“Ugh… And here I thought I’d have a fun mission…” Scourge muttered to himself as he leaned on the metal wall, tapping his foot impatiently. The large mechanical door beside him was locked, and not only that, it was pitch black in this stupid base. The flashlight he had helped with the darkness, but things were going so damn slow.
His mission was to check on the unspecified “contents” of one of Eggman’s old bases, assigned to him by a certain zone cop. He was waiting on Zonic to either open up the door and let him in the storage area, to get the lights back on, or both. If it weren’t for this stupid inhibitor collar he would have just spin-dashed through the damned door, which is what he suggested at first.
He remembered Zonic’s firm response. “No, Scourge. Although I do have the authority to remove the collar, doesn’t mean I should. Besides, these doors are the only thing keeping the contents inside.” Scourge frowned at the recollection, but then something occurred to him. Z made it sound like the security wasn’t about keeping people out, but keeping something in.
A loud clunk sounded next to him, making him jump. It was just the door unlocking. His communicator rang, and Scourge picked up the call. “Talk to me, Z. You got the door open, but now what? Pretty sure these doors are automatic,” Scourge said to the all-too-familiar face of Zonic. The cop gave him a look, but responded. “If you stop being a smartass, I’ll tell you. Now that the door is unlocked, it can be opened manually. There should be a lever on the left side of the door. Pull it, and a handle should pop out to open the door.”
“Shitty security if you ask me,” Scourge said as he hung up and pulled the lever. The handle emerged as promised, and the green hedgehog pulled open the door, not expecting what he saw inside. The warehouse-sized room in front of him was filled with rows of large tubes filled with a green substance he didn’t recognise. All of them were side by side, with a wide walkway between the rows.
Three empty tubes were near the door, and he checked them out. ‘These must have been lit up at some point,’ he thought, noticing the LEDs around the glass edges. Curiosity set in, and he walked over to the fourth tube and pressed the flashlight against the glass. He recognised the silhouette immediately. It was Shadow. Shock swept through him. Scourge quickly called Zonic back.
“Z, what the hell is this? When you said I had to check this place out, I didn’t think you meant this!” He was getting freaked out, and it must have shown on the videochat. Zonic looked concerned, and quickly began to explain, “These are the Shadow Androids, Eggman used these for a few years in the past, but found they were constantly glitching and tended to fight each other rather than the enemy, and discontinued them.” Scourge sighed in relief. That explained the similar look, and why there were so many of them.
“Recently, we had an alert that there was movement in one of the sectors of the base, but then the power cut. Either someone got into the facility, or an android escaped,” Zonic continued. ”The main control room should be running on the emergency power, so if you go there, you could check if one of the androids escaped. If it is an intruder, then you can take them out, and let me know so that I can place a warp ring so that I can get you both out quickly.”
“And if it’s an android?” Scourge asked, making his way toward the control room. “Let me know and...I will open your inhibitor collar so that you can kill it,” Zonic said. Scourge’s ears perked at Zonic’s statement. A chance to run and fight like his old self? Now that’s the deal of a lifetime!
Scourge jogged across the warehouse toward the control room. Finding it was easy, and the lock was one he had plenty of experience with.
The window-lined room was small, and had a large control panel lit by various buttons and the soft pulsating light of an asleep monitor on the desk. When Scourge tapped the screen, it turned on. The screen had rows of pictures of the Androids, a short summary of each’s abilities, and either a red or green light, indicating if it was contained or not. Scourge smirked, and quickly called back Zonic.
Three of the lights were red.
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“Did you see him?”
“Yes, of course I did”
“And? Didn’t I tell you?”
“Yes you did. And I agree entirely. He is rather attractive…”
“Well, should we grab Ardor, or do you want Greenie to yourself?”
“As nice as the latter sounds…”
“Hey...”
“Yes, Go get them, we will need the extra strength to bring him down.”
“Yay!”
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“Three of them?! That’s insane!” Zonic grumbled, clearly frustrated at what Scourge was showing him through the video call. Scourge gave Zonic an amused glance. “What’s so unbelievable? That the androids figured out how to release each other, or your cadets can’t figure out the difference between one android and three?”
“Both,” was the cop’s blunt response. Scourge snickered. “Well, you going to get this collar off or what?”
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