Miracle Sonic listened out for more visions but none came. Left without much of an idea what to do, he decided to help out with the evacuation of his planet's doomed counterpart (they were probably both doomed now, so he made a mental note to think of a better name to distinguish between the two). He had made a brief visual inspection of the transporters and most of them seemed fine – he only reported back two that had stopped working since last time they were checked. He still knew where they were from memory and he had to restrain his urge to break them all again out of habit. The robots began mobilising at the sites of the transporters. He had to leave before they mistook him for someone in charge who had a clue what they were doing and began asking awkward questions. Some of them didn't make it to the designated evacuation stations so he decided to keep himself busy by going out looking for them. Whatever was delaying them – falling down a mine shaft, having a tree fall on them in Palmtree Panic, reverting to their original programming and trying to kill all hedgehog-shaped objects on sight, failing to believe what they were told about the ensuing apocalypse and deciding to go on strike – Miracle Sonic made it his duty to pull them out of danger.
Meanwhile, Neo Metallix relaxed into his control chair, nestled in the core of Metallic Madness. A throne of steel and wires, he was attached to the computer systems all around him, virtually blocking out any sight of him from an outside observer, by interface points that connected at the back of his head, at the base of his spine, underneath each quill and into his hands. He threw the switch and was instantly thrown into a virtual world that overlapped and then expanded his awareness of the world around him. He saw a map of the entire planet that showed every installation created by Robotnik and now under his own control, giving him detailed information about their status and prompting him to manipulate its working at the deepest level. His eyes closed and a quiet serenity washed over his features that resembled Miracle Sonic in meditation. His body was still and he was indistinguishable from any other part of the facility – the fact that he was highest in the command structure didn't change this much. He was a slightly more crucial component in the machine. To harm the machine was to deny his own identity.
Warning lights in red flashing text popped up in clusters all around his overhead. URGENT REPAIRS NEEDED IN...
"Everywhere. I know," he sighed, "Begin activating the transporters from the perimeter inwards."
MASSIVE SPATIOTEMPORAL ANOMALY DUE IN...
"Far too short a time, yes, I know. Just do as I say."
EXPECT HIGH LEVELS OF INTERFERENCE.
"That's why I want you to do it right now instead of arguing with me and wasting time."
VERY WELL. DIRECTOR METALLIX AUTHORISATION ACKNOWLEDGED. SEQUENCE INITIATED...
Through the security cameras, he watched the forward scouts step into the crackling transporters, then disappear. Seconds later, they reappeared and gave the all clear. Then the crowd surged forwards towards the teleporters - the security robots were having difficulty corralling them into organised queues so that they wouldn't start trampling each other and wrecking the machinery in their haste to escape the unseen threat. On the other end of the scale, despite Miracle Sonic's best efforts, a small proportion of the robots refused to leave, unable to understand the concept of any life beyond the function they had been assigned by Robotnik, or any reason they would ever want to cease that function. They had at least been persuaded to head towards Metallic Madness Zone to guard their Director, ready to stand until the last moment to make sure he left safely. Again the teleporters crackled and again a wave of robots vanished, to be replaced by the next few hundred that the security robots allowed past the barrier at once. After an hour, the twisted, rusty mechanical jungle of Palmtree Panic Zone was entirely evacuated, then the contraption up on the hills of Collision Chaos Zone that resembled a broken pinball machine fell silent. The waters of Tidal Tempest were empty and the mining equipment in the hollow shell of Quartz Quadrant had finally stopped moving. The Central Mainframe had switched off many of its observation stations that had existed only to monitor the condition of the now empty zones, so the room in which Neo Metallix sat was suddenly a lot quieter. The cyborg hedgehog felt empty inside, his own energy drained as if a part of himself was now missing. I'm only moving sites, he told himself, I'll be able to set up on the other side. In the time it took for him to reassure himself, Wacky Workbench Zone had been evacuated and he would never again have to say the embarrassing and morbidly inappropriate name, reminiscent of a children's playground that came to life and murdered people every night, out loud in front of a robot army while keeping a straight face. Only Metallic Madness Zone remained. He would have to find a way to remotely activate the transporters so that he could enter them himself. He still lacked the security clearance – Metallix had never quite been trusted with access to a means of leaving the planet without Dr Robotnik's permission – so he would have to either hack his own systems and fake something or subsume himself so deeply into the system that he was mistaken for part of it, not just the person controlling it.
The last transporter in Metallic Madness Zone sent its last load of passengers out into the unknown. Miracle Sonic was still watching. The hedgehog didn't understand why his counterpart didn't just leave. There was nothing left for him here. Soon there would be literally nothing worth staying for at all. Didn't he have his own problems to...
Suddenly, his eyes glazed over and his vision went entirely red. He couldn't move and he had no sensory input from the outside world or the Central Mainframe except for a vague understanding that someone was usurping his command. No, he realised, they were controlling him. Maybe he was about to lose his free will now that he had finally become one with the machine. This felt different, though, too sudden and violent, less like a sudden realisation of something that had been happening over a long period of time. Someone was hacking him. From the other side of the transporter? No, the robots had already confirmed that wherever the transporters led to was completely abandoned, another Robotnik failed experiment. Something else wired into the system with even stronger and more insidious control than himself. Suddenly, he understood his mistake but the thought was already being overwritten by the stream of crimson destruction...
Miracle Sonic heard the loud rumbling and felt the ground begin to shudder. He began running towards the centre of the machine complex that already falling apart around him. He assumed that the planet was about to collapse now that nobody was there to run the machines that were the only thing holding together. He had to leave soon but he couldn't do so until he had seen that the other Hedgehog was still intact and was heading towards the exit. He hadn't seen Neo Metallix leave. The doors weren't opening in response to his approach as they normally did. It was the business with the Time Stones all over again. Come to think of it, the Stones wouldn't be in the same location in this world...
All the security terminals around the walls of the domed complex blinked on and off once, then stayed on, showing the same picture: the Control Room of the Central Mainframe, where Neo Metallix slumped in his chair like a broken puppet, motionless but not deactivated, his eyes entirely glowing red.
ALL REMAINING NON-ESSENTIAL PERSONNEL EVACUATE, blared a dolorous voice over the tannoy in time to a dull klaxon wail that was echoed in every single remote station on the planet, FINAL PROCEDURE ACTIVATING IN 5... 4...
"What final procedure?" yelled Miracle Sonic, "What the hell haven't you told me? Hey, I want a direct line NOW!"
He grabbed a handset and repeatedly punched in the key he had been given by Neo Metallix, with the promise that the security system should recognise his voice. There wasn't even a buzz to warn him that he hadn't been recognised: the intercom had been switched off. The tremors through the ground grew even louder and more powerful, knocking him off his feet so that he almost fell into an obligatory random spike pit before he regained his footing. The display screens, now upside down to him, changed to show a picture of Tidal Tempest Zone, which was sinking into the ground, the foul water draining away as something enormous, the source of the rumbling, slid into place so that it covered the entire region of the planet. A giant plane of quartz, he realised: the lens to the planetary-class death laser that Robotnik had built here, the one Neo Metallix swore he decommissioned as a gesture of peace between the two hedgehogs.
The lights in the mechanical hedgehog's eyes blinked once, then the laser began charging, the similarly coloured penumbra of light growing around it like a bud on some malicious flower that, when the petals unfurled, would unleash a stream of pure devastation on anything that happened to be too close to the planet's orbit in the same direction that the laser was pointing. He wasn't sure how far out the laser could go exactly, only that it was designed to eradicate a similarly sized planet. Another Miracle Planet... he had planned this from the beginning... he just wanted me off the planet so I couldn't even try to save my home...
The dread and remorse turned to utter confusion as he realised, after a few seconds had passed and the initial panic had died down a little, that the laser was pointing in the opposite direction to the planet's twin. It made no sense to fire at the other Miracle Planet anyway; this world was too close and would be destroyed by the impact of the debris. Then what was he firing at? They were floating through a rather barren and unremarkable, if quite pretty, nebula. There was nothing in the sky that could possibly be close enough to hit with a doomsday laser that would be worth expending the energy. Unless he just had a sudden unquenchable urge to fire it to see what happened. Unless he had taken a sudden violent exception to empty space...
The recoil of the impact sent Miracle Sonic flying. He had been plunged into a darkness more total than the bottom of the mines. Pain throughout his entire body barely registered, as though his mind were somewhere else at the time. A terrible noise pealed once, a loud ripping like someone tearing through finest silk with a jagged blade, but loud enough to be heard all over the planet. Then everything glowed emerald again. He was floating inside the dimension he usually only passed through to travel backwards or forwards in time, a nexus of pure energy where he should not be able to exist except when he had transcended matter through the sheer joy of motion. Except now he hung there, in the exact centre, as if the winds were holding him there rather than rushing him onwards. From somewhere very close, maybe all around him, and also much larger than him, taking up all the space that was not occupied by himself, he heard a voice. Or rather, a collection of voices, tiny, high-pitched, chirping, like birds flying in spirals through the sky.
"There is no need to worry any further. You are no longer in any danger. Everything is being taken care of for you, so that you may focus solely on your role as observer. You were brought here to watch the final stage in our plan, as you have watched every stage leading up to it, even those that happened before you ever existed. It would do you well to consider yourself the most privileged life form in the Universe. No other shall ever witness something like this, as it will not need to be repeated. For you are about to see completion itself, in its purest essence. Make sure you do not miss a moment."