Genesis End

By Spinning Demon (Topman) and Gauntlet (Shadowman)

Chapter Sixteen - A Chip Off The Old Doc

Seven of them, all highly capable, and heavily coordinated... and one of me. How was I ever going to outmaneuver them?

I needed to come up with a place to run to, so I tried to think of how they would proceed. Snake would probably choke off heavily trafficked areas with surveillance via his Search Snakes, so I'd have to stay out of heavy urban areas. Gemini would most likely divide and conquer the city's teleportation sites, so those would be off limits to try. I figured Magnet likes to do things the old fashioned way, so he might start questioning witnesses to establish a trail...

Here I was, trying to think of what each of them would do. But would they be doing the same with me? My greatest asset is my speed, everyone knows that - so they would anticipate I'd try to outrun them, right? Which would stretch them out thinner, they'd be trying to cover more ground, be more watchful towards the city's limits. So what if I did the opposite? What if I took a route so slow they would just assume I'd never take it?

The sewers. There was no footing there, no traction, no way I could use my wheels to any effect. It was a risk - if I was wrong, I'd be completely out of my element when they caught up to me. But with so much of Monsteropolis to cover, would they waste their time even looking for me there?

I decided it was a better plan than anything else I could come up with. At the very least, it could buy me a day or two to come up with something else. I skated north for just long enough to establish a trail of potential witnesses, then ducked into a nearby alley, climbed down a manhole and doubled back in the opposite direction. The sewers were a slog, even more slowgoing than I'd guessed they'd be, and it was several hours before I was confident that even if they did a cursory search of the tunnels I'd be well hidden. Those hours gave me time to think.

Things had gotten so crazy, so fast. It was all a blur, jumbled details I had to sort out one by one. Ha'Khael was dead. I was at least sure of that. He might have been a demon, but he was in a human body, and the kick I'd delivered was bone-shattering. But it's not like he wasn't asking for it. He was practically threatening me, and then he lifted his hands up to cast a spell - what was I supposed to think? Gemini had said it was just a healing spell, but... but then why had I felt so threatened when I saw his fingers glow? Not just threatened, but angry. Or was that just from his words?

'Obsolete'. It was painful how precisely he'd put into words what I'd been feeling the past few days. He'd taken the full brunt of my frustration, but really it was frustration at myself. But it was time to end that. I'd done nothing to help the investigations, I hadn't even really thought about them, I'd been so caught up with what was going on with me. And all I'd done was come up with excuses so far, whine about feeling powerless against Mesmer.... no, not Mesmerman... whatever it was that was controlling me. But I wasn't going to be powerless anymore, not if I could help it. I was going to try to set things right.

It became strikingly clear to me as I trudged through the muck that Ha'Khael had been a lot more devious than I'd given him credit for, even if it was his downfall. He'd known exactly what to say to push my buttons - he must have been studying me, maybe all of us, at every opportunity. Picking up on even the tiniest of cues. It wasn't long before I realized I'd mentioned Snake would be scoping out emerGEnesis, right in front of him. I had no doubt in my mind that he had been the one to tell the Androids we were going to be there tonight.

But why? What was his end game? Was he hoping we'd lose the battle, so he could escape with his little amulet without breaking his vow? That could explain why he was getting me riled up afterward; he might have realized he needed a distraction so that we wouldn't put 2 and 2 together. Too bad his plan backfired on him.

So where did that leave things? Despite how much had happened tonight, we hadn't learned anything at all. emerGEnesis had been our only trail to follow, and it was practically reduced to rubble. And if Mesmerman wasn't the one controlling me, I had no idea what or who else was, nor did Shadow, apparently. Amidst all the action tonight, my mind had almost let slip the odd encounter with that disfigured man in the alley - could he have been the one doing this to me? He was there twice when I started getting violent, but he wasn't there when I attacked Ha'Khael... and I'd started getting the thoughts before I saw him for the first time... but it was too much of a coincidence to just ignore. Who the hell was that guy?

I was so lost in thought, I almost didn't notice the sounds of someone inching up to me in the dark. Shit, I'd been so sure they wouldn't have thought to look here! I could barely move, how was I going to fight? But when I turned, it wasn't any of the Mechs in front of me.

"Hello, brother."

The robot stepped out of the dark into the waning light leaking in from the streets above. It was Omni Man, one of the last surviving members of the once obnoxious Evil Eight. I took a step back and readied some bombs, though I knew they wouldn't do much to help me. He was wiry and skeletal with a large pincer handing off one arm and a large three pronged lance instead of a hand on the other arm. He was much better equipped for melee combat right now than I was, but I wasn't about to let him know that.

"Omni Man?!" I spat. "What the hell are you doing down here? If you're looking for a fight-"

The robot chucked and seemed to smile. "Fight? No, just the opposite. I'm here to help you."

I hesitated. Omni Man was an old enemy of the Mechs. If I was in fighting form I'd have been happy to kick his ass, just for old times' sake. But after the night I'd had, I was in no shape to battle, especially down here. As long as he was willing to play nice, so was I.

"Help me?"

"Yes, but we shouldn't talk here. We know you're on the run, and you need a place to hide. We can offer you that. We'll talk when we get there."

I looked him up and down. In their hayday, none of the Evil Eight could be trusted... this kind of thing would have been a sure ambush. But with so many of them dead or defected, I wasn't so sure that'd be the case anymore. Besides, I was just about as ragtag and teamless at this point as they were. What did I have to lose?

****

Omni Man led me through the maze of sewer corridors until we emerged into a small parking garage, an apartment building most likely, or maybe a small hotel. An iffy-looking freight elevator led us to the top floor. The once extravagant hallways were worn and dirtied. We walked through a pair of large doors at the end of a hall into, what I could only assume, was once a banquet hall.

I took a look around and had to suppress a sigh. This was just sad. Plastering an entire wall were various maps, photographs, sketchy notes, all tracking rumoured Wily sightings across Monsteropolis and beyond. In the center of the room, store mannequins had been crushed, skewered and pulverized, and some of them had been shoddily painted to look like the Mechs. Against another wall, dusty mattresses were folded over to make a makeshift couch. Golem Man, another of the Evil Eight, who couldn't form a thought of his own to save his life, sat across from a television set, mindlessly mashing the buttons of a controller. Craning my head to see the TV, the character on screen was walking into the same wall over and over again.

It really was a sorry sight. At one time the Evil Eight were among our most fearsome rivals. No wonder they were obsessed with rebuilding their team.

"Welcome to our base of operations," Omni said, and if there was any irony in that statement he didn't show it. "We've been watching you for some time, Top Man. All of you."

"Watching us? Why?"

"Since the beginning, we have only had one sworn purpose in life. To protect Doctor Wily, our father and creator."

I scoffed. "Wily? Guy's been dead and gone for years!"

"Wily gone. Golem sad," said Golem Man. I mean, obviously he said it, the mammoth can't help but refer to himself in the third person.

"Indeed, my friend," Omni patted Golem on his large back. "Gone, yes. But dead? We cannot afford to believe it. If he is alive, then he needs our help to restore him to his former glory." He had to be kidding me. What glory did Wily ever have? "But our ranks have grown too few," he continued. "We cannot do our duty with us two alone. We needed warriors. Recruits. And so I devised a plan!"

"Good plan!" Golem clapped, "like plan!"

"The vestiges of Doctor Wily's wealth of inventions are hard to come by. But I managed to secure a single Wily chip, one that could revert a robot master back to their original programming, the programming Wily instilled in us. When you all began to upgrade your armor to TM3 capabilities, we saw an opportunity to get a recruit unmatched by others. One of the legendary Mechs!"

My brain put the pieces together. "Wait, so are you saying...?"

Omni nodded. "We couldn't be sure who would be the wearer of the chip - even getting it smuggled into the RPD to begin with was a difficult task. But we knew that if we waited, and watched, the signs would start to show in one of you. And they have, in you. You are becoming whole again, brother."

All these violent feelings... all this feeling helpless... it was because of a stupid CHIP?! "YOU did this to me?!" I leapt at him, but Golem intercepted and pinned me to the ground. "YOU'RE the ones who've been messing with my head?!"

Omni Man looked distressed. "We have liberated you, don't you see? Can you not say that you feel freer, that you feel whole again? No inhibitions, no bosses, no rules? Without that chip you'd go back to all that."

I was about to come up with some kind of quip, but it wasn't so easy to laugh the idea off. That feeling of being obsolete, of being under the thumb of anybody and everybody, wasn't weighing on me anymore. I felt scared, sure, but I also felt free. Not having to report to some bloating, overbearing, cheeseball. Not having to go on patrol for an ungrateful public. To just do what I wanted, when I wanted. If this was all because of some chip, did I really want to just let go of that? I looked into Omni's eyes, and they didn't look crazed or deranged with conviction. They actually looked kind, and a little desperate.

"We aren't your enemies. There's only two of us, after all. But join us and we shall already be much stronger." He gestured to a pile of armour that cluttered one of the mattresses. I recognized it as some of Spin Man's old armour, or at least a cheap facsimile of it. "Become our new Spin Man, Top. You don't even need to help us in our search for Wily if you think it's fruitless. All you'd need to do is fight alongside us. Surely that is worth the gift we've given back to you."

Omni could see I'd stopped struggling. "Let him up," he said to Golem. I felt the large robot's weight lift off me and I got to my feet. This wasn't the Evil Eight anymore, that much was true. Omni and Golem didn't seem like bad guys on their own. What were they fighting for anyway? Mindless bureaucracy? Humans like those Emerald Spears fanatics, who wanted us gone? No, they were just fighting for a spot in the world. And right now I needed that too.

"Okay, I'm in." I looked back at the heap of armour, the largest part being the large and impractical disk that adorned the headpiece. "But I am not wearing that ridiculous helmet."

****

Omni finished installing the Spin Man skin for my armor. It was a cheap sort of thing, the kind you'd buy online to give your robot a specific look. It didn't actually change any of the fundamentals of my armor, nor did it give me any additional powers, but it gave me a monochromatic color scheme, which was probably for the better if I was trying to go around the city unnoticed.

"Welcome ... Spin Man!" Omni said with a melodramatic flair which was kind of pointless given it was just the three of us there.

"Golem missed Spin," said Golem.

"Now that you are truly one of us, there is nothing you can't accomplish, no whim that need go unsated... is there anything you wish to do? Revenge on a former colleague? Perhaps there was something you coveted... we could fetch it now."

I thought about it for a moment. Maybe I could use these guys. And then an idea hit me.

"I think I want to rob a bank."