Hours of lethargic inactivity gave way within an instant. The arrays of display readouts and monitors, dismally dark just seconds before, lit up like wildfire spreading throughout the throne room. Snively snapped to a straighter posture, instantly alert. The sensors had been programmed to alert him for one and only one thing.

"Yes! Bingo!" Headphones flew off his head, the alarms still ringing in his ears. His excited voice was raised to a fever pitch. It wasn't often that he was able to give his Uncle good news of such high caliber. "Sir! We found her!"

Motors whirred underneath the green metal throne as it turned, revealing Robotnik's face. He looked at the consoles in front of Snively with wide, surprised eyes, as if he hadn't expected this to actually happen. Within seconds, the surprise turned to glee. It wasn't merely simple happiness, though, no, Robotnik's joy was laced with a malice that made Snively shiver.

More readouts flashing, each competing for attention. Snively could only spare a glance at each, but he gathered more than enough information. "Laurentis's activation code was six-nine-seven-tango-four-three, after decryption. It took us a while, but we did it, sir!"

"Oh, *yes*! I've waited far too long for this!" Square-shaped teeth glinted in the throne room's light. "Give me the details."

"Just under twenty seconds ago we began receiving a wide-beam beacon- style ping, on radio frequency forty-four point seven kilohertz. That's the band the Laurentis nodule is configured for. Our receiving station here in Robotropolis has already got a distance fix. The signal's weaker than we anticipated, but our readouts peg her somewhere within a distance of forty-three kilometers of the city itself."

"So much the better. What about the rabbit's exact position?"

Snively's fingertips flew to the keyboard, frantically typing in orders. His words were relayed to remote outposts scattered across the Great Forest, and to the obedient worker bots staffing them. "We don't know yet. I've already got our other receiving posts looking for the signal. Once they have it, we can begin running a triangulation routine. We'll know where she is in a few seconds."

Robotnik rose from his chair, clasping his hands together in eager anticipation. "If she's in Knothole... it will be the end of the Freedom Fighters, Snively."

"And if she's not, sir?"

Contrary to what Snively had expected, Robotnik's grin grew wider. "Then I get to focus all of my attention on the rabbit."

***

Griff held a trained ear to the surface plate on Bunnie's right leg, the metal access piece that covered the Laurentis nodule itself.

His face told Bunnie everything she wanted to know.

"Oh, no..."

"What?" Rotor asked frantically. He wasn't used to not knowing what was going on. "What is it? What's happening?"

"Bunnie was right," was all that Griff could manage to say. "Robotnik's activated the Laurentis nodule."

The time bomb had finally gone off. After two long years of waiting, the transmitter had finally ticked for the last time. Now it was screaming her location across the world, to the tyrant sitting on a metal throne atop an enslaved city. He was going to add her to the list of the vanquished, the crushed, and there was nothing she could do about it.

All her life she'd been hiding from him. The Freedom Fighters had never been able to challenge Robotnik's brute force, so they had settled for striking from the shadows. As long as Robotnik's searchlight never spotted them they could escape. For Bunnie, there could be no more hiding. All of Robotnik's anger was directed at her head. Even worse, just by being here she had given away Lower Mobius's location.

Everything smashed in a horrible instant.

"Now?" Rotor looked at the placid city surrounding them, eyes wide with last-ditch denial. "He couldn't have!"

The nodule continued to whir underneath the surface of Bunnie's right leg.

She had been ready to leave, to just get out of here. Save these people. It wasn't fair that it had happened now. Nightmares were never fair.

One hundred and fifty people.

Her senses whirled around her like a roller coaster, lost amidst the realization of the magnitude of her crime. There were one hundred and fifty people living in Lower Mobius. A city that Robotnik now had the exact location of, thanks to her. Sight and sound became dizzying. Words were spoken but they faded from her memory quickly.

"Griff!" Dirk's voice. He was running towards them, radio clenched tightly in his fist. Bunnie tried to pay attention, but kept losing herself again.

"Dirk," Griff began, "we have to-"

"There's no time," the boar said. It was the first time Bunnie had seen him panicking. "I've been getting calls from every militia station and watch post. Someone's broadcasting a signal from within the city. There's a spy here trying to give us away to Robotnik!"

"I know," came Griff's reply.

"You know? What?"

"It's my fault, Dirk." Griff's usual shield, his charm, was completely gone. The admission was frank, honest.

"Then we have to shut it down now, before Robotnik uses it to trace us!"

"We can't shut it down. Not without murdering her."

Dirk's eyes fell upon Bunnie, who was still sitting dazed on the ground. Understanding flashed in his eyes. Anger.

"She's been broadcasting the signal, hasn't she," Dirk said. "She's the traitor."

"She's no traitor!" Griff shot back, the ferocity in his voice taking his friend aback.

"But then how-"

"I'm the guilty party here, Dirk. We've lost everything because of my mistake. Now sound the evacuation sirens throughout the city. We have to save what we can."

Dirk looked unsure of what to do for a moment. He kept glancing from Griff to Bunnie, back and forth. The anger wasn't completely gone, but it was overshadowed by uncertainty. Follow his friend's orders or his anger.

"Go!"

Loyalty won out. With a last, fleeting look at Griff, Dirk ran back in the direction he came, disappearing around street corners. The last Bunnie heard of him was orders shouted into the radio. He had the voice of a man who'd had everything torn away from him by a horrible flash of unreality.

"Mah fault..."

Within moments, loud sirens began howling throughout the bustling streets and buildings of Lower Mobius. A city wailing because of her, Bunnie thought.

***

Circles began to appear on Snively's monitor, slowly but surely resizing themselves until they all began to collide at a single at a single point. Snively watched it anxiously, feeling his Uncle's impatient stare over his shoulder. The point where the boundaries of the three circles met would be where the rabbit was.

Snively kept zooming in on his map view as the ranges narrowed. When they finally stopped, though, the edges of the circles actually overlapped each other.

He frowned. That wasn't supposed to happen.

The joy in Robotnik's voice was gone, replaced by testiness. "Where is the rabbit?"

"I really don't know. The triangulation routine seems to be malfunctioning."

He ordered the monitoring outposts to try and reestablish a distance trace on the beacon. The circles obstinately continued to overlap each other. Had the triangulation been working correctly, they should have been touching only at a single point. There was over half a square kilometer of ground within the overlap now. That wasn't right at all.

"What is going wrong, Snively?"

Snively knew that tone well enough. He was looking for somebody to blame. Snively kept his cool, though. Panicking would only make Robotnik angrier.

"I think I know, sir. Hold on." Snively quickly opened up the cartography program's interface, typing in commands to re-render the map in three dimensions. The display in front of him tilted; mountains and hills suddenly had depth. He could see the rolling elevation of the Great Forest. Another command told the program to add the triangulation circles again, but this time render them as three-dimensional objects, spheres.

The spheres obediently materialized on the new map, precisely in the pattern Snively had imagined they would. This time, all three met at exactly two points, one far above ground the other far below.

Snively immediately discounted the idea that the rabbit was soaring through the air. If she were in a hover car that high off the ground, radar in Robotropolis would have detected her long ago. That left the point below the surface.

"We've got her, sir. She's about two hundred and fifty meters underground." One of the few things Snively liked about his job was the flexibility of the computer system. It only took a few key taps to pull data from subterranean map files and incorporate them into his current file. "She's in a system of large caverns that have been abandoned since long before the Great War."

"You mean Knothole is underground?" Robotnik asked, his curiosity piqued.

"Erm, no, sir. The last time I was there it was a village on the surface," he said hesitantly. Neither he nor Robotnik liked being reminded of the memory scrambler incident, but the intelligence Snively had managed to gather there was important enough.

"I see. Another hide-away, then?"

"It seems likely," Snively agreed. "Especially now that we know the various groups of Freedom Fighters have begun to work together."

"Then this will be too much fun," the fat man said, stomach quivering. "Oh, yes, I'm going to enjoy this. Payback's a bitch, rabbit. Snively?"

"Yes, sir?"

"Ready my strike force."

***

The city screamed around them. The passerby and citizens that they saw immediately flinched at the noise, then began moving either through buildings or city streets, rushing towards the center of the city. There was no panic, no angry cries of sorrow, just cool and calm movement, a sharp contrast to the blaring sirens. Lower Mobius had gone through similar drills before, Bunnie realized. The people just didn't know how permanent it would be this time. When the thought finally occurred them, she knew that there would be mass fright and panic.

All because of her.

This wasn't like any of the storybooks she had ever read as a kid. She remembered reading each one, mesmerized by the hero or heroine's courage. No matter how bad things got, there was always a shining flicker of hope clearly visible in any situation, no matter what. The little spark of life that kept the protagonist moving, fighting the odds.

With the transmitter in her leg, there was no hope. She was being buried in piles of futility, so deep that she couldn't even breathe. Even if she killed herself now, Robotnik would still come and destroy Lower Mobius. He would win.

Scratch that. He *had* won.

A voice in Bunnie's mind scolded her for thinking that. For thinking that the future was as static and unchangeable as the past. It wasn't. Though there may only be a few grains of sand left in her hourglass, the least she could do was try to accomplish something with them.

She picked herself off the ground, brushing the road's dust from off her legs. The worst had finally come to pass, but Bunnie saw that she had come out on the other side. There wasn't anything she could do about the transmitter now, but in the time left to her, maybe she could help someone.

"What's the city's evacuation procedure?" she asked Griff urgently.

"It depends on where in the city you are. Most of everybody moves towards the center of the city, where we've got a pool of hover cars ready to start shuttling people back and forth between here and our rendezvous points on the surface. Those who can't make it there know how to escape through side tunnels in the cavern." Griff glanced worriedly at the energy crystal still glowing passively over the doomed city. "We've- I've got to go and help."

"Ah'm comin' with," Bunnie said, resolution surprising herself. This was all her fault, and the thought of not helping never even occurred to her.

"Me, too," Rotor said.

Do what you can with the grains left in the hourglass. Accept that you couldn't do anything else. Bunnie kept telling herself this over and over as they jogged down the city streets to join the flow of departing traffic, but it didn't make herself feel any better. Every time she saw another face she saw another life destroyed because of her.

But what else could she do?

They shortcut off the main street, separating themselves from the flow of traffic. Griff waved them into a smaller, unmarked building just off the main road. He tried to explain where they were going, but his voice was lost in the continuing roar of the sirens.

When they finally stepped inside, Bunnie saw where Griff had led them. Computers, old and dingy machines scrounged from Robotropolis's scrapyards, abounded in the one-room building. They looked ancient and beat-up, but were still usable. Numerous display readouts continually blinked red- flagged charts, graphs, and pictures. The sound of the screaming evacuation sirens were muffled by the walls, but there was no less an atmosphere of alarm in here.

Besides herself, Griff, and Rotor, Bunnie counted maybe four others moving through the room, clacking buttons on keyboards or staring in slack-jawed shock at monitors. Dirk was standing at the front of the room, glaring out a window that overlooked the center of Lower Mobius, occasionally speaking into his radio unit. Voices buzzed back to him.

"This is where all our emergency operations are coordinated," Griff said softly, aware that his voice hadn't been audible before.

Dirk glanced up sharply upon their entrance, glaring at Bunnie. But he remembered Griff's earlier command, and said nothing to her.

"I want a full report," Griff said.

"The evacuation's proceeding smoothly for now, thanks to all the drills we've run over the years," the boar snapped to attention, all external signs of hostility towards Bunnie gone, as if somebody had flicked a light switch. "The problem is, most everybody out there thinks that this is just another practice run. They don't know about any beacon. When that happens, you can bet that there's going to be panic."

"How much of that can we cope with?"

"Not much at all. Most of the evac transports are already clustered at the market square. We're completely dependent on citizens getting there themselves. We can't help anybody who doesn't show up." A camera feed of the square caught Bunnie's eye. There was already a crowd there. Many stalls and groceries were scattered across the ground, roadside shops destroyed to make enough room for the hover cars. Someone's life work destroyed. "Griff... it doesn't matter how soon Robotnik shows up. We're bound to leave some people behind in all this confusion. People are going to die because of this."

Bunnie thought she had hit rock bottom earlier, but somehow she found herself continuing to slide downward. The last sentence kept echoing in her ears.

"How long will it be before the majority of the populace can be evacuation from the cavern?" Griff asked.

"Maybe twenty, twenty-five minutes to get most everybody. That's a pretty conservative estimate, though. More if other things go wrong."

"And, assuming that Robotnik leaves Robotropolis now, how long do we have before he gets here?"

"No more than twenty-five minutes."

"That's cutting it awfully close."

"Maybe we could delay the strike force for a few minutes. I've already scrambled all the militia ranks in the barracks, the outposts are on full alert. Armed only with laser rifles, they wouldn't stand much of a chance, but they'll be between the Robotnik and the civilians."

"No!" Bunnie nearly shouted. "Nobody's goin' to suicide because of me!"

Dirk glared at her again, the old anger flickering briefly in his eyes. He looked expectantly at Griff.

The mountain goat shook his head. "Order whatever militia's still in the city to evacuate with the civilians. Tell those at the guard outposts to abandon those positions, get to our rendezvous point on the surface as fast as they can. If they see any of Robotnik's forces along the tunnels, tell them to get out of the way and not fire back."

Dirk seemed disappointed, but he gave no other sign that he disagreed with his commander. "Of course, sir."

"We're going to save as many lives as we can."

"Yes, sir." For a moment, the boar's military discipline faltered, wavering on the edge of uncertainty.

"Griff? Is this really happening? Are we really going to lose the city?"

"Yes. Laurentis finally killed it."

"Who?"

"I'll tell you if we survive this disaster. Just... get to work."

Dirk nodded, then trotted back to his post by the window, giving orders into his hand radio even as he moved.

"So now what?" Rotor asked in the silence that followed.

"Ah'm goin' out there," Bunnie said. "Ah have to help those people out there. There's so many of them."

"Bunnie..."

"Don't even try, Rotor. Ah have to." She backed towards the door. "Ah'll come back here after Ah've done what Ah can. Just don't try to stop me this time."

She could clearly tell that it pained him not to, but this time he at least listened to her. "Good luck, Bunnie. Hurry back after you've done what you can."

She ran out outside the building, determination to help overwhelming the depression of futility. Rotor's last words echoed in her ears, hollow and empty. "We will beat this."

***

Market square was breaking down into pandemonium. When people arrived and saw the hover cars clustered around the center of the village, it finally became apparent that this was for real. The shock that the city that had existed almost as long as Robotropolis was in danger of utter annihilation struck the crowd with the force of a jackhammer.

Ignoring the cries of panic and distress, Bunnie fought the crowd to force herself away from the marketplace. Those people were already at the evac point. It was the people who weren't who needed help.

A child's plaintive wail cut through the chaos. It was the first time she had ever heard or seen a child in Lower Mobius, but she supposed it was possible. There were entire families down here.

But there wouldn't be for long.

She fought back against more than just the crowd as she squeezed forward. The density of people slackened, slowing to just a trickle. Most of the city was already clustered around the market square. Those who weren't, couldn't. The ones who needed help.

Bunnie searched the dirt roads, buildings, offering a hand wherever she could, but never being able to help much. A family looking for a lost child. She told them to just go down to the market: he was likely there waiting for him. An artist scrambling to pack away his meager but precious belongings. She couldn't help much there, either, only load a few items and send him on his way. Otherwise everyone she saw was already leaving, giving her nothing to do.

Everywhere she looked she saw misery. What would they do if they found out that she was the cause, Bunnie wondered. She considered telling them, thinking that even a lynching at the hands of rightfully angry villagers would be better than the fate otherwise in store for her, but decided at last against it. It would only add to their suffering, take away the valuable time that they needed to evacuate.

The heavy bass thunder of multiple thruster blasts rumbled throughout the city cavern. Bunnie looked towards the market, squinting against the glare of the energy crystal. The first convoy of hover cars had left, each one packed to the brink. Bunnie counted over two-dozen distant pinpricks coasting away from the market, picking up speed. Within minutes, each would return ready to take more.

Heads turned sharply at the noise, a few shouts of alarm echoed over rooftops. It was finally becoming apparent to everyone that this was not a drill. Bunnie gritted her teeth and plodded onward.

Ordinarily, Bunnie was never very confident about her skills in number- crunching and algebra, but the equations rushing through her head now were coldly accurate. At the most there would only be time for one more such trip before Robotnik arrived. Everybody in the city *had* to be ready to leave by then.

There were fewer and fewer people out in the streets, and all of the ones Bunnie saw were already headed towards the evacuation point. There was no one in need of any help, nothing she could do.

She knew that the problem lay in the odds against finding anyone. If there was someone out there disabled, trapped, or otherwise unable to move to the evac point, Bunnie was unlikely to ever find them. She was only one person, and Lower Mobius was a large city.

She kept searching and searching, and time was running by all the while. Minutes had past since the first convoy of hover cars had left. She could already hear the engine rumble of the first few to return. Eventually, there wasn't even anyone left in the streets. Anybody who could move was already down at market square, and even some of those who couldn't. Bunnie was alone.

Lower Mobius had become a ghost town. Bunnie kept telling herself that there were still people out here, people who were going to die because of her. Unless she found them.

Still the sirens continued blaring, shrieking at her with high notes of accusation. The sound grated against her ears.

Two years of waiting had come down to this climatic moment. As she walked, Bunnie could only wonder who else would get caught in the maelstrom.

***

"I'm not following you, Nicole," Sally said. She resisted the urge to shake out the hand-held computer in frustration. She had had all her life to become accustomed to her best friend's technobabble, so it wasn't often that she made this little sense.

Nicole tried again. "AT 1323 HOURS, I BEGAN PICKING UP A BEACON- STYLE TRANSMISSION ALONG RADIO BAND FORTY-FOUR POINT THREE KILOHERTZ."

Sonic was even more clueless than Sally. He scratched his head earnestly. "And you said that this whatcamicallit has something to do with Bunnie and Rotor."

"THAT IS CORRECT, MY MAIN HEDGEHOG. SIGNAL FREQUENCY MATCHES THAT OF THE LAURENTIS NODULE."

"The Lauren-what-now? Nicole! Start making sense!"

"THE LAURENTIS NODULE CONTAINS A BEACON TRANSMITTER WHOSE PROFILE MATCHES THAT OF THE SIGNAL I AM RECIEVING," Nicole said impassively. "THE NODULE IS LOCATED WITHIN BUNNIE RABBOT'S RIGHT LEG."

"There's a beacon in Bunnie's leg?" Sally asked, shocked.

"YES."

"But that's not part of the design specifications for a normal worker bot," she said.

"YES."

"Never mind," Sally gave up. "But you're sure that this signal is coming from Bunnie?"

"I AM SURE THAT THE SIGNAL IS COMING FROM A LAURENTIS NODULE TRANSMITTER," Nicole corrected calmly. "BUNNIE RABBOT IS THE ONLY KNOWN SPECIMEN FITTED WITH SUCH A DEVICE. IT IS A POSTULATION, NOTHING MORE."

"Uh huh," Sonic said. "So where is this signal coming from?"

"I HAVE BEGUN PIECING TOGETHER A TRIANGULATION ROUTINE BASED ON DATA I RECIEVED WHILE I WAS BEING CARRIED AROUND THE VILLAGE," Nicole said. "THE SIGNAL'S SOURCE APPEARS TO BE LOWER MOBIUS."

"Lower Mobius? Wait a second - Nicole, could Robotnik be picking up the beacon, too?"

"HE COULD NOT AVOID NOTICING IT."

"Oh no!"

"What is it, Sal?" Sonic was having trouble making any sense of the conversation. His eyes were opened wide with confusion and alarm. He knew that something big was happening, but not what.

"Lower Mobius has been compromised!"

"You mean 'Buttnik knows where to find Griff?"

Sally nodded sadly. "And everyone else down there."

"Oh, man, bad news! We've gotta juice over there and help! Now!"

"I don't think we can, Sonic. You know how many hover units Robotnik brings these kind of operations. We can't fight that kind of brute force."

Sonic clenched a fist. "Watch me."

"Sonic!"

"But what else can we do, Sal? Stay here and watch?"

"No, but... I don't know. Do you have any ideas? Any plan that's not straight-out suicidal?"

Sonic opened his mouth to snap off a retort, then thought better of it. He realized she was right. He cracked his knuckles in irritation. "Man, caught between a Robuttnik and a hard place. I hate this."

"Any ideas, Nicole?"

"TRYING TO FIGHT AIR POWER FROM THE GROUND IS FUTILE," the computer responded. "THE FREEDOM FIGHTERS LACK THE RESOURCES FOR A SIGNIFICANT GROUND-TO-AIR DEFENSE OF LOWER MOBIUS. MEETING AIR POWER WITH AIR POWER, THOUGH, MAY GIVE YOU A FIGHTING CHANCE."

"Sonic, I want you to go run out and get Dulcy."

"Dulcy?" He snapped his fingers. "Of course, air power! We're gonna find out what's happening, Sally. I promise."

A burst of wind marked his exit.

Sally looked quizzically at Nicole for a moment. "And you, what exactly is a 'Laurentis nodule'?"

Nicole told her.