"I was more gettin' at the part about everybody bein' as crazy as he is," shrugged Rock. "It's what he's using to justify all this. The sarcasm's doing about as much to cover all that shame and regret and self-pity-stank as perfume on a pile'a—"

"I don't have any reason to lie about what the researchers said," interrupted Seven. "What don't you get? I don't need to lie about anything anymore. I'm the one who's in control this time. I don't need to justify anything."

"You need to lie to make yourself feel better about what a piece of %#$* you are," replied Rock correctively, bluntly, with the detached dryness of a literature teacher discussing the meaning of a verse. "Anybody can turn into a monster, human or not. But what you are doesn't decide who you are. Only you decide that. You made your bed, not anybody else."

"You don't get to preach at me," growled the boy, tension rising, voice popping with static. His image onscreen visibly darkened. "Is this what you want? Do you want me to kill everybody?"

As empty and rhetorical as the question sounded on the surface, one would almost have to wonder what Rock would lose if Seven leveled Central City and virtually all that remained of GUN with it.

"So Rock Lochert knows how I think and feel, and Geoff Hawkins is privy to my plans. You've already decided what I'm going to do, and that's that."

Seven's statement should have been biting and snide, but he sounded too... pleased. It was ominous.

"If you wanna talk about making a bed, then here you go," he laughed. "Sleep it up, losers. You had your chance."

The image of the boy distorted worse than before, clapped its hands together soundlessly, then, as if by some sort of poorly-animated magic trick, produced a huge, red-numbered countdown timer as he vanished in a flash and fell silent. They apparently had seven minutes to do... something. It wasn't really clear what they could do anymore.

Over at Jam's end of the disaster, things had gotten far more intense than even the command center saw before. The small space combined with the sheer number of robots intruding upon the area created an undulating sea of mechanized bloodshed (oilshed?), as a seemingly unending flow moshed its way through the newly-opened doors and straight into the waiting gunfire of Tau's last line of laboratory defense.

It was a peculiarly mixed reaction; some of the machines, caught in the dark rush of adapted Nocturnus tech weaponry, simply collapsed and were trodden upon by their own allies, while others had minimal reaction to the experimental guns. Suffice to say that bullets still did what bullets ought, though, and that the volume of said slugs flying in both directions generated seemingly endless carnage.

Jam was fortunate that fewer of the robots were interested in her; in that junction of hallways, she was opposite the entrance to the lab, and thus in the opposite direction most wanted to travel. Still, she was a threat, and while the tide rolled one way, at least a small wave spilled the other, straight at her.

Down on Jam's end of the carnage, it was so unbearably loud that the corridors would seem near intolerable to any inhabitant. Hopefully the monkey was still keeping one ear on the transactions of her communicator, because at one point, it buzzed:

"Jam, duck."

And somehow, for some agonizing reason that was quite unfair to the ear's pain threshold, it started to get louder... and then louder because a fighter jet came tearing up onto the scene. Just like that. It was tight enough in the corridor leading up to where they were, and here there was no way the pilot could have continued on without causing some terrible catastrophe in the process.

Green had throttled down, activated the airbrakes, done everything he could to get that monster slowed when he saw the doors to Tau's lab approaching. The fighter shook and rattled with the incredible decrease in speed, gravity threatening to tear the paintjob off the thing and send a bunch of colors flying into the storm of robots. Its arrival was accompanied by a big rush of wind, one that was going to wreak havoc on the army of enemies alone.

The aircraft crunched hard against the corridor's flooring, slowing rapidly with a godawful wrenching noise of metal and concrete and a sight that was almost painful to behold in itself... and it ended up pointed in the direction of the clump of mechanized creations bumbling over themselves. Then, there was a lot of gunfire. Tracers spat from the fighter's considerable armada of weaponry at a ridiculous rate, followed up by a generally haphazard barrage of un-aimed missiles. While unable to procure a lock on anything in particular, the aircraft was positioned in a way so that they came in handy despite that.

When it seemed the fighter's reservoir of blow-stuff-up stuff was depleted (or there were simply no more viable targets in its heading), the cockpit lifted.

Out flashed General Green. Flashed. The afterburners on his back roared, the boosters on his legs thoomed. His left arm seemed nearly encased in a large, rectangular tower shield of advanced design that was already soaking up bullets everywhere. In the right, a falchion that glowed orange-hot.

He rapidly disappeared into the mess of robots, and there came the sound of things... not existing any longer.

Rock was already busying himself with whatever he was viewing in his visor; a touch of the side of the helmet, followed by a few button presses on the device on his wrist, brought about some change of visual inside, though from the outside, all one could see was the faint-but-colorful ghosts of lines, numbers, and other HUD elements.

What he saw: A map, projected into 3D space, and the bearings of his teammates, as well as the status of their aircraft. Following Green's departure from the battlefield, a couple of CTs in Chimera fighters had bitten it fast. A glance upward confirmed that the firefight seemed to be moving away from the command center, with the bulk of forces headed toward where Jam and Green had gone. Meanwhile, it was further apparent to him that Jam's fighter had stopped somewhere in questionable condition (which made sense in light of her transmissions), as had the General's somewhere further along.

The distance to the core of the cannon was pretty immense, and he couldn't call for a lift.

"If I can get to one of my fighters, I can make it to the cannon, but it looks like there's a lotta ugly between here and—..."

He stopped abruptly; his helmeted head turned just a fraction of an inch. What he was looking at was imperceptible due to the opacity and reflectiveness of his visor, but a cursory look in that general direction would explain a lot:

A black-clad, battle-worn and bloody GUN agent was aiming a revolver at Rock's head. None of the other agents seemed bothered by this, but instead looked a little constipated about something else. If Geoff and Fenn hadn't noticed prior, they were being glared at, and trigger fingers were looking fidgety.

"You don't get to make this call, Hawkins. We didn't come here to team up with Chimera," spat the aggressor with a distaste well in excess of vehement as he stepped up and pressed the muzzle of the large-caliber handgun against the primate's helmeted head. It clunked quietly; Rock's head jerked with the light application of force, but he did not otherwise flinch. "We came here to kill him. We'll figure this out ourselves."

Rock's posture visibly tightened and tensed, apparent even through his spacesuit. The agent cocked the hammer back quickly. There was an instant for someone to act in some way before everything went to hell.

The countdown looming over their heads served only to remind them they didn't have time for this.

As if Rock wasn't unreadable enough without having his face covered, there was something all the more puzzling and indecipherable about him with the way he just stood there, head slightly turned and downturned, hands tensely at his sides—one on his belt, the other gripping a tight, empty fist—and apparent gaze just somewhere off-center the unfolding drama. Perhaps he didn't yet move because of all the others—the others, who had all raised their weapons on Geoff when he lashed out.

It was tense for the agents. Some stood rigid as scarecrows, while others gripped and clenched their guns as if the mix of sweat, gunpowder residue, and nerves hindered their very ability to keep hold. There was unified baited-breathedness about them as every single one waited for some indication, some cue that they should step in, yet none dared take the chance to make the first move in the present company.

The ragged agent on the floor, apparently a commanding officer, laid there for just a second after Geoff turned away, eyes still wide.

Jaw and fists clenched, he breathed in sharply through his nose, as if to ready himself to speak.

"Open fire."

Rock whipped his arms forward; one palm landed crisply, maybe painfully on Fenn's shoulder, and the other on Geoff's. With all his strength, for the betterment of all his haste, he heaved back and down, and yanked the two with him as he fell backward into that narrow maintenance shaft.

Guns were already blazing before they were even in. Realistically, he couldn't have been fast enough to get all three of them out of that perfectly unscathed, but he had been fast enough to leave a parting gift in their wake: a grenade on the floor. The EE-issue-style grenade's digital interface let out just the barest of perceptible blips, then erupted with violent flash and flare, annihilating utterly their nearest attackers, and scattering like ragdolls their more distant ones. Rock, Geoff, and Fenn would have no immediate pursuers as a result, which was fortunate, as, for the moment, they were likely preoccupied by bouncing off one another in a narrow, electronic mineshaft-plummet of doom down nearly the full height of the command center tower.

Rock tagged the walls not once, not twice, but ow, a lot of times on the way down the shaft. It wasn't the most controlled entry, and it was a crowded, uneven, ladder-laden environment of hazards just ready to snag a faller by his helmet and send him spinning.

He didn't really get to see what Fenn was doing in that hectic environment. Naturally, he thought it was up to him to save his own hide from some pain. At some point during the fall, he managed to activate his magboots and make contact with a long section of wall; the screech of metal-on-metal was piercing, but didn't last long. The uneven surface was interrupted before he could come to a full, magnet-powered stop, and he accelerated into a fall once more, and...

Smack.

He would have been better off if he hadn't tried to slow down, because the inflated raft was almost doubtlessly deflated by a pile of sharp, hedgehog-shaped crystal by the time Rock hit it. The primate nonetheless collected himself quickly from the less-than-ideal landing, and, looking no worse for wear other than by a short-lived limp and stagger, set off into a run through the cramped corridor, leading the way to the hatch where he had originally entered.

As soon as they were out a couple steps into the open atrium, he halted a second or two to tap the side of his visor and check his surroundings and his HUD map. It appeared that there was a tunnel at the nearest atrium wall—the same big, four-lane-wide vehicular tunnel Jam had just flown into minutes ago.

"Alright, I gotta head—"

Naturally, there was a wall of Egg Gunners lining up in front of the tunnel Rock pointed his finger at, as if Seven already knew.

"... that way," sighed Rock in a low, rattling rasp, finger drooping.