Chapter Sixteen: He's Not Home
I…
I…
I am lost…
Inside my head…
I am…hardly here.
There is…so much more. Too much more. It leaves no space for me. There is…the Metarex. The Metarex. THE METAREX.
And then there is
me.
I used to be Sonic the Hedgehog.
But he hardly remains inside me now.
Sonic lay back on the thin mattress in the tiny cell staring up at the metal ceiling above his head. He knew this intellectually, rather than by true awareness of the setting he existed within. He did not feel the mattress beneath his body nor the metal floor just beneath that, not as he had when he had first awoken to his imprisonment.
But things had changed since then.
"Blue Seed."
Sonic jerked upright into a sitting position at the sound of that name, though he himself did not command his body into action. Though, then again, this wasn't really his body anymore, was it?
"There's work to be done."
Sonic's head did not turn toward the voice. Sonic's own attention was not required for his body to obey. When the glass wall of Sonic's cell lifted, only then did he stand. The voice—Silver Fir's voice—beckoned him closer, and so he came closer.
"Sonic!" Cosmo's voice gasped desperately behind him, and the sound broke Sonic's heart.
I'm doing this for her, he reminded himself, though his own thoughts dragging through his head screeched like nails dragged down a chalkboard. I never wanted to be a hero. But if that's what it takes to keep Cosmo safe, I'll become whatever I have to be.
Even if that means I have to become a Metarex.
The armor shell stood before him now. It shone in the too bright lights illuminating the hallways of the Metarex ship. The light glinted off the metal as though the armor was of the magical variety pulled straight out of a fairytale. And to a certain extent, it was.
After all, it was more alive than Sonic was anymore.
And so, Sonic's body stepped inside and allowed the Metarex armor to consume Sonic entirely.