I’m moving my shoulders against the ropes, trying to work some slack into them. I manage to free my mouth, spitting the gag out and letting it hang under my chin.

“Amy? You there?”

She whimpers helplessly under her gag and I can hear her trying to break loose. The blindfold is annoying but something tells me that there isn’t much to see in here. The air is stale, recycled after hours of our unconscious breathing. There’s the smell of rust and damp wood. I can feel the corner of the box with my feet. It’s thick. No chance of kicking through this. I’ll have to spin through it when I get free.

I’m on my stomach when I yank my right wrist out. Most of the rope I push into the corner. The blindfold comes off.

I hate it when I’m right.

“Amy? Talk to me…” She cries out from somewhere close, still gagged. I crawl over to her and almost immediately touch warm flesh. She starts to panic.

“Easy! Easy, it’s me.” I get the ropes off of her and gently pull the gag out of her mouth. Hot spit covers my fingers, and I feel a jolt before Amy jumps on top of me.

“Sonic! Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you-”

“Fine, fine, no problem! Let go of me! Sheesh.”

“He said you were as good as dead, Sonic, but I didn’t believe him! He said you were going to die soon, real soon, he said, and-” She stops talking on her own power, shocked at something. I think she’s noticed where we are. Her hands slip slowly off of my shoulders.

Any opportunity is a good one. Standing up-

THUNK

“Ouch! Son of a…” There’s a throbbing pain in my head and I get back down on my knees. “That smarts.”

Amy touches me again, running her hand along the side of my neck and down my back. I stop rubbing my head, warming up to the feeling of her palm against my naked flesh… Something’s wrong…

“What happened to your quills?”

There’s the vague sensation of my own hand searching for the familiar sharpness lining my spine, my back, my…

…

Gone.

Eggman must have… so we’d…

So I couldn’t…

So we’d be trapped and…

I…

“GODDAMMIT!”

It’s a while before I calm down… well, before Amy manages to calm me down. My fists are raw and cut open from hitting the floor, the ceiling. She tries for my swinging arms, gets thrown down by the force of them, ends up wrapping herself around my neck like a locket, her eyes trying to find mine in the dark, and normally I’d be opposed to this, but the idea of being close to her doesn’t seem so bad anymoremy quills my goddamn quillsand I eventually stop moving, tired with the idea of trying anymore, and we lie down next to one another.

**********

“I heard you were missing, and that he had captured you, so I waited. That’s his biggest problem: he brags about his plans, how clever they are, how they’re going to get the best of me. All it does it make me want to prove him wrong. And it makes him easier to find.”

“Mmm.”

“So I headed down to Tails’ and he managed to figure out where old Buttnik was holed up, and I decided to go ahead of him while he had his plane prepped. So, I get there, and he throws everything he has at me, his entire army of ‘bots.”

“Wow! Did you really defeat all of them, Sonic?”

I don’t know why I feel the need to brag about this to her. “I fought my way to the main control room, and it’s just me and him in there, and he was on the other side of the room. And… he was so calm. I mean, I didn’t think anything of it at the time. It didn’t seem weird. I just asked him where you were.”

She hugs me tighter. “My hero…”

“Eggman, he said to me… ‘Oh, she’s safe, for now.’”

Her breathing stops momentarily, but she picks the rhythm back up. “Then?”

“I took a couple of steps towards him, and he was just babbling on and on, and-”

“About what?”

“Same old, same old. Bragging about his plans, once again. I hardly ever listen anymore.” Hmmm. “I didn’t see it coming. These steel cylinders suddenly came down from the ceiling. I tried to get out from under them but one pushed me into this circular hole in the floor, pressed me down hard. I couldn’t move. I heard him talking before I passed out. And I woke up here.”

Here.

I can see shapes, some shadows. I think we’re in a shipping crate, the kind the fisherman use at the docks. I can’t feel the crate moving, so my bet is that Eggman locked us in here, then packed up and left, knowing that Tails would be coming for him.

It’s wishful thinking. If we’re still at Eggman’s hideout, then in no time, Tails will be here and he’ll be able to get us out. But there’s this sinking feeling I’m getting. I’m not telling Amy about it, but I’m sure she knows. The girl’s oddly attuned to what I’m feeling, like there was some university that offered Sonic 101 and she aced the class.

This is why it’s bad to keep things from her. She figures things out, sooner or later.

“What Eggman told me was that he was getting real interested in chemicals. Biochemical gas, he said. He had engineered a new one and he needed to test it on something living. He… wanted me to be there when the effects kicked in. He said he hoped I’d like it.”

She’s holding her breath again, her arms tightening their hold around my waist. She stammers, “… He told me the same thing. He said he needed me. I was… chained up in one of his cells and he kept talking and talking about it… and he… he injected me with something. It was bright yellow, and it… oh, it hurt, Sonic! I kept crying and crying and I was hoping I’d see you run up behind him and stop him before the needle touched me, but…” She’s shivering violently against me and there’s that jolt again, longer and more localized this time.

To keep my mind off of it, I do a quick mental check of myself. Nothing sore, no throbbing pain coming from odd places; just the cold goosebumps on my bare skin and the feel of Amy’s arms around my waist. I discreetly check my arms and neck for any sign of injection. Nothing. It must be her. She must be the experiment.

And unless we get out of here, she’ll be helpless. I won’t be able to save her and I’ll have to watch... whatever’s coming.

Tails, where are you?

**********

No telling how much time has passed. It’s hard not to think about it.

I can’t remember who asked who first.

That old sinking feeling? Deeper and deeper all the time. Worrying about the air. I’m feeling lightheaded and Amy’s hacking coughs are increasingly frequent. My nerves are done for. I’ve never gone this long without moving. I can’t seem to fall asleep.

Amy is the only thing keeping me from losing it. I don’t think I could have endured this without her. At the same time, I wish that she wasn’t involved with this. Or that I at least saved her from getting that injection.

If I ever get out of here, he’s going to pay dearly for this.

It’s my fault, of course. I took my abilities for granted. Without them, I’m nothing. I can’t win. I’ve failed.

“Sonic?”

I’m speaking to the back of her head when I say, “Mmm?” muffled by her hair.

“… Wondering if you were awake.”

She shifts her hips. Another jolt, embarrassingly, oh God, horribly localized, no mistaking where it’s coming from. She’s molded into me, barely any space between us, so please, please, stop th- uh oh.

No turning back now.

What a way to tear down her image of me. Imagine, a hero of hers, one she’s chased all her life, admired and praised, and he takes advantage of her the first time they’re alone together, pressing his dick to her backside at a time like this, with some experimental poison coursing through her veins. All because he can’t take the idea of losing.

My left arm, draped over her side. You don’t know how difficult it is to keep that hand away from her breasts. Goddammit, I’m thinking about her breasts… Get it together, hedgehog, what in the hell are you doing?

She takes a deep breath, and for a moment, my palm touches the warm skin of her chest, and the jolt travel its way from my crotch up my entire body. I grit my teeth and ride the turbulence as best as I can.

Her voice, I can barely hear it even in this space, but you’d think she shouted it, the way I reacted.

“My arm hurts.”

**********

I’m grinding my teeth loud enough to bust my eardrums and she’s shivering violently in the corner, whimpering. She doesn’t want to be touched anymore. All I want to do is hug her, tell her it’s all going to be okay, that Tails will be here soon and we’ll get her to a doctor and then, after that, I’ll tear that son of a bitch Eggman limb from limb.

I’m certain that we’re losing air. I’m begging to hallucinate, thinking I can see her in the dark. Thinking there’s a large black stain, spreading visibly over her skin from the injection points on her arm. Thinking I can see her eyes dipping in and out of color, thinking I can see her breath coming out of her mouth. And somehow, still thinking that she’s enduring this so well, that she’s still beautiful.

She screams every time I come within ten inches. She doesn’t move but her voice rises and sustains a high volume for five full minutes. All contact hurts her. It takes all of my concentration to stay at the other side of the crate, pressing my back into the wood, the splinters breaking bare skin but not enough to bring me out of it.

Can I say it, anyway? Am I able to do it without touching her?

“It’s going to be okay, Amy. Tails will be here soon… and we’ll get a doctor, and after that…” and after that and after that-

A right arm moves lazily to her mouth, vibrating in time with my chattering teeth, and she presses an index finger to her lips. I never realized, all this time... I could have… we could have… could have been something together. “Shhh. Don’t talk.”

Her breath bursts forth in a white cloud, spreading out over the roof of the box. Her body shudders one last time before she’s gone.

**********

“I hope you enjoy this.” His last words to me, before it went dark under that steel cylinder. I didn’t understand before, but now…

Her skin is warm to the touch, but it’s fading fast. I don’t have a lot of time. The feeling hasn’t gone away. I still think she’s beautiful.

Eggman gave her an injection, but what did he do to me?

I can’t stop myself. I’m grabbing her by the shoulders and rolling her onto her back. I have to hunker down low. Eggman… you son of a bitch…

If I do this, just this once, it’ll all be okay. Nobody will know.

She’s coldest between her legs, warmest on her chest. My waist, my lips, my heart, I’m connected to her for the last time. We’ve never been closer.

She doesn’t scream.