Author's Note: Thank you to everyone who's been reading this. This chapter has a bit of... AUness to it, but before you start panicking, read the Author's End Note after the chapter. Oh and I know in the last chapter I didn't mention Silverbolt's humanized name (just didn't find a good pace for it), but it's Michael. Enjoy and please review to tell me how I'm doing. Don't forget to read Interlude I after this!

Chapter 5

Capture

Sensing urgency from Silverbolt, Blackarachnia was the first to return, a full hour before their designated meeting time. She was surprised to find him not back at the pool hall but in an alleyway behind the building and even more surprised when she recognized the limp form in his arms.

"Is that... Nightscream?" she knelt to receive the boy from him, supporting half his weight on the ground and half against herself.

"He was on the rooftop," he replied grimly. "He only said that someone was coming before his collapse. I do not know what happened to him or what he meant, but I think it's imperative that we find Rattrap and Cheetor and move to a more secure location."

"Rattrap went west," she gestured to the right. "You'll have better luck catching up with him. I'll stay with the kid."

"I will return shortly," he leaned in to press a quick kiss to her lips. "Stay safe, beloved."

He disappeared behind the corner, and she settled against the wall with Nightscream still propped awkwardly in her lap. He was young, she thought, looking at the child's pale face. Too young to be part of any of it. It was easy to forget those kinds of things when one was constantly in a life-or-death situation like the Technorganic War on Cybertron. War was indiscriminate towards petty things like age.

"It'll be okay," she promised, her palm pressing against his damp forehead.

In the hour she waited for her friends to return, Blackarachnia didn't move from the spot she'd been sitting at. Nightscream hadn't awoken, but she had time to check his wounds. The bruises and scrapes didn't look too serious, but his chapped lips and dry skin suggested he was severely dehydrated. She found that odd since they had arrived on Earth less than a full day ago. What could have happened to him in such a short time?

If she had been listening carefully, Blackarachnia might have noticed the sound of a helicopter landing on the roof a few buildings away, but the city was so filled with sounds and her attention was focused entirely on the boy. All she had was seconds between feeling the prick at the back of her neck and pulling out a tiny dart before her throat began to tighten and vision faded to black.

Never having been good at staying still for long, Cheetor paced outside of the pool hall. He was frustrated at not having found the spark, frustrated with his lack of success in calling up the vision that let him see the spark – what Optimus had called 'spark probing' – at will, and even more frustrated at being the first one back, like he'd given up or something. All of it was made worse by the fact that he was supposed to be their leader.

He was relieved to see Rattrap and Silverbolt jogging towards him, though his face fell when he saw their empty hands. He didn't even get the chance to say anything before Silverbolt asked.

"Where are Blackarachnia and Nightscream?"

He was taken aback. "Nightscream is here?"

"He musta been the spark you saw. 'bolts said he found him an hour ago, handed him over to Webs, and went to look for me," Rattrap blurted out before Silverbolt could relay the story. "They're supposed ta be here."

"I haven't seen anyone," Cheetor shook his head, then, noting the worried look that passed between the other two men, added. "Is there something I should know?"

The hum of a rapidly accelerating propeller was heard above them in reply. As it lifted into the air, Cheetor spotted a marking that looked like a hexagon divided into three sections with 'S7' written beneath it on the tail of the helicopter. Behind him, he heard Silverbolt growl.

"They must be the people Nightscream fled from," the older man, his fist clenching and relaxing in an unnerving rhythm. "If they harm..."

"We won't let that happen."

Cheetor's eyes scanned the street for any appropriate vehicle. Spotting a sleek looking yellow car parked only a few feet away, he ran to it with Silverbolt and Rattrap at his heals. The door was locked, of course, but he had no trouble forcing it. Cheetor briefly wondered if it meant that Blackarachnia had been right about their new bodies still being Technorganic, but he didn't have time to think about that now. He was a little surprised when the door didn't just swing outwards like on all the other cars he'd seen but instead rotated upwards.

With an unhappy grunt, Rattrap, being the smallest of the three, squeezed into the cramped backseat while Silverbolt took shotgun. The uneasy look on his face made Cheetor smile. With a few manipulation of the wires, the engine roared to life. His grin broadened.

"Fasten your seat belts," despite the situation his voice was almost singsong.

"Do you have any idea how to drive this?" Silverbolt demanded.

"We're about to find out," the gear stick shifted to drive. "Hang on, guys."

For once, Silverbolt did as he instructed, holding on to the inner door handle for dear life as Cheetor maneuvered the vehicle to the road in a series of jerky motions. It took him a while to steady the wheel, and by the time he did, both of his companions looked a little green.

"It's okay," even his laugh was a little shaky. "We're fine. We're good. Now, which way did that thing go?"

Rattrap shrugged from the backseat, but Silverbolt did offer a reply. "North west," he said. "Though I do not know if they kept that course."

"It's the best guide we got," Cheetor said, keeping his eyes on the road. "Rattrap, do you still have those papers you printed out at the library?"

"All of 'em," the rodent pulled out the thick stack. "Why?"

"See if you can find anything about an organization that has a hexagon divided into thirds with 'S7' under it as its logo. That's what was on the tail of the helicopter. Silverbolt, got any news for me?"

"I cannot sense her," the other man shook his head, still uncomfortable at having to use the bond to his lover as a source of information for anyone else's benefit but his own. "I suspect she is unconscious. If she were... otherwise, I would know."

"Good. At least we know our teammates are more valuable to whoever it is alive. For now, anyway. Tell me the minute you know something else."

She was getting pretty tired of waking up in unknown places and wondering how she got there. First it was the Predacon base at the beginning of the Beast Wars, then the empty Cybertron of the Technorganic War, and less than twenty-four hours ago, Earth. She was pretty sure that's still where she was, but the white sterile hospital-like room was nothing like the street ally she last remembered being in. Blackarachnia's head spun a little when she rolled over on her side, but her eyes finally refocused on the pair of wide blue ones staring at her.

"Hey, kid," she crocked, swinging her legs over the side of the bed. "Any chance of getting some water over here?"

Nightscream quickly ran to the metal rolling cart at the door where a plastic pitcher and cups stood and pored one, though by the time he brought it to her, half the content has been splashed onto the floor. Still she took what there was and downed it in one gulp, wiping the remaining droplets with the back of her hand.

"Thanks," she tossed the empty cup into the trashcan by the bed. "How long was I out?"

"Since they brought us back here? About three hours."

It was the first time she heard him speak, and Blackarachnia noted how his voice was still that of a child. She wondered why, since Optimus had given them a choice, did Nightscream choose to involve himself in another conflict. He took a seat in a chair facing her.

"And where exactly is here?"

"I don't know," the boy shook his head. "These people just call themselves Sector 7."

"Never heard of them."

Actually she was surprised that she hadn't. Blackarachnia was fairly well versed in human history, especially any aspect of it that related to Cybertronians. The fact that there was an organization she was not aware of bothered her.

"Tell me what happened," she asked in a firm voice.

Nightscream took a deep breath, bit his lip, and looked to the side, as if he didn't want to think about it. "I've been here for about a week," he finally said. "After I woke up, everything is sort of blurry, but somehow I ended up in what the humans called a hospital. They asked me questions, took all kinds of samples. I think they found something weird, because then they came and brought me here. I kept asking where you guys were, but..."

"Nightscream," she squeezed his hand in a comforting gesture, "we just got here a day ago. However Optimus sent us here, it must have accidentally caused some time lag."

"It always happens to me," the boy sounded disgusted. "I'm always the one left alone."

At that moment she realized just how frightening that week must have been for him. At the very least, she and the others had been to Earth before and most importantly, had found one another relatively quickly. Nightscream had never known anything but Cybertron. For him, arriving on this alien world must have been overwhelming. Worse of all, there had been no one else. Despite his bravo, it was a badly kept secret that Nightscream was nearly phobic of being alone after spending so much time running and hiding by himself after Megatron's virus hit Cybertron. That made her next question all the more obvious.

"Why did you choose this?"

"You mean why did I volunteer to get in the middle of another fight instead of hanging back on Cybertron?" his laugh was humorless. "I sort of figured you guys would go, and without you, there's not much left for me back home. You're the only family I have now."

"You picked a very odd one to adopt, kid," but she was smiling. "Don't worry. We'll get out of here."

"You sure?" Nightscream didn't sound so convinced, nodding his head towards the security lock on the door. "It took me forever to break out the first time, and I think they beefed up security since then."

"Yeah, but you're with me now," she grinned. "Come on. We dealt with Megatron. How hard can a couple of humans be?"

"What about us?" the boy held up his hands indicating the new body. "Aren't we human now, too?"

"That's getting to be a popular question," she noticed a chart at the foot of her bed. "Let's take a look."

The laptop she had with her was, unsurprisingly, confiscated, but at least their captors didn't bother to hide the medical information they had gathered on them. Blackarachnia flipped through her own, rather short, file. Her eyebrows went up.

"They pumped me with enough tranquilizers to put down a small elephant," she muttered, more to herself than to Nightscream. "No way is our physiology human."

"They did a lot more tests on me," Nightscream volunteered, running to the bed on the other side of the room to bring her his own chart. "This might help."

Nightscream's chart was a lot thicker than her own, and as she read it, Blackarachnia's brows drew further and further together. Her suspicions had been right; they were still Technorganic. Purely biological systems intermixed with silicon, wires, and various kinds of metals. Scans and X-Rays showed tiny metallic plates, not much bigger than cells, surrounding nearly every muscle of the body like internal armor. If these reports were correct and if those plates could be brought to the surface...

What surprised Blackarachnia the most, though, was that each test was run to discover a specific purpose with expected results, which was absolutely impossible. Humans might have been well familiar with Autobots and Decepticon, but Technorganic Cybertronians should have been completely alien to them. Should have been. But science didn't lie. Whoever ran these tests knew exactly what he or she was looking for and how to find it.

As if on cue, the door opened, and two men strode in the room followed by an armed escort of five guards. Both were middle aged, dressed in dark jackets with a hexagon divided into three sections and the characters 'S7' stitched on the right breast. One of the men had a mustache and light thinning hair, while the other had tight dark curls with only a little gray at the sides. The first one wore a curious, but hardly malicious look on his face, while the second was smirking.

"You, young lady," he addressed Blackarachnia, "are in some serious trouble. You hacked the United States Department of Defense network."

"I did not!" she objected indignantly and almost added, "Rattrap did," but restrained herself. How in the Inferno did they detect his hack? Even here, rat face knows not to leave a trace. "Who are you people?"

"I'm Tom Banachek," the man with the mustache stepped forward, "head of Sector 7's Advanced Research Division. This is Agent Reggie Simmons."

"Yeah? Well, I'm Brianna Stark," she replied without missing a beat, "graduate student in the computer science PhD program at M.I.T.. Check my Facebook page. I don't have so much as a parking ticket, so I don't think you have any right to hold me here."

"M.I.T.?" Simmons laighed. "That's very funny. Why not Harvard or Yale?"

"Actually," Tom Banachek ignored his associate. "I believe you're Blackarachnia. Maximal scientist and saboteur and a veteran of the Beast Wars."

Author's End Note: Okay so you're probably all wondering what the heck is Sector 7 doing in a G1-BW-BM story. Is this a crossover with the 2007 movie? No, but I am borrowing a few elements of it. Since the story is already slightly AU by making 2008 look like it does now instead of what G1 creators thought it would look like, I figured why not? Sector 7 here plays a similar but slightly different role it did in the movie. Here, they were established soon after the Great War started (so they've been around since 1984), and their job is to learn all they can and keep an eye on Cybertronians. As for how they know about the Beast Wars and the players in it, you'll have to wait to find out.