"Were there any others with you?" The woman was speaking again, once more ignoring Sonic's requests as she cut straight to the details that were most important to UECH, "Or was it just you and Nine?"

"Damn, internet cut out. I know I came across a Nine on one of those pages, too. Denis, you played those games, right? What do you know about the Nine creature?" Scrunched up the door, his body turned away from Sonic as far as the seatbelt would allow, EMP man glanced up from his phone long enough to dart a look to the other.

Denis was watching everything with initial silence, but jumped back into the conversation to both ignore Sonic, and to denounce EMP man, "Jesus Smith, the hedgehog can't hurt you right now. Scoot over any further, and you'll fall out the door." He'd also blatantly refused to answer Smith's question regarding his gaming history, and instead worked to unbuckle his seatbelt as the SUV came to a stop. "I'll help you haul him up; grab the rope, and watch the quills. Jan, enough with the questions - our job's over, as far as he's concerned. We'll work on locating his partner after this."

The snap of orders was so quick and decisive that even the driver paused to glance back, but ultimately didn't chime in. He merely secured the vehicle in park, and unlocked the doors.

A cowed Smith fumbled his phone back into his pocket and clicked himself out of his seatbelt. He and Denis both ignored whatever else Sonic might be saying, including the line about not not attacking anyone, as the pair each grabbed a section of the nylon rope and tugged the hedgehog up and out from between the seats. "I swear, if I get stuck with a quill..."

"Just move, out your side." Denis rushed, crouching awkwardly in the vehicle before shuffling out the passenger side, following Smith. With little more ceremony than that, Sonic was transferred - wiggling, fighting, resisting or not - onto a cold metal gurney surrounded by four scientists in stark white gowns, gray leather gloves, and pale masks. Smith and Denis readily stepped back, as the shorter of the pair huffed out, "He's all yours. With any luck, we'll have a second one soon."

The gurney was moving soon after that, clattering over cement, and bumping up over a metal threshold that lead into the smaller, brighter hallway where the scientists had come from. As it was wheeled down this smaller space, a man with a sharply pointed nose and pair of bright, blue-gray eyes joined the convoy. Dressed in the same white garb as the others, this man was otherwise distinguished by a clipboard held close to his chest. And where the trio in the SUV had been keen to talk over and mostly ignore the hedgehog, this fellow's hawkish focus was solely for Sonic. "Your name is Sonic, is that right? I'm Professor Harlow, and I'd like to ask you a few questions."

The male voice which had been talking about rings before spoke again, although not to answer any of Sonic’s questions. Sonic frowned, trying to make the words make sense in his still-dazed mind. ‘Trank’, like… like tranquiliser? Like that thing inside a knock-out gas bolt? If they’d hit him with one of those already, it would make sense that his brain felt as fluffy as a cloud. If the voice had decided to trank him again then there wouldn’t have been anything he could have done, but fortunately another voice decided against it. Sonic flicked his ears, trying to make sense of where the different voices were coming from and get clues about what kind of space he was in. There was no kind of echo, which suggested somewhere small and enclosed or somewhere soft. Or both, Sonic thought groggily, as he stared at the stitching in the black leather.

There were other noises too, beyond the vehicle. A rumbling sound, and a noise Sonic recognised from Eggman’s various contraptions: the whine of electricity. Bright spotlights periodically shone from above, making the leather gleam, before passing by and plunging them all into darkness again.

He wiggled again, trying to push himself onto his back so that he could get a different angle on what was going on. Unfortunately, he seemed to be wedged between two leather arms on the seats; between those and the cuffs, he was getting nowhere.

The woman’s voice followed on from the men’s, and this time someone was finally talking to him. She was asking questions of her own instead of answering his, but Sonic could take that as long as he wasn’t being ignored. He hated being ignored.

“That’s me.” They knew him in this shatterspace, then. Did that mean there was another Sonic here? The possibility made his head hurt even more. “He’s Nine, and he has nine tails. Don’t try and call him Tails though, he hates that. You said he was with me, like not with me now? Like, you guys didn’t get him? He’s out there?”

Sonic wasn’t one for shuttering away his emotions; hope and relief lifted the tone in his questions. Of course they didn’t get Nine. They’d get more than they bargained for if they messed with Sonic’s best buddy. And if Nine was out there, he was most likely putting his brainy fox brain to use trying to track down and rescue his friend.

If Nine were here, he would have used his brainy fox brain to tell Sonic to shut up so he could listen for the clues which would tell them more about where they were as the vehicle slowed to a stop. Unfortunately for Sonic, Nine was not here, and shutting up wasn’t exactly one of the hedgehog’s go-to moves.

“So you know me then? Or like another me?” He asked, hoping the female voice would answer him this time. “Is there another me here? And another Tails? You didn’t seem to know who he was though. Hey, can you sit me up? I can’t see anything. All this security is really unnecessary, you know. I don’t even know who you are, dudes, I’m not going to attack you or anything. Who even are you guys? Do you know Eggman? Are you related to Eggman? Ugh,” he groaned. “This isn’t going to be another one of those Eggman family reunions, is it? I’m so done with those.”

Inside, a stuffy and very brief silence had fallen over the agents after being chided by the driver. It wasn't until 'that thing' suddenly spoke and began to squirm around that conversation picked up again, first by the EMP man, "Ahh, shit." Having seen first hand what Sonic was capable of, he glanced to the man sitting across from him, "Should we tranq him again?"

"No..." Answered the other fellow, a shorter man who'd only stepped out at the Visitors Center after Sonic had been knocked out, and Nine had fled. "Those cuffs will hold."

The woman was twisting around in her seat to look back at the hedgehog, while the EMP man was trying not to squirm himself, now that their captive had woken up. "Your name is Sonic, right?" She asked, ignoring a look from the driver, as well as Sonic's first requests. "Nine; is that the one that was with you? The one with all the tails?"

While the hedgehog was left hopelessly pinned, the SUV was coming to its final stop in the deep depths of the tunnel. With a lurch, the vehicle was shifted into park, and the driver stepped out. Somewhere beyond Sonic's vision, the deep, resonating hum of machinery sounded, followed by the hiss of hydraulics. The glow of brighter light hit the side of the car as a pair of metal doors opened to a smaller hallway. And inside this hallway was a crew of scientists ready and waiting with a rolling metal table.

The only thing Sonic might be aware of was the way the wheels of the table clattered over the threshold of the sophisticated doorway, then thumped into the tunnel, moving towards the SUV. There was a soft chatter of voices too, but they were much quieter than that of the woman currently interrogating the hedgehog.

He opened his eyes, but everything was still dark. It took a bit of blinking and focusing before Sonic realised that he was looking at shiny black fabric with just a fine line of black stitching running vertically to help identify it. Leather? The ground beneath him was rumbling as though he was in transit. Like on the mothership maybe? Had he been captured by the Chaos Council again? No – he was back in Green Hill, wasn’t he?

Whatever he was in jerked as they hit some turbulence, and Sonic became aware of a female voice saying something about water. A vision of a wine-dark lake shooting towards him pushed its way to the front of his brain, followed swiftly by a tumble of new memories. He wasn’t in Green Hill, he’d come through the Void with Nine to… somewhere. Somewhere where they weren’t a fan of non-humans, Nine had said. Sonic wiggled his shoulders slowly, starting to get some feeling back into his arms – which were twisted behind his back and restrained by cool metal – while a male voice he didn’t recognise started talking about rings. This felt like a good situation for some rings, but unfortunately for Sonic, the male voice was correct to say he didn’t have any. The Void had come so suddenly he hadn’t thought to try and ring up before running right at it.

His legs were restrained too. Having regained feeling and awareness, Sonic glanced downwards. Huge metal cuffs were clamped around his legs and a twine of thin, green-yellow rope had been wound around his torso so he couldn’t even flap his elbows. The only thing he could move was his head. Well, and his mouth.

“‘That thing’?” He grumbled. “I’m a hedgehog, dudes.”

It was really hard to see much other than the sheet of leather his head had been shoved into. Sonic wiggled like a worm, trying to get a better look at what was lying next to him. It was also black, but a different kind of matte fabric, and curved around something roughly cylindrical in shape. A leg? Was there an Eggman sat next to him?

“Hey, what’s up with the cuffs?” He asked, trying to wiggle further down so that he could see the possible Eggman better. “Can you sit me up? I can’t see anything. Also, who are you guys? Where’s Nine?” A shot of panic washed away any remaining grogginess and he raised his voice. “Nine! Nine! Where’s Nine?”

Their safest bet was to keep quiet, conduct their experiments quickly, and hope the public simply didn't found out before they disposed of the alien.

And so, after a few moments of discussion, the massive steel gates were opened, and the vehicle rolled forward into the cliff-side tunnel. It was at this point that their captive may or may not be waking up from the double-whammy of sedatives and paralyzing electricity. If he did, Sonic might eventually notice that his legs were tightly hobbled by a pair of titanium-alloy shackles that seemed absurdly large for his small legs, yet left no room to wiggle his feet free from. His arms, likewise, were pulled sharply back and manacled by the same sturdy brand of metal. For good measure, a length of nylon rope had been wrapped around around his arms and midsection too, as the agents had improvised on the scene. Having then been laid on his side and wedged in between the rear passenger seats of the vehicle, there wasn't much room for the hedgehog to move.

"..says here, he's afraid of water?" This was from the woman who'd leapt out of the SUV and took part in firing the electro-darts. With a flip of her thumb, she scrolled through a few more articles of information on her phone, then looked back over her shoulder from the front passenger seat.

The man who's EMP gun had been obliterated, and who was sitting in one of the seats next to Sonic, was also scrolling through his phone, "Where'd you find that? All I found was the ring thing. And we didn't find any rings on him."

"You're all thinking too hard about it." The third voice came from the driver, "The scientists will figure it out. We don't know what kind of universe it came from." The EMP man glanced to the woman, who gave a shrug of her brows. Before either could say anything, and before the third man who sat in the seat on Sonic's opposite side could interject, the driver spoke again with strained patience, "Put your phones down and keep an eye on it. If that thing gets lose before we get it in containment, Raimond will have your heads."