Chapter 4: A Wrinkle in Time
This won't end well.
Dead End thought that about everything, but after Motormaster strode out of the Ark and the Stunticons followed, the bright sunlight outside seemed to pick out every scrape and dent on his chassis. Where the black Autobot's missile had impacted, the thick plating was twisted and deformed, with a glisten of oil or lubricating fluid seeping out. The purple glass of his cab was splintered, but the violet gleam of his optics was as sharp and feral as it always was when he faced an enemy. Or a victim.
Starscream took his time to make an appearance, and before he arrived all the other 'cons had gathered outside the Ark, forming a ring around the Stunticons. Megatron sat on a huge boulder nearby and high above them, Laserbeak and Buzzsaw perched on the ship's engines jutting out of the side of the volcano. Bets were clearly being placed, though no one invited the Stunticons to join in the wagering, and Dead End could tell that few if any 'cons were wagering on Motormaster.
Why should they? They don't know him. And if they did, they might have been able to tell that his forcefield had gone down hours or years ago, under the barrage of fire from the Autobots in the clearing. The first direct hit from a null ray would knock out his systems. Motormaster's own weapons were equally powerful, but there was a reason he obviously wasn't bothering to draw them. Even when his sword crackled with raw energy, it would never be as fast as Starscream, never be able to strike a Seeker who was lightning incarnate.
Motormaster was going to lose… and Dead End had to admit that was probably the better outcome for the rest of the Decepticons. If he won, he would not be replacing Starscream with a newer and better Air Commander; he would simply be humiliating a Decepticon who had earned his place in the ranks, a skilled flyer who was far better known to everyone there than the Stunticons were. Whatever Megatron might have felt for Starscream personally, he wasn't likely to thank Motormaster for that.
Of course, losing would be almost as bad. Catch-22. Megatron owed them his victory, so perhaps it would not turn into a feeding frenzy as every other 'con closed in on then, but at best they would slink away from the Ark in disgrace. Dead End did not want to imagine what it would be like to live with Motormaster under those circumstances.
The only ray of light in the gloom was the fact that they had been constructed from Earth vehicles. The Stunticons could survive on gasoline and diesel long enough to find or manufacture energon, though Dead End wasn't sure how to do either of those.
"Whoa," Wildrider said suddenly, staring at the entrance of the Ark. Dead End turned to look.
A vision in gleaming red and white strode out, dark helm tilted arrogantly high. As silence fell, the only sound was the grit of sand beneath feet as blue as the sky, and all the light in that sky blazed from the polished metallic white of his armor. The red looked even deeper in comparison, raw and visceral and hungry. Starscream turned a slow semicircle, letting the glass of his cockpit flash liquid-amber in the sun, and inclined his head in a minimally correct bow to Megatron.
"Slag," Wildrider said, sounding absolutely slack-jawed. "I could overload just watching that."
Motormaster spun on his heel, engine snarling, but for all his faults he knew better than to hit his subordinates before a crowd of mechs who were strangers at best and enemies at worst. So he only glared down at Wildrider, said, "I'll deal with you later!" and turned back to face Starscream.
"If you're done preening, let's get on with it," he said, and strode out into the middle of the makeshift arena. Starscream took a few paces forward as well, unhurriedly.
Then he transformed, wings and nosecone flipping up, arms drawing in and folding so only the long guns were visible. His afterburners lit and he soared into the air, peeling well away from Motormaster. Smoke and vapor plumed in his trail.
Motormaster stood where he was, making no move at all. He simply watched as Starscream gained altitude and did a lazy circuit over the arena hundreds of feet overhead. It would be insane to try to take Starscream on in his element, Dead End thought as he sensed ice-hard patience through the gestalt link, so we're waiting for him to come back to the ground.
Without warning, Starscream did. He flipped into a dive, turbines roaring as they propelled him far faster than gravity alone could. He arrowed down in a straight line that ended at Motormaster's uplifted head, and both guns fired.
Except Motormaster had been watching for that—every nanometer of every circuit in every processor had been bent on gauging Starscream's speed and weaponry—and he flung himself aside. He sprawled full-length on the ground, null rays sizzling against the ground where he had been a moment earlier. Starscream twisted, turning his fall into a swoop, and fired again just as Motormaster scrambled to his feet.
That time Motormaster didn't dodge—he dropped into a crouch instead. The null rays shot just over his helm, missing him by less than two feet, and nearly hit Soundwave's cassettes, who leaped to get out of the way. Laughter and jeers came from all sides as Starscream tilted gracefully and roared away, but when Dead End glanced at Megatron, he knew they were on shifting ground. Megatron's expression had gone from alert and watchful to impatient, and it was obvious he expected Motormaster to do something other than simply evading attacks.
"Never thought I'd be pulling for him to win," Drag Strip said softly as Starscream swept in again.
Dead End silently agreed. Starscream was coming in low now, all but hugging the ground so Motormaster would have no chance to dodge—and from the looks of him, Motormaster wasn't likely to be doing that again. Even over the thunder of engines and shouts of the crowd, Dead End was close enough to hear a quiet but ominous sound—gears and cogs grinding together in Motormaster's midsection, where the supply of lubricating fluid had finally given out. Every movement he made scraped internal components together, damaging them further. He had to have been in pain, because his lips were drawn back in a grimace, but as always, nothing changed the look in his optics.
Starscream hurtled towards him, a red streak splitting the air. And Motormaster leaped. He lit his own thrusters and shot fifty feet into the air—but he was an instant too slow. A null ray hit his right leg, the spark of fire in that thruster winking out at once, but he was airborne and had a moment of inertia on his side. Starscream was flying far too fast to react, much less bank or tilt, as Motormaster plunged down from above.
If he had hit Starscream, it would have been the equivalent of a broadside collision, and the Seeker had never been built who could withstand sixteen tons ramming his chassis from above. At Starscream's speed, though, nothing on Earth could have hit him squarely. Motormaster did not—but one huge purple hand snagged a white wingtip.
"Go, boss, go!" Wildrider yelled.
Starscream jerked violently, speed killed. He spun about the pivot of Motormaster's fist gripping his wing, slammed into Motormaster's frame and transformed as well, fighting to stay on top as the two of them crashed to the ground together. Decepticons drew back on all sides as a cloud of smoke and dust burst up to hide everything.
Dead End stood very still, seeing nothing. All his attention was on the gestalt bond, where the fury and power and cold cruelty had just vanished. He felt as though his fuel tank had just been yanked out, leaving nothing but a vacuum behind.
"Motormaster?"
There was no reply. The Seekers were shouting encouragement to Starscream, who could just been seen staggering to his feet, half-hidden by dust. The polish job he had clearly given himself before the duel would be ruined, not that Dead End cared one jot about that now.
He activated his combat radar and searched for the Stunticons. The radar sweep covered the land two hundred miles away in every direction, and four blips popped up on the screen.
"What the frag happened?" Drag Strip had felt it too.
"Did…" Breakdown lowered his voice even further, not that any 'con was close enough to hear. "Did Starscream kill him?"
Wildrider shook his head, optic ridges coming together. "Can't be… we'd have felt that, right? He's just…"
"Gone," Dead End said quietly.
The dust was starting to settle as Starscream looked around, even glancing at the ground beneath his feet. A few fragments of amber glass glinted there, fallen from his broken cockpit, but there was no evidence of Motormaster at all—no wrenched-off tires, no purple splinters, no scrapes of black or grey paint on Starscream's armor.
"Where did he go?" he shouted at the gathered Decepticons in general. "Motormaster! Where the frag are you hiding now?"
"Maybe he teleported!" Skywarp yelled back.
Starscream's frustrated expression gave way to blank unease. He peered back over his shoulder as best he could—a tall vent blocked the effort—and stretched out both hands, clearly trying to cover as large an area as possible with his guns.
Some of the other 'cons began to get into the spirit of the new game. "Maybe he's invisible, like that Autobot spy!" "Maybe he dug his way into the ground!" "Look out, Screamer, there he is!" Starscream's expression grew steadily darker as the jibes went on, and finally he let out an audial-splitting screech of rage.
"You!" He leveled an arm at Dead End. "Where is he?"
"What does it matter? You win by default, don't you?" Dead End couldn't have cared less about the outcome of the duel, or even about the consequences of being shot in the face with a null ray. Not after what had happened to Motormaster.
Starscream hesitated, clearly mulling over the win-by-default part. "Well, of course I do," he said finally. "Prime was right about that much—your leader's a coward who couldn't stand up to me in battle."
Dead End closed a hand around Drag Strip's arm before he could say anything in reply. "That's right," he said. "All hail Starscream, veni vidi vici, hip hip hooray. Until next time, Commander."
He started toward the Ark, Drag Strip in tow and Breakdown staying close on his other side. Wildrider brought up the rear, but they all stopped in their tracks when Megatron said, "Dead End."
Dead End glanced up. Megatron hadn't moved from his place on the boulder, but the fusion cannon was pointing straight at him.
"Where is Motormaster?" Megatron's voice was dangerously calm.
"I don't know." Dead End knew the mech he faced was more than adept at seeing through lies—as the saying went, you can't con a 'con—but if he told the truth…
"You do," Megatron said. "If you didn't know, you'd be looking for him out here. For the last time, where is he?"
Dead End swallowed through a dry intake. He was vaguely aware of Breakdown trembling at his side, and that helped to ground him a little; whatever happened, he had to keep his team safe now that Motormaster was gone.
"I don't know," he said again, wishing he had more practice in speaking with emotion in his voice. He knew the flat monotone didn't sound convincing, so his only chance was to try a half-truth. "Because he is nowhere in this place or time, Lord Megatron. Our gestalt bond doesn't detect him." Now came the lie. "The time machine must have returned him to the future now that his work here was done."
He couldn't tell if it had worked. Megatron's optics showed him nothing but tiny red reflections of himself, and in the frozen silence a wind sifted dust against his feet. Deep in his core, a gestalt link broken so fast there had been no time for pain—only for a shocked numbness—reached for its fifth part, straining for completion, and found only a void.
But after what felt like an hour, the fusion cannon swung away from them and Dead End forced himself to move on legs he could barely feel. He headed towards the shadows of the Ark, hearing talk start up again behind them as the Decepticons speculated on what had happened, but he didn't listen. They might know what it was like to see a comrade or wingmate die in battle, but he doubted any of them felt the threads of fear that crawled through his circuits. Where once were five, there now are four… and after that?
As soon as they were in the Ark, Drag Strip yanked his arm from Dead End's grip. "Let go of me! What are we going to do?"
"Are we gonna disappear too?" Wildrider said, and his voice was so quiet Dead End knew that he, the most fearless of them all, was afraid.
"No," Breakdown said, but he didn't sound certain at all. "If we were going to varnish too, it would have happened by now, wouldn't it?"
"Well, why would that just happen to the boss and not to us?"
We're in this together, Dead End thought. We went through the machine en masse, and we deactivated the Autobots together, so I have to assume we'll disappear too. Without warning, when we least expect it, we'll be wiped out of existence.
The prospect was peculiarly disturbing even to Dead End, who thought about death quite often. But his ideal death was one where he would be painlessly taken down in battle, with a perfectly placed shot straight through the laser-core, leaving the rest of him shining and flawless. He also imagined himself lingering a few moments after the Fatal Shot, so he could impart words of farewell to his teammates, divvy up his possessions accordingly, tell Motormaster exactly what he thought of him and dictate what he would like to have engraved on his Crypt marker.
That would be a dignified death, as opposed to what had happened to Motormaster. There weren't even remains to take back to the Crypt, and from the last few intact seconds of the gestalt bond, Dead End knew Motormaster hadn't even realized what was going to happen to him. There had been no time at all for him to react.
Time. Is that running out for all of us? Dead End didn't know, but he had to assume the worst. And now he knew there was something more horrifying than death—nonexistence in a place and a time where no one would even remember them after they vanished from the face of the earth. Even the Autobots left their bodies behind. I knew they were the fortunate ones.
He shook himself free of brooding with an effort and switched to one of the Stunticon channels. "We're going to use that machine to go back where we came from. When we came from. Breakdown?"
Breakdown nodded, the scout in him struggling above the disorientation of loss and fear. He didn't bother transforming, only picked a corridor and hurried down it, overhead lights flickering in his wake. One or two of them went out altogether, but in the near-darkness Dead End saw glowing red points at the end of that passageway long before they drew close.
Ravage uncoiled himself like a shadow made steel. Wildrider transformed, hi-beams flicking on, and Ravage snarled at the sudden light, the missiles on either side of his frame priming to fire.
"Don't," Dead End said on the Stunticon channel. Even if they took Ravage down before he had time to send a transmission, Soundwave would know about it—and there was just enough light for him to see the door to the laboratory behind Ravage. The lock was melted to slag, fusing the door shut. By the time they offlined Ravage and got through that door, the rest of the Decepticon army would have arrived.
"What are you guarding, Ravage?" Drag Strip said. "Your glitch-mouse collection?"
Ravage's lips curled back from fangs that could pierce titanium plate. "No one gets past without Megatron's permission," he transmitted, tail lashing. "Now frag off unless you want to fight. Or do online mechs scare you too much?"
Wildrider's engine growled, but Dead End moved between him and Ravage. It wasn't a fight he wanted to avoid, it was wasted effort. Without the time machine, they were all doomed, so the most sensible thing to do was to find some quiet corner where they could come to terms with their fate or high-grade themselves into oblivion, whichever worked best.
"What now?" Breakdown said, and the question jolted Dead End even through the thickening fog of despair. He looked at his three teammates, knowing at once that they wouldn't settle for a dignified surrender to the inevitable. And Breakdown will probably spend the last moments of his existence trying to make me care about what's happening to me.
Which he didn't. He doubted he ever would. But he did care about what happened to his teammates, and he knew that without a leader they would die—probably in a long-drawn-out and painful way, too. Someone had to tell them what to do, someone had to unite Wildrider's fearlessness, Drag Strip's determination and Breakdown's loyalty instead of allowing them to pelt off in separate directions, and with an inward sigh, he supposed that someone was him.
"We'll leave," he said to Ravage with all his usual indifference and turned away, though he fully expected a missile to strike him in the back. When that didn't happen, he led the way back down the corridor and took the first turning so Ravage wouldn't see what they were going to do next. There was no need to tell Breakdown to take them to their next destination, the only other place they could go; he knew the way there only too well.
None of the other Stunticons said a word as he set out for the Autobot brig. None of them needed to. Urgency, tinged with the fear he kept forcing back, raced through what remained of the gestalt link, and when Wildrider—still in alt-mode—brought up the rear as he always did, Dead End had to stop himself from glancing back over his shoulder to make sure Wildrider was still there.
The lights ahead were indication enough that they were in the right place; Megatron would have wanted the brig well-lit. Sending Wildrider and Drag Strip a quick comm to stay back, Dead End strode ahead with Breakdown just behind him and the two Decepticons looked up from the game they were playing with small marked tiles in a pattern on the floor.
Optimus Prime glanced up as well. The marks of an energy-whip showed dark across his frame—nothing lethal or even incapacitating, Dead End noted with disinterest, just enough to cause constant stinging pain. The other Autobot—Wheeljack—was in the cell across from him, seated but curled into a tight knot with his helm on his knees.
"What do you want?" one of the 'cons said. It was Dirge, but in a strange moment of déjà vu, Dead End found himself wishing he hadn't recognized Dirge either.
"We're here to relieve you," he said.
The other 'con, a Reflector component, looked suspicious. "Our shift's not finished."
Slag, Dead End thought, but Breakdown spoke up. "Starscream won the fight," he said, "so there's a calibration going on... he wants all the Seekers to join in." He directed a quick, nervous look at the Reflector component. "He didn't say anything about you, so I guess you could finish your shift."
He got a withering stare that made him flinch and sidestep quickly behind Dead End, while Dirge quickly collected the tiles. "Well done," Dead End whispered over their internal radio as the two 'cons left. He knew how nervous Breakdown was around cameras, but if anything was stronger than that fear, it was Breakdown's loyalty towards his team.
Dirge and the Reflector component had left in the opposite direction from the one the Stunticons had arrived, so they wouldn't see Wildrider and Drag Strip, but time was still running out. The moment the clank of feet and heel-turbines had died away outside, Dead End turned to Wheeljack's cell.
"If we release you," he said quietly, "can you use your machine to take us back to our own time?"
From the corner of his visual feed he saw a faint blue glow reflecting off energon bars as Prime's optics brightened, but the only movement in the brig was the slow rise of Wheeljack's helm. When the Autobot finally looked at him, Dead End felt impatience scratching from Drag Strip's and Wildrider's side of the link, but he ignored that. The last thing I need is to remind this Autobot that he has nothing further to lose—and, as a result, that he doesn't need us as much as we need him.
"What kind of trick are you playing now?" Wheeljack said, his voice weary and toneless.
"It's not a trick." Dead End glanced at the doorway through which Dirge and the Reflector component—Spectro? Spyglass? Oh, what does it matter?—had left. "Motormaster disappeared, and our gestalt link… can't find him. He doesn't exist any longer."
Wheeljack's optics flickered. It seemed to take a long time for him to reply, but when he did, the exhaustion in his voice had been pushed into the background; he spoke with the crisp precision of a scientist instead.
"In the world we came from, Megatron created you to fight us," he said. "But if there are no more Autobots, then he had no need to build you—and in this new reality you've created, he didn't. So the timeline is editing itself, erasing what's no longer relevant." His vocal indicators flared like balefire. "And that couldn't have happened to a more deserving pack of—"
"Wheeljack." Optimus Prime's voice was not loud, but Dead End would have recognized the authority in it over the roars of any crowd. He turned and met the Autobot leader's steady gaze, though he had to lower his head a little to do so. Prime's cell was too small to permit him to stand upright, and he knelt instead. A memory of Motormaster in a similar cell flitted through Dead End's mind and was gone.
"If there's a chance that we can save our friends, we'll take it," Prime said.
Wheeljack shook his head jerkily. "You can't trust them, Prime. You don't know them—you haven't seen what they—"
"And you won't see us," Breakdown cut in, his voice tense and sharp as razor wire, "if you just keep arguing long enough, because we'll all get erased by the timeline. Then it's just going to be you two and the rest of the 'cons. Is that what you want?"
In the silence Wheeljack looked from him to Prime, and Dead End wondered if the Autobot leader might be ordering him—over their own secure comm channels—to cooperate. But no, with our luck he's being heroic to the bitter end, because he probably thinks Wheeljack should have the freedom to refuse the only way out—
"Okay."
The word was so brief a flicker of Wheeljack's vocal indicators that Dead End almost missed it, and it was nearly drowned out in the creak of stressed components as the Autobot rose to his feet. Breakdown drew his rifle and aimed at Prime's cell, while Dead End commed Wildrider and Drag Strip to join them.
"Halt, all of you!" someone snapped from the other doorway.
Dead End turned his head. The Reflector component stood there, a gun trained on them. Breakdown had frozen where he stood, but from the opposite door came a rev of engines.
"Drop your—" the Reflector component began, just as Wildrider shot through the other door like a grey comet. Dead End and Breakdown threw themselves aside instinctively—in Dead End's case, barely missing the energon bars of Prime's cell. Equally instinctively, the Reflector component fired, but one of the advantages of having a sports car as alt-mode was being low enough to the floor that the glowing bolt streaked over Wildrider's roof.
He shot again. That time, Wildrider hit his thrusters, soared over the lasers' trajectory, transformed in mid-air and crashed into him, feet first. They went down together with a crash, cursing and struggling, but Wildrider scrambled away and as the Reflector component leaped up, gun in hand, Drag Strip shot him.
Metal screamed in the twisting grip of gravitational forces. It was, Dead End thought in detachment, like watching a mech placed midway between two black holes, both of which were distorting him beyond recognition. At some point it occurred to him that the controls on Drag Strip's gun must have been pushed up to their highest level, past all safeties, but by then the red glow had gone from the Reflector component's optics. Drag Strip lowered his gun and a chunk of mangled metal clanged to the floor.
That's it, then, Dead End thought as Wildrider ran back to them and Drag Strip hurried in from the other side. Reflector's other two components would have sensed that at once. The hunt is on.
"Let's go," he said. Breakdown nodded, turned back to the Autobots' cells and fired.