Chapter Text
“This place looks like a prison.” Sonic muttered, more to himself than Rouge.
“It might be.” Rouge said with a frown.
Sonic had never been within the walls of a GUN base before, so he couldn’t be certain if all of them felt this oppressive and lifeless, or if the people who used to run this place were just particularly boring. Every wall was the same cold, dark metal, and every room felt empty apart from the equipment that had been left behind.
Rouge’s employers had been tight-lipped when it came to the reason the scientists who ran this place had suddenly fled the building, all she’d been told was that she had to retrieve a highly volatile experiment that they’d abandoned. They hadn’t even bothered to tell her what it was she was retrieving, saying only ‘you’ll know it when you see it’.
She’d decided to drag Sonic along to get it over with quicker, as she had been dragged out here during prime beauty sleep hours, and didn’t feel like searching a base while half-asleep for hours. Plus, it had been a while since she’d had someone to accompany her on a mission, and she liked the blue hedgehog’s company.
Sonic had already run through the first few floors of the base, but hadn’t found anything out of place. Just more abandoned equipment and expired food. It wasn’t until they made it to the last floor that they finally found something different. Not just different, but deeply concerning.
They’d been walking down another blank hallway, the base becoming darker the further they went in, as most of the lightbulbs had already gone out, when they found what looked like a cell. It was an open space built into the wall, blocked off by glass, the only entrance being a door with a palm scanner next to it.
Within the cell, Sonic could just barely see deep scratches in the metal of the walls. It looked like some sort of animal had clawed at the metal, but he didn’t know a single animal with claws sharp enough or strong enough to leave such deep marks. A small bowl was lying on the ground, filled with fruit so rotten that it had gone black. At the back of the cell, a chain was connected to the wall, the end of it leading to the darkest corner of the cell.
When Sonic looked closer at the dark corner, he thought he saw movement. It was slight, he couldn’t even be certain he hadn’t made it up, until he heard Rouge gasp next to him.
“What the fuck?” She blurted out, stepping closer to the cell.
“What do you see?” Sonic asked, squinting in an attempt to get a glimpse of what Rouge was seeing, to no avail.
“It looks like…” she shook her head. “No, no, that’s not possible. Even GUN wouldn’t-“ she cut herself off, a grimace forming on her face.
Sonic wanted to roll his eyes. Not everyone has night vision, Rouge. “What are you-“
Sonic couldn’t finish his sentence before something shifted in the darkness. This… creature crawled closer to the glass, the metal of its chain clinking against the floor as it moved.
The first thing Sonic noticed about it was its face. It looked… mutilated, was the only word that came to mind. Sonic could only see half of its face, the darkness and the angle the creature sat at ended up concealing its other half, but what little he could see looked horrible. The half he could see was scarred, making the creature’s fur uneven and patchy. Its muzzle was torn down to the bone, showing its teeth and parts of its jaw through the ripped skin. Its eye- or, where its eye should have been, was now an empty socket, the eyelid equally scarred as the rest of its face. On top of its head was a ripped ear, the tear of it looking jagged.
As Sonic’s eyes shifted down its body, three realizations hit him at once, each one more horrific than the last.
First, this creature was a Mobian. It had to be. It had clearly gone through something that warped it to be nearly unrecognizable, the scars covering its face dragging down that entire half of its body, but it was still a person. Or, had been, at one point.
Second, this creature was extremely small. Too small to have been an adult Mobian. It was sitting down on the cell’s floor, but just judging by its size when sitting, Sonic figured that, even standing, the top of its head wouldn’t even reach his hip. If he had to guess, the creature was young. Very young.
Third, this base had been abandoned for months, yet this creature was still alive. It had moved. If Sonic listened closely, he could even hear its soft pants. It was dangerously thin from what he could tell, and nobody had been here to feed it, leaving it severely malnourished. Even just that small amount of movement must have taken most of the creature’s energy.
Sonic’s stomach churned, and he had to swallow back the bile rising in his throat. He turned to Rouge. “D’you think this has anything to do with your mission?”
“Gaia, I hope not.” Rouge whispered, her hands trembling at her sides. “…He looks so… scared.”
Sonic frowned. “How can you tell? I still can’t see what you can.”
For a few seconds, Rouge didn’t acknowledge that Sonic had spoken, but when his words finally caught up to her, she inhaled sharply, then knelt down in front of the glass.
“Can you hear me, honey?” Rouge said, her voice as gentle as she could manage.
The creature twitched.
“Can you come closer?” She made a motion with her hand, beckoning the creature to keep moving.
The creature didn’t move for a long moment, then it- he, apparently- seemed to shake his head. Something in Rouge’s eyes seemed to soften.
“We won’t hurt you, I promise. My friend here just wants to see you.”
After another tense moment, the creature finally moved again. He didn’t walk, instead choosing to drag himself forward with his arms, taking the chain with him. He stopped a couple feet away from the glass, then looked to Sonic. Sonic’s heart dropped.
The creature was a hedgehog. A mutilated, malnourished little hedgehog with dark quills and a single uninjured eye. His quills were clipped dangerously short, as if someone had intended to take away his only natural defense mechanism. There were red stripes beginning down the middle of each grouping of quills, though they were too short to know how far the stripes would have gone. He had the same red stripes over his eyelids, and down his arms (presumably his legs as well, but they were hidden from Sonic’s view). His arms were covered in a dark liquid that had dried onto his fur, which Sonic could only assume was blood. The hedgehog didn’t have any gloves, though he did have thick Inhibitor Rings around his wrists.
Only half of the hedgehog’s face had suffered severe injury. The other half of his muzzle was unscarred, though his cheek was sunken in, losing the baby fat that should have still been there due to a lack of nutrients. His fur was dirty and perhaps a bit thin, but not affected by whatever had scarred the other half of his body. He had a tuft of white fur on his chest, though the fur was matted, darkened with dirt and grime. His remaining eye looked uninjured, Sonic couldn’t tell if it was brown or red.
The little hedgehog’s gaze flicked rapidly between Rouge and Sonic, his eye wide and clouded with fear and an underlying desperation. One of his hands was clenched around the chain that must have been attached to him somehow. His mouth was stained with the same dark liquid Sonic had seen stuck to his arms, and it dripped and eventually dried onto the dirty tuft of fur on his chest. His lower lip wobbled, like he would cry at any moment.
“…He’s just a kid.” Sonic’s voice came out weak.
Rouge let out a wounded sound. “What the hell were they doing to him? How long has he been here? How-“ her voice cracked. “How is he not dead?”
The hedgehog’s good ear flattened, and Sonic wondered if he could actually understand them, or if he could only understand the tones they spoke in.
“W- We can’t just leave him here, right?”
Rouge shook her head fervently. “Absolutely not.”
A thought occurred to Sonic then, one that only expanded the sickening feeling in his stomach. “Is this what GUN wanted you to find?”
Rouge’s eyes widened. “No.” It came out less as a word, more like an exhale. “I’m- I can’t bring this to them. But… if they send someone else-“
“He won’t be here for them to find.” Sonic said with finality.
“You think we can get him out?”
Sonic shrugged. “We’re gonna have to. I won’t leave him here.”
Sonic moved to the door, inspecting the hand scanner next to it. He figured it would only open for the scientists that had been working here. Best case scenario, it wouldn’t work for him, and worst case scenario, messing with it in any way would set off an alarm. There was no one left here to be alerted by an alarm, but he didn’t want to scare the kid further. Besides, there was so little residual power left in the building that the scanner probably wouldn’t work to open the door anyway.
“I think we need to break the glass.” Sonic said.
Rouge raised an eye ridge. “Are you planning on spinning through it, Blue?”
“Spin-dashing, yes.”
Sonic dropped to one knee in front of the glass, making the little hedgehog flinch back.
“Can you understand me, kid?” Sonic asked.
The little hedgehog made a quiet sound, almost like a whine.
Sonic sighed. “If you know what I’m saying, then go into that corner over there.” He pointed toward the corner at the back wall, the same spot the hedgehog had been hiding in when Sonic and Rouge first found the cell. “I’m gonna break the glass, but I don’t want to hurt you.”
The hedgehog tilted his head, and for a moment, Sonic thought he hadn’t understood, but then he began crawling into the corner, pushing himself as far back as he could get.
“Rouge, stand back.”
Rouge backed away from the cell, flying up toward the low ceiling for good measure.
There wasn’t much space for Sonic to get a straightforward head-start, so he ran a short distance down the hall before running toward the cell. He curled up at the last moment, slamming straight through the glass and hitting the empty corner with a thud.
Sonic heard a high-pitched cry, and realized quickly that it came from the little hedgehog. He stood up and shook the broken glass off his quills before moving toward the hedgehog.
“Hey, little guy.” Sonic murmured, walking slowly to keep from startling the kid. “Let’s get you out of-“
In a single moment, Sonic understood exactly why GUN wanted this child.
Chaos energy burst to life around the hedgehog, crackling over his torn quills and lighting up his eye with red electricity. A loud hiss came deep within his small body, followed by a warning growl that sounded much bigger than something this small hedgehog should have been able to produce. He was back as far as he could move, yet that didn’t stop him from trying to press himself into the wall, only serving to bend his already damaged quills.
Sonic froze. “Whoa, hey, I’m not gonna hurt you.”
The little hedgehog did not stop growling. With the dim light of his own energy illuminating him, Sonic could see the sharp fangs his snarl revealed. For the briefest moment, Sonic was afraid. This hedgehog was small, but he was dangerous. His face was torn open, he had sharp claws that could tear through metal, and he was coated in blood that may or may not have been his own. He looked terrifying.
But that moment passed. Sonic took a deep breath, forced himself to look past the sudden aggression, and reminded himself that this was a child. This little hedgehog must be deadly, he had to be if GUN was involved, but that didn’t change that this was a child who was far more afraid of Sonic than Sonic was of him.
Sonic knelt down, sitting back on his heels. “Don’t worry, I won’t get closer.”
Rouge peeked into the cell, but made no move to enter it.
It took several minutes for the hedgehog to stop growling. The energy surrounding him gradually faded to an occasional flicker of electricity. He stayed curled in on himself near the wall, tense and trembling. His breaths came in short gasps, his chest rising and falling too fast.
“I just want to help you.” Sonic said quietly. “You don’t have to stay here. You can come with me.”
The hedgehog’s eye narrowed, scanning over Sonic’s face in suspicion. Something akin to recognition flickered in his gaze, and Sonic wondered if he’d ever met another hedgehog before, or if this was his first time seeing someone like him.
His eye shifted to the hole in the glass. One of his hands twitched, like he meant to pull himself forward, but he stopped himself, looking back to Sonic. He was frozen in place, torn between attempting to escape and staying as far from Sonic as he could.
Sonic held a hand out, a silent offer. He made no move to get closer, and he didn’t try to make the hedgehog move either. The hedgehog watched him cautiously.
“I’ll protect you from them.” Sonic promised. “I won’t let those scientists hurt you again. I just need you to come home with me.”
The hedgehog’s ear twitched at the word ‘home’. He crawled just a bit closer to Sonic, testing the waters. Sonic did not move, so he crawled a little further.
The hedgehog’s hand shook violently as he raised it. Sonic didn’t dare move a centimeter when the little hedgehog placed his hand over Sonic’s. He ran his bare fingers over Sonic’s glove with curiosity, a small frown replacing the aggression and panic from before. His hand was so small, Sonic’s fingers alone were bigger than it.
His eye darted up to meet Sonic’s gaze, and Sonic could still see the fear there, but that wasn’t the only thing he saw. There was the smallest flicker of hope, now.
“Ready to leave this place, little one?” Sonic asked softly.
The hedgehog blinked, like he was just realizing that Sonic meant it. His tiny hand trembled against Sonic’s. He nodded, his fingers clutching at Sonic’s hand, sharp claws digging into the glove and nearly tearing them.
Sonic smiled. “Don’t worry, you’ll be out of here soon-“
His words died in his throat when he finally got a glimpse of the hedgehog’s legs.
He understood why the kid had been crawling now. He couldn’t tell if the legs were broken, or just weakened by a lack of food, but they were twisted at an odd angle, like they’d gone too numb for the hedgehog to realize that he wasn’t supposed to keep them in that position. Around one of his ankles, right above another Inhibitor Ring, sat a thick manacle, connecting him to the chain in the wall. The metal was covered in scratches, it looked like the kid had tried clawing it off, but failed. Even if Sonic managed to get it off of him, he wouldn’t be able to walk like this. Would he let Sonic carry him out? He already looked ready to back himself up into a corner again at any moment, and he was only touching Sonic’s hand.
“Uh, Rouge? Problem.” Sonic said.
Rouge entered the cell carefully, avoiding tearing her wings on the broken glass. She followed Sonic’s gaze to the manacle.
“Oh, I can get it off.” She said, her tone the most casual it had been since they arrived.
Sonic blinked up at her. “You can?”
“I’m a thief, dear. This isn’t my first time picking a lock.”
She stepped around Sonic to kneel next to the hedgehog’s locked up ankle, then pulled her tools out of her glove. The little hedgehog flinched away before Rouge could even touch the lock, red sparks of electricity lighting his eye up.
Rouge winced. “Sorry, hon, I wasn’t trying to scare you.” She held up the tools for the kid to see. “I want to use these to get that-“ she pointed at the manacle, “-off of you. It won’t hurt. They won’t even touch you, I promise.”
The hedgehog didn’t look convinced, but his desperation for freedom won over his fear. He didn’t move back when Rouge inserted the lock pick into the manacle’s keyhole. It took a little over two minutes before the lock clicked open, freeing the hedgehog’s leg.
“Dang, that was fast.” Sonic said.
Rouge snorted. “Fast? That’s the longest a lock has taken me in a while. Either GUN locks are harder than I remember, or I’m losing my touch.”
Sonic reached out to the little hedgehog once more. “I don’t think you’re gonna be able to walk out of here, little guy. Can I carry you?”
The hedgehog’s ear pinned back in alarm, a quiet whimper escaping his throat.
“Nobody’s gonna hurt you, but you can’t stay here. You need food, and a safer place to heal.” His nose wrinkled as his eyes landed on all of the blood clumped into the kid’s fur. “And a bath.”
The kid looked halfway to panicking again, Sonic could practically hear his heart racing. But all it took was one last look at the hole in the glass for the hedgehog to crawl closer to Sonic. He gave the older hedgehog a near pleading look, and Sonic didn’t know if it was meant to mean Please help me or Please don’t hurt me. Maybe both.
Slowly, Sonic scooped the little hedgehog up in his arms before standing up. The hedgehog was far lighter than he should have been, and small enough for Sonic to comfortably hold him against his hip. He was careful to not press against any of the hedgehog’s scars, as they still looked raw and painful.
The hedgehog shivered, clinging to Sonic tightly, and it was then that Sonic realized how cold he was. He’d been lying against the metal floor in a building without any form of heating for months, how had he not died of hypothermia? Or starvation? Or simply succumbed to one of his many barely-healed injuries?
Anger burned hot in Sonic’s chest, but he had to force it back and focus on getting this child far away from the base.
“What are you gonna tell your bosses?” Sonic asked, carefully climbing through the hole in the glass. The little hedgehog slumped against him tiredly, the demonstration of his Chaos abilities must have exhausted him.
Rouge scoffed. “I’ll tell them there was nothing here. They’ll probably send someone else, realize their ‘experiment’ went missing, and do everything in their power to erase any and all knowledge of this little guy. Plausible deniability, in case he turns up again, you know?”
“Assholes.” Sonic muttered, shaking his head. He’d known this child for all of ten minutes, and he already couldn’t imagine abandoning him like that.
Rouge followed Sonic out of the cell, and together, they made their way back to the stairs. Sonic dreaded having to walk up the stairs with a child on his hip, but the kid was light enough that hopefully it wouldn’t be too much of a nightmare.
“What’s the plan, Blue?” Rouge asked as they started walking up the stairs.
“What do you mean?”
“With the kid. What are you gonna do with him?”
Sonic frowned. “Honestly, I don’t really know what to do. If GUN’s after him, then there aren’t many places he’ll be safe, or many people he’d be safe with.”
“So, what, you plan on keeping him?”
Sonic narrowed his eyes at her. “Don’t talk about him like he’s a pet.”
“Ooh, protective already. This is gonna be fun to watch.” She grinned.
“Shut up. I just don’t want anyone to hurt him again. This is…” he glanced at the kid’s torn muzzle, teeth, gums and bone all visible despite the kid’s mouth being closed. “Nobody deserves this.”
Rouge nodded in understanding. “For what it’s worth, the kid could have ended up with a much worse parent.”
“I’m not anyone’s parent-“
Rouge cut him off with a laugh. “Blue, you’re already raising Tails. This little guy is kid number two.”
Sonic couldn’t actually argue against that, so he just rolled his eyes. The little hedgehog watched them, his eye bright with curiosity.
Just as they arrived on the main floor of the base, Rouge flew off toward a nearby hallway.
“Yo, door’s over here!” Sonic called out to her.
“I need to check something first.” She called back. “Wait for me outside.”
Sonic sighed, but didn’t try arguing. He walked out of the building, taking in a deep breath of fresh air now that he was finally out of the stuffy base.
It was early enough in the morning that the sun hadn’t risen yet, casting darkness over the surrounding grass and nearby trees. The air was damp from rain that had only just stopped within the past couple of hours, and the wet grass crunched under his shoes as he walked toward the Tornado.
The hedgehog in his arms made a sudden sharp noise, a mix between a grunt and a whine. When Sonic looked down at the kid’s face, he saw that the kid’s eye was wide and filled with a quiet awe. His gaze rapidly moved from the trees to the sky, a soft gasp leaving him as he saw the stars. Sonic smiled. Now that he could finally get a good look at the kid, Sonic thought he was adorable. The scars on his face and upper body had been off putting at first, but when he focused on the uninjured half of the kid’s face, he realized the little hedgehog really did look like a normal Mobian child. It was impossible to tell at first glance just how much power this child held in his small body.
All Sonic knew was, the stars dancing in his eye were far more preferable to the fear his gaze had held in that cell.
The hedgehog looked away from the stars only because the grass had somehow caught his attention. He reached his hand out to touch it, and Sonic knelt down to make it possible.
The kid ran his hand over the wet grass, flinching back at the odd feeling before touching it again. Suddenly, the little hedgehog burst into a fit of giggles, though Sonic couldn’t tell what it was about the grass that this kid found so amusing.
That was when Rouge returned, tucking something into her glove. She paused when she spotted the two hedgehogs, smiling as she listened to the younger’s laughter.
“Someone’s happy.” Rouge said, coming up to Sonic’s side.
Sonic shrugged. “He just touched the grass and started laughing.”
Rouge’s expression softened. “Oh, poor thing. He’s probably never seen grass before.”
All at once, Sonic’s blood ran cold. He hadn’t even considered that the kid had probably never been out of the base before. Sonic couldn’t even imagine a life like that, living in forced captivity. Had this kid ever seen the sun? A living creature other than the humans experimenting on him? A color other than the grey of the walls, the white of the lab coats, the odd mix of red and green that stained his dark fur? Had he ever seen himself in a mirror? Just how much had those scientists taken from him?
The kid calmed down a bit, but he still had the tiniest smile on his face as he ran his fingertips over the grass.
Sonic was reluctant to stand, wanting to let the kid enjoy his newfound freedom for a bit longer before they were locked into the Tornado, but they needed to get far away from this base. Sonic wasn’t sure how much longer he could handle the sight of it without getting sick.
The kid gave a quiet, disappointed whine as Sonic stood, but he didn’t fight it. He perked up quickly when he saw how far away the base was getting.
Sonic stopped next to the Tornado, looking from the pilot seat to the child at his hip, then turned to Rouge. “Think you could carry the little guy while I fly us outta here?”
Rouge had hardly taken a single step toward Sonic when the little hedgehog suddenly stiffened, clinging tighter to Sonic. His claws dug into Sonic’s back, and he had to bite back a wince.
“Okay, never mind, new plan.” Sonic said, his voice tight with pain. The kid only relaxed slightly. “You don’t happen to know how to fly a plane, do you?”
“I can fly a helicopter.” Rouge shrugged. “Close enough.”
“Let’s hope.” Sonic sighed. If they even so much as dented the plane, Tails would be devastated, and Sonic (despite his claims that he had unlimited energy) did not have the energy to deal with two upset children at the moment.
Rouge climbed into the front of the plane while Sonic climbed in the back. He held the child in his lap, keeping him in a protective embrace as the plane took off.
That same look of awe came over the kid as he peeked over the edge of the plane, watching as the ground quickly became a distant memory.