped.
"It's a Metarex trap," C2 explained from where she knelt beside Tails. "Using the fake Chaos Emeralds."
Illusions. The Metarex had manufactured illusions in his mind. Tried to force him to believe the illusion using dream logic. "It was like the nightmares from the last war," he realized. "But weaponized."
At least during the previous time loop, the nightmares only haunted them where they were asleep. This time, however, the Metarex had forced them asleep. While at least one Chaos Emerald—and presumably a Metarex ship—hurdled straight toward them.
Tails stumbled to his feet. His knees felt like jelly beneath him. His twin tails tangled around his ankles. C2 grabbed his shoulder to steady him. "Chris, report!" he shouted.
"We're still cloaked. The Metarex ship is alongside us but they're not firing," Chris explained. "We've shut off everything but essential systems to try to disappear as much as we can."
Alongside them but not firing? Why were the Metarex playing games when they could take them out? They couldn't be cloaked so entirely that the Metarex couldn't see them; they wouldn't be that lucky.
"That sounds like the sort of game Rusted Maple would play," Tails said.
He opened his eyes to look at his friends scattered across the floor. In the middle of their circle lay the violet Chaos Emerald, sparking wildly.
"Do you know how we stop this?" Tails's heart raced wildly in his chest to see his friends hurting, to see the Chaos Emerald acting so dangerously. He couldn't look away. It was like watching a car accident in slow motion.
"Not…exactly," C2 said slowly. "I know what this is, I know the Chaos Emerald's acting as a beacon, I know this only affects someone who was channeled the Energy of a Chaos Emerald. But I don't know how to stop it. Except to realize it's not real."
Tails squirmed. Maybe it was a side effect or being friends with Sonic as long as he had been, but he couldn't bear to just wait for his friends to break free on their own. Patience was not an option. "Is there a way I can help them?" Tails asked.
C2 didn't respond right away. Tails turned toward her. She frowned down at the ground. Tension knitted her brow. Like she was digging for an answer to an equation she didn't fully understand.
That's when realization dawned on Tails.
"You can't use Chaos Emeralds, can you?" he said.
C2's eyes slid from the Chaos Emerald to Tails's face. "No. I hardly see the relevance of that question, given our current situation," she said shortly.
It meant that C2 didn't know what to do. It meant that C2 didn't know what Tails might be able to do. Which meant Tails was on his own.
He turned away from C2 and back to the sparking violet Chaos Emerald.
-X-X-X-
Angel's View
Metarex-Sonic's hand squeezed tighter and tighter around Angel's throat. She reached for Sonic's wrist but her hands kept falling away without finding purchase. Darkness edged further in on Angel's vision so that all she could see was the Metarex who used to be her father in the small halo that remained. There was nothing she could do as her dad—
"ANGEL!"
The voice that screamed out her name woke her up. Her resignation evaporated in the midst of her surprise.
"Angel, it's not real!"
The voice screaming out her name sounded larger than the space it filled, like it belonged to some ethereal being. But wasn't she herself an ethereal being? This felt bigger than her. Even being a Time Whisperer, she wasn't privy to information regarding the possibility of a higher power. Perhaps she was simply hallucinating as the oxygen deprivation got to her.
"Angel, try to touch him! You'll realize this can't be real!"
Angel's eyes widened further. She hadn't realized her eyelids had started to fall again. But with no better plan to follow, she listened to the voice. Her arms hung heavy at her sides and she struggled to swing them up. She reached for Sonic's metal arm.
And watched her hand fall right through.
This.
Wasn't.
Real.
Angel fell from Metarex-Sonic's hand and to the ground beneath her. And then he was gone. The whole world around her evaporated and dropped her back on the floor of the Blue Typhoon. Angel sucked in a sharp breath through her still injured throat. She reached up to brush the tips of her fingers against the bruises there. To remind herself what was real.
A gloved hand reached out and grabbed the hand of hers that rested on the ground. Her head twisted to the side so her eyes landed on Tails. "Sorry you had to live through that again," Tails murmured beside her.
"You came to get me," Angel rasped. It felt like her throat had been injured all over again, even though what she had just experienced was an illusion.
"Are you okay?" Tails asked.
No. Yes. Any simple answer felt like a lie. Any true answer felt too time-consuming to offer, given their current situation.
Their current situation.
Angel shot up into a seated position. Saw the sparking violet Chaos Emerald. Saw C2 standing there, eyes already waiting for Angel's to find hers. Saw the panic at the edges.
Chaos Emeralds weren't C2's area of expertise; Angel knew that. Though C2 had existed as a Time Whisperer longer than Angel, that length of time didn't make a difference if it wasn't the topic of relevance.
Angel swallowed. Her throat throbbed with pain as she did so. Because, while Angel knew what they were dealing with, she hadn't been able to save herself from it.
But Tails had.
She turned to him. The adult fox who had once been her uncle was now but a boy. However, he was wiser now than he'd ever been. He wrinkled his brow, staring at the Chaos Emerald, assessing it. "You tried to warn us," he said suddenly. Going in a direction she hadn't anticipated. His head turned and his eyes met hers. "Do you know what we need to do next?"
Wiser than she had ever known him to be. Wise enough to know when to look to others for help.
"I do," she agreed. "Here's the plan."