"I....I...didn't...." Back in the present, Sonic was bent over the toilet, but not matter how much he wrenched, his empty stomach wouldn't produce anything. He trembled uncontrollably, factoring in how realistic everything was, but trying to deny it. "It....w-wasn't real....it couldn't have been...." Despite how many times he repeated these words, he could still feel it, taste it. The sensations, the craving for more, and the multiple releases. He saw vividly the white frame suspended before him while the cries for him to stop rang in his ears. The blue hedgehog started struggling to breathe as the scene replayed in his mind over and over, relentlessly compounding in detail with each loop as it threatened to drive him insane. "NO!!! I WOULDN'T!!!" Sonic screamed subconsciously while only gasps exited his lips. The echo of boots arrived behind him, crushing him with the weight of absolute terror. Shakely, he glimpsed around to see Infinite standing at the door, glaring down at him with his single burning eye while the other remained blackened out behind his rigged wall of metal. Since they had gotten close, the jackal always removed his mask around Sonic, sharing his face with his pet was a symbol of affection and a level of trust, something he wouldn't do with anyone else. Now, his master stood frighteningly silent with his face covered, making it impossible for the feeble hero to read him. The Phantom Ruby's red glow intensified the dread welling up within Sonic as the silence became unbearable. "Infinite..." he stammered as he pivoted on his knees, begging for salvation, "...pl-please...tell me it wasn't real." The jackal remained quiet, his stare feeling like a saw blade cutting into the former hero's stomach. Without a word, he took a single step to the side in order for a small robot to enter the bathroom. The harmless machine extended its arms to Sonic and assisted him in standing. After ejecting a small platform from its chest for him to sit on, the automonous wheelchair motored out with the forboding jackal leading the way. Sonic eyes were focused on his master's back, where those flowing white locks of hair swayed over his perfectly sculpted frame. How he yearned to reach out for him! How he wanted to be held in those tight arms, to feel his warmth surrounding him. The lack of contact and communication pained him more than he could bear as Sonic folded his arms tightly around himself. He kept thinking about those lingering memories he had with Silver that were far more realistic than any dream, "Was he really on the Death Egg? Did I....with him?" he contemplated while staring at his master, realizing if it were true, then his master must hate him more than anything! They continued onward until they reached another one of Eggman's labs, this one being slightly different than the others in a manner of what equipment was housed, but one that was still familiar to the broken hero as he had been experimented on here as well. He cowered inward and shuttered as he passed by the devices that he recalled were instruments of torture that the Doctor deemed were tools of science. "AH!!! THERE HE IS!!!!" Eggman stated rather exuberantly as he seemed oddly delighted to see Sonic in the flesh, "what was the blue rat's reaction this time?" "The same as the last," Infinite responded coldly, catching the hedgehog off-guard. His voice sounded so different, so melancholic and stern at the same time. In all their time together, Sonic never heard him speak in such a tone and it was more worrisome than frightening to him. "Well that answers one question, at least!" the mad scientist spouted as he turned to his computer, his statement seemingly disturbing the jackal further, "now, I just a little more data....hmm...yes...I need the two vermin to engage again while I monitor the exchange, this time without the replica's influence." Infinite clenched his fists, the anger burning within him practically fuming an invisible vapor. Eggman could tell he was rubbing the mercenary the wrong way, but he nevertheless remained blunt in his reasoning, "Their first encounter was a fluke, albeit perfectly timed. The rodent would be dead by now otherwise." The flashing lights on the screen, the mysterious conversations between his master and his lifelong enemy, and the confusion that gripped his mind while his body felt out of place all stacked into a mountain-high tower of anxiety that inevitably came crashing down on a whim. "WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?!" Sonic shouted, interrupting the Doctor as he was growing irritated at being spoke of like he wasn't in the room. A sudden pain gripped his insides, making him wence and clench himself tighter until his wounds began to throb, "WHAT'S---HAPPENING TO ME?!" With a few keystrokes, the evil one brought up a diagram on the main screen that depicted every single piece of Sonic's anatomy. His muscular, skeletal, and circulatory systems, his DNA structure, blood panel, cognitive functions, his unique energy signature, EVERYTHING was displayed before them. There wasn't a single aspect of his nemesis that Eggman hadn't figured out, and with these latest tests, he had discovered even more. In a cavalier sitting, the doctor twiddled his fingers as he declared with a hint of glee, "You're kicking the bucket, hedgehog. Every piece of you is degenerating. Eventually your organs will shut down and you'll be out of my hair for good." Despite the directness of Eggman's harsh truths, the fallen hero refused to believe it and steadied himself against the man he's fought his entire life with what bit of energy and sass he could muster to fight back. This made him feel that at least some part of him hasn't given up, "Says you, Baldy McNosehair," Sonic quipped through the cramping agony, "you've never been able to get rid of me before....what makes you think you can now?" The doctor hopped out of his seat and swaggered over to him, towering above the hedgehog with a sadistic smile, "The results are incontrovertible--you're dying, rodent. Expiring. Extinguishing. Passing away. Heading to that rainbow bridge. Whatever you call it, you can't escape it. The long awaited end is finally near, Sonic. And growing closer day by day. You can't lie to yourself any longer. I know you can feel it." The blue blur had a hard time swallowing Eggman's taunting way of expelling facts, but he knew he was right. He felt something was seriously wrong with him and that it was only getting worse. He had encountered death before in his past adventures, but no matter what he faced, he was able to survive it. However, even the most brutally agonizing experiences of his life didn't compare to this. It was slow. Painful. Debilitating. There was nothing he could do to fight it. Sure, he always knew his life wouldn't go on forever, which is why he thrived on living for the day. However, all this time in confinement made him reevaluate his look on life. He changed. Everything changed. At first, he was just trying to survive one day at a time, waiting for rescue. Then, his hope gave out and something beautiful came out of this nightmare. Sonic looked to his master who was staring at the screen of data. He looked so lost, distant. Infinite broke him, he knew that. He wasn't ignorant to the torture he was put through and he wasn't blind to its purpose either. The jackal wanted him and Sonic was too stubborn to see it. It took a lot for them to get to this point, but they found happiness in their dynamic. Was it what the hedgehog imagined for himself? Absolutely not, but it was something he didn't want to give up. He couldn't leave him. He couldn't die. In sheer desperation and in the most disheartened tone, Sonic finally uttered to Eggman, "Help me," he asked while swallowing his last shred of pride, "please....don't let me die." The Doctor raised an eyebrow. He knew Infinite's methods of conditioning were effective in weakening the great hero's arrogance, and there had been a significant changes to his personality, but never in a million years did he expect his lifelong enemy, the jackal's trull to beg for his life. The patheticness of it all was as sweet as it was pitiful. "This is the third time we're having this conversation and yet this is the FIRST time you've pleaded for help," he finally explained. Sonic looked up confused, "Third time?" As Eggman pointed at the monitor, multiple images came up that displayed the tests they had conducted since the initial discovery of Sonic's illness. Each experiment to find the cause led to fruitless results, while the different attempts to cure him had vastly variable effects. The first natural solution was to supplement his unique energy with power from a chaos drive. Being a chaos wielder whom is so attuned with the emeralds, it deemed feasible that his body would adapt what was needed. However, things didn't work out. "You flatlined in this round," the doctor reported as he brought video footage of the experiment up, "whatever is in your body, it's completely the opposite of chaos energy, so this method only sped up the degeneration." Sonic watched in horror at the video where Infinite desperately shook his lifeless frame, the panic in his movements, even from the obscure camera angle, being inarguably evident. Sonic almost died, and the thought of that alone shocked him, but seeing his master afraid and desperate that he did left a lasting imprint on his heart. For the second trial, Eggman attempted to use the life energy regularly produced from small animals that he often resorted to power his badniks as a solution. This test proved to be both uneventful and unsuccessful as all it did was tire out a flock of flickies without having any positive or negative affects on Sonic whatsoever. "It was a shot in the dark, but that's science," the maniacal genius commented as he flipped pass this page briskly out of disinterest. "NOW FOR THE GROUNDBREAKER!" he shouted with exhuberance as he opened the file which detailed infusing energy from a Phantom Ruby replica into the blue hedgehog, "Here's where things get INTERESTING!" He quickly panned up the full view of how injected with a cocktail made from the liquid that housed the duplicates of the infamous gem. "Admittedly, I wasn't prepared for your response," Eggman added as Sonic went absolutely BALLISTIC once the chemicals were introduced to his system! Ignoring his injuries, he tore through his restraints and attacked the doctor before disappearing into the base. "Infinite was currently on assignment on Earth, and good thing too. Seeing your horny body laying in a puddle of reproductive juices was sickening enough without having to watch you tear that white rodent a new one in person." Sonic was absolutely horrified as his eyes were glued to the screen, where he witnessed himself raping Silver. Everything he watched, he relived. The smell of his friend's fur as he rubbed his face against his body. The taste of his equipment in his mouth and the heat of his anus as he penetrated him. The screams were louder on the video than the blue blur could remember, but not any less traumatizing. He began to tremble as his heart raced and it became harder and harder to breathe once again. "N-NO! THAT WASN'T ME!!! I WOULDN'T DO THAT!!!" He managed to belt out in-between labored breaths as he tried desperately to control the rising panic that was raging like a wildfire within him. "Ho-Ho-Ho! BUT YOU DID!!! You had such hard intercourse with that vermin that it took days for his ass to heal! Do you treat all your 'friends' that way?" Eggman gloated while zooming in on Silver's pained flushed face as the tears stained his blindfold while he writhed helplessly. This twisted the knife in Sonic as he began developing tears of his own that proceeded to stream down his cheeks. The truth was in front of him. He did this. The unforgiveable act had been done to him so many times, he inflicted on another. He had to accept it, but accepting it was worse than dying. Infinite glanced at his pet, watching as he mentally and emotionally crumble. Stepping forward, he swiped the screen for the next set of data to appear, effectively stealing the doctor's thunder as he grumbled at having his fun ending too soon. "Grrr, fine. After I discovered you in the cell block, I had you taken for medical treatment. Oddly enough, there was a remarkable improvement in your vitals despite the clear loss of memory, hence, the first time we had our little conversation. I deduced that perhaps further exposure to the Phantom Ruby was required in order to stabilize your condition." The screen then displayed Sonic being shackled to a chair with strange bindings as nodes and wires were hooked onto him. The blue hedgehog shuddered as he couldn't remember what happened next but knew from the looks of it what transpired. The waves of pulsing red and black electricity into his body had him screaming in agony, convulsing wildly, foaming at the mouth, and falling limp seconds into the test. This was NOT the anticipated outcome. Infinite wasted no time in destroying the machine rather than wait for the kill-switch to do its duty. "You were teetering on the edge here," the evil genius pointed out, "luckily, Infinite was able to siphon the energy from your body into his own Phantom Ruby. After another round of care, we had the second replay of this conversation, and you know how much I hate to repeat myself. Strangely though, when you awoke, all you kept asking about was if that white rodent was real or not." The jackal folded his arms in an effort to appear indifferent to this discussion, but history and facts can't be changed, nor can his feelings for his pet. In fighting so hard to save Sonic for him to ask the whereabouts of another whom he had been intimate with burned like a hot blade in his chest. That day, the mercenary returned to wearing his mask at all times as he couldn't bear to face his beloved pet otherwise. They had grown so close, he knew he wouldn't be able to hide his sadness from him. Yet here, Sonic could sense it. The bitterness of betrayal was a taste that he was not familiar with for he never betrayed his friends' trust, much less his master's. The fallen hero was at a loss for words as he stared at Infinite's back, knowing that the invisible knife there was his doing. "You seemed to deteriorate at a much faster pace from there and slipped into a coma after you started bleeding internally," the rounded scientist spouted, interrupting everyone's thoughts. "As your doting physician, I orchestrated a blood transfusion from your time traveling whore and came across an astounding discovery! CHRONOTONS! That white rodent's blood is full of them! More than likely his biology has been altered from all those trips across centuries. Either way, that brought you back from dying--AGAIN, and it provided me the perfect table to research." Bringing up one more page on the screen, he demonstrated how Sonic's blood, when exposed to the energy of the Phantom Ruby, immediately became dark, whereas his blood mixed with that of Silver's became a healthier, brighter shade of red. "The Phantom Ruby is a gem of unimagineable power," lectured Eggman, whom returned to his seat once more, "I have unlocked many of its secrets, and with my brilliance, I constructed replicas that can match the wavelength of its energy. With these new findings it stands to reason I can fabricate some method of utilizing that naive pest to cure this blue pin-cushion before he starts pushing up daisies. HOWEVER, I must verify that doing so would indeed yield such results rather than be a colossal waste of time." Sonic looked on with both worry and confusion, "WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?!" he shouted as he couldn't stomach this any longer. The complex suggestions mixed with his own ignorance of the situation and the guilt he still felt for hurting Silver and betraying Infinite was too much to handle! "YOU KEEP USING ALL THOSE BIG FANCY WORDS TO PROVE YOU'RE THE SMARTEST GUY IN THE ROOM, BUT YOU'RE NOT MAKING ANY SENSE!!!" The pain in his throat forced him to lower his volume as he let out raspy gasps behind shedding tears, "WHY did I attack Silver? Why would HIS blood keep me alive? WHY---IS THIS HAPPENING TO ME, EGGMAN?!?" After a moment of silence in studying his distressed nemesis, the question he had waited so long for Sonic to ask finally fell from his pale lips. Swiveling in his chair, he swung his finger towards the mercenary standing adjacent to him, and with a large grin forming under his giant mustache, he responded, "The answer his simple, rodent. Your beloved jackal here is killing you." "SONIC! I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU DID THAT TO ME!!! " Silver shouted despite the onset fatigue of their intercourse, his anger being the fuel to belt out his thoughts without restraint. "EVERYONE THINKS YOU'RE DEAD!!! BUT YOU'RE HERE--FUCKING PRISONERS?!?!?!-- WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU?!?!?!" "Silver...you...you didn't deserve it...I wish I didn't...I hate that...I'm sorry....I'm so, so sorry, Silver..." Sonic uttered with incredible sadness as he couldn't stop himself from crying profusely, hating himself for what he did to his friend. Silver looked on exhaustingly. He never saw Sonic cry before and wasn't sure what to think. He always saw him as this indestructible hero, an icon for everyone to follow who never gave up. Now, he was a wreck. Sniffling and choking on tears. His voice cracking under the gravity of his guilt while he physically looked nothing like the one the white hedgehog used to admire. While part of him felt disappointed and still angry that he was violated, mostly, the kind, naive one felt sympathetic. The coolest guy he had ever known was sitting by his side weeping, seriously ill, mentally and physically abused, and now wallowing in self-loathing for deeds he would never had done if he was healthy. It was heartbreaking.