The first thing he felt was weight.
Not the familiar, comfortable kind that came from his own body—but a wrongness, a distribution of mass that didn't belong to him. His center of gravity felt lower. His arms were heavier. His gut was… bigger.
His eyes snapped open.
Fluorescent lights burned down from the ceiling in jagged strips, buzzing faintly. The air smelled faintly of ozone and scorched circuitry. He was lying on a cold steel platform surrounded by walls of glass, the kind you'd find in a lab with too much funding and too little morality.
A name, his name, should have been there—simple, obvious—but instead there was nothing but static in his head where his real identity had been. He searched his mind in panic, digging through the fog.
What he found was… strange.
Two sets of memories.
One was his—memories of a life before this moment: mundane days, quiet regrets, a dull, human existence that had ended abruptly in darkness.
The other… belonged to this body.
And that's when the name hit him.
Doctor Ivo Robotnik.
The words slammed into his mind like an alarm klaxon. Not because he didn't know who that was—but because everyone knew. The greatest technological mind in a fictional world. A genius, an inventor… and a megalomaniac.
Except this wasn't fiction. This was real.
And his hands… the thick, gloved fingers flexing in front of him… they were Eggman's.
Before he could spiral further, a voice crackled through a nearby intercom.
"Squad Alpha, report. Package retrieval in T-minus ten minutes. Repeat—Emerald containment secured. ETA to extraction: ten minutes."
Emerald containment.
He froze.
The other memories in his head kicked in, flashing schematics, raw data, energy readings.
Seven objects. Seven brilliant, otherworldly gems, each glowing in a different hue—red, blue, green, yellow, purple, cyan, white. Chaos Emeralds.
His gut tightened.
These weren't just supercharged batteries—they were volatile reality-warping artifacts. And in the wrong hands? Time and space weren't going to be the only things twisted.
The voice on the intercom spoke again.
"Vought command wants the Emeralds before the other buyers get wind of them. Don't screw this up."
Vought.
The name was enough to make bile rise in his throat. The memories—both sets—flashed again: billboards plastered with smiling Supes, PR stunts hiding massacres, secret R&D using civilians as test subjects. If Vought had the Emeralds, there would be no stopping them. Not the "heroes," not the governments. Nobody.
He looked around the lab.
In the corner, propped against a workbench, was a blueprint. A half-assembled something was parked under it—a sleek, egg-shaped hovercraft frame, stripped down to the skeleton. His eyes swept over it, the genius in his borrowed brain already calculating loadout capacity, thrust-to-weight ratios, and armor upgrades.
He had ten minutes.
No… less.
By the time the clock in his head said "eight minutes," his lab coat was on the floor, and his hands were moving in a blur. Tools scattered across the platform as he welded, bolted, and jury-rigged components onto the chassis.
A repulsor coil from the lab's disassembled drone project became a lift generator.
An experimental particle cannon—half a prototype—was welded onto a swiveling mount.
Old mech armor plating was ripped off a training bot and bolted to the hull.
The Eggmobile was born.
It wasn't pretty. It wasn't perfect. But it was functional—and right now, functional meant survival.
He slid into the cockpit, fingers flying across the control interface. The onboard AI—barely a shell program—booted with a static-laced beep.
Screens lit up, feeding him data from the building's security systems. He tracked the Emerald containment vault… and his blood went cold.
Five minutes ago, it had been breached.
"Alpha Squad, package secure. Returning to extraction point."
The Emeralds were already gone.
His knuckles whitened on the Eggmobile's controls.
He didn't have the luxury of mourning the lost head start—he still had one advantage: Eggman's brain. Vought's men might have a five-minute lead, but they weren't him.
The Eggmobile roared to life, repulsors humming, particle cannon locking into place. The reinforced lab doors exploded outward as the hovercraft blasted through, scattering sparks and debris into the sterile hallway.
The chase was on.
The lab opened out into a massive industrial dockyard.
There—three armored Vought vans, moving in formation, flanked by two flying Supes in company-issue armor. His scanners picked them up immediately: one was a speedster capable of bursts near Mach 1, the other was an aerial tank with limited energy projection.
The Eggmobile shot forward, weaving between cargo crates and cranes, repulsors screaming against the ground. The particle cannon whined to full charge, and with a squeeze of the trigger, a beam of condensed plasma sliced into the rear wheel of the last van. The tire exploded, sending the vehicle skidding sideways into a stack of shipping containers.
The speedster reacted instantly, vanishing in a blur. In the time it took to blink, the man was on top of the Eggmobile, pounding on the cockpit canopy.
Bad move.
With a flick of a switch, he rerouted the exhaust heat through the upper vents. The speedster screamed as searing air blasted him off the hull, tumbling across the asphalt. The Eggmobile didn't slow.
The lead van was in sight now. Through the bulletproof glass, he caught the glint of seven gleaming containment pods, each holding an Emerald. His heart hammered.
The aerial Supe swooped in from above, arm glowing with a charge. A bolt of raw energy slammed into the Eggmobile's side, frying half the HUD and scorching the armor. Systems screamed warnings in red.
He gritted his teeth, rerouting power to the forward repulsors.
The Eggmobile lurched, launching upward in a burst of speed, colliding shoulder-first with the Supe. The man grunted in surprise as the hovercraft's reinforced hull slammed into him, sending him spiraling out of control.
The vans swerved onto a main road leading to a waiting aircraft—sleek, black, and very much Vought-made. Time was almost up.
He punched the Eggmobile's thrust to max. The hovercraft screamed down the road, closing the distance. The particle cannon cycled up again, this time aimed not at the van's tires—but at its engine block.
The beam fired. The engine erupted in flames, and the van skidded violently to a stop.
Before the driver could even react, the Eggmobile slid sideways, hatch opening just enough for him to leap out.
The Emerald containers were heavy, built for containment. He didn't care. One by one, he yanked them free, shoving them into the Eggmobile's rear compartment.
He was back in the cockpit in seconds, repulsors kicking back in as the first sirens wailed. Overhead, drones were already moving in—Vought's surveillance net locking on to his position.
They'd be tracking him in real time by now.
Unless…
He tapped into the Eggmobile's signal disruptor—rudimentary, but workable. Using stolen lab uplinks, he piggybacked on the building's satellite relay, injecting a virus into the tracking algorithms. Within seconds, every satellite feed with his heat signature was overwritten with a decoy: an empty stretch of highway.
He was gone from their systems.
The Eggmobile banked sharply, leaving the smoking wreck of the Vought convoy behind.
In the rear compartment, seven containers glowed faintly, each one holding more raw power than this broken world deserved.
He didn't know what he was going to do next.
He didn't know where he was going.
But one thing was certain:
Doctor Ivo Robotnik—Eggman—was alive.
And this time, he was playing for keeps.