The Gang's All Here

25: The Room

Mephiles woke up first. Feeling sickly, Mephiles slowly sat up. He looked around, realizing two things:

1. His friends (oh, and Sonic) were with him.

2. He didn't recognize his surroundings, but the room did look familiar.

Suddenly,

"Wake up, worthless hedgehogs!"

Mephiles, along with everyone else, was brought to a start at hearing a voice yell. As everyone began waking up, Mephiles looked around wondering where the voice had come from.

"Yes, yes, wake up. Wake up and look around you," the voice said. "Anything about this room look familiar, Monster?"

At that nickname, the memories began flooding back to Mephiles. The room he was in looked almost identical to the very first room he was given when he was awakened in the Organization building.

He became frightened. Quickly, he tried to wake up Fleetway, who was the only other person in the room that would immediately understand the trouble that they were in.

Fleetway took little time to fully wake up, and he soon saw what Mephiles was seeing. "Ohhhhh, this can't be good."

The two helped the others wake up, and they all were soon wide awake and alert. They knew that they clearly weren't at home.

"Finally, everyone's awake!" the voice said. "Well now that the gang's all here, let's get started. There's a screen on one of the walls in your room. Let's watch a little video, shall we?"

Everyone looked to the black tv screen on the wall, which switched on to a shocking image.

"Manic!?" everyone cried out at once.

Indeed, there he was. Manic was sitting in a chair, tears streaming down his face.

However, everyone looking at the screen was confused. Manic wasn't tied up. He didn't appear injured. There was nobody standing over him with a weapon. Manic didn't even look scared.

He just looked sad. Tired and sad.

"Manic! Manic, can you hear us!?" Silver called.

Manic's ears twitched. He had heard Silver fine.

Everyone awaited Manic's answer.

Instead of answering, Manic stood up, grabbed the chair he'd been sitting in, lifted the chair above his head, and threw it as hard as he could at the camera in front of him.

The screen glitched, then went black.

The voice shouted in anger. "Damn it all! I just got that camera!"

Fleetway asked what everyone was thinking: "Geez, why'd Manic do that?"

"No matter," the voice said calmy. "That camera is worth nothing compared to what I'll get with your little friend."

"What do you want with him!?" Fleetway asked.

"Please don't hurt him! He's been through enough!" Silver added.

"Hurt him?" the voice said, seemingly surprised. "At the most he'll feel discomfort, but he won't be hurt."

"Okay, then what are you doing with him?" Shadow asked.

Mephiles then looked up at the ceiling. He noticed that the vent was open.

'Aha!' Mephiles thought. 'All I need to do is find a control room, free my comrades, find Manic, then leave. We'll have to figure out everything else later.'