ADAPTION chapter four

Amy dreaded the morning to come, she and Tails had to let their bodies take over, let the programming take them.

It was simple enough, all they did was retreat to the backs of their minds, pushing the programming forward, she had taught Tails how to do it during the night. But it was terrifying. Terrifying because they didn't know what Bowen was going to do with them when he returned.

They were going to have to watch as Bowen made them do things, and the only escape they'd get from it was at night, when they were alone, unwatched.

She floated discontentedly, attempting to sleep before they had to let their bodies take over. Soon, she slept.

She was walking through the mists of time again.

She recognised it, and this time she didn't let the emotional barrage get to her. Walking slowly she could now recognise parts of the visions. Herself screaming in pain obviously from the procedure, Sonic fighting the androids, Tails and herself floating in the rejuvenation tubes in the darkness of night.

There were images she hadn't seen, but could guess, Sonic running through the laboratories, hiding behind Dr Bowen, watching as she and Tails were awoken, Techno and Porker watching the security cameras switch off, Sonic overjoyed at realising they were all right.

Other images, though, began to crowd in on her.

Sonic screaming for help, Tekno and Tails flying together, Porker, dear Porker, waking up in a damp cell, herself holding Sonic unconscious in her arms, Dr Bowen laughing manically, Dr Sampson curled up on the floor crying in tattered clothing, the images went on and on.

There was one last image before she woke. She was cradled in Sonics embrace, smiling in a contented way.

Amy awoke and looked quickly around to see what it was that had woken her. Tails frantically directed her gaze to the door, it was being unlocked.

She nodded and they both closed their eyes, drifting backward into the deep shelter of their minds, letting the programming take over.

Dr Bowen walked in, followed by Dr Sampson holding a folder an inch thick.

He walked straight over to the rejuvenation tubes and looked up at his creations, a smile slithering its way across his lips.

"They are perfect, are they not Dr Sampson?"

Sampson had moved to a table a little way off and was putting the folder down when Bowen addressed her. She looked up, "Y-yes, Dr Bowen.perfect"

Dr Bowen stepped back, still looking at the two recumbent Mobians then turned and walked to a cupboard, opening the door, he took out two uniforms. As he straightened them out, unfolding them and laying them together on the table, he addressed Sampson again.

"Wake them up and let them out please Dr Sampson"

Dr Sampson nodded sedately and pressed the button.

The tubes drained, Amy and Tails programmed bodies taking their weight, then the fronts slid out and up. The two Mobians stepped gracefully out of their rejuvenation chambers and stood facing the Dr's with blank eyes, hands clasped behind their backs, military style.

"Agents, come here"

They both turned, in perfect synch and almost marched over to Dr Bowen, passing Dr Sampson who looked near terrified.

Bowen showed them the uniforms he had taken from the cupboard.

"These are your new uniforms, go dry off then change. Sampson, take them to the shower rooms if you would."

Looking slightly panicky, she nodded and led them out of the room and down the hall. A moment later they were shown into a room, as white and sterile as the last. There were two cubicles at the end of the room, separated from the rest of the room by only a curtain. Dr Sampson nodded towards them and waited as they went and cleaned up, dried off and dressed.

They looked completely different when they stepped back out into the room.

Amy was wearing a tight leather corset style top with a split soft leather skirt. The numbers oh four one six oh were printed in a straight line down the right side of the skirt, next to the split.

Tails was wearing a tight soft leather sleeveless top and leather trousers baggy at the ankles, the numbers oh six one five oh were printed in a line down the right hand side of his chest.

Both were wearing slightly heavy leather boots and fingerless stretch gloves reaching just below their elbows.

They stood 'at ease' and waited for Dr Sampson to instruct their next action.

She sighed and shook her head sadly, "I can't believe what he's turned you two into.you were our last hope. of survival."

She looked at them miserably for a moment, then stood straighter, "Follow me, Dr Bowen will wish to establish you're roles in our stronghold"

Tekno sat back in her work chair, resting for a moment.

She looked at the ceiling rubbing her neck. She'd been working all night; Porker had broken the encryption soon after they had put Sonic back to sleep, and ever since she had been working on designs to help Amy and Tails.

They had broken the programming before, so she had a basic design to start from, but from what she and Porker had been able to tell, Amy and Tails were no ordinary cyborgs now.

Dr Bowen's idea of merging a living being with a shard of the master emerald was ingenious, but it made it incredibly hard to find a way of removing any damaging results.

At least there was some suspicion that they were ok, Sonic had seen to that, so she didn't have to find a way of wiping a complete programme from a drone, all she had to do was get rid of any conditioning that was going on. Even if Amy and Tails did still have their minds, there was likely to still be some programming, controlling their bodies when they didn't concentrate.

"Or something along those lines anyway." she thought a little wearily.

Tekno was missing her two friends a lot at the moment, Tails for his refreshing way of thinking about technical problems, and Amy for simply being Amy.

Over the past few years the two girls had become fast friends, sharing many an adventure, travelling together, discovering new zones, sharing each others excitement over new things, even saving the world a few times in ways the boys would never have thought of.

She smiled and closed her eyes a moment, remembering the time she'd discovered some alien technology during a fight on another planet. She'd been half excited about the discovery, half trying to figure out how to turn it off to stop it from destroying the whole island when Amy had simply shot it.

Right about now Tails would have been making a light hearted joke, making mention of some memory or other, then he'd shout something out, having noticed something she'd missed herself.

Tekno sighed and started getting back to work; pouring over the notes stolen from Bowen's computers, having Tails around right now would certainly be helpful.

Dr Sampson sat and watched as Bowen fiddled with the controls of the new rejuvenation tanks. Earlier today, Bowen had sent Tails out to a nearby village to 'recruit' two new workers.

She was now looking wretchedly at the two of them, floating in the tanks, emeralds embedded in their chests, blank eyes staring. She was nauseated by the very thought of what Bowen was doing to them, physically sickened, but she had to hide it, she had a job to do.

It was strange though, she had noticed something about these two new ones that she wasn't going to mention to Bowen. They were. blanker somehow, in the eyes, than Tails and Amy had been. It was just a feeling, and probably a stupid one, but she was starting to think that maybe Bowen's experiment hadn't worked on the freedom fighters as well as it had on these two.

It gave her hope, so she prayed Bowen wouldn't notice.

"Sampson, come here please."

She stood and moved to Bowen's side.

"This," he pointed at a screen showing a complicated graph and measurements of various bodily outputs from the two Mobians, "these two have less energy flow than the first. Can you think why?"

Dr Sampson looked at the screen and thought of what she had noticed.

"I'm afraid I can't Dr, perhaps it has something to do with them being the first?"

It was a stab in the dark, but he may believe it.

Bowen looked thoughtful for a moment, staring up at the two Mobians.

"Perhaps. I think I may make a few more to see what happens, you may be right and this energy depletion could simply be nothing more than who it was we used."

He fell silent again and Sampson took a step back.

"Yes," he was suddenly more animated "Take these two to get cleaned up, put in uniform and shown to their new quarters if you would."

He pressed the button that released them, and Sampson watched as his two latest recruits stepped gracefully down from the dais.

Sonic was in the front yard of the safe house with Porker, testing his legs, when the first reports came in from a small village near Milestone city.

A new type of cyborg, which apparently looked very much like Tails, had attacked the outlying village and carried off two villagers, a young male squirrel of no more than 15 years and a twenty something mother of two.

Porker and Sonic both were near furious. Bowen had taken Tails only two days before, and already he was using him in the field.

"I can't believe it Sonic; the normal recuperation stage of the first and second wave cyborgs was a week, at least. His treatment of Tails, and possibly Amy, is unprecedented."

Sonic nodded calmly, keeping his emotions to himself. Hearing that Tails was already being used in the kidnapping of innocents to further Bowens ranks was painful to say the least. Tails was such a happy go lucky personality, wouldn't hurt a fly without good reason, never happier than when fiddling with some mechanical contrivance, throwing jokes around in a witty banter that had often left him smiling for ages afterwards.

That he had been reduced to this by Bowen. nothing more than a thrall to fulfil his needs.

His hands clenched of their own accord. He wanted to kill this man like he hadn't wanted to kill anyone since Johnny's death.

Porker helped him back to his own room and then left to tell Tekno about the report. "Don't worry Sonic, we'll figure it all out." he said as he closed the door.

Dr Sampson quietly walked into the cyborgs quarters and looked at the ranks of tanks for the new emerald merged Borgs. Amy and Tails were in the rejuvenation tanks farthest from the door on the left, before them were ten new recruits, reaching from the end of the room towards the door, all created that day. Each one kidnapped by Tails from villages around the city.

She looked at them sadly, shaking her head as she walked down the line, past still empty tanks on her left and right until she reached the first of the cyborgs on the left. A young girl cat, possibly no more than seventeen, floated, staring blankly at the empty tank opposite her.

Sampson walked further along, looking at each of them in turn, looking for what she noticed in the first two. She found nothing. Each pair of eyes was a blank as the other, all staring out at the empty tank opposite them.

When she reached Amy and Tails tanks, she stopped and looked at them both in turn, searching their eyes.

There it was again, the feeling that they were more than what appeared, more than what Bowen professed them to be.

She gave a startled gasp when Amy blinked and looked down at her.

'Don't say anything Miss Sampson; just pretend to be reading our screens.'

Sampson, breathing deeply to calm down, did as she was bid.

'We heard what you said yesterday, about us being your last hope of survival, we'd like to know what it is you meant.'

Sampson blinked, trying to figure out what was going on, were they tricking her? Was this one of Bowens plans?

'It is nothing of the sort Sampson; we are as you have suspected, Bowens programming didn't work. We need your help, but we'd like to be able to trust you.' Sampson picked up the folder hanging from a chain on the side of Tails tank and pretended to read it, the font blurring as she looked at it.

Amy had heard her thoughts. that meant she didn't have to speak aloud.

'You can trust me' she thought desperately 'I'm part of the underground movement pitted against Dr Bowen and his experiments, surely you know of us?'

She jumped as the cameras around the room clicked off one by one and watched as the other recruits all closed their eyes. She dropped the folder, startled, when both Tails and Amy's tanks emptied and opened.

They both stepped down and looked at her, relief in their eyes, but not on their faces.

'Yes, we know of you.'