Chapter 10

Sonic walked up to the drawers on the left side of the room.

"There might be something in here that could help us out," he said. When he opened the drawer, he found that it was absolutely cluttered with torn pieces of paper, rubber bands, coins, and other such miscellaneous items. "A junk drawer. Looks like we'll have some rummaging to do."

"Why can't I look through it with my AVA sunglasses?" Knuckles asked.

"Because..." Sonic said, pulling a key out of the junk drawer. "I already found it! The key. Now, let's see which door this goes into."

Knuckles nodded and gave a thumbs up.

Sonic ran up to the door on the left side of the room, inserted the key and turned it.

"What do you know?" Sonic asked. "First time!"

Sonic entered first, with Knuckles right behind him.

When Knuckles pushed the door gently closed, the hinges on the door creaked. The floorboards were even noisier, as they walked around the room. The room itself seemed to be some sort of personal office. There were dozens of science books, a desk with a primitive PC under it, and a minifridge. It was unlike anything Sonic had ever seen.

"What's that smell?" Sonic asked, holding his nose.

"What smell? I don't smell anything."

"Oh, wow," Sonic said, as he bent down to the fridge. "That's because you live on a floating island out in the open," Sonic mumbled, his voice coming out a little funny because of his plugged nose. "If this is really a trick by Eggman to drive us away, it's starting to work."

Sonic examined the computer and monitor.

"Why would Eggman use a computer that looks like it was made centuries ago?" Sonic gestured towards the small computer with a single monitor. "He's used to really big computers like Tails'. The minifridge is probably his, though. On the Death Egg, all they served were Egg Dogs."

"Well, let's see what we can find in here."

Knuckles walked up to the books and started going through them, while Sonic kept playing with the computer. Something was bugging Knuckles and it wasn't this mysterious office. Sonic never talked about his time aboard the Death Egg during the war. Knuckles' spy he had aboard the Death Egg, Rouge the Bat, had said that Sonic had been tortured for the six months he was there. But when Sonic ran into the then Rookie (now Champion) who happened to be on the rescue squad that was planning on liberating the prisoners on the Death Egg, he didn't seem the slightest bit injured or even bothered by the whole ordeal. Something was definitely wrong with Sonic. Knuckles didn't want to bring it up for both of their sakes. Knuckles had his own bad memories of the war.

"Hey, Knuckles!" Sonic called out. Knuckles stopped looking through the books and was snapped out of the trance of his own thoughts. "This computer doesn't have a plug."

"Why do you want a plug?" Knuckles asked.

"I wanted to see if I could find any files on it that we could use to find out what's going on here," Sonic answered. "But, no luck."

"What if we just... take the hard drive?" Knuckles asked. "It probably won't work with any of Tails' computers, but if we find another computer in here, we could just swap them out."

"Good thinking!" Sonic exclaimed. "We don't have any tools to take it apart though. Probably should have thought of that."

"Who needs tools when you have Knuckles?" He put up his fists and then he punched a hole in the computer, to reveal the computer's inner workings.

"That works, too," Sonic said, shrugging.

Knuckles dug in and took out the hard drive, along with a CD ROM. "Bonus!" Sonic exclaimed triumphantly. Knuckles, nodding, handed him the hard drive and CD, which Sonic put into his bag.

To check the minifridge, go to Chapter 11

To leave the room, go to Chapter 12