"Whatcha' do'n little cuz?" his friend asked curiously.

Sonic was recovering well considering the kind of drugs that had been coursing through his blood not even an hour ago.

"Well this thing was communicating with Kintobor somehow."

"What do you mean?"

It was a fair question from someone who had just been in a nightmare induced coma. The hedgehog may not have even had a chance to see this thing up close until now.

"I mean Julian's thoughts were being transferred to this thing wirelessly… the way it turned to see if he was alright. Kintobor never said anything, so It must have been joined to his thoughts by some type of network."

On any other day he probably would have called himself crazy, but it was the only explanation for what he had just witnessed.

"This thing is just a hunk of metal now," the hedgehog replied as if the robot were not a spitting image of him. "I mean what could you possibly hope to do with it?"

"Honestly," Tails hesitated, "I have no idea. The parts in this thing don't resemble anything I've ever seen before. It's so primitive yet at the same time, advanced."

"Watch who you're calling primitive," Sonic quickly remarked, apparently remembering the machine was made from one of his clones.

Everything was a mess of wires each one a smaller gauge than the next wrapped endlessly through the body beneath the machines armor. There was no rhyme, reason, or least of all organization. It truly was a mechanical clone of an organic being. That, however, meant that what he was looking for should stand out.

Human's designs were inherently organized and efficient, a far cry from the randomness that comprised the internals of bodies designed by nature. Since Mobians had yet to evolve a way of communicating wirelessly, it stood to reason the that the mechanical version of Sonic would never have had it it's original form either.

"Julian had to have added a wireless card," the kit nearly laughed when he said it aloud.

"You mean like on a computer?"

Sonic's understanding of all things technical didn't extend too far, but by all accounts this was a legitimate comparison.

"That's exactly what I mean."

"What? Why?"

"Think about it. Can you join a wireless network right now?"

"No of course not… so neither could the robotic version of me," the quilled Mobian sighed, "I get it."

"Right, so if I can find that piece I might be able to use it to send a message."

It was a longshot to say the least, but it wasn't like he had much else to do to occupy his time. Right now Julian was no doubt coming up with a way to subdue or kill them. Tails was not about to spend his final moments in self reflection.

No, I can save that for when I'm dead.

The two-tailed fox had managed to teach himself enough about anatomy to understand there were only a few places you could put such a device. The base of the brain stem made sense, but only if the remote user intended on controlling every facet of the robot. Kintobor wanted nothing more than to deliver his orders and have them obeyed.

He said this thing would always listen to him right?

Prying at the titanium plated ear, it took a great more force than he anticipated to remove. The effort, however, was not wasted. Right before him was a circuit bored to intricately designed to be random. These wireless chips were baked into almost every Dominion device known to man.

"I found it," Tails breathed a sigh of relief.

"Really?" Sonic asked in a tone of surprise before attempting to look over the vulpine's shoulder. "Now what?"

"Now we hope."

"Hope? What for?"

Julian wasn't dumb. These wireless chips were coded to self destruct when the unit they were connected to was stolen or destroyed, removing any hope that they could be hijacked and used to listen in on encrypted conversations.

"That this thing still works."

A robian, however, was a new challenge. Normal devices were built from the ground up with the idea of being identifiable by serial numbers, asset tags or some other human defined code. A robot that used to be a Mobian wouldn't have any of that. It was only a guess, but there was still a possibility that Kintobor, in his haste, removed those safeguards because he couldn't program them to work with a robotic hedgehog.

"You didn't break it, did you?"

"No," Tails replied calmly as he prodded gently at the chip. "These aren't supposed to work after the device they're connected to malfunctions."

"Then how is this going to help us?"

"Because Kintobor is arrogant and probably never thought he had to worry about us peeling one of these apart."

Grasping the small transceiver between his fingers, Tails raised the small circuit board into what little light there was.

"Now all we need is a working computer, right?" Sonic asked hopefully.

The room was bare save for Julian's experiments. Aside from the occasional wall mounted status terminal there wasn't much in this room that would be of any use to them. Then again, Tails had never intended on plugging the chip into any of Kinotbor's stuff anyway. He had his own perfectly functioning piece of Dominion equipment right on the side of his head.

"Not really," Tails replied nonchalantly before removing the HUD from his ear. "I've got everything I need."

His HUD was well outside of any frequencies that he could hop onto. However, with a different wireless card, there might be an option he couldn't see. Powering down the tiny device was easy. Taking apart the fragile computer was a different matter. Without a full set of tools, Tails was left with the point of his knife to pry open slender aluminum frame.

After that, replacing the wireless card was easy. Sliding it into place, the kit could only hope that his HUD unit would be able to access the same networks as the Robotic hedgehog.

"Well," Sonic asked desperately, "did it work?"

"It's still turning on," he sighed in response.

It was hard not to grin when he saw the network status in the corner of his screen. The kit was connected on a secure encrypted line to the outside world. However, if he had to guess he only had one shot at sending a message before Kinotbor noticed unwanted traffic on his private network.

"Who do we want to send a message to?"

"You go it?"

"I got it."

"Way to go little cuz."

"We're only going to get one shot at this. Kintobor won't let us stay on his network for long."

"We need to tell someone where we are."

"Alright," Tails asked, "do you know where we are?"

"Not a clue. But you have to remember how you got here."

"I cam in through the Central Bank."

"How did you manage that?" Sonic snorted. "That's almost as dumb as going through Dominion HQ."

"The key!" Tails realized. "We need to send someone the key."

"What key?"

"If anyone wants to get into these tunnels, they will need this key," the two-tailed fox proclaimed as he produced a card from his vest. "It will give them access to everything."

"How are you going to send a key?"

"It's electronic, a cypher that changes predictably over time. I can only send a snap shot or two, not the actual algorithm but Nicole could probably replicate it with enough data points."

"Cuz, there's got to be someone else. I don't want to drag Sally into this."

"We don't have a choice. No one else could crunch those numbers in a reasonable time. Hell, no one else might even be listening for a message from us. Besides, you might not have much to worry about... Sally may not even want to come down here for either of us."

"Yeah," the hedgehog lamented, "don't remind me."

Hi everyone! It's been more than a while this time. I'm in the process of switching jobs. In the next two months, things will settle down for me and I should be right back to more acceptable update intervals. I should finish this story by the end of the year. Sorry for the short chapter, but I just want to keep things movings.

Cheers,

M.D