Exactly how much had passed before he woke up, Sonic could not quite tell. Sensation came back slowly one sense at a time. At first he became aware of his pain wracked body. Then sounds began to intrude. Someone was saying his name over and over again in a frantic sounding voice. He frowned, trying to place who it was. The voice was familiar but right now his brain was still too benumbed to make a proper recognition. He hung there for what seemed an eternity in that half awake state of utter emotional detachment.

Suddenly it all came rushing back to him. That voice. He did know that voice. It was Sally. She was calling his name and her voice was on the verge of hysteria. With some effort the hedgehog forced his eyes to actually open. What he saw stunned him.

Sally, Chuck and even Hare were on their knees a short distance away from him. Their arms were all locked into large electronic manacles behind their backs and chained by a leash to an anchor keeping them from rising. They all had various injuries. Hare had a large bruise across one side of his face and several cuts down the left arm. Sally had a nasty looking laser burn on one ankle, blackened fur showing where she had been struck possibly by a laser rifle. Chuck seemed to have only been roughed up a little but the look on his face was far worse, a short of inner collapsed despair clear in his eyes.

Sonic reacted instinctively, trying to rise, struggling to get up. It was then that he felt his own restraints and looked around in panic. Like them he was bound too, heavy electronically bolted shackles locking his arms and legs in place. He was connected in a dozen places to the same platform, making it impossible for him to budge. That did not stop him from trying however, straining hard to push his way free. But try as he might he could not break loose. The only reward he got for trying as a stabbing pain in his chest, a reminder of his broken ribs.

The four of them were back in the coordinator booth they had left behind, restrained near the window that allowed a view of the research floor and its strange device, completely undamaged and intact. Six Swat-Bots stood over them and another six stood guard around the room, all of them armed to the teeth with laser rifles, machine guns and other nasty assorted weaponry, most of which was pointed directly at them.

"W...what's going on?!" He demanded and even to himself his voice sounded weak, an echo of its former self.

"We were betrayed, that's what's going on!" Hare spat, his voice muffled slightly by the swelling on his face. He was squatting down between Chuck and Sally. Sonic blinking, stared right at him. Hadn't they left him behind at the base? Hare stared right back, seeming to read the question in his expression. "They found the base, blue boy." He said in an ominously dark tone. "Badniks came pouring in and trashed the place." Sonic continued to stare at him and his struggling subsiding as he sat there with wide disbelieving eyes. The full scale of what had been said to him would not quite sink in.

Suddenly the door to the room opened with a shunting sound. Sonic looked back and stared as into the booth walked Dr. Robotnik. The man had his arms folded in the small of his back underneath his cape as he walked and there was the barest hint of a smile making the ends of his moustache quiver. This was the first time Sonic had ever seen the dictator outside the cockpit of a mobile. It was quite tall despite his girth and his torso was well portioned and developed with muscle too. The plump fatherly posture he adopted on television was a façade. The real Robotnik, while certainly portly, was in very good shape. On his shoulder, metallic talons clutching at a thick pad, was a miniaturised Seeker badnik. The bot was not at all like the larger variety, which were little more than intelligent bomber craft. It behaved almost exactly like a feral animal, with twitches of the wings and head as if it were actually alive. It fixed its beady red optics on them all and glared, its articulated wings rustling behind its back.

Beside Robotnik was Snively. Freed from the rope they had tied him up with, the little man was holding a small bag of ice over his nose which had swollen up badly. In his other hand he was holding a rectangular touch screen device. He was glaring directly at Sally with murder clear in his eyes. As they came, the Swat-bots stood aside to make way, clearing a path to allow their master to walk openly right up to them. Hare turned pale at the sight of the so called ruler of Mobius.

When he reached them he stood there in silence for a long moment, his face unreadable expect for that small smile. That smile was enough to make the hedgehog burn with anger.

"Take a picture, it will last longer!" Sonic remarked with ire. Robotnik ignored him quite deliberately and turned his attention towards Chuck, the smile on his face widening out.

"Hello old friend." He said with some degree of warmth in his voice. "It has indeed been too long. I have missed you." Chuck looked up and his expression was a mixture of disgust, contempt and even some element of shame.

"I can't see why." The old Hedgehog replied hoarsely and his voice trembled with an unrecognisable emotion. "I did everything I could to stop you from spreading your evil across the world."

"Evil, Charles?" Robotnik seemed almost offended by the choice of word, unfolding his arm and laying a hand across his chest. "You call it evil?"

"What else would I call it when you enslave a planet?" Some of Chuck's old fire seemed to come back and he glared. "Kintobor was a scientist who once used his technology for the betterment of all. Robotnik abuses that same technology for his own selfish ends." The dictator looked at him and slid his glasses down the bridge of his nose. His eyes, never seen on television, were an icy blue, as cold as the northern winters.

"You naive old fool." He remarked. "Is this nonsense what you raised your nephew to believe?" He shot a glance at Sonic. "Can I make none of you understand that what I do is necessary?" He gestured up and around with one arm. "Look around you. See how my science and technology has turned the once weak mobian state into a powerful nation, capable of facing any and all outside threats." Sally snapped her head up to look at him, her teeth grinding in outrage.

"And all the people have to give up is their freedom!" She nearly shouted, pushing hard against her restraints and looked as if she might rise to her feet. One of the Swat-bots grabbed her by the arm and forced her quite painfully back down into a sitting position.

"A small price to pay for the safety I provide, wouldn't you say?" Robotnik asked, turning his head to look at her and pushing his spectacles back up into place.

"Don't give me that!" She replied with gritted teeth, the metallic hand keeping her pinned down to the floor. "You don't care anything about the wellbeing of the people or protecting the planet, all you want is power!" The look the doctor directed at her was almost pitying.

"You can't have one without the other." He said as if it was the most reasonable thing in the world and he was explaining it to an infant. "Power is a necessary tool." He pointed a finger at her. "Where did the quaint notions of 'freedom' and 'liberty' get us? We were weak with weak rulers and a weak military and the Metarex came. It was only through gaining strength that we fought them off." He curled his fingers into a fist and then brought it to his chest. "Strength I will maintain." Sonic suddenly burst out laughing, his body twitching as his laughter made his damaged ribs ache. Everyone looked at him in varying degrees of surprise.

"Sure, your privileged few would all be safe as houses!" He chuckled, grinning inanely. "The rest of us have to live in slums and survive on whatever food we can scavenge, afraid to go out after dark. If you think that's any different from the Metarex then you're fooling yourself." Robotnik's expression turned dark and his face creased into a frown.

"This conversation is moot anyway." He said flatly. "This little rebellion of yours is over and once the Bears have been crushed, Mobius' future will be totally in my hands."Snively looked down at the device he was holding, the displaying highlighting his face.

"The prisoners are being brought in now, sir." He told Robotnik, his voice even more high pitched than before. "We estimate a capture rate of eighty percent of the local groups."

"Ahh excellent timing." He clasped his hands together with relish, his smile of smug satisfaction returning instantly. "Have them brought onto the research floor at once."

"Yes, sir." Snively replied and presses a few buttons with the thumb of the hand he held his device with.

"If you would all be so good as to direct your attention this way?" The large man asked his prisoners, sweeping out arm out bombastically towards the window. "I believe I can vividly illustrate my point." They all turned to look.

A large door at the end of the research floor opened wide and two rows of Swat-Bots marched out in single file. Herded between the two rows were dozens of prisoners, all shackled around the arms and legs. Many of them had severe injuries that were being deliberately ignored, some could barley move in the heavy manacles. With mounting horror they all recognised many of the prisoners down below as belonging to other Freedom Fighter Cells in the city, groups they had cooperated with on more than one occasion. The other prisoners in the group took a moment for Sonic to recognise. He gasped when he saw the familiar robed form of the Reverend, the badger with a taste for Bear Mead who dwelt down in the tunnels. All around him were other homeless from the abandoned subways, the needy who the blue hedgehog had gone out of his way to bring stolen supplies to feed and clothe. It looked like anyone who had been even remotely connected to their group had been rounded up.

"A few fish escaped the net." Robotnik admitted. "But not enough to fret about. This house cleaning is more than sufficient to end your resistance movement within my capital city." Sally stared down at the scene below.

"H...how..." She began. Chuck shook his head.

"Haven't you figured it out yet Sally?" He asked with a thick voice. "It was the leak. We brought a viper into our midst." She shot a look at him, her face clearly stunned.

"Tails?!" She gasped. "T...that's not possible!" Robotnik laughed lightly at her declaration and stepped to one side.

"Oh no? Why not ask him yourself?" Standing in the doorway behind him was the young fox. He was unshackled and fee of any restraint, except for a Swat-bot standing guard behind him. The silence that followed was like a frozen moment in time, the expressions on everyone's face mirroring shock, stunned disbelief and dismay. Hare was the one to break it.

"I knew it was you! You sold us out, you little bastard!" He snapped suddenly, outrage and intense indignation contorting his features. It was only the metal hand on his shoulder that kept him from racing at the young fox. "I'll kill you for this traitor!"Tails winced at his voice, his face contorting with shame and Sonic could see that his fur was matted with tears.

"I...I'm sorry." The young fox said with a weak voice that was dripping with sadness and dismay. He had to avert his eyes from them. "He has my folks."

Sonic just stared, his open face a picture for the emotions within. There was confusion and dumb surprise clear in his eyes as he looked at the young fox. Tails did not meet his gaze, keeping his face down and away. Beside the blue hedgehog, Sally was shaking her head in perplexed and dismayed amazement.

"That's... just not possible." She was muttering. "No child could hack into our system, even from the inside."

"True." Robotnik agreed affably, running the fingers of one hand through the tangled end of his moustache. "But then Miles Prower here isn't exactly an ordinary child." He walked up to the boy and patted him on the head. Tails cringed away from his touch as if it were filthy. "He is the gifted son of one of my technicians in the Chemical Plant Zone. He passed the top of his class in advanced electronics and computer maintenance. He had quite a promising potential and possible future within the Dominion. I assure you he was more than capable of tapping into your 'NICOLE' network and then beaming my servers the information needed to bring your rebels down." He turned to her a smug superior smile, full of the glee of triumph. He reached down the back of the boy's head and with a yank pulled something out of his fur. Tails yelped and swung away, rubbing the back of his head.

"You were naive fools to just bring him into your base." The Doctor continued. "I had a tracking device on him the entire time." He held up what he had removed for them all to see, a small device that looked very much like a communications node. "I could have smashed your base to putty the moment I knew where you were, but I decided to hold off and let you expose the rest of your network." He flipped the device with his thumb like a coin and caught it again. "Such a pity really. Your talents are to be recognised but I simply do not have the time to dally around with the antisocial." He paused then and rubbed his chin with one hand, tossing the device away indifferently now that it had served its purpose.

"Only question is – now that I have you, what should I do with you?" He paused in seemingly thoughtful silence for a long time and then a large oily smile parted his lips. Chuck was the first to see where his line of thought was going and his face turned snow white in an instant.

"No!" He grated in horror. "You can't! Even YOU can't be that evil!" The others looked at him with confusion. Robotnik ignored him and gestured to Snively.

"Are the capacitors charged?" He asked.

"Ready and waiting, sir." The smaller man replied. "We're just waiting to perform the beta test now." Robotnik nodded several times in satisfaction. He held up his left arm and obediently the small seeker hopped from his shoulder onto his forearm. The man began to pet the robot tenderly, stroking its articulated metallic feathers.

"Please!" Tails began giving the doctor an imploring desperate look. "You said you'd let my parents go if I helped you capture the freedom fighters!" Robotnik did not pause in his caress of his mechanical pet nor did he look over at the boy.

"Yes, I did say something like that didn't I?" He turned his pet around to admire it at different angles, the mechanical bird shifting its weight as he did. "Ah yes, I remember now. The deal was that if you did as you were told and played the Trojan horse then I would let your parents go from captivity." He replaced the bird on his shoulder and then turned to give Tails a look. "It would seem that despite your way above average intelligence, my boy, you are as naive as they are." Tails only had a split second to look shocked before he was grabbed roughly from behind by two Swat-bots. He struggled but they held him fast.

"Now that you've seen the machine I have here, I can't let you or your parents go free." Robotnik said flatly. "You've served your purpose."

"Bu...but you said..!"

"I say a lot of things." Robotnik swept away from him and marched up to the window, staring down at the people clustered at the foot of the machine. "Snively, bring out his parents and begin the test run."

"Yes sir." Snively replied and typed a few commands into the screen of his handheld. At once several of the Swat-bot guards down below pushed through the crowd of prisoners and selected two of them, dragging them out from the others. The two of them were foxes, a male and female, older than Tails but the family resemblance was obvious even from this distance. Tails was dragged by the robots holding him over to the window. When he saw them he gasped and cried out.

"MOM, DAD!" He yelled, slamming his fists against the glass. They were too high up however for anyone down there to hear them. The two foxes were herded at gun point up the stairs and onto the devices pedestal, each one fitted into one of the long glass tubes. They were both shoved in unceremoniously and once inside, they could not get out. The two of them hammered their fists on the inside of the glass but it did not budge. Robotnik watched the scene below unfold with an expectant rigid intensity. Chuck struggled in his restrained fiercely.

"You can't please!" He begged Robotnik. "That machine it...it.."

"Unc, what's going on?" Sonic asked, with panic creeping into his own voice. The tech-bots manning the machine's controls and panels worked quickly as the device below began to emit a deep humming noise, energy passing through the pipes and cables and feeding into a containment battery above it. Lights flickered over the machine in various places as that deep hum became louder and louder, increasing to an ominous rumble that made the chamber rattle. The top of the occupied glass tubes began to glow an intense but sickly green. Chuck was thrashing in his restraints, desperately trying to break loose in what could only be called a frenzy of terror.

"No, NOT AGAIN!" He cried out. A pale beam of light was moving down from the top of the glass tubes now, slowly descending. As it passed over the two occupants, they screamed out in pain, hideous screams that reached up even to their suspended booth. Their yell was cut off abruptly as the beam descended lower and lower, passing over their bodies. As it moved along them, they were subject to a shocking and terrible change. Their fur and flesh was replaced by gleaming metal, their entire forms converted from organic matter to silicon.

Above, Tails watched with dumb stuck horror clear on his face eyes widening as the process continued, on and on. His body taut with sharp anxiety and the terrible unearthly nightmare of what he was seeing pouring into him, a burning reality he could not look away from. Before him his parents were screaming in agony as their flesh disappeared bit by bit and he was powerless to stop it. Into him poured the horribleness of that moment, a moment that would be with him from now until the day he died, a terrible wound on his psyche.

Finally the machine grew still but it's terrible work was complete. His parents were gone. In their place were two steel automatons, almost exactly metallic copies of the living beings they had once been. The machine hissed as it finished its work and the glass tubes opened, allowing the now mechanized pair to step forth. Their metal faces were bland and unresponsive, devoid of any emotion. The crowd of prisoners below backed off in alarm at the sight they had just witnessed, many screaming in terror and had to be corralled back into line forcibly by their Swat-bot guards.

"Readings indicate a silicon conversion and mechanisation of one hundred percent, sir." Snively reported, reading off of his portable device.

"Beautiful, isn't it?" Robotnik asked having never taken his eyes of the newly converted pair as they stood stock still like statues. "It's taken me ten years to perfect the design but time well spent I think." He grinned and looked down at the shaken old hedgehog, kneeling there with his face filled with stark dismay. "So then Charles, what do you think of MY Roboticizer prototype?"

Finally realised what he had happened before his very eyes, Tails seemed to shrink in on himself, his hands covering his face as a cry of utter despair and hopelessness escaped him. It was soul wrenching to hear that yell of utter horror and grief. Suddenly he exploded, tearing out of the grasp of the robots that held him. He made a step towards Robotnik, teeth clenched in hate and eyes filled murderous intent. The Swat-bot reacted quicker and smashed its fist into the top of the young foxes head and the boy collapsed to the floor. He lay there, twitching slightly.

"You sick, heartless monster!" Sally spat at Robotnik, quivering with rage. Chuck just sat there staring off blankly. He looked as if something inside him had collapsed.

"I take it back." Sonic said in a voice that barely contained its outrage and hatred. "You're not as bad as the Metarex. You're far worse!" Robotnik adjusted the glasses on his face with one hand as the Swat-bots below on the research floor beat the prisoners into submission.

"Empty words rodent." He said in a dismissive tone. "Regardless of what you think of me, I have won and in the end, that is all that matters."

"Fuses A-D, F-F and X-V have fried, sir." Snively stammered, looking up at Robotnik apprehensively for daring to interrupt with bad news. "The Roboticizer needs immediate system maintenance before it can be used again." Robotnik turned sharply to glare at him, his expression flat but there was a definite menace in his manner.

"What caused the fault?" He demanded his tone stern and tinged with intense disapproval.

"Unexpected power surge. Couldn't have been predicted, sir." Snively replied quickly, a nervous twitch under one eye. "We can have it repaired and back online in two hours." He trailed off slightly as the larger man turned to face him completely, the miniature seeker on his shoulder spreading its wings to halo his head in metal feathers.

"You've got one hour." Robotnik said in a firm tone. "Then I want the prisoners roboticized on mass. Do I make myself clear?"

"Perfectly, clear – sir." Snively nodded quickly.

"In the meantime, have these dissidents transferred in holding cells." Robotnik ordered, jabbing a finger back at the stunned group on the floor. "And keep them separated so they had brood about their final moments in private." He half turned caught Sonic's angry eye. The young blue hedgehog was glaring at him with undisguised hatred and contempt. Robotnik held that gaze and his oily smile returned in full force. "Well hedgehog I suppose this is goodbye. Such a pity. Our little feud was fun while it lasted."