Chapter Text
Infinite
An endless chromatic space with no real substance, that's what Infinite would call this barren prison he had been trapped in for so long.
It didn't matter how long he walked, how long he ran, how long he suffocated under the spiraling of his own thoughts and constricted throat… It was still the same, never changing, constantly cycling into itself.
He didn't know how long he had been here for, it could have been weeks, years, decades. All he knew is that no matter what he did, how far he pushed, he couldn't escape. The jackal wished he had learned more about null space before having come face to face with it himself; he had only been vaguely briefed on its properties when it had been discovered during his trials taking control of the stone.
The Doctor had only divulged what was necessary to the jackal before sending him off to fight the heroes of Mobius. This meant that the ruby’s ability to warp space had never been fully realized when it came to Infinite’s usage, there was a chance that more information was available somewhere in the Doctors networks but it was useless to him in his current state.
Ultimately the final battle ended in himself being ejected into null space by the damaged ruby in his chest, the only way out slamming shut behind him and leaving him in limbo. He wasn't sure if the ruby acted on its own or if his frazzled state had sent the ruby on the fritz alongside him, either way the result was the same.
At first he hadn't been worried, he had thought that Eggman would retrieve him, not for his own sake but for at least the ruby. But as time wore on, his confidence in the Doctor’s greed waned.
It didn't take long for him to start searching for his own way out with more purpose, but it was to no avail. He had tried everything, ripping open a new portal, trying to overload the space with power, falling through the grid to try and break into the abyss below, but he was limited in his power with how fractured the phantom ruby already was.
The gem had cracked down the middle with branches flaring off into the bottom half, creating an almost root-like system of fractured lines. When he pushed too much power through it, the cracks would spark out a flickering glitched light through the fractures, creating a searing hot sensation in the jackals chest.
At first the feeling had made Infinite reluctant to use his powers, but as time passed and the jackal's mental health started plummeting, the pain was worth pushing through when he could taste the slightest chance of escape that was just on the other side of it.
He didn't need to eat in null space, but he still grew exhausted and slept. Initially it was a reprieve from his circumstances, assisting in passing the time while he had waited for rescue; but gradually it had become something he grew to dread. His dreams turned to nightmares, his nightmares to night terrors.
To make matters worse, most of them had to do with his former team, the jackal squad.
When he was still dreaming, it was of his found family curled around a campfire out in the desert, laughing and bickering as they waited for dinner to cook over the flame. Deux picking on Quatre, Trois intervening when it started to go too far. Or memories of a victory where the group chose to celebrate in the city taverns, high end meals paid easily by their most recent mission. The best of times before everything had gone to ruin.
Slowly over time those kinder dreams and memories contorted into something more malicious, something more haunting.
Infinite stumbling across their discarded corpses in a ditch, unmoving and covered in red, or hearing them scream for help while he was trapped on the floor unable to do anything but scream out and try to claw his way to them in time.
One of his worst nightmares had been of Shadow the hedgehog holding Quatre by the throat, the youngest jackal looking to Infinite with pleading terrified eyes before a snap rung out and he was falling lifeless to the floor. The hedgehog gazing back at Infinite with cold uncaring eyes.
The list went on, Infinite’s guilt and fears manifesting in the cruelest of ways over the passage of time.
He still remembered watching the feed that Eggman had captured of his family being extinguished one by one, the dark furred hedgehog taking everything he lived for in one fell swoop.
All because he was too weak to defeat him, too weak to protect the people who called him their leader. Even with the power of the phantom ruby he couldn't protect or even avenge his squad, a stupidly determined rookie of all people being the one to defeat him, he was pathetic.
He shouldn't have ever taken on that job with the Doctor, he had foolishly believed that having the power of the ruby would mean that his squad was set for life, that nobody could touch them. He had been blinded by the hope that they could be more than impoverished orphans turned mercenaries in the barely habitable deserts of Kammit.
His squad didn't even want to take on the job, Uno trying with everything he had to convince Infinite not to take Eggman’s offer after they had failed to raid the base.
It was only meant to be a simple looting run, take as much tech as they could carry and sell it off to the highest bidder in the markets of Golden Palm Junction. But of course luck wasn't on their side and the Doctor himself ended up being at that damn base. The Doctor’s proposition had seemed like a great opportunity at the time, unparalleled power and a place in a world that the larger man intended to build.
A perfect way to get his squad off of the streets permanently and bask in the luxuries of life that he had never been able to afford, but there was wisdom in the saying ‘All that glitters is not gold’.
He had paid the ultimate price for his hubris, losing sight of the things that mattered most to him, and destroying it all in the end. He was the reason they were at that rainforest base, the reason that they were dead.
The jackal sighed out, these thoughts weren’t new to him, in fact they felt more like a daily occurrence. Looping over and over, contemplating how he should have done things differently, deliberating how he could cause the most pain and anguish to that hedgehog if he ever got out. Wondering if he could find out what had happened to their bodies, and give them a proper send off in their home country.
He had been drifting through the open space of the dimension, having lept off of the grid flooring and hoping to fall through the bottom. Unfortunately he was disappointed to find out that gravity just zeroed itself out, leaving him stranded in nothingness with no way to land himself back on stable ground. Yet another way that he lost more control over himself and his environment. He had tried to manipulate his body and fly back to solid ground like he used to during the war, but the ruby didn't seem to be reacting the same way. Any attempt to directly move himself only resulted in the ruby backfiring energy and causing the jackal pain.
He was sick of this, sick of living.
Being awake was hell, being asleep was even worse.
There was no escape, no hope, no future.
He might have been alive but he sure as hell wasn't living.
It wasn't for the first time that he wondered if he could find a way to shatter the ruby and just cease to exist, but the more rational side of him pushed back that he could survive it and make things even worse for himself.
He felt numb, his body sluggish and heavy, even with the weightlessness of space holding him aloft in the void. He wished he could just shut off his mind for a few hours, not have to feel the crushing weight of his life crumbling around him with the pulsating waves of energy washing over him like an icy wave lapping at the shore….
-Wait…
Infinite’s eyes snapped open as he registered the foreign feeling, it was faint but it almost felt like the ruby was humming. Perhaps it was resonating with something he had drifted close enough to? No that wouldn't make sense- the dimension folded in on itself in a constantly looping feedback.’
It had nothing to react to that was already here, so there was something possibly bleeding into the dimension?
The Jackal maneuvered himself into a more upright position, his piercing gaze sweeping across the landscape looking for even the smallest of changes. Adrenaline and fear surged into his body, this might be his only chance to get out of here, he can’t fuck this up.
He started searching the landscape more aggressively, there had to be something different, he wouldn’t be able to take it if there wasn't. The fear of this being some fucked up nightmare or hallucination was overwhelming but he kept himself in the moment, he knew exactly how this place looked from the last however long he had been here. This had to be different, he couldn't dismiss it as something his own mind was tormenting him with just yet.
Just when he was starting to grow panicked, doubting his own senses, he caught sight of it.
His eyes widened and his breath hitched, he almost couldn't believe what he was seeing. In the space between him and the grid tiled floor was a centralized rippling of space the size of a baseball, very reminiscent of the way portals would form when he had learned to open a doorway to this dimension, it was in the first stages, and he needed to find a way to open it now if he wanted any chance of escaping.
He was decently far away from it, a few meters at least. The jackal knew that his ability to move through the air wasn't viable here, but he had to do something.
The only form of propulsion that he had experienced here was when he was on the gridded pathway. He might not be able to use the ruby to even half of its former ability but if he put enough energy into it he could probably manifest a solid platform to launch off of and use the lack of gravity to his advantage, putting his everything into forcing that portal open when he came in contact with it. It would hurt like hell and possibly even kill him from the energy required but it was all he had right now.
His eyes hardened, calculating the distance and how hard he would need to launch in order to hit his target without overshooting it. If he moved too fast he could risk passing by the portal before it had time to fully open, if he was too slow, it might collapse before he could reach it.
The jackal aimed his right hand at his feet as he positioned himself in a crouch to jump, putting all of his concentration into forming a solid platform. Infinite’s chest started to rapidly flare up, a bone deep pain carving through his nerves that nearly caused him to lose his focus. It took everything he had to keep himself on task and ignore the way his body screamed at him to stop. He didn't want the platform to get launched away instead of himself, so he put focus into weaving it through the space around it, essentially freezing it in time as quickly as he could.
Once everything was set up his muscles coiled tight with energy and he looked up towards the rippling space. He was panting hard with exertion, but steeled himself and pushed against his makeshift floor. Thankfully it held strong and he was flying towards his target.
He threw both arms out in front of him, the Phantom Ruby trembling harder as the jackal tore past every limitation, pulling out as much energy as he possibly could. The agony that he felt was unlike anything else he had ever experienced, it felt as though he was being ripped in half. He couldn't feel his arms or legs, everything around him fading in and out of focus, he could hear the faint wail of his own voice through the rushing of his own ears.
Infinite grit his teeth, sucking in as much air as he could and funneling the powers of the ruby into his palms. He had to resist the urge to hack and cough with the sudden and unexpected fluid that forced its way into his lungs with his heaving in, likely blood from the damage he was doing to himself in attempting this.
The rift was coming towards him quick, so he steadied his hands and put his everything into catching onto that fold in space, roaring with all his might as he snagged into it and gained traction.
The rippling in space was scraped wide open, a pitch black hole of roughly the same size suddenly expanding as the space around him was gradually getting siphoned towards it. At first the jackal was dazed and in shock from his plan actually working, his body barely keeping up with him as he forced himself to stay awake through the pain. A feeling of joy momentarily replacing the shock before promptly fading again as he realized that the torn hole wasn't acting like a normal null space portal.
Under normal circumstances, a portal to null space would act exactly like a doorway. No vacuum, no howling winds swirling towards it. This portal was much more aggressive, he couldn't stop himself from getting dragged into its gravitational pull. He had no way to know if this thing would even throw him out into his own dimension, and that's If he survived its crushing weight.
Infinite grit his teeth as he tried to think through the overwhelming pain as his leg was pulled through the portal, he could feel himself starting to lose consciousness. There wasn't any way to escape the pull, leaving him with only one option, finding a way to protect himself through the journey.
He quickly pawed his hand over the ruby, checking that it was still there. As he gripped it, he could faintly feel the heat rolling off of it, even through the rest of the sensations his body was being battered with. The ruby wouldn't last much longer in this state, the heat was likely going to expand the cracks and shatter it .
He shut his eyes tight, coming to terms with the fact that if he wanted to have even the chance of surviving this he would have to toe the line with death by funneling even more energy through it. At this point his hips were being pulled through the portal, leaving only his torso within null space, the pull was getting stronger, stealing the time for planning and forcing him to act.
The jackal let out a blood curdling yell as he pushed everything he had into the ruby, aiming to create a barrier around himself for as long as possible.
He was fully pulled through the portal right as the barrier activated around him. A pitch black space completely devoid of light was what he was met with, winds that were howling in their intensity, taking hold of his body and viciously throwing him around at breakneck speeds. The barrier he put up was shockingly maintained through the hurricane-like conditions that he had thrown himself into, but as time went on, the forces against him grew fiercer. The winds tore against him like blades, with large projectiles slamming against him in the pitch black, putting so much strain on himself and the ruby that it was only a matter of time before it gave out.
He felt more than heard the gem crack, a sickening pop echoing through his body as half of the barrier dispersed and left him open to the unnatural elements. Immediately his body lit up in an immeasurable onslaught of pain as his right side was ripped at. He knew he was screaming but he couldn't hear it over the freight train of noise that was swallowing up everything near it. Fear and the desperate desire to survive surged through what was left of his mind, he called on the ruby once again on instinct. The ruby flared brighter at his request, starting to form the shield around his body once more before it flashed a searingly bright red and exploded outwards. Infinite was immediately knocked unconscious from the sheer force of the blast.