Amy clenched her fist while the other hand wiped the tears out of her eyes. She silently muttered a prayer for the dead person before she turned back and followed Silver. This was so cruel. She hated it. She hated this place. She hated how Silver didn't show an ounce of emotions, no sorrow, no sadness. Why didn't he feel anything?

Maybe he didn't have a heart. Maybe it was so cold it couldn't feel anything? She felt a slight pat on her shoulder it snapped her out of her gloomy thoughts. Amy looked into Eclipse's eyes. Surprisingly, there was more sadness than in Silver's eyes. She returned him the small smile he sent her, feeling a bit better.

At that moment she felt stupid. There was no way Silver was emotionless he just knew how to control his heart. Amy lifted her head, putting her chin forward. She couldn't let this place get under her skin. There might still be another survivor and whoever was responsible for the pain of all those people would dearly pay. This time she would accept alternative currency in the form of their teeth, broken limbs, and kicked butts. A slight smirk appeared on her face. She didn't notice it, but it made Eclipse a bit concerned about her mental health.

Silver reached the end of the line of prison cells, counting forty-three bodies. 'Hmm,' he pondered, 'this means more than eighty are still missing. I wonder...' He didn't want to think about this possibility, but it must have been the reason for this whole facility.

He once more checked the structure of the walls, wondering how many years it was since it was built. Why nobody noticed anything suspicious? If his rough estimation was correct, they were about two miles underground or even more. There had to be tremours from digging in the stone and people working on it. His brain had to leave the calculation for another time as the corridor ended in a big hexagonal room.

Each wall had a big cell build inside it. They walked a bit toward the center, and as was Silver looking around, he understood what this place was used for. He turned around to speak with his teammates when the only entrance loudly closed.

"What!" exclaimed Amy.

Eclipse quickly started to look around, searching for enemies. Silver did the same, just in a less visible way. 'Is somebody here?' he asked himself and cursed himself for not taking this possibility into account. Were they deliberately lured here?

"Well, well, what a surprise," said a creepy male voice from above. All their eyes moved up toward a small cliff hidden under the ceiling. The shadows there were the deepest, but they still recognized standing figure. Silver squinted, seeing the figure gestured its hand and numerous crystals embed into the walls started to shine.

"Welcome in my humble research center," the albino echidna in black coat continued. He hid his hand with three golden rings on the wrist under the torn cloak. He also slightly leaned forward, eyeing them. Eclipse inhaled, but he didn't find any particular smell coming from the echidna's body. He hissed when he noticed that fella had black sclera and yellow eyes like him. Could he be a demon?

"I'm genius scientist Zachary Finitevus, but call me just Doctor Finitevus," he bowed in an elegant way, exposing his forehead with embedded yellow diamond fringed by black lines. "Please, accept my apology. I would serve a tea, but I'm not used for unchained guests," he chuckled and added, "I hope you will forgive me." Dr. Finitevus straightened up.

"But I wonder..." he looked at Silver, noticing he had a hand next to his ear. The albino man lifted his right eyebrow, even tilting his head to the right side in his confusion.

"Can't hear!" Silver shouted, articulating every word. "Too high! Come down!" He gestured to emphasize his point.

Amy was speechless this was so cheeky! She would expect this kind of behavior from somebody like Sonic. He loved to tease people around him, and she heard a story about how he mocked a group of criminals before he beat them. He was using this tactic to distract his opponents while he took them down. It was definitely his style. However, Silver was always serious, hardly showing any hint of positive emotion. At most, she saw him irritated, gloomy, or bored.

The albino echidna laughed. "Now this is something you don't see every day!" His voice suggested he was indeed pleased.

"And I haven't even started," Silver said with a smug smile. "Just wait when I whack your sorry butt, you wacko." He tilted his body a bit and gestured the echidna to come closer. It was one of the cheekiest invitations for fight ever.

Amy couldn't help it, but she used her sight on the psychic. Gold explained to her Silver had from time to time unusual tendencies, to say it lightly, during missions. When she inspected his soul the first time, it was dark gray and sluggishly moving, and it filled her with nothing but coldness. And now, the same soul was swirling with colors like some psychedelic tornado, and it was widely moving, spreading through the whole body. Was he keeping inside a different personality?

"Wacko?" Finitevus barked, interrupting her next thoughts. "How dare you to call me that way!" He started to stomp with his legs, and every sound was muffled by the bandaged he had around them, taking away the half of the effect. "I'm genius scientist Zachary Finitevus! You must have heard of me!" He was fencing with his index finger as he pointed at the psychic. It actually looked comically.

"Nope, dunno, don't care!" Silver's face was an epitome of boredom, however, his soul was still full of many colors. He was right to assume this man was quickly enraged by insults on his status. He just loved to mess with his enemies.

Dr. Finitevus was clenching his fists for a bit before his pose turned relaxed. The anger in his face was gone, resuming its whiteness. "Why am I not surprised?" he asked nobody in particular. "It figures The Shortsighted Order wouldn't understand my work even in thousand years."

'The Order?' Silver's head slightly jerked. 'This man was working for them?' This was important information because this man was then a renegade and particularly dangerous one. He shot a quick glance at his companions, noticing Amy heard that man too, and her surprise was equally big.

The psychic adjusted his gloves. "Who cares?" he pretended he wasn't concerned with it. "You are going down anyway."

"Har, har, I have heard better one-liners," the doctor cruelly smirked, "before I cut their tongues out." The last sentence made Amy shiver, but she kept her fighting stance. "Let's see what you are made of," Dr. Finitevus whispered to himself, snapping his fingers.

The prison cells started to slowly open. The cogwheels lifting the heavy bars were screeching, and Amy was fighting with a strong urge to block her ears. Her demon familiar wasn't any better, but he didn't dare to do it. If he was smelling what he was smelling, this would be a hard battle.

From the openings were coming voices and noises of different shapes, for the lack of better word. Some were animal, some resembled human words, and some were a mix of both or hardly recognizable.

The trio formed triangle, guarding each other's back. Amy prepared her mace, clenching it with both hands. What was she sensing? It was illogical! It couldn't be that way. Yet, her brain was telling her otherwise. It was true.

From the cells emerged many grotesque monsters. Hardly a handful of them had a humanoid shape, others were like twisted animals, and the biggest group was nothing but an unimaginable mess. All of their bodies were looking slimy, full of blisters, and many of them had exposed bones with rotting meat. Horns and sharp claws were ignoring every law of nature in existence, twisting and growing from every possible place.

Amy felt her hands sliding down, and her stomach was swirling, threatening to throw the week worth meals on the floor. Her self-control was pushed to the extreme when two monsters in front of her collapsed at each other. They screamed, bellowing in pain as their body parts erupted and steaming bowels were spilled out before they melted. The rest of the monsters created a circle around them, not moving any further.

"Do you like them?" Finitevus asked, pleased with Amy's reaction. The silver fellow caught his interest a bit since he was calm. Dr. Zachary Finitevu's yellow eyes fell on the third member of the group who seemed to be somehow a mix of both as his head was jerking from one side to another, but he managed to hide his fear.

The mad scientist continued, "I know they look shabby, but never-mind that. They proved to be rather useful lab subjects given their low-grade quality."

Amy's eye twitched. "Low-grade?" she loudly repeated. Her head twitched towards him, and her face was frowning so much she had wrinkles of a very old lady. A thin crack appeared on the handler of her mace as her hand was crashing it. "Weren't they living people?" she yelled at him at the top of her lungs.

The man at the cliff hid his ears as the sudden sound wave hit him. It was like she was standing right next to him. Before he answered, he cleared his ear, "I suppose. They screamed a lot. I remember a number of them exploded. Twenty-three I guess," he answered her calmly. That was a big mistake on his part.

"How could you?" Her yell vibrated the whole arena, forcing Dr. Finitevus to cover his ears once more. "How could you do that to them! All they wanted was to have simple lives!" She took a deep breath. He used this time to release his ears, hoping it was over when she yelled once more, "Don't you feel anything?"

This time the mad scientist had to step back. "I feel ringing in my ears," he mumbled, baring his teeth. He loved listening to screams of his specimen, usually. However, she was exceptional. He could still hear her voice inside of his head. He growled, moving back to his previous post, and he leaned forward. "Yes, I do!" he shouted back. "I feel a headache from your screaming!"

His eyes caught her companions to clearing their ears too. That lifted his mood, knowing he wasn't the only one annoyed. Dr. Finitevus pondered for a few seconds, playing with a thought to capture them for his newest experiments. However, the yelling memory was too fresh, so he immediately scratched that. He was having only one pair of ears.

He snapped his fingers and said, "It wasn't my pleasure to know you, and I have a more important business than waste my precious time on some low-grade subjects." The monsters around them moved forward. "Farewell," he muttered at the end annoyed. He turned away, heading deeper into the laboratory complex.