Evening was beginning to fall across the eastern horizon. Though the west was still bright, the travelers moved away from it, and into the spreading darkness. It felt too much they were leaving the sun behind them. Absurd as it was, the sensation that their motions were responsible for the loss of the sun was inescapable.

Dulcy felt as though she'd been flying for a thousand days and nights. Her wings felt like little more than scraps of weak flesh and torn tissue; all of it exhausted beyond endurance. Griff was a dead weight on her back. Sally's insistence for a speedy flight to Robotropolis had taken a lot out of the dragon. She just coasted easily through the air now, most of the time letting the wind currents do the work for her.

It was difficult to believe that only a single day had passed since this chain of events had been sparked. Just this morning, Bunnie had been safe and sound in Knothole. Dulcy remembered passing by her hut just after the sun rose, and seeing her still sleeping. She hadn't thought much of it at the time, but remembering it now just made the image seem so idyllic... and made what was happening to her now just all the more unbearable. Dulcy drew in a deep, shuddering breath, and this time it wasn't entirely exhaustion behind her quaking.

She knew that she had a job to do. Though Griff had stirred back to consciousness minutes ago, he still faded in and out, and needed medical help as soon as possible. Only once that task was done would she be able to curl up into a little ball and weep.

Robotropolis was still a dark blot on the far horizon. The sun was disappearing behind the impenetrable smog. Dulcy glanced at the city and shivered, and pushed her tired wings to take them just a little further away from it.

A mechanical whine made her flinch, but the sound was gone soon, and when she glanced around she could see nothing. Haunted by memories of tales of haunted woods and hover unit patrols, she flew onwards, but not for much longer.

Griff strained his voice to be heard above the rushing wind, but when he spoke it was in a voice not much more audible than a harsh whisper. She clearly understood his tone of voice, though. It was a warning.

He was pointing at something just over Dulcy's massive shoulder. Following his finger, she saw what where the mechanical whine came from.

A small camera orb floated passively several meters away from them, mercilessly tracking their progress. She couldn't tell how long it had been trailing them. The shadowy lens eagerly sucked in all the light that fell across it.

"Oh *no!*"

A quick, instinctive blast of icy breath smashed the offending spy camera to bits. The broken debris fell serenely to the ground. But Dulcy knew that it was already too late. The surveillance system had no doubt already reported them. More orbs, and possibly even hover units, would be dispatched within minutes.

Under ordinary circumstances, Dulcy would have no difficulty evading whatever forces were sent to pursue them. But now exhaustion weighed heavily upon her.

Her wings felt as if they could give no more, and she knew that they would soon fail if she continued to overtax them. Tiredness was becoming a physical force that she could no longer fight.

Gasping for air after the strain of blasting the camera orb, Dulcy knew that there was a good chance that they wouldn't make it. She was in no condition to fight the armada that was surely coming. She and Griff were probably as good as captured.

She could feel the hover units close in on them.

***

"Sal, what happened?"

Sonic's voice was raised high in a note of protest, but he sounded as though he was objecting to the universe itself rather than anybody in particular. He cradled his gloved hand close to his chest. Whatever had ripped the power ring away from him had come very close to taking his wrist along with it.

Sally didn't hold his confusion against him; she beginning to think that the laws of physics themselves were playing unfairly. For no reason she could see, an invisible force had just smashed the power ring out of Sonic's hand, and dashed it to pieces against the floor.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Robotnik swipe his fist through the air triumphant. She ignored him. Instead, she bent down and picked up the broken half of the power ring that had landed on their side of the invisible barrier.

Yellow energy crackled weakly as she touched it, and then it died entirely.

It was a trap, Sally knew immediately. Robotnik had been waiting for them to come into the roboticization chamber. They were trapped between some kind of barriers, something she couldn't see but could sure feel. Her muzzle still smarted where she had smashed into it. Whatever the substance was, it was strong enough to break a power ring in two.

The tables had turned against them so quickly that it left her head spinning. In less than a second, they're roles had changed from conquering intruders to hapless prisoners.

"*Bunnie!*"

Rotor's cry split the room. His eyes met Bunnie's in the same instant. Each had the same glaze of panic in their eyes. Their mutual terror was accented only by a desperate longing.

"Rotor!"

"Diamond glass barriers locked, sir," Snively repeated, looking up proudly at his uncle. "We have them."

"Yes!" Robotnik exclaimed. "I knew that materials science laboratory would pull its weight some day! I just never imagined it would bring me this much." He turned his attention to the newly captive Freedom Fighters. His cape swept across the room as he did so. "I hope the accommodations suit you all. I certainly put a lot of work into them. This is one of my latest creations. It's called diamond glass. Very much unbreakable."

"'Buttnik, the only thing I know right now is that if you built it, I can break it," Sonic shot back.

"You're welcome to try, hedgehog," Robotnik leered. "I certainly enjoy watching you fall flat on your spines. You have come close to 'breaking' some of my things. but too often you never finish the job. Do you remember the crystal mine? You sabotaged my operations there, but you failed to destroy the facility itself." He tapped the invisible barrier with his metal hand. The only way Sally could tell that he was touching anything was the heavy *thunking* sounds that mimicked his movements. "That's where this comes from. You didn't finish the job then, and now you're paying for it."

Sally paid no attention to his posturing. Instead, she met Bunnie's fretful gaze for a moment. She looked directly into her friend's eyes, and asked her without words if this was worth it. The regret in Bunnie's eyes was enough for her to able to know that she could never bring herself to be angry at her for this. But it wasn't enough to know why she had hid this information in the first place.

If only she had told them about the Laurentis nodule...

And then she pushed the thought forcefully out of her mind. In one smooth, fast movement, Sally swept down, unclipped Nicole from inside her boot, and flipped open the computer. She aimed it at the invisible barrier.

"Nicole, analysis," she ordered.

The result was instantaneous. "MATERIAL EXAMINATION INDICATES CHAIN OF CARBON COMPOUNDS TYPICAL OF DIAMONDS. ADDED ARTIFICIAL METALS, MOSTLY BUCKYFIBER ALLOYS, CREATE PERFECT TRANSPARENCY AND SUPPLEMENT TENSILE STRENGTH."

"Can we break through it?" Rotor asked her.

"THE ENERGY REQUIRED TO DO SO IS BEYOND THE SCOPE OF YOUR PRESENT CAPABILITIES."

"Talk to us in English, Nicole!" Sonic snapped, knocking his uninjured fist against the unseen wall. Robotnik grinned widely at this indication of helplessness.

"MY MAIN HEDGEHOG, FOR ALL INTENTS AND PURPOSES, DIAMOND GLASS IS INDESTRUCTIBLE. WE ARE TRAPPED."

Without even looking at him, Sally knew that Sonic wouldn't accept a straight 'no'. He was already backing up against the far barrier, and getting ready to rev up into a spin dash. She ducked.

Sonic bounced off the first diamond glass barrier with a painful-sounding *thud*, nearly hitting Sally on his landing. He fell back, dazed but not defeated. Before either Sally or Rotor could say anything, he revved back up into a spin and slammed himself into the boundary behind him. It was just as unbreakable as the other. True to Robotnik's words, Sonic fell flat on his quills.

A darkly sonorous laugh echoed through the chamber.

Sally let the laser rifle clatter to the ground beside her. It was useless now. If even Sonic couldn't break through, she knew that they'd have to find some way besides physical force to fight Robotnik. But she couldn't think of anything.

There were no computer consoles within the tiny space they were trapped inside. Nothing conveniently placed for them to hack through; no easy access to the computer that controlled the diamond glass prison. The only way to get to the cage's controlling mechanism was to be outside it.

Snively stood there now, tapping button at the same console that controlled the roboticizer. So the cage walls were using the same circuit as the roboticizer. It was potentially useful information, but Sally didn't see how she could use it from where she was. The only person outside this inescapable prison was Bunnie herself. and she had problems of her own. The walls of the roboticizer's tube were just as unyielding to her metal punch as the diamond glass was to Sonic's spin.

Bunnie stared fearfully at her friends. Though her fur was dripping with sweat, her body was wracked by shivering.

Helpless fury boiled in Bunnie's veins, while stark terror brushed wintry skeletal fingers across her bone marrow. Her robotic limbs throbbed painfully - regardless of how impossible that was for pieces of metal that lacked nerves of their own - as though they remembered the last time they had been in this same booth.

Her heart was pounding, and her gut burned. Fire ants danced inside the interior of her ribcage. She felt as though she was going to die before Robotnik could even activate the roboticizer.

And something about her mind was not quite right.

Whether it had been the barrage of stun bolts, a side-effect of the pain of Robotnik's mistreatment of her, or simple hysteria, she was never able to tell. She knew that her mind was starting to play tricks on her. She was beginning to hallucinate.

What she saw was her mind's own induced madness. Colors began to become exaggerated, and then flow across her vision like a river. Memories, either ancient and nearly forgotten, or fresh and new, assaulted her, playing across her pupils and eardrums as though they were taking place in the present. She knew in the core of her mind that what she saw wasn't real, that she was really standing shock-still in the roboticizer tube, but that knowledge didn't chase the phantoms away.

She thought immediately of the old cliché about one's life passing before the eyes, just before death; but this was something else. This was different. These were nightmares, but beyond the ghouls lay a message. Something her subconscious was trying to tell her, if only she could fight her way past the armada of horrors and sorrows in these visions.

***

*she*was*flying*the*hover*car*again - still*through*the*tunnels*of*Lower*Mobius - she*knew*that*this*memory*wasn't*real -- could*see*reality*and*the*roboticizer*behind*the*memory*but*the*vision*was*n o*less*vivid*or*no*less*real-- the*sun-- the*crystal*was*dying*violently*

The world turned white behind her, deathly silent for an eerie moment.

A wave of sound slammed into the hover car like a physical blow, jets of livid hot air suddenly and temporarily overwhelming the air resistance of the car's motion. Bunnie's ears unconsciously folded in on top of each other, trying to shut out the horrendously loud noise. The car tilted forward, shoved along by the explosion's turbulence. Bunnie tried desperately to right it again, just barely keeping the car from smashing itself to pieces on the tunnel floor.

Lower Mobius incinerated itself.

***

The flashback faded but the madness didn't subside. Robotnik seemed to swim through a sea of dark color, always moving towards the glass cage of the roboticizer tube. A terrible, gloating grin was frozen solid on his face. Behind him, Bunnie could see her three friends trapped helplessly between the two diamond glass barriers. She couldn't help but think about how badly she'd let them down.

"And you, rabbit," the tyrant said, audible somewhere at the fringes of her hearing. "Just when you'd been convinced that you'd won. You actually thought that this would end with just *your* roboticization. You have been mine these two long years; you never stood a chance of escape. Regardless of how long you'd managed to delay this, you were my prisoner in those metal arms and legs of yours. No matter how far you traveled, you always stayed in their cage. With that transmitter in you, you were always mine."

She tried to shake her head clear of the phantasms and hallucinations, to no avail. She hated the idea that she was going mad just before the end. She despised it with a vengeance, with a passion, and would have done anything to chase the specters away and at least die sane. It was bad enough that she was an invalid in body; she didn't want to be one in mind as well. She didn't need another illness.

Robotnik's gloved hands loomed out of the ocean of hallucinations, latching themselves onto the outside of the glass cage with suddenness that made her leap backwards. "You were always going to end up here, but it was so kind of you to bring me your friends at the same time. It was almost worth the delay. You've betrayed your friends, rabbit. You've sold them out to try and run away your fate. And you've brought them here to me. They'll share your fate, now. Tell me, rabbit, how does it feel to know that you've destroyed everyone you care about most?"

Bunnie threw a desperate gaze sideways, towards the diamond glass prison. Rotor had his hands pressed against the invisible barrier. His expression was severe, and overflowing with helpless terror. And then more memories ambushed her senses-

***

*in*the*hover*car*but*in*worse*trouble -*the*prospect*of*imminent*death*forcing*absolute*honesty*with*Rotor - before*he's*gone

"AH LOVE YOU!"

The eject toggles were patterned in a series of four buttons, arranged in a square-shaped pattern. Bunnie slammed two fingers into the buttons that matched Rotor and Griff's seats, and pressed them down with all the effort she could muster.

The last thing she saw of Rotor was his eyes wide open in shock.

***

Rotor's palms were still quashed flat against the diamond glass barrier hemming him and the others in. It was difficult to see them. They kept swimming in and out of her field of view. Distressed shadows, that the core of her mind knew didn't really exist, hid them from view, masking or sometimes even distorting their faces.

Right now, though, Rotor's expression was crystal clear. It showed a clear astonishment, as if she'd just voiced some dark secret.

Surprisingly, the same expression was on Robotnik's face as he backed away from the roboticizer tube. He looked as though Bunnie had just yelled the last thing that he'd ever expected to hear from her. But she had no memory of ever saying anything. For a moment she thought she'd accidentally revealed the hidden Laurentis blade, but that was still tucked safely away in her jumpsuit's belt.

Then she realized that words were indeed still on her lips. When that flash of memory had overcome her, she had unwittingly shouted aloud to Rotor the same words she'd said to him as his seat had ejected from the hover car. In the middle of Robotnik's relentless questioning, she'd just screamed to Rotor that she loved him.

That would certainly explain everyone's stunned faces, she thought. Even Snively was looking up from the roboticizer controls, his right eyebrow slanted upwards.

Sonic and Sally were looking at Rotor with slack jaws and wide eyes. Because of the direction of Bunnie's gaze, they knew exactly who she was talking to. This was clearly news to them, enough so that their surprise temporarily overruled the urgency of their situation.

Bunnie thought she heard Rotor whisper something, but a combination of distance and hallucination made it difficult to understand. She thought she heard him say, voice quiet and morose, "You too."

Sonic and Sally clearly weren't the only ones in the room taken aback by this. Robotnik had been caught off-guard, and for an instant looked as though he was at a loss for what to do next. Then malice returned to his face, and Bunnie instantly regretted saying anything at all. He grinned portentously at her, and then swiveled around to face the other three Freedom Fighters.

Robotnik knew enough about the Freedom Fighters to know about more than a few romances among them. He always tried to take advantage of them. The 'replicant' incident had been geared to appeal to Sonic's love for Sally. Occasionally, the city streets echoed with falsified microphone recordings of either Sonic or Sally crying for help. Robotnik was obviously hoping that one of them would fall for the bait and come rushing the rescue. Once he almost succeeded in capturing Antoine through a similar trap. Only the fact that the real Sally appeared around a street corner a moment later had kept him from running straight out into the trap.

This would be no different, Bunnie knew. Because she had given away what she herself had only recently come to acknowledge, she'd played right into his hands.

Only this time, Robotnik wasn't trying to capture them. He was only going to use this to inflict as much pain as possible. To drive another spike of torment into them. He could never see love, especially this love, as anything more than a tool. Cruelty gleamed in his eyes.

"You two love-" he started, and then cut himself short. "Oh, I don't believe this. This is too perfect." He leaned in towards Rotor, once again showing off his perverse tendency to try and understand the suffering of his victims. "Well, *lover*, how does it feel to know that your sweetheart is the one responsible for your undoing?"

The walrus withdrew his hands from the diamond glass barrier, staring unflinchingly up at Robotnik. "We may be here because of her, Robotnik, but I'll never forget who's ultimately the criminal here. You're the monster who's done all this to her, to us, to everybody here. Yeah, I love her-" he was interrupted by the sudden sound of an alarm on Snively's console, but a moment later continued, talking above the sound of the siren, "-and no matter what you do, you can't take that away from us."

There was no mumbling, or any indication of Rotor's usual hesitant and self- conscious nature. She had never heard him talk like that before. Occasional hallucinations still pried from the corner of her subconscious, but right now her vision was entirely clear.

His expression was the essence of defiance, but next Robotnik's massively powerful form from behind his prison's walls, he looked so terribly vulnerable even as he stood up to him. The sudden flash of fear in his eyes as Snively's alarm went off revealed just how scared he really was. Bunnie's heart went out to him.

Distracted by the alarm, but still intent on his captives, Robotnik turned to face his lackey. "Snively, what is that noise?" he asked, with a threatening undercurrent in his tone.

"I think you'll be very pleased by this, sir," Snively answered. Whenever he dared answer so boldly when Robotnik used that tone of voice, that generally meant that what he had to report was very good news indeed. "Our camera orb surveillance system has located the dragon and another Freedom Fighter above the Great Forest."

Robotnik's displeasure quickly turned into jubilant delight; the Freedom Fighters' curiosity became stark horror. Sally, Sonic, and Rotor were instantly against the walls of their diamond glass cage. Bunnie's hallucinations took Snively's announcement as a cue to redouble their efforts to tear apart her consciousness. A thousand new ghosts and demons surged into her vision.

"The incident in the cavern city has reduced the number of available hover unit patrols, but we still have enough to take them. The dragon isn't putting up much of a fight. All available units are vectoring to intercept."

Robotnik studied the monitors, which were invisible from Bunnie's angle. Moving light played across his features, casting severe shadows across the lines on his face. Through Bunnie's eye, it seemed as through every crack, every shadow, was grinning wickedly.

"It all comes crashing down," he said, shuddering with pleasure. "The decaying 'Freedom Fighters' network is collapsing. Their underground city is annihilated. The Knothole Freedom Fighters are finally done for. I don't even need to bother searching for that wretched village anymore; there are only a few stragglers left there now. Everything I ever wanted I have right here.

"And the thread that unraveled it all is right here," Robotnik continued, looking back up at Bunnie. "That transmitter in your metal leg. Your roboticized limbs. That metal is the only thing of beauty in all your despicable meat and flesh. I think it's about time we disposed of that worthless fur and fleshy tissue, and made it pure machine."

The pattern always went like that. Bunnie had seen the tyrant act like this a thousand times before, and knew the next stage by heart.

Robotnik's gloating suddenly had a much more dangerous edge to it. His bragging was nearing its conclusion, and he was finally ready to begin acting on his words. He had let his victims wallow in fear of what was going to happen next, and was preparing to now begin inflicting as much pain as possible. As predictable as the transition was, she was hard- pressed to think of anything that terrified her more.

The hallucinations made seeing difficult once again, but she confronted the nightmares long enough to at least delay the next onset of panic.

Again came the impression that the dream-like images had meaning, and that her subconscious was trying to tell her something. The feeling was fleeting, though, and she was left with no clue of what the message, if anything, could be.

"Go ahead an' roboticize me," she said, letting Rotor's earlier defiance seep strength into her words. "Because Ah'm all you'll get. All you've done is trap my friends; y'all can't do anythin' to 'em when they're in there. Ya have to open the cage to get at 'em. And once that cage is open they'll bust out, and they'll beat you."

Judging by the wide grin that immediately appeared on Robotnik's face, it had been the wrong thing to say. She had just inadvertently drawn attention to them. Even Snively was smirking slightly.

"Oh no?"

She had to do everything in her power to keep her friends from getting any worse trouble. They were in bad enough shape as it was, and all of this was her fault alone. She tried to turn his attention back to her. "Just roboticize me and get it ovah with! Y'all won, ya got me, now just finish the job!"

Her effort was to no avail. Robotnik leered at her, seeing straight through her ploy, and then gestured at the diamond glass barrier. "You, more than anyone, should know that I like to see my enemies suffer before I finish them. And one of your many weaknesses is empathy. Whenever your friends suffer, you suffer." Oozing faux gallantry, he said, "I wouldn't dream of ending your life without letting you watch them die first. And now that I know certain things..."

Then his expression hardened. His cape whirled through the air as he turned to face his nephew. "Snively, deploy the laser turret!"

Snively nodded briefly, and struck a button on his control panel. The diamond glass cage reverberated with the sound of moving mechanical gears.

A piece of ceiling above the trapped Freedom Fighters peeled backwards. Bunnie felt her hopes sink even lower as she watched. Slowly, a deadly- looking laser barrel appeared from inside the shadow of the newly opened crevice. The majority of the weapon was hidden above the ceiling, but Bunnie could tell that it was very powerful military-grade weapon.

It was clearly designed to execute whatever prisoners got caught inside the diamond glass cage.

It was well out of reach of the three people trapped within. Bunnie heard her friends gasp; felt her own sharp intake of breath get caught inside her throat. She felt her heart stop beating.

Robotnik's eyes were fixed on one person inside the cage. He shook his head slowly, letting them wait in awful apprehension. At last, he turned to Bunnie, and said, "It was a mistake to let me know that you'd fallen for that walrus."

Rotor backed away from the cage screen, wide eyes looking helplessly upwards at the laser turret. Whatever display of courage he'd shown before had completely evaporated now. He trembled, and sweat pooled on his forehead. There was no more hiding behind a veneer of defiance; he was desperately afraid.

Robotnik leveled his index finger at Rotor's chest.

Coldly, he ordered, "Kill that one."