I forgot to post segment 3 for the prologue to tulips lore!
Here have 3 and 4 together!
Silver was already there waiting for me on the screen.
The dim lighting around him barely hid the dark circles under his eyes, and his posture made it obvious he was irritated. He leaned forward slightly in his chair, one hand pressed against his forehead while the other rested near the keyboard beside him. Even through the poor video quality, I could tell he’d been waiting for a while.
“Well,” Silver said sharply, “what took you so long, Sunflower?”
I froze for a second before instinctively checking the time in the corner of the screen.
Searching for food had completely thrown off my schedule, and with everything that happened inside that building, I had lost track of time without even realizing it. Great. Fantastic first time I was late to a conference call with the leader.
I rubbed a hand across my face, trying to think of an excuse that wouldn’t immediately sound pathetic.
“Ran into problems while scavenging,” I muttered finally. “Had to stay hidden longer than expected.”
Silver’s expression didn’t soften.
“If you were caught, you should’ve abandoned the search,” he replied. “You disappearing for over an hour without contact makes people assume the worst.”
His voice stayed calm, but there was frustration buried underneath it. Maybe even concern.
I quietly leaned back in the creaking chair, exhaustion settling heavily into my body now that the adrenaline was finally beginning to fade. Every muscle ached. My legs felt weak from walking for hours, and my chest still hurt from how hard my heart had been pounding all day.
“I know,” I answered tiredly. “But I was trying to find something nearby to eat instead of heading all the way back to base.”
Silver let out a long, irritated sigh.
Even through the flickering screen, I could tell he was disappointed with my decision. His shoulders tensed slightly as he leaned back in his chair, clearly trying not to snap at me outright.
“You could’ve searched for food back at the base,” he said.
I shrugged weakly. “Too much of a walk to get back.”
Silver stared at me in complete disbelief for a few seconds before groaning under his breath.
Despite everything happening around us, despite the ruined world outside and the constant fear crawling beneath my skin, I still felt the urge to joke.
Maybe because it was easier than thinking too hard.
“What can I say?” I muttered. “I had a tire-ing day.”
Silver immediately facepalmed.
The sharp smack of his hand hitting his forehead echoed through the speakers.
A tired laugh almost escaped me seeing his reaction.
Silver dragged his hand slowly down his face before glaring at me through the monitor. “We are literally surviving through an apocalypse and you’re still making terrible puns.”
“They actively damage morale.”
I quietly snorted at that.
For a brief moment, the tension in the room eased. The fear, the exhaustion, the constant pressure sitting on our shoulders, it all felt just a little lighter.
Silver noticed the small smile creeping onto my face and sighed again, though this time it sounded less irritated.
“You seriously worry me sometimes, Sunflower.”
The screen flickered again as the unstable connection struggled to hold together. Static buzzed softly between our voices while the old computer fan rattled loudly beside me.
Silver’s expression slowly became more serious again.
“You can’t keep wandering around districts like that alone,” he said quietly. “Especially this far from resistance territory. If the cannibals catch you out there, nobody’s getting to you in time.”
I looked down at my hands resting in my lap.
Every abandoned street I walked through felt like a gamble. Every dark hallway, every distant sound, every silhouette moving in the corner of my eye could’ve been the thing that finally killed me.
But staying still scared me too.
Silver studied my exhausted expression for a moment before speaking again, softer this time.
“Did you do your job and hack into the doctors' servers to figure out what he’s doing with the survivors he had been gathering up?” Silver asked but I felt a burning sensation go through my stomach.
The awful images I’ve saw from when I hacked, all of the awful information had crawled back to me.
“Yes, however, you should keep this confidential, what has happened is not for the faint of heart. I’ve saw so many unholy things.” I explained to silver as I type a code as this sends all the information I got to silver’s computer.
“Good luck on not throwing up silver.”
“Sunflower, you know I hate being called that. I’m aware you had to hack our systems to figure out my identity, but that doesn’t give you the right to call me that.” Silver scolded.
I responded with an exaggerated grin, leaning back in my chair like I had done nothing wrong.
The look on his face somehow grew even more disappointed.
Jeez. Talk about someone who couldn’t handle a joke.
The rest of the conference dragged on for nearly two hours, but I barely focused on half of it. Voices continued speaking through the speaker; plans, supply routes, survivor counts, arguments over territory but my attention constantly drifted elsewhere.
I kept scanning the security feeds instead.
Every flicker of static made my stomach tense.
Every shadow outside the building looked wrong.
I watched the empty hallways through old surveillance cameras while occasionally glancing toward the boarded-up windows beside me. My hand never strayed far from the flashlight resting on the table, even though I knew using it carelessly would only get me killed.
Out there, darkness belonged to them.
Cannibals used the night like hunters stalking wounded prey, silently waiting for the smallest mistake. And the machines… they were even worse. They didn’t sleep. Didn’t hesitate. Didn’t lose track of a target once they locked onto it.
The conference finally ended with a burst of static before the call disconnected completely.
Silence flooded the room.
I rubbed my eyes, exhaustion hitting me all at once. My neck hurt from sitting still for so long. The dim glow of my computer monitor was the only light left in the break room.
I glanced toward the clock in the corner of the screen.
Night had already swallowed the city whole.
The thought of wandering outside made my chest tighten. Even with my night vision, going out there alone would be a death sentence. One flashlight beam cutting through the dark was all it took for something to notice you.
And once something noticed you…
You would never be heard from ever again.
A distant metallic clang echoed somewhere outside the building.
The sound was followed by silence.
I slowly reached for the weapon beside my chair, holding my breath as I listened carefully. The old building creaked around me while rain lightly tapped against the windows.
Maybe it was just loose debris.
Or maybe something was searching.
Either way, I wasn’t stupid enough to risk it.
I let out a quiet sigh and leaned back in the chair, trying to ignore the growing pit in my stomach.
I’d have to stay here until morning.
Hopefully… nothing found me before then.
The silence in the break room felt oppressive, broken only by the faint hum of my computer and the occasional groan of the old building settling around me. Every sound made me tense for a moment before forcing myself to relax again.
I reached over to my backpack and pulled out one of the dented cans of food I had scavenged earlier that week. The label had long since peeled away, leaving me with no clue what was inside. Honestly, at this point, it didn’t matter.
I popped the lid open with my pocketknife and quietly ate the contents straight from the can. It tasted cold, salty, and stale, but it dulled the hunger enough to stop the painful twisting in my stomach.
As I ate, my thoughts began drifting somewhere I hated letting them wander.
Man… everything was just ruined.
The world. The cities. The people.
I stared down at the half-empty can resting in my hands.
I couldn’t stop myself from wondering what life would’ve been like if he hadn’t died.
Would things have turned out differently?
Would any of this have happened?
Or were we doomed from the beginning?
The memories came in fragments I didn’t want to revisit. Laughter that no longer existed, voices I’d never hear again, moments that felt almost unreal now. Back then, everything seemed so simple. Problems actually had solutions. People still smiled without forcing it.
Now surviving another day felt like an achievement.
I quickly shoved the thoughts away before they could sink any deeper. Thinking too much in this world was dangerous. Memories had a nasty habit of hollowing people out from the inside.
And I couldn’t afford to fall apart.
I glanced around the dim break room again. The barricaded door remained still. The windows stayed dark. No scratching. No footsteps.
Since sleep clearly wasn’t happening anytime soon, I leaned forward and booted up one of the old games stored on my PC. The screen flickered for a moment before the familiar title screen appeared, washing the room in soft blue light.
For the first time all night, I felt some of the tension leave my shoulders.
The world outside had completely collapsed, yet here I was playing some old game like things were normal again.
But maybe that was the point.
Maybe pretending things were normal for a few hours was the only thing keeping me sane.
I rested my chin against my hand and quietly started playing while the darkness outside continued swallowing the city whole.
I could feel myself slowly growing tired of the game I had been playing.
At this point, I wasn’t even sure how to properly describe it anymore. It was some old game I found buried inside abandoned files months ago, patched together just enough to function on my portable PC. The gameplay itself was simple, repetitive even, but it had been entertaining enough to distract me from reality for a little while.
Still, after playing it so much, the charm was beginning to wear off.
The excitement it once gave me had slowly dulled into routine.
I let out a quiet sigh and finally closed the game window. The faint glow from the screen dimmed slightly as I leaned back in the chair and rubbed my tired eyes.
That’s when I noticed the sunlight.
Thin beams of pale morning light crept through the cracks in the boarded-up windows, stretching across the dusty floor of the break room. The darkness that had swallowed the store all night was finally beginning to fade away.
Relief washed over me almost instantly.
The long night of sitting awake, wasting time to avoid sleeping, was finally over.
I quickly packed my things back into my bag before reaching for the robotic mask resting beside the computer. The cold metal pressed against my face as I secured it back into place, hiding any sign that I was still a living Mobian beneath the artificial appearance.
Without the mask, I was prey.
With it, I at least had a chance to bluff my way out of danger.
I stretched my aching legs before slowly making my way toward the break room door. My joints cracked painfully from sitting too long, and exhaustion still clung heavily to my body despite surviving the night.
Carefully, I stepped back into the abandoned store.
The place looked even sadder in the daylight.
Dust floated visibly through the air now, illuminated by streaks of sunlight shining through broken windows and holes in the ceiling. Mostly empty shelves stretched endlessly around me while old advertisements peeled away from the walls.
I wandered aimlessly through the aisles for a few minutes, trying to wake myself up before heading back outside.
It was safer to be fully alert.
If I ran into a cannibal while half-awake, there was a good chance I’d slip up somehow. The robotic mask only worked if I acted correctly. Stiff movements, limited reactions, mechanical speech. One mistake, one moment of hesitation, and they’d realize I was still alive beneath the metal disguise.
I didn’t even want to think about it.
As I slowly walked through the toy aisle again, my thoughts drifted back to the skeleton I had found earlier.
The image refused to leave my head.
The horrifying realization that they had probably been eaten alive while terrified and alone.
My stomach twisted painfully.
It was one of the most disgusting things I had ever seen.
…Yet somehow, it still wasn’t the worst thing burned into my memory anymore.
Not after the doctor’s files.
My pace slowed slightly as flashes of those images crawled back into my mind again.
At least a dozen Mobians fused together into one screaming mass of exposed muscle, metal, and bone. Limbs twisted unnaturally into each other while parts of machinery were forcefully embedded into living tissue. Some of them had still been alive in the recordings.
I felt nauseous just remembering it.
Honestly, this cannibal-infested nightmare outside almost felt tame compared to the horrors hidden inside Eggman’s facilities. Out here, at least death usually came quickly.
People were turned into experiments.
And the worst part was knowing the doctor had probably viewed all of it as some sort of twisted progress with whatever he was planning.
Eventually, I grew tired of wandering around the store.
Not that there was much to do in the first place.
Honestly, remembering the horrors I had seen in those files had done a better job waking me up than sleep ever could. My exhaustion still lingered in my body, but now it mixed with that familiar pit of dread sitting heavily in my stomach.
I let out a quiet sigh and adjusted the strap of my bag before finally heading toward the shattered entrance of the store.
The moment I stepped outside, the silence returned.
A vast, empty silence that seemed to swallow everything around it.
Occasionally, it was interrupted by the distant chirping of mutated birds somewhere high above the ruined buildings. Their cries sounded warped and unnatural compared to normal birds, almost distorted in a way that made my skin crawl. The wind moved through the abandoned streets in long hollow gusts, pushing loose debris and scraps of paper across the cracked pavement.
As I walked, faint mechanical sounds clicked and whirred beneath my clothes with every movement I made. Small servos hidden under layers of fabric shifted alongside my limbs, producing subtle robotic noises whenever I turned my head or moved my arms.
One of my better inventions, honestly.
I had spent months building the system using scavenged machine parts and stripped-down motor components. The entire purpose was simple. To make my disguise more believable.
Anyone could wear a robotic mask.
But sounding human was what got people killed.
The fake mechanical noises helped sell the illusion that I was some kind of wandering machine rather than a living Mobian desperately trying to survive. Most cannibals were too unstable to question it further, especially if I avoided speaking too much around them.
Still, every day I wore this disguise, this disgusts me pretending to be a machine but it’s better than nothing.
I quickly pushed it aside and pulled out my portable PC while continuing down the empty street. The screen flickered to life after a few seconds, displaying a cluttered mess of notes, intercepted transmissions, unfinished code, and resistance requests.
I skimmed through the task list while walking.
Most of the tasks on my list didn’t really catch my interest.
They were either painfully boring or jobs I wouldn’t be caught dead doing.
Cleaning old relay stations.
Searching collapsed tunnels for scrap.
I let out a quiet sigh as I closed the task window on my portable PC. Great. Nothing useful I actually wanted to deal with today.
Guess I should just head back to the resistance base.
I powered the computer down and slipped it back into my bag before beginning the long walk home through the ruined streets.
The city remained eerily quiet as usual. Only the wind and the distant cries of mutated birds disturbed the silence. My fake mechanical systems clicked softly beneath my clothes with every step, maintaining the illusion that I was just another wandering machine.
Eventually, I passed one cannibal I had seen around this district before.
I never learned his name.
Honestly, I doubted he even remembered his own anymore.
He just ignored me after assuming I was robotic, barely sparing me a glance before continuing his endless wandering. This was the cannibal that was a pale yellow squirrel Mobian with sunken eyes and matted fur stained with old blood.
The way he moved immediately made it obvious he wasn’t mentally stable anymore.
His body twitched erratically with every step, almost like a puppet being dragged around by broken strings. His head jerked constantly while his claws scraped lightly against the walls beside him.
As I carefully walked past him, I could hear him muttering to himself in a weak, broken voice.
“Hungry… where is food…?”
My heartbeat immediately quickened.
I kept my movements stiff and mechanical, forcing myself not to react as I continued walking past him. Even after all this time, being near cannibals still terrified me. Every encounter felt like balancing on the edge of death.
I just needed to keep moving.
Eventually, the squirrel disappeared behind me, fading out of sight as I continued farther down the street.
Suddenly a scream tore through the silence.
Followed by a sickening ripping sound.
The voice belonged to the squirrel.
Cold sweat rolled down beneath my mask as I slowly turned back toward where the sound came from.
At first, my brain struggled to process what I was seeing.
The squirrel cannibal was on the ground.
Or at least… what remained of him was.
A Mobian stood over the body with a broken arm hanging limply at their side. Blood dripped heavily onto the pavement beneath them while pieces of flesh and torn fur littered the street nearby.
The cannibal had been ripped apart with horrifying ease.
My breathing caught in my throat.
And yet something about them made my entire body lock up with fear.
The sheer violence of what they had just done.
Fear crawled violently down my spine as I stared at the scene unfolding before me.
I couldn’t breathe properly.
The Mobian slowly looked down at the remains of the cannibal before speaking in a hollow, emotionless voice that barely sounded alive.
“There… your suffering is over.”
Their voice sounded dead.
“The doctor has no use for someone willingly eating others for an experiment.”
The moment they mentioned the doctor, pure panic shot through my body.
I really, really wanted to run.
But my legs refused to listen.
My entire body had gone numb with fear.
I stood frozen in place as the stranger slowly turned their head toward me.
“Located a resistance member.”
The lifeless voice sent pure terror through my body.
My breathing immediately became uneven as I slowly stumbled backward, shaking so badly I could barely stay balanced. Every instinct screamed at me to run, but fear rooted my feet to the pavement.
I couldn’t even force words out anymore.
The figure began walking toward me.
The way they moved felt horribly familiar somehow, and that realization only made my fear worse. Their posture, the rhythm of their footsteps, the slight tilt of their head—
It felt like I should recognize them.
Something about them had been ruined beyond recognition.
I took another shaky step back before suddenly feeling my arm violently yanked forward.
I gasped as the stranger grabbed me with terrifying strength. Their grip tightened painfully around my arm, cold fingers digging into me hard enough to bruise.
Before I could react, their other hand shot toward my face and ripped the robotic mask clean off.
The sound of tearing straps echoed loudly through the empty street.
Panic flooded through me instantly.
The cold morning air hit my exposed face as I desperately struggled against their grip, but it was useless. They barely even reacted to my resistance.
Or at least… attempted to.
The grin stretched unnaturally across their face, stiff and wrong, like something imitating an expression it didn’t fully understand. Now that they were standing this close, I finally saw it clearly.
It was one of Eggman’s machines perfectly cloaked to be one.
Fear slammed into me so hard it felt difficult to breathe. I twisted violently, trying to pull myself free, but the machine’s grip never loosened.
It was like struggling against solid metal.
“Please—!” I cried out desperately. “Leave me alone! Please!”
The machine stared at me silently for a moment.
Just those horrible red glowing eyes locked onto me.
Then it suddenly forced something over my face.
I panicked immediately, my heart nearly exploding in my chest as I thrashed harder against its grip.
“Stop—! Let me go! LET ME GO—!”
The machine ignored every word.
Without warning, it began dragging me down the street.
My shoes scraped uselessly against the pavement as I struggled and kicked, tears burning down my face beneath the blindfold. I was shocked that I couldn’t hear any of the machinery that makes up the machine. The doctor managed to make a machine that has all of its metal and loud sounds silenced.
The ruined city echoed around me while panic completely consumed my thoughts.
I didn’t know where it was taking me.
But after everything I had seen inside the doctor’s files…
I knew nothing good was waiting for me there.
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