The Tearing of Worlds
The sky had no right to break the way it did.
Locke remembered thinking that, in the half-second before everything changed. He'd been standing on the observation deck of his apartment, watching the sunset paint the horizon in shades of amber and violet, when the first crack appeared. Not a sound—not yet—just a thin black line that split the heavens like a wound opening in flesh.
Then came the scream.
Not from any living thing, but from reality itself—a grinding, tearing howl that made his bones ache and his teeth clench involuntarily. The crack widened, edges rippling with colors that had no names, hues that shouldn't exist in any spectrum he knew. Locke's hand shot to the railing, knuckles white, as the wind suddenly reversed directions and began pulling everything towards that impossible crack in the sky.
From within the vortex, something emerged.
A machine, first—angular and gleaming, bristling with weapons that hummed with barely contained energy. Then the figure piloting it came into view: roundo, fatsio, wearing goggles that reflected the dying light in twin crescents of gold. The figure's laughter preceded his words, rolling across the landscape like thunder.
"Magnificent! Absolutely magnificent!" The voice boomed through speakers mounted on the hovering craft. "A world without that insufferable blue hedgehog—a blank canvas for my genius! This realm shall become the greatest Eggman Land ever constructed!"
Locke's jaw tightened. He knew this type instantly—a conqueror, a megalomaniac, the kind of ego that devours entire worlds without hesitation. But beneath that familiar dread was something else, something that made his skin prickle with a strange, unwanted recognition.
The dimensional energy leaking from the rift was wrong. Contaminated. Like oil swirling through clear water.
His realm detector confirmed his instinct a moment later, locking onto the dimensional signature and pulling up the origin point. It wasn't just Sonic's world—it was an alternate version of it. A parallel realm twisted just slightly off the original.
Locke had already suspected as much, but now he understood why his instincts had been screaming. Something was different about this Sonic World… something fundamentally off.
"You picked the wrong world," Locke called out, his voice steady despite the chaos erupting around him. Citizens were fleeing, sirens wailed, but he stood his ground. "And you definitely picked the wrong person to threaten."
The floating doctor—Eggman, thus he'd called himself—peered down at Locke with interest. "Oh? And who might you be? Some local guardian? A would-be hero?"
Locke didn't answer. He could already feel it—that familiar surge rising from deep within his power core, the wild, untamed force that had defined him for as long as he could remember. His chaotic energy was reacting to the dimensional breach, resonating with it like a tuning fork struck too hard.
Reality wavered around him. Probability folded in on itself and snapped outward again in rippling waves, each pulse feeding into the storm gathering inside his body.
He let the power rise, no longer resisting it. Chaotic energy flared to life along his arms as he prepared to strike back, and once again battle another threat. Robotnik's forces were closing in on the one place he would never allow to fall. His home. Adelaide.
"I'm the one who's going to send you back, because you don't belong here. You egg shaped freak." Locke said, and raised his hand. The one with energy spitting out of it.
The energy exploded from him in a column of raw force—not fire, not lightning, but something more fundamental. Space twisted, time stuttered, and for one beautiful, terrible moment, Locke felt like he could reshape the entire world with a thought.
But he'd miscalculated.
His powers, wild and uncontrolled, latched onto the dimensional rift instead of closing it. The vortex pulsed once, twice, then erupted outward in a sphere of blinding white light that consumed everything—Eggman's craft, the tower, Locke himself.
In that moment of transition, suspended between worlds, Locke understood what was happening. His chaotic nature had turned him into a bridge, a conduit between dimensions. And now, that bridge was collapsing, dragging him and the invader down into somewhere else entirely.
The last thing he saw before consciousness fled was the Main Realm fragmenting behind him like a shattered mirror, each piece reflecting a different world, a different possibility.
Then—nothing.
The Weight of Absence
Awareness returned slowly, carried on the smell of salt and ozone.
Locke's eyes opened to an unfamiliar sky—the same blue as the one he'd left, but somehow different. Subtly wrong. The clouds moved in patterns that didn't quite match the wind, and the light had a crystalline quality that made everything seem hyperreal, oversaturated.
He was lying on grass. That much was certain. Soft, real grass that yielded under his weight, still damp with morning dew that soaked through his jacket. Pushing himself to his knees, Locke checked his body for any major injuries he might need to heal. No major injuries. His clothes were singed at the edges, but he was whole.
The device on his wrist—his Reality Checker—was beeping frantically.
Locke tapped it, pulling up the readings, and felt his stomach drop. Dimensional coordinates: completely foreign. Temporal signature: fractured, as if multiple timelines were attempting to exist simultaneously. Spatial coherence: 73% and falling. Alternate Sonic Dimension detected changes. Locke sort of really question it.
"This is bad," he muttered, climbing to his feet. "This is really, really bad."
The landscape around him provided no comfort. Yes, it was an island—mountainous, lush, with ancient ruins poking through the vegetation like bones through skin. But something about it felt hollow, incomplete. Like a painting where the artist had forgotten to add the shadows.
A sound made him turn.
Through the trees, moving with cautious determination, came a fox. Orange fur, white-tipped twin tails that swayed with each step, and eyes that held far more sadness than person should carry The fox stopped when he saw Locke, one hand moving instinctively to a device strapped to his waist—some kind of portable glowing device.
They stared at each other for a long moment. "You're not from here," the fox said finally. Not a question—a statement. "No," Locke admitted. "I heard your name was... Tails?" The fox's eyes widened. "How do you know my name? I've never seen you before."
Locke chose his words carefully. "Where I come from, you're famous. A genius inventor, best friend to the fastest thing alive. You and Sonic—" "Sonic?" Tails interrupted, and the confusion on his face made Locke's heart sink. "Who's Sonic?"
The world seemed to tilt. Locke had suspected—the dimensional readings, the wrongness in the air—but hearing it confirmed was different. He pulled up his Reality Checker again, running a deep scan of the local timeline.
The results made him want to scream.
This dimension had been altered at its foundation. Where a blue hedgehog should have existed—where Sonic the Hedgehog's presence should have shaped history, inspired legends, created friendships—there was nothing. Just absence. A hole in the world where a hero should have been.
And it was Locke's arrival that had caused it.
His arrival, combined with his unstable powers, had corrupted this reality. The dimensional breach had spread like a cancer through the timeline, erasing what should have been and replacing it with this hollow echo. Sonic hadn't disappeared—he'd never existed here at all.
"Oh jeez," Locke said quietly. "Welp, I'm gonna have to fix this myself." Tails tilted his head. "For what?"
How could he explain? How could he tell this fox that he'd lost his best friend, of adventures that should have defined his life, of a bond that transcended time and space? That somewhere in the infinite multiverse, there was a version of Tails who flew alongside a blue hedgehog, who'd saved the world countless times, who'd never known the loneliness that now radiated from him like a chill?
"My name is Locke," he said instead. "And I think I broke your world. But I'm going to fix it. I promise you that." Tails studied him for a long moment, those intelligent eyes seeming to see right through him. Then, slowly, the fox extended a hand.
"Then you're going to need help," Tails said. "This island... it's been strange lately. Machines appearing out of nowhere, the nature acting paranoid and aggressive. Something's wrong, and I've been trying to figure out what. If you know something—anything—that could help..."
He trailed off, and Locke saw it then—the desperate hope of someone who'd been alone for too long, who'd been bullied for being different, who'd never had anyone believe in him the way Sonic would have.
Locke took the offered hand. "Let's fix this together."
Echoes of What Should Have Been
They moved through Angel Island—for that was its name, Tails explained—like ghosts through a graveyard. Every step Locke took, his Reality Checker fed him information about what this place should have been. Here, Sonic should have fought Knuckles in an epic battle. There, Tails should have flown him to the Death Egg. In that clearing, three friends should have stood together against impossible odds.
But none of it had happened. The island remembered, in the way places sometimes do, but the memories were hollow shells. History with all the meaning scraped out.
Tails led him through hidden paths, past ancient mechanisms that still functioned despite their age. The fox was brilliant—that much was unchanged by the dimensional corruption. He'd mapped the entire island, cataloged every machine that had recently appeared, traced their origin to a single source.
"There's someone here," Tails explained as they climbed a steep cliff face. "Someone who doesn't belong. A doctor of some kind. He's been building... something. The island's guardian is working with him, but I don't know why. Knuckles isn't usually so—"
"Knuckles," Locke interrupted. "The guardian. Red echidna, spiky knuckles, incredibly strong?" "You know him too?" "In a way." Locke pulled himself over the cliff edge, offering Tails a hand up. "In another version of this world, he's your friend. Stubborn, proud, easy to trick, but with a heart of gold. He guards the Master Emerald—the source of this island's power. I'm surprised you know about him this early. Probably because of the changes making different flaws here."
His expression grew distant. "The Master Emerald... I've heard stories. Legends about a gem that keeps the island floating. But I've never seen it. Knuckles won't let anyone near the shrine."
They pressed on, and with each mile, Locke felt his own powers shifting. The chaotic energy that had always defined him was being compressed, refined, transformed by this dimension's physics. His reality-bending abilities were fading, replaced by something more physical, more immediate. He found himself moving faster, his reflexes sharpening. When he jumped, he could curl into a ball mid-air, spinning with enough force to shatter rock. When he ran, the world blurred around him.
He was becoming more like Sonic. More like what this world expected a hero to be. It confused him. But he knew if he could get back to his world. His powers would probably return to normal.
"Locke?" Tails called from ahead. "Are you okay?" "Yeah," Locke replied, catching up. "Just... adapting."
They found the first of Eggman's machines shortly after—a hulking construction bot tearing through the forest, clearing space for some larger project. It spotted them instantly, mechanical eyes glowing red, weapons systems powering up with a whine that made Locke's teeth ache.
"Run!" Tails shouted.
But Locke was already moving. His body knew what to do before his mind could process it—curl, spin, dash forward with enough speed to become a living projectile. He slammed into the machine's leg joint, metal shrieking as it buckled. Tails soared overhead, dropping small explosives with precision timing, each detonation targeting a critical system.
The machine collapsed in less than thirty seconds. Tails landed beside it, breathing hard. "That was... how did you move like that?" Locke stared at his hands. "I don't know. This world is rewriting my power. Making me into something it needs." He looked up at Tails. While saying so.
"No," Tails said firmly. "You're adapting. That's different. You're still you—just... translated." Translated. The word struck Locke as profound in its simplicity. Perhaps that's all anyone was when they moved between worlds—a translation of themselves, adjusted to fit new contexts, new rules, new possibilities.
They continued forward, destroying three more machines before reaching the island's central waterfall. The roar of cascading water was deafening, but through it, Locke could hear something else—the hum of engines, the clank of metal on stone.
"He's here," Locke said. Tails nodded, adjusting his goggles. "Then let's end this." They stepped into the clearing just as the waterfall exploded outward.
The Battle at the Falls
The machine that emerged was a nightmare of engineering—part scorpion, part tank, bristling with weapons and armored thick enough to withstand artillery fire. Mounted in its center, looking far too pleased with himself, was Dr. Eggman.
"Well, well!" the doctor called out, his voice amplified through external speakers. "The dimensional anomaly and the clever little fox! I must say, I'm impressed you made it this far. Those mech's I left as a greeting should have reduced you to ash, but here you stand. Resilient! I respect that."
Locke's eyes narrowed. "This ends now."
"Does it?" Eggman's grin widened. "You don't even understand what's happening, do you? This world is malleable, kid. It bends to those with vision. And I have the greatest vision of all—Eggman Land, stretching from horizon to horizon! A paradise of my design, unchallenged by that cursed hedgehog who's plagued me for so long!"
"Sonic," Locke said quietly. "You're talking about Sonic."
"Am I?" Eggman's expression shifted, confusion flickering across his face. "I... yes. Yes, Sonic. Though... why can't I picture his face clearly? Why does the name feel like..." He shook his head violently. "No matter! The dimensional breach has given me what I always wanted—a world where I already won! And you won't take that from me!"
The Egg Scorcher MK II surged forward, plasma cannons charging with a sound like tearing silk.
Locke moved without thinking—pure instinct guiding him into a spin dash that carried him under the first volley. Plasma rounds tore through the air where he'd been standing, superheating the mist into steam. Tails was already airborne, his twin tails spinning like helicopter blades, dropping charges that detonated against the mech's armor with sharp cracks.
"Targeting system locked!" Eggman's voice crackled through damaged speakers. "Fire!"
A spread of missiles erupted from the machine's shoulders. Locke watched them arc through the air in what felt like slow motion—his enhanced reflexes processing trajectories, calculating impacts, finding the gaps. He pushed off the ground hard enough to crack stone, spinning mid-air as missiles passed within inches of his body. At the apex of his jump, something new awakened inside him.
The Spin Jump Swift Wind Push.
Locke thrust his hands forward and felt the air itself compress, then explode outward in a directed blast. The shockwave caught the remaining missiles, detonating them prematurely in a chain reaction that lit up the sky. He landed beside a stunned Tails, already moving toward the mech. "Together!" Locke shouted.
They flowed into synchronization without planning it—Tails high, Locke low, attacking from angles that forced Eggman to split his attention. The doctor was skilled, Locke had to admit, adjusting his tactics on the fly, but he was fighting opponents who were learning, evolving with each exchange.
Locke's spin dash carved trenches in the earth, building momentum until he was moving fast enough to run up the mech's leg, across its torso, delivering devastating strikes to every weak point his enhanced senses identified more than ever, that fit this world perfectly. Tails explosives followed split seconds later, amplifying the damage, creating cascading failures in the machine's systems.
"Impossible!" Eggman howled. "You're just morons! How are you—"
His words cut off as Locke reached the center. For one moment, their eyes met—conqueror and defender, chaos and order. Then Locke planted both feet on the reinforced glass and activated his power with intense force.
Reality rippled. The glass shattered. The mech's systems screamed.
Locke dropped away as Tails delivered the final blow—a shaped charge placed with surgical precision against the power core. The explosion was contained, controlled, but devastating. The Egg Scorcher MK II collapsed like a puppet with cut strings, smoking and sparking.
Eggman ejected, his escape pod rocketing away toward the island's interior. But before he vanished, Locke heard him screaming into a communicator.
"Knuckles! Now! Activate the trap!"
The ground beneath them shuddered. Locke spun, searching for the threat, but it was Tails who saw it first—a massive stone panel, hidden beneath moss and earth, glowing with ancient energy.
Standing beside it, fist raised, was Knuckles the Echidna.
His eyes were pained, conflicted, but his resolve was iron. "I'm sorry," the guardian said. "But I can't let you interfere with the doctor's work. This island needs his technology to survive."
"Knuckles, no!" Tails shouted. "You don't understand what you're—" The echidna's fist slammed down. Reality broke.
Falling Through Memories
The sensation of falling is supposed to trigger fear—primal, instinctive. But as Locke plummeted through layer after layer of Angel Island's hidden depths, all he felt was a strange, detached curiosity. This was how it felt to fall through history, through geology, through Sonic's world itself.
Tails was screaming somewhere above him. Or below. Or beside. Direction lost meaning in the chaos of their descent. Stone walls rushed past, each stratum a different era—recent construction giving way to ancient ruins, which gave way to natural caverns, which gave way to something else. Something older than the island itself. Some kind of flooded city.
Locke tried to activate his powers, to halt their fall or at least slow it, but his chaotic energy sputtered and died like a candle in a hurricane. The dimensional corruption was accelerating, rewriting him faster now, stripping away everything that made him himself and replacing it with what this world needed.
He caught fragments of impact—a glancing blow against a mineral formation that spun him sideways, a splash through an underground stream that soaked him instantly, a collision with Tails that sent them both tumbling through a network of glowing fungi. The fox's tails wrapped around him instinctively, slowing their fall marginally.
"Hold on!" Tails shouted, his voice barely audible over the roar of rushing water. Then they hit the pool.
The impact drove the air from Locke's lungs, cold water enveloping him like a frozen fist. For a moment, he didn't know which way was up, his senses completely disoriented. Bubbles streamed past his face. His Reality Checker's display flickered, waterlogged and failing.
Then he broke the surface, gasping, and saw. They'd fallen into a flooded city.
Structures rose from the water like the bones of giants—ancient towers, collapsed bridges, weathered statues of figures Locke couldn't identify. Everything was covered in bioluminescent growth, fungi and algae that pulsed with soft light, turning the entire cavern into a galaxy frozen underwater. The water itself seemed to glow faintly, reacting to their presence with gentle ripples of luminescence.
"Impossible," Tails breathed, treading water beside him. "This is... I've studied every map of this island. This shouldn't exist. It's feeling like it shouldn't exist here in my world. What a strange feeling."
Locke swam to the nearest structure—a half-collapsed archway—and pulled himself onto it. His Reality Checker was beeping weakly, displaying fragmented data. He tapped it, coaxing it back to life, and the readings made his breath catch.
Temporal anchor detected. Location: Classified as "Hydro City" in multiversal records. Status: Should not exist in this timeline. Warning: Reality coherence falling to critical levels.
"Hydro City," Locke said aloud, and the name resonated through the cavern like a bell. This place knew itself. It remembered existing in other worlds, other times. It was a ghost, anchored to this reality by nothing more than the echo of what should have been.
Tails climbed up beside him, water streaming from his tails. "What is this place?"
"A memory," Locke said. "A piece of history that shouldn't exist here, but does because..." He trailed off, the truth settling over him like a weight. "Because I brought it with me. My powers didn't just corrupt this world—they're trying to fix it. Pulling in pieces from other dimensions, other timelines, trying to restore what was erased."
"Sonic," Tails said quietly. "You keep mentioning someone named Sonic. Is he... part of what's missing?"
Locke nodded. "He's everything that's missing. The heart of this world. Without him..." He gestured at the ghostly city around them. "This is what happens. Reality trying to fill a void it can't understand."
They sat in silence for a moment, listening to the gentle lap of water against ancient stone. Then Tails stood, determination replacing confusion on his face. "Then we find him," the fox said. "Or we fix whatever stopped him from existing. I don't know who this Sonic is, but if he's that important, then we—"
A current struck them without warning.
One moment they were standing on solid stone; the next, the water around them surged with violent force, pulling them off their perch. Locke grabbed for Tails but missed, his hand closing on empty air. The current was mechanical, too precise to be natural—triggered by their presence, or by something they'd activated.
They were swept into a tunnel carved through the bedrock, the flow accelerating impossibly fast. Locke caught glimpses of machinery embedded in the walls—ancient and modern technology fused together in ways that shouldn't work but did. Glowing crystals pulsed as they passed, and for a moment, Locke thought he saw faces in the light. Echoes of people who'd lived here, built here, died here.
"Locke!" Tails voice, distant and distorted by water. "I'm over here!" He reached out blindly, found fur and metal, held on tight. The tunnel twisted, turned, branching into smaller passages that rejoined moments later. The current pulled them deeper, faster, until Locke couldn't tell if they were moving through water or falling through something else entirely. Time felt wrong here. Space felt negotiable.
Ahead, light grew—not the gentle bioluminescence of the cavern, but something harsher, more artificial. The tunnel was ending, depositing them somewhere new.
Somewhere that shouldn't exist.
Locke had just enough time to take a breath before the current ejected them into blinding whiteness. He felt himself tumbling, felt Tails grip slip away, felt consciousness beginning to fade as his waterlogged body simply gave up.
His last thought before darkness claimed him was simple: We're not going to make it. Then—nothing at all.
TO BE CONTINUED...