Author's note: Yes, yes, delays and more delays. If I told you that the reason for this wait was because I'd written a novel between the pages of "The Laurentis Countdown", I don't suppose you'd believe me, would you? No, I suppose not. ;)

On another note, I would like to thank everyone who's been harassing me to get this done. I deserved all the haranguing I got for waiting for so many months.

***

A shaft of solid azure light stretched down from the ceiling. If it hadn't been so deadly, the light show might have been called beautiful.

The bolt burned straight through the sash on Rotor's shoulder, and began searing the flesh underneath.

Rotor howled in pain, and reflexively leapt away from the laser beam. The turret stopped firing as it lost its target. Understandably unaware of where he was stumbling, he smashed into the diamond glass screen in mid- stride. His shoulder was blackened, the soft tissue underneath charred and peeled. Once the laser stopped firing, he clamped his mouth and screwed his eyes up in pain.

Sonic and Sally instinctively backed away from the blast. Sally bent down to pick something up; or she could have just stumbled. Bunnie's eyes were on Rotor, and the turret that was about to end his life. She could only watch with the slack jaw.

The turret lined up another shot, this time drawing a bead directly on Rotor's head.

A laser fired.

The bolt flew away from the tip of Sally's laser rifle, and smashed into the turret's barrel. The shot wasn't very powerful, but it was enough to dent the armor, and seal the nozzle of the turret's barrel.

When the turret fired, the blast smashed into its own barrel, and the turret blew itself apart in a burst of smoke and a hail of debris. It wouldn't be firing again any time soon. A shower of sparks rained down on the cage's inhabitants.

Rotor collapsed to his knees, and then curled into a fetal position on the ground, cradling his shoulder wound. Bunnie couldn't see much from her vantage point, but it was obvious that the laser had burned deep.

Sally lowered her laser rifle, and rushed to Rotor's side.

On the other side of the diamond glass cage, Robotnik's grin had quickly turned to snarl. Whirling to face his nephew, he exploded. "*WHAT* just happened?"

"The Princess fired on the turret!" Snively said, checking and double- checking his monitors. He nearly choked in panic as he read the displays. "I'm sorry, sir, the weapon's been completely disabled! We won't be able to get it back online without a full repair team."

"I want them dead! All of them!" Robotnik swerved back towards their cage, and slammed his gloved fists against the invisible wall. For now, though, the same diamond glass barrier that kept the Freedom Fighters trapped also protected them from Robotnik's wrath.

Bunnie found herself crying in relief when Rotor moved again. He wasn't dead, just badly hurt.

Sonic and Sally kneeled over the prone walrus, helping him protect the wound. Sally did her best to stop whatever bleeding hadn't been cauterized by the laser's burn, while Sonic glared fiercely up at Robotnik. A fury the likes of which Bunnie hadn't seen in over two years burned in the hedgehog's eyes.

"One day we're gonna do all of this right back at you, Robuttnik!" Sonic cried. "Right back at you! You're gonna hurt just as much as we are!"

Robotnik ignored him, instead fuming, "There has to be some other way we can kill them from here!"

In a tone of voice that made him sound as though he were pleading for his life, Snively said, "We don't have any more equipment inside the barriers, sir! I'm afraid we can't!"

With a gentle touch, Sally slowly moved Rotor until he was sitting on his knees. She was careful not to let anything touch the sensitive wound. Empathy seemed to guide her every movement. She looked every bit as sympathetic as Bunnie felt.

Rotor's eyes were still squeezed shut, but occasionally a tear slipped the slit between his lids.

Robotnik stalked over to a depression in the wall, and grabbed a laser rifle from a waiting rack. For a moment, he looked as though he was getting ready to open the cage and shoot them himself. Then he reconsidered, set the rifle back, and growled. "Maybe I'll just have to let them starve to death in there!"

Occasionally, a feeble shower of sparks still sprayed from the broken laser turret. Sally brushed them off her fur, and together she and Sonic moved Rotor away from underneath it.

There was nothing more that could hurt them in there, but the situation was still out of their hands. The combination of the turret's destruction, and the indestructibility of the diamond glass, had simply removed them from the field of play. They may as well not even be there. They were helpless witnesses to what was about to pass.

Bunnie let out a long breath, feeling as though she hadn't exhaled in a lifetime. Rotor was still alive. She would have collapsed inside the roboticization tube if there had been enough room. Instead, she only leaned limply against one side of the cramped tube. Her neck craned back as she did so, and, quite by chance she caught a glimpse of the roboticizer machine waiting silent above her.

Her fur prickled.

She, unlike her friends, was not outside the field of play. Though she was caged like the others, she was not so impervious to Robotnik's fury. The instrument of death here wasn't a turret, but instead the roboticizer itself.

She remembered when she had stood in this same place, two years ago. Staring up into the machinery, her senses were overcome by another flashback. This one had more force, though, and the sensation that her subconscious was trying to tell her something became much stronger. There was a message somewhere in these hallucinations.

***

*her*life*was*about*to*end-- *only*fourteen*-- *the*tyrant*had*just*opened*her*leg*-- *done*something*to*the*Laurentis*nodule*with*the*glowing*blade

Bunnie caught a glimpse of a cylindrical object, perched among the wiring and hydraulics of her right leg, glowing with the same blue color, before he snapped the panel shut again.

"Very well, Snively. We're ready to begin phase 2."

The roboticizer snapped shut once more. It was happening, again. She was going to be roboticized, this time for good.

"Let me double-check the nodule's configuration," she heard Snively say.

"No, Snively, I don't want to wait. Just finish roboticizing this bitch, now."

"Sir, if the nodule isn't properly configured, the feedback loop could destroy-"

Alarm sirens punctured the air, without warning.

***

The glowing blade he'd used then was now secreted safely away inside her jumpsuit's belt.

Robotnik turned to her.

"Or maybe I'll just have to let them sit in there while I roboticize their friend," he said. "Rabbit, I hope you're as miserable as possible, because I've really grown tired of inflicting pain on you. I just want you *gone*! Out of my way forever! And now that's finally going to happen."

Bunnie dropped to a crouch, one hand protectively covering the hidden blade. Phantoms still distorted Robotnik's face, but she growled at his frightening visage anyway.

Robotnik paced the length of the roboticization chamber, finally stopping when he reached Snively's console. "Snively, the Laurentis should still be configured to what I set to, two years ago, correct?"

"Yes, sir. I'll double-check that now."

"Good. I don't want any mistakes."

The hallucinations drew her gaze to the computer console Snively was working on. It was the same console he had used to spring the trap that her friends here still snared in. The realization hit her like a slap to the face: the two systems were tied into the same circuit. If one were destroyed... there was a good chance that the other would be, too. If the roboticizer were destroyed, then the diamond glass cage would spring open.

That was what her subconscious, through the hallucinations, was trying to tell her.

Her hand rested sedately on the hilt of the Laurentis blade. There was only one way out of this. There always had been.

She kept her eyes locked on the shiny tip of the blade. She only wished she could drive it through the heart of the man doing this to her. With the glass barrier still in place, though, that was impossible. Her body would have to do instead.

"The rabbit's nodule is properly configured," Snively said. He was still bent over the controls, double- and triple-checking displays even as he spoke. He knew exactly how much of Robotnik's wrath he would catch if he made a mistake here. "All systems are a-go. We're ready to roboticize, sir."

Robotnik was suddenly leering over her. Bunnie was careful not to draw his attention to the object she held in her hand.

He was going to gloat, she knew. He always did. He'd never had enough of it, not even when he was already sure he had the last word.

"Any particular requests for a duty assignment, rabbit?" he asked. "Once you're a workerbot, is there any particular place you'd prefer to work? Any SWATbot factories or smelting plants that've caught your eye?"

Bunnie kept her gaze down to the ground. It wasn't hard to give the appearance of being in total submission. If she kept this up for long enough, it might even be possible to convince him that he'd won already. Well, the truth was that he *had* won already - but just not the way he thought. If she did the wrong thing now, he'd start to get suspicious, and then he'd surely find the blade she'd hidden.

"Don't- don't bother saying anything," Robotnik said. "I already know what your first duty assignment will be. When I open the cage to murder your friends, I think you'll be the robot I'll assign to do to deed."

Whatever tiny shred of rationality left inside her insisted that she continue to act the way Robotnik would expect her to. If she could keep that up, the voice promised soothingly, it would all be over soon and she could finally... rest.

She ran her hands across the blade's surface again, and wondered how that sharp tip would feel when it pierced her.

Her southern sensibilities insisted that, if suicide was inevitable, she should at least do it an as spectacular a way as possible, and do it at a time that would let her life end with a clear conscience.

That last little core of resilience kept the words coming out of her mouth. She almost didn't hear herself say them. She wasn't even sure she even believed them, either. Her only motivation now was to keep Robotnik content with thinking that everything was over. "They won't let a lil' ol' thing lahk me stop them. When they get out, they'll keep fighting you." Robotnik chuckled heartily before she could even finish her last sentence. He'd bought it. So far so good.

Was this what the end was supposed to feel like? This wasn't how Bunnie had imagined it. She'd always thought that the last real decision of her life would feel like it had a bit more meaning than this - like it would be worth more than this. She knew, in a way, it would matter to Sonic and Sally and Rotor, but she had just stopped caring about them. She had been so bombarded with hallucinations and futility and false hopes snatched away at the last second that she could hardly feel anything at all. Only an overwhelming apathy and an urge to rest.

That last core of rationality kept her body in motion just long enough to complete this last task. Then even it would fail.

"Well, we'll just see about that, won't we, rabbit?" Robotnik said.

He raised his hand, index finger towards Snively. The gloved arm hung in the air like a guillotine, ready at last to give the final order. He let it hesitate there for a few seconds, savoring the moment almost as much as he was the expressions on the faces of his captives.

Sonic, Sally, and Rotor all had their hands pressed against the indomitable diamond glass, pushing with all their might. They knew they were helpless to act, but that didn't stop them from trying anyway. Even Rotor seemed to have forgotten about the pain of his shoulder wound.

Bunnie's hand trembled as it gripped the Laurentis blade. Even though this moment had been the subject of nightmares for all her years, there was surprisingly little fear. Fright had been quashed out of existence. There wasn't much point to it when she already knew what the outcome would be. She'd lost. It was as though this moment had already happened, and everything she saw now was only the replay of a rewound tape.

There was only a crushing exhaustion now. She knew that in just a few more moments whatever force kept driving her on would curl up and die. She'd give up whether this was over or not. Just a few more moments...

"Snively-" Robotnik began.

"No!" Sally said, from inside the diamond glass cage. "Don't do this. If- if you let her go, I swear I'll surrender to you. You can have me, Robotnik! Roboticize me instead!"

Robotnik's hand had stopped in mid-air. The corner of his mouth twitched in amusement as he listened. Even Snively, risking life and limb, had allowed his attention to be distracted from his control panels.

"Shut up, Sally," Bunnie said.

"Now that you have us, you don't need her," Sally said. "You have the Freedom Fighters network, she doesn't mean anything more-"

"Shut up, *Sally-girl*!" Bunnie hissed.

Robotnik shook his head with bemusement. He looked back and forth between the two cages for a moment. For a moment, Bunnie thought that his complacency had been broken, and that any minute he would discover the missing Laurentis blade. But instead, he said, "Now, Princess, why would I let one of you go when I quite clearly have all of you already? Honestly, you shouldn't try to make a bargain with a man who already has your life. You don't have anything else to offer me."

Sally opened her mouth to protest again. Why did she have to do that? Why did she have to come so close to keeping Bunnie from taking this one last chance to save their lives? "But-"

"Princess," he interrupted, to Bunnie's relief, "your time is up. The game is over. You lost. I do enjoy all this drama, but sometimes it wears a little thin." Robotnik turned to face his nephew.

Letting his hand fall at last, he said, "Snively, activate the roboticizer!"

Sally cried out in wordless protest. She was ignored. Not even Bunnie paid attention to her. She simply wasn't relevant to the situation any longer.

Snively nodded at his uncle. His fingers danced across the control panels. Power began thrumming throughout the room, centered on the roboticizer chamber in the middle of the room. A small smile crossed Snively's face; he seemed pleased that this was at last drawing to a conclusion he could appreciate.

Somewhere on the fringes of her consciousness she was aware that all three of the other Freedom Fighters were still pounding uselessly against the diamond glass cage. Had she been in an ordinary state of consciousness, she would have felt sympathy for them. Now there was nothing.

Just a few more seconds, she told herself, and then she could rest forever.

With a whirring noise, the machinery above Bunnie's head came to life. Green lightning began flickering through the beam emitters.

It was a terrible color - bright and vivid, fraught with angry energy waiting for just the right opportunity to strike. It lashed about the beam emitters with hungry malice, and looked as though it couldn't stand to wait there for even a few seconds longer. It looked just like it had the last time Bunnie had stood underneath the roboticizer. Her memories of it hadn't been this vivid even in nightmares. In her emotionally-deadened state, Bunnie wasn't able feel frightened by it. Instead, she just watched the beam emitters charge and marveled at the sight.

She had been afraid of that lightning for so long. It had troubled her for so many years: a ghost that haunted her memories. She'd once thought that she'd die of fright if she ever saw it again. Now that she had a chance to examine up close, really close, she could see that there wasn't actually anything to fear.

The energy was a tool. It was just as much a tool as the control panels Snively used to activate it. The lightning didn't have any mind or malice of its own. It just roboticized what it was told to. It was a mindless thing made slave to Robotnik - and with the right amount of tweaking, it could be made to work against him just as easily.

Bunnie stood resolute underneath the roboticizer. She brought the Laurentis blade out from underneath her jumpsuit. It was a risk to reveal it openly, but she was wagering that Robotnik was too busy obsessing over his imminent victory to give much notice to it now. She held it clenched in her right hand, ready to bring the blade down to strike its target in an instant.

Thin red pencils of light swept down from the ceiling of the roboticizer chamber. They were sensor beams. They swept across her body, leaving a slight tingling sensation wherever they passed, and at last settled on the broad portion of her right leg. All of the other scanner beams centered on that point instantly. They had found the roboticizer beam's guide, the Laurentis nodule, and were providing target crosshairs for the beam to follow. If Griff's explanation was accurate, the roboticizer beam would strike the Laurentis nodule first, and from there spread out through the rest of her body.

With it would come the cloying sensation of flesh and fur being warped into shapes - into entirely new elements - that nature had never intended.

For another moment, nothing moved.

A sudden mental image of a funnel passed through her mind. This was the choke point. For the past two years, anything she had ever done in the past all lead inexorably to this moment. Everything that would happen in the future hinged on what she would do here.

The roboticizer beam swept down from the ceiling, and washed across her.

It focused on the hilt of her right leg, exactly where the scanner lights were leading it. There was an electric tingle in her leg. It was the first real sensation she'd felt from down there ever since she was roboticized.

There was a tiny click from within the Laurentis nodule as, after two long years, it finally began to fulfill its ultimate purpose.

Her tailbone and left shoulder began to feel agonizingly cold, as though all the marrow were turning to ice and pushing outward. Brown fur and purple jumpsuit began to meld together. She could feel fur all over her body start to be matted down. She could feel it slick back as it started to transform into sleek, slippery metal. An alien consciousness began to pry at her thoughts. It was cold, aloof and alien. It insisted that she acknowledge Robotnik as her supreme leader. Within a few moments, it would overcome her entirely.

Whenever she tried to remember this moment later, there were only two things she called with any clarity. The first was the pain. The second was the speed at which the next few things happened. For the last defining moment her life, it was over startlingly quickly.

She brought her fist around, glowing blue Laurentis blade was enclosed within her fingers. The tip of the blade pointed directly downward. She hefted the blade up. and slammed it straight through her right leg.

There was a prickling sensation as the blade pierced the leg's metallic skin. Then an incredibly painful shock as the blade stabbed into the guts of the Laurentis nodule. A scarring, burning agony rippled throughout all three of her metallic limbs - a sign that told her that she had succeeded. The nodule was demolished entirely. Her aim with the blade had struck true, and it she had torn the Laurentis nodule entirely asunder.

A slight humming that had reverberated across her subconscious ever since she'd left Lower Mobius faded: the nodule's beacon was silenced.

All sensation from Bunnie's three robotic limbs faded away. They became so dead to her senses that she might as well not have even had them at all. They locked in place and didn't move. It was even worse than if she'd just gone limp. Suddenly, she was just a torso, a head, and a right arm, and all the rest became just dead baggage. She was just a collection of immobile body parts wreathed in the fires of the roboticizer energies.

With the Laurentis nodule gone, and the roboticizer lightning began to diffuse around her. The beam no longer had any guide to direct it. The roboticization process halted. The alien consciousness screamed and was torn away from her mind. She was herself again.

Lightning crackled harmlessly around her. Energy continually streamed in from the emitter in the ceiling above her, but it had no place to go. It collected in a pool on the bottom of the roboticizer cage, unable to escape. The laws of physics told it that it still needed to go somewhere - to strike something - but it was trapped. It strove for release. It tried to absorb itself into Bunnie's body, but without the Laurentis nodule to act as a guide for the roboticization effect, it could accomplish nothing. Her fur rose on end, but otherwise nothing happened to her. The lightning buzzed furiously throughout her cage, growing more anxious by the instant. It was building towards a violent crescendo.

Robotnik and Snively both shielded their eyes from the sudden glare emanating from the roboticizer tube. An insistent whine coming from the roboticizer was growing louder by the moment, and it was enough to drown out most of their words. Only Snively's most urgent alarm managed to pierce the cacophony: "SIR! There's a feedback loop somewhere!"

The energy collecting in the roboticizer tube finally gathered enough strength to decide that it had had enough. It escaped the only way it possibly could: back in the direction it came from.

Bunnie's body briefly glowed of its own accord, and then the trapped energies leapt upward in a single surge. The lightning rode the still- active roboticizer beam like a ladder. It smashed into the roboticizer emitter, and tore it apart. A bright white flash split the air, and the sharp crack of a thunderbolt echoed throughout the chamber. The combined power was far too much for even the roboticizer's capacitors to handle, and at last the feedback loop that Bunnie was promised two years ago happened. The machinery above her burst into a shower of sparks of flames. The roboticizer exploded. The force of the blast broke the glass of the roboticizer tube. A shockwave of white-hot air slammed into her.

Fire raced across the walls and ceiling as the entire room's computer network was overloaded by the blast. Even Snively's control panel was ablaze, and fire and smoke poured out of it even as he wrestled with the controls.

"The circuit grid's overloaded," he said. "I'm losing control over everything!"

Just then, Robotnik reached the same conclusion Bunnie had moments earlier. "Seal the diamond glass cage! It's on the same circuit as the roboticizer! Quickly, Snively, lock it!"

Snively reached across the panel with his right hand. Before his fingers could touch a single control, the entire console exploded. His right hand was engulfed in a sheet of yellow flames. He shrieked, and jerked his hand out of the fire. He held his injured hand to his chest, cradling it and unable to do anything else.

The explosion on his console was the final sign that the circuit had at last overloaded. The diamond glass cage sprung open, and Sonic, Sally, and Rotor each sprung out. There was the distinctive high-pitched whine of Sonic revving up to high speed, and the sound of a laser blast from Sally's rifle. Bunnie didn't see where the laser hit. Her vision was starting to fade to black.

The crumpled roboticizer machinery perched above her head was starting to look dangerously unstable. The power of the overload had nearly destroyed its structure. It would topple over on top of her at any moment. The machine was heavy enough that the impact was sure to be fatal, and with her three robotic limbs now nothing more than dead weight, she couldn't move to avoid it.

Bunnie no longer cared. She was past exhaustion. She had just given up entirely. She knew beforehand that all she had left to do before she could call it quits forever was that one simple task. Now that she had done it - now that the Laurentis nodule was destroyed - she could give in to the numbing fatigue and just die.

As the fires and the battle raged around her, she shut her eyes.

The last thing she heard before succumbing to the darkness was the agonized shriek of tormented metal of the machinery as it collapsed down on top of her...

***

TO BE CONCLUDED.