“That’s it,” Bunnie said as they rounded the corner, still supporting the buck’s not-insubstantial weight between them. The Knothole cargo sled had miraculously remained untouched during the chaos of the evacuation, and was sitting calmly at the end of the road, right where she had left it. “It’s still here.”

Gail muttered something gratefully under her breath. Bunnie thought it was a prayer, and didn’t ask.

“Y’all know how to drive one of these things?” she asked.

“I... think so.”

“Good. Let’s git ‘im into the passenger seat, and then you take the driver’s side.”

“What about you?” Gail asked. Bunnie gave the passenger side door a solid kick with her metal boot, and stepped back as it swung open. Together, they lifted the half-conscious buck into the seat.

“Ah’ll hop into the cargo bed,” she said, already lifting her legs over the side of the hold. The metal on metal of her feet hitting the empty sled was a thunderous CLANG. “You just drive me to the control center, the buildin’ Ah told you about.”

Gail nodded resolutely, moving around the front of the vehicle to the other side. She stopped just as she opened the door, looking at Bunnie. “You sure you don’t want to come with us?” she offered. “We can make it to the rendezvous point together.”

Bunnie smiled faintly. “No, trust me, you don’t want me around you for too long.”

“But you’ll die here.”

The simple statement no longer shattered Bunnie’s resolve, like it had just minutes before. She was a dead person no matter what. Fact. But at least she could go out saving lives. Her death had meaning now. It wasn’t as empty or hollow as it had seemed just minutes ago. She would die as a Freedom Fighter.

‘A Freedom Fighter never lets the struggle stagnate.’ ‘A Freedom Fighter never forfeits hope, even in the bleakest of situations.’ Sally’s words, which had just this morning seemed foreign and hostile, came back to her. She would never let the fight stagnate even in the face of encroaching and unstoppable death. That house would have collapsed regardless of the Laurentis nodule. She had been there to help.

“Ah know what Ah’m doing. You don’t want to take me with. Trust me.”

Gail still didn’t understand, but she acknowledged that her newfound friend had at least earned the right to make this choice. “Okay, if you insist. I have to tell you one last thing, but I don’t even know your name. Just in case I never see you again.”

“It’s Bunnie.”

Gail nodded appreciatively, still looking up. “Thank you, Bunnie.”

The door closed behind Gail and clicked into place, sealing her behind the soundproof cavern of the sled’s passenger compartment. A moment later, the sled’s thrusters roared. The noise was ear-splittingly loud compared to when Bunnie had heard it from the relative silence of passenger cabin.

Acceleration pushed her down against the rear wall of the cargo bed, and wind rushed past her head, toying with her ears. They were airborne.

Streets and rooftops became a blur as the hover unit’s engines roared their peak acceleration. Gail knew how to drive, all right; she was going almost recklessly fast. G-Forces became a physical phenomenon that Bunnie had to fight against to stay in a sitting position. Only when she had traveled with Sonic had she felt anything as strong. Gail’s speed paid off, though: they were back at the emergency control center in seconds.

The hover thrusters on the underside of the sled squirted a blast of exhaust as they settled down to the ground, hitting the dirt road directly next to a parked hover car. The sled shuddered with the landing, and Bunnie was already out and on the ground.

Gail gave a last wave through the passenger compartment window, and then they were gone. The Knothole cargo sled made a beeline for the nearest tunnel exit, growing more and more distant with each moment.

The control center’s door was already open; no sooner had the cargo sled disappeared over the rooftop when Rotor stepped out.

Bunnie couldn’t remember ever being as deep in the thick of the action as she was now. She had thought that there was this hard, cold little ball inside herself where she could bundle up her feelings and emotions, pack them away so that they wouldn’t interfere. Just like the determined expressions Sonic and Sally wore when they were only seconds away from death or salvation. The instant she saw Rotor that she had been dead wrong. The determination wasn’t the absence or suppression of emotion; merely the delayed version of it.

“You made it back!” Rotor exclaimed gratefully. “We’ve got a hover car ready to- oof!”

Bunnie threw her arms around Rotor’s shoulders, and pushed his head until his neck craned gently forward. Their lips brushed across each other’s for the first time. The sensation was unexpected and wonderful, like electricity crackling through her veins.

Amazing what the prospect of imminent death could do for these latent feelings.

When Bunnie pulled back away, Rotor looked at her with wide, startled eyes. “There wasn’t much time left,” Bunnie explained. “Ah had to do it.”

“Bunnie, I-“

Rotor’s answer was cut off. Griff came out of the control center’s open door. It was clear that he was shaken badly. Just like Bunnie, there was no little core he could store his emotions in. His arms and knees wobbled fearfully, and uncertainty blossomed on his face like an extension of his mind. If he noticed that Bunnie was standing with her arms around Rotor, he didn’t comment. “We have to go. It’s all happening now. We have to get out of here!”

Bunnie lowered her arms at last, forcing herself to tear her gaze away from Rotor and look at the hover car. It was the same make and model of the vehicle that Griff had brought to Knothole on his first visit. Convertible, sleek, and yellow except for the nearly opaque tinted windows. Two tubular engines mounted on the rear underside, jutting outward.

“Right,” Bunnie said, after it was clear that Griff was too shaken to make any commands, “Y’all take the driver’s side, and get us the hoo-hah outta here. Rotor and Ah will take the other two seats.”

Rotor looked back at her one last time, then got into the passenger side seat. Bunnie started to move towards the rear of the four-person passenger compartment, but stopped when she saw that Griff remained frozen in place.

“Me, drive?” he said, aghast. The fright in his voice was momentarily joined by a stutter of shame. He hung his head. “But I can’t - I mean I’ll just crash - in no state to.”

“Griff, Ah only know how to fly the bulkier cargo sleds. This is your vehicle, and you’re the only one who’s flown it before. You’re drivin’,” she said firmly.

“I can’t,” he said miserably. “I’m incapable. Please don’t make me.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sakes, Griff! Ah’ll drive, then. Just get in the rear seats and git ready to help me.”

Moments later, the hover sled’s convertible top slid shut. Bunnie examined the unfamiliar controls before her. She was used to a steering column layout like the one the old cargo hauler had used. Instead, on this car two retractable handlebars controlled steering and motion, while a third perched on top of the gearbox.

In the middle of the passenger cabin, placed where both she and Rotor could see it, were bizarre combination of buttons and toggle. None of them had any immediately discernible purpose.

Where would the ignition be? Bunnie tried to think back to the cargo hauler’s layout. The hauler’s ignition key was in an obvious position near the steering column. She guessed it had to be the same with this one. There was a switch underneath the right steering bar, pressed into the handle itself. She reached for it.

“Wait! Don’t touch the laser!” Griff burst out.

“Well, this isn’t mah vehicle. You tell me where the ignition is,” she said, unable to contain her irritation.

“The control panel, second button on the lowest row,” he replied sheepishly.

Bunnie slammed the button into the dashboard. Her seat began to vibrate with the force of the hover car’s engine. She heaved a sigh of relief; it was time to get out of here.

Rotor turned around suddenly, as if a switch in his head had been turned on. “Laser? Are you telling us that this ship’s armed?”

“Only lightly. I had the militia install them when the rat-bots were still a threat.”

“We can use any advantage against Robotnik. Can these help us much?”

Griff shook his head. “No. Not against armored units. The most they can do against a hover unit is knock it around a little.”

Rotor nodded thoughtfully, and looked back at Bunnie.

Bunnie grabbed the gearbox lever, and threw it upwards. She put such force into the motion that she almost lost her balance in the seat when it refused to budge. The box made an ugly noise, like metal grinding against metal.

Bunnie frowned, and grabbed the lever with her biomechanical arm, pushing upward again. Still, it refused to move. She kept pushing until it felt like the lever itself was going to snap in half.

“Uh-oh,” Griff moaned softly.

“Don’t tell me,” Bunnie said, “You managed to fix up everything in Lower Mobius except your car’s gearshift?”

“It didn’t seem like a priority at the time,” Griff said defensively.

Bunnie pushed against the gearshift again, without avail. The lever simply refused to move. The engine hummed uselessly in the car’s hood, unable to do anything unless shifted into drive.

They sat helplessly on the dirt road.

“One minute until the crystal detonates,” Griff said under his breath. “We have to be out of here before then!”

“Detonate? Y’all mean explode?”

“That’s what it’s getting ready to do, yes.” Bunnie glanced up. The incendiary orange glow of the energy crystal was growing brighter and brighter by the second. The light flickered unsteadily to some infernal beat, like an orchestra crescendoing to the climax of a violent opera.

“Why?”

“It was the only way to make sterilize the cavern and keep Robotnik from tracking the evacuation convoy,” he said apologetically.

Bunnie tried once more with the gearshift. “This just keeps gettin’ better, doesn’t it,” she muttered.

“I’m sorry,” he exclaimed, “but-“

Rotor held up a hand to silence Griff. “Not right now. Our time table just dropped again. Look ahead.”

Bunnie looked out the windshield, and froze.

Like a swarm of black locusts, hover units poured out of the side tunnels ahead. There were dozens of them; Bunnie had never seen such a fierce display of Robotropolis’s military power in all her years of fighting. Robotnik wanted her badly. Occasionally, a laser blast lanced downward and ripped a building to shreds, just for the spite of it. They began to spread out and blanket the chamber, slowly creeping towards the center of the village. And the dormant hover car.

“Here they come!”

“It looks like a village of some sort, sir,” Snively said. The camera feeds from dozens of different hover units were splayed out on the monitors before him, each displaying a different view of the invasion. Single story stone and wooden structures mingled with the crusty brown rock of the mammoth cavern.

“More than just a city,” Robotnik said. “Those rodents have built an entire city down there. Are there any visible inhabitants?”

Snively scrolled through the monitors. In each view empty streets and abandoned buildings were the only things visible. “None sir. Perhaps they caught advance warning of our arrival.”

“Wouldn’t surprise me. Well, there won’t be a city here for much longer. You know what to do, Snively.”

“Yes, sir.” He turned to the communications panel, and patched himself into the squadron circuit. “All units, pepper the city with random laser fire. Start wiping it out.”

No vocal affirmatives answered him, but the monitors soon began to flash with lightning-quick pulses of laser fire. The light splashed across the command ship’s floor, the chaos only a mild reflection of the intense destruction below. Snively began to direct the path of demolition, his keyboard telling each unit exactly where it should be.

On his master tactical monitor, a map of the city cavern was displayed along with glowing dots representing each hover unit. They began to sweep through the city.

“What is that?” Robotnik’s sausage-like finger was leveled towards a structure on hover unit twelve’s camera view. A glowing crystal hung suspended from the ceiling, an unnatural stalactite.

“I’m not sure. The squadrons’ sensors only detect an immense power output and EM emissions along harmonic frequencies.”

“A power generator, then,” Robotnik declared, satisfied. “Now, the fun part.” He stood up, walking closer to the tactical monitor. His boot steps made heavy impacts against the gray metal floor. Snively imagined that he felt the command ship listing for a moment.

“Where is the rabbit?”

“She’s still in the cavern. I’m correlating the data from the triangulation routine with our map of the cavern now, sir.”

A new dot began to glow brightly on the tactical display.

Snively frowned at it, and then glanced back over at the camera views. In a moment, he found what he was looking for. He pointed towards hover unit fifteen’s display. “There, sir. The hover car sitting at the center of town.”

“Yes!” Triumph inflated Robotnik’s voice. “This is it, Snively! She’s mine! Order hover units to land there and capture her”

In response to Snively’s key presses, five hover units peeled away from the larger group, heading directly towards the parked vehicle.

“And if she attempts to flee in the hover car?”

“Then destroy it. Dead or roboticized, both mean the same to me in the end.”

“Come on, come on!” Bunnie wrenched the gearshift futilely, so hard that the lever itself began to whine in protest. She stopped pushing before the lever itself snapped in half. That would be the only thing that could make this worse.

“Bunnie, we need to leave now!” Rotor half-shouted.

“Ah’m tryin’! It’s not budgin’!”

A building five blocks away was struck twice by twenty-centimeter thick laser blasts. It disappeared underneath a liquid curtain of dust and fire. Only five of the dozens of hover units didn’t fire at all. They were heading straight towards the parked hover car. Fire was spreading through Lower Mobius like a wave, the five deadly silent hover units riding in front of it like advance scouts.

“The gearshift’s internal components cause the problem,” Griff explained quickly. “They block the moving parts. Push the lever hard to the left next time.”

A laser slammed into the roof of a two-story rectangular structure no more than three blocks away. The entire wall of the top floor seemed to buckle for a moment, and then it fell over with a horrible deliberateness.

Bunnie forced the gearshift up and to the left. For a moment, nothing happened, the lever was still solidly stuck. She felt it begin to slip slowly upward until something inside snapped. The lever jerked easily upward.

Bright yellow flames from the thrusters charred and blackened the dirt road.

An explosion shattered the building across the street, a single laser splitting into in twain. The roof cracked around the burning hole created by the hover units, splitting into two parts and caving in. The walls expanded outward until they broke apart, sending shards of mortar and glass in every direction. The glass roof of the convertible hover car cracked and splintered as it was pockmarked by debris.

The furious maelstrom engulfed the hover car.

So this is what death looks like, Bunnie thought to herself. A whirlwind of fire and ash twisted across the windshield in front of her, threatening to break through and lick across the dashboard. She had waited for over two years for this to happen, and the display of fearsome power brought against her was everything she had known it would be.

She had never imagined that destruction of this magnitude could fell so... personal.

“Gun it!” Rotor shouted, terrified.

There were dozens of hover units storming the city cavern. The five heading towards the hover car were almost directly overhead, maneuvering into landing positions and preparing to disgorge a platoon of SWATbots. Bunnie knew right then that she couldn’t win no matter how hard she tried. She had been right hours ago, she was done for.

But she would be damned if she would die without a fight.

Bunnie jammed the accelerator forward.

Dust and fire rushed towards the windshield, and then straight past it as the hover car passed through more or less unblemished. The street was suddenly meters below her, and growing more and more distant.

A burst of laser fire arced past the car on the right, coming from behind. The five hover units had already broken formation and were scrambling to pursue. A second blast screamed past, again to the right, but only missing by a few meters this time.

Bunnie twisted both handlebars to the left. The hover car turned sharply away. The cavern walls became a blur on the windshield. She only stopped turning when one of the tunnels in the cavern wall was directly in front of the car.

“She’s taken off,” Snively reported to his uncle. “Hover units ordered to pursue and take her down by any means necessary.”

Robotnik paced back and forth behind Snively, the metallic sounds of his boots against the deck a constant reminder of his presence. Every once in a while he would stop and glance at the array of monitor. Snively thought he heard him mutter something under his breath, but he couldn’t make out any words. Whatever it was, he sounded excited about it.

“Tactical analysis, Snively,” he said at last. “What are her odds of escape?”

“That would depend on the engine output of that hover car, sir.” Always be one step ahead of Robotnik, that was the primary rule for working as his underling. “I’ve already run a cross-referencing check with Robotropolis data libraries. She’s flying a retrofitted old Nimbus Island Yard model transport, one specifically designed for speed.”

“Speed?” The word darkened Robotnik’s mood, a reminder of one of the Freedom Fighters’ greatest weapons.

“Yes, sir, I’m afraid that it can outrun our hover units. But we do have a significant advantage over it underground.”

On over a dozen monitors, the hover car pulled up and away from the city, doing a sharp port turn to finally head towards one of the cavern exits. The squadron of five hover units in pursuit did unison barrel rolls to change course accordingly. Bright flashes of laser bursts continually illuminated the cavern, deceptively silent and serene on the small monitors.

“Explain,” Robotnik said dubiously.

“The hover car’s main source of propulsion is the two thrusters mounted in the rear of the vehicle. However, they’re only capable of propulsion in a single direction: forward. The car has separate, more cumbersome thrusters for steering control.

“The propulsion drives in our hover units are omni-directional. We have more maneuverability. We won’t have to slow down to turn corners and curves, but her car will. In short, sir, in the confined and twisting underground tunnels leading out of here, we can outrun her.”

“And outshoot her,” Robotnik mused, watching the violence unfold. “She can’t escape.”

“No, she can’t,” Snively agreed, “she’s trapped.”

“The sooner you shoot her down, then, Snively, the happier I’ll be.”

On the master tactical display, the hover car crept closer and closer to the exit tunnel.

Griff had just finished explaining the same thing, shouting above the whine of laser discharges and the rumble of explosions. Talking seemed to be the only thing he could do to keep his mind off the spectacle of his city being destroyed. “Gun the engines to full throttle, and gain as much distance on them as you can,” he said. “Once we’re in the tunnels we won’t be able to.”

The accelerator was already giving as much as it was going too. Even though they were gaining distance on the hover units behind them, they weren’t gaining anywhere near enough. Even if she didn’t look behind her, the sound of their engines was threateningly close. Every once in a while a laser lanced past, always too close.

“So once we’re in the tunnels,” she asked, risking a glance backward at Griff, “then wut?”

Griff didn’t answer.

Bunnie knew that there would be over five hover units in the tunnel behind them. And if they could catch up, the hover car couldn’t move anywhere near fast enough to avoid being an easy target.

“Just try your best to lose them now,” Rotor said.

It sounded to her too much like Griff was saying that they were dead once they hit the tunnels. She said so.

“If they’re still behind us in the tunnel, we don’t stand a snowball’s chance,” Griff said bluntly. “But we do know something that Robotnik doesn’t. We’d better be clear of the city cavern in,” he checked his wrist timer, “twenty-five seconds.”

“The crystal,” Rotor said, “when it detonates it might distract Robotnik long enough for us to get away!”

Scarlet energy flared to the car’s port, vivid red light spilling across the dashboard. For a moment, everything was frozen in violence, like a strobe light.

“Ah doubt it,” Bunnie said. She hated to be a pessimist, but by this point reality had forced it on her. “The SWATbot pilot’s AI won’t notice at all. They’re just not programmed to be troubled by distant flashing lights.”

“The explosion’s going to be a hell of a lot bigger than a flashing light,” Griff said. “We’d better be in the tunnel when it blows.”

Bunnie pushed the accelerator so hard that it hurt. A constant G- force kept her pushed back against the well-cushioned seat. This was the moment of truth. If they managed to lose the hover units before entering the tunnel, in all likelihood they would survive for at least another half- hour or so.

Thirty minutes of life worth fighting for.

She gritted her teeth, and stared at the impossibly distant cavern exit ahead. She hadn’t truly appreciated how large the cavern was before. The car had almost reached its break-neck cruising velocity, but the tunnels ahead barely seemed to grow closer.

Behind her, the crystal had changed from its sickly, flickering orange glow to a horribly bright yellow. It hurt to look at, but even facing away from it Bunnie could tell just from the glare how bright it was. The rock walls on every side of her were bathed in an aura of it.

Griff kept his eyes rooted to his timer. “Ten seconds!”

Somehow, that seemed to be the cue for the hover units to redouble their efforts. Three laser blast flashed in successive order to Bunnie’s right, each one closer than the last. She realized she couldn’t afford to keep a straight arrow course anymore, and twisted the steering handles to the left.

The car dove in response to steering, ground tilted to an incline of thirty degrees for a moment. She instinctively expected to feel gravity shifting underneath her, and was momentarily disoriented when centripetal acceleration ensured that she didn’t. The car wobbled before it righted itself, maneuver completed.

Wind shook the car roughly, shuddering. Air resistance kept trying to shove the steering bars out of Bunnie’s hands, but it was easy enough to counter. Her grip was iron-solid. She doubted she’d ever held on to anything as tightly as she did the car’s steering.

One of the cavern exits loomed ahead, a roughly triangular hole punched through the rock wall ahead, edges jagged and sharp. After fifty meters the rock ended suddenly in metal, a circular tunnel that continued ahead. Beyond that was darkness, nothing Bunnie could make out. Despite it’s lack of aesthetics, though, it was the most beautiful thing she had seen in ages. Its edges were getting visibly larger. She quickly calculated that they would be on it almost the instant the energy crystal detonated.

“Five,” Griff continued the countdown, voice strained to the verge of tears. He had devoted over a decade of his life to this city, and now all he could do was maintain a stoic deathwatch.

The hover units resumed fire almost the instant the hover car had righted itself from the maneuver. One laser burst missed wide and to the left, while another one seared the air overhead. The shots weren’t as close as the others had been, but were still an obvious threat. Bunnie tried to evade their targeting routines by quickly turning to the left and right. Fast enough to present a moving target, but not sharply enough to lose their course towards the tunnel.

“Four...”

Rotor had his hands on the dashboard, knuckles white as he held on to it. His mouth was clamped shut, bracing for the inevitable explosion. His eyes were wide open. She couldn’t remember the time he had blinked. But he was there. His mere presence seeped strength into Bunnie’s arms. This was her mess, not his. He didn’t deserve this. Getting him out was a goal worth fighting for, even if the odds of success weren’t good.

Another missed laser slammed into the cavern wall just above the tunnel exit, sending a cascade of rocks tumbling down over it. They would be clear by the time the car reached the exit. Bunnie just hoped that didn’t happen just before they entered, or the avalanche would smash them to pieces.

“Three...”

The bright yellow glare had at least twice the intensity of the sun. She didn’t dare glance behind her for fear of damaging her retinas. The light in her peripheral vision was bad enough by itself. In the reflected light the cavern wall became a still portrait of liquid metal, jagged peaks and edges distortions in an inverted surface. Bunnie wondered just how much of what she saw was illusion; the heat coming the window behind her was almost intolerable.

“Two...”

Rotor finally shut his eyes, sealed them tightly. He whispered something under his breath. Bunnie couldn’t hear it, and didn’t have the time to ask. Bunnie straightened out the car. They were coming up on the exit fast, and careless maneuvering now would only get them slammed into the cavern wall. Life would end in an apocalyptic fury, even before the energy crystal blew.

The jagged edges of the triangular exit grew exponentially fast, and suddenly they engulfed the hover car. They were in the fifty-meter stretch of rock foyer, just before the metal-sided tunnel began.

“One...”

Bunnie resisted a powerful urge to do as Rotor had, and squeeze her eyes shut. A single slip with the steering controls would kill them all.

Instead she clenched her jaw muscles tightly shut, and levered her legs to push her further back in her seat, wedging her tightly in place. With her biomechanical limbs exerting full force, only a very strong blow could knock her loose. No matter what happened now, she would be able to keep a grip on the steering handles.

The walls turned to metal around the hover car as it dove into the exit tunnel. Bunnie wasn’t worried about a lack of light anymore. The darkness had been burned away seconds ago.

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.

Gradually, the jets of air calmed, and the shuddering stopped. The noise faded away to a dull rumbling and then to silence. The hover car once again flew straight through the tunnel.

The whine of military hover unit engines filled the air, still directly behind them.