The thought occurred to him at the zero hour that this might have been a bad idea.

It was too late to turn back now. He raised his arms, palms facing outwards as he planted himself on the metal seat. “No tricks.”

A SWATbot returned his backpack to him. “CLEAN, SIR,” it reported to its master.

“Very well,” Robotnik said, suspicious and wary. “Set up a tight perimeter and inform me of anything unusual.”

“YES, SIR.” The ‘bot exited the interior of the HoverUnit. It grew quiet, the humming of the control panel not loud enough to pierce the silence.

Robotnik flinched when Sonic suddenly reached into the backpack. He placed his thick metal hand on the weapon at his belt and prayed for the hedgehog to make another mistake.

He relaxed when all Sonic pulled out was a chili dog.

“Sorry. I didn’t know how long this would take.” Sonic was tempted to offer him a bite, but the tyrant looked disgusted even at watching someone else eat one. He briefly wondered what it was that Robotnik and Snively ate. He had never thought about it before.

He chewed slowly, unsure of where this was going. It had sounded so simple before he had to actually come face to face with that large, evil exterior. I tell him I want to talk and then I don’t know what I want to say. Swallowing, Sonic’s voice snaked around his food before he could stop it.

“Wondering why I wanted to do this?”

Robotnik’s lips stretched back in a wide smirk. “It’s a trap. I know you, rodent. You wouldn’t surrender yourself, even to save the lives of your friends. I’m waiting for one of my SWATbots to report to me that they’ve seen movement outside the perimeter.” He leaned forward. “You made a mistake coming here.”

“Got it all figured out, don’t you?”

Those red eyes of his flashed. “… So polite this evening, hedgehog.”

“I’m not surrendering.” Sonic swallowed and returned the leftovers to his backpack, and shoved ot under his chair. He tried sitting up straight enough to meet Robotnik eye to eye. “I want to talk.”

“Hmm,” he grumbled. “About what?”

About what, about what. So many places to start. “… Why. We’ll start with why.”

**********

High above Robotropolis, the dragon flapped her large wings against the crosswind, cutting deep into the black sky. She called over her shoulder to the passenger on her back, “They need to make something like gloves, only for feet. That’d be neato, huh?”

Sally, hanging on with one hand, didn’t look up from her camera. “You mean like socks?”

“Yeah… sure, like socks. I guess.”

“Hold it steady!” she called out, leaning around Dulcy’s long neck, one arm gripped tightly around the strap of the saddle and hanging out as far as she could. She pointed the lens straight down and pressed the shutter release. She held that position, hoping they were steady enough to get clear images of the houses below. She ignored the tiring of her muscles until she was sure that the film had run out. “All right!” she yelled over the sudden rushing wind. “Let’s head back!”

Sally almost lost her seat as Dulcy gratefully reversed direction to the Great Forest, quickly retreating on the crest of the toxic wind.

**********

That evening in Knothole, Bunnie spotted a diligent but tired looking Dulcy standing in the village square. She approached and asked, “You seen Sally-girl ‘round, Dulce?”

“She’s in her hut still.”

Bunnie blinked in surprise. “You’re pullin’ mah leg.”

“I know. She doesn’t wanna be disturbed. I’m supposed to guard. So, uh, you can’t go in there.”

She sighed. “Fine, shug, have it her way. If ya see her, tell her that her favorite friendly neighborhood Bunnie dropped by.”

“Sure thing. Before you go, though, I gotta ask you something.”

“Shoot.”

“What are socks?”

Bunnie heard the wooden door to Sally’s hut creak open before she could respond. The princess’ head poked out an inch and her voice came out as an order, “Bunnie, come here a moment,” and was punctuated by the closing of the door.

Bunnie nodded a vague goodbye to Dulcy and immediately entered the hut, her curiosity inflamed. Princess Sally was already back at her desk, leaning over her projection screen in the dim light, her face glowing. She motioned Bunnie to her side. “What part of Mobius did you used to live in?”

“West End. Near the boonies, ah think.”

“Maybe you can help me with this. I’ve been trying to figure something out and NICOLE has no information on it.”

“You picked me? How thoughtful.”

Sally missed the playful jest. “Yeah. So here it is.” She pointed to the photograph she had on her screen, tracing her finger along a dark line. “This is the eastbound highway. It cuts the city into two halves. In the residential district, brick walls about two stories tall keep in enclosed between each and every onramp and offramp.” She moved her finger a couple of inches to her right. “This is Calloway River. It runs all the way through the west area and comes out of town near the south, and ends somewhere in the Great Forest. It’s channeled,” she paused to click to a closer view of the photograph, “through the city with old concrete from before the Stephan Acorn era. It crosses with the highway here and goes underground before coming out on the other side, here. Look close and you can see that it has water damaged these lower houses on the left side. See? The ones wedged between the river and the freeway.”

Bunnie nodded. “You’re right.”

The princess waited. Then, she made a sort of dissatisfied gesture before pointing at the picture again. “What are these houses?”

“… Oh!”

“See, that’s what I was going for-”

“Oh, oh, oh!” Bunnie leaned in closer. “I don’t know what they are.”

Sally’s slump deepened. “Mmm.”

Bunnie finally realized why Sally was spending her time on this. “There are no roads leading into it.”

“No offramps from the freeway, either.”

“No way.” She looked carefully at the two dilapidated ramps coming over the tops of the houses. They ended and turned into normal roads into the central area of Robotropolis, nowhere near the neighborhood in question. “Wow!”

“You can barely tell from the photographs, in fact I almost missed it myself. It was the lack of roads going in or out that caught my eye. The neighborhood is its own little valley, closed in on both sides by the river and the freeway wall. I mean, I would imagine that these two offramps that come over the top hide it from the air, blending it into the surrounding neighborhoods from most angles. I think I just got lucky.” She paused, confidence leaking into her words. “There are no entrances, and no exits.”

“How ‘bout underground?”

Sally smiled and flicked the display to a schematic of the sewer system. “Look. Nothing.”

“Could it be wrong?”

“I sent a message to Chuck to check it out.”

Bunnie shook her head in disbelief. “Why in the wide, wide world is it like that?”

Sally turned off her projector, bathing the hut in darkness. “Want to take a trip?”

**********

“We should be back before morning, if we hurry. We can get this done faster if we can find him.” Sally exited her hut quickly, moving across the square with a purpose. She stopped dead in her tracks when she saw her. “Dulcy… you look really tired.”

The dragon blinked, trying to see where the voice was coming from. “Oh, it’s nothing, I’m fine. You guys going back to Robotropolis?”

“Trekking it, Dulce. Between flying and guarding I think you could use a break.”

Dulcy nodded and let loose a tree-shaking yawn. “Kay.”

“You haven’t seen Sonic hanging around here, have you?”

“No, but maybe I’ll see him… soon…” With that, Dulcy collapsed into the dirt, emitting puffs of black smoke with every snore.

Sally didn’t appear to notice, moving right along, heading in the direction of Rotor’s hut. “Never around when I need him, that boy. We’ll have to do this without him.”

Bunnie waved away the black smoke, following close. “But how are we gonna get in there if we’re not droppin’ in?”

“Either we’ll have to climb or we’ll have to swim.”

Bunnie’s eyes widened. “You joshin’ me? You know what swimmin’ does to these ol’ things?” She knocked on her legs with her metal fist. “And I don’t know where that river’s been or what’s been in it-”

“Climbing, then.” They reached Rotor’s hut and Sally pushed open the heavy wooden door without knocking. She almost ran into a pile of engine parts and skidded to a halt, her boots sliding across the oil-slick floor. “Rotor? You in?” There was no answer. Sally moved to his worktable, searching through his tools.

Bunnie still stood at the door, inching her head around the corner. “This here’s invasion of privacy, Sally-girl.”

“He’ll get over it.” She reached under the table and found a duffle bag, and began grabbing tools from his workstation and shoving them one after the other into the bag. She noticed Bunnie’s horrified expression. “I’ll be careful with them. Promise.” Sally winked and inserted a bolt gun into her boot. She looked around for the grappling hook and shoved it into the bag with the rest of the stuff.

Bunnie’s head was practically spinning on her neck when Sally blew past her and headed to the edge of the village. “Wait, wait, wait, what’s the big hurry, anyhow?”

“This is time sensitive, Bunnie,” she said without stopping. “It might not be there by the time we get properly prepared to find out what it is. We do it now or we don’t do it at all.”

Bunnie couldn’t argue with that, but she felt that there was something wrong with moving this fast. Sally didn’t normally rush headlong into missions like this. This reckless behavior was completely out of character. “Please! Wait a sec! I… I have to get ready.”

That managed to stop her, but it she didn’t look happy. She cast a brief, frustrated look at Bunnie, then continued walking. “Meet me at the Nest. I’ll wait for five minutes before I’m gone.”

Bunnie watched her disappear into the woods, wondering why it was that she and Sonic fought all the time, because they acted so much alike.

**********

The Nest was their name for the bird’s eye whicker carriage that overlooked the canopy of the Great Forest. They used it to look out for patrolling high flyers prior to entering the city. Sally was climbing down from it when Bunnie arrived.

“Right on time.” She turned from the tree and eyed her friend. “‘Getting ready’ means putting on a jacket?”

“It might get cold.”

“Uh huh. Well, we’re clear. If there are no more delays…”

Entering was a breeze. They snuck around the city so often that it was an instinctual thing. They knew where to turn and when to keep out of sight, when to talk and when to keep quiet. Bunnie did what Sally told her to, but there was still this horrible feeling that was twisting her stomach around and keeping her from being one-hundred percent with the moment. She managed to swallow it and place her trust in the princess for the time being, but she felt it wasn’t going to last much longer.

Sally seemed to know the way by heart, winding through a part of the city they didn’t visit too often. No important military targets, only abandoned houses. They crossed a walkway over the highway to rest in the middle of a bridge over Calloway River. Sally leaned over the railing and pointed off in the distance.

“There it is. You can barely see it, between the ramp and the support beam.”

Even though Bunnie could only see the tops of the houses, she was still awestruck by the sight. “Amazing.”

“Appears to be a regular neighborhood from here. The road that runs between the houses must dead end under the channel.”

“They’re damaged… like the rest of the city…”

“SWAT units must have gotten in and out from the air.” She cleared her throat. “We’ll have to be careful.”

They made a motion to leave but for some reason, they didn’t let go of the railing. The hidden neighborhood had their attention and held fast. The excitement of what they had stumbled across hit Bunnie and the gears began to turn. “Could your dad have built this?”

“… Possible.” It caught her off guard. She hadn’t considered it. “But why is the question I want answered.”

“The same reason he built Knothole, I reckon.”

Robotropolis weighed down on them from above. Success was suddenly top priority if King Acorn had anything to do with its construction.

Bunnie and Sally hiked back to the walkway over the highway and they rappelled down to street level. They made their way along the wall, moving northwest and keeping low under the cover of hover car skeletons.

If Bunnie had heard noises, she would have been a lot less worried. Silence made her jittery.

Sally withdrew NICOLE from her boot and flicked her open. “Blue light, please.” The computer obeyed, dimming her screen. Sally read the numbers and signaled for Bunnie to stop. Together, they took a few steps back. “There.” She looked up at the wall. “Here it is.”

Bunnie looked too. It was way too high for her comfort. Smooth surface, no footholds. “Great.”

Sally put NICOLE back into her boot. “How far you think you can extend? About halfway?”

“If that.”

“Give it a shot,” she said, pulling the grappling hook out of the duffle bag. With a gentle hand she eased Bunnie down on one knee and positioned herself on top of her shoulders. “Go.”

Bunnie extended her legs and indeed, they made it halfway up the crumbling concrete wall. Bunnie hadn’t even steadied herself before Sally twirled the grappling hook over her head. Another revolution and they both would have fallen hard onto the debris cluttered ground, but Sally let it fly and hit her mark. She pulled the rope tight and swung off of Bunnie’s shoulders, feet planted firmly against the wall. She climbed to the top.

Her legs contracted at ground level, Bunnie held her aching head. “This here spells bad cass all over…”

“Bad what?”

“Never mind,” she mumbled back. A loud pop then made her jump. Sally had fired Rotor’s bolt gun into the top of the wall and was busy unhooking the rope from the grapple. She tied the rope to the wall.

“This should hold your weight. I think.”

Bunnie tried it, pulling herself a couple of inches above the ground. The rope stretched audibly but it seemed strong enough. A moment later, the two of them were on the wall together, silenced once more by the view they had of the neighborhood.

Beneath them was a small strip of dead grass that ran along the length of the wall and ended where the river and the highway crossed paths, north from their position. The neighborhood was sunken in, like they had seen on the pictures and from the walkway, but the depth was finally given due credit; the neighborhood was closed in all right, on both sides by steep concrete inclines. Traversing them would be like climbing on the wall they were currently straddling.

On the opposite side of the neighborhood, there was the river, calm and serene, reflecting the pitch black night sky, the fireflies moving slowly over the water, the flickering stars of Robotropolis, and the buzzing skyway patrols. It was beautiful, but not nearly as beautiful as their find.

Sally swelled and motioned to the far away ground. “After you.”

Bunnie nodded in reverend silence, reeling in the rope and slinging it over. She kicked her metal legs over and slid down fast with her real hand, fiercely worried about damaging their only practical way out.

She waited as Sally retied the grapple to the rope. Sally slung the bag over her shoulder and rappelled to the ground.

They were in. They made it.

Then there was the sudden sound of a deep intake of air. Bunnie had gasped, the force behind it having all the fear of a piercing scream. She was staring at the grass.

Sally’s blood ran cold when she saw what she was looking at. She kept her analytical cool and kneeled down close.

Footprints.

Fresh, too, from the way the grass was sunken into the mud. Free of the oil and black dust that fell from the sky. Clearly defined. Animal.

Someone was still living here.

When they felt it was okay to breathe again, the setting had changed. The highways that had provided air cover suddenly closed them in. All around were corners for enemies to hide. And the inclines, they were the doors that shut and never opened. Once they went in, there was no way they were getting out.

Sally shrugged it off. Most of it. “Come on,” came out as a weak croak. Her shaking legs carried her to the edge. She swung the hook into the ground with all her might, like it would get rid of her sudden fear. With her boot, she pressed the grapple deep into the mud, and pulled it tight against the lip of the incline.

“It’ll hold,” Bunnie said, trying to be optimistic.

It held. Their rope showed no signs of snapping in two. They both arrived at the bottom with no slips or near misses. Their uncanny, well-timed luck held out.

They hesitated, staring at their exit snaking its long way up the incline. Sally could barely keep from hyperventilating. Adrenaline was flowing hard. She felt eyes on her.

“Should we leave it like this?” Bunnie had been thinking the same thing. What if whoever lives here comes by and moves it?

Sally shook her head. “No choice.” No guarantee that her throw would imbed it deep enough in the mud to pull them out. She pulled two things out of her boot. One was NICOLE, the other was Rotor’s bolt gun. She held it in front of her like she meant business, her finger resting gently on the trigger. She slipped an arm through the duffle bag’s shoulder strap.

NICOLE’s soft blue glow gave them courage. They were ready. They moved.

Where one end of the neighborhood was closed off by the intersecting of the river and the highway, the other simply ended in a wall of concrete, the bottom of which held a huge inlet to what appeared to be a tunnel but turned out to be a large storm drain. It was at this end where they started, coming out from between two buildings.

“Ah thought-”

“Me too,” Sally whispered back, but she never believed for a minute that this place had no plumbing system. Whoever built it obviously went to great lengths to hide it, and whoever did it had enough resources to manipulate old Mobian records.

Acorn… Daddy…

They made their way to it. NICOLE illuminated the pipe so they could see that it sloped down even steeper than the concrete incline. There was only about two feet of pipe acceptable to stand on. Sally leaned in, running NICOLE’s light along the walls.

“Look. Writing.”

Tiny black words scrawled in sloppy handwriting. They leaned close to read.

“The dogs are dead…”

“They come out at night…”

“Ride on the back of the present-”

“The future is food along the path-”

“The past gives chase, nipping at your heels.”

In spite of her intense fear, Bunnie had to stifle a laugh. “We belong to the night; the night belongs to him; I belong to him.”

“My father was a doctor but he saw no patients and he had no patience.” Sally cocked her head in confusion. “I never feel safe.”

“This place gets better and better, don’t it?”

“Aren’t you glad you came?” Sally leaned close to the words. “Well?”

Bunnie shrugged. “I got nothin.”

“Hmm.” Sally turned to face the ghostly quiet houses that stood on either side of the crumbling, dead-end road. “Time for the good stuff.”

Their first stop was a wooden general store that confirmed Sally’s earlier comment about the valley existing prior to the Stephan Acorn era, before the industrial revolution that standardized and modernized housing for the entire planet. This building’s construction was… ancient. Primitive. Downright dangerous. But it was safe enough to enter, thankfully.

Miller’s. It was on the highway side of the street, so there was no water damage from the river. However, the roof had many holes in it from the aerial invasion of the SWAT units, the day of the coup. Procedure was to crash right through the roof in order to take those who had fortified the doors. It did a lot of damage. Broken bottles and empty cans were scattered everywhere.

Modest accommodations for the neighborhood general store, Bunnie had to admit. Not large enough to have more than one shelf, and it ran along the walls of its interior, ending at the door and at the fireplace in the rear.

“Lookee here…” No, not a fireplace. “Mah stars, I recognize one of these!”

Sally came to Bunnie’s side, holding NICOLE out in front of her. “What is it?”

“This here’s an air chute! You’d get packages from the sky- well, ya did until the parcel flyers were turned into…”

Sally nodded, knowing where in Mobian history that sentence would take them. “Packages… that must have been how they kept the store stocked up with food and supplies.”

Bunnie leaned into the chute, looking up and getting a dusty view of the sky. She quieted a cough. “But how could this place stay hidden if they were gettin’ regular deliveries?”

“Seems our neighborhood dwellers were very well connected…” Sally made her way over to the cashier’s desk, gently opening drawers and shuffling through pages upon pages of old paper. “Financial records… nothing here that can help.” She walked out of the store, disappointed and eager to move on. Bunnie followed fast behind, not wanting to be left alone anywhere.

Sally took another look at the houses on the river side of the street and decided against going into them. She moved on to the place next door.

“What if…” Bunnie whispered real low, trying to keep up. “Well, ah mean, can we just… what if we barge in on their… whoever’s place?”

Sally cleared her throat, trying hard not to think about it. “They’ll get over it.”

Bunnie rolled her eyes but offered no other objections. They walked to the next building, which looked like an official’s headquarters but wasn’t labeled with any signs, like the general store had been. Its edifice was completely blank.

And unlike the general store, it was in much better shape. Sally thought that this was because of the lack of doors. It was the best looking of the block. It had even maintained much of its original color. A good feeling washed over her.

Darkness swallowed them as they entered, the fireflies of the night offering nothing to light their way. Sally held NICOLE out at arm’s length. “Lights, NICOLE.”

The computer complied, and…

“Wow.”

Only the outsides had been in good shape. The walls inside matched the exteriors of the rest of the houses, and in the center of the room was a huge pile of black ash that towered above them, halfway to the ceiling. A fire had raged out of control here.

Sally sighed deeply, lowering NICOLE and mumbling, “Blue light, NICOLE, please,” and slumping her shoulders. No documents. This expedition was turning into a colossal disappointment.

Bunnie wasn’t so quick to give up. She went over to the nearby wall and knocked gently on it, listening to the soft clang. “Metal… these here walls are made of metal... Strange, huh?”

“Not really.” She scraped a boot along the floor, kicking up a line of ash. “It’s a Strong Box. It’s built so you can quickly destroy sensitive materials inside without anybody-” Sally abruptly stopped talking. NICOLE was still pointed at the floor, lighting up a trail of ash that led outside.

“What?”

She ran outside, following the trail to the street.

“What?” Bunnie was at her side, looking with her but not wanting to hunt for the answers any longer. “What the devil is it? Talk to me.” She was pulled outside, all the way to the center of the street.

“SWATbots didn’t do this…” Sally said, scanning the houses, unsure of what she was searching for. There was only a feeling.

Once they noticed the house at the end of the street, it stuck out like a sore thumb. It was in great condition, even for being covered in soot.

Before Sally had a chance to move to it, a metal hand stopped her in her tracks. Bunnie was holding her firmly in place. “No,” she said, dead serious.

Sally took one icy look at what was holding her place and managed to break free with only her eyes. “Ya know, Bunnie, you can be a real drag sometimes.”

She knew that she was right in being cautious, but the statement still hurt Bunnie’s feelings something fierce. She looked at the ground and willed the night to chew her up and spit her out, away from here.

Sally’s glare softened a bit, but the house at the end of the street was still stubbornly reflected in her eyes. “I’ll apologize later.” She tried a smile. “Promise.”

It was a sullen nod, but at least it was a nod.

The house came closer and closer, and then, they were at the front door and all other problems were forgotten. Sally’s grip on the bolt gun was tighter than ever and Bunnie’s hands balled into fists.

Even in the dead of night, they could see the twin set of doors lying on the wooden entrance. Moonlight softly glowed over the mess of empty tin cans that were scattered across the floor. Moving in, they had to nudge some aside in order to step on firm ground. Sally swept NICOLE around. Furniture was knocked over and covered in thick layers of black soot, and wax. Spent candles. In the corner, next to a long dining room table, there was a large open box, full of them.

“Here.” Sally reached into her bag without looking and handed Bunnie a flashlight. “Keep it pointed away from the windows.”

Bunnie turned it on and briefly illuminated the staircase. Sally kept her eyes on it. Upstairs. It pulled at her, stronger and stronger, and then she was moving under a trance, up and up, quietly and not noticing that Bunnie was still looking around downstairs.

Thirteen steps up, the stairway opened into a narrow L-shaped hallway, allowing access to three bedrooms and probably a bathroom. Every door was closed.

Sally crossed her arms, shining light ahead and keeping the barrel of her weapon trained on what she could see. She stepped off the last step, praying the creaking floor would hold her weight. She watched the doors.

Ahead, she was able to ease open the first room’s door with a gentle nudge. She moved the light and the gun around, searching first for movement and second for any hint of useful information. She got neither.

It was the master bedroom, and it was frozen over by a thick layer of gray dust. Sally took one step in but didn’t feel right about going further. She brought her foot back out and looked at the footprint she made.

Next was the bathroom, and it was latched closed. Sally at first couldn’t decide which needed to be sacrificed in order to turn the handle: her light or her protection. Deciding that it wouldn’t matter how many bolts she fired if she couldn’t see anything, she holstered the gun into her bag. With her free hand, she turned the knob.

“Sally!”

Bunnie, whispering from downstairs. Sally let go of the knob. “God. Upstairs!”

The steps creaked under the weight of her footsteps. Bunnie saw Sally still standing at the door, pulling the gun out of her bag. “Thought we were doing this together.”

Sally handed to gun to her. “We are.” With that, she quickly opened the door to the room, shielding herself against the dust. She stepped aside for Bunnie to get a good angle. They held up their lights.

The primitive nature of the house was matched by the bedroom. No sink, no faucets, no signs of plumbing. Only a stove and a washtub. Places to hang clothes.

“They did get their water from the river.” That satisfied Sally. She backed up and moved on to the next room.

Unlike the master bedroom, this room looked recently inhabited. One desk, one chair, and one bed placed close to the open window in the rear. The desk was facing the door from the center of the room. Sally and Bunnie entered cautiously, stepping around the footprints on the floor.

Sally leaned down to them. “Different from the last ones we saw.”

“You mean there’s two of them?!” Bunnie whispered, frightened.

She looked at the desk. “Step back. Just in case.” Sally made a vague sort of motion to the door, approaching the drawers like they were wounded animals, ready to bite her if she got too close. She opened the bottom drawer.

Bunnie watched from the doorway, keeping the barrel trained on the desk as Sally flipped through the files lining the bottom of the drawer.

“Schematics. For the sewer system.” She held up a page. “Looks like the street sewer pipe narrows to five inches in diameter and goes all the way down to a horizontal main that meets with the river halfway into the city…” She was too busy marveling at the pictures to notice that Bunnie had come up and next to her and was opening the second drawer. She didn’t even noticed when she nudged her out of the way to look at more of them. “They’re out of order… Some of them are torn in half…”

“Lookee here.” Bunnie withdrew a large stack of hand-bound pages. “There’s handwriting on it.”

Scribbling. Identical to what they saw on the pipe.

Sally took a last look at the door and window. All was clear.

Only the creaking of the house and moaning of the wind.

If there was a clock ticking down for both of them, they at least had to find out the reason. What it was all about.

She pulled the chair away from the desk, its wheels squeaking like mice. “Go ahead, Bunnie. Read it out loud.”

Bunnie took a seat, pointing her light at the pages, and while the princess guarded the room, she began reading the first words.

**********

“Fifty pages or less to write about what makes you who you are.

You have even less ink to write it with.

Could you do it? Can you talk about yourself in that way? Can you reveal everything that you hate, everything that you’re embarrassed about, all those little things about yourself that you should be able to control but can’t?

Or would you waste time asking a lot of questions.

She started painting at an early age. She can remember the feel of the brush as it moved across the first surface she had ever changed, its color splashing a beautiful red curve over the back wall of her house. She had been promised, by her parents, a real canvas to paint on. It was too exciting to wait for. She had to let it loose. Just think, her poor parents’ house.

How easy she fell into it, and she never looked back. Hours would disappear under the sounds of the river at her back, the vehicles moving on the other side of the highway wall, the parcel postal carriers in the sky, and the shapes and colors that flew and fell under her brush. The sun moving above her. Sounds of those retrieving water from the river. Very tops of the buildings in the distance, as much as the horizon she could see. Birds flying in the sky.

Every time she would blink, there would be one second where the paints would look only like paints, the wall only like a wall, but it would instantly disappear and she could see what was in her head. She was seeing her dreams come true.

It made her feel good. Painting was all she wanted to do from then on. It made her forget about the only horizon visible to her, the tops of the skyscrapers far over the river. She would steal glances at them and her head would fill with questions. Like, why didn’t her house look like those?

She wondered where the sun went after it disappeared.

There were problems. She worried all the time if her parents loved her. She worried that she was too young to feel this way. It was getting worse. They took care of her, sure, gave her gifts, but she felt she was more of a nuisance or an obligation. She was growing less and less concerned about upsetting them, painting on the back of their house when she could have easily done it elsewhere in the neighborhood.

She was dying at an early age, stuck in a closed off world that constantly teased her with glimpses of what she was missing. The rest were already dead, moving around with no purpose or desire, no want or need to risk what they had here, not even to feel. They all wanted to stay put because it meant that they were safe.

But she wasn’t.

She wasn’t born for this.

It was important to the parents to make sure that she knew she was only safe if she allowed herself to die. That’s why they kept the fear in her. They made it dangerous to think. They vilified the outside world. They talked and talked. They told stories. She was told that the monsters came out at night.

This was around the same time she started painting. But she never painted what she was afraid of. She painted what she wanted to feel, and where she wanted to be.

She had to do it. If she painted forever, she would never want to leave the neighborhood, she wouldn’t put all of their lives in jeopardy, she wouldn’t ruin what generations had built, and she would soon become like the rest of them. She would accept her fate. She would die.

And it was working. She died more and more every day, with every finished painting. She filled canvas after canvas. This went on for a long time before he came to town.

He saved her.

He came to town that day and he saved her life.

She was in her backyard at the time, drawing her brush in a straight line across a new white slate, and she heard a noise, a sound like a zipper opening but a lot louder. She could see a line of smoke snaking into the sky, and she could smell it.

She came out to the center of the street and saw that others were doing the same. It took her a moment to find where the sound had come from, but she likes to think that she was the first one who saw him.

He was blue, with patches of white on his stomach, gloves covering his hands. He was about her age. He had spines lining his back. He was wearing red shoes which still had thin trails of smoke clinging to them, and he was blinding her with his grin.

He was smiling.

He was smiling at-

And then, he was surrounded. Closed in by the angry grownups, yelling at him, saying how dare he enter their neighborhood and penetrate their safe little environment. Screaming at him in unintelligible tongues.

She couldn’t see his face but knew that he was confused, and eventually, he was upset. He stayed longer than she thought he would. He must have tried to apologize.

She saw a total lack of fear in his eyes. She couldn’t stop looking.

The next moment he was zipping back where he came from, up the incline and straight over the freeway wall, a long line of fire marking his exit. She stood there, her jaw hanging loose, her eyes wide, watching the fire die out.

… He had arrived and he had left. And he made it look so easy.

The brush was still in her hands. Her canvas was still in her backyard. She forgot all about what she had been trying to paint.

She remembered all that she wasn’t supposed to.

She didn’t notice that the attention of her parents had shifted to her, but intentions stayed the same. The problem had returned because of him. The fire in his wake didn’t die out after all, but had been transferred to her. Their worst nightmares had come true. And she didn’t notice this, the grownups of the neighborhood forming plans and ways to force the desire out of her again. She just kept her eyes on the wall and smiled.

This is the story of the girl who never forgot about the boy. She is me.

I don’t know much for sure and I can recall even less. I’m sure that it wasn’t personal. What I mean is, a bunch of people who valued their privacy get together and dug a hole to hide in. No hatred in it. No ill intent. Took loads of guts and loads of resources, a lot of pull, some favors called in. A lot of restraint. Fear of strangers.

Restraint which I didn’t possess. Still don’t. Seems I didn’t inherit anything from my parents and I didn’t learn anything from the rest of those who lived here. But I can only see this because of the end result, and take a look at what kind of monster I have become.

Staying here can’t be much of a good thing if I can’t look at myself in the mirror and wonder who this stranger is.

The girl was woozy on the way back to her house, but her feeling was returning. The old feeling. She loved it. She loved feeling this way.

She was flying at a height that she knew was dangerous, and they wouldn’t stand for it. There were rules, after all. These rules were important. They’d never understand that even though it was difficult to breathe at those heights, the view was beautiful. She didn’t hear them in the same way they weren’t hearing her. They saw her entertaining ideas of leaving, which was much worse than liking a boy from the outside.

She really had been thinking about leaving. She thought about running up the incline and clawing at the walls to the other side, but that dream ended with her tumbling back down to the bottom and breaking something vital.

She came back to her room and watched herself in her vanity mirror. She was wearing a grin that was cold and disconnected from the rest of her, but she had seen one recently that had been more sincere.

Where once the paintings were warm they were now cold. Her brush wouldn’t fit between her fingers. Blank canvasses frightened her.

That numbness soon went away. Her fingers itched for her brush a mere hours later. She wanted to paint him and only him. She resisted, staring blankly ahead as her parents came in and scolded her for whatever and whatever. She still didn’t paint. She didn’t paint at all.

All she wanted to do was leave. And find him.

She decided to wait. Fall asleep, to see if the feeling remained.

It turned out to be a mistake.

Had I known, I would have told my parents that I loved them. Something like that. Who knows anymore what I would have done.

She had a dream that night. She can’t remember what it was about, but it was probably about him.

At some point, she felt her father’s hands picking her up out of bed and carrying her across the house, and it wasn’t a dream.

Upstairs. Into the attic.

Her father put her on the floor as she was beginning to wake up, and he wrapped a blanket around her. She heard him say something that sounded like “Drink,” and her response was cut off by the slamming of the door.

Over the sounds of her own heavy breathing, she heard glass breaking. Footsteps hitting the street. Cars screeching around on the freeway. Yelling. Screaming.

Screaming.

She wrapped the blanket tighter around herself, only daring to look once outside of it. She was suddenly very scared, and very awake. Light still made its way into the attic and she could see what her father had left her.

A glass of milk.

Drink.

She heard louder screaming. And she heard a loud rumbling that took them all away.

She picked up the glass and drank. She closed tight around herself and shivered. The attic grew dark, her head grew heavy, her eyes shut.

They were all gone.

She woke up and they were all gone.

She came downstairs to the top floor, carefully, hearing the sounds of every step radiate outwards, hitting no ears. She could still hear the river, but she couldn’t hear the cars from the freeway. The house… didn’t breathe like it used to. Everything was getting murky, like it was dusk. She didn’t know how long she had slept.

She opened the front door and a giant blade was cutting across the sky, spilling black blood in an outward spiral that reached far over her house and edged over the wall where the sun usually set. The sun was in the sky now, blinking at her beneath the waves, choking.

She stood on her porch and watched it die out.

It was night. It would stay that way.

Here’s where I can’t remember what happened next. I don’t think the events are too important, but all the same I’d like to have them; clearer memories of what happened before the incident, more time spent with my mom and dad or the kids my age. More recent years shove them out of the way, demanding to be recognized, like they’re giving me clues to a puzzle I’m supposed to put together. They get stronger and stronger. They’re frustrated.

Her first instinct now that she was alone, was to eat. She knew where to get food.

Her father’s store at the end of the block. There was food there that she didn’t have to cook. She numbly stepped around the carnage in the streets, trying to ignore the howling in the air and the rest of her view of the city.

She picked a box of cereal off one of the shelves. She felt strange about taking her father’s food without asking, but the hunger was too strong. She munched hungrily, inhaling every last bite from the box, all the while staring at the unoccupied cashier counter, and what was on the wall behind it, as it got darker. Bottles. Little plastic bottles of pills that she wasn’t allowed to touch, not even allowed to ask about.

Finally, she began to wonder what happened to everyone.

She existed the following days doing what her body needed, eating when she was hungry and sleeping when she was tired. Getting water was tougher, since she had to figure out how to work the bucket lines that ran from the attic of her house to the river. Luckily, it wasn’t too hard.

All the while she thought about why they were all gone, and why the sun never came out and what the skyscrapers that she used to be able to see where mysteriously gone. Why the freeway was quiet. What those sounds were in the sky.

Stories she was told came to mind. Monsters only came out at night, and night was here all the time now. She even tried to stay awake as long as possible to catch the sun coming out again, waking up with a start every day to catch it in the act, but it never worked. The sun was gone forever, the black blood covering the blue like a cold blanket.

If this was night, where were the monsters?

They must have missed her when they came to take the neighborhood. Her father knew what they were and that was why he hid her. That was why this place was built, in case they came. And they did.

So where were they now?

Up came the desire to learn, to find out why this happened. She went to the hall where the records were kept.

It took a lot of figuring out. A lot of supposing. A lot of theory. A lot of reading.

And a lot of digging.

That desire only lasted for so long, however. She noticed after a time that she wasn’t really finding out what she wanted to know. No mention of any monsters. Nothing of the neighborhood.

She hadn’t lost track of time yet. It was as present as ever. Only two weeks since they were taken. Two very lousy weeks. She didn’t think she would last at this if she could feel every single moment. She still had trouble sleeping at night, and switched constantly between shutting out the noise and letting it in. She had nightmares. Rarely dreams.

See, where I could previously blame others for my problems, everything that has gone wrong for the entire time I have been here has been my fault. I was thrown into responsibility for my own actions without any preparation or forewarning. At least the ideas were clear.

Clearer than who I’m looking at now.

Someone had to have built this place. Every brick, every stone, every nail was someone’s moment in time, a moment proven by the act of creation that will never grow old and will never die, even if no one sees it or appreciates it.

Do the strong protect the weak or do they protect themselves at the expense of the weak? Do they live for the weak? Themselves?

What do I live for?

Who?

More questions. More wasted time.

She didn’t find these answers in the hall. She came out of the building, shattered.

Their one street lamp was flickering, about to go out. She watched it, the way her hands moved between the flashes; she moved my fingers quick, faster and faster until movement was a series of still pictures. Paintings. She moved with the light until it stopped.

She had to resort to candles as a source of light. Her last source. She gathered all of them from the store and brought them to her house, lighting one a day and watching the flame. She spilled wax on the furniture, hoping her mom or her dad would come out and scold her.

New elements of her home emerged and grew terrifying and oppressive, bits of ownership she had never noticed before but in their absence they took on a life of their own. They towered over her and grew in the candle light.

Days passed before she took back control, first with a small dish full of glass shards. Purely decorative. She studied it, trying to understand not only why it was being so mean, but why it was there. What possessed her mother or father to put a bunch of broken glass in a see-through dish and show it off on the dining room table.

She tipped it off of its stand and watched it fall. Glass spilled everywhere.

The only logical thing to do after that was to pick it all back up and tip it over again, again and again, gripping the shards harder and harder every time. She did it until there were no more pieces. The dish itself still hadn’t broken.

She hated the cuts and she enjoyed them. Time passed faster. She bled.

She broke every piece of glass in her house, even the windows, hoping that walking across the pieces would keep her as numb as the objects that towered all around her. She passed the time. That’s what she did, because every second was an audible tick that turned her deaf and reminded her where she was, and that she couldn’t leave.

That I didn’t want to.

Freedom. Freedom through slavery, but freedom. So she waited for them to come for her. She wanted them to.

They didn’t. They never came.

It didn’t make any sense why they would leave her here.

Him. I waited for him, too. She did.

Time crawled. There was too much of it and it was too painful.

She thought about him actually showing up and seeing what she looked like. All she had to do was be there. He had to actually know how to use himself, he had to be skillful, he had to use his body. All she had to be was thin and small, and it would work for him. All she had to do was be there.

I like what you do for me. But you might as well be a robot.

She suddenly felt sick.

There was the slow realization that he was the reason that she wanted to stay and the reason that he was being tortured. Time was slow in bringing down the hammer. She suddenly wanted desperately to forget all about him. She wished she had never seen him.

This would be easier without him.

But how could she forget? She remembered every detail of the day that he came. It would be impossible to pretend that it never happened.

Bile rose in her throat. She ran out of her house, feet stomping hard on the broken glass, blood trailing behind her in a line that ran all of the way to the general store.

The pills. The pills would make her happy. It made them happy. At least they looked it. Up until now, she had been afraid to try it. Now, the bottles stared at her and her bleeding feet and sick stomach and offered their solution.

She opened a bottle and put her lips to it, ignoring the smell and kissing him goodbye.

Her throat burned but the bad taste was gone. Beautiful. Her motions were getting fluid. She was acting like herself, for once. She loved this feeling. She made every motion a performance to an unseen audience, like they really were watching and she wasn’t supposed to know. She kept drinking the stuff and soon she couldn’t feel anything.

You knew that this would hurt.

She was floating and she kept adding ballast to the balloon, sinking deeper and deeper, down to her base emotions. Instincts.

I still don’t understand. The boy. I didn’t understand about the boy. What did I want to do to him, exactly? How did I want to touch him? What did I want him to do to me and did I really want that to happen? Mysteries emerged and yet everything still made sense. This urge to touch one another, it made sense. It works. It should work.

I get images of contact from him, some images of his lips kissing mine, his hands moving over me as my hands move over him, but they’re frightened. And the images stop there. They don’t continue even though reality should let them continue. I don’t know what is supposed to happen after that.

What will they think?

What would he think?

It started with the dream, this all started with the night I dreamt about him. What was it, please, what was it about? There, the reality must have happened. I must have known what to do.

That’s why they all left. They knew what I was thinking and they were all disgusted by how wrong I was, but instead of telling me what was right, they left, please don’t, they left her all alone by herself and expected her to learn without them.

I can see the lights even after I close my eyes and try to sleep. The red lights I see at night aren’t fireflies. They’re the eyes of everyone I knew, people that used to live here. They remember. If I can figure it out, I will meet them before they meet me. All will be well, all will be well.

A fierce sense of homesickness that dissolves her, eats away at me, and I never even left.

They left me.

Honestly, I never imagined it would hurt this much.

I can’t go back. There isn’t a place where I can regain that safety, that warmth of being somewhere where no one can hurt you. Maybe that’s what they were trying to do with this place. Build a crib and wall it in. Keep everyone safe.

God.

She thought about God.

She thought about creation. If what she wanted to do had worked other places, then God would be the best example. She wanted to create, and keep creating, with a constant flow of original ideas as her tools and a never-ending satisfaction at the results. This was her favorite path to happiness that she had thought of, and the road kept ending at God. The thought of God as a concept.

He mustn’t feel, she thought. God is not an emotional concept. At most, he was a mortal being who transcended to immortality because he kept creating out of his own need and he never listened to the feedback.

She thought in order to do this, she must change. Her method couldn’t take too long, either. It had to be swift.

Numb the pain, temporarily, so that when the feeling did return, it would be utterly horrified at the mess it had made of itself. Ashamed, it would leave.

From there, she could begin creating. She could throw out the tools of the old world and make her own, use her own ideas, and concentrate on only herself. That’s survival -- finally. Transcendence. She would have no trouble seeing every perspective, all perspectives, all unique and untraveled paths, because paths untraveled by her would be paths never traveled by anyone.

She would become the center of the universe.

She got started soon thereafter. She kept drinking.

Time was forgotten.

Her own limbs, even without the weight of the furniture, were tough to carry. She had an idea of what she was doing but she wasn’t sure if she could go through with it. That’s why she kept the bottle close.

The neighborhood was hers now. So it had to feel like that way, wholly and completely. It couldn’t with remnants of the past still here. Furniture from the other houses. Clothes.

She kept at it until every house was empty, except for her own. She couldn’t bring herself to burn anything in there, however long she held her brain underwater. Those would never be hers.

Empty food cans and strings of wax surrounded her like plants in a jungle of her own creation. She had dragged everything to the records hall. She made a huge pile in the open space of the building, near the door. She ignited match after match until it caught fire.

They had to see this. This had to make them come.

She returned home and waited, sobering up and wondering why they weren’t coming and why she wasn’t feeling any better.

She didn’t know what was missing.

You’re wasting time.

Sorry. I was wondering about the search for firm ground, why that was the goal and the greatest achievement. Serene waters on a calm ocean. But I was only seeing history through the end result, the records in the main office. All of those forbidden documents. Unsure why they were forbidden. They must have known that I would put the pieces together incorrectly.

History is written by the winners, and the winners are the ones who let someone else do all of the hard work.

They’re the ones I’m curious about. The subjects, not the writers.

Here, she realized what was keeping her prisoner.

This is where she took all of her paintings, all of her pain, and she threw them into the burning pile. She didn’t stay to watch them burn.

This was her chance to live her life on her own terms, without any outside forces shoving her in different directions, anybody telling her what to do. She had a readily available food source, an easily accessible source of water, plenty of light, no predators. No seasons, so she needed no extra clothes or blankets. No danger of staying too long out in the sun.

There was only time. Time and guilt. Imagination. Fear riding the nightmare, glaring at her back, breathing down her neck.

It moved on and on…

you have to suffer sometimes
and forget that you’re
alive

Eventually, the pills ran out.

And still, she lived for a long time. She could live a lot longer. She still had lots of food, and while the water had turned foul, it still hadn’t killed her. She wanted to keep on going. She wanted to live as long as possible. Really, she wanted to die here.

Sometimes, it would rain. A drop would fall on her, and she’d feel where it landed, looking at the black drop on her fingers and laughing at the bleeding sky. She’d hear the sounds, sometimes seeing them flying around like insects in the distance, in the dead city. She’d laugh at that too. This was her home. This is all she would ever know.

Then, he came back.

He saved her again.

It came rushing painfully back, blood shoving its way rudely into dead veins. Waking up from the dream, she suddenly wished that she didn’t live in this world, that this was the nightmare and that she was still with him in the dream.

It wasn’t true and she could never make it true.

And the dream was nothing. Less than nothing. She saw him in a strange kind of straw hut, curled up on a homemade mattress, sound asleep. He wasn’t facing me. I only saw his back. But he looked older. As old as I am.

Lightning strike.

There had been a small desire to leave, but was resigned to the fact that I couldn’t. The pain of existing without the guts to free myself. I need others. It’s pathetic, but it is as inescapable as where I am. This valley.

We all need a reason to put our life’s work into something.

It’s him. He is the reason.

I have to believe that his is still alive. He is. I know it. He left before they were taken. He is.

It’s time to leave.

If I lived this, how could I write about it, right? There’s a compulsion to record history and I don’t understand what use it is, but I’m doing it. I did it. I only wonder who it is I’m working for.

It isn’t an achievement unless I acknowledge it in some way that will help me remember, some way that will live on after I’m gone. The same as the bricks and the nails. More than just imagining what our kids would look like.

Going outside had meant certain doom back then, too. It will be harder to survive, more difficult to making choices that didn’t involve compromises.

The thing was, though, that she wasn’t scared of the outside, not really. She was scared of where she was. Eyes watched her at night.

Whatever caused this, it is time to meet it. Face the devil. Try and understand the source of the fear. Why this happened.

Become the eyes. Find the answers.

I don’t know if it’s all supposed to come back to him or not. If it all comes down to some boy I thought was cute or if I somehow knew that he was going to save me with one glance.

Am I weak? It’s up to whoever finds this.

I only wish I knew his name…-”

**********

Bunnie choked as she read the final words, the abrupt end of the page.

“The rest of it is torn out.”

Sally stared at the binder in Bunnie’s hands, her eyes gleaming in the dark. She didn’t have to order her to put it back in the drawer, and probably not even say “We’re leaving,” but she said it to hear her own voice again, if it still sounded like hers. They left the room, the house, the neighborhood quickly and quietly, feeling like extremely unwelcome intruders.

They made their way back to the freeway wall, glancing once more at the footprints, then the neighborhood, and feeling like it was an inappropriate gesture, they turned away, ashamed.

**********

“I love you, if it is you who finds these words. This is for you.

All of it. Every word.

After she’s done writing this, she’ll go to the hill and she won’t stop climbing until she reaches the top. And she’ll keep going. The way you came.

I’ll make it. I know I will.

I hope you’ll find my remains.

And this will all be a dream you can’t remember.”

Robotnik finished reading the rest of the page, the torn piece of paper resting lightly in his metallic palm. “It’s touching, it really is. Where did you find this work of fiction?”

“… By the highway.”

“I suppose it doesn’t matter, nor does it matter where the rest of it is.” He sighed deeply. “And you want to know why.”

“Yes.”

“You want a reason.”

“Yes. I do.”

“… I can’t give you one, hedgehog, because there isn’t one. Not one I can explain and not one you would understand. There’s nothing I can say that will stop you from fighting and nothing you can do to-”

“Stop you,” he finished for him, feeling himself sinking. “I get it.”

Robotnik felt the weight of the paper in his hands, the weight of the memory in his mind. “I do remember her. She asked a lot of questions. She came to me out of her own volition, like you’re doing now, hedgehog, only she didn’t do it out of some obligation to her fellow rodent or her long gone home, or even to shove a load spite at me in order to justify those long years of suffering and loneliness. It was for herself. She had seen the worst already and, sure, wanted to regain her lost childhood, but a larger part of her knew it was hopeless, and fully accepted it. She wasn’t afraid. If she felt anything, it was curiosity. I daresay that she was the smartest Mobian I had ever met.” He leaned back. “So of course I Roboticized her.”

“Surprised you remember her,” Sonic said through clenched teeth.

“I remember all of them, hedgehog.”

Sonic gathered his backpack into his arms and moved to leave. “That’s all I wanted to know.”

“Oh come now! Did you really expect anything less of me?”

“I expected more.”

“This is what I do. This is what I live for.”

“Killing us?!”

“I never kill any of you. I merely use you to further my own ambitions and I do it in a way that is painless and completely reversible. I don’t lie to myself. I came to terms with the consequences long ago. I will do what I want at any cost, at any price, because it is worth it.”

“And at any cost, at any price, we will fight back.”

Robotnik smiled big. “Harsh words.”

Sonic smiled back. “They’re yours.”

“… This is the first time we have agreed on anything, Sonic.” Robotnik noticed that he still held the paper in his hands. He tossed it back to Sonic, who let it flutter to his lap. He stood to his feet and turned away. “Get out of here. Now.”

In spite of how this had gone, Sonic was clear headed enough to know that hesitating would be a bad idea. He was out the door and out of sight before Robotnik’s fist had fully clenched.

Snively reentered moments later, frantic at seeing the hedgehog race off into the forest. “Should the SWATbots pursue, sir?”

“NO!” Robotnik slammed his fist hard into the console, trying to quiet the pain. It was the first time it had hurt in years.

**********

Back in Knothole, Bunnie and Sally couldn’t form the words that would accurately describe how they were feeling. It was too surreal, and they couldn’t decide if it was a good dream or a bad one.

“I’ll consider it,” Sally mumbled in response to a question that wasn’t asked. Bunnie was already going back to her hut.

Sally was silently coming to terms with the sleep she wasn’t going to have for a long time. On the way to her bed, she saw Sonic returning from wherever he had been, looking downtrodden and rejected. She approached carefully.

She couldn’t say anything to him. The look in his eyes was too much. Whatever she was trying to say, he had already heard. Instead, she leaned forward and pressed her lips to his cold mouth.

“What was that for?” was his only response.

She felt extremely foolish. “Don’t know. Either it was for you or for me.”

He nodded, still far away from where he stood.

She watched him leave, that strange look on his face lingering in her mind, one that meant something completely different to him, and that she would never find out what that meaning was.