Work Text:
Under the dark cover of night a bat worked tirelessly on her most recent commission.
It had been a while since she'd accepted a desk job, but this one was both well paying and interesting enough to pique her interest.
Usually she went for the more physically demanding jobs; being in the middle of the action always gave her a kick.
But this job was special.
Her client was an ex-military special ops turned journalist. She’d tried to hire Rouge anonymously, but the work asked was too risky to do without getting dirt on the person she would be doing it for.
So she found out everything about her potential client.
Her name was Topaz, which Rouge found oddly endearing all things considered.
She was a 30-something human that had recently gotten more and more involved in uncovering military and government secrets, but not yet something big enough to actually get into big trouble.
It was almost as if she’d been testing the waters.
And now Rouge knew why.
Her job description was clear: Find out everything that G.U.N. had refused to tell about the research that took place on the Space Colony named ARK and secure evidence that there had been unethical experiments going on.
And after Rouge had done her due diligence on the background check, she accepted and got to work.
She always felt better knowing she would be the only faceless person in the equation. It gave her leverage when assholes tried to throw her under the bus.
But then she acquired an account log in with a sufficiently high enough clearance and she knew this would be something else.
She read through file after file describing the inhumane treatment of an ‘artificial’ lifeform. Experiments, rough handling, purposeful infections of disease, forced combat and more all came to light.
Eventually she found an attached folder of pictures to track the ‘accelerated growth process’ of his creature.
And to her horror she was faced with an almost painfully regular looking hedgehog.
They wore no clothes, gloves, socks or shoes in the first few pictures. They looked scared and uncared for. It made her feel ill.
But there was still a job to be done, so she continued on.
As they continued to age through the timeline, they gained socks and gloves first, then some odd looking shoes and eventually all four limbs were branded with four gold rings.
She immediately recognized them as inhibitor rings.
The average mobian could get them made to order. The only other way someone had them was when mobians with powers became convicted criminals and were sent to prison.
In the past they would stay on even after your sentence was completed, but years ago it had been outlawed on the basis of unethical punishment.
There was a modern left over from the movement though.
In trying to get attention for justice for forced inhibitor rings, many had started wearing them in protest. Not real ones, but copies in looks only. The way to tell the real from the fake apart is with a production number etched into the inside that was linked to a person's identification. That, or you had to be able to spot the difference in material.
After the law had been adjusted, it just kind of stuck around as both a reminder of the fight for justice and a fashion item.
But Rouge was one of the few people that could tell the difference between real and fake at a glance.
This mobian wore four genuine inhibitor rings and was still standing upright.
Glancing back at the filename, she thought to herself “Ultimate lifeform indeed”.
Closing the pictures, she went back to the text, hurriedly scanning through it expecting it to be almost finished as she neared the date of the ARK incident, but to her surprise, there was about a third left.
And suddenly she felt extremely worried.
What happened to this person after the ARK?
She’d just kinda assumed he’d been killed when the ARK got shut down.
She quickly scrolled all the way to the bottom of the file and was stunned as she read the date on the most recent report.
One week ago.
The mobian was still alive and being tested and used by G.U.N.
Rouge wanted to throw up.
She’d seen and done plenty of horrid things, but that was life outside the law. And while her business was not clean by any stretch of the imagination, she’d always held firm on her own moral code.
Most people in her line of work were more humane than this organization.
But she still had work to do.
She quickly copied all of the remaining ARK files, double checking that she hadn’t missed anything.
Satisfied with her copies, she made quick work of erasing any trace of her access to the system before logging out.
The data was safely stored on her encrypted usb device and ready to be sent off.
Taking a last look at it, she decided to do something unusual.
She made a copy for herself.
It broke one of the few work rules she had: Never keep anything to link you back to your finished work.
But something told her she would need it later.
She quickly copied everything to another safe usb. One that was small enough to be kept on her at all times. It was even waterproof.
But she decided it would be safer to hide it and she knew just the place.
No one could find it on an island if the island itself couldn’t be found.
It would cost her a big favour with the hot-headed owner of said island, but something in her told her it would be worth it.
And with that, she sealed the blank envelope containing the first encrypted device and made the arrangements for it to be delivered discreetly.
-
For a while after that, nothing happened. No news broke, no whispers of a big story coming up. Not even a whisper of her contact at the paper Topaz wrote for.
And then it happened all at once.
An anonymous person had sent all the files to all the major news outlets at the same time, flooding the entire news cycle and web with all of it.
There were stories of biological and military weapons, articles focusing on how the military had embezzled funds and coerced scientists to work for them and a story about how a little girl had been raised on the ARK, growing up in space.
But the one story that everyone spoke about was about the hedgehog she’d know about before all of this broke.
The file describing them had been edited significantly to make it more digestible for the public, less focused on the torturous conditions they’d had to endure and more open about their capabilities.
But what struck Rouge the most about this file was a photo she hadn’t seen before.
It showed them walking around downtown amongst the general public. Unrestrained and unaccompanied.
Chaos ensued.
-
A couple miles outside the city a blue hedgehog stood at the kitchen counter cooking lunch for him and his little brother.
Said little brother was sitting at the table fiddling with some electronics as he watched the news absently on his phone.
All in all, it was an average day in the Hedgehog-Prower household.
Until the little phone blared with the emergency news alert.
Turning up the volume, both of them waited for news of the Robotnik attack they’d come to expect with the noise.
“-e have just received a file containing the picture of an artificially created creature. This news comes from the expose about the Space Colony ARK. Included in the file is a picture of the creature we are showing on screen now. As you can see-”
But Sonic couldn’t hear anything else the reporter was saying as he zipped over to look at the phone Tails was holding.
There, on the tiny screen, was a clear picture of the man he’d spent his night with not even a month ago.
All he could do was stare blankly as the picture faded back to the reporter.
Tails didn’t notice that Sonic was having an internal debate until he had to save the food from being on fire.
“What the heck, Sonic?” Tails shouted in alarm as he ran over to the stove to save their lunch.
If there was one thing Sonic was always on top of in the house, it was making food.
Tails turned back to Sonic after making sure the chili was still edible and set the pot on the counter.
Sonic still hadn’t reacted.
“Sonic?” the fox tried again, getting actually worried now.
“I know him, Tails. We have to help him.” Sonic said with fire in his eyes.
“Get me everything on this situation. I need to find someone.” And with a blue streak Tails was left alone in the kitchen.
Deciding to trust his brother, Tails got to work.
-
In the G.U.N. base a black and red hedgehog was resting up after a long and difficult day of tests. He lay on his bed as his body tingled with the leftover energy sparking underneath his skin as his body healed itself from many minor injuries he sustained.
Today had been scheduled for endurance and strength and Shadow could feel it. They’d pushed him further than last time, like always.
He knew they would push him until he either died or came dangerously close.
But he couldn’t give up.
Tomorrow he would get to see Maria and Gerald.
Ever since coming to earth he’d only been able to see them once a month at most.
On the ARK it had been almost every day.
But he was glad Maria was finally able to live her life on earth like she always wanted. With an immune system that worked properly.
And that was enough for Shadow.
Especially now that he was allowed certain freedoms, like some time outside the base, unsupervised.
Gerald had managed to get him that much, though Shadow wasn’t allowed to go visit them in those hours.
Not that he could.
Whenever he left the base, Maria and Gerald were insurance that he would come back.
It was all done under the guise of ‘health checkups’ for Maria and always coincidentally scheduled at the same time as his ‘free’ time.
He usually just took a long walk among the vegetation surrounding the mountain where the base was situated.
But one night he’d been sent out, the personnel in charge of him that night telling him that Maria had an overnight visit and he wasn’t allowed to be on the premises as a ‘safety concern’.
He did kinda break everything the last time he was kept from a sick Maria, but in his defense, she’d been shot and was dying.
The only way she could be saved was by Gerald doing an emergency bone marrow transplant.
On the way out he received a laughably small amount of currency to spend on a bed for the night. Gerald had found a way to slip a note in between the bills, telling him this was just G.U.N. fucking with Shadow - not in those words, but telling the same message.
He slipped on the clothes he was mandated to wear when going outside and took the bills he was supposed to rent a bed with.
He never went to look for one.
Instead he found a club with a bright neon sign.
The rest of the night's memories would never be shared. They were his precious secret. His first and most likely last brush with intimacy.
He would take them to his grave.
As he lay reminiscing in his cell, he suddenly heard clamour and seconds later a full squad of soldiers surrounded by robots burst in.
He jumped up in alarm, but before he could even fall into a defensive stance, he was shot with multiple specialized tranquilizer darts.
He was unconscious in seconds.
All Shadow could think as he fell towards the floor was ‘why?’