Chapter Text
It burns, it burns, it burns, it burns, it burns, it burns…
That was all Shadow could feel, every inch of his body, the pain spreading like wildfire. His back, his hands, his arms, his legs. His quills felt spiked in all the wrong directions, his teeth ached as if he had ground them together for years, and his head. It hurt the most, throbbing so deeply he could hear it. It felt like someone had jabbed a hundred massive needles right into the marrow of his skull. Washing out like waves spreading over every muscle down his body - neck, spine, ribs, hips - searing every vein.
He was on the ground, or he thought. His sense of direction was definitely screwed by the pain in his head, and for all he knew, he could have been hanging upside down. The only way he could tell he wasn’t was the dull pressure of a gritty, flat surface on his left cheek, but he couldn’t force himself to open his eyes yet to check. He racked his brain for any memories or reasoning as to why he was here and why he was so cold. He felt freezing on the outside and burning on the inside, and it took him a moment to realise it was because it was raining.
He couldn’t feel the droplets, but the small streams of water that trickled between his quills and around the corners of his eyes told him it was raining heavily. A voice in his head told him that was bad, that he couldn’t be out here for long. Shadow wanted to ignore it, too sore to move, but the warning was insistent. Something bad would happen out here in the open, drenched in rain. It gave him a sense of dread, and, afraid of further harm, Shadow peeled his eyes open.
At first, his vision was foggy and swirled, but after blinking a bit, he could see more clearly. He was in a field of sorts, tall grass surrounded him, except for the small impression of wet dirt he was lying in. The sky was a foreboding grey, and rain bucketed down, flooding the mud, sticking between every crevice on his body.
Experimentally, he rolled slightly onto his side, and pain rocked up through his arm and hip. It dulled back to a repeating throb after a while, though, so he pushed himself up, putting as much weight on his fingertips as possible when his wrists screamed in agony.
He made it up to his knees and pushed himself up by his elbows.
The sudden movement from bent over to half-standing made his head spin rapidly, and he had to brace himself for a few seconds to avoid falling over. The full-body pain had ebbed slightly by then, but the pain in his head and ribs persisted, and something was wrong with his left leg. I hurt to put the same amount of pressure on it as his right, and below the knee, it twisted at an odd angle.
The little voice in his head said: Get out of the rain.
The first few steps were wobbly, uneven, and heavy, and Shadow’s shoes almost slipped dangerously in the mud. But soon he was moving more smoothly and with a sense of urgency, heading for the treeline of pines that lined the field. By the time he made it to a short wooden fence that marked the border, his body had automatically sped up to a hasty pace.
Under the pines, less ran reached him, and he took a second to wipe the water out of his eyes and ears. The voice in his head that had been getting louder over the walk into the trees had quieted down again, but Shadow still didn’t want to stay in the open. He made his way to a thicker part of the forest, where bushes and mossy ground cover broke into a rocky downhill slope.
Through the line of trees, Shadow could vaguely make out small pinpricks of light and tall, dark shapes, a city. Something about it put him off, but maybe civilisation would be good, considering his broken leg, he had enough common sense to know a doctor might be able to help.
A bitter wind rustled the pines and sent a spray through the canopy. Involuntarily, Shadow shivered and made his way down the slope. It was steep enough that the rocks cracked in dangerous gorge formations, dark, safe and out of the rain.
One crag seemed to lead deep while being tall enough that he could crawl in and curl up inside.
Shadow folded himself inside, back against the stone, tucking his legs up to his chest, and wincing as he jarred his leg. When the rain stopped pouring onto him, he noticed the tiny voice in his head was completely silent. Now all he had to do was recover.
He didn’t know why he was out in the field, or why everything hurt. He tried to recall any memories from previously, but all he could remember was the searing pain and the feeling of the mud against his cheek. He wiped subconsciously at his face, and his glove came away with a red smear.
He touched tentatively at the quills coming out of the side of his face. There was a cut below his ear, deep enough that it was most likely the cause of his dizziness.
Broken leg, broken ribs, a cut on the head, and memory loss.
Enough injuries for Shadow to suspect there must have been some aggressive, violent event before he woke up on the field to cause them. He looked out at the dark evening sky, still bucketing rain, to the skyline of buildings at the bottom of the slope.
A deep, hot feeling brewed in his stomach, churning his insides. It felt like panic. He held out his hand and watched his fingers quiver as he heard his own heartbeat quicken.
He shouldn’t be here.
It was all he could think of. Something went wrong. He wasn’t meant to be damaged or abandoned, curled up out of the rain and feeling his own anxiety build.
He shouldn’t be here.
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Sonic had tracked the small red signal all the way to the small coastal town.
He’d been tracking the Angel for a week; it had been moving way too erratically for him to reliably pin it down in one location, but it had stayed relatively stationary in this one settlement for a few days, so this was his best bet.
It was definitely a Scout. By the speed the signal had been travelling, Tail’s tracker registered it as one, and a small square of information on the side of the tracker screen told Sonic it was a registered defective.
He stood about a half mile out from the town, but the grassy hilltop rolled all downhill towards the beach town, so he could see the entirety of the village. It was a small fishertown, perfect for a rogue Angel to try and hide.
A cold wind swept up the hill, rustling the dry grass and bringing with it the smell of the salt water. The sky was still a heavy slate colour, promising more rain later that day, the cold dawn light barely breaking through the clouds.
Sonic flipped the tracker closed and made his way down the hill. He didn’t need to reach full speed and made it to the town in under a minute.
The town was small but quaint, with short brick buildings leading all the way to the pale-wood docks and open streets, and Sonic could smell fish cooking from many of the houses. The Angel hadn’t spent long enough in the town for Sonic to assume it had gotten comfortable blending in with the locals, so Sonic moved in the smaller paths behind the houses and along the docks, keeping an ear out for a subtle whirring sound that was almost invisible to others, but he knew was a sign of a damaged android.
A few people were up early, fisher people making their way to the docks or onto boats.
Sonic made a deliberate effort not to walk too far out onto the docks, avoiding watching the rolling grey waves and ignored the churning in his stomach.
Sonic had made it almost halfway through the town when he saw the Angel.
It looked rather clean and unassuming, but Sonic could hear the whirring and see the almost-invisible segmenting on its joints. It had been wandering behind one of the boat houses by the docks. No one else was nearby.
“Okay.” Sonic drawled, bored from tracking it all along the coast. “You’ve been a pain in my quills to chase down for ages, buddy. You're coming with me.”
The Scout’s eyes flickered, its programming giving it tiny signals, and it gave Sonic a confused look.
“I’m sorry, do I-” Sonic cut it off, giving it a hard jab in the torso with his elbow, knocking it backwards. The impact jarred his arm, the metal shell hidden under the faux fur not giving in. Sonic shook his arm and winced.
The Scout registered the aggression, its programming abandoning the stealth code, and it turned and ran, moving unaturally fast down the docks and out onto the field.
Sonic sighed and gave chase, ramming into the Angel out in the grass, smashing into its back and toppling it over. The Angel rolled over, reaching out to grab at some kind of purchase on Sonic, but Sonic held it firmly down on the grass.
“Crap-” he muttered, ducking out of the way as the Angel reached for his face. He put his weight on its side, forcing the Scout face down in the grass, pinning its arms beneath it. A tiny blue glint shone on the back of its neck, and Sonic reached down and pulled out the power cell. Almost all at once, the Angel stopped moving, arms and legs locked in place, and the dull whirring stopped.
Sonic let out a long exhale and moved off the Angel, stretching his back and shaking out his still-sore arm again.
“Man, did you have to run?” He rolled the Angel over to survey the damage he had done.
The Scout was small and lean, like most of its line of Angels. It was modelled after a fox, with tall ears, a long tail and a narrow muzzle. Its faux fur was a dirty orange shade, and it looked almost entirely real. Scouts were especially hard to find with the naked eye. They were built for recon and blending in with people, and only by looking closely at their joints could you see the robotic parts. A few moments before, the Scout had incredibly realistic eyes, shiny, emotional and natural. Now that Sonic had torn out the power cell, its pupils had blinked out, and its eyes were plain, white voids. Sonic hated how it looked like Tails.
The Angel wasn’t too badly banged up. Its tail was at an odd angle, and there would most likely be a dent in its chest and back underneath the fur, but it wasn’t too bad a condition. The Guild would be glad to have another intact model to dissect, considering they weren’t all that happy that Sonic had practically blown up the last few Angels.
Sonic flipped the tracker open again and pulled out the antenna. The red signal blinked out on the radar, and the little bar of information on the Angel read the message:
“Collection point located.”
Tails had built Sonic the tracker. It had an in-built radar linked to the Guild’s database on HEAVEN’s machines, and any current rogue Angels showed up as tracker points on it. When Sonic refused to join the Guild, Tails had made it for him to help him track down defective or dispatched Angels.
Sonic flipped it back closed and gave the Angel a nudge with his toe.
“Well, I’d love to stay, buddy, but Tails will probably want me back at the Guild.” He glanced back at the coastal town. A few people had turned their attention to the field, and Sonic gave them a wave. The ones that noticed his gesture gave small, confused ones back. The ones who noticed his gesture returned it in confusion.
Turning back up the hill, he jogged up to the highest point and watched as a helicopter whirred in the distance. When it reached the coast, it hovered over the point where the Scout was still lying, lifeless in the grass.
He didn’t need to watch to know the cable would reach down and hook around the Angel, reel it up and take it back to the Guild. Sonic would beat it back anyway.
A ringing noise was emitted from the tracker pad. He opened it up to see a red message pasted across the small screen:
“RETURN TO GUILD BASE IMMEDIATELY.”
Huh. It’s been a while since I got one of these. It must be important. Sonic thought. What could be so important that Tails sent one of the emergency meeting broadcasts? Sonic sighed and tucked the tracker away one last time, and ran off as the helicopter winched the limp body of the Angel into the air.