Sally, Antoine and Rotor spied on the badniks standing in the middle of what seemed to be an empty clearing. They were two Egg Soldiers, equipped with spears in one hand, and shields in the other. They stared blankly into space, every minute checking their surroundings, before returning to their stationary positions.
"There's no doubt. There's an entrance somewhere here," Sally whispered, passing her binoculars to Rotor. "Those soldiers each have a warning beacon. If we alert them, they'll send an S.O.S. to all nearby Egg Bases."
"I think I see a hatch just behind them," Rotor said. "There's no way we can open it without them noticing. They're also equipped with 360-degree sensors – they can see anything that happens all around them. Them checking their sides is just a bluff tactic, but… these 'bots look like they haven't been maintained in some time."
"Meaning?" Antoine asked.
"Meaning that whatever's here might have been abandoned some time ago. We'll likely just dig up old info the Resistance already knows about."
"It's still worth checking out," Sally declared. "Any idea how to take them without tripping the alarm?"
"That's easy. Although they can see all around them, they can only react to one thing at a time. If we send out a diversion in front of them – something that won't scare them – then we can attack from behind and take them down before they call for help."
"What would we be sending?" Antoine asked, when suddenly, a small bunny rabbit began to nibble at his boot. He tried to shoo it away, but it seemed enamoured with him. "Please be leaving. We are having a discussion of strategy."
"Wait, that's it!" Rotor proclaimed in a hushed cheer. "We'll send this lil' guy out in front of them. They'll see it and react, but when they see it's just a mobini, they won't be alerted."
Sally picked up the small rabbit and asked it, "Could you do us a favour? We really need your help with this."
The rabbit looked concerned, but when Sally offered it a carrot, it happily obliged. Hopping through the bushes, the rabbit sat and waited, observing the two badniks in the distance. Eventually, the trio got behind the robots and Sally gave the critter a small nod.
Scurrying out into the clearing, the rabbit caught the attention of the two Egg Soldiers, who turned immediately and analysed the new presence. As they did, Sally and Antoine rushed out from their hiding places and struck, slicing the badniks apart and taking away their beacons. Whilst Rotor disabled them, Sally and Antoine examined the hatch and found a way to open it.
The hatch creaked loudly as it opened, and they had to put quite some force into it. "It's supposed to open automatically," Rotor pointed out. "As I thought, this place hasn't been used for some time. These badniks were running on reserve power, too. Likely would've only lasted a few more months."
"Well, if nothing else, we have another place to hide refugees," Sally pointed out, turning to the small rabbit that scurried towards them for its reward. Smiling, she took a carrot from her satchel and gave it to their new friend. "Thank you. Now you be careful about where you forage,okay?"
The rabbit took its prize and hopped off happily. Rotor scratched the back of his head as he watched. "I know he helped us and all, but we're running low on food, Sal. That carrot was your only ration for this mission, right?"
"It's a small price to pay," Sally replied.
"Ma princess, if I may, I will offer my own share to you," Antoine offered, but Sally shook her head.
"Thanks, but I'll be fine. Come on, let's check this place out and get out of here."
The three descended into the dark and damp hallway beneath the hatch. The lights were not functioning, but Rotor's flashlight, powered by a power ring, lit the way. Everything was made of metal, and adorned with the ghoulish face of the tyrant that had torn their world apart in the past months.
After some walking, the trio stumbled upon what appeared to be a storage room at first glance. However, as they observed more, they found that it was more like a prison. No, more like a laboratory and a prison put into one.
Sally gulped. "Don't tell me… he was abducting Mobians and using them as test subjects here?"
Rotor slammed a fist against a wall. "Looks that way," he said, pointing his light at a wall of open cages, each one labelled with simple numbers and species classifications.
"Hello? Is somebuddy there?"
The three gasped, looking around for the source of the voice. "Who's there?!" Sally called out, activating her energy blades as Antoine unsheathed his sword.
"M-Ma name's Bunnie. Bunnie Rabbot. Please, help me. A-Ah don't know where ah am. Ah can't see anyth-"
"Hello?!" Sally called out as the voice fell silent.
"S-Sorry, it's hard to talk. A-Ah haven't eaten in some time…"
"We'll get you out! So stay with us just a little longer!" Sally gritted her teeth. No matter where she looked, there was no sign of another Mobian in the room. Then, she saw that one of the walls looked strange. Or rather, a section of a wall above a desk. She moved closer to it slowly, and felt it. "It's a partition! It must be used for observing test subjects."
"Can we break through it?" Rotor asked.
Sally knocked against the partition, and shook her head. "It's a Power Ring Matrix. Its power is almost faded, but it's still strong. Robotnik must have been afraid of whatever it was he was trying to create."
"We must restore ze power to zis facility," Antoine declared. "Rotor, your power ring, it can do zat, non?"
Rotor nodded. "Yeah, but we need to know where to- Ah." Rotor settled his flashlight on a nearby box, which adorned a symbol resembled a bolt of lightning. "There. Get the cover off of that and I'll plug the power ring in."
Antoine used his sabre to force the cover off, disturbing a thick layer of dust in the process. As he coughed and wheezed, Rotor removed the power ring from his flashlight and put it into the grid. "Okay, now just flip this switch…" The entire room hummed to life, the lights turning on and the door leading outside closing. Antoine screamed, but Rotor simply said, "Calm down. It's not locked, it just closed as the power came on."
"I-I knew zat," Antoine said, blushing. "Anyway, ze power is on, but ze partition is still lowered."
"The lights came on in here," Bunnie called out from the other side. "Ah can see better now…"
"We're getting there," Sally said. "We just need to know how to raise this partition."
"I think I can help with that," another new voice called out, startling the group.
"Who said that?!" Rotor demanded.
"O-On your guard! We will not surrender today!" Antoine yelled.
"Please, don't be afraid!" the voice responded. "I'm sorry to startle you. You're Julian's enemies, are you not?"
Sally raised an eyebrow, cautiously walking forward. "'Julian'? It's been a long time since anybody's referred to him as that."
"Oh? It has been a long time since I have been activated, so I may not be caught up on recent events."
"'Activated'?" Rotor asked.
Sally turned to where she could hear the voice, and found an old computer console. On the screen was a line of text that read out exactly what they had just heard from this mysterious voice. It vanished, and was replaced by what the voice said next.
"That's right. Julian deactivated me many years ago, and I have been drifting in cyberspace ever since."
Sally approached the computer. "Are you… in here?"
"Yes. Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Nicole."
"An AI?" Rotor asked as he and Antoine approached the console.
"Not quite," Nicole replied. "Oh, before we continue, perhaps I should raise the partition. Here." A few seconds later, the partition raised. Behind it was a thick cage of glass, and inside that glass was a yellow-furred rabbit wearing a filthy, torn-up brown robe. The garb that Eggman gave to his prisoners that were forced into labour.
What caught everybody's eyes, though, were the rabbit's unusual limbs. Her left arm, and her entire body from the waist-down, were robotic. Sally felt like she could vomit in her own mouth, but she held it in as Rotor and Antoine rushed to the cage. "What happened to her?"
Rotor found a door in the glass and opened it, and the two boys rushed inside to check on Bunnie. "T-Thanks," Bunnie said, smiling despite how weak she clearly was.
"Your arms, your legs," Antoine began. "What madness has zat vile doctor subjected you to?!"
Rotor hoisted Bunnie onto his back and carried her out of the cage. "H-He said it was an experiment," Bunnie explained. "A device to turn Mobians into robots. 'Robotization', he called it."
"It seems the experiment failed, though, and only half of her body took to the process," Nicole added. "Any more likely would have killed the host."
"Ah wasn't the first," Bunnie said. "There were others. None of 'em made it, an' when ah 'failed', too, the doc' got mad an' ran on out of here, sayin' he was givin' up an' I could go ahead an' rot in here."
"How awful," Sally said, approaching Bunnie to comfort her.
"I assume you will all be leaving now," Nicole surmised. "Please, if you do, take me with you! I can't be trapped here any longer! I'll do whatever I can to help you! I can even access Julian's data files and provide intel, so-"
"Before we decide on anything," Rotor interjected, "Perhaps you could explain exactly what you are?"
The room fell silent, and after a few moments, Nicole sighed. "Yes, that… would be the proper course of action. I do not like talking about it though, but I will try… You see, twelve years ago, I was just a little girl. Nikki was my name back then. I was only six when I was playing outside one day, and I was approached by a man who called himself Doctor Julian. He offered me candy if I would help him out. Being such a naíve girl, in a quiet village where nothing ever happened, I went with him…"
"And then?" Sally pressed.
"… I woke up here, in this very computer." A few seconds passed, and then Nicole continued. "From what I've pieced together in my years trapped in cyberspace, it appears that Julian was researching how to digitize a mind and restore it to a physical body. Likely a means to ensure he would live forever."
Antoine shuddered at the thought. "Robotneek, living forever… Zat would truly be ze end of days!"
"It seems his experiments went nowhere, though. I was the final subject, and although he succeeded, my original body died very quickly and it became impossible to download my mind into another. So he gave up and abandoned this facility, switching me off in the process."
"Jus' like me," Bunnie said, sympathy in her voice.
"You said this happened twelve years ago?" Sally asked. "If it did, then how was he still conducting experiments down here?" Sally turned to Bunnie. "There's no way you could have survived down here for twelve years, right?"
Bunnie shook her head. "Ah lost track of time, but ah'm sho' enough ah've not been down more than two months. Thankfully, there was some food an' water in the cage, but… ah had to ration it."
"I… don't know, exactly," Nicole admitted. "As I said, I have been offline since then. Anything I know is what I have pieced together from Julian's files, and even then, most of that has been localised to this console only. My connection to his cloud server was severed some time ago."
"Wait, you can get onto Robotnik's cloud servers?" Rotor asked.
"I could. Perhaps I still can, if they function similarly today as they did five years ago."
"Robotnik's nothing if not an ego-maniac," Sally said with a grin. "He rarely changes what's 'perfect'."
"I say we take her with us," Rotor said. "With access to Robotnik's data, we can finally do some real damage."
"I must advise zat we act with caution," Antoine replied. "We must not be taking her word at face-value. It could be an elaborate trap by ze Doctor to lower down our guards!"
"This place was abandoned, 'Twan!" Rotor pointed out. "There's no way this is a trap!"
"For what it's worth, ah can vouch that the Eggman hasn't been down here since he left me," Bunnie said. "Nobody has, save for you three."
Sally returned to the console, and stared dead into the monitor. "… Nicole, let me just ask you one question."
"… Okay."
"Are you telling the truth?"
There was a pause, and then Nicole responded, "I am. Please, believe me!"
Sally smiled. "Okay then. That's all I needed to hear. I'll trust you, Nicole."
"Princess, are you sure zis is wise?" Antoine asked.
"I am," Sally responded, reaching into her satchel. "This console hasn't been used in such a long time, so I'm sure it's not a trap. And besides that, I can hear it in her voice. Something… just makes me want to believe her. Like, I know how much she's suffered, and how real her fear is." Sally pulled out a small device and a cable. She plugged the device into the computer. "And besides, nobody deserves to be left all alone, right?"
Antoine smiled, and nodded. Rotor nodded too. "Right you are, Sal," Rotor said.
Sally keyed some commands and then turned to the console. "You ready? I'm about to transfer you into my handheld."
"As I'll ever be," Nicole responded, and with that, Sally executed the transfer program. The monitor on the console faded to black, and the handheld lit up. "I-It worked! I'm in your handheld now! Oh, I brought all the data from Julian's computer with me. I'll set it aside for you to go through later."
Sally smiled. "It's nice to meet you, Nicole. My name is Sally Acorn."
"I'm Rotor," Rotor chimed in. "Guess we forgot to introduce ourselves, huh?"
Antoine stood tall and said, "And I am-"
"Say, could I ask a small favour?" Nicole asked suddenly. "That power ring, if you're no longer using it to power the facility, could you plug it into your handheld? I might be able to use the energy to connect to Julian's servers."
Sally motioned to Antoine, who begrudgingly fetched the power ring. The facility's lights turned off, and he had to stumble through the darkness as he made his way to the flickering light of Nicole's new home.
"Thank you," Nicole said as the power ring was attached to the top of the handheld. A few moments of silence passed, Nicole's screen exhibiting the facial expressions of somebody in deep thought. Then, suddenly, the pixels formed a light bulb. "Okay, I've found them! It'll take some time, but it looks like I can use my former access to Julian's servers to find a backdoor in!"
"That's great!" Sally cheered. "And by the way, he goes by 'Robotnik' now-a-days."
"'Robotnik', I'll make a note," Nicole said, her screen drawing a smiling face.
"Welp, time to trudge our way through the darkness to get out of here," Rotor moaned.
"Oh, about that," Nicole said. "There's something else it seems I can do, now that I have this power ring." The ring lit up, and that light shot out from the handheld. Everybody gasped as the light took the form of a brown-furred, black-tinted Lynx girl with a slim purple dress, and long black hair tied in twin pigtails.
The lynx smiled at the startled Mobians and bowed. "It's nice to meet you all. I am Nicole, the Holo-Lynx." Nicole's hologram shone bright enough for everybody to see, and she gestured to the door leading outside. "I will be your guide today. I look forward to working with all of you."