Chapter Text
Dawn took a deep breath in, willing her nerves to turn to steel in imitation of the thick bunker door in front of her.
The remainder of Team Chorus flanked her, both standing a few paces behind rather than by her side. She could feel their eyes boring into the back of her head, waiting for a reaction from her. She resented it, the way they’d been treating her as if she was delicate when they knew what she’d survived, knew damn well all she was capable of. They had just watched her turn into a biblically accurate angel and punch a hole through Ultimate Devil Doom for fuck's sake, they should know she could handle this.
Stalling, she checked the time and ran some numbers in her head.
6 days, 3 hours, and 54 minutes. That’s how long it had been since she had escaped from this place. The place they held her in stasis, using her for Gaia-knows-what, for 6 months, 1 week, 2 days, and 19 hours. But whatever, who had been counting?
The door felt familiar yet foreign. This was the first time she had actually seen it from the outside — they had frozen her back in the United Federation before transporting her pod here, and she hadn’t bothered to look back on her way out. His voice had been in her head — keep moving ahead, seize your freedom, and our conquest will follow. And at the time, she'd listened.
A shiver ran up her spine. Fat lot of good all this thermal-wear was doing her — “fit for the Antarctic” her ass. Although, the layers meant she couldn’t access her half-healed biopsy sites or gunshot wounds; as much as the itching clawed at her, she had to admit being unable to scratch was a good thing.
The pain she’d felt for most of the way there had mercifully subsided to a dull pulse. She’d held off on taking her pain relief until they were about an hour away, so hopefully she could stay pain-free throughout their search. Uncle Tails had reassured her over and over that the PIL stated the drug took effect immediately and lasted 4-6 hours, but Dawn could swear it took an hour before she felt any relief, and even then it only lasted for another 2 at maximum.
She took another deep breath in, then out. Then in again, then out again. She needed to get this over with, and there was no time like the present.
“Mosaic,” she said, a slight wobble in her voice betraying the front she had put up, “Check the door.”
Mosaic was slightly caught off guard; it wasn’t like Dawn to instruct instead of request. “Uh- on it, Boss,” she quipped as she started moving towards the door. She was trying to make light, to make Dawn realise she wasn’t acting like herself in a way that hopefully didn’t seem like criticism, but she couldn’t help but let a little passive aggression leak into her voice. Dawn felt her heart clench slightly; she knew Mosaic's issues with being bossed around better than anyone, so why did she let herself do it?
Dawn didn’t even spare Mosaic a glance as she walked past her. Her ever-vibrant green eyes somehow appeared cold and dead as they remained fixed on the door, as though it would somehow strike her if she turned away and gave it the advantage.
Without another word, Mosaic the approached the door. She looked it up and down before titanium fingertips tentatively made contact with it and sent out signals, getting a feel for the circuitry underneath.
“Ok, I feel pretty safe in guessing it has an electromagnetic lock. I don’t feel a current right now, but that doesn’t mean it’s not locked," Mosaic explained, "Knowing G.U.N., I’d be willing to bet my blasting arm that it’s fail-secure — that means it’s locked when not supplied with power, by the way.” She added the last part with a deliberate smugness, and looked over her shoulder at Dawn in wait of a response — something along the lines of “amazing, we never would have guessed” or “thank you for gracing us with your genius” — but was met with nothing. Wow, not even their usual banter could get through to her?
Mosaic made a noise somewhere between a hum and a mechanical whir, then looked over her other shoulder and gestured at Treasure to come over. “T, think you could pop this thing open anyway?”
Treasure cracked her knuckles, her unwieldy expedition gloves doing little to soften the two deafening crunches she produced, as she announced, “I mean, I can sure as hell try!”
Dawn’s gaze remained fixed forward when Treasure passed her too — not even the blinding neon pinks and greens of her friend’s thermals could draw her eyes away from their entry point for a second. Although, as Treasure made it in front of her, the thought of how Rouge might react if she ever saw her daughter’s current choice of outfit did cross Dawn's mind briefly. She almost chucked at that.
Mosaic and Treasure eyed the door, looking for a point of leverage. The design of the door was covered in harsh ridges, but none of them stuck out enough to provide a proper grip.
"…Can I try freezing your hands to the door?" Mosaic asked. Treasure wasn't sure if she was joking.
"Dad was like two seconds away from locking me in one of the Island's temples to stop me from coming here. Not to be dramatic, but I think if I get frostbite and he finds out it's your fault, every finger I lose is two he'll rip off of you." Treasure was barely exaggerating. As the next Master Emerald Guardian, the first echidna born for 27 years, and, y'know, his daughter, Treasure's safety wasn't a matter Knuckles handled lightly.
"Alright, sorry, I'm just trying to give us options here!" Mosaic responded, throwing her hands up in exasperated surrender. "Besides, you'd probably be fine." This didn't make Treasure any more sure of if Mosaic was being serious.
Dawn deflated slightly. Of course they couldn't get in. Coming here was a mistake — she was just about ready to cut their losses, to let G.U.N. come back here later to cover the whole thing up and to just hope they had the sense to find and destroy anything still in there, even if it meant never finding out for sure just what they did to her. Then, something Mosaic had said earlier clicked in her head, and she finally opened her mouth to speak again.
"Hey, didn't you say the door doesn't have power right now?"
Mosaic and Treasure both turned to her, looking as if they hadn't quite believed they'd heard her voice. "I mean, I couldn't feel any electricity running through it."
Dawn walked up to join them before continuing, "I should be able to teleport through it then, shouldn't I?"
Mosaic scoffed. "Um, no? This is G.U.N. we're talking about, they know to protect themselves against Chaos Control. There's obviously an Inhibitor Field, you can't-" Wait.
Dawn could see the realisation sweep Mosaic's face (well, her antennae stuck up straight and the eyes on her LED display went wide — Dawn had always been impressed by how expressive Mosaic's face could be with so few moving parts). "Just caught up, did you? No power, no Inhibitor Field."
Mosaic scowled at her. "Oh shut up, like you didn't take your time figuring it out. And besides, the Inhibitor tech will still be built into the door."
Dawn rebutted, "But it needs to be amplified by a power source to create a field strong enough to stop Chaos Control from breaking through. It's not… what was that term you so helpfully laid out for our dumb little meat brains earlier? 'Fail-secure'?" Dawn's voice was dripping with sarcasm, and for a second, Mosaic was almost too pissed off to be happy that Dawn was finally matching her energy again.
Treasure chuckled and rolled her eyes slightly. "Glad to see you guys arguing again, but if we have a way inside, can we please just do it? I'm about to freeze out here!"
"Yeah, and I don't exactly want to be frozen again any time soon so…" Dawn had meant it as a joke, but Treasure's eyes went wide and she raised a hand to her mouth.
"I- I didn't mean to remind you of that, I'm so sorry, I-"
Dawn cut her off sharply, "You can lay off that. I was trying to be funny, seriously, don't worry about it! And it's gonna be impossible to not think about it here anyway, no matter what we talk about."
There was silence for a second, then Mosaic spoke, "It's kind of hard to find it funny when we didn't know where you were for half a year. We didn't even know if you were still alive."
Treasure nodded dejectedly. "We thought we'd looked everywhere, only to find out…" she trailed off, looking up at the door. "…We weren't even close."
There it was again. That air of tragedy they carried about the whole thing. Even Dawn wasn't that torn up about it, and she'd lived it. She'd slept for a while, been poked and prodded a bit, then she woke up and kicked alien ass. Big whoop. All that would've been a slow Tuesday for her pa and dad…
Well, she had to admit, they'd actually been losing their minds over it too, but that was only because it had happened to their kid. If it had been either of them in her shoes, they'd be totally nonchalant about it and she'd be the one freaking out- not "freaking out", overreacting, because it wasn't that big of a deal.
…Maybe the part where she made her dad promise to kill her if she couldn't fight off Black Doom's control was just a little bit messed up.
She absentmindedly reached a hand up to her chest, before remembering she couldn't scratch through her jacket.
"…I think I should be able to get all three of us through at once. Let's get this over with."
Dawn reached behind her head and took the Chaos Emerald she had stashed in her quills into her hand. It was the red one - not the vibe she wanted right now, but she wasn't exactly in a position to be choosy with the color of gem she used for its godly power. She held it in front of her face, closed her eyes, and focused on the fizzing feeling of the Chaos Energy as she began to channel it. Treasure and Mosaic knew the drill; they each held on to one of Dawn's arms and braced themselves as much as they could for the jump through space.
They waited… and waited… but nothing happened.
Dawn huffed. She should be able to teleport silently, even with two passengers and the Inhibitor tech in the door, but her mind was too clouded. Too full of… memories and feelings and other complicated stuff that wouldn't just go in the vault for some reason, no matter how hard she tried to shove them away. She was gonna have to force this.
Dawn tore her Inhibitor Bands from her wrists and hastily handed one to either of her friends. "Hold these," she said, before quickly adding a "please" onto the end.
"Wha- Dawn, are you sure about this?" Mosaic questioned.
Dawn did not answer.
"Chaos...!"
Her blood burned as she strained to mold chaos itself to her will. The Emerald pulsed angrily. She gritted her teeth.
Treasure's concerned voice cut through her focus. "Dawn, is everythi-?"
Dawn blocked it out.
"…CONTROL!"
In a harsh flash of red, they were gone. The only trace they left were their footprints in the snow, until fresh snowfall filled them in and the tundra appeared lifeless once more.