Nothingness.
The absence of sensation and rationalization alike had been swift and curt, all of reality and being vanishing as the flash wiped the world away. Nerves and sounds had fallen silent, sight and sights to behold were no more, leaving nothing but the anti-abyss to gaze upon. Nothing but whiteness could be discerned, although that too fell into an ever encroaching slate of blackness, fading further and further until all semblances of light and color were gone.
Time ceased to exist for both the shortest of seconds and the longest of years. It started faintly, but eventually sensation returned to the body.
Breath.
The pinpricks of discomfort began to pick at her skin, sinking through the flesh and sinew of her extremities, stoking fire through her nerves and veins. The sound of the universe sighing could be heard from very far away, almost imperceptible to mortal ears as the fire began to channel through her arms and legs into the core of her being.
No more air.
Eyes opened to greet the stygian blackness, the true colors of nothingness. A blank canvass, waiting for a mad artist to attack it with brush of ego and the paints of the soul, although as she stared into the all-consuming night small flicks of light marred the otherwise perfect slate. Before long, a constellation formed, then a cluster, and finally a galaxy of spots pierced the shadowy veil.
Breathe.
Her lungs hurt as the pins began to prickle at her ribs and throat, slivers of steel and silver tracing every node from her collarbone to her jaw.
Inhale.
Her eyes snapped open just as the last pin set into place, stabbing behind her eyes with the same gentleness as a dull knife being stabbed into the soft spots of her sightless orbs, mouth opening wide as her lungs finally hitched and began to fill with fresh air. She inhaled deeply and greedily, a sound not out of place had she been drowning in the ocean. The agony in her chest subsided with mercy as she forced herself to exhale the bad air and fill her lungs with good air once and then again.
Slowly, her vision began to clear as she lay upon her back, the darkness giving way to grey blurs that stained her vision as she tried to look around, her eyes shifting from one corner to the other. Detail was something that took it’s time in coming to her, arriving fashionably late as the grey sky overhead began to sharpen and crystallize, the fine lines of the metal plates that made up the ceiling emerging from amorphous color. The agony in her body had since faded back to her fingers and wrists, blessing her with relief.
It was a while before her muscles began to react as she had willed them to but eventually she pulled herself up into a sitting position. Her back had barked at her with aches, muscles trying to cramp up but she ignored the muscular arguments, banishing the discomfort from her mind as she let the blood in her veins settle and shift, the momentary feeling of light-headedness passing with it.
The sight of Dr. Robotnik’s laboratory greeted her, although a far cry from what she had remembered before the night born from light had fallen upon her. As much as she tried to remember what had happened there were undeniable holes in her memory, dark pits of nothingness that refused to compute, although it couldn’t be called amnesia by any means.
What she could remember was the tightness in her wrists, the discomfort in her arms and the feeling of weightlessness in her legs. She had been strung up by the mad doctor, metallic cuffs digging into her arms as she was hung in the air for his experiment. He hadn’t been too keen with the details, but it had been obvious that she was the latest unwilling test subject for his latest work of destruction: an energy cannon that had been powered by one of the chaos emeralds.
Before the flash, she could remember screaming, laughing, and the blank nothingness that soon followed. Now, as her senses returned to her, the lab had clearly seen better days. The walls were marred with rust and odd stains, the ceiling was missing plates and panels, revealing the wiring and superstructure above her head, and even the energy cannon was reduced to a pile of scrap with the chaos emeralds no-where to be seen.
Just what had happened here? She found herself without a satisfactory answer as she pulled herself to her feet, boots clicking against the floor as she managed to stand without toppling over, although the sudden bout of nausea nearly won and brought her back down. Pressing a hand against a computer console for support, at least until she was able to walk with confidence, she inched towards the spot that Robotnik had been standing.
The primary computer array was dark and cold, clearly showing many years of disuse and neglect. She tried pressing a few buttons, her bare fingers tapping against the plastic keys in the attempt to revive the computer console, alas to no avail. The keys clicked, but the electric beast refused to awaken. Perhaps that was for the best, she found herself reasoning. After all, she was still stuck in Robotnik’s domain, and there was no telling if he or his badniks were still roaming about.
The sliding doors that led to the hallway squealed as they registered her approach, jerking once before screeching with the din of metal on metal. One of the panels got stuck halfway through, motors quickly falling silent while the other half opened fully, allowing her out of the room where her life had flashed before her eyes. The hallway, however, hadn’t fared much better in comparison.
Rust and corrosion stained almost every plate that she glanced at as she followed the hallway, favoring the right as opposed to the alternative. She couldn’t remember the path that had been taken when she was brought to the room in the first place to be used for target practice, but the right just felt… right. Even as her body moved with a confidence that her mind couldn’t share, something in the back of her mind had reassured her that this was the way out; the golden path that would let her escape this metal hell.
Instinct soon led her to an observation room of sorts. As she stepped from the hallway and beyond the doors she noticed the metal shutters that covered the windows began to rotate, letting orange light spill in. She winced at the sudden brightness, raising her hand against the glare as the shutters began to peel from the window panes, sliding upwards to reveal the outside world. It wasn’t long before she was able to adjust to the brightness and glanced out of the crystalline portal.
The sun had become a sphere of fiery brass in the far distance, setting ablaze the mountains and horizon that it had begun to sink behind. The city itself was sparking in the way that only steel and titanium could show as light caught on the odd and straight angles of the buildings that surrounded Robotnik’s tower. The world of Mobius, for the slightest of moments, had bloomed with heated color, but as the sun flared for the last time that day before its lunar sister took control of the skies she noticed something troubling. The neglect that had left the previous rooms in a state of desolation, of rust and metallic corruption wasn’t limited to just the tower.
The whole of the city had fallen into a state of disrepair that could only be described as “shocking”. Entire towers had been reduced to rubble, leaving only skeletal remains to point to the heavens while a multitude of floors and walls had been left to plummet to the ground, while others fared slightly better. Those that had not crumbled entirely certainly looked as if they would topple at any moment, from an errant breeze to an earthquake providing the necessary push. Dull red rust shown from the exteriors, while brighter, almost fleshy splotches covered windows and the streets below. Just what had happened to reduce the city to this state?
It wasn’t something she would complain about, that was certain. The city was simply Robotnik’s stronghold, the redoubt he occupied and used to organize attacks and manage his empire. If something had happened to the city, let alone the Lord of Lard himself, then that would only be good for the rest of the planet and the population, both mobian and human alike, right?
The sound of groaning metal tore her attention from the window as she glanced over her shoulder, eyes tracing across the ceiling and then the walls, searching for what might have caused the sound. It was hard to tell, but either the sound originated from another floor, or it came from the superstructure itself, judging by the vibrations that coursed from the floor into her feet. She listened intently but silence had soon filled the gap from the aural disturbance, leaving her alone once again.
Perhaps this place wasn’t as structurally stable as she had first assumed. Tearing herself from the windows, she headed back to the halls and started walking. There had to be an elevator or stairwell somewhere around here. On second thought, the elevator wasn’t going to be the best of ideas considering the possibility of the elevator cord snapping, considering how the rest of the rooms and halls looked. Having her take an elevator just to have the cable come loose and the car drop 20-plus stories into the ground wasn’t going be something she wanted to experience, regardless of the outcome.
The stairs didn’t offer much reassurance either, as she soon found out when she found one a stairwell that led downwards. The unhealthy shifting of the platforms and the loud, almost pained groan as the metal supports began to pull free from the concrete and rebar made her heart drop lower and lower until she was all but convinced that it was nestled somewhere between her toes as she eased herself down onto each and every step. The trip took much longer than she had anticipated, her boots finally finding solid ground before she hurried away from the stairs, lest the entire thing come crashing down onto her.
Her lungs recoiled at the polluted air that greeted her as she barreled out of the tower’s lobby, the acrid, metallic taint staining her lungs to the point that she began to cough violently at first. The sun had sunk beneath the horizon, immersing the land and city in encroaching darkness while the last vestiges of twilight slipped from the sky. The clouds had since changed, once painted by a wash of orange brilliance only to be brushed with a deepening purple that lost its luster with every passing minute. If she was to leave the city then it would have to be soon, lest she be caught outside after dark.
That was something she had just come to realize, now that she was at street-level and searching for a tram or similar route of safe passage. Robotropolis was Robotnik’s city- literally- and full to the brim with robots and badniks of his own design. Automatons of faux life that worked at his beck and call, be it world domination or getting him a glass of water, the city would be positively full of the things.
So, if that were true, why had she not seen a single one in the tower? Why, since she reached the streets, had she not been accosted by a passing patrol or even an errant janitor? She stopped to look back, her green eyes tracing the way she had come since leaving the tower and felt her lips curl into a frown. Nary a single soul in sight- organic or otherwise- to mark her passing.
She didn’t want to admit what she had been fearful of for a while now, but was it possible- let alone probable- that the city had been abandoned? She couldn’t have been out cold for more than a few hours at best, although that was what her own perception of time had told her. Vanishing in a flash of light, only to wake up on the floor with no one in sight was one thing, but that didn’t explain why the city was so empty. Sure, she had only visited one street out of many, but the sounds of industry, of mechanical beings, of aircraft… there was nothing but the sound of the wind.
Something connected with her chest and she recoiled, taking several steps backwards. She looked up just in time to see what she had run into, a collection of pipes that had stood on-end. The cacophony of metallic, musical chaos was enough for her to grab at her ears, cringing at the harsh sounds as they echoed across the streets, bouncing along the buildings before finally fading into the twists and turns of the metropolis.
Consequences came quickly as the sound of fans shearing through the air replaced the clamor of the tubes. A small squadron of flying robots, an aerial patrol shifted around one of the buildings and floated down the street, the lead drone sporting a spotlight that quickly burned to life. Staying here was a bad idea, leaving her to look back and forth, trying to find a suitable hiding place. As it turns out, her salvation came in the form of an open door that led into what looked like a repair shop for the various robots that inhabited the city.
The doors tried to shut behind her, the hydraulics hissing loudly before popping with the panels refusing to budge from their homes within the walls. The effect was the same, considering how the spotlight floated across the ground, stopping short of her shoes as the patrol investigated the fallen tubes. One of the eggbots descended far enough to shine a light through the doorway while she hid behind the abandoned carcass of a large bipedal robot, the cobalt hue of its armor shielding her from the light of aerial misfortune. A blue hedgehog wearing nothing but red leather didn’t have many options when it came to hiding, although it was sufficient to simply stay behind the metallic body and avoid the lights of certain doom.
Gradually, the patrol lost interest and the spotlights vanished, leaving her to her own accord in the growing darkness that permeated the outside. Overhead only a few scattered lights remained to reveal her surroundings, soft white tubes and bulbs casting their radiance from on high. Content that she was safe from danger, at least for the time being, she shifted her weight around, away from the robot hulk and let her weight come to a rest on her rump as she sat with her back against one of the colossal legs.
If there had been any doubt that the building was used to repair and refit the robotic workforce of the city, the interior had put those questions to rest. Hanging mechanical arms loomed over storage bays, some of which still contained the robots that would power down for the last time. Egg pawns, SWATbots of all kinds, and even a few designs that escaped identification littered the area, although it wasn’t the fact that they were present but how they were presented.
A pair of egg pawns hung from the ceiling, cargo hooks sunk into their shoulder joints although everything above and below the waist had been missing. Several of the grey-skinned SWATbots lay in a haphazard heap towards the rear of the bay, almost as if left where they had simply fallen. Even the hulk she had taken cover behind was half-sitting against a support pillar, the armor covering its torso and everything beneath having been ripped away, judging by the jagged edges that the armor twisted into.
Just what had happened here? Something, surly, but this was just getting more and more confusing. All she had were a handful of questions that continued to burn, a chill that had crept into her spine since waking up, and the occasional ache that radiated from the cuffs that continued to dig into her wrists. At some point she would have to find some way to bypass the locks, or else risk cutting through the bands themselves.
She got to her feet and felt the robotic leg shift behind her. The movement was enough for her to leap forward, almost as if something had leapt up and taken a bite out of her tail, although nothing more happened than that. A shift, the movement caused by her own movement. He had to spend several moments convincing herself that the robot hadn’t come back to life to attack.
Nothing that wouldn’t be out of place in a scary story, but her nerves had been on end for a while. The rational part of her brain continued to offer consolation and reassurance, while something far more louder, almost primal screamed the opposite. The more she listened to it, the more it made sense but after a while she had to force herself to silence the tiny, persuasive voice in the back of her mind.
It didn’t help that dark whispers continued to crawl beneath her skull as she stepped over scattered parts and robotic guts, listening to the crackle and snaps as circuit boards and fuses snapped and popped beneath her feet. It was a short walk towards the rear section but every crackle resonated in the air, echoing within her ears before she finally found cleaner spaces to step on.
As it turned out the rear section simply didn’t terminate into a black backdrop painted upon the wall, but a small compartment that lacked any appreciable lighting. That was when she noticed something troubling. What first seemed to be a simple scattering of robots, left on the ground for no obvious reason, quickly shifted into the fact that the robots all pointed in the same general direction. Some laid on their backs, chest and front armors scratched all to hell while others lay on their stomachs, hands raised over their heads as if trying to crawl towards something. The pile, at this range, had changed into the sight of three robots sitting against the half-closed blast door that led into the second section.
One of the robots had been sitting with its back against the panel, another laying across its lap, almost as if being offered comfort by the other. The third, probably the most damaged, had been holding a leg that had been severed at the knee while missing its own, lost at the same spot.
She glanced towards the yawning, black abyss. Every sane though in her head pulled her back from the radiant void. Something felt wrong in there, dangerous… surreal. She glanced back towards the entrance, suddenly afraid that something had snuck up behind her from the street. There was nothing to see but the scattered, metallic corpses that marked the way she had come. Breathing a sigh of relief, she turned back towards the entrance to the second section.
A glowing red eye had pierced the stygian darkness, staring at her with cold malice. She blinked once, unsure if she was simply imagining the sight, although that idea quickly went out the window when the red pinprick of evil remained right where it was, blinking slowly as if in response to some unspoken statement. The sound of something heavy clattering to the ground beyond the darkness as the eye shifted rang out like a gunshot, snapping her out of the almost mystified trance she had found herself in.
***
The smell was too foreign, contrasting against the eternal stench of raw metal that stood against the backdrop of pollution and smog that resided after all this time. The clothing was alien, of visceral and bright colors contrasting the natural shades of blue and peach that covered their body. There was no telling just what they were doing here, but it didn’t take a genius to tell that they were well and truly out of their league by being where they didn’t belong.
It was his own carelessness that tipped her off. Despite seeing as if the world had been bathed in a monochrome light he had still been careless enough to stumble over a heap of circuits and plating. The sound alone had been the cue for her to take off running, tripping over the debris and landing flat on her face before scrambling ahead and disappearing off into the night. If she had been looking for safety then she would be left wanting, that much was clear.
Robotropolis had always been a deathtrap, a home for the insane and the soulless. It was fitting that he would be here, but that was the thing. He wasn’t alone, even when taking the blue intruder’s presence into account. She had to be found, either by him or by the dark spirits that now called the city home, let alone the survivors of the aftermath. Checking his coat, lest it snag on something again, he took a step towards the light.
Running had never been her strong suit. Strong muscles in her legs, sure, but her body left much to be desired when it came to endurance and feats of stamina. Her boots had clapped harshly against the street, echoing loudly for all to hear, and hear they did. Another squadron of aerial robots took notice and easily kept pace, spotlights snapping illuminating the fleeing mobian right before the laser blasts cut through the air.
Every crimson lance, every snap of photonic energy, every near miss covered with radiant heat as the focused energy impacted and dissipated against the concrete. One hit from those bots would put her down, something to avoid and avoid she would do. She tore down the streets before making a hard turn down a narrow alleyway, looking over her shoulder in the infinite hope that she managed to give them the slip. The bots simply adjusted formation, flying one after the other to fit into the alleyway and continue the chase.
Another hard left, a right, even going so far as to double-back did little to dissuade her pursuers. Her only measure of salvation came when she dove into a hole that had been blasted through one of the walls of another building, this one just large enough to crawl through. Almost immediately she was bathed in the red hue of the building’s emergency lighting, making she was well and clear from the hole to avoid a lucky blast from one of the drones.
A single crimson bolt of raw energy tore from the hole in the wall, refracting off a plate of metal, angling up into the air, bouncing off of another steel plate and sailing into the darkness above before striking a concrete wall. Two more erratic blasts followed through the hole before the bots, either out of boredom or intellect stole away from the hole in the wall. It didn’t matter what the reason was, so long as they bugged off and left her the hell alone.
Easing away from the wall she had pressed against, green eyes were turned aside, curious as to just where it was she had ended up now. The emergency lighting was dimmer than the repair bay, but it offered her enough to see where she was going. Thankfully this building wasn’t full of robot cadavers or pitch-black rooms with glowing red eyes. She took several steps, listening carefully for anything that would sound amiss from the natural silence that had overtaken the city, obviously with some exceptions.
It was hard to tell what this particular building had been for, although the smell of rotting flesh and sewage offered a few ideas. She reached up and pinched her nose shut as she took another step, the heel of her boot clipping across the mesh plating of the floor, once offering a sight into what resided below. Given the horrendous stench, it was probably better that she couldn’t see just what it that was below her, even if it stunk to high heaven.
That was when she felt it. A pulse, something intangible but present all the same. It was something she wasn’t keen to let slip, even in the best of company, but she had the uncanny ability to sense the ethereal, omnipotent force of Chaos; the energy that ebbed and flowed through the whole of Mobius, and perhaps the universe as whole. Normally, it was a force that radiated through the multicolored gems that Eggman had an unnatural inclination towards, including the two that he had rigged into the device that, for all she knew, backfired and blew up the world.
That same phantom pull tugged at her from beneath her feet now. Even amid the red haze that surrounded her she could make out the faint luminescent shine that filtered through the water below. The glow was a chaos emerald, undoubtedly. What else could it be? The glowing water was an oddity, although it could be blamed on the emerald, no doubt.
She knelt down, her fingers looping through the grate as she pondered the idea of how to retrieve the emerald. Leaving it in Robotropolis where the fat madman could retrieve it with ease would, no doubt, be one of the worst ideas in existence, second to staying in this hellhole of a city. At the very least it would keep the gen out of the bastard’s hands. She tugged on the grate, unsurprised to find that it refused to budge even the smallest bit.
The smell had already been on the verge of being bad enough for her to choke on, but as she fiddled with the grate the stench seemed to multiply by degrees, even when she stood back up, covering her mouth and nose as bile boiled and churned in the back of her throat. The smell was downright awful, and although she was sure it wasn’t indescribable it would take words that she didn’t have the time or inclination to think of at that moment. Eventually her lungs begged for air and she inhaled before doubling over, coughing violently as the rancid oxygen filled her lungs and tainted her taste buds. Good lord, the taste!
She managed to look down at the grate as her eyes began to water and noticed that the glowing emerald had grown in size. The time to register just what that meant was ill afforded as the emerald slammed against the underside of the grate with enough force to knock her to the ground, landing on her tail. She winced as her full weight came down onto the delicate vertebrae before looking up at just what had collided with the floor. She quickly found herself staring at the red stalk of a glowing blue eye as it stared at her in return, radiating the same luminescence that she saw before.
“What the hell,” she heard the words escape her lips just before the grate began to vibrate, almost violently as the fleshy red stalk began to push through the floor. Liquid-like flesh, the same bloody color as the stalk and smelling just as bad bubbled up through the fine holes that separated her from the sublevels, a multitude of eyes and nightmarish mouths forming over the hellish flesh.
An ear-splitting screech filled the room as whip-like tentacles began to spew from the opening mouths, lashing at the air and ground as the abomination of life surged towards her, skin rolling and flowing in ways that flesh never should move. The fight or flight instinct was something was hardwired into all living things, and hers kicked into overdrive as she scrambled away, her boots failing to find purchase as her arms flailed, although she managed to skitter across the ground at a respectable pace right up until something snagged at her ankle.
With wild eyes she looked over her shoulder and discovered, much to her growing horror, that one of the tendrils had coiled around her leg, tightening like an anaconda’s grip as it began to pull while the rest of the nightmare pushed forward, the wails and screams of the dammed reaching a crescendo pitch as it came closer and closer.
“Let go of me,” she wailed as she began to kick at the tentacle with her unbound boot to no avail. Without thinking she brought her foot up and brought it down onto the fleshy appendage, crushing it between her heel and the grating with enough force to sever the dammed thing.
She wasted no time in climbing to her feet as the meaty whip bled crimson and pearl ichor while more of the fleshy spaghetti stuck at her, clearly intending to ensnare her once again. It wasn’t something she had to consider as she leapt and dove through the hole that she had initially entered through, the feeling of tendrils brushing over her thighs a brief sensation before she cleared the portal and found herself once again immersed within the night. Any respite that could be gained from the situation was short lived as a chorus of banshees resonated from the structure just as the glowing eye was birthed from the hole that she had just vacated.
She was already turning and sprinting down the street by the time the beast emerged, screaming and boiling over the concrete as she ran like her life depended on it. One of the few patrols that she had seen in the city screamed overhead, leaving her unmolested as the squadron attacked the boiling atrocity, laser-fire filling the air with high-pitched whines that did little to drown out the unnatural screams of the meat wave. She didn’t know if they considered that… thing… to be a bigger threat than she was, and right now she didn’t care.
Bobbing through streets, cutting through alleyways and even clambering up fences became a normal occurrence as she struggled to keep a lead on the thing that continued to pursue her. Robots exploded into great balls of shrapnel and flame as they were swatted away like flies. Lasers scorched and charred its malleable, if not liquid flesh but the carbonized spots soon disappeared back within its body, vanishing forever underneath the boiling hide. As much as she tried to ignore it, she was starting to tire from this relentless pace, her lungs struggling to fill and a sharp pain forming just under the fleshy parts of her ribs.
Something grabbed at the back of her neck as she stumbled by an open doorway, a surprised yelp filling the air as she was yanked into the darkness. A hand covered her mouth quickly and the sensation of something cold and metallic found her throat as she was pulled against a firm, warm surface.
“Don’t move,” a raspy voice hissed near her ear, the foreign object digging into her neck. “Don’t even breathe.”
Not knowing what else to do, she willed her lungs to wait as she held her breath, fearful eyes watching the illuminated twilight just beyond the doorway. Whatever or whoever this person was, didn’t he know what was outside? Why didn’t he close the door? Close the door, please. Don’t let it see us. Close the door!
All thought stopped as the squelching and popping of the meaty freak surged by. The figure that held her hostage bristled at the sight, muscles tensing as he too stopped breathing, either out of fear or anticipation, she couldn’t tell which. Her lungs began to ache as she reached up, her hands falling upon his as she struggled to keep her lungs from bursting as the thing pushed on, disappearing from sight although the trail of ichor remained splattered and covering the ground.
The hand that was not her own let go and she quickly inhaled, taking care not to let the sound carry beyond earshot. The metal blade shifted away from her throat and the figure stepped back, finally releasing her. She rubbed at her neck as she looked back towards her captor and savior. Despite the abysmally poor lighting she could still make out the vague figure and the burning red orb that resided just off center of his head.
“T-thanks,” she whispered.
“You woke it up,” his voice was low but accusing all the same. “What the hell were you thinking?”
She opened her mouth to protest but found herself at a loss for words. He didn’t bother waiting for her reply, stepping past her towards the door. At first it seemed as if he was going to step outside while whatever the hell that was still ran riot among the city, instead he stopped short of the door frame and touched something to the side, earning a soft hiss as the door slid shut. Another button press and the lights overhead kicked in, although a few immediately burned out as a result.
Before her stood a furry mobian of grey hair and fur. His ears pointed at something overhead and his stocky body was of no sterotype but it wasn’t hard to see him for the wolf he was. One eye glared at her with yellow ire while the other was a viscerally black as could be.
“Answer me,” he spoke softly, his voice tense with growing irritation. “What in the blue hells made you think that waking that thing up was a good idea?”
She shook her head. “I didn’t know it was in there! I thought I saw a chaos emerald before that thing showed up!”
His eyes narrowed as he rested his fists on his hips. “Bullshit.”
“I mean it,” she pressed her position in the argument. “I had no idea! I just woke up a little earlier in Robotnik’s tower, I honestly didn’t know it was there!”
He watched her for a moment as his hands returned to his sides, although his hands remained curled into fists. “You’re lying,” he said with a bizarre combination of confidence and soft tone. “This city has been dead for generations. No one lives here, and no one sleeps here.”
She opened her mouth to protest but he cut her off.
“You don’t belong here, you poke your nose where it doesn’t belong. If I didn’t know any better I would say you were just a scavenger who was too dumb to live.”
She sighed, feeling her shoulders sag as he lungs exhaled. “No, I’m not. I mean, I did just wake up but I’m not what you think.”
“Explain,” his response was quick and simple.
She took a breath. “Look, I don’t know what happened, but Robotnik had me strapped to this weird laser cannon thingy and the next thing I know I wake up on the floor,” she motioned to her wrists. “See? I still have the cuffs on. Why would I put them on if I was just here for shits and giggles?”
“You wastelanders do weird things all the time,” he didn’t so much as blink. “I’ve stopped trying to figure you out.”
She frowned and pointed at the sealed door. “Why in the hell would I be here if I knew that thing was here!?”
He didn’t offer an answer.
That was when something occurred to her and she opened her mouth again. “You said the city was dead. What exactly happened?”
His good eye seemed to bore a hole into her own before he spoke. “A great light shone from the tower and Robotnik was no more. That thing you saw outside, however, was born and soon the city fell into disrepair.”
“So, Robotnik’s dead?”
He shrugged. “He may as well be, but whatever happened to him soon happened to the surrounding lands. Whatever that thing touches, it eats and absorbs. Many were lost before it was sealed away.”
She blinked. That thing ate people? Was it about to eat her when it grabbed her ankle? A shiver crawled up her spine like a hairy spider made of ice, the idea leaving behind nothing but discomfort in its wake.
“Now, you woke it up,” his words may as well have been punctuated by his pointing at her in accusation.
“No, wait,” she raised her hands, almost as if to ward him away. “That bright light from the tower, do you know what caused it?”
He blinked. “What?”
“What caused the light,” she repeated.
“One of his weapons gone awry,” was the answer.
The correlation wasn’t the most pleasant to think of, but it did make sense. Telling him would, no doubt, leave him thinking he was dealing with a loony person, but if the puzzle pieces clicked into place then there was no avoiding the answer. He took a step towards her and she quickly stepped back without thinking, feeling her back press up against the wall. He continued to move and she raised her hands to fend him off, only to be left short of the conflict she anticipated as he walked past her, his coat flowing in his wake. She rounded the pillar and watched him grab at a floor plate, lifting it up to reveal a hole in the ground.
“What are you doing,” she asked. “That thing lives under the city, doesn’t it?”
“Yes,” he replied as he shifted the plate away. “Under the city, but not within the service tunnels.”
He knelt down and looked into the hole before glancing up at her. “Follow if you wish. Just remember: If you fall behind, you’re left behind.” And with that he disappeared beneath the floor.
She glanced back at the doors before following in his footsteps, kneeling and easing herself down into the dark hole. She landed after a short drop and almost immediately the tunnel around her was illuminated by a chemical light that the wolf had broken in his hand. He nodded to her and led the way with her following close behind. Whatever their destination was, it had to be better than here.
