She stopped crying, long before I finally get to her, but her nose is still clogged with snot and dried blood, and she snorts loudly between every resonating beat of her heart. It’s painful to look at her, unrecognizable like this, no longer the smiling jewel of Mobius.

“Tell me what happened.” As if it isn’t obvious. He beat her. He beat her because he found out about us. There’s leak somewhere in the security monitors, or maybe there are hidden cameras in the SEQ Block after all. Hell, does it really matter how he found out?

And Robotnik knew that kicking my ass wouldn’t hurt, and that there wouldn’t be a point to an accidental death. He did this because he wanted to prove to me that he could destroy things better than I ever could. To show me that I have more to lose.

The room smells like her sweat mixed with his, the sex of his fist pounding into her flesh over and over, screams, cries of delight and pain. Who had enjoyed it more, I wonder.

“It’s no big deal, really.” Amazing that she can say that without breaking down and sobbing.

All I had wanted to prove to uncle, a long time ago, was that sometimes, destroying things isn’t the point. And we certainly can’t do it every time we feel like shit.

It’s too late for all that now. I missed her cry. I missed the fucking bitch cry, and it’s his fault. He couldn’t do it in front of me- shit, I would have accepted video playback, for fuck’s sake! If you’re going to beat someone, you make sure you do it for the right reasons and in the right circumstances. What cause was there for this?!

“Why?”

She snorts loudly. “All he said was to stay away from you.”

“Stay away?”

“… Stay away.”

“That’s it?”

She nods, and I can hear the joints popping in her neck. She tries to stand to her feet but collapses back to the floor. “Sorry.”

Sorry for what? Keeping me from my work? Teasing me all this time? Making shit complicated? “It’s no big deal.” For speeding up the inevitable? For making my life so goddamn interesting? “No big deal.”

**********

The dust never stops blowing in Robotropolis. It’s a combination of the arctic winds from the north and the smog we generate in the central sector. Dust blows over everything, bombarding every surface and dusting it for fingerprints. A thumb here, an index finger there; remnants of the old world. You can’t help but wonder who made them and if you killed them or just Robotocized them.

The freedom fighters have it easy. They’re the ones who have to restore this shit. Where it is now, this is what Robotnik and I get. All of it, ours.

Postcards, memories of a place more complicated. We destroyed a world that was well on its way to becoming perfect. Or so the optimists would say. I’m sure Mobotropolis had its problems. Beauty, after all, is only skin deep.

Societies need some large catastrophe every once in awhile, to keep it on its toes, to tip the balance of power. Maybe having more people on a planet has always been a bad idea after all.

Sally is on the list for Robotocization. He’s ending it after all, keeping the princess away from the rebels entirely, and turning her with no chance for rescue or escape. She’s scheduled to join the hive tomorrow. Big deal.

You want to be good at conventional life, you better be a damn good chess player. You better learn all the ins and outs because life is a goddamn labyrinth and it’ll kill you before you ever find the right way out.

Psychology. The manipulation of experience and emotions at the expense of the target.

Psychology. Be sure you know who’s fucking who.

Yes, it’s this dangerous to have opinions. It causes this many problems. A preference can kill off a species. Mobius would have gotten to this point without our help.

But it’s okay.

It’s all okay.

There’s some work to be done this afternoon, before dinner. It’s a strangely welcome change to the current course.

After all of this, I’m throwing the switch on myself. Trading my skin for a fresh metallic coat. Hell, I’ll try anything once, and at least this way, I can rid the world of its last problem of freedom.

**********

Maybe.

“Snively, dear boy, you’ve been awfully quiet this evening. Is something on your mind?”

“No, sir. I’m just tired.”

“From what, I wonder… you don’t have any female prisoners left…” He takes a big sip from the cup to his left, the one with the words ‘El Conquistador’ written on it. “Did you enjoy doing what you did to them, Snively?”

“To an extent, sir.”

“Ah.” He still hasn’t made eye contact with me, staring at the medium rare steak in front of him like that’s who he’s talking to. “Why did you get rid of them all, then? If they gave you pleasure?”

“The joy disappeared, sir,” I say, clenching my teeth, trying to keep calm. “No more passion.” I shift in my seat, adjusting the bulge in my pants.

A silence passes between us. It appears as though he’s dropped the subject. This is how most of our conversations end. For awhile, he digs into his meal. “Snively?”

“Sir?”

“Could you set up the monitors in the main Robotocization lab tonight?”

“Are we transmitting?”

“Thinking about it.” But he’s already made the decision. Tomorrow, we’ll be broadcasting Sally’s death to her comrades in the forest. Ouch.

“A quick way to end the war, sir.”

He nods, somber. “One way or another.”

Awfully chatty this evening, something I didn’t expect. We couldn’t have much more to say to each other. I tighten my grip on the fork and dig it deeper into the beef sirloin, twisting. All I want to do is eat.

“Have you ever wondered about your father, Snively?”

My fork ends up going right through the slab of beef and jabbing into my left palm. I barely feel it.

“Did you know that he studied fossils for a living? Of all things, hmm? Obsessed with creatures that were long dead. He’d dig and dig, dear boy, and then he’d study. When he didn’t find the answers, he’d go back to the dig. He would have tunneled to the other side of the planet if he thought he could find a clue as to why he existed.”

“Is that what he was looking for?” I can’t help it. I’m caught. He has me.

“Something, dearest nephew. Anything that would help him forget that one day, he was going to be in the ground with them.” The room suddenly fills with this thunderous sound, and I almost choke on my own spit. Robotnik is laughing. “You’d think if he wanted to forget, he wouldn’t want to be right in the middle of it.” His chuckles die down, his metallic hand wiping tears away from his red eyes. He takes more bites of his food. “You’d be surprised how often it works.”

“Mmm.” Screw it. I can’t eat, anyway.

“Completely buried by his own work.” He shakes his head, his jowls waving a second behind the rest of his face. He coughs a couple of times, takes more bites. “I never thought it would happen to us.”

“Yeah…” Stalling, staring at the plate. I’m pretty sure I know what he means, but why would he say it? How did he come to this? Either I bite the bullet and stay silent or I risk embarrassment and ask- “What do you mean?”

He coughs again, deeper this time, un-clearing old cobwebs on words he never thought he’d need. “I never thought we’d actually forget why we were fighting. I can’t remember for the life of me, dear nephew. I was hoping this business with the Princess would…” Cough, sniff. “Things back at the beginning, they had a purpose, didn’t they? We really had something b-beautiful…”

Finally. I put down my fork and stand up.

“Why c-couldn’t they have k-killed us y-year-ss-s ago-”

Three steps away from the table. I was hoping I wouldn’t be smiling. I can’t seem to help it.

The lights flicker.

He looks up at me, veins in his eyes turning red. He reaches forward, knocking over his cup, staining the table cloth. “SS-NIVELY!”

His voice, the way it sounds, it hits me with such force that I fall backwards. It’s a voice from the past. Anger, directed at me.

“Sssnivelly….”

It’s gone again, and I can stand back up. Too bad. The old man can’t even hold onto his own past.

He’s still trying to keep his head up, but he can’t support his own weight any longer. The muscles in his neck give out first and the rest of his body follows. Gravity pulls him out of the chair and he falls to the floor, smacking skin and clanging metal. He lets out one final groan before he closes his eyes.

I wait another minute for his heart to stop. I figure it must be pretty strong to power a body like that. When it passes, the lights dim and go out completely. I knew it. Robotnik’s failsafe. Total shut down and self destruct, if ever he should die.

“Idiot.” How predictable.

Out comes the flashlight, pulled from the front pocket of my pants, illuminating the face of the dead, the first real dead body I’ve seen in years.

Killed, by the biggest assassination cliché in the book: poison.

And I looked for it this time, I really did. I watched the entire time, and I couldn’t see it. The moment where a person ceases being a person, and becomes a decaying bag of meat. Such an infinitesimal, undetectable-

Energy to Capital Lair won’t return for another hour, not until the computers reset. I’ll have to restore all of our information using our hard copies, reprogram the SWAT bots, the skin jobs, get the city back on track. A sacrifice for keeping it together. More work, so the legacy can live on.

Yippee.

There’s a brief bounce to my step, exiting. Walking the path to SEQ Block is lonely and dark, and a little creepy, to be honest. The thought keeps occurring to me that maybe I have failed, that Robotnik had been pretending, and that he was right behind me, and catching up fast. The feeling I was being followed.

To hell with that. There’s no reason to get scared. I’ve won, the first victory in a long time. A necessary step in the evolution of Mobius. Scales of power tipping in my direction.

I followed the bouncing cone of light to Sally’s cell, opening all of the doors manually. I’m already getting a hard on, thinking about her. I can see her door in the distance, getting bigger, bigger, bigger…

The things I can do to her now, what we can do to each other, how long she’ll last before I get bored of her… it’ll be worth it.

I open the panel in the wall and crank the wheel with both hands, holding the flashlight in my teeth. I can still smell her blood.

She’s leaning against the back wall, in more or less the same position she was in the first week of her capture. I stand in the door frame, shining the light in her eyes. She squints.

“Me.”

She looks reassured, sighing. “What did you do?”

I imagine I look like a dark silhouette to her, so I carefully unzip my pants. “What needed to be done.”

She grins, oblivious. “Wonderful.”

My hand stops halfway, my fly half open. She sounds… happy. Oh ho ho, too precious. My dick presses hard, yearning to break free. I knew that she was a smart girl, that she’d recognize what I could do for her. “It is wonderful, isn’t it? Such a brilliant mind deserves a reward, don’t you agree?”

“Agreed. But I should tell you…” she says, standing to her feet. “I lied to you earlier.”

Keeping the light in her eyes, I unzip all the way. “No points for honesty.”

“Good. Then you won’t mind hearing it.” The last words, barely audible, but… “Robotnik didn’t fuck me.”

I hear a click behind me. The flashlight almost falls out of my hand, but I don’t make a move otherwise.

“You’re just as predictable as your uncle, Snively.” She walks towards me, staring past the blinding light, directly at me. “Such a blind search for knowledge, power, and pleasure.”

I can hear them, now. I really was being followed.

“Regret, Snively? Is that an unfamiliar feeling? You killed him for the wrong reasons, for things he didn’t even do. But you believed me. Because you thought you had me? Just because you showed me your dick?”

Breathing. Four or five of them. Freedom Fighters. Holding me at gunpoint. Those infectious filth.

“Life is more than the search for a good fuck, and I must say, you had a good one going, for at least awhile.” She’s close to me now, and I’m not even holding the flashlight upright anymore. “Well, it’s about time we ended this. Thanks for opening the gates, but we still have a lot of work ahead of us.” She nods ever so slightly to those behind me, keeping those beautiful eyes of hers locked on mine. “Goodbye.”

There’s an arm around my head and a warm blade against my throat. I tell her: “Think of me, then, whenever the boredom begins.”

My skin opens up and I’m pushed to the ground. I can see Sonic, Sally, and Antoine watching me die. I can hear myself gurgling. How pitiful. They’re watching, carefully, but they miss it, I’m sure, just like I always did.

It fades fast, but not too fast, and the last thing I feel is my erection, still trying to break free of its prison, and I keep it to the very end.