Sonadow - The Island

9: The hierarchy of hedgehogs

I know, the chapter's a little shorter than the last, but the next one will come soon. Enjoy! Oh, and hope you like the new cover. Pictures don't belong to me, but I put them together like this myself.

Knuckles' head pounded, when he woke up again. He opened his eyes and tried to find out, where he was and why he felt, as if he had been run over by a train.

His arms were in a strange position, he was literally hugging himself. He also felt warm in his upper region. He couldn't move his arms, so he had to lean on his forehead on the cold floor and then crawl on his knees before lifting his upper body to sit straight. He looked down and saw, that he was wearing a straitjacket.

He looked around the dimly lit room, the only light coming from a tiny window far above him. The small room, that seemed more high, than anything else, was barren, without any furniture. The walls and the floor were strangely soft, as if they were out of cushions. It took him a moment to realize, that he wasn't alone. Tails and Amy, also in those uncomfortable straitjackets, sat next to him. The fox even had one of those jackets around his two tails.

"Looks, like sleeping beauty finally woke up.," a foreign voice suddenly said. His head quickly turned around and he discovered two more beings with them in the room. The first was a bat with fur of a very light shade of gray, it was most likely white. Her big ears were drooped and it seemed, like her fur was dirty and unkempt. Next to her sat a cat with light gray fur. Some kind of jewel was embedded in her forehead and her eyes were gleaming in a light green shade in the darkness. They both also wore those jackets.

"Who are you? What is this place?," he asked with a sharp voice. "This are Blaze the Cat and Rouge the Bat. They have looked for their hedgehog friends here, but ended up getting knocked out and locked up, like us.," Tails explained. Obviously, he and Amy had been awake for some time now and had talked with the two girls, that seemed both around the guardian's age.

"Is this true?," Knuckles asked. The two girls nodded. "Yes. I lived with my adopted hedgehog brother Silver on the streets. He was sick, since I knew him and I had to steal and earn money every day to afford his medicine. About a year ago, I went off once more, but when I came back, he was gone. He was too weak to move, he must've been kidnapped. I thought about this uke institute I had heard of and went to it, but it took me months to find it. When I finally got there and asked for Silver, I suddenly felt a sting in my neck and fell asleep. I woke up here.," Blaze explained.

She looked at Rouge to signal her to tell her story, too. "I work for GUN, my partner is a hedgehog named Shadow. We went a few months ago to arrest a criminal, but as the area was big, we split. He didn't return, unlike what we had agreed to do before, so I searched and found the body of the criminal we were supposed to arrest – with some of Shadow's quills in his hand. GUN searches for Shadow now because of murder, but I know he hasn't done it. He wouldn't do that. I went to this place, when I ran out of options of where he could be – and ended up like Blaze."

"If you work for GUN – won't they search for you, when you're missing for months?," Tails asked. Rouge snorted. "Yeah, right. If the Commander, my boss, would have a say in how the whole world should work, we would all be held in cages as exotic pets.," she growled.

Knuckles, finally clear in his head again, tried to break the straitjacket, but he found, that it was impossible. "Forget it, they're too strong.," Blaze said. "Now what? What are they gonna do to us?" "Nothing. They just keep us here.," Blaze explained. "At least they feed us...some strange concoction they call food." Rouge shrugged her shoulders. They both seemed pretty hopeless. But Knuckles refused to give up and started to rack his brain for a solution. He needed to get out of here and save Sonic!