Perceptor examined the germ sample a little more closely. He couldn't seem to get his lenses to adjust correctly. He sighed; lack of recharge was starting to take its toll.
He transformed into his bipedal mode and grabbed a mug of energon on the lab table next to him. He took a sip and glanced at the clock. Yep, it was past midnight. He silently promised to go into recharge after he properly examined the samples. He hoped to find a cure to a few human illnesses by the end of the year, and he needed to get the necessary data.
There was a light knock on the door. Perceptor looked towards it confusedly. Now who could that be at this hour?
"Come in," he called. The knock sounded again, slightly more insistent this time. Perceptor furrowed his metallic brow in puzzlement and walked to the door.
"The door was unlo-" he stopped when he saw no one on the other side. He looked to either side of the corridor. He heard retreating footsteps a little ways away. The footsteps paused, as though waiting for him to follow.
"Sideswipe? Sunstreaker? Is this an endeavor to make a fool of me?" he asked. There was no answer. He rolled his optics.
"Sideswipe, Sunstreaker, this is the third time this seven-day-cycle. I'm not going to rise to the b-" he stopped talking when his door slid closed behind him, and a click told him it was locked.
"I must admit that you are getting clever about this venture if you were able to bar my way to safety. Did you rewire the control console?" he asked. Everything was silent in the hall. Perceptor frowned as he was beginning to get nervous in the eerie silence. Doubt began to nibble at his spark. Would the twins really be able to pull all this off? Would they even do it? He had no doubt in his mind that they would do it, but it wasn't like them to try the same trick so soon, and lacking as much embarrassment as they could stuff into it. The last two times it had involved bright turquoise paint falling on top of him the moment he stepped outside the door, and then a paint gun had done a painful polka-dot design. And then the twins had taken pictures. Lots of pictures.
"Whoever it is, please respond," he tried again, doing his very best too hide any of what was going on in his head. By now he was almost sure this wasn't the twins' doing. They never delayed gratification long enough for an overly-complex trap. The footsteps started retreating again. He looked around, and noticed there weren't any doors leading out of the corridor. It was just going straight, but it was too dark to see his phantom knocker. Perceptor strained his optics trying to catch a glimpse of the owner of the footsteps, but it was almost as if they were just a sound with nowhere that it originates from. He quickly ran a diagnostic on his audio receptors and they came up in perfect condition.
There was the sound of a door being opened and shut and the footsteps disappeared. Perceptor followed the corridor until he came to the end of it. Strangely, at the end there was the door to the med-bay, though there was an odd picture scratched into the surface of the door. It was an almost spherical shape, only it had more then a few facets, like a well-cut diamond. It looked familiar.
Perceptor filed that information for something to look over in the future, but for now he opened the door to the med-bay.
The inside of the med-bay was dark, as was everything else. There was moonlight leaking from the window and it fell to the middle of the floor. That wasn't right, there wasn't moonlight in Cybertron, but Perceptor didn't really care. The Cybertronian equivalent of his throat constricted and his energon ran cold. No, he didn't care about that at the moment because his eyes were glued to Ratchet's sparkless corpse right where the moonlight hit.
Perceptor woke up with a start and nearly falling off his recharge berth.
---
"Congratulations, Ratch. You scared the living daylights out of Perceptor." There was a ghostly eye roll at the late engineer's words.
"With what we have to do he'd better get used to it. When is Prowl going to contact Jazz?"
"Tomorrow. We can only go one at a time at first."
"Why?"
"Well, for one we don't want to wake the whole of Metroplex up with six simultaneous screams, for two we need each other free for back up in case someone tries to resist, and for three…"
"Who would want to miss seeing our friends scared witless?" A slight amused smile.
"Right."
"Who are you going to contact, 'Jack?"
"Grimlock. We need to have the Dinobots' strength behind us if we want to get to life and get Vector Sigma under control."
"And you want reassure them as fast as possible that we're okay."
"And you don't?"
"Touché. Well, I'm going to see if Perceptor's okay. We can hardly have him have a spark attack on the first nightmare."
"And you're worried about him."
"What did you say?"
"Nothing."
---
Jazz took another drink of energon. Glaring sunlight came down obnoxiously into the recreation room, and it hurt his optics. It was too early to deal with pain.
He noticed that there seemed to be an equally tired Perceptor sitting down on one of the Cybertronian-size couches. Perceptor looked, for a lack of a better word, awful. He seemed as though he were slightly traumatized by something. Jazz grabbed an extra mug of energon and walked towards the scientist.
"Had a bad night?" he asked, handing Perceptor some energon. Perceptor jumped slightly then looked up at him.
"J-Jazz, I didn't see you. Yes, I s-suffered from a slight disturbance in my recharge and I couldn't fall in-into slumber again afterwards," he said, accepting the energon. Jazz raised an optic ridge at the scientist's jumpy behavior and language.
"And that's why you're as nervous as a petro-rabbit? Did you have a bad dream?" he asked.
"Yes, I-I had a bad dream," Perceptor said, grimacing. His expression screamed 'understatement of the century!' "May I en-enquire as to why you are up at this early hour?" he asked, making an obvious effort of steadying his speech. Jazz grinned sheepishly.
"I sort of listened to music all night. I didn't realize how late it was 'till about fifteen minutes ago," he said. Perceptor raised an optic ridge but didn't say anything.
"You should go and try to get some recharge. I'm sure you're experiments can wait until you get enough sleep to keep your hands from shaking," Jazz joked. A slight smile teased Perceptor's lips, though it obviously was tainted by something Jazz couldn't see.
"I sh-shall attempt to, though I cannot promise recharge. I'll leave you to your music," he said and he disappeared out the door. Did the saboteur think that Perceptor would really try to recharge after the obvious shake-up he had? No. Did the saboteur think that it was really any of his business? No. Jazz took another swig of energon and walked to his own rooms. Inside was a desk with a boom box on it and a recharge berth. There were a couple posters on the walls but that was just decoration. The boom box was already playing 'We Will Rock You.'
Today was Jazz's day off, and he was going to enjoy it. He eased into the seat at his desk and leaned back, gently tapping to the music. When it ended, an odd song came up.
You don't remember me,
But I, remember you.
Jazz glanced confusedly at the boom box. He didn't put that song on there. He switched to the next track.
Help!
I need somebody's
Help!
Not just anybody's
Help!
You know I need someone
Help!
Okay, now he knew that he didn't put Beatles in there. Jazz switched to the next track, his confusion growing. Did Blaster leave a burned CD in here in the couple minutes he was out?
(Wake me up)
Wake me up inside!
(I can't wake up)
Wake me up inside!
(Save me)
Call my name and save me from the dark.
(Wake me up)
Bid my blood to run,
(I can't wake up)
Before we all come undone!
(Save us)
Save us from the nothing we'll become.
Wait a second; some of those lyrics weren't even the right ones. What in the Pit?
Jazz tried turning the boom box off. He could swear the thing was laughing at him as it continued to play that same song. Great Primus, he owned a demon boom box.
I've been sleeping a thousand years it seems,
got to open my eyes to everything.
Without a thought without a voice without a soul
don't let me die here
there must be something more
bring me to life.
Jazz tried unplugging it. Apparently he had inspired the wrath of the evil boom box. It started cranking up the volume as though just to spite him, but something seemed wrong about it. This wasn't friendly music. There was definitely something about it that seemed so much more sinister than the music he so loved. The music no longer seemed to come from the box; it came from all around him. It came from his berth, it came from the ceiling, and it came from the walls. It was with horror that Jazz figured that it was also coming from himself, and the music was just getting louder. He clutched his audio receptors to try to block out the song, and he saw what looked like sparks flying through the air. Not the electronic sparks, Cybertronian sparks. The ones that were their souls.
(Bring me to life)
I've been living a lie, there's nothing inside.
(Bring me to life)
The song just got louder if that was even possible anymore. The room was shaking to the music. Jazz screamed.
Bring me to life
Bring me to life
Bring me to life
Jazz's optics shot open. He picked his head up from his desk and looked wildly around, and looked at the boom box on his desk suspiciously while it finished the song 'Welcome to the Machine.'
---
"Wow, very creative with that one, Prowl."
There was a small smirk. "Thank you."
"Who knew there were so many songs that could help get Jazz's aft into gear?"
A presence of Huffer bobbed into awareness. "He's a musician; of course music is a language he can speak!"
The medic mentally cocked his head. "Speaking of languages, how are you going to get the minibots to listen?"
"Well, I don't know if you know this, Ratch, but the minibots often share dreams, so it won't come as a surprise for Beachcomber, Bumblebee, and Cliffjumper to be running around the same dream."
"You DO realize that Cliffjumper will be the first to resist the dreams, right?"
"Yeah, we are NOT looking forward to that…"
"Well, I'm going to watch Perceptor. Who knows, maybe he'll fall asleep again and I'll be able to send him a slightly clearer message."
The engineer sighed. "I feel so bad for Perceptor right now."
"Shut your vocal processor, 'Jack. It's not like you won't send nightmares as well."
"True."
A/N
None of the lyrics belong to me; they belong to Evanescence and the Beatles. I'm not sure who Transformers belong to, (probably Hasbro,) but I'm not that person/company. I'm sorry about not updating sooner, but my computer was five years old and it decided to die on me. I had to get a new computer and I still need to find all my files... Yeah, not that fun. Again, thanks to Maieve Avvi for betaing the chapter. Take a bow Avvi! Review please!
