Prologue

Sonic fell.

It had happened before he could even react- no easy feat given how quickly he could move. He’d allowed the mad doctor to get the drop on him and now he was tumbling down into the blackness below, bits of machinery and panels of metal that had previously been the floor high up above raining down all around him.

Sonic twisted and contorted his body as he tried to see exactly where he was falling or, rather, what he was falling towards. It was no use- his eyes struggled to adjust to the darkness as he tumbled. Sonic couldn’t help but feel a twinge of embarrassment- imagine, a hedgehog that couldn’t see in the dark. The feeling soon passed as the panic of the situation shouted noisily inside Sonic’s head once again.

Sonic tried to calm himself to work out something- anything- that could give him an idea of what to expect. He’d been taken by surprise and his heart was pounding practically out of his chest. Sonic listened carefully and thought he heard some of the machine parts landing distantly below. Some of them hit with a hard clanging noise which might have allowed Sonic to work out how far he had left to fall if only he was any good whatsoever at maths or science.

But it wasn’t the clanging noises Sonic was concerned about- it was the splashing. Water. Sonic had had more than his fill of water back in the Labyrinth Zone but he hadn’t accounted for just how vastly the maze spread beneath the surface of South Island. Was the Scrap Brain Zone built atop some of the Labyrinth Zone’s ruins? It certainly stood to reason, but Sonic wasn’t in the mood for playing cartographer at the moment- not that cataloguing the Labyrinth Zone seemed remotely feasible anyway.

Sonic’s pupils began to take in a little more light in the dingy surroundings. The walls here were stone rather than the metal up above. Sonic tried to turn in mid-air to gauge just how far he’d fallen but the light from the Scrap Brain Zone seemed like little more than a pin-prick by now. As light reflected off damp surfaces around him, Sonic recognised he was without question in the Labyrinth Zone. The stone here didn’t have the same golden-brown quality of the part of the Zone he’d visited on his chase for his mad foe, being more of a dull grey. Nevertheless, Sonic spotted some of the fire-spitting busts he’d previously encountered, indicating the same creative geniuses behind his own personal nomination for Dank Dungeon of the Year had been here in times past.

Almost instantly, the rest of the world seemed to light up for Sonic. He blinked a few times and the world below came into focus. Trying with some difficulty to stop himself from spinning so wildly in the air, Sonic saw two possible options below and neither offered his preferred landing of several hundred soft pillows. He could land atop the stone structure he saw, which would probably hurt like crazy but he could likely soften the impact if he curled into a ball. The alternative was he could land in the water right nearby. Sonic wasn’t a fan of water on most days and that was just the clean blue stuff. This water was purple from centuries of stagnation and, presumably, a good few weeks’ worth of who-knew-what dripping down from the Scrap Brain Zone above. The water was not an option.

Sonic curled himself into a ball and attempted to shift his weight in mid-air to try and bring himself towards the structure. There was a very real chance this was going to leave a bruise that wouldn’t go away for some time. There was also a very real chance this was going to turn Sonic inside out but he reasoned there wasn’t much he could do about that so he might as well hope for the best.

It’s a well-known fact that when you are in mortal danger, your life flashes before your eyes. This is your brain’s emergency attempt to find something- anything- in your memory reserves, things you think you’ve long forgotten, that might help you avoid getting wiped out or turned into a blue splat on an ancient stone structure in a forgotten maze of tunnels. Sonic braced himself for impact, seeing these brief flashes of his life. The friends he’d made, his family, the good times- and the adventures.

How had he gotten here? The Green Hill Zone seemed so far away now. If only he’d not been thinking of his stomach on that fateful day, none of this would be happening. If only he’d not caused a distraction at entirely the wrong moment. If only his friend hadn’t—

And then Sonic hit the water.

Landing back-first in the purple murk with the force of a cannon shell, Sonic barely had time to register the pain before his body compensated and he blacked out.

On to Introduction