Hey, let's wait until chapter three to start doing author's notes for no reason. Good call, Wedge.

First couple chapters were a little slow going, but now the plot starts to pick up a little. I'm going to try my best to update this bad boy as consistently as I can. The goal is a maximum of two weeks between chapters, but hopefully less than that. Also, big shout out to Leodragon678 for beta reading these first few chapters for me! He's a heck of a writer and if you haven't checked out his stuff yet, I highly recommend it.

Cool, now that all that's done, let's got on with it!

He remembered very little. Nothing, as a matter of fact. He remembered nothing at all.

The brambles and brush clawed at his hide, mud and dirt clinging to every strand of fur. He was tangentially aware of the pain, but it was a distant thing, like swimming below the surface and hearing a scream from above. Thoughts flitted from his mind almost as quickly as he could form them, and time began to blur into a steady whir.

Day became night became day became another night. Slowly, his broken mind registered that he should be afraid, and so he was. He made his way through the underbrush as quickly as he could manage, without the slightest hint of grace. The fact that he could walk at all was a miracle, but the significance of it was lost on him.

To what end he was trudging through this tropical hell, he didn't know. But he knew he had to get somewhere. Panic was setting in like it was the first time he'd ever felt it. He screamed. No words. For no reason in particular. It just seemed like the thing to do.

The sun was at its zenith when, through the staggered trees, he saw it. A smooth, light brown expanse of tightly packed dirt. A road.

"Finally," he said to himself, voice hoarse and shaky. He could speak. That would be useful.

He hobbled through the treeline a short time later with trembling knees and blurred vision. The road most likely wasn't highly trafficked, but he would take what he could get. It was civilization; he could figure the rest out later. He laid down for a moment of respite, only to find he couldn't get back up. This must be the exhaustion finally catching up.

Though he didn't know how long exactly he stayed immobilized on the side of the road, he knew his daylight hours were running thin. Periodically he would try to rise, to little success, but at least he was in plain sight. As long as he could be seen, he could be helped, or at least that was the hope he held fast to. After what must have been hours, he heard a sound in the distance. It was a strange sound, almost like tires on the road, but with no discernable engine noise, and moving at an impossibly high rate of speed.

The dust cloud began to appear above the trees shortly thereafter, and soon he could make out the source: a vague blue figure blazing down the path towards him. Before he could even ponder what it was he got his answer, as the blue speck was now upon him. He reached his hand up feebly to flag down the arrival. It was a mobian - a hedgehog, to be precise.

The visitor slowed to a stop as he approached the battered form in the road, concern taking hold of his features.

"Woah. Hey, man. What happened to you?" his voice was soft, gentle.

He stared up at the hedgehog, unsure where to go from here. He'd finally found someone...and that was as far as he'd planned. The hedgehog knelt down on one knee, studying him with barely concealed sorrow.

"Do you live around here?"

"D...don't know."

Okay, he'd responded. This was progress. The words were slow to come out, ungainly. But he could communicate.

"What's your name, kid?"

"Miles."

He hadn't even thought about it. He couldn't remember who gave the name to him, how long he'd had it, he just knew his name was Miles.

Apprehension began to set it yet again. But this was what he wanted, right? He'd been looking for someone, anyone, and he had succeeded. Now was the time. The pain had long become more than a nuisance. It was quickly veering into unbearable territory. He couldn't move more than a few inches at a time. He knew nothing of who or where he was. All he knew was that he was afraid.

He met the hedgehog's eyes, and felt tears crowd his own vision.

"Help me."

Tails groaned and rolled over in bed. Red LED lights were the only thing that met his eyes against the dark backdrop of his bedroom. The clock next to him read 3:31am.

So much for getting a good night's rest, the fox thought as he sat upright. He rubbed his eyes and sat for a while in the silence, taking a moment to decide what his next move would be. Sleep was proving to be a fruitless pursuit; he figured all the time he'd spent in front of a computer screen the past few days had sent his circadian rhythm into a tailspin. Sonic always did tell him spending too much time at the workshop would…

Wait…

The workshop!

Tails slipped out of bed and hurried over to open the window. He had to crane his neck to see the other building from the angle of his bedroom, but sure enough, through the windows of the "administration" section, he could see stark white light emanating out into the darkness of the surrounding countryside.

Tails silently cursed himself, and briskly walked over to put on his shoes. He couldn't believe he'd left the lights on nearly all night. His electric bills were already high enough as it was, he didn't need to compound that with such simple carelessness, also known as "forgetting to turn out the lights like an idiot".

Well, he figured, tugging at his laces, at least the walk over might help me clear my head and get back to sleep.

As one would expect in the wee hours of the morning, the house was awash in silence as Tails made his way down the stairs as quickly as he dared, careful not to wake Sonic sleeping a few rooms down. Once he was outside, he turned on his flashlight and began the trek up to the workshop, his frustration at himself lingering as he walked.

Great work, Miles. You can build a plane from the ground up but apparently flipping a lightswitch is beyond your grasp.

After a few minutes' walk, avoiding the odd molehill here and there, Tails once again disabled the security systems and entered the shop, this time only triggering the muted reserve power that gave him just enough light for visibility. As the kitsune maneuvered his way through the space, eyes on the illuminated room across the shop floor, the low-light conditions proved to be dark enough for him to miss a rogue mechanical creeper laying in his path.

The rolling board gave way almost instantly as Tails unknowingly trod on it, sending the fox flying backwards into a nearby workbench. His right elbow slammed hard into the edge of the unyielding surface, before he fell to the floor on his back. He could hear the creeper clattering against the far wall, echoing throughout the large room and bringing the whole scene to an almost comedic end.

Tails sat there on the concrete for a moment, grimacing as he waited for the intense pain that would inevitably overtake his arm any moment now…

...and it never came.

Tails slowly opened his eyes, and a slight panic began to run through him. He should be in agony right now; why wasn't he? Had he hit his joint badly enough to do nerve damage? That was a terrifying thought. He slowly began to move his right arm up, and found that everything moved as it should and felt perfectly normal, as if he hadn't just obliterated his funny bone as part of a rather impressive display of slapstick.

Something isn't adding up here. I practically destroyed my elbow just now, and I know I've been hit by less force before and still felt it. What gives?

Thankful for the lack of pain, yet still unsatisfied in the way of answers, the fox slowly, trepidatiously, turned his arm and bent his elbow, expecting to feel a wave of belated sensation any time now. Still, none came. But, he did notice something that raised louder, much more serious, alarm bells in his head.

I...I have to be sleepwalking or something.

There, plain to see even in the relatively dim light of the workshop, three network connection ports stared straight back at him, sitting within his arm as naturally they would a computer tower. But no, these weren't simple USB or HDMI ports, they almost looked like…

Infiniband?

Indeed, the young mechanic had been working with digital tech enough lately to identify a high-speed, industrial grade infiniband switcher, a standard format for transferring information in high-performance computing, even when it appeared to be embedded within his arm. But, why was it embedded within his arm? It never had been before, obviously. It wasn't even there a mere two minutes ago, not until…

Tails glanced back up at the edge of the workbench he had just become a little too acquainted with, and then back at the network ports still resting in his upper extremity, as if waiting for an order. Finally, the kitsune rose to his feet, keeping his arm level in front of him, not knowing if any sudden movements might cause his new discovery to retreat back to whence it came. He set off toward the back of the workshop, this time much more careful to avoid any stray equipment. His destination was obvious: the server room.

If this is a dream I'm at least going to get the most I can out of it he reasoned as he made his way into through the hallway off from the main floor, and then ducked into the third door on the left.

He hurried over to the main terminal, its large triple monitor setup and walls of technological miscellania as imposing as the complex systems and immense computing capacity over which it held dominion, and flipped the power switch. Thankfully, the young fox had quite a bit of experience with the particular interface that was, apparently, intermingling with his biology. It wasn't a standard piece of equipment, obviously modified quite a bit, but the basic workings looked to be the same.

As Tails located some spare cables on a nearby rack and began unraveling them, still mindful of his arm, he realized that this was, indeed, no dream. Now that he was away from the haze of sleep and under the stark white glow of the server room lights, it was all far too real. The mild panic he'd felt earlier slowly resurfaced. Who had installed this in his arm? He'd never had major surgery, and had only been knocked unconscious twice in his adventures, neither time long enough for something this major to be performed. Whatever the case, he could only hope it was benign.

The three monitors had by now engaged and all systems were out of standby mode. Tails stared down at the terminal, as if trying to intimidate the machine. One end of the connection was inserted to the console port, the other he held in his hand, trying to parse what exactly he was about to do. And, to be quite honest, he had no clue.

This can't end well.

With that thought, and before he could convince himself not to, he inserted the other end of the cable into his newly discovered interface. It felt...not painful, maybe slightly unpleasant. Mainly, it just felt odd. Almost like something ethereal and intangible was spreading out from his body and through the wire, as illogical as that sounded. If asked, there was no way he could put the exact feeling into words, he was sure of that much.

Slowly, and then faster, data began to collect on the screen, which Tails immediately took to picking apart with vigor. The fact that the connection actually did something and contained what looked to be a multitude of information only accelerated the kit's anxiety. Had someone been storing data inside his own body? Why? How? When?

But as he poured through the lines upon lines upon lines of code, his fears worsened as more and more was revealed. The first thing he noticed was that the terabytes of information were arranged methodically and in perfect working order, and although Tails had little idea of what any of it actually did, the complexity and size of whatever he was looking at was plain to see. But more than that was the presence of some sort of program present in his arm drive, as he had taken to calling it, that was not compatible with his machine.

This was baffling to him. N.I.C.H.O.L.E. was a hugely advanced supercomputer, comparable to the most advanced hardware in the world. It had been designed by him in conjunction with the Acorn Kingdom's brightest scientists with unwavering government support, so what could he possibly have under his fur that this beast of a machine couldn't handle?

He got his answer in the most humble of places: a simple readme file, tucked away amongst the hoard of numbers and letters and characters. When opened, it quickly became apparent that it was in actuality more of a developer's log. Each document within the file described a different section of the program, and what Tails quickly learned was that this monolithic project he'd stumbled upon was not simply software, it was software designed to operate a machine.

The creeping fear was omnipresent as Tails steeled himself to more closely inspect the documents. As the content of the first log spread itself across the screen, the kitsune's knees nearly buckled at what it told him. Staring back at him, in gawdy ASCII art no less, was the infamous insignia of one Dr. Ivo Robotnik. This alone would have been enough to send the fox into a frenzy, but what the text itself detailed was unfathomably worse. It was a possibility he had forcefully pushed to the back of his mind the moment the data began to transfer, but now he was out of options. He had to face it, as the proof was laid bare in front of his eyes.

The infinitely complex calculations, the meticulous description of hardware, the forbidden section of code not even N.I.C.H.O.L.E.'s mighty processors could handle.

This data was designed and coded by Ivo Robotnik.

This data was created long before he'd met Sonic

This data was not inside of him.

This data was him.

His hands were a blur flashing across the keys as he dissected every little bit of information he could.

[PROJECT BRUTUS]

[SUBJECT: MILES PROWER]

[AUTOMATON CAPABLE OF REASONING, EMOTION, INDEPENDENT THOUGHT]

[OBJECTIVE: INGRATIATE ACORN LEADERSHIP; PHASE I ATTACK PREPARATIONS; NEUTRALIZE SONIC THE HEDGEHOG]

His heart, or whatever abominable facsimile he had in his chest, nearly skipped a beat when he read those words.

Neutralize, the thought drifted through his mind like leaves in the wind before a storm.

He didn't know what to do. This was too much at once, and he couldn't stand it. Tails had spent his entire life, what he could remember of it at least, believing himself to be a good kid, a specially gifted but otherwise normal mobian. It was all a lie, every inch of it. And here he stood now, in his own laboratory, where a simple fall had led him to lift the venier. His lone reason for existing, was, evidently, to murder his brother, and who knows who else, in order to tear down everything he'd ever known. All at the behest of a ruthless tyrant. He was but a machine - a computer in a shell. A killer.

The tomes within the digital labyrinth remained on the screen before him, and as he read more, they gave the android a horrifying insight into every aspect of his true being - a world that was living just beneath his synthetic skin, and yet one that he was blissfully unaware of until less than 20 minutes ago. There were countless subsystems, he found, known as "obfuscations" blended into his construction, engineering marvels designed solely to imitate normal mobian bodily functions. A simulated digestive tract, faux blood that was recycled over and over through a simplified version of a circulatory system, lungs made of highly advanced plastic that could draw and exhale breath.

None of these things were strictly necessary in any functional way that the fox could find, except for one lone yet crucial thing: trickery. None of these systems were on par with the complexity of an organic mobian's biology, but they didn't need to be. No, they just needed to be convincing enough not to draw any suspicion toward their body's mechanized nature. Not even from Tails himself.

He gathered information on his abilities, which were far more than he had anticipated. Built-in laser blasters, cybernetically enhanced vision, and bolstered strength were only a few of the multitude of enhancements he found hidden within his specifications, to be initiated once his damnable creator had deemed the time appropriate. Until then, they had remained suppressed. "Inhibitors" was the term.

He also noted that, through some sort of wireless connection of which he didn't particularly care to know the details, he was connected directly to Robotnik's mainline computer systems at all times, so that the doctor might send any necessary updates down the pipe to his unwitting minion. Normally, Tails would be ecstatic to have such a valuable in to Robotnik's notoriously stonewalled networking. At present, however, it barely registered. It's tough to get excited about espionage when your whole life is collapsing in real time.

And yet, with all this knowledge of seemingly every aspect of his situation quite literally spelled out in front of him, there were still so, so many questions, and so precious few answers.

Tails stared at the keyboard. He stared with such intensity he thought he might bore a hole through the console. But that was all he could bear to do right now. Anything else might send him reeling. He was shaking, teeth clenched. Each breath felt like a hollow victory.

This isn't...it's...how could I not have known? How do you not know about something like this?

But the evidence couldn't be denied. It was on the monitor and in his arm. His whole existence was metal and binary, his very reality and the nature of his agency called into doubt. How could life hold any meaning to him if…

If...

No.

No, now wasn't the time.

He could break down later, he would break down later, but now was the time for action. Though he didn't know the particulars, he knew this much: the protocols listed in his programming posed a direct threat to Sonic, the entire Acorn Kingdom, and possibly the whole of Mobius. Robotnik was intent on using Tails as a means to an end in his crusade. He wouldn't let it happen. He had a direct line to the source of the evil. He could use this to his advantage, painful though it might be. In this moment, Miles Prower had the upper hand.

So he choked back the tears, steadied his shaking hands as much as possible, and got to work.

"No, don't send any more men, just resume remote reconnaissance. I want 'round the clock surveillance on any updates."

The king paused to wait for a response from the other end of the telephone. The room was silent save for the tinny voice emanating from the receiver, the words garbled and unintelligible from Sir Charles' position.

"Right. Right. Of course I trust your judgement, General, but I don't want to put any troops in danger if there's no cause for it. We'll need defense on the home front in case of an attack. You have my authorization to use force if you have just cause, but stirring the pot just for the sake of it..."

Another pause. The squirrel king's brow was tense with worry or frustration, Charles couldn't quite tell which.

"Understood. I'll be awaiting the report from today's sweep. Thank you, General."

The click of the receiver and the sigh from King Maxamillian's lungs blended together in a brief symphony of exhaustion. He gave a knowing glance over to his most trusted advisor.

"What am I going to do with them, Charles? On high alert simply because they haven't had reason to be on high alert," he remarked, directing his gaze skyward toward nothing in particular, "You'd think a man as decorated as him would be a little more inclined to look before he leaps."

"The general just seems to be taking a proactive approach, Max. You've known Penn for long enough, he wants to do what's best for the kingdom," Sir Charles responded, ever the diplomat.

"Of course, of course, and I don't begrudge him that," conceded the royal, "But he of all people should know that he's playing with fire by trying to goad Robotnik. Just because he's gone dark that doesn't mean he's vulnerable. In fact, I fear it indicates the exact opposite."

"I understand, truly. I'm worried about his silence, too. Hopefully these surveillance missions can get us some better intel to work with," the hedgehog encouraged.

Both men in the room knew exactly what atrocities the feared doctor was capable of, how much blood had been spilled by his hand in the past. The need for bolstered defences was paramount.

"Charles, how many chaos emeralds do we have in our possession at the moment?"

"Two on hand here in the palace. Our contact on Angel Island has one as well."

"And Ivo?"

"No confirmation that he's got any emeralds, but we can't be sure. We've known for a while now that he has similar energy concealment technology to ours."

The king brought his hands to his face, folding them neatly just below his nose, "So, four emeralds at large. That's...concerning. It would be prudent to confirm the location of as many as we can while we wait for our foe to make his next move."

"A job for the Freedom Fighters, you think?"

The shadow of a grin appeared behind the king's hands.

"Yes, Charles. I do think."