It was several weary, nearly-recharge-free orns later that Optronix felt his will breaking. The strange half-dreams, half-hallucinations had not ceased with the deformed, physically violated apparition of his friend Ariel. On the contrary, they had become stranger yet.
As he was sitting at his desk in office the morning after his experience with the butchered Ariel, another figure had appeared before him, a young mech whom he recognised as a worker from the Data Collection division by the name of Saber. Despite that he was not acquainted, he knew through hearsay that Saber, though not yet mature, had a good head on his shoulders and spent most of his free time training with an energo-sword. By all accounts, Saber was genial, polite and refined, speaking with the grace of a humble uppercaste (and such a thing was rare to find these days) but the vision Optronix had seen curtly told him to mech-up and accept his responsibilities. It was a disgrace, Saber had said, to the honour of a true-sparked Autobot that their destined leader cowered and remained anonymous.
Optronix had offlined his audio receptors, but the voice had still echoed in his processor. Giving up, he had tried his best to ignore it, but that was a task much easier said than done. When Saber had disappeared, in the same haunting way as every other face (most of them mechs he could not yet put a name to but who had claimed to be under his command as Prime) had vanished, it took a while to regain his composure and try to concentrate on his work.
None of the swimming faces had been as surprising as the last, however. After a tiring orn filing menial data on uninteresting but extremely dense reading, as he had brokenly huddled onto his recharge plate to see if he could chase the relaxation that so skilfully eluded him, the apparition – by now, of course, not entirely unexpected – had been, to the young archivist, so shocking that he had leapt back as though scalded and fallen clean off his berth.
His pristine, well-tended body bent awkward in the inverted 'L' shape of a gracious, self-humbling bow, the image of Perceptor stood before him. Unlike many of the others, the edges of his brightly-coloured plating were not even shimmering. For a moment, Optronix felt that if he reached out to touch, the vision might be real, his fingers might just touch living plating...
It was not that it was Perceptor that was shocking. Less than a deca-cycle prior, Optronix had been working with the famous theorist on Zeta Prime's body, and had even, to his secret pleasure, held an extended and relatively insightful conversation with him, something that most mechs of his caste would never dream of being able to claim.
However, Perceptor was one of the most, if not the most, highly-regarded scientists on the planet. Such a position of esteem, regardless of his social status at creation, carried with it certain perks – most notably, the fluidity to move easily upwards through the strict caste ranking system of Cybertron's Autobot government. Though Perceptor had probably onlined as nothing more than a lab drone, he was now widely regarded to be of a caste that held almost the same clout as a senator, if not a state governor. Of course, to survive in the vicious world of the political elite, the microscope had, for the most part, adopted the many necessary social norms for his standing.
Despite that he had showed restraint more common of the lower classes he had doubtless risen from (his not physically punishing Optronix for the latter's gross misconduct during Zeta Prime's autopsy, for example, was unusual; any normal aristocrat would not have hesitated to send the archivist head over heels for the offence), he would never bow to a labourer such as the young stylus-mech. Not with the honest reverence and respect that this apparition showed, stooped so low that his torso was nearly parallel to the ground.
"May I say," Perceptor's elegant voice had echoed slightly as though he were speaking through a long but narrow tube, "that it is a great honour for me to be personally requested by you, Optimus Prime. To hear your high praises of me..."
"Stop it!" Optronix had cried, swiping forward with one hand. His arm had passed straight through the apparition's waist, which had disappeared momentarily and then shakily morphed back into place. The shade of Perceptor had kept talking as though nothing had happened.
" – more extensive training in forensics, I admit, but I shall embrace this challenge eagerly... as I hope you shall do with the challenge of Prime, sir."
"I'm not a Prime!" wailed the archivist, severely more disturbed by the sight of an upper-caste bowing to him and treating him with such formality than he had been even by the ghastly curved mutation that had claimed to be an upgraded Ariel. "I'm not a Prime!"
No matter how many times he screamed at it, no matter how many punches he threw at the ethereal scientist, shattering the frail-looking, delicate face and neck several times only to see them reform each time, Perceptor remained unperturbed. The translucent microscope continued to speak until his piece was done; it was a good seven or eight frustrated punches later, when, finally, he bowed again and melted away into nothing.
Severely spooked, Optronix had fled his quarters and disappeared into middle Iacon for half a stellar-cycle. It had been a thoroughly foolish thing to do, as only unaligned mechs, Empties and those with dark secrets to hide from authority wandered the city after curfew, when the Cyrra-nova dwarf star cluster was hidden behind the smaller of Cybertron's moons. Approximately a third of each orn was considered out of curfew hours; if a mech was caught in the streets by the army after this time, he was fair game to be accused of counter-government espionage and perfectly liable to be interrogated by the Emirate's special team.
Returning miraculously unscathed, Optronix had found his mind was already made up. He did not remember ever thinking the situation through while he was traipsing morosely through Iacon's streets and back alleys, drooping slightly from lack of recharge... but then, there was only really one choice to make.
Fumbling clumsily against the control panel, weariness hampering his normally-agile fingers, Optronix activated the compound's emergency communicator and called an immediate summons to Emirate Xaaron.
oOo
"This had better be good, Optronix," Xaaron warned, the tone of his voice promising a world of beatings if the young archivist could not supply an adequate reason for dragging him from his downtime. Behind the golden body of the city official, which gleamed even in the half-light of the nearly-empty conference room, Reverence's dull, non-reflective black form seemed unimpressive and nearly wraithlike.
Like his master, Xaaron's protégé Reverence seemed sluggish and tired from having been disturbed from his recharge. Unlike the Emir, however, who was waiting patiently enough for Optronix' explanation, Reverence seemed already to have made his mind up; he was glaring at Optronix with such unforgiving hatred in his optics that the archivist was once again taken aback by the force of emotion the normally-deadpan politician could convey.
"If you would let me, Lord Emirate," Optronix murmured, tearing his gaze away from the thinly-veiled disgust in the black flier's optics. "I... would like to accept the Matrix."
There was a long, extremely uncomfortable silence, not at all alleviated by the blank stares that both Xaaron and Reverence fixed on him after his statement. Wary beneath the piercing scrutiny of the two political elites, Optronix squirmed inwardly.
It was almost a relief, though he was dreading any response, when Xaaron opened his mouth to speak. It came as no surprise that the Emirate, when the words fell from his lips, sounded more than a little bewildered. "... You want to what?"
"To... take the Matrix, my Lord," and the more Optronix said it, the more he convinced himself that he did not want to change his mind.
"Take it... where?"
Though it was hard to misinterpret Optronix' clearly-expressed intentions, Xaaron was doing his level best to provide an escape route and willing the archivist to accept it while it was still available to take. Optronix, however, by now had made up his mind. He had come this far, and would be damned to the Pit if he willingly returned to those bizarre, disturbing apparitions that had plagued his recent life.
"Er... In my chest, my Lord. As its bearer."
Xaaron, to his credit, managed to keep his composure well, his response limited to a slight grimace as he moved his hand up to massage the bridge of his nose. "You want to take the Matrix and be the next Prime, correct?"
"Yes, my Lord."
The Emirate's thumb and forefinger dug into his optic ducts slightly. Nearly unnoticed by Optronix, who was so closely focussed on the golden politician, Reverence sneered without bothering to mask the noise.
"Optronix..." Emirate Xaaron let out a world-weary sigh. "We are in a state of political crisis. I appreciate your determination to help but we, er, are looking for rather more experienced leaders to volunteer -"
At least Xaaron was trying to deny him gently, Optronix thought to himself as he stood his ground. Most of the Emir caste would have smacked him in the face and told him to stop being such a pretentious idiot by now... indeed, it seemed that Reverence was itching to do that very thing. The young politician's purple-flecked fingers were twitching...
"I understand the responsibilities, my Lord, and I am prepared to accept them."
That Xaaron either did not believe Optronix was serious or did not believe he understood the heaviness of his words was clear. One optic ridge quirked, the Emir regarded the lower-caste coolly. "You were the one, were you not, who recovered the files on the mech rejected by the Matrix?"
Here it was. The wrath, if that was the correct word for it, of the Matrix was what, more than anything else, caused Optronix hesitation. "Citarex, my Lord. Yes, I recovered his record. He was burned alive from within over a period of three-point-eight orns." The very thought of it made the energon pulsing through his systems run cold with fear – but if Xaaron thought this would change his mind, he was sorely mistaken.
"You are willing to face the same fate?"
"Yes."
With one final sigh, Xaaron shook his head slightly. "... Very well. I will call a council meeting –"
"Please," Optronix interrupted, a haze of fatigue in his cerulean optics, "as soon as possible."
Unable to stand the breakdown of conduct any longer, Reverence sneered again. Optronix had been wondering when the younger, more impulsive politician would object. "Who do you think you are, bookkeeper," growled the black-bodied flier, "to call your Lord up from his recharge and demand he give you the holiest of relics? You should be executed for your insubordination! Be thankful that your Lord has agreed to humour you at all!"
"With all due respect, do you not win either way, sir?" murmured the archivist softly, becoming more than mildly irritated with his superior's open dislike of him; politicians were not supposed to show when they hated someone. "If indeed I am supposed to be Prime then my stepping forward now will save countless cycles searching. If I am not supposed to be Prime, well, you have made your opinion of me clear enough. I am sure you would relish seeing me melt."
"You impudent –" Reverence began, his optics flashing dangerously, but Xaaron cut him off.
"That is enough. It is unbecoming to carry on an argument out of petulance. You know as well as any mech, Reverence, that there must be a Prime." The golden emirate sighed again. "If Optronix volunteers and is correct, then our glorious Autobot government will once again have a chance to survive the... unexpected strength and coordination of the Kaonian rebels." Regal optics fixed the black mech. "Go and rouse the council... and a medic, just in case."
Chastised and smarting from the blow to his ego, Reverence turned on his heel without another word and swept away to carry out his duty. So belittled was he that he did not even bothered to spare Optronix a parting glare.
"There." Xaaron turned back to study Optronix calmly. There was a strange glint in his gaze. "You have permission to speak freely; I am sure Reverence's departure will make this easier for you. Oh, don't be an idiot," for Optronix had jerked and opened his mouth to protest, "it doesn't take a great amount of genius to see there is animosity between you. Now, please proceed to the council room – after you have told me this is about."
"About, Lord Emirate?"
"Don't play a fool, I know you are brighter than that. Why the sudden interest in the Matrix? I had you down as a quiet, solitary type. Not at all the overzealous, ambitious sort I would have thought would leap at the chance for leadership and power and glory, all that hype that surrounds the rank of Prime."
Studying his fingers briefly, some unrecognisable expression playing faintly with his lips, Optronix gave a slight shrug. There was something deeply unsettling about the thought of telling Xaaron he was seeing mechs who were not there, but nevertheless... "It is as it is written in the archives, my Lord. Nova Prime suffered visions too, did he not?"
Saying nothing more, he bowed once to Xaaron and turned, prepared to stand before the council and, unless he was very much mistaken, finally see if it was the Matrix tormenting him with visions or if his sanity was truly crumbling.
oOo
Only half the council assembled.
If he had been calm, Optronix would never have paid much attention to such a mundane fact, much less found it funny. As it was, he was unable to help a quirk of the lips despite the seriousness of the situation and was forced to hide his smirk behind his fingers. Only half the council assembled, and that was if he was generous and rounded the number up. If he did not count the mechs who had shown up compared to the number who were supposed to gather on the full board. In all reality, about forty percent of Iacon's most senior governors had appeared to, if everything went well, see a new Prime sworn in.
Perhaps it should have been expected. Many of those absent were the governors of slightly older models, whose limb were beginning to creak with spreading rust and debris. Not even urgent news of a nuclear apocalypse could rouse the eldest of the governors from their berths once they had settled down for a recharge cycle.
In another, darker way, it highlighted the weakness of the ruling government. For such a serious, potentially world-changing matter, it was protocol for every mech on the council to appear. Anything less was insulting, both to the Matrix and the potential Prime.
No wonder Megatron had made such progress so quickly. The long era of peace had dulled the uppercastes' sense of responsibility. Everything was someone else's problem...
The Matrix was borne on a small palanquin by four menial labourers who were nevertheless held in high esteem and allowed decorative trinkets to garnish their figures. A streak of gold on the otherwise jet-black helm of each mech distinguished him as a respectable, though lower-ranked, member of the religious caste, dedicated to the service and care of Primus and his relics. The Matrix, of course, was Cybertron's most famous, most powerful, most important religious artefact, imbued with the essence of Primus himself.
Vaguely, Optronix recalled the huge ceremony when Zeta Prime had accepted the Matrix. For several days, Iacon had celebrated, descended into a drunken stupor as the planet around the city collapsed into civil war.
This time, there was no designated successor to the Matrix, and this ceremony – if it could even be called a ceremony, in the small joors of the cycle when most mechs were comfortably recharging – had not been planned and was hardly impressive. Most of the council had not even bothered to grace the occasion with their appearance, most likely because they thought nothing would come of it.
Optronix glanced towards the door he had entered by. There was a medic standing there, looking just as sleepy as everyone else. When he noticed the archivist's gaze, he shifted a little on his feet in a lazy gesture of acknowledgement, but did not otherwise move. The deep red cross that showed him as a qualified doctor glared out from the pure white of his base paint. It caught Optronix' stare for a moment in the dim glow of the council room.
Everyone thought he was crazy and that the Matrix was going to kill him. Why else have a medic on alert? Not that he could blame them, Optronix thought to himself with a wry, humourless chuckle. Visions? Hallucinations? They had not once in the records been the mark of a sane mech. Especially not in the case of Nova Prime.
The Matrix' palanquin was reverentially laid down before Optronix, who stared at it blankly for a moment. Was he supposed to pick it up now and try, or wait for some kind of signal? Was there a ritual to perform first?
"When you are ready," said a voice by his audio. Struggling hard to suppress the jerk of surprise, Optronix turned his head to see Xaaron standing behind him.
"I just pick it up and put it in?" he asked, feeling somewhat foolish.
Xaaron's optics twinkled with amusement. "Yes."
Turning his attention back to the innocuous-looking Matrix, the sliver of light that was visible from within it swirling haphazardly, Optronix tensed and bent to reach for it. Though he was painfully well-aware of the gazes focussed on him, from the council and the palanquin-bearers and the medic who was probably by now preparing himself to rush a casualty to the repair bay, the young archivist ignored the piercing feeling in the back of his neck as his fingers grasped at the silvery handles.
Nervous and embarrassed at the sets of optics focussed on him, having never really been one to be the centre of attention (much less when his spark was involved), he turned away as he parted his chestplates to insert the Matrix. As the artefact passed through the threshold into his chest, something that should have been the most public and celebrated of acts in the finding of a new Prime, Optronix was hunched awkwardly over himself, looking more like a stooping slave than a future leader – yet another of the irrelevant little details that struck his ponderous, fretful mind at exactly the wrong moment.
A soft clicking noise alerted the archivist to the Matrix' becoming secure in his chest and he hesitantly withdrew his fingers, half expecting his internals to melt right there and then. When he had pulled his hands full away and the Matrix had not fallen out nor burst into a raging ball of flame, he half-turned towards Xaaron for some guidance about what to do next. Surely that couldn't be all their was to it... that was far too easy.
The first wave of nausea hit, not entirely unexpected but still an unpleasant surprise, and Optronix lurched. His optics guttering out. At another violent upheaval of his tanks, the first droplets of energon sprayed past his lips and he brought one blue hand up in a dazed awe, touching his face and then withdrawing his fingers to stare at the silvery-pink fluid there as though he did not know what it was. Pressing one finger to his lips, his glossa flicking out to taste the distinctive tang of spent energon, only verified that he was rupturing internally... somehow.
Looking back towards Xaaron for guidance, the fringes of panic nagging at his processor, the archivist became more than slightly concerned when all he could see was a dimly-coloured blur that almost took the vague shape of the golden-bodied Emirate. A cry that sounded like Xaaron's voice reached his audios, but the words were made unintelligible, drowned out by a horrific-sounding gurgle that, under the circumstances, probably came from his own body.
As a burning rush of white-hot agony shot from the alien device in his chest outwards through the rest of his chassis, forcing him to his knees, another spurt of energon escaped his mouth, spattering loudly onto the burnished metal of the councilroom floor. The faint tickling on his faceplates indicated that he was bleeding from his nose too, perhaps also from his optics, though through the overwhelming, disorienting pain he could not really concentrate enough to tell. Was that energon blinking from the tiny ducts either side of his optics? Or were those tears of lubricant squeezed out with pain? Another stupid question that floated in his feverish processor as, vaguely, the heavy thud-thudding of footsteps told him that the medic was hurrying towards him, or perhaps it was Xaaron...
Falling from his knees to lie fully supine and then rolling onto his side with his arms clutched around his own torso, bent almost double with the pain in his chest and abdominal areas, it took Optronix some effort to turn his head toward the medic. Onlining his bleary, malfunctioning optics, he saw the dark sculpted face staring at him, the look in those deep optics so intense...
For but one precious moment, the gaze was so forceful that Optronix, just briefly, felt the pain dim. A part of his mind, the more rational part that was not half-crazed with his melting body, reasoned that it was probably because the medic had administered some sort of anesthetic and was peering at him so piercingly to see whether or not it had started to take effect.
Optronix accepted this explanation as the first twinges ricocheted through his worn-out limbs and towards his spark again. As the face drew away from his line of vision, he offlined his optics and tried to concentrate on anything that might take his mind off the throbbing in his chest. The one thought of dissent had to struggle through a cloud of uncaring thoughtlessness, yet it nagged persistently at his processor until he paid it attention... and it confused him.
For the face that was staring at him with the burning, unreadable optics that pierced him through was dark, like the deep metal of the haulage crates so often left around the docks, but other than the red that showed his rank, the medic had been fully white...
The archivist almost noticed his senses and his reactions dulling. The panicked shouting of the spectators, of Xaaron and the medic, had dimmed down into a perpetual background buzz, impossible for individual words, or even individual voices, to be picked out from the mess. Had Optronix thought to online his optics again, he would have seen the world in very dark, muted colours, tainted with blackness. A pressure on his shoulder which he thought had been his superstructure collapsing in on itself turned out to be someone's hand, attempting to offer comfort, though it took some effort to deduce that.
Delirious with the pain, which spread out in pulses from the epicentre of the Matrix in his chest, Optronix barely noticed the additional ache when his head hit the floor again with a loud clang. Somewhere from within his conscious, which was slipping away as though it were tar through a thin sieve, a voice he almost recognised as his own berated him for thinking that this was 'too easy'... Nothing was ever allowed to be 'too easy'.
Mercifully, time stopped.
oOo
Optronix onlined his optics slowly and then promptly offlined them again with a groan. His body ached, and the bright white light of the Well of All Sparks did not help his poor head. Though he felt as though he was laying on his back, there was a heaviness in his frame that he did not recognise; it was most likely the gravitational pull from the centre of the Well, which had always been said to have a stronger hold on a mech than Cybertron.
He almost wished that his senses were still suffering from the Matrix' wrath. Sadly, however, according to the violently bright feed he had just received from his optics, and the clarity of the background noise he was receiving from his audio receptors, all his senses were just as good as they ever were – perhaps even better. While normally, the curious, studious archivist might have welcomed such a thing, he dearly wished that his optics were not good enough to pick up the strength of the light, or that at least he might have had some warning that trying to look at where he was would achieve nothing more than giving him one of the most processor-splitting headaches of his life.
"Could you turn down the lights a little?" grumbled the archivist to himself, feeling grouchy and churlish as he could still feel the residual aches from the torture that had killed him along with the growing ache in his head. All those religious types had told him that there was no pain in the Well. How wrong they had been! Dying had felt bad enough, now the very state of being dead felt as though there was a Kaonian living in the sensitive circuit network just behind his optics. "It's bad enough that I'm dead without you blinding me."
"I can turn down the lights," answered the Well of All Sparks in a rather amused voice, "but I'm afraid I'll have to disappoint you on the being dead part."