Title: and the glass zone shatters
Chapter: Seven
Summary: On this side of the mirror, the Decepticons have a higher tolerance for humans. The Autobots, on the other hand, don't really give much thought to the skin-jobs beneath their feet… [Shattered Glass/Mirrorverse Transformers Prime AU]
Disclaimer: I don't own anything related to Transformers Prime or LOST (i.e. Kate Austen, Edward Mars, James "Sawyer" Ford).
Warning(s): violence, language
Rating: PG-13
A/N: Please remember to leave feedback. Thank you editoress, nellasaur, wherearemychips and sweetsweetsorrow at tumblr for their feedback on this. Thank you to all the reviewers. Hope everyone enjoys the next chapter.
This also should be in continuity with my other mirrorverse!TFP fic written for the TF-Prime Livejournal community's August challenge, "it's science," unless noted otherwise.
The below is inspired by another fanfic for a videogame (full credit at the end of the chapter).
"Your men will be too late, Fowler."
Megatron stared at the agent's glaring face on the computer screen.
"Starscream's not the only one who's been captured—"
"My people are searching for Kate and the other humans as well." Megatron continued before Fowler could say anything more. "I have no intention of groundbridging your soldiers there."
"My team and I will search the base, and will suffer no distraction." Megatron's voice lowered as Fowler's glare intensified. "And though your men are aware of the risks, there's still little point in increasing the chance for casualties when it can be avoided."
Fowler sighed, but said nothing more.
###
Since the Omicron Labs, Starscream's audio receptors had been finely trained to listen for screams. Thus they were a sure way to drag him from unconsciousness.
Starscream twitched, grumbling around his gag. The screams sounded like a femme's, long and thin...really thin... But muffled, he could hear the distinct sound of a desperate voice around a gag.
Starscream's eyes snapped open. Still, sight was blurry: above the dark inanimate Cybertronian was a small figure hanging.
The image solidified before Starscream's optics: a long, thin red-tinted pole now worked its way out of the back of the dark Cybertronian's head. Deep brown waves fell over that pole...the texture...hair; that was hair...
The Seeker really comprehended how a human's scream wasn't that different from a Cybertronian's. Why, it could be just as loud.
The human hair was curly, wild, and dark as...
"Kmf," Starscream garbled around his own gag, completely butchering Kate's name. He could see her gag now, thin wire; well, thin to him, probably thick to her...oh frag this entire situation.
Starscream tried to shake his head of the fog once Kate's gagged voice shifted to something that sounded like his name and a human curse, all in a wild questioning fearing tone. Any sense in Kate's voice was lost as it degenerated into more pained, baffled howls.
Focus, focus...Starscream trained his optics harder on Kate and that dark Cybertronian, trying to harden that fuzzy image, trying to get his mind to catch up. Now he could comprehend that with the way her hair fell, Kate was upside down. Wires wrapped tight around her eyes too, denying her vision. Kate solidified further; Starscream saw most of her body was encased in metal, some contraption that had slid out from a ceiling panel. Still her head did not dangle-she seemed unable to move it much at all. It was stiff and at an angle...
Starscream blinked.
His optics went back to the dark Cybertronian, to the pole—no, it was glass tubing. Thin, red-tinted glass tubing coming out of the Cybertronian's head, stretching up at an angle below Kate's hair, where it...stopped. Where was it stopping at? Starscream couldn't see it go past her hair. When the Seeker strained to see where the tubing stopped, he saw its red tint drip.
Starscream's optics widened. They watched the red drip down, bulge into a red bead and fall down from the tubing. Starscream followed its descent, to where it fell into a red puddle (nonono) but it wasn't just red it was (nonononononono) all of it was there was that red tint not just red it slid down the tubing not immobile not red but (NO)—
Kate's screams reached a new feverous pitch.
Starscream wasn't sure if he was glad the human was still alive or wished she were dead, with that tubing embedded in the back of her skull. He couldn't even comprehend how that was possible. Humans were sturdier than he imagined, but they could only take so much...the blood loss would surely...
"I was hoping you'd join us, Seeker."
Starscream's optics snapped to Ratchet as he came into full view. The Autobot spoke again, "You're a bit of a scientist yourself, aren't you, Starscream?" Ratchet smiled thinly. "You might be able to truly appreciate this..."
The Seeker shouted something indecipherable and in a voice that alternated from a throaty barking growl, to a high shrill thing as he madly fought against his restraints. His rage almost drowned out Kate's screams that were steadily becoming more warped by the minute.
"...But I rather doubt it," Ratchet said before he pressed down on the box containing Starscream's half-spark, and this time the Seeker's agonized scream did momentarily drown out Kate's own shrieks.
###
"They didn't seem to be expecting us," Breakdown muttered as he fired another shot at the 'Bot troopers.
"M.E.C.H. grunts might've retreated a bit prematurely," Knock Out replied once he was close enough to say it low in Breakdown's audio receptor. "Maybe those coordinates were more of a case of in-fighting than a trap..."
Megatron's voice crackled over their inner commlink: "Split up, cover more ground—Breakdown, come with me; Knock Out, go with Soundwave; Shiv, Katal, stay together." The Eradicon troopers remained at each other's sides, while Breakdown and Knock Out separated. "Soundwave has jammed Autobot and M.E.C.H. communications—they'll be confused for a limited time, but not completely blind to this, so strike fast."
"No kidding," Knock Out grumbled, following after Soundwave as Breakdown went with Megatron, Shiv and Katal running in the other direction.
###
Soundwave slammed another 'Bot trooper unconscious before freezing at Knock Out's hissed, "Oh frag..."
The communications officer turned back, finding the physician in a dented doorway. He went to him, looking over his shoulder.
Knock Out stood over a downed and slashed up 'Bot drone, on top of a battered down door. Before him was a Cybertronian-sized room with seven small rolling stretchers. Surgical drones hung on the walls, in stasis.
On the stretchers were humans in varying states of dissection. The only ones who were whole enough to resemble Fowler's pictures were the three youths—and even they were still cut up below the neck in such a way as to be lethal.
Soundwave touched Knock Out's shoulder, and the medic turned to him with a cool mask.
'I sense no human life signatures,' Soundwave's facial screen read out. 'Take the blood samples.'
Knock Out entered the room, stepping over the 'Bot trooper as a small syringe popped out from one of his arm compartments.
Soundwave followed, taking photos of the humans. Given the crisis, the best they could do was to bring back proof of the victims' demise. There probably would not be time to bring them back to honor human funerary practices...
Soundwave photographed the youths first, as Knock Out was siphoning samples from the adult corpses now virtually unrecognizable.
The communications officer heard a small shuffling; it sounded like the medic was rolling over one of the human bodies.
"Hey, Sound...flip your human over. There a hole in the back of his head?"
Soundwave followed Knock Out's direction, and in the back of the smallest human's skull was a round cavity.
He turned to the medic, nodding.
"Got holes in all the adults...I'm done here, I'll check the others..." The two 'Cons switched groups, Soundwave taking pictures of the adults while Knock Out took blood samples from the youths and gently looked under their heads.
"All of them with holes in the back of their fragging skulls." Knock Out stood back, arms folded. "There's something...off about this...I doubt that's standard dissection...even if it's a whole other species—" Knock Out stopped as Soundwave went for a computer panel in the room.
"Anything?" Knock Out asked in a low voice, looking over Soundwave's shoulder at his rapidly typing claws.
'"Almost—yes, here—a map!"' Soundwave said in Jetfire's voice, and Knock Out almost decked the communications officer, but of course his news was good. Still, to use their lost comrade's voice in a situation eerily similar to what led to his death was not good for the nerves. Times like this made Knock Out wish Soundwave would feel comfortable enough to use his own voice...
'"Sending to Breakdown now,"' Soundwave said with a recording of Knock Out. 'And Lord Megatron' flashed across his facial shield.
The actual Knock Out asked, "What about the—?"
'"All of them with holes in the back of their fragging skulls,"' Soundwave repeated Knock Out's voice again, this time from seconds ago. His claws madly typed as he searched for information that would shed light on what the humans' lives were extinguished for. Perhaps there was a connection between that and Starscream and Kate. Half a minute later he finally clicked on some promising files.
The two 'Cons scanned surveillance of the human targets, data read-outs, and other documents with a silence that grew deeper by the minute as dots were quickly connected, leaps made to get the gist of Ratchet's plans.
"...Scrap," Knock Out breathed out in a low growl of a voice.
The two 'Cons rushed out after Soundwave had swiftly downloaded the files and sent them to Megatron and Breakdown and the Eradicons, along with the map.
###
Starscream willed Ratchet to monologue, the Seeker screamed the question to the 'Bot around his gag again and again, "What are you doing? What are you doing?" Just anything to buy time for...for what? It was a desperate hope that his comrades would find him...again...not again, he did not know this human at all, but—not again, he did not want another life slain in front of his eyes while captured by the Autobots, while completely helpless to do anything...Primus, she may've tried to hijack Knock Out, but Kate had nothing to do with any of this, nothing at all...
Starscream stilled, chest heaving, once the older scientist went to a computer console, typing. Soon after the supercomputer program Teletraan spoke in its familiar neutral tone, "Commencing upload."
Kate's screams reached a new pitch as the machinery roared to life. Starscream's throat grew dry and quiet, just as when Cliffjumper had extinguished Jetfire's spark right before his optics. Still he fought against his restraints, though half his mind told him it was futile.
Kate twitched while she shrieked, but the restraints and the tubing still immobilized her.
Starscream saw arcing lines of energy start surging down the tube from Kate's head and into the dark Cybertronian's skull. As they went, Kate's voice was fading, more and more as that energy surged faster and faster down the tubing.
Finally Kate grew silent, and there was a slight but definitive slacking in her jaw and the rest of her body, in the way it stilled.
Starscream's spark pounded. He watched the last of the energy pass through the tubing into the dark Cybertronian.
Starscream watched its facial shield—nothing. It was just as inanimate as before. Just as still as Kate was now, her hair barely moving...
Starscream shuddered, yet he did not force back a shriek. He could feel nothing in his throat—nothing at all, really. It was almost that same surreal detachment that seized him once he heard Cliffjumper's shot and Jetfire went down, down; never got up again, even when he snapped out of it and started screaming for him—
Ratchet then pulled out the Seeker's half-spark and placed it again in the darkly painted Cybertronian's spark chamber.
Its facial shield finally flickered.
A green line twisted across it, not unlike Soundwave's—Kate's screams crackled alive through the Cybertronian's vocalizer as that line solidified into two round dots, the optics reduced to that through the glass shielding. Those green dots (green like Kate's fleshy wet eyeballs) focused on Ratchet, and were such simple round shapes as to make Kate's vocalizer shrieks even more disturbing to hear—what the Pit, what the Pit just—did Ratchet just—upload, Teletraan said 'upload,' had he just uploaded Kate into that Cy—?
"—ck. What the hell is this, who the hell are you, what—? Starscr—" That was definitely Kate's voice running through that Cybertronian's vocalizer, and its green optics alighted on him.
"—scream, Starscream, what the h—? No, I—" The dark Cybertronian—Kate began to struggle against her table's restraints, optics darting around madly.
Ratchet looked down at her, musing aloud, "Human brainwaves and consciousness still didn't generate a new spark...but it can apparently connect to a spark ready-made, even half of one...or perhaps only an immortal one? Certainly an average spark cannot be split in half and survive..."
Though Starscream heard Ratchet as if the older mech were a quite a distance away, the dark Cybertronian—Kate didn't pay any attention to Ratchet's analysis, still struggling madly in that dark Cybertronian body with the red Autobot symbol flashing mockingly on her head.
"—I—no, I—don't, don't touch me, you can't touch me—!" Starscream helplessly watched her head try to twist, but the tubing and the enclosing headrest kept her immobile. "Out, get it out, inside, it's—no, I want it out, get out of my—my hair...I can't...feel it, my hair...oh Christ, where is my—toes? I can't, my—where are my toes—? There's nothing, nothing nothing nothing—"
Ratchet wrapped one hand around the tubing, and pulled its end out of Kate's human skull.
"—out, out of my head, out of my head, get it out right now you—"
Starscream stared as the Cybertronian continued to ramble quickly in Kate's voice and struggle against the table's restraints, screaming that the tubing be removed from her head. While Kate's human body lifelessly swayed back and forth, the tubing out of her head, free—with a gaping bloody hole through skin and bone and all that hair.
"Teletraan, disengage the human," Ratchet said, other free end of the tubing still in his hand.
The Seeker winced as the metal casing snapped open, and Kate's human body fell and hit the steel floor, crumpling into a heap with a sickening smack.
"Reengage," Ratchet said, bringing the tubing up to the metal contraption and waiting for its sensors to pick up. A second later it did; the contraption shifted, reconfiguring its shape to connect to the tubing with a hiss and a snap.
"Teletraan, commence overriding Subject 8 with your beta copy."
"Affirmative."
Starscream's muffled screaming returned while Kate shouted "WHAT?"
It started again, energy crackling down the tubing and into the dark Cybertronian's head, who writhed and screamed with Kate's voice—
And then there was a loud sound in Starscream's audio receptors and sudden smoke in his optics, the Seeker wasn't sure what exploded and what didn't.
But soon all that mattered was that one bond had weakened, and his right claw was free.
A/N: The above inspired/directly transplanted from the Portal fanfic (for both games) You Monster by Kamiki77, here on the site. It's really good, and recommended on TVTropes. Speaking of TVTropes, its "Brain Uploading" page (which also mentions Portal and what the above fic deals with) was inspirational for this too. Besides this mind uploading's precedent in fiction, it's apparently given some real research focus, i.e. "Uploading" by John Filiss, the Blue Brain Project (though to my understanding, it focuses more on creating a cybernetic brain than transferring a preexisting one), etc.
There's also apparently RL precedent for people surviving something stuck in their brain, i.e news articles 'Miracle Baby: 'Doctors Save Toddler Impaled in the Brain by Hook, Man survives 4-inch nail in skull.
The above mind upload/transfer idea is combined with Beast Wars' plot with splitting Protoform X/Rampage's immortal spark (meant to duplicate G1 Starscream's immortal spark) in half, the other half giving life to Dinobot's clone, Dinobot 2.
And apparently something like this (human mind in robot body) did happen in G1.
This is not me bashing TFP's canon human kids—and I will just sorta hint at/say kinda upfront that the ultimate fate of Jack, Raf and Miko isn't over yet...