The Guardian Who Came in from the Cold

by Mauser-KAR98K

The Chronicles of Aleutian. A continuation if Knuckles had a full brother. Aleutian's painful depression has his father seeking to mend their fragile relationship after 16 years of running away. All the while Snively has something up his sleeves. Vio,gore

40. Toxicity

Holley bovine it's been awhile! Yikes when was it the last time I updated...a decade ago? Sure feels like it.

Life has me trapped by the neck until somewhat recently. And to add, this chapter has been really hard to write. Lots of pauses, lapses in my writing voice, and other projects I'm gearing up for. And to be honest, it was hard to get into Aleutian's character for a time. He is coming back, and I hope I nailed him down.

After this chapter, one more left and an epilogue. Then a break for awhile, and for school, and hopefully then next installment of The Chronicles of Aleutian.

This is a whopping 21,000 word chapter, so take your time. I really tried for the suspense, plus what I'm known for in my writings with character development. I did bring out more of Aluetian's past with this, while keeping some of him a secret. Next novel I will definitely bring more of that out.

Disclaimer (if I can still do it), I do not use any of the characters for any profit that the subject of other people's creation from this fandom.

Until then:

Enjoy, and please tell me how I did.

---

Toxicity

By: Mauser

Slipping her left eye diligently slow around the corner, Rouge expelled the held air from her lungs in an equally slow sigh. The long corridor beaconed her to round it, empty of anyone or anything that made the thief in her accept the invitation to be scoured and possibly pilfered of new belongings to her before the boys got their turn at the leaden, walled compound. And one light to her liking; barely.

Pressing her back further against the wall, she turned her head to the right and glanced down the way she'd came. Nothing except for a few hydraulic doors and another corridor that branched right towards the end of the hallway she stood in. To her left it continued down till it ended to something she thought was a rusty cage cut in half. A dim florescent light flickered at the foot of it, but it could have been a twinkling star due to the length of the hall. But either way, when she looked up, her heart stopped for the third time since she had dropped in from the ceiling: a camera panned its lense to the right, stopped, stared, then like rejecting its own image, panned back to the left. And the fact the first one she had spotted didn't set off any alarms, and herself into full blown panic, when she'd turned the first corner just behind her and came face-to-lense with a it was feet a miracle couldn't reach. It could have taken at least three and a half portraits of her trimmed figure as she froze in complete terror and embarrassment of being spotted. Then like the one above her now, drifted itself on its servo and ignored her. Why she felt hurt like that, even before a camera, she couldn't fathom why. At least the place didn't go bonkers, the white furred bat told herself.

A lone thought crossed her as she peered back down the corridor: It can't be this easy. Eggman loves to make me work at my beautiful talent.

For once in her life, and she hoped only once, she was cursing her broad female anatomy, strain to suck in her chest while giving her best footwork to sidestep around the corner. Eggbots on vacation or not, she was still going to play it safer than she had before her training decided to come along and play too. Keeping her back against the wall, Rouge felt the cold concrete with her hands, letting her fingers run inside the grooves while putting her head on a swivel, letting her keen, large ears have free reign over her senses. She could see the indentation of archways to the many doors on either side of the corridor, never bothering to count them. Glancing back over to her right, she smiled and pushed away from the wall once she saw she was out of the camera's sight range. At least now she wouldn't activate any door sensors and accidently open one up to the next shift of Eggbots.

Speaking of doors, they lined this corridor as well. Not as numerous as the passage she just left, but she could count on her white gloved fingers and even have digits to spare for all the overhanging florescent lamps illuminating what the metal nameplates were identifying what room held what. The first on her right that she sauntered–and boldly at that–passed read: Machining. From her junkets inside Eggman's labs deep in Robotroplis, her mind depicted large metal lathing machines and huge stamp-presses that always spawned superficial images of her well formed body being squished under the large jaw as he crushed her without mercy. Why she stayed the heck away from those things. If the world's most expensive diamond was lodged anywhere near the thing, well, it wasn't looking expensive anymore.

She shuddered and chased away the thoughts with a scant eye to her left. Bio-studies? she read with a puzzled voice. With the syllable Bio, Shadow came straight to mind. And along with the way she found him, his body and face dormant as his body laid embalmed in the test tube filled with green liquid. And she remembered whatever buttons she'd pushed triggered those red eyes to snap open. That's what she will always reflect on for the rest of her life when the word bio is presented to her. It was what was posted above the large metal doors that she went through: Biostasis. But Studies? Dissections came to mind. And paper work–

A creek leaked to her ears just ahead of her, snapping her mind to where it needed to be; situational awareness. She froze where she took her last step. Her eyes searched the dim corridor, straining to ignore the flickering light further down and tried to focus where the noise had come from. It sounded like it originated from the ceiling, but all she could make out was the vast forest of overhead piping. Was it steam, water, or whatever surged through the pipes that birthed the sound? Whatever it was, it didn't came back–

Clack–clack–clack.

Rouge knew the steady, rhythmic footfalls of an Eggbot anywhere. Especially one marching on cold concrete. As she turned her head toward her back, the groans of the servos invaded her large ears, ordering her torso to move in the direction of the creak. An oval shadow danced on the far wall at the end of the corridor, coming from the weak light that shown over that half-caged thing she remembered seeing. Her mind raced in instant panic with the dreaded, Uh, oh sounding the alarm in her head.

She looked forward, judging whether to keep going. But the creak from before halted her.

The footsteps clanked closer, louder. Her own feet inched a step forward. Then another. Before her third was completed she was facing forward, willing herself to start making decisions either to try for a door and pray the room was unoccupied, or move faster to the intersecting corridor a good run ahead of her and risk rounding it into the eye of another camera? Her mind was bolting, her body almost doing the same.

Her eye focused on a metal sliding door to her right, and started to pivot her foot to head straight for it–

A dark shadow engulfed her sight. Just before her heart received the signal to skip a beat or two, she felt her feet leave the bare, concrete floor, felt her body become wrapped at the waist by a tense fur arm, felt her physique being lifted toward the ceiling; being twisted toward the pipes. And just as she blinked, just before she could let out a scream, Rouge's eyes met a set of blue, crisply drawn hues that quickly looked into hers, then darted up in the direction of the roving Eggbot that had just turned and began its tour of the corridor.

"Don't make a sound," came the eyes' faint whisper, yet filled with grit in its low, male tone. "Level your legs to mine and straighten your tail flat against you as best you can. And lower your heart rate."

That's easy for you to say! came the cynical side of her, her pupils studying the face that was a mere centimeters from hers–she traced the trailing end of a line down the broad muzzle of the man's face. Then her heart tightened when she descried the head-spines of the echidna that now held her. Bringing her chin down, she peered past a jacket and straight at a white crest etched on the figures chest. It couldn't have been him? He had left over two days ago. Had it been that long?

Her legs began to burn as she held flat–and without any support–next to his. She tried to push it away, praying her endurance was going to be enough to hold herself together. With her ears twitching as the clanks echoed loudly below them, she couldn't held her eyes to gaze at his, watching the glare of the yellow bot through them, and pass under.

And then she closed hers. The aches increased as she did. The burning roared through her mind. But she breathed in, keeping it shallow, focusing to lower her heart rate, knowing if she spiked anymore the roving droid could pick up the influx of sinus rhythm, and in turn, pick them up.

Numbness started to seep in down her thighs, then came the cramps, all of it moving passed her knees and into her calves like an agony filled train coasting without a brakeman.

But the clanking changed pitch, ebbing away from them. Could she at least drop her legs now? Or will her sudden movement produce a creak from the pipes, or would the shift make him loose his hold and they both plummet to the floor?

The footfalls faded, and her heart felt the urge to jump, hoping it was okay to at least start the next round of a panic frenzy. As the clanks became distant, she felt the firm arm around her ease up around her waist. Her legs dangled out of pure necessity for her cramping muscles, and before she could fully relax, the echidna swung himself down with her still in his arm, holding to a steel pipe above them with the other, planting her down on the floor before he landed smartly without so much a clap from his shoes.

Rouge kept her envious drawn eyes at him as she watched him turn to face where the Eggbot had disappeared to, tracing the painted, leaping Griffin from the Freelanders banner under it. She could still smell the diesel from the Plunger's last sail.

And she couldn't hold herself back any longer. "I knew you would find me again, Aleutian."

The fully expecting abrupt turn came from the crimson furred echidna, and she was bathing in the coming embrace of his arms around her, wondering if she would survive the sweeping off her feet and the kiss.

But the sharp turn was about as far as he got. Instead, and to her sinking heart, he glared at her with his blues engulfed in utter seriousness. "Where the charges?" he ignited under a turned down voice for noise discipline.

Rouge crossed arms tightly against her chest and sagged a hip. "Well, that's a nice way to say hi to a girl."

She saw the tightening of his lips and found his spiked–knuckled gloved hand wrap around her right arm, and with a slight shove, moved her closer to the bare, bricked wall. "I'm sorry, where did you put those charges?" he said, mocking himself from his previous question.

A matching sneer. "Oh, I'm doing fine, Aleutian. How's your father?" she released with a snide whisper. "C'mon. Can you just say hello, how are you?"

"I would have if you'd stayed with Espio."

A hint of a knowing smile. "Oh, you can't keep a girl waiting." Something toyed with Rouge's mind. "Say, how did you and Shadow keep from killing each other."

"'Cause there was a damsel distressing us. Congrats on the peace keeping. Had to come and find you from jeopardizing the whole thing." Aleutian closed to her face. "Now, where are the charges?"

"Hidden."

"Where?!" he nearly bellowed. He was playing right into her hands.

She gave a smile filled to the brink of deviousness, hooking her finger under his chin and tickling him. "I only show guys who are nice–"

He grabbled her hand and twisted her wrist just enough to show her he wasn't going to play her games. "Too bad you're fresh out of nice guys. Now, mind telling the guy you are throughly ticking off where the nice building-crumblers are?"

With a squint, scathing eye, and her insides wallowing in defeat from snagging yet another Guardian in her net, all she did in reply was take her thumb and thrust it over her shoulder.

The crossness in his eyes slightly faded, and only slightly. "Well, there's a start," he bestowed in an even, mocking tone, stepping past her.

Rouge turned to follow him only with her eyes. "Aren't worried about the security cameras?" she barbed at his back, hoping that he'd stop cold just for her pure enjoyment.

But he didn't. "Espio has those taken care of. Now lets go."

She started toward him. "You know you should let me lead the way."

He turned his head as he walked, showing his stubbed dread-lock. "Those privileges have been revoked."

Now her face became crossed, glaring at him as he swayed his head around to the passing wall, placing his hand up and letting his fingers slide across the mason blocks. Rouge swore she saw the stare that his father would hold beam to the wall. But Locke melted into her hands. And so did his brother...not as easy due to Julie-Su, of coarse. She was another matter.

But Aleutian. She knew coldness ran in the family, but never so entrenched as it was in this boy. What reason did he have to be like this. And in a snap. Yes, he did try to stun her and take her to Ebony Hare. And yes, he did yell at her on the Plunger, but Julie-Su got the same beat down. Yet, he did say he was sorry, and that placed a little light into him that told her Aleutian wasn't such a heatless stud–minus the muscles his broader brother possessed. So why doesn't she come out with it and find out why? It couldn't hurt? Might be the right road to win him over to her intricate web.

"You know, most guys just melt for me. But you–" Purposefully letting a sigh expunge from her lips. "–you treat me like I'm some object below you. Something Shadow would do."

He strayed an eye to her. "That's because I've been around the block a few times in your neighborhood," he replied, unmoved. Even with the comparison with Shadow.

And just before he was about to say something, Rouge could see it at the edge of his lips, he turned his head away from her–and then he instantly stopped dead in front of her, his fingers still touching the wall. She watched his back straighten as she stepped closer to him, stopping a mere foot away. The thought to ask him what was the matter crossed her mind, but it only did that.

Aleutian's head turned slowly to the wall his hand was placed upon. His eyes this time had widen in a strange gaze; like he was looking through the wall and asking himself if he could believe what he was seeing. And if his mouth hadn't opened in silence, she would pass this off as a fluke in his brain.

She stepped to his left side, touching his arm, readying herself to ask him what was wrong. But she stopped herself again as her gaze drifted up to the light lone florescent light that illuminated the metal sign: Bio-studies.

"Hey, Rouge?" whispered Aleutian in a distant voice, his gaze never leaving the wall. "I'm going to need you."

---

He heard it, the footsteps unmistakable as it approached the sliding hydraulic door, signaling that his wait was almost over. His frame tensed, lowing his slim hulk so he could push off the floor like a shot. His right hand gripped the knife firmly, almost choking it, but he was going to need the extra force; the other two were harder to kill. Especially the black one. But the one that was coming was unknowingly browsing for an ambush. The only worry he had about it was he hoped the thing wouldn't see his purple skin from the bright glimmer of the screens behind him. He was out of the door's funnel, well pressed against the wall. But he knew how these things operated: unsuspecting movements on their part, their sensors attuned far greater.

Could he vanish and save him the trouble? No, Espio thought. He needed to save his energy.

His trance broke as soon as the door slammed open to expose the grey corridor. And with his right hand cocked back across his chest, Espio only let the bot have a single step inside before his arm slashed the air like a tightly wound rubber-band releasing its tension, piercing the head of the bot dead center of it's eyes with his knife. Rolling his feet the instant the feeling of steel-on-steel rammed through his nerves in aches akin to cold pins puncturing below his skin, Espio grabbed the bots head with his left. And in one quick motion, and with his full weight behind him with help from the floor, he pulled and rolled the droid inside the compound's nervous system. The Eggpawn clanked as it was tossed over itself until its legs flopped to the floor, ceasing its motion.

Only when the door slammed shut did Espio finally breathe.

"Thanks, Aleutian," he grumbled, wrestling his knife out of the bot's head. The steel sang an interlude when it was pulled free, him looking up to the broad and cumbersome console his main focus was suppose to be on. Just ahead of him, two more bots lay lifeless just behind the two chairs he had found them sitting in when Archimedes teleported him between the two Eggbots. Espio could still see the bleak surprised glances they stole from each other before he plunged a knife in one and a throwing star in the other. What bothered him about it was even with his proper placement, his weapons were becoming less keen in going through their metal shells. Evident with the black painted bot he was still feeling in his aching muscles. Either he needed to work in sharpening his cold steel blades, or Eggman was improving their construction.

Casting those observations into the trivial pile of his thoughts, he stood up and slipped between the seats and into the large chair to the left. Now where was I?

"Helping me access the main data banks, mate."

Espio strayed an eye passed his horn at Archimedes, wondering if Knuckles felt the same way he did about having his thoughts read so freely. He saw the fire ant was walking on buttons, finding that each one he stepped on, a camera image would change on one of the screens above them. The truth that laid in Espio's head was that this compound had way too many monitors for its size.

"Where are they now?" he asked Archimedes in an even voice.

The ant's slouch hat turned up to a screen two rows up and lost in the middle. "Chatting with Miss. Trouble, if you ask me."

"And confirmed," Espio answered without flinching his tone. He could see Archimedes glancing at him oddly from it. Even in midst of the harsh fighting or intense partying afterwards, Espio had a degree of seriousness that was unnerving to some, and unfeeling to many others. He knew it, and really didn't like it either. But what he was doing wasn't a joking matter anymore. For here he was sneaking into another compound, base, or whatever this cold, dry place was, grabbing very important information, and torching the place as his way out.

"Espio," came Archimedes voice, pulling him away from Aleutian and Rouge. "Concentrate, lad."

He didn't respond, only facing his head down at the keyboard in front of him. For the moment his mind lapsed without thought, he let his hands drift on the keys, recalling how he had broken his way inside Eggman's complex cyberframe networks on Charmy's people's behalf...and very solemnly all but the young Prince and his wife, deceased. As he felt for the portable handheld computer in the holder on his hip, he realized on that thought that those emotions, ones he had bartered for, he let their existence into the open, and they all met their underling fates when the Beehive Colony exploded to the four winds, and at his hands. Why things began to loose feeling with him, he mused unhappily.

Flipping the computer open, he sat it down beside a half exposed ball that he concluded without forethought was the curser mouse. Then he felt for the twin cables in the same sack and pulled them out. Once he felt the tangled mess release their slack on gravity's whim, he fished under the heavy panel for the connecting ports. He found them the split second the pad of his index finger under his glove rubbed against a hole. Eight inch direct, his mind snapped and pushed the cable up, hooked it under the console, and plugged it in. Then he connected the other end to the handheld, pressed the "on" button, and Nicole flickered to life.

Working the large keyboard he sought out the larger screen in front of him and squinted at the green letterings. He exited out the security monitor program and dove for the main frames' data banks. That was easy enough for him. But the password was what demanded his aggravation.

"Nicole, are we secure?" he asked, never looking to see if Nicole's manx face had appeared on the handheld beside him.

"For the moment, Espio. I'm going to gain access but then you are on your own. Can you manage?" said the female voice.

"Yes. I got you half way this time. I'll upload what I find and broadcast it when we are out."

"Roger; I'm almost there...now. Good luck."

Espio nodded at the screen. "Thanks. Tell Saint John we're in."

"He knows–"

And the screen flashed and her face was gone. All he could read now was that the handheld was awaiting for data. "Now on to the fun stuff."

A click came from Archimedes direction. "Hey, found 'ole Shadow."

Espio peered up and searched out the screen the fire ant was looking up to. "Where is he?" he asked, finding the monitor and hardly seeing Shadow in the nearly washed, dim lighted corridor he was easily striding in. He only got a glimpse of the hedgehog's back.

"Don't know. Haven't quite got the lay of the land here. From the look I got, he just got done shopping."

"Say what?" Espio snapped, breaking his serous pose in his attitude.

All four arms of Archimedes shrugged. "He had sacks slung over his arms."

The chameleons brows furrowed before they rose. "Oh. Hope that's what Aleutian is talking about with her?"

A jump and a button pressed and Archimedes was staring up at the young Guardian and the bat. "I'm sure that has come up by now seeing how empty handed the Sheila is." He paused for a moment, crossing his lower arms while scratching his chin with his free right hand. "Hmm, he's stopped at some door."

Steeling a glance away from the screen in front of him, Espio saw that the camera was pointed straight down the hall at Aleutian with his hand up on the wall. Rouge was there, clinging to him. But his look. It had turned cold, almost in a silent cry of horror.

"What's going on?"

He saw the fire ant's body rise and lower with a heavy sigh. "He's peering into the room. He can see through walls, around objects, and inside people. He could almost be the best doctor in–"

The slam of Espio's fist jolted Archimedes to turn his attention to him. "That's how he was beating us at Cheat! He could see what cards we held."

A gulp then boiled up a disenfranchised smile on the fire-ant. "Or one heck of a gambler."

The chameleon took a breath and eased his eyes back on the screen. He was now sifting through the compounds stored channels of communications. But those weren't totally on his mind:

"So what has been happening with him and you?" he asked, finding his tone had subsided to a nonchalant easiness.

"Reconnecting," Archimedes replied, his own voice oddly quiet, and from what Espio thought was too quick for the change.

Between the files of dates and the green lettered descriptions he was struggling to process, he found his mind flashing to the same camera shot that was panning at Aleutian now as it was then when he found the echidna making his way down the corridor. If Archimedes had teleported them just a hair slower, Aleutian would've brought the whole compound on them. But it was Aleutian did just a while ago that made Espio tilt his head and frown in an absent awe; he was sure he saw Aleutian hear something coming, and with a quick look up to the ceiling, jumped and grabbed a large pipe, after which, he swung and caught it with his legs. Then to Espio's absolute surprise, the echidna wrapped his tail around it. And when he reached down and snagged Rouge, who was possibly the reason why he had found cover in the above plumbing in the first place, Aleutian held himself up as he swung down with his tail and one leg still wrapped around the pipe.

This whole act kept replaying in Espio's head, making him ask, "Did you teach Aleutian that–picking up Rouge the way he did?"

Archimedes held his attention to the numerous monitors. "No," he replied distantly, like wanting far away from the subject.

Espio couldn't help but stray his sight to the fire ant, looking on with a puzzled, yet guarded face. "Do you know who taught him?"

And again, Archimedes didn't turn away from the screens. "Yes."

Just before the chameleon could let out a word from where he'd seen a trick like that, or even who moved either like he or Aleutian, the fire ant had stepped on a button in a box row he'd hadn't selected yet. Both heads turned when a left hand screen from the bottom row turned on just in front of Espio. It had the effect of a rolling graph. Lines bounced up and down at an even pace, yet they were of different colors. On the bottom was in clear letters: SUBJECT TWO.

"What'd you push!?" Espio forced out.

"Don't look at me, lad. I haven't the foggiest." For the moment Archimedes lay silent and studied the screen. When he read the second rhythmic line did his throat jump to his skull. "That's an heart graph."

"I think you mean someone's stats, as Doctor Quack might say," Espio added in a grey voice. "Sinus rhythm."

Without voicing anything, Achimedes pressed another switch with his boot, and the screen above switched from a dark corridor to a second series of pulsing lines. Under it read: SUBJECT ONE. But this one had a different reading on the top line.

"Flat line at the top. But that sinus rhythm is slow, but reading," Archimedes said under a pensive voice.

"What does it mean by 'nero'?" Espio asked, studying the top line as well.

No answer came, but a sigh. "Found anything yet?"

Shaking his head, Espio turned to the monitor in front of him and said, "Nothing yet. I'm searching for the messages that were sent here. There's a lot of data here."

"Shove that aside for a minute, mate," Archimedes said with an air of thought in his voice. Then his tone drifted on the air.

"What's going on here?"

---

Its lone eye twitched then. With a mere program being put to its paces, it faded the brightness as light flooded into its red lighted sanctum. It didn't turn to look, instead the tech-bot kept its lone, cybernetic eye down at the strainer that doubled as a tank–

"Oops, I think I got the wrong room."

Its metal skeleton head pivot squarely, bringing its permeant smiling cyclops face to the source of the slightly trembling, yet oddly bright female voice standing in the open doorway. Flickering through modes of visual enhancements, the tech-bot searched its settings before it settled with a red image. Its computer went straight to work when its clear view drew up a female mobian; species: bat. Once it took in the face, it possessed it and came back with the name Rouge: agent of G.U.N. With this trickling through its directives, its artificial intelligence began its sequences of protocols.

It turned its thin, open chassis toward her.

"Well, maybe you can help me anyways?" she said to it.

It passed down the aisle of large, steel constructed lab tables built solidly to the cold concrete floor.

"You see, I'm looking for the ladies room. Can you point me to it?"

It detected a slight strain in her voice. Its data banks replied that she was hiding something. It was logical, concluding she was here without a calculated coincidence.

"Oh, good. I can't thank you enough to show me the way. How gentlemen of you now to keep a girl waiting, and wandering through the dark."

With all this skipping across its many hard-drives and cities of circuit boards, it passed a tray of surgical instruments. Without so much as pivoting its lone ocular, it lifted its five digit hand and snatched a bone-saw from the tray kinetically.

"Yikes! Is this place that bad that you need a weapon?"

She had placed her hands on her hips. Its data-banks processed that she's welcoming some sort of vice for a service. But a different program announced she was lying even with the stance she took. Her eyes, as the facial recognition and language software elaborated, was that her sudden twitch of her left cheek muscle and a scant look to the left indicated her false proposal. Its A.I., however, never matched up all this anyhow. Its purgative was in the loop of how the bone-saw was going to cut her left arm off, then thrash down the center of her chest. By which then it would sound the alarm of the intruders. Lastly, it would be in a better position in the Doctor's best laboratory section of the empire. After all, competition in this bot-eat-bot-empire reigned supreme to get the better places to serve their creator. In fact it knew it had to be the reason why its dear creator had placed the notion of competition in all the Eggbot lines–

A squeak of leather shifting on the concrete floor sounded behind it, abruptly stopping its slow wake to the girl.

Aleutian saw the tech-bot stopped, and he was instantly rounding the heavy, long table and jutting straight for the back of the bot. For the moment he jumped, the moment his right shoe landed on the hydraulic ram that was the bot's calf, the moment he squeezed the steel shaft of the throwing knife between his mashed middle and forth fingers against his palm, he wondered now, and at that instant, if his gloves would shield his hand and body from being electrocuted.

He wrapped his left arm around the bots throat and grabbed its face and eye with a hand that could've held a large melon. And with his fierce eyes locked on the millimeter gap in the vertebra, he slammed the point of the knife through it, slicing the bradded strand of wires and home to the flex-fiberoptic line. Aleutian felt a lone jolt of current spread through his glove, but it didn't surge through his body.

With a brief show of spark, slow, dying groans of the bot's hydraulic pumps, motors, and electric servos echoed as the cyclops fell forward like a cut down tree with Aleutian along for the ride. Its thin chassis frame made a surprising, heavy metallic crash that rattled a few of the rolling trays and electronic machines beside it. Then all was still, including Aleutian. His blue eyes moved in their sockets as he watched for any signs of movement from the bot. Its red glow burned out from its cyclops-eye, along with the spine.

From the top of his sight, Aleutian saw the white boots of Rouge walk to him in an agitated, akimbo stride. "What were you doing, letting him think he was going to have a chance with me!?"

Aleutian straightened himself with his knees still on the bot's back. With one quick jerk,, and an irritable face, he pulled the knife free. "Grow a spine," he sneered at her.

Her mouth gapped at him as her eyes bulged. "Heh, guess that's the last time I give you my help."

He stood up, keeping a safe distance. "Being used isn't fun, is it?"

She was about to go off on him.

And he was about to turn away–not before he wrapped his arm around her, and pulled her down. He cocked his right arm, the double edged blade pinched in his fingers, stopping short of sending the knife hurtling at the figure who suddenly appeared in the doorway.

"Look what I found," ebbed in Shadow's clear voice into the large, dankly light room. As Aleutian lowered his arm, the hedgehog rose both of his. In them were sacks suspended by webbed straps. "Something tells me someone doesn't know how to hid things."

Aleutian rolled his head to a certain girl who was looking at him, but not with the same face as a second ago. He nearly wanted to laugh as she gave a very coy smile to him and in the same instant shrunk herself an inch lower. Even her wings sagged. "Geeze, how'd he find those?"

Shadow walked over to them, only glancing at the dead tech-bot just to step over it. "Hanging from ventilating shaft that collapsed under the weight," he replied without so much as a hint of feeling. He gave the measure of the charges weight when he dropped them at her feet.

Aleutian felt a smirk coming but he let it die. "It's a wonder you've lived so long in your line of work," he sneered at Rouge. He could see she wasn't taking it well behind her cool faced mask. Before he could shake his head and turn away, she did it for him, throwing her chin slightly up and strutting with her back both to echidna and hedgehog.

Rolling his eyes, Aleutian faced Shadow with a lighten expression he has ever offered to him, tucking Espio's blade to the inside pocket of his jacket. "Having fun, yet?"

"Can't say," Shadow replied with the same deadpan response. "I think you're right."

"About what?" Aleutian returned with a bleak notion of surprise.

Shadow glanced over the echidna's shoulder, then gave his full attention to him. "I found a utility elevator down the hall and to the left from here."

"Where again?" Aleutian asked, easing his voice.

Shadow point off to Aleutian's right. "Down that way and left."

"Have you been down it."

A shrug with a fleeting hint of a smirk. "Not yet."

Aleutian was going to ask him something else, but the hedgehog turned his face away from him and starred over his shoulder. He was discovering Shadow's art of killing conversation; actually surprised he'd lasted that long with him.

"So why did you come in here?" the black hedgehog asked.

Giving a quick look about the room, Aleutian replied with an even tone, "I saw something in here that caught my eye. I think I was seeing things."

Shadow nodded for him to turn his attention around to the rear of the lab. When Aleutian did, he found Rouge leaning over a white sheet that had something bulging under it. Wires and clear lines ran from a path to a large machine that had a tank fitted to it while a screen gave out readings that took up most of the body cavity.

She lifted up the sheet with her fingers, and Aleutian stepped forward when he saw her face turn pale. "My gosh!?"

He stopped at the bedside, and pinched the top half of the sheet. With a quizzical, fearful look to Rouge, they both rolled the sheet down.

The blue skin of a chameleon nearly froze his thoughts and emotions solid. Then he comprehended to what he was seeing. He heard the soft, nearly silent beeping rhythm of the boy's heart being registered from the machine beside Rouge. Felt the coldest shiver run down his spine as he realized the pace of his heart was too slow. His eyes traced down the lines that were stabled down the table to keep up off the floor, finding a large clear tube draining into the tank he had descried earlier, it running from the young boy's wrist. For the moment he was piecing the image before him together, Aleutian couldn't feel himself, or even the cold air, until he felt the strain of his opened mouth called him back to his senses.

"What is this?" Rouge asked in a whisper before he could.

His lips moved but no words ever slipped out. Breathing in, he turned to Shadow, finding the hedgehog was sharing the same expression as he. "Chameleon?" Aleutian willed himself to say.

Only a nod under boiling red eyes.

"What's going on here, Shadow?" the Guardian asked in a reposed, but knifing tone.

The hedgehog slowly shook his head. "I don't know."

"Can we bring him out of this?" launched Rouge from the other side of the table.

"Come on, you worked for him, Shadow," Aleutian pressed on to the hedgehog, his voice rising with his temper. "You know something about this. What's going on here?"

"I don't know." The hedgehog looked to the echidna, his expression hardening.

"Why is there a chameleon strapped to a table?"

Shadow looked away, bringing his eyes to the motionless blue skinned chameleon. "If I knew I would have told you weeks ago."

"What are they doing to him?" Aleutian shouted with a ramming–

Shadow lunged at the echidna, grabbing his jacket and pushing against an intravenous station the fled on its wheels as Aleutian was pressed against it. "I don't know, damn it!"

They both locked stares at each other's eyes, both tasting each other's breath as they held in their rage from going over their equally boiling rims. And as they studied one another's face, Aleutian was beginning to swallow Shadow's sincerity; glimpsing for the single moment Shadow showed he was scared of what he had been involved in, but not directly. Something was horrifying him about it, and from what Aleutian had endured and suffered from his own life, it laid in Shadow's past.

A light voice struck a soft wedge between them. "I guess trust is a commodity these days."

Red and blue eyes turned to Rouge. They looked at her as if she had suddenly arrived in the room. When her tightened, emotion laden face sank between them, Shadow released his hands from Aleutian's jacket. A heavy sigh filled his body, controlling his shoulders, head, and legs, moving him almost mechanically to the other side of the table. "There was something about this compound Eggman didn't want anyone to know about. Including me," he said. His indifferent voice had returned. "It's all I know."

"But how do you know it was a chameleon?" Aleutian affronted, yet he kept a leaden edge to his voice.

Shadow gave a slight glance over his shoulder. "I didn't," he replied defensively. Turning at the life support machine, he said, "That came from the cipher that we're here for."

"Okay," interjected Rouge with a trying voice, "but what is Eggman doing with him? Just look at him. He's barely alive." Bitting her lower lip, she edged herself to the chameleon's side, placing her hand atop his forehead. "And cold."

A heavy sigh from Aleutian, his heart weighing to the pit of his stomach. If he didn't look away now, the screams would return. "They're keeping him alive for something," he said quickly, turning away just as fast. For the moment his sight fell on the two rows of long, metal tables, he closed his eyes, breathing in and out, keeping to the sinus rhythm of the boy's slow heart, slowing his intake with the beeps. And slower. Slower–

Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeepppp–

Aleutian turned, arms swaying at his side when her heard the flat-line fill his ears and mind. As his eyes shot open, he felt his soul turn to stone as he witnessed Shadow switching the machine off. His rage was at the edge of his tongue. A scorching heat ran through his body, burning him in a flash he hadn't felt in over two years...and the feeling utterly scarred him. It was in the instant that Shadow had turned his face, had showed his soul, a welcoming cool came over Aleutian in a flash he wished he could feel again in his life.

But not without the hedgehog's own pain.

"Shadow," Rouge shrilled at him, cupping the boys face with her gloved hands. "He was still alive."

"No he wasn't," the hedgehog whispered in utter contempt.

"How do you–"

"Rouge," came Aleutian's baritone voice.

They all looked at each other for a long moment, neither one wanting to give in. Only did the silence leave when Shadow turned on his shoes, the rocket trusters scrapping across the smooth, stoned floor. Aleutian thought he could hear them crying for the both of them.

"Call Espio, Aleutian, brother to Knuckles," Shadow said, his brooding tone echoing in the room. He reached down and picked up the four satchel charges. "He needs to know. And he needs to destroy this place."

---

Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeepppppp–

If Archimedes hadn't pressed his foot down on the red illuminated button, he and Espio would've never given in to their hold of the flat-lined screen; he didn't even look away. It was as if something in his mind had ordered his leg to release a little more energy to his leg. He let in a breath to calm himself, searching for his heart's rhythm to remind him he was still living. And just as his voice was coming to, he heard a distant male baritone call to him:

"Archy, we had found a chameleon in a lab-room of some sort. It had Bio-studies written over the door. A tech-bot was in here alive, but we're last seeing him dead. You need to tell Espio..."

The fire-ant looked to the purple skinned chameleon to his left as Aleutian kept speaking, letting his mind become entertained briefly with the young boys entranced gaze at the screen with the second vital-stats still pulsing weakly–

"...Shadow needs him," echoed Aleutian's voice sternly in his head."And he's sorry. I'll tell you later when we catch-up. We're going to find the basement to this place."

Espio's low, soft tone came brazing at Archimedes. "What just happened, Archy?"

Both eyes leapt to the movement that came from the center screen. Shadow was seen walking out under a rigid, embolden stride from the Bio-studies room that Aleutian had referred to, letting his face betray the feelings Archimedes was now very aware of why they so brightly shone from the hedgehog before he turned to the right and done the corridor. Rogue followed out next, her back slightly tilted as she took a more cautious advance in the corridor. She turned behind her, taking a quick look inside the lab just to watch Aleutian take her lead. It all made Archimedes cross his arms briefly at the screen, watching Shadow turn out of sight from the camera's to the left.

The fire-ant turned his attention back to Espio. "Keeping working, lad," he gently laid in an encouraging tone. "There has to be something here."

Espio let his head fall slowly to the computer monitor in front of him, his hands gliding over the keyboard and occasionally to the mouse-ball, working his fingers with gradual speed to his concentration. He pulled up file folders, only reading serial codes as he dove in to view the contents. Shipments of titanium alloy; cargo ship manifest of hydraulic fluid. A click on the back button; a random file folder above the one he left, click; seven crates of positronic brains. Espio's mind conclude they had to be replacement parts, compounding that conclusion as the compound was possibly being uses as a forward repair facility.

It made logical sense to him, but Archimedes knew if he relaid what Aleutian had said, he was afraid Espio wouldn't perform the way he is now. As for the fire-ant, aside from reading the chameleon's thoughts, he walked up the large control board, fixated his attention to the next two rows of unlit buttons, and pressed his right boot one on top. A bright, yellow light flickered on from the top most row of screens, making him raise his head to witness several large tubes appear, counting five, and all filled to a line just a foot under the brim with liquids in colors ranging from blue to a bright orange and a clear, oily fluid with small bubbles raising slowly to the top.

He turned his head away when Espio said, "I can't find anything in these files. It looks like it's all resupply shipments, except for Eggpawns. What's odd is Eggman is sending in a lot of titanum."

"Why's that odd?" Archimedes asked, looking back up to the screen with the fluid storage tubes. Blindly, he pressed his boot on the next button.

"Because titanum costs too much, and it's almost too heavy to be placed on your average Eggpawn–" Espio strayed an eye at the top screen that Archimedes had turned on. The screen next to it shown just as bright went it was turned on, showing the service elevator cage. "Where's that?" he asked, skipping around his own thoughts.

"Believe it's the underground portion of the complex," replied the fire-ant pensively.

"Where's Aleutian, Shadow, and Rouge?"

A cable started to move inside the caged barrier on the screen. "My better guess, heading down into the belly."

Nodding off from his left shoulder at Espio, he watched the Chameleon return to search through the computer banks, then stared back up to the screens. Sidestepping as he kept his gaze, Archimedes pressed the next button, holding his breath when the screen beside the first one that had been activated turned on, and shown a large, crude two prong robotic crane that was folded like an arm, hanging idly from the ceiling. Below it sat a portion of a black conveyer belt. Archimedes frowned at the emptiness of what he conceived was a large showing of the underground complex. Shrugging he placed his right foot behind him and began to rock back to energize another monitor–

"I think I found the cipher program!"

Throwing his head around to Espio, he replied, "Upload it quick, lad, if you think it's it."

The Chameleon racked the keyboard in front of him, and as he smiled, the hand-held computer began to come to life. "I'm pretty sure this is it. I'm transferring a whole data bank of messages that seem out of place."

"How so?" Archimedes asked, folding all four of his arms.

A shake from Espio's head. "I went back through some of the regular messages. One came from the Hive Colony just a week before my operation there, and I remember watching Nicole decipher it. But I went further down into the message data banks and pulled up one that had some weird shapes to it; very different from the one I remember." Espio, took a breath.

"Well?" Archimedes said, watching the Chameleon's eyes searching the monitor.

"Well, I clicked on it, and it began to decipher the message by itself. So, I traced through the auto-activation settings and followed it to a stand alone file buried deep in the hard-drives. I mean, deep. It's gonna take about another minuet to upload it to Nicole. But..."

Archimedes pressed the button his boot was on, but didn't bother to look up. "But what?" he asked warily. He could see Espio reading the information as it sprawled across the screen.

"It's that it had some different accessing codes to get into it. I can't jump into the files to see where the program originated due to a password block."

"That doesn't sound uncommon with Eggman, lad," Archimedes said under an obvious tone.

But Espio gave a single, slow shake of his head. "Not unless it is to keep him out."

The fire-ant's eyes slightly squinted, his arms relaxing. "Better explain that one to me?"

A perch of his lips, and his stare narrowing. "The message that was deciphered gave plan orders to keep a lock on files under a password using the cipher itself. I know that doesn't sound out of the ordinary, but...I'm clicking through some recent file creations during the past few days; their security check logs, and they are all unsecured. And the ones that aren't are using the old cipher..."

Espio eyed Archimedes. "All these messages are ready to be sent today, and I guarantee you Knothole will read them, and gain a fix on this location. These messages are mandatory to be sent and they go straight to Eggman." He turned to the computer screen, moving the mouse cursor to click back on the decrypting message he had started. "But these are request-send only, and marked as such. And the asking receiver has their name in the same cipher. Archimedes," Espio held his thoughts as he swallowed. "Someone, or something is hiding whatever is going on here from Eggman. "

A lone squint from his eye, and a shift in his posture brought Archimedes to view the screen he had turned on. The camera was squarely aimed down upon four rows of Tech-bots, their lean skeletal heads facing down, their eyes vacant of electronic irises, their exposed frames at a slumped attention. From the count of the formation, Archimedes estimated forty bots in all, but why were they inactive. In fact why didn't he see more Eggbots roving around the facility. If the cipher was such a high priority of its secrecy, and the vast amount of information sent and received from what Espio was indicating, why was the place a virtual ghost town? And what with the chameleon Aleutian, Shadow, and Rouge had found?

It was time he told Espio–

He didn't get much further than his decision when Espio began reading from the screen:

"'Execute Program Avalanche. Add a diagnostic check before the full commitment of upload orders, and only done after deployment and when scans indicate area safe to do so.'"

Archimedes unconsciously stepped back and landed his foot on a button behind him. The corner of his eyes were blinded by the illumination of the bright screen, but he kept his attention solely fixed on Espio. "Please tell me you have found that program?"

"It's deciphering now," Espio said in a breathless voice.

Closing his eyes, Archimedes gave a shallow nod, tightened his arms, and looked up at the screen he had unintentionally turned–

In the brief struggle of his heart to beat, his face melted into pure terror, his eyes locked to burn through the monitor. Not even Espio's stressing voice edged him away:

"'Orders to program stand,'" Espio began, his lungs flexing as his mind was trying to steady himself. "'Seek and eliminate King Acorn, and Princess Sally Alicia Acorn. Targets are to be searched in Knothole City. Possibly both targets will reside in Castle Acorn, and should be searched out that location first. Secondary objectives as follows: eliminated all possible counter targets that will possess immediate threat to self, or creator...Second Directive: route to Robotropolis for further programming.' Archimedes, this isn't–"

Espio was cut short just by the sight when he turned his head to the fire-ant then gazed at the direction the slouch hat was peering up to. All the chameleon could do was cease his breathing as his eyes dried and his stomach torn itself in a frenzy of knots.

"Oh dear Goddess," Archimedes breathed in from the fear he was lost in. "I hope those things aren't active."

---

Light began to slip in from the floor, then entered in a wash at their shoes. Aleutian stepped to the far left of the elevator when Shadow pressed himself up against the far right, all the while Rouge stood firmly in the direct center. Throwing a frustrated grim frown to her, Aleutian reached with his right hand and hooked under Rouge's left biceps, pulling her towards him. The force nearly slamming her against the cage. The shaft had a narrow cut for an opening, and just by the grace of Aurora, or just by design, had given cover for both hedgehog, echidna, and now one angered bat. But Aleutian gave her snide look. She didn't let it phase her, returning it with a smirk that told him she was immune and to try again. Sighing loudly to exhume a low groan, Aleutian faced the coming opening while reaching into his jacket and brought out Espio's throwing knife. He gripped it with his right hand, keeping the blade's edge aligned with his forearm. If training still served him, a back-handed trust could deliver the punishment needed to kill a bot. If it didn't, Lopper was surely going to have his hide.

A green glow shimmered gradually from his left; his eyes instantly falling upon Shadow's right hand where the green aura was coming from. Their eyes met, and Shadow gave a slow nod. Somewhere in his conscience Aleutian felt a smile exhume on his face. But he hid it from the surrounding present company.

He closed his eyes, doing it tightly, forcing a menacing urge coming straight from the blackness of his soul. Go away...you're not apart of this.

The elevator stopped with a deeper drop before the correcting rise. Actuators wailed as the gate lifted up in a slow draw. Leaning out, Aleutian peered inside the lower underground, descrying only the concrete pillars that held the top floor at bay. His nostrils felt the damp air try to suffocate him, yet, something lingered with it that was all too familiar, if only his mind would reconnect to the link. And it came when Rouge's, feminine body pressed up against his, making him look to her with a jumping heart just by seeing her peer out from around him.

"Looks clear, boys. You two can put away your teeth, now," she said in a cool, bantering voice. Stiffening her back in a mock of self-confidence, she stepped out of the elevator, never bothering to see if Aleutian or Shadow would follow her at the same pace, much less the same matter. She only achieved three steps. From out of the corner of her eye she glimpsed something to her right.

Seeing her stop and gasp, Aleutian –and with a surprise that made him smirk– Shadow both grab their allotted arm of Rouge, and both pulled her back inside, shoving her to the rear of the elevator. Letting go, Aleutian reasserted himself against the right side of the elevator, while Shadow stepped out of the carriage, his arm was vertical to his chest; his hand knifed and glowing green.

If they had any inclination to even send a signal to their hydraulic legs, Aleutian knew he would only have enough time to dodge back inside the elevator and let Shadow handle it. But the rows of tech-bots didn't move. Instead, he and Shadow looked on at the slumped, lifeless frames for the moment they had of solidarity with each other.

"What are these, Shadow?" Aleutian asked, his tone calm, unlike his aggressive posture.

"Labor bots," came the black hedgehog's balanced, uncaring voice.

Rouge nearly scurried around Aleutian and in front of Shadow to reacquaint her vision of what she had seen. "Hey, these guys look different from Mister Scary from upstairs."

Aleutian looked back behind him to Shadow, noticing the hedgehog had relaxed his hand to his side. "I take it one-eyed was a creation?" he chided, placing Espio's knife back in his inner jacket pocket.

"From Eggman, himself, I surmise," Shadow said, taking a stride to the left and drifting through the first line of pillars, the glow from his hand dissipating. As Aleutian watched him, he could see that Shadow was moving towards the brighter expansion just ahead.

His attention left the hedgehog's back when Rouge touched his arm. Her eyes made his emotions wander astray when his met. "You think he wants those charges, now, or when he's finished with all the rides?" she asked him.

He smiled for what seemed like a wink of time, but felt like an eternity for his soul. He wanted to answer, yet, his insides drained of his courage. With it his smile. With it his stare into her eyes. Looking back inside the elevator, he felt his soul retreating back into the darkness that dangled from his heartstrings.

"Hey, Brother to Knuckles."

Aleutian turned to see Shadow entrenched in a hard stare at the beacon of the harsh yellow light. "Does he always address people like?" he asked from the corner of his mouth.

"You should hear what he calls Sonic," Rouge replied in a mocking manner.

Aleutian was waiting for her to educate him but saw that she didn't get as far as a jarring look when the brooding eyes of Shadow aimed their red pupils at them, the hedgehog merely turning his head to do so.

"Better grab the satchels," Aleutian said in a voice aligning with resign.

Rouge did a protesting step forward. "But–"

Snapping his head, Aleutian bared his tightened face with his scars. "Don't argue with me," he said in an uncaring voice. Turning away, he missed the barbing look from Rouge that he knew was coming his way as he began moving towards Shadow. "Just do it."

He heard her growl at the back of his jacket before he heard her grudgingly turned to her ordered task. "Yeah, sure. I can do it. Ha, if your brother or father were here, I'd have them hauling all this stuff."

Aleutian stopped cold and tried not to spin completely around and assault Rouge with a stare he knew he would regret giving. Instead he held it all at bay under a deadpan expression as he turned his head and watched Rouge kneel over to grab the charges. He was beginning to know why Julie-Su hated her so much. If Rouge kept up with him the way she was going, the tables were going to turn, and turning upside down for everyone. But he couldn't explain the sudden feelings of her, or about her, when she would just arrive and try to handle things, and he watching her like a curious spectator.

Maybe it was just another female being close by was reminding him of Emi-La, and it wasn't just Rouge being Rouge.

Cool it, bub. She was far classier...Far classier.

Shadow's heavy footfalls came up to him, making him look away as his voice echoed in his head. Yeah, cool it. Somewhere in both of their torrents of souls, they both managed to match the same emotionless, overserious looks that each held.

"Are we done yet?" Aleutian asked Shadow.

The hedgehog stiffened his jaw before turning his grim face to the left that seemed to invite Aleutian to do the same. When the Aleutian's head followed, he didn't feel his jaw drop, or even felt his posture give. Woodland camouflage pattern was the first thought that went through his mind. Gazing briefly at the olive, tan, brown and green blotching colors, overlaying and underlaying against one another, his brain began to add the pieces of the heavy hulk behind the solid, floor to ceiling plexiglass. Vacant, dark eye sockets struck his own, peeling away what shield he though he had left to kept his fear from flowing through his body. In the heavy light, Aleutian could make out the irises that were lifeless. But the full body and faces of the bots were on display. Heavy chest walls indicated the armor that he was sure no hand held blaster could penetrate. To his awe, every joint had been sculpted, and covered with the same hard metal, right down to the legs and feet of the machines standing in front of him. And their hands were fisted, making the whole line seem fossilized in a strict attention, giving evidence of their principle design and creation. Yet, Aleutian couldn't find a single weapon on them.

"Com-bots," came Shadow's foreboding voice. "They look to be new generation."

Aleutian turned his head to the hedgehog, his mouth hanging, but his aversion seeping from his eyes. "You knew about these!?"

Shadow looked to Aleutian with a bit of surprise. "You mean you never heard of Com-bots before?"

The echidna didn't get a thought in when Rouge stepped beside the two, dropping the charges as soon as her eyes made contact to the metallic monsters slumbering between the glass. "Oh, great...how many of these things are there?" She struck her head directly to Shadow. "You knew about these killers being here, and didn't let on."

"Hey, easy on the hedgehog," Aleutian pushed, along with his face, "I'm the one asking first."

Shadow leaned into Aleutian then beamed his eyes at Rouge, both seeing the hedgehog's visage wither from its fortress expression. "You never heard of Com-bots before?" he repeated, mostly to Aleutian.

The echidna tighten his jaw. "Oh, I've heard of Com-bots, and thankfully I've never had to fight one." He stepped closer to Shadow, jabbing a straightened hand at the hedgehog's white chest. "But you said, 'new generation'."

Blue and red eyes held each other stares.

Shadow gave a squint from his right eye that Aleutian almost missed. Then the hedgehog turned his whole body to the row of Com-bots. "I didn't know of these Com-bots, so don't accuse me of withholding."

"Too late for that," trumped Aleutian.

But the hedgehog turned his head, frowning in deceleration of his innocence. "I didn't." He returned his pensive eyes to the machines. "Not these. But I can tell they are new just from knowing the latest ones I had seen being decommissioned in Robotropolis. The ones here, their frames have more armored coverings to protect their flex joints."

"Okay," began Rouge from between the two, "so, why aren't the labor-bots manufacturing more under our noises. I mean, c'mon, this place has been a virtual ghost town since I came in."

Both hedgehog and echidna glared at Rouge. "What do you mean, I?" Aleutian scoffed.

"Hey, I can't help it if you boys are slow," Rouge said, twisting to the left. Never minding to pick up the charges, she started walking, weaving around a pillar and taking a tour of the lined machines like she was window shopping for her next wardrobe. Her wings swayed as her stride fell into a saunter.

Shadow and Aleutian looked to each other, only resigning their stares back to the Com-bots. "Any takers on why this whole basement isn't filled with these things," Aleutian offered evenly.

A slow shake of Shadow's head. "I can't see why the Kingdom, or even us, have run across one of these. From the beacon I remember Eggman watching, and from the time I caught him, he would have had enough time to produce more and make them active."

"Hey, boys," came Rouge's yelling voice bouncing off the concrete walls.

But they ignored her; Shadow crossing his arms to their large, camouflage coated object of their attention:

"Look at their feet," Shadow observed, nodding with his head and straying a finger, "they're riding a conveyor."

Aleutian saw the black strip that was the belt of the conveyor system. "You think it's automated construction?" But his question didn't make any sense, and finding the reason when he looked over his shoulder and eyed the empty underground. "Even so, where are the supplies and material? I'm sure these things take a lot of steel to produce–"

"Hey, boys!" Rouge shouted from their left, grabbing their full-annoyed glares and making them lean out from the square concrete pillar they were beside to see her. She held a face that traced fear and compassion from her heart. "You guys need to look at this."

It wasn't but a few steps forward that Aleutian and Shadow saw what Rouge had been worked up over, and they both stopped and looked to each other in drawn gazes. Aleutian took the lead and nearly ran down the small line of pillars, stopping when his eyes grasped the full picture that Rouge was standing beside.

A green skinned chameleon lay on a gurney, covered in a white sheet. Slipping from under the sheet was the same bunch of wires and clear tubes that they had seen from the other chameleon– and who was now on, remorsefully, to meet Aurora. And those same strains of wire and tubes led to a large machine just behind the Chameleon's head. But this time they only protruded from her left side.

"I think she's still alive," Rouge said gravely concerned that was just shades from what she was just a second ago.

Aleutian blinked at Rouge, then darted his stunned and perplexed stare downwards what he now realized was a girl under the sheet. Her smooth facial textures and soft lips grabbed at his soul and jolted his reservoir of pain back to full circulation upon gazing at her. He felt his heart gradually pound faster in his chest, twisting his insides around as the image of the chameleon's prone body mixed in his thoughts...his memories. For all he saw of her green skin, he saw red fur; dreads mixed with long red hair; himself holding her, begging for her to blink her lifeless eyes at him.

He shut his own, concentrating to think of something else. But when he opened in the wink of time he closed them, Shadow had moved over to the machine the girl was attached to. He felt his grief being chased away by his renewed sense of anger flowing through his narrowing eyes. "Shadow!"

The hedgehog dropped his hand on the machine, seemingly ignoring the echidna's tightened voice. He began operating the touch screen, turning their area of the dark room into a sea of green when the monitor came to life, and Shadow's face bathing with it, showing his steadfast drive to do what he thought was necessary. Within a few drops of his fingers, his white glove dancing over the screen like a disinterested dancer performing with an unworthy song, the monitor flashed to black, and with it, several lines that soon fed into rhythmic arcs and dives.

Aleutian fostered the urge to launch himself forward, felt his throat become tangled with his feverish thoughts to voice his fortitude towards Shadow. He was just an inch of muscle fiber away–

A puff of solid smoke erupted on his right shoulder, ordering his hand on instinct to slam it to the threat. But pain suddenly rushed to his fingertips that were spearing forward, instantly stopping him. And when the smoked clear, he saw by the two smaller hands of Archimedes, the fire-ant's eyes drawn with a hint of affirmation, however, fostering a prominent look of disappointment.

"Not fast enough, young Guardian," Archimedes flatly scolded in a dry tone. He could see Aleutian was taken aback at his sudden strength. "We fire-ant's possess a world of talents unknown to the world itself."

Releasing his hand, Aleutian lowered his arm, then eyes back at the girl. With a shake of his head, he raised a harden gaze to Shadow. From the shift of Archimedes body, and from the corner of the Guardian's eyes, the fire-ant followed his every motion.

But from his back, a shallow, breathless voice haunted at the four of them:

"What–what is this?"

Aleutian, Rouge, and even Shadow, had turned their heads to see Espio nearly forcing himself to step forward, his own eyes burning at the sight of the supine chameleon of the stainless-steel gurney. As Espio's solid posture filled with the painful terror he was seeing, Aleutian grinded his teeth and his head around to Archimedes, the only Mobian not giving his attention to one stricken chameleon. And it wasn't the girl. You didn't tell him like I told you to, Archy?!

Just a slight lowering of his shoulders told Aleutian that Archimedes got his message. But as to what the fire-ant was thinking was anyone's guess.

Except Aleutian. He didn't need his father's, or even forefather's learned trait to know what Archimedes was reminding himself. All behind us, eh? And here we go again? Except this time you didn't come when I'm in severer pain...not when I'm dying. This time you're doing to Espio–right in front of me!

Archimedes tilted his head like a snake finding a threatening scent in the air. "I needed him to get the information we needed with a cool head." Scared Guardian and fire-ant held reserved stares following his words. "We'll talk about this later, Aleutian."

Fighting back the call to fist his hands, Aleutian instead bladed his stance off as if ready to pound his father's, and brother's, guiding conscience. Archimedes had been anything but that to him. And even now, after the past hard days, it was still shaping up to be the same. "I see," Aleutian seeped from his lips like pouring acid.

"I'm afraid not, Young Guardian." Archimedes did his best to match Aleutian's stance, and boiling stare, and actually succeeded when the echidna shifted his stance. "Don't think you can see the forest from the trees, lad. You've hardly even glimpsed with your walk-ah-bout through it thus far."

Turning slightly, the fire-ant gave his attuned stare at the com-bots. "Do any of these machines look missing?"

Rouge replied, finding that someone needed to cut the straining tension. "From what I can see, I don't think any thing down here has moved for eons."

Archimedes returned with silence.

Somewhere, Espio had gained his mortal life back and had slipped beside Rouge and Aleutian, his eyes still looking as if there were going to fall between his horn and into an abyss. He then stepped around them, grabbing the girl's hand from underneath the sheet and began to look at the bundles of wires, and clear tubes and cords that punctured under her green skin. Taking the cords' with his hand, he followed their path, stepping around the bed and near to Shadow, who stood by the device like a lone guard, watching Espio like a concerned scientist studying a hapless creature in a new environment as the chameleon gawked at the machine he'd stopped in front of.

Aleutian swallowed his boiling rage, with it, his long painful memories. Espio was reminding him of himself from two years ago. "We found another Chameleon upstairs. He was already dead, according Shadow."

Espio's eyes slanted to the black furred hedgehog, then drifted along with his head to Aleutian, resting his stare on Archimedes. "But, those two vitals we saw looked well? All except for that one line that read nero."

"He was brain-dead, Espio," came Shadow's low voice, devoid of anything of humility.

The chameleon returned his stunned gaze to the girl on the gurney. Again, his eyes traced the lines that went from her hand, under the bed, and to the machine. "Was the other one butchered like this?" Espio spit out in a thundering voice of rage. "Did he have these needles and wires piercing his skin?"

Aleutian felt the wind get kicked out of him; that was how his voice wafted from him:

"Yeah."

"But," festered Rouge, seemingly the only person possessing some kind of life, "you said something about brain-dead, and that a nero-something was flat-line. What 'bout her?"

Shadow's chest rose as he inhaled a lung full of dry, cold air. "She's in some kind of shallow coma from what I can indicate on the terminal. However, her blood is very low."

"What do you mean low?" said Aleutian, crossing his arms. "She's alive and barely breathing. And her skin seems to have good tone," he added, waving his right hand at the lying girl.

Espio shook his head. "No. You couldn't tell even by her pigmentation that she has low iron. We chameleon's keep are skin pigmentation easier than the Overlander's, or even other reptilian Mobian's in very cold temperatures, or even in the baking sun." He turned his head to Shadow, then to the machine. "But..."

His voice trailed as his thoughts consumed him. And before he could put any pieces together, he sighed. "But if Shadow is right, and her blood is low, then it means they are taking it from here."

"And the coma stasis is to do what?" Rouge asked, her voice leveling with frustration as pieces began to connect, "Keep her living just barely enough to keep her as a table top fixture?"

Espio's stare mauled out his realization, and possibly everyone elses. "Yes...they are farming them for their blood."

His head snapped around to the com-bots. For the period that seemed to elapse with Espio's words ringing through the understructure, only the low hum of pumps and groans of machines echoed the foreboding premonition that Espio alone was dwelling over.

"Has anyone of you fought against a com-bot before?" the chameleon asked with a suddenness that startled Aleutian.

Silence elapsed in reply from them. Espio took it as his answer. "I have when they first came out; when Robotnick put them in play for the first time. They have a neat little trick that I thought it was only my kind who could do it. I saw them blend into the backdrop and disappear. You couldn't see them. But I could hear them. It was the only way I could defeat them, even with myself cloaked."

"You're not saying?" Aleutian suggested, shifting his weight mostly on his left leg. He was searching the stares, wondering if he wasn't thinking of the same thing. But Espio's look that fell to the two large canisters at the foot of the machine said it all. "Okay, better educate me on how those things disappear."

Espio sighed while closing his eyes. "It was a chemical that robotnick had refined. He was shipping it from over around Mercia, and I think beyond that part of the world. I'm not to sure anymore. But, the chemical was injected throughout the armor and then it was charged by the bots own internal power system. And from there, it made the bot transparent. Only a good keen eye, or a good set of thermal imaging goggles could pick the thing out." He shrugged his shoulder. "Heck, that is how you have to find me. But I can do it just by thought. In fact, I can go transparent like the com-bots are designed to do. But I only duplicate the colors that way."

A furrowed, pensive brow. "Yeah, but Mercia is under his rule," Aleutian said, his mind conquering his emotions for the moment. "He could easily get it shipped in." Again, his hand shot to the chameleon girl. "So why would he need to do this?"

"Because, lad," Archimedes said with a voice that struck Aleutian's warrior soul with a foreboding disposition of fear, "Eggman ordered this facility to scrap the whole line, due to a shipment getting sunk by a certain ole Dingo..." Archimedes turned his face to Aleutian, giving him a proud smile, "...and with some help from a boy he plucked from the sea."

Aleutian's heart sank. "That can't be," he protested, dropping his arms.

"Aye, mate."

"It's in the data banks," Espio followed on. "This facility was suppose to receive some sort of shipment, but said it was intercepted. Then two days later came the order to terminate the project." Turning to Aleutian, Espio tightened his jaw in sureness. "It didn't say what the shipment was for...but it all makes a little since now." For a moment, Espio watched Aleutian breathe his feelings in deeply, taking note of his stiffening arms as his had already done. "This girl and the one from upstair–my kind–are the backup!"

"So again," Archimedes went on with an affronting tone, "do all these metal blokes look to be all here. Nothing looks 'outta place?"

Aleutian threw up his spike-gloved hands, while Rouge shrugged, and Shadow only shifted his stance to look at the line of com-bots.

"I don't know. Everything seems out of place here," Aleutian said. Then his mind gripped his throat. His eyes narrowed sternly, and quizzically at Archimedes on his shoulder. "Why are you asking all this when you said Eggman ordered the whole line to shut-down."

Espio stepped forward, taking the sheet the girl was under with his hands. "Because Snively has ordered these things to penetrate and assassinate Princess Sally and her father."

Rouge let out her reaction faster than Aleutian could. "What?! Him? Eggman's pathetic lackey?"

"It's undeniable," Espio replied, his voice sounding exhaustively, "everything here has his name written all over it."

Aleutian unconsciously balled his fists under his arms. "What makes you think it's him, Espee?"

They all could see Espio tugging his lower lip, his eyes fully drawn on the chameleon under the sheet. "Because this feels like two years ago at this moment, Aleutian." His eyes met the Guardian's, finding pain being beamed across the still void between them. "Right now I fell like Sonic. And the girl in front of us is Sally...and she's dead."

Aleutian stiffened his stance, his jaw, his eyes, his voice. "Go on." Under his fur, he wished he didn't ask him to.

Espio wandered his attention to his hand resting on the sheet, catching Shadow in the corner of his eye turning his back to them, facing the machine the girl was virtually plugged into. "Like two years ago it is all being underhanded. It feels like it–"

"It was a clear day today," Aleutian interjected coldly, almost unbelieving. "It wasn't then."

"Does it matter?" Espio shot back, looking at Aleutian with a face as if asking the echidna if he was there. As for Espio he gladly wasn't in Knothole for the whole act, but he did help at the final end. "This is going against what Eggman does. He doesn't send assassins; he likes to make thing go up with a lot of flash and earthquakes." He wandered his face around to Rouge. "You think that Snively isn't capable of this. You need to talk to Geoffrey's wife, and she'll tell you other wise." A returned look to Aleutian. "All the messages, the data, the termination order, and this girl are pointing to Snively. Sally is on their programming, the King–and anyone that get's in the way. They are all ordered to be killed!"

"Was there anyone else?" Aleutian asked hesitantly.

But Espio absently shook his head. "I'm not sure. I only got into that file before we teleported here." He tilted his head, his face tensing with thought. "But it did order them to go to Robotropolis for some sort of reprogramming. It couldn't be for Sonic; Eggman has him on high priority for capture or kill. He would go first."

"He might want the Princess and her father killed just to get to him?" Shadow suggested.

"It's crossed my mind," Espio nodded. "Yet...this feels like two years ago. And Sally is on the list."

Archimedes turned and leaned into Aleutian's vision. "So one more time, young Guardian: Are all of these bots accounted for?"

Aleutian stared off. A feeling of revulsion and burning agony leapt from him to Archimedes, the fire-ant doing his best to wash it all away from himself. It was the only bond he and Aleutian really held together, other than looking after his brother, Thinking of the scars that could have been for Knuckles, he always felt that they both worn them so Knuckles wouldn't. I'm sorry lad. It doesn't have to be a dreary day, either, for this.

"Aleutian?" he said uneasily, his voice tainted with tension. "Are they all here?"

The Guardian stared on distantly, his tone matched his searching face. "I don't know, Archimedes." A heavy breath filled him, raising his Guardian crescent on his chest.

"Chhrriiiss....stiia...ann..."

His eyes widen, his head bringing his struck gapping face down to where he heard the faint, weak voice. He was surprised he even heard it over the ambient noise around him and wondered if the others had heard it too. A quick glance answered his own question. No one had heard a thing, no one had noticed.

Except Shadow. He was looking straight at the girl lying on the gurney between them. And for a moment, Aleutian saw his red eyes peer up to him, making him tighten his face in anger.

"What are you doing?–"

Rouge's gasping voice cut Aleutian off. "Hey, she's moving."

Espio, in a blink, was at the girl's side. Aleutian stood for the most part watching him search for the girl's hand, taking it and felt for a pulse.

"Anything?" came Shadow, concerned. Albeit he still sounded distant in feeling.

Espio held his head down, like listening for his own thoughts for answers. "Very little..."

Aleutian witnessed the girl swallow roughly. He took a step forward, shooting his gaze up to Shadow. He saw in the hedgehog's red eyes that his previous question still lingered, but neither of them spoke, for the girl was trying to. Stopping beside her, he leaned down. And froze. He felt his stomach squeezing inside him. He felt his heart lurch to his chest wall, crushing him beyond his sense of being.

"Chriissstiiaann." The girl's voice was strengthening.

And so was Aleutian's own pain. He was waiting for her to call him next.

"What did she say?" asked Rouge. It took a moment before Aleutian realized she was asking him.

"Uh...I think she was saying a name."

Again, he looked to Shadow. He didn't have to say a single syllable.

"I'm bringing her around," said the intent hedgehog, his tone for once sounding defensive.

Archimedes took a step forward on Aleutian's shoulder, nearly slipping if he hadn't hooked a foot on the jacket's epaulette. "Please tell me 'ya know what you are doing, there Shadow?"

Red eyes drew back to the machine's monitor. For a second Aleutian thought he heard him sigh:

"I think I have stopped the injection that's placing her in a coma...but it's vague."

"So how is she coming out so quickly?" asked Espio, looking up for an instant.

"Because I'm reversing the blood flow," Shadow replied, working a few buttons on the console.

Aleutian's eyes fell to the girl, her own on the brink of being unshielded. "Eh, that doesn't sound to healthy."

"Because it isn't," Shadow added with a soft, but firm voice. "If she is to live, my best conclusion is a blood transfusion."

"How long?" Espio jumped in.

Shadow looked to him then the girl without the slightest affection to her plight, or even theirs. "Within the hour, at the most."

Rouge peered at him with eyes that were cursing his feckless attitude. It was a look Aleutian felt as well, knowing it rather close, possibly the closest he ever experienced. Friends' faces started pouring into his psyche–

"So, is it going to kill her if we unplug her and get the heck out of here?" shot Rouge's voice, bouncing around the walls.

The girl groaned in pain, making all eyes fall to her. "Christian....Christian...please."

"Within the hour," Shadow replied. Only Aleutian looked to him.

Espio gave a quick nod, searching for stares around the room. "Okay then." He glanced to Rouge, "Help me get these things out of her."

Shadow stepped away from the machine, his back towards the four. "I'll start on the charges, if anyone has forgotten why we're here."

Stiffening his jaw, Aleutian held back his particular knee-jerk remark, wanting to tell Shadow to knock himself out with the same feckless voice that the brooding hedgehog used. With his eyes gravitating to the shallow breathing girl, he wished he had–anything to divert his thoughts. In every intake it seemed to bring poisoned thoughts, like a remorseless cancer of pain that he was wanting to forget. Wanting remission. Deliverance.

"Lad..."

Espio lifted up the girls hand, then, snapping his head over both shoulders. "You see any gauze, bandages...something?!"

The girl let out a thickly moan; Aleutian's skin began to crawl. His sight turning to grey.

"Lad..."

Rouge studied her immediate area; Aleutian watching as if he were one of the obscure pillars in the dark. "Nothing," he heard her reply, her voice tensing. "Any ideas of getting this stuff off of her?"

Jutting to the stainless-steel stand behind him, Espio quickly returned with what Aleutian's eyes could vaguely make out as a towel. "We're 'gonna have to wing it with this for now." The chameleon looked up to Rouge with grave, eager eyes. "Get on this side, Rouge."

"Lad!"

Aleutian snapped his over to his right shoulder, locking his eyes to Archimedes' with a flash of cold blood worming though his veins. It sent him back further...deeper. For a instant, he held his breath, only exhaling softly when the fire ant tuned his soft gapping, calling face away, ridding Aleutian–and a good chance Archimedes as well–perhaps the only remembrance they had of each other from the worst nightmare from their lives. A sight Aleutian had only caught briefly, but it echoed the same burning, hypnotic agony like before.

"Lad," Archimedes' breathed with a wink of a shudder, his head looking straight, a lone finger pointing "time we did a headcount on those metal blokes."

He nodded, but not without looking down at the girl again. His body tensing, he asked, "You'll be alright, Espee?"

Espio didn't say a word. He was busy with his own convictions wrestling within him. Aleutian knew the feeling and painfully well.

"He'll be fine, Aleutian," Archimedes assured him. "We need to do our own part, now."

Sighing, straighten himself and looking on at the plexiglass that housed Eggman's instruments of supreme death, Aleutian tugged at his legs to move forward, struggling to bring himself in front of the machines. This was the first time he had seen a full fledged com-bot in the metal flesh. He remembered when Control had briefed him about Robotnick's latest, and most lethal machine to date, reflecting it had been over three years since then. For a time, Control was fairly convinced they were meant to come after her whole operations, not to mention her operatives. But then fast word came back about them really hunting the fastest thing on Mobius.

And now seeing them up close, he instantly saw, their woodland pattern made it clear from the get go, where they were meant to go; straight to the Great Forest. With this, as he stepped closer he concluded that they weren't meant to cloak for long periods of time. Stopping at the foot of the plexiglass, his shoes nearly touching the steal base of it, he was still struck that he couldn't find a shred of weaponry either on them, or for that matter, finding one on rack near by. A quick glance down the row both ways, he saw there wasn't even a rack to speak of except the one they were supported on. At least their eyes were still lifeless. But the feeling that they could come straight to life Aleutian couldn't shake.

"Are we impressed?" Archimedes asked, he too looking over the bots while stealing quick glances to the echidna.

He shrugged, but not one portraying indifference. He looked down the row from right to left, and back across. "They all look here. This place is so dark and vacant, it would be hard to know what is here and what has left."

A shake from Archimedes head. "Aye, lad. And the data we brushed over didn't keep very accurate numbers. Course, I don't think me and Espio, there, got that far down."

"Did their programming give out any times?" Aleutian asked next, his stance shifting some.

Another shake of the fire-ant's head. "Not a bloody thing."

"Or you just didn't dig deep enough," Aleutian added. He searched over his shoulder, seeing how Espio and Rouge's progress was coming. But his eyes only caught Shadow's red trim on his quails from the weak light. The hedgehog was kneeling down at one of the center supporting pillars.

"Okay," Aleutian heard Espio's voice announce. Upon a further turn of his head, the echidna saw him speaking to Rouge as both of their heads were looking down. "Two more. This one is going to be messy."

Aleutian turned his attention back to the com-bot in front of him.

"Eww, gross," retched Rouge.

He wanted to look back but didn't. Instead, he continued tracing the bots with his keening eyes. "Man, these things are built," he remarked, hoping to get something more out of Archimedes. For a moment, the fire-ant only nodded in agreement, wondering if he too was locked on the texture-less face. Aleutian's mind was flipping through the books that he had read from over the years, trying to remember a picture, or even a footnote of what the bot's head reminded him. At first, Aleutian was thinking of steal helmets from three centuries ago, around the time when the first King Acorn was ascending to power. But the shape was very smooth, only leaving a small square-hinged mouth that was a permanent fixture of being lock-jawed shut.

"At least he got rid of those silly spikes on their shoulders," Archimedes said, almost like a critic getting his way. "But I think he went back to the old face."

"Does it matter?" Aleutian retorted evenly.

A shrug. "No, not really. Hmm..." Archimedes looked around them, Aleutian only stealing a glance at him some. "Where're their weapons?"

"What I've been asking myself since seeing these guys."

A muffled grumble. "Hope that's a good thing?"

Looking down the line again, crossing his arms, his mind stirring more, Aleutian asked, "How were the old ones armed?"

Archimedes didn't answer right off. Instead he shifted his body away from Aleutian some, the Guardian returning his attention to him. Behind them, Espio and Rouge were still getting the lines out of the girl; Aleutian could hear them crystal clear:

"The towel's working, alright," Espio said, like breathing in better air.

"Then were is this blood coming from?" Rouge nearly demanded.

A long pause, Aleutian figuring Espio was studying what she meant, until, "Eh, it's soaking through the bottom– wrap it tighter!"

Almost looking back to see if he was going to have to defuse a situation, Archimedes stepped in with a cautioned, lighten voice:

"They were armed mostly with blasters. Heavy ones, I think."

Aleutian turned his head forward, then over to Archimedes, raising his eyes to the line of Combots, following them until the interior lights failed to light the darkness. "So, you think we're right on time?" he mused aloud. He felt his spirt give to some hope. "If they're not geared up now, then they're not ready, right?"

Archimedes kept silent, swallowing, then braced his spirt before he spoke:

"Could they be something more?" He felt Aleutian's stare come upon him. "Something far worse than what we've seen? Not you?"

The Guardian stiffened his jaw, trying hard to subdue his thoughts.

"Maybe they don't need weapons this round?" Archimedes continued on, his head roving at the line of Combots. "We know what their mission is, we know their past, but we don't fully know them, lad. What Espio and I did was slice the surface of these blokes...nothing more."

Aleutian stepped closer to the glass barrier, his and Archimedes' reflection appearing as he did. He stared past themselves, focusing on something distant and not of the corporeal world. "No, Archy," he said, merely shaking his head. "They're gonna need something. And if you and Espee are right, and this is Snively, then we know Robotnick is next."

"You mean Eggman," Archimedes corrected, though his tone had more distaste than anything resembling a scolding.

The notion of agreeing with him didn't register. Aleutian was more focused on the machines in front of him. More focused on what was being laid out in front of him. Of all the thoughts that circled his psyche, of the images that plagued him, it were words that rang through and through. No. It couldn't be happening again. Not now. Old memories were finding their way back to haunt him. And for what was happening, he didn't really need them to search him out. Instead, life fell at his feet again, and this time, making him wonder if he was going to relive a nightmare.

His nerves felt more alive. His mind more atoned. It was as if any moment some unseen door was going to give way, pouring in Swatbots, aiming their arm-blasters at Rouge, Espio, Shadow. Then at him, to finally finish him off, to end their two year long mission in killing him. And in the darkness, all he would see was that bald, short Overlander, smirking at him–

Aleutian's hand and fingers seized the glass, bracing himself from succumbing to the call of his nightmares. Emi-La's face flashed in his mind, her smile carrying to his heart and strangling it, yet he managed to let her fade from his sight. In her place, Locke's affirming face appeared to him. It was as if he and his father were staring at each other. And for a second, he felt his father's warm hand touch his shoulder, like trying to settle him down from crying. Like telling him he was beside him.

"Can you see further..."

His father's question echoed in his mind from yesterday. What was really going on here?

"I don't know...I've never tried..."

With his own voice lingering, he pressed his hand firmly against the glass, and closed his eyes. It felt as if he had free-fallen down from his own height, watching the tiny cracks of the plexiglass fly passed him. Before his mind could fully grasp where his inner sight had taken him, he was already skimming across the metal floor, his vision blurry for a moment, but now seeing where he was heading towards. And before he could even brace himself for the sensory overload he knew he was going to experience, his sight went dark in an instant, then, like a blink, he felt as if he'd crossed into a room that was illuminated with weaker lights, red and green ones that splashed sculpted steel walls.

Like blinking from awakening in a strange room, Aleutian began to make out the smooth, reflective steel of a hydraulic arm that connected the foot to the bot's knee. In fact, with a twist of his sight, as if standing himself on a hill top of wires–which they were many all around him–he peered up the left leg of the Combot, observing more hydraulic pistons, some collapsed, other extended. Dark hoses also towered up over him, and with a quick jolt of his vision downwards, he realized that they were fuel lines, finding the bundled wires led to the upper base of the small hovering thrusters he was atop of.

Like leaping from a rock-face, he shoot his sight up the leg, guiding across the hydraulic limbs until the red and green LED lights nearly blinded him as he enter the lower torso, and further up, the greater expanse of the chest cavity. It wasn't hard to miss the three large cylinder tanks, standing from head to foot as they may. Two of the cells were coated red, both bestride a single, yet larger cell that was painted green. He dove his vision inside them, crossing them like their aluminum walls didn't exist. Through the voyage his vision never became distorted. And right then his stomach eased from the building anxiety. Empty. And for the time, he guessed what cylinders were supposed to hold what: red for fuel; green, perhaps, for the chemical–and now chameleon blood–for the cloaking process.

Aleutian guided his sight clear up the reenforced chest now, finding it very apparent from the cramp confines of the chest compared to the size of the driod, searching out an arm. His vision ran through the assortment of wires, over a hurdle of flex joints, that after a descent down saw their anchor points to a series of more hydraulic arms, six smaller ones encircling a large main piston. They were strong, that was for sure. But he wasn't really interested in their brawn. He saw the connecting point form the upper arm to the forearm, a mass of intrigued plates with something he thought were more flex joints, but were built far cleaner. In fact they looked very different. He glided his sight across them, and with applied concentration, feeling his body for the first time since his vision jumped, he tried like the other day to magnify is inner sight–and it worked, far quicker than he expected. With the smoothness of the well sculpted aluminum layered plats becoming crude and pitted, he followed where they connected and slide through the harden steel beyond.

And straight into an empty, dark chamber. He was expecting to see the inside of the complex from were they where. But his sight was utter darkness, and his conclusion was about as instant: the com-bots were doubled skinned, allowing chambers for the girl's and her brother's blood to pass around, and under the titanium armor. With a little electricity to excite the cells, as Aleutian remembered what Espio described, the bots could disappear, letting whatever was in front of, or behind them, which ever direction the person was looking, pass through them like light through a window.

He floated his vision over the outside of the forearm, stopping as he dove into a lump that bulged from the right forearm. Light pierced through a slit, and there in wait was, its teeth. A large silver blade hidden beneath the skin, ready to present itself from a small ram attached to a motor and rail behind it. Aleutian's stomach lurched, crushing his heart in the process to rock his very being.

Breathing in deeply, he raced his inner-sight back up to the chest wall, hunting for what lay in the left arm. But he went to far in his sudden spike of panic. Shooting up passed the cylinders, further passed twin rows of batteries wedge shoulder to shoulder (yet low enough to give the bot freer range of motion), and behind the batteries, the housing that tucked away the main thruster for flight, he arrived at the neck, seeing at first the ring that rotated the head as a complex gear and a small motor, and it heavily shielded. With curiosity now guiding him, he kept ascending, finding his vision was starting to become snowy with electric static–he was reaching his limits–and arriving at the positronic brain, finding it with aide from the few blinking red lights. He was instantly struck from the complexity of the main processing cavity of the com-bot. The eyes, as he raced to them, were wired to the brain with the same type of bundles that thronged the machine almost entirely. The brain itself was littered with heat sinks and small, yet powerful fans. And was it ever reenforced. Too bad his skull wasn't built like this, he thought for a split second, seeing this as the envy of any Mobian or Overlander; a thick cranium to take unbelievable damage to the head.

But, something looked even out of place here. He went back to the eyes: they were really nothing but wires connecting from the irises to the positronic brain. With another strain from his forehead, his brow furrowing, he launched his sight to the eye itself...and went straight through it. His vision opened up to the large underground complex, seeing himself with Archimedes still standing on his jacket shoulder.

And Shadow walking up behind him:

"We're done here."

The hedgehog's seemingly soulless voice carried to Aleutian, breaking the echidna from his visual leap. His sight was instant in its change, and it nearly made him queasy. Taking in a long pull of air, he turned his head over to his left, seeing Shadow was staring at the com-bots.

"That fast?" Aleutian said skeptically.

The hedgehog waved his head. "We'll be lucky if these charges can do the job."

Aleutian turned his head away, looking off from the machines as well. "I saw fuel cells in these things. They've got jump and flight capability–"

"I found the storage tanks toward the east part of the complex in a different section," Shadow said without further input from Aleutian. He even sounded as if he wasn't going to be taken for a brainless creature.

"The last three," he went on, pausing for Aleutian's attention, which he only got as a nod, "are on three of the most potential supporting columns I calculated might be able to bring the building down on itself.

Hurried footsteps killed any other questions from Shadow or Aleutian.

"We need to go," came Espio. Looking over to him, Aleutian saw he held the limp girl in his arms, her body wrapped in the sheet, her head resting on his biceps. Rouge was beside him, holding the girl's hand with the blood soaked towel.

"I heard everything is set," Rouge said, her voice filled with anxiety.

Espio eyed Shadow. "When are the charges set to go off?"

"As soon as we're gone."

Taking the low monotone answer for what it was worth, Archimedes stepped to the edge of Aleutian's shoulder:

"Then gather around for a ticket 'outta here."

And they did. All Aleutian saw before the purple smoke took his sight were the uncomfortable stares–

---

Locke nearly jolted himself into a solid defensive stance when the teleporting smoke erupted beside him. It wasn't easy even for this seasoned Guardian to lay and wait, watching the roving Eggbots make their sweeps around the compound. He had been hunching low behind the same downed log that he and Aleutian had found Espio laying behind. Now with the smoke dissipating, his body relaxing some, he was confronted with worried faces; Aleutian instantly scanning the immediate area; Rouge stepping low and carefully over to where Locke was now leveling from; Shadow never flinching a muscle to move.

But Espio was lumbering forward with a lifeless creature lying in his arms.

"What happened?" Locke partly demanded under a disciplined voice.

Espio marched forward, his stare on a whole different plain of haste. "We need to get back to Knothole––fast!"

Seeing the chameleon girl clearly now, Locke began to fester his same question, "What–"

"Dad!?" Aleutian stepped to his side, gripping his shoulder, closing to his ear; Archimedes was looking out on the young Guardian's shoulder toward the compound. "You need to teleport us back at full flank."

A shake of the elder echidna's toning face. "Not with this many and at that distance, son. And not without channeling the chaos powers that can certainly bring attention right here."

Archimedes was quick to respond:

"Warp ring, Locke. We have no time."

Still holding his father's shoulder, Aleutian turned to Shadow, who was staring out at the compound, his arms crossed, his posture oddly erect. "Hey, how long did you set those charges for?"

"Short–"

The ground heaved at their feet; the air crushing with tremendous pressure and sound; within the short second, the east side of the complex's roof poured out with belching fire, delivering flying concrete inside the fence line. Then the satellite dish sunk into the exploding inferno mass. With it the center of the compound, its walls and roof crumbling inwards like water through an open fissure, almost kinetically. For the short ten seconds of show, it all ceased almost instantly as it began, unfortunately leaving the west end almost untouched, the walls looking like they were cut through with an ice-cream scoop, the solid roof flexing inwards and down from the middle.

With a calm grumble, Locke rose his hand in the air, and crushing his fist, he slammed it down with hardly any effort. The last section fought, but then fell inside itself. Fire, dust and the sounds of tumbling rubble and the brewing fire birthed a new brutal life to the valley, as well as on looking Mobians.

Reaching into the pocket of his battle robe, Locke found the small warp-ring. "How long does she have," he asked, taking the ring out and eyeing it, not even remotely interested in burning complex.

"Its not her we're worried about," Archimedes said.

Locke only questioned with a side glance to the ant on his son's shoulder.

"Can you put us on the outskirts?" Aleutian jutted acerbically, trading a hardening stare to Locke's widening eyes, though his body watching the flames lick the air.

A nod came after a still expression from his father, and with a turn, Locke flicked the ring from his thumb. It quickly expanded out with its low, waving call that Aleutian was still getting used to hearing. Seemingly on impact, he and his father nearly squinted when waning, however strong sunlight poured through the golden ring that was now a hundred times it originating size. Then their eyes adjusted upon the tall timbers of the Great Forest.

"Let's go," came Locke's strong voice. And he stepped through.

Aleutian was quick behind, turning his head away from the stunning optical illusion of a sun-setting day in the Great Forest to stare at Shadow, Espio, and then Rouge coming out from the darkness of the heavily wooded Badlands, saved for the burning fire of the collapsed, and hopefully totally destroyed complex.

Locke walked up beside him. Ounce Rouge had passed through it, he lifted his hand out, and the ring compressed to its original three-quarter inch size into his palm.

"We might've been on time," Shadow observed, standing forward from everyone else. "It's still relatively daylight. My best logic tells me they wouldn't be active until sundown. "

"What does he mean?" Locke asked firmly.

Espio stepped forward, the girl giving a tiny whimper from his arms. "Sally and her father could be in real danger, Guardian."

"Yeah," Rouge festered, walking toward the side of Shadow, "but brooding, there, might have a point." Sauntering, she didn't stop moving.

Aleutian clinched his teeth in agitation, but turned to his father:

"Dad–" His father faced him, his grey beard adding to his cooling stare. "–Dad, we found com-bots in the basement."

Archimedes stepped out from Aleutian's head-spines. "Aye, mate," he added, giving Locke no time to dispute his son, "and they were programmed to hunt Sally and King Maximilian."

The elder Guardian nearly stepped back with bewilderment, his old friend's face flashing before his eyes, seeing him being stalked by those giant machines he knew far too well. Angel Island was littered with them once Eggman had a good footing on his treasured land.

"But Shadow said we might have been early?" he objected, his voice still sounding concerned.

Espio stepped in. "Maybe so, but this girl needs to see Quake at any rate."

Looking at the chameleon with quizzical eyes, Locke lifted them to his son.

"They were draining her," Aleutian answered his father's coming question, "and another chameleon, a boy. They were taking their blood, dad, and using it to generated their cloaking sequences."

"Like the old models," Locke concluded.

Archimedes nodded. "Aye–"

"AAEEHhhh–!"

Aleutian bolted for the scream the instant it hit his ears, passing Shadow as the hedgehog began to take his first foot falls. Checking his shoulder, Archimedes wasn't there with him. But he ran on, facing forward, trying to target where he heard the feminine shrill.

And Aleutian saw Rouge pick herself up hastily from the grass, turned and started running towards him, her face never turning to him. He nearly got himself stopped when she slammed into his chest. Her wings were flexing as she breathed in as her tears rained down her face. "Oh my goddess," she expelled with a very shaken voice, one Aleutian has never heard from her.

Lifting his head up he saw why she was trembling, burring her face into his birthright–

"Dad!" he hollered, taking Rouge with his gentle, flexing hands and moved her to his side. From there he scrambled towards a large pine tree...and found a brown, small lump lying on the grass. She was little girl, a ground squirrel, her yellow dress assaulting his emotions. And she wasn't moving.

"Ah!" He stumbled backwards, his eyes straining, working to push back tears.

Locke stopped beside him, and without hesitation went and knelt down beside the lifeless girl. Gently with his mitted hands, he felt for the girl's pulse on her throat. To his sickening surprise, her head moved too freely, making him jerk his hands back, It all jarred his heart.

"Her neck is broke," Locke said with a cutting voice of anger. Raising his head, he looked to his son with caring, yet tempered eyes. "She still warm, though."

Aleutian swallowed, looking at his father with the same tempered eyes before looking off to the whisking sun.

Espio's voice slipped from behind them. "Aleutian–Locke, over here!"

Taking in a deep breath, Aleutian followed the chameleon's voice, finding Espio standing in a small clearing. Running towards him, he stopped when his eyes descried deep impressions in the grass and exposed soil. Footprints; large, deep, and in pairs.

"We're late," Espio gritted, his face becoming hard.

"Not if we hurry," Locke said with a resounding voice, coming up behind them.

"We need to get to St. John," came Aleutian's commanding voice. "He needs to be warned."

He turned to Shadow. "Can you?"

The hedgehog nodded, not letting an ounce emotion slip from his deadpan face.

Looking next to Archimedes on his father's shoulder, Aleutian swallowed hard, his soul beating his resolve to awake. "Get Espio and Rouge to the Quake. Teleport them there."

"No problem, lad," the fire-ant affirmed, tipping his hat. With a lasting stare, he said, "Go find 'em. Do what needs to be done."

And he disappeared off of Locke's shoulder, leaving the two Guardians reaching across the short void between them with growing, atoning stares. He wanted to say something to Locke, wanted to ask him if he was doing the right thing, but his mind was paralyzed. It was already made up. And as he turned to run towards Knothole, his soul cried up to him, shouting to him, warming his very being. With Locke close behind, he let it speak out. He needed him.

Knuckles!

---

"So what are we going to do later tonight?"

The question lingered in the air between them. For her, the front palace doors were nothing more than large tables, cleared for a feast she could only imagine in the mean time, making her hunger worse. The problem was, what she wanted. As she rolled the spear around her the palm of her sweaty left hand, her stomach began to draw up menus to her, some so far fetched even for the brown fox that she couldn't believe she was starting to crave for it.

"A salad?" she suggested to the tall, male beaver three paces beside her.

He too rolled a spear in his right hand, but not eyeing her, for she couldn't even steal a glance to him either. If the commander so much even saw them talking while on duty, their career outcomes would be a simple list of push-ups, demotion, or a permeant relieve of duties. Course, they both knew–and so did most of Knothole–that Geoffrey St. John couldn't spare a single fighting hand to the unemployment line.

And with this conclusion hot on the beaver's mind:

"You're nuts, Beth," he festered to her. "I want steak tonight."

She gave a heavy, demeaning sigh at him. Did all muscular men run on large slabs of meat? "That's all you want, John; steak! Steak with potatoes, steak with seafood–"

"Steak with salad," he cut in with Beth's rhythm, adding it with a suggestive wink in his voice. It wasn't that they were together romantically. But they both knew friendship kept them from being alone in a battlefield if and when St. John decided it was time to clean up some out of line acts.

So Beth shook her short dark haired head. "Okay," she said tartly. "Steak it is again.

John merely shrugged his shoulders. "Hey, I'm not forcing you–"

"But the smell, John–It just eats me alive and I can't help myself but to join in with you, and the rest of the watch."

Smiling for a moment, she gave a small chuckle. And for an instant she felt a warm wave come over her. With the sun behind them, shining on the rear of Castle Acorn, it felt like it was an uplifting feeling for her. But it felt confined to her, it didn't wrap around her. Was this ever odd, she thought. It was akin to having someone standing directly in front of her. But green grounds were only present–

"Did you hear something?" John snapped in a crude whisper.

Beth turned her face to him. "Hear what?" she asked, finding her spear was becoming light in her hand.

And suddenly it leapt out from her hold. She faced forward, her right hand falling to the hilt of her sword. But her eyes were paralyzed her movements, transfixed on the floating spear in front of her, hanging like a standing pole, nothing holding it–

Her throat collapsed so hard her vision nearly blanked out. She struggled to breath, but not a molecule of air was let in to her lungs. She gasped, her wind pipe collapsing, causing her to groan in panic. Beth then had the worst notion of floating. And to her painful dismay she felt the scruff of her neck brushing and scrapping up against the castle's wall.

A harsh yelp clamored through her ears. Vision fading, she tried to twist her head, wanting to scream the instant her waning sight caught of John. His spit washed with blood, watching it run down his quivering mouth.. But from his stomach gushed his life's elixir from a wound with nothing protruding from it.

And a revulsion of pain split her body, giving definition between her lower stomach and her chest. Her head was forced forward. Her eyes briefly seeing the sight of her own spear lodged through her...just as the phantom iron grip around her lower jaw and throat continued to twist her head until it–

---

The breaking slam of the wooden door startled the only occupant in the large hut the Chaotix called home. To Aleutian's dismay–and her's–no one else was there. But the widened eyes of a finely dressed bee had locked to his, addressing him with the coming stunned disbelief he could see running through her eyes. His aviator jacket was open, and Aleutian knew she was staring at his guardian birthmark. But the scares on his face and chest, his half dread-lock, and even the jacket were all perplexing her.

"Knuckles?"

"Where is he?" the marching, nearly running, echidna demanded. "Where's my brother?"

She stammered for a reply, but he kept moving past her, the couch and continued out of the living room.

Locke appeared through the door and hot on Aleutian's heels. "Saffron," he said instantly upon entering. A quick look around the hut made him scowl. "Where're the Chaotix."

Saffron just froze in front of him.

"Knuckles!" shouted Aleutian, quickening his pace to his brother's room, finding the door was closed as he neared. "Knuckles! Julie-Su!" He closed his hand around the handle, finding it locked.

Oh, don't let me catch you two!

His foreboding voice died when he forced open the door with his shoulder, breaking the locking mechanism, and pushing out chunks of wood from the passageway wall. And Aleutian stood in utter disbelief. The bed was nicely made, the dresser closed, the mirror reflecting the adjacent wall the door was obscuring. The room was empty!

He darted away, stopping when Locke approached him with the young bee in tow. "Where's my brother?" he asked her with a calmer voice. "Where's Knuckles?"

A slammed her eyes shut, her chin dipping with distress. "On–on a mission."

Locke's eyes glared widely, somehow staying calmer than his son. "And the Chaotix, Saffron?"

Her head trembled as she struggled to answer. "They're wi–with Julie-Su, rescuing survivors from the–um--Hawkinge."

"What's happened with the Hawkinge?" Aleutian asked next in a raising voice.

Saffron clinched at her dress, holding her emotions back. Locke saw this and placed his hands around her shoulders, lowering to a knee. "Saffron, we need to know this right away. Okay?" She nodded her head, but Aleutian could see the tears starting to churn from her large eyes. "Good. Now, from the beginning, where is Knuckles?"

Her antennas lowered, as with her cringing face. She spoke deliberately slow:

"He is with Sonic and Antoine, tracing down a cipher out in the Great Plaines."

Aleutian rolled his eyes. "Ah, great!" Exhaling his coming rage, he stormed inside his brother's room.

Locke kept his calming tone, though. "And the Chaotix. Why are they searching for survivors from the Hawkinge?"

Aleutian heard her swallow again while he let his attention wander around the room. Anything to calm his mind.

"St. John got a message from them, asking for help."

"We're they sunk," Aleutian asked from the room.

Her voice was mild now. "They think so...something about Mercia."

Locke lowered his beared face closer to hers, trying a smile. "Any word back from them? Any at all, Saffron?"

She shook her head. "Not that I know of."

Aleutian stepped through the doorway. "And Knuckles? Any word from them?"

A confident nod this time. "Yes. They needed the Turbo Lifter to help them free some Mobians somewhere. St. John's wife, Rotor, and a handful of the Guard went to help."

Rubbing her cheek with his thumb, Locke gave Saffron a smile to comfort her. "Good. Thanks your Highness. You did real good for us."

Standing up he looked to Aleutian. "We need to go find Prower and his boy. Tails might have something to–"

Looking up to Locke with guilt filled eyes, Saffron said, "They're gone too, along with Merlin."

"What?" stammered Locke, perplexed.

Watching his father again lower himself down to Saffron's level, Aleutian back-stepped inside his brother's room. He turned his body away from the scene, letting his eyes search the articles inside, keeping his ear out for his father's and Saffron's words.

"They were asked by King Elias to go look for something," Saffron explained, Aleutian merely turning his head.

"Did you know what for?" his father asked.

Waiting for the reply, Aleutian's eyes fell to the foot of the bed. He tilted his head, felt his right eye squint with the black object he saw tucked away under the frame.

"No, Locke, I don't." Aleutian heard Saffron sniffed her tears in. "What's going on? Why are you two so angry."

"We're not, Saffron. There is something bad going on that we need to figure out what to do with."

Reaching down, he saw it was his duffle bag, the one he took with him from his house. He pulled it out from under the bed. And with the bag, a wooden box dragged by the strap. His heart nearly stopped dead when his blue eyes froze to it. He breathed in, his chest rising, his soul never letting go of its hold to his psyche. He could feel his conscience fighting within him not to do it. But he did anyways; he picked up the box...and opened it. The black, smooth metal slide of his hush-puppy haunted him.

Grunting out his apprehension, his anger, Aleutian grabbed his bag and unzipped it. He felt like he was looking into a black abyss. His gear was crumbled to together, but clearly identifiable of what was what. They were like tools to a carpenter, and he that man, his careful mind probing which instrument he was going to need. What he could use.

And his eyes took him back to his pistol. Inhaling deeply, his own eyes feeling as if they were to tear up from what was plaguing his soul, internally watching the images of outcomes running through his mind, his own questions rearing to be answered...he picked his pistol out from its resting place, and placed his hand over the top of the slide.

---

SShhieek!

The sound was unmistakable to Locke. It reined in his ears to have him slowing climb to his heavy boots. It was metal against metal, elements sliding against each other that ended their trek with a short hollow ring. And it came from the same room where his son was in.

What are you doing, Aleutian?

"Locke? Guardian? Did you hear me?"

Locke looked down and felt as if he were blessing Saffron's soul. He kneeled down to her eye level again, whipping away the tears from frustrated her face. He wanted to tell her it wasn't her fault that the people they really need, the family they all wanted, were off doing what was asked of them. But it still didn't make him feel better. "Okay, Saffron," he said, whipping another tear away, "tell me again where Princess Sally is?"

She choked back her sobs for a single moment to answer him, "In Castle Acorn, Locke."

As he nodded for her, he heard velcro being ripped open then a brief moment later, slapped back onto itself. "Are there guards?" he asked amidst what he heard in the other room.

"Just what is usually there."

Aleutian marched through the doorway, Locke looking up in the moment, seeing his son's jacket was off him while his left hand was tugging with a black piece of web gear, strapping it to his right wrist.

"That's not going to be enough," Aleutian remarked, looking straight to his father. "These things are hunting in pairs, dad. They working more efficiently this way. And with their vanishing trick, they'd kill like ghosts."

A furrowed brow from Locke. "Would they split up, Aleutian?"

His son shook his head, giving a hard tug to the last strap, locking it down further up his forearm. "If I had that capability, and I had a partner like that, possibility, yeah."

Before Locke could ask him more–before he could even see his thoughts–Aleutian darted back into the room. And once he disappeared, Saffron immediately tugged at his hand.

"Locke, are we in danger?"

He shook his head, giving the best smile he could manage. "No, not here, Saffron. What ever happens, you stay right here. Okay?"

She nodded, looking around the hut. "Are you sure?"

Coming through the door again, Aleutian looked to Saffron. Locke saw him holding a magazine in his left hand for a split second–he remembered very clearly from three days past, still seeing Lopper holding the thing. Then it disappeared into the pouch his son attached to his wrist.

"Is King Maximilian there as well?" asked Aleutian, giving a hard tug on the flap to secure the magazine.

Saffron, Locke could see in the corner of his eye, was looking up to him in bewilderment. "Yes, sir."

Turning around, Aleutian stepped back into the room. "Don't call me sir, Milady."

And from there Locke held his silence, still kneeling down to Saffron, she too laying silent. Locke could hear her breathing.

"Aleutian," he called steadily.

More sounds of metal and steel connecting with each other ringed–Locke sure he was hearing something being rotated on with metallic threads.

"Aleutian?" he called again, his tone deepening.

Through the door his son emerged....his right hand holding his black pistol at his side–The same one that Locke saw as the demon that tried to take his son's life away from him three days ago. But this time it possessed a longer barrel, with a girth that could swallow the exposed barrel, seeing as he looked further up the pistol hovering down by his son's thigh the slide was locked back, revealing rounded cartridges nestled in the magazine.

"What are you doing, Aleutian?"

His son let a grimace form on his face. "What needs to be done, father."

"Not like this...Not like this Aleutian–"

He looked up to Locke's pleading eyes, Aleutian's own doing the same. "I'm not letting this happen again, dad!"

Locke could see the tears welling in his sons eyes. But he couldn't let him go down the road ahead. Not this time when he was so close to having him back.

"Aleutian, think of what we've done. Think of what you've achieved. You've done so much for yourself–for me, Aleutian. We have the ability to save Sally and her father. We are Guardian's, Aleutian."

And he nodded with that. "I know, father," Aleutian breathed, his stare continuing down to the weapon in his hand. "But, I'm not ready yet."

"You are, son!"

"No!" Aleutian barked back. "Dad, I'm not confident with all you've taught me...I'm not confident to save people with it." He rolled the pistol in his hand, still looking on at his father. "But I can with this." His stare molded to a hint of sorrow, of shame. "It's what I still know..."

Locke stepped forward to his son, staring into his eyes, searching for what he was afraid was the undoing of the past three days. "It's not our way."

He didn't sense it; the coldness...he didn't feel it as he peered into his son's heart. But there was searing pain, it carrying burdens, flashes of light. And to Locke's yearning soul for his son's, he knew what he had connected to; what Aleutian was playing through his mind:

The room was dark, yet, a candle flicker weakly in the distance. But nonetheless the image was now as clear as day to him. Faces looked on. And steadily they became more defined. A tall, male dingo, his age showing from greying fur and his stance, his eyes looking on with something akin to disappointment, filled with sadness; a squirrel stood beside him, her mouth opened in disbelief. And standing next to a book case, he swore he saw Anthair! The old Guardian was hunched over his tattered cane, his face inscribed with his usual deadpan fixture. But Locke thought he saw disbelief etched with it. It just couldn't be his Great Grandfather! Not there–

Standing against the candle's shadow, Locke–and seeing his son was doing the same in his past– gazed down the cold blue and green eyes of a lop-eared rabbit, his face embitter, his hands reaching as if trying to save someone.

"Dad," Aleutian said softly, both he and his father still locked with their searching stares, their beings back in the present. "Dad...I swear to you, on my equal's grave...and on my unborn child..." His voice began to crack, his hand stiffening around the pistol's grip, his eyes watering. "I swear, dad, I will never use this in anger.

"Ever."

With his voice becoming steadfast in his resolve, Aleutian stood before his father as he had with Mathias and Faith and Lopper...and with his Great Grandfather, staring coldly with his pistol at his side, his scares fresh and bleeding across his face from that night. It had been two years since then. But now his father was here, standing in front of him. Somewhere he hoped now it was going to be different this time. He hoped this was the end of his nightmares. For the monster that consumed him wasn't here. But he was here; Aleutian felt himself this time. And this time there was no vengeance. This time there was purpose.

He pushed his thumb down on the slide lock, and like two years ago, the spring pushed it forward to capture the first round from the magazine, closing it into the chamber where it lay in wait with the dark...

---

I really do hope I gave you all your fill with this: action, excitement, some comedy. Shadow was fun, yet hard to write in this. Really it was his lack of feeling and emotions I had the most trouble drawing up; largely due to finding the right words and phrases to use. I've got ideas for him in the next project, but not as big as I have him now. My character count is high, so it's time to condense.

Aleutian's interaction with Rouge was especially hard. I'm running with something between them, but doing my best not to make it Mary-Sue. Then there is Aleutian...I'm trying to keep his mental health about the same with this. Rouge is playing the role for him to be a little freer with his emotions and heart, but still trying to constrict it. Again, hard.

Espio's role in this was the real key, but I felt I didn't use him more than I wanted to, or would have liked. I know I could have had him more in the spotlight, and I did try. But the focus with Aleutian was getting him to own up to what he used to do, and be. Shadow played out as something he could have been, possibly far worse. I hope I put that well in this chapter.

Again, thanks for reading. And thanks for hanging on between my long absence.