My dearly, dearly beloved readers; you have my thanks for your kind messages and for your lovely support through my hiatus. That you were able to bear with me through such a long wait is most miraculous to me.

My head will soon be better, thank you all for your concern.

So here's what I managed. It was supposed to be much longer and much gorier, but alas, my body turned against me!

I hope it satisfies you for the mean time…

: )

Too Far Ch.2

/'Comm. link talking'/

"I'll kill him! I rip out his internals and let him bleed out slowly!" Bulkhead snarled, pounding at the floor viciously, his optics far too bright.

"Bulkhead, desist." Optimus punctuated, laying a hand on the ex-wrecker's shoulder and drawing him back. The Prime looked to Ratchet, who was furiously typing away on the main monitor's keyboard, mumbling to himself angrily.

Arcee had taken to calming June again after Silas' transmission but was failing as the woman kept sobbing and the femme could not keep the anger and despair out of her own voice.

"It's going to be alright, June, we'll find them, I promise." Arcee soothed quietly. She turned to level a gaze at Optimus, opening a communiqué link.

/'I'm with Bulkhead. That fleshling is dead when I get my hands on him.'/

Optimus gave a silent sigh, /'We cannot harm humans, Arcee,'/ He looked to the crying woman next to her, and his gaze darkened, /'No matter how much they may deserve it.'/

Ratchet stopped pounding on the console and whipped his helm around to glare at his leader, /'And when he kills the children, Optimus? What then? We let him live to do it again to someone else?'/

Bumblebee, next to the medic, let out an audible whimper at the thought, but remained quiet.

/'Silas will not harm the children as long as he can use them to barter with us-'/

"He HAD a chance to trade, Prime, he chose not to! What does that tell you? That he doesn't want a 'bot, he wanted the kids!"Bulkhead snarled viciously, breaking the silent communication.

Optimus gritted his denta, and an ache blossomed in his spark, knowing it was true.

Ratchet typed increasingly harder until he smashed his fists on the keyboard with a growl, "I cannot narrow down the trace on Miko's phone any further than this; they could be anywhere in the Southwest!"

Agent Fowler, from his silent seat on the stairs, looked up from his hands for the first time since the video feed, "Lemme get on the horn and see if anyone's seen anything. I mean, Si's got an armada of helicopters and bright green cars, someone's gonna have to see something…" He mumbled, standing and bringing his cell phone out from his jacket.

As Fowler walked into the recesses of the base, silence descended on the hangar with the air thick with guilt, fear, and anger, until June sniffled and uncurled herself in Arcee's hold.

"Raf and Miko's parents are going to want to know what happened, what do I tell them?" the woman glanced up at her family's guardian with red, puffy eyes.

Arcee moved to say something, but swallowed it and instead looked to Optimus, who moved to kneel before her. "For now, I believe the story of an anonymous kidnapping will do. The perpetrators attacked your vehicle and abducted the children; Agent Fowler can forge the proper evidence to distract the local police with it until we find Jack, Miko, and Rafael."

Optimus pulled himself upright again, glancing over to Ratchet and the monitor, "If we cannot trace the children through Miko' cell phone, then we shall have to investigate the crash site to look for leads to where MECH may have taken them."

He looked to the quiet scout next to Ratchet, "Bumblebee, go with Ratchet and see what traces you can find there." Ratchet and Bumblebee obeyed, transforming silently and driving towards the exit.

Next, Optimus turned to look at the now, sheepish ex-wrecker behind him. Bulkhead shifted uneasily, "Er, sorry about yelling, Prime, I-"

"Bulkhead, please take June home. Then go assist Bumblebee and Ratchet." Optimus dismissed the larger mech's apology.

June looked as if she wanted to protest, but gave a sigh and stood warily; looking aged and tired more than years of single parenting could do to her. Bulkhead watched her approach, defeated, then transformed to his vehicle mode and opened the driver's door for June. She climbed in, gave a wave to Arcee and they drove out the exit; leaving Arcee and Optimus alone in the hangar.

A single, silent moment passed.

"I can't lose another partner, Optimus; I won't be able to go on like that." Arcee choked out, her grief and fear leaking out in the presence of her commander. "Not again."

Optimus looked at her with sympathetic optics, he kneeled down to her, laying his hands on her shoulder struts, "And I give you my word, I will do all I can so you never have to again. I swear to you, Arcee, we will find them. "

The Prime looked off to where Agent Fowler had disappeared; the man wouldn't have been gone so long if he hadn't found anything; at least he hoped so.

"We will."

-o-o-o-

"Nothing? Not one god-damned sighting?" Fowler roared into his cell phone, "This guy's got an army of goons, and we can't catch wind of ONE?"

"No need to shout, I can hear you perfectly, Fowlie."

Fowler growled into the phone, "Simmons, you're pushing it; find me a trail, a trace, ANYTHING. These kids have valuable information about-"

"About what? The Autobots' lunch schedules? How much you divulge in front of 'em, Fowlie?"

"Stop calling me that!"

"Whad'ya want, man? This guy's more off the radar than Area 51; no record, no documentation, no nothin'. Lookin' back, probably would have been helpful if we had a surname…"

Fowler groaned, suddenly feeling tired and defeated. "So we got nothing." He sighed, putting his back to a wall and sliding to the floor, "We got nothing and he's got three little kids at his mercy."

Simmons must have decided to choose his words, because the other end of the phone went silent for a moment, "I'm sorry, Will, I got my CIA contact workin' on this, but for now; we're stuck. I hope your robo-friends have better luck, I really do."

Fowler nodded to himself, "Yeah, thanks anyway, Simmons."

The agent disconnected the line, closed his eyes, and hung his head.

They had nothing.

-o-o-o-

Ratchet and Bumblebee had thoroughly scanned the area of the abduction with little results other than the carnage making Ratchet nauseas. By the time they had returned to their Podunk base with empty hands, Bulkhead had also returned from dropping June off. Agent Fowler had also left for the Pentagon to report the situation and put the children, and Silas', profile at every checkpoint in the United States.

Until then, all they could do was wait.

Wait.

Glower.

Sulk.

And pray that Primus took pity on the three children, and kept them alive until they could be rescued.

The local clock chimed 3 P.M.; twenty-four hours since the children had been abducted.

-o-o-o-

Optimus ordered them all to rest, to save their strength for when they located the MECH base, Ratchet, in turn, ordered him to rest by pulling medical rank. He ushered his grumbling teammates off to their quarters for some uneasy, hard-earned rest.

At two or three in the morning, when the base was silent, and the Autobots had just drifted off into recharge; the klaxon sounded, jolting them all from their sleep and bolting out of their quarters.

It was Ratchet who had sounded the alarm, for very good reason.

The video had been sent via an anonymous transmission, showing Rafael sitting alone in a corner with a defiant glare leveled behind the camera. Silas emerged into view, stalking towards the boy predatorily with his hands behind his back.

Raf said nothing, continuing to watch Silas through his cracked glasses.

"So, Raf, what say you and I get to know each other a little bit better, hm?" Silas reached into his belt to withdraw a switchblade knife, flicking his wrist to snap a wickedly sharp blade out; turning it over a few times in his hand.

"You won't be nearly as fun as your friends," Silas leered down at Raf, who leaned back as far away as he could from the man, eyes going wide as the knife came closer to him. "But we'll make do, won't we, Rafael?"

"He can't be implying what I think he is…" Bulkhead spat through gritted denta while Bumblebee trembled in barely controlled rage next to him.

"For his sake," Ratchet snarled, "he better not be."

Optimus remained silent, his face impassive, watching the humans on the screen with feral raptness.

On screen, Silas finally lunged, grabbing Raf by his arm, which was obviously either broken or fractured and hauling the boy upwards and towards the camera. Raf struggled helplessly, making small noises of pain at the abuse on his already injured arm.

"Let's begin from the insides, shall we?" Silas smirked, grabbing Raf's wrists in one large hand and brutally lifted them up, causing Raf's arm to make a cracking noise that made them wince.

"Insides?" Ratchet balked.

"Oh, Primus, he can't mean-" Arcee gasped.

Bumblebee wailed, his hands flying to his head as his optics shrank in fear, "/No! We have to do something! He can't-/"

"Bumblebee," Optimus looked back, sadly, "This isn't live; Silas recorded this to send to us."

"So it couldn't be traced…" Bulkhead sighed.

By now, Silas had cuffed Raf's hands with cruel metal cuffs and hooked them onto a chain from the ceiling.

The boy was struggling violently as he was dragged upwards by his broken arm, his feet barely touching the floor.

Silas had circled the room again, emerging from behind Raf again with the wickedly curved blade, tossing it casually in the air and catching it as he walked.

"Anything to say, Rafael? Or shall we just begin…" The man came up behind the boy and pressed the tip of the knife to Raf's pale cheek.

Raf made a frightened- terrified- face as he glanced down at the blade just inches from his eyes. The boy's jaw trembled, either in fear or in attempt to make words.

He finally spoke with a glare, insolent, "Go to Hell."

Bumblebee keened as Silas began to pummel Raf for his remark, his brave and defiant words that came from being taught by himself and others; taught that he should stand up to bullies and not give them what they want.

And now his poor charge was being beaten to within an inch of his life, and he could do nothing to stop it.

"I see your mother was too busy with your sibling's to teach you any manners. Jack has the same problem; perhaps the Autobot's aren't as good an influence on you as you believe?" Silas teased, rounding back to give another harsh punch to the back of the boy's head, eliciting a gasp of pain.

"But, I suppose," The man mused, returning his hands behind his back with the knife glittering in between them, "That's nothing that can't be corrected, hmm?"

Raf's chest heaved as he tried to catch his breath, head lolling upwards to try and get a look at his attacker as his arms strained above him.

Silas grabbed a handful of the boy's hair and pulled back to show his vulnerable throat, "I wonder what sort of response I'll garner out of your yellow bot friend when I return you to him; in pieces…"

Silas wasted no time after that; he sunk his blade into Raf's shoulder with an audible shlick sound, not a second later, Raf's scream accompanied it.

Minutes turned to hours for the five on looking Autobots; paralyzed by a horror that pierced them to their cores. The slick, disgusting noises of that blade sinking into flesh never ceased, though the screams died to agonized whines as the boy's life essence leaked onto the filthy floor.

Silas finally released Rafael's arms and allowed his body to drop into a pool of his blood. Raf didn't even twitch; lying far too still, face turned away. His broken arm now hung onto his body by strands of gory tissue, there were far too many punctures in his little abdomen for comfort, and the blood just wouldn't stop!

The man walked towards the camera, lowering his face into the lens with a sadistic smile, "I seem to have made a mess of your little friend, Prime. Don't worry; I won't repeat that mistake with the other two…"

Silas exited the shot to give the Autobot's one last look at Rafael's still, mutilated form, before the camera went dark.

-o-o-o-

Ratchet had to lean against the console to keep himself from collapsing,

Optimus' mouth was agape, optics still glued to the black screen.

Arcee had to rush away to the wall as she purged her tanks onto the floor; half digested energon spewing from her mouth.

Bumblebee stood, too shocked, too consumed by horror and fear to move, to twitch of let one sound from his vocalizer.

Bulkhead was torn between panic and anger; fearing too many things at once, mostly his own helplessness to be there to take action.

There were a thousand things that could have been said. Optimus could have given encouragement that Raf was tough and would survive. Ratchet could have boasted about the superiority of Cybertronian tracking, and how it was only a matter of time before Silas would be found. They could have rallied themselves into motion and confidence.

But they said nothing.

And the screams echoed on in their audios.