Coop turned around.

“Look,” he said, approaching at a slow, measured saunter, his face wooden, “you’re smart and you know things. You get it, I get it—you have...”

He held out his hands, palms open, as if handing the kid an invisible sandwich, albeit a sandwich made of carefully tempered loathing.

“leverage or whatever. Just ignoring for a second that the last time I saw you before all this I was flying off to save a million people from a bomb you set up to sink half an island—and, you know, just pretending you don’t want to wipe out all of us—the scalies and the spikies—and set up the kingdom of human beings or whatever insane agenda you had baked into your brain, back when GUN cooked you up, ok—just pretending, you know, that all this isn’t true—”

He stopped in front of Seven and stared at the kid with an empty, impassive face.

“What do you actually want us to do?"

Seven considered what Coop had said with a smile that was just a little too broad. There was silence for several seconds after the eagle's approach, then finally, the boy straightened his posture, stood normally again, and spoke.

"I want you to do what I can't: be three places at once."

He sighed and rolled his bright, orangish eyes. "As much as I hate admitting it, you're the only people I can trust anymore. I'm not with GUN anymore. GUN doesn't even exist. I'm not with anyone anymore, and, no, I don't have some kind of pro-humanity agenda, either. I realize now that to class myself among humans would be to stoop rather low for what I truly am—whatever that may be."

Well, his ego was still intact. He folded his hands behind his back and stood like some sort of commanding officer.

"And I realize that you people, as well-intentioned as you are, aren't accomplishing squat. Eggman already announced the construction of a new lab four times bigger than the one you just helped me destroy."

(Wait. They weren't accomplishing anything, but he was the one who destroyed it?)

"You see, I'm here to dismantle Dr. Eggman for good. I have everything I need except enough able hands. I've managed to flash an image of Eggmanland's command center computer operating system, and I've discovered that, using a sort of virus I've designed, it'd be possible to corrupt its user authentication in such a way it would no longer recognize Dr. Eggman as its sole authorized user. It would just require a coordinated effort to successfully get this virus into the system undetected."

His brows raised expectantly.

"This means pulling control of Eggman's whole empire out from under him. Robots. Ships. Facilities. Everything. Tell me if I've gotten your interest yet, really."

The way he grinned so smugly could have deterred even the most determined rebel, but there it was on the table: If he was telling the truth, it was a way to stop Eggman.

Coop’s gaze flickered. After a second or two he spoke.

“I’m interested,” he said, blandly.

Seven appeared pleased with the response. Somehow, he appeared even more pleased with the question.

"'Who says' indeed, huh?" he answered, still smirking that smug, punchable smirk. "I don't think you have much of an option except to trust me. I could still take my offer to somebody else, like, say... Rock, maybe?"

It was physically impossible for a living thing to look more self-satisfied than Seven did at that moment. He let the pseudo-threat sink in for a moment.

"I can't help but think maybe I touched on a nerve," whispered Seven thoughtfully (but plenty audibly), grinning as if actively feeding off of Geoff's reaction. He seemed to snicker a little, but digressed, shaking it off with a literal shake of his head. "But, no, no, y'know what? Since I'd like to show you what a reasonable guy I am, I'll be the nice one, here, and actually let you inspect my code yourselves." He then produced a small, black flash drive from his pocket and gave it an underhanded toss in Geoff's direction. What happened the last time they plugged in a flash drive of his they found...?

"I'm keeping the insertion method and access point locations a secret until go-time, though, so don't think you'll be able to cut me out of the plan."

"Correct," replied Seven to Tabitha. Ember's comment, however, was only regarded with a glance—an unimpressed, unenthused downward one directed at the more diminutive, but uppity bird. (After all, Seven was taller than her. And Rodolf. And Mako. Actually, he was bigger than pretty much everyone there except Coop, Geoff, and Ace, if only on account of being at least somewhat human.)

"In the meantime, get supplies and equip yourselves," he advised, then suddenly turned and lunged in one great whoosh and flutter of longcoat to the concrete barrier that separated their parking garage level from the open air above the city streets. He balanced atop it effortlessly, and used it as an opportunity to glance dramatically over his shoulder.

Shades on. Grin on.

"I'll be in touch."

He stepped off the building and vanished from view.

Coop watched him go, silently.

“We have to kill him,” he said, eventually.

“If he isn’t planning on using this virus to personally screw over half the world, then—“

“You know what? I don’t even know then what. He’s obviously not doing us any favours, and I don’t want to wait and see what he’s going to come up with next.”

“We have to have a plan, though. He’s been thinking about this, that’s why he keeps getting the jump on us. We have to be ready for him the next time he does. We can’t let him keep pulling us around on a string like this, but... for now, he have to get out of here. Let’s... let’s get outta here. We gotta get back to the desert. The fox kid, Tails. He’ll know what to do with this chip, and he’ll probably know what to do with that stuff.”

He gestured to the box of Mystic Belts, then looked around the skyline outside the parking garage. In the distance, the pumpkins of pumpkin hill stretched up into the sky like ragged toothpick teeth, biting the horizon. Behind them, the marble mountain range leaned away into an early evening mist.

“That way,” he said.

“Can anyone think of a way to get out without being noticed?"

“Take that piece of crap off,” Coop said, surly to a tee.

“Do you want to see what happens to you when that thing goes off while we’re driving down a highway?"