Chapter Seven: From Defenseless to Deadly
As Trickshot and Arcee rode toward Jack's house, a nagging suspicion kept tugging at the hybrid's thoughts. "Did that seem too easy to you?" He asked over his comm as his engines purred calmly. In truth, the fight had made him nervous. He had come so close to being offline just because he was cocky, Arcee hadn't thought about it, but it did seem too easy, especially if Megatron wanted them, more precisely, Jack. As they rode, this puzzle stayed in the forefront of Arcee's processor. As the lights began to turn on and the sun began to set, Jack found himself getting nervous. Well, nervous wouldn't really describe his feelings accurately. Paranoia would be a better way to describe his mental state as he rode home. "I'm sorry, Jack." Jack skidded to a halt when he heard that. "What?" He asked, surprised. "I wasn't there to protect you when the Vehicons ambushed you." Jack glared at her. "Optimus gave you a mission and you had to go. I understand. Please, don't worry. I'm not helpless anymore." He told her with a kind smile. Arcee sighed. "I love you, Jack. If you went offline because of something…" Jack sighed. "Stop!" He demanded as he got out of his alt mode and looked at her with an aggravated stare. "I won't go offline so easily." That's the truth. He promised with a firm look. When Arcee heard this, she felt better, but the worry was still there. Could anyone blame here? Jack was still a rookie, and she had lost two partners already because of overconfidence. I'll go to The Pit before I let that happen to Jack! She promised herself as she held back the sadness in her Spark.
As they pulled into the garage, Jack was tense for a moment when he didn't see June. Then, he remembered her shift at the hospital. He walked into the house and sighed as he fixed himself a steak and potatoes. After he ate, sleep came to him slowly. He was just getting to sleep when the slam of the front door made him shoot to a sitting position as his blades came out on their own. Then, he heard June and relaxed enough to retrieve his blades. Something was off though. June seemed distracted. She dropped her purse and keys on the floor, hurriedly picked them up, and sighed. June couldn't get the feeling that she was being watched to leave her mind. She shook the thought away for the moment and headed to bed. Jack couldn't stand to hear her suffer. He got up and walked into the kitchen calmly. "What's wrong, Mom?"
June looked up tiredly in response to her son's voice. "It was a long day at the hospital." She said with a tired smile. Her body language told Jack there was more to it. He crossed his arms with a gentle frown. "I wish your Dad was here. He would know what to do," She said finally quietly. "I'm being watched at work." She said quietly. "I can't prove it, but I know someone is watching." Jack shivered. "Mom, I was attacked by 'Cons earlier today." Her eyes went wide. "Do you think Megatron…" She froze, unable to finish. "It's a strong possibility." Jack said calmly. His face became serious. "Mom, please be careful." The woman's face formed a small smile. When Jack gave her an odd look, she just shook her head. "It's ironic. I'm usually the one to tell you that." With that small laugh still on their lips, Jack and his mom went to bed.
As the house went dark for the night, a high pitched alien wine could be heard. In the black of the Nevada night, Laserbeak flew back to its master as the mini drone compressed the day's data into a manageable form to free up the memory required for the drone's homing program to run properly. As the drone rejoined to its master, Soundwave began the task of studying the video data for a pattern of June's routine for Lord Megatron to exploit. This data collection went on for weeks with The Darby Family or the Autobots none the wiser. Soundwave suspected such luck would not last. On the Friday of the fourth week of surveillance, Soundwave's luck ran dry.
Jack was getting out of school later that same day when Rafael looked at his computer with a confused expression. Jack looked at him worriedly. "What is it, Raf?" The computer genius looked at Jack with a worried expression. "A strange signal…" He said with a focused glare on his screen. "…it's not on a frequency that's from Earth." Jack's face went white as he remembered his past few days of paranoia. "What's the source of the signal?" Jack asked as Raphael typed away on his laptop. Then, he growled in frustration. "I can't pin it down. The signal's bouncing all over the place and only stays on a particular satellite's server for a second or two before it jumps to another satellite's systems and so on." Jack shivered at the mention of an alien program hiding in Human satellites.
Jack began to pace in thought to give his mind a chance to work. As Jack paced, he thought of his brief encounter with Soundwave. The Faceless Mech seemed to be interested in him. Of course, after his fight with Vehicons, Jack was on edge. Then, it hit him like a ton of bricks. "Megatron was testing me. That's why it was so easy." He growled. Then, his mind went back to the strange signal. "What if the signal is from Soundwave?" Raf gave him a strange look. "Really? What would be the point of that?" Raphael asked. "A drone control signal?" Jack suggested as he shook his head as he got in his alt mode before Bee and Raf drove back to the Autobot base. As Jack rode back to the Base, His paranoia was pinging like crazy. "What the scrap?!" Jack growled as he held his head in pain.
He looked back to see a small bird flying away. "Damn." He growled as his anger was released in a moment of fury. As the minicon sparked and smoked. The pain in Jack's head subsided. Arcee transformed as Jack got out of his alt mode to investigate. "Laserbeak…" Arcee growled in anger. Jack grinned as he picked up the drone. "Let's see what you're hiding, you piece of slag." He said as they entered the base. Ratchet glared down at the drone and linked to its memory. Ratchet connected the drone to a video screen, and stared playing the video on its memory. What the bots saw was very disturbing. Laserbeak had been following Jack for the entire day, even as he went to school and work. It recorded his entire day from History to PE and tailed him even into The KO Burger. Then, they saw it watch his confrontation with Vince which didn't last nearly as long Then, the dreaded passage to the Base.
When Jack saw the video files, his anger flared. "So, that's why I felt so uneasy lately." Ratchet sighed and shook his head and looked at Jack with a frown. "That's only part of the reason, but it's not the whole reason why," Ratchet said with a glare. "Soundwave's control signal for the drone interferes with your processor's own frequency." Ratchet said as he uploaded a patch to fix the frequency problem. "Thank you, Ratchet." Jack said with a smile. Optimus walked up to him. "June is probably in extreme danger. We don't know how long she has been spied on." Jack nodded with a sigh. Jack was suddenly very scared for his Mom. Optimus turned to Jack and gave him a reassuring look. "Something tells me your mother will be safe." He then turned to the Medbot. "Delete the drone's memory and send it back to Soundwave." He ordered as the Bot got to work.
At the hospital, June was busy tending to patients. She was trying to relax but couldn't. the flashbacks were getting worse. It was almost like her mind was trying to warn her of some impeding danger. As she was clocking out to go home, she heard cars race up behind her and box her car in. June just sighed and shook her head. "Long time no see, Scrapheaps." June said to them calmly as she got out of her car and glared at them. "You have no idea who you're messing with." June growled. She was about to attack them when a Groundbridge opened. Jack and Arcee jumped out of it. "Stay back, June." At hearing the femme order her around, June glared at Arcee. "I'm tired of being tormented by Deceptions!" She growled. "In case I ever needed it…" June smiled and recovered a chest plate from her backseat as Arcee looked on in shock at what June was carrying. "Is that the…?' All June responded with was a slight nod. The chest plate was clearly Cybertronian but had been spray-painted bright pink. When Arcee gave her an odd look at seeing the altered armor, June smiled and said, "I just couldn't handle the dull grey. I had to brighten it up a bit."
"Watch your Mom work." June said with a smile as she grinned and winked at her son before she activated the armor. The armor expanded and gradually covered her body until the armor encased her and made her three quarters the size of Arcee as the Bots and Jack looked on in shock. "Eat steel, assholes!" She growled as she started beating the slag out of the bots with surprising ease. "Mom…?" Jack found himself saying in shock. The woman didn't stop pounding in faceplates until there were no more drones around to offline. "Mom! How the heck did you know how to fight?" She smiled and deactivated the armor. "Eric taught me how to fight just in case. I always hoped I would never have to use it, though." She said as she smiled at him sadly. "Mom…what's wrong?" He asked as she deactivated the armor and gripped Jack in a tight hug as she trembled. "I miss him so much." She said quietly with a trembling voice on the verge of breaking down.
On a traffic cam across the street, the lens zoomed in on them and watched the exchange between the armored human and the group of robots. Following the wires, the electrical pulse controlling them coursed back to the origin of the control signal. First, it piggy backed on the satellite signal of an international communication satellite. Then, it was diverted to twelve more satellites before the last satellite sent the feed back to The Nemesis where Soundwave received a bit of a shock as he watched the human rip apart the drones like they were just shorting out glitches. Soundwave watched and would have mirrored the dumbfounded look of the femme and the other Autobots if he had a faceplate. It can't be The Apex Armor, can it? The mech thought in a shock as he went to find Lord Megatron. Luckily, Megatron wascoming into the communications bay. "What have you found, Soundwave?" He asked, Soundwave as the mech played the security cam video. When Megatron saw the Apex Armor in the hands of the human glitch, he slammed his servo into a nearby unlucky drone. "Things just got interesting." The large grey mech said as he folded his servos behind his back and began to pace, "This just got fun." He said with a twisted grin as he punched the feed right as June's armored head stared at the camera.