Possession.

Chapter Six.

As Starscream put Sam down in the Seeker hangar, Sam's mind buzzed with questions. Why had Starscream declared him kin? What would happen to him? Why was Starscream treating him this way? What did Starscream mean when he stated that there was 'far more to this squishy than meets the eye'? Sam also, however, wondered how to phrase the questions without risking pissing off the Seeker or sounding as if he were complaining.

Sam could not have said if something of his confusion showed on his face or whether Starscream had been planning this talk for a while, but Starscream looked at Sam for a few moments before asking him "What do you know about the AllSpark, Sam?"

"What, now, or back then?" Sam asked.

"Both," the Seeker stated. "What did you know then and what do you know now?"

Sam nodded slowly.

"Back then, I knew it was an ancient artefact from Cybertron, a great power source, of great importance to the Cybertronian people, I just didn't know how important or why," Sam said. "From what Optimus said about sacrificing himself, I guess I sort of worked out it would kill a Cybertronian if mingled with their Spark, but I wasn't wanting to kill Megatron, you have to understand that," he said pleadingly. "I just wanted to stop him killing me."

He raised his hands up in a gesture of frustration and confusion. "I guess that doesn't really make that much sense, but I can't explain it any other way." He hung his head. "Sometimes I think through it, wondering if there was something different I could have done, saving my life, and my world, and Megatron. I've never worked one out." He raised his eyes to look at Starscream again, and the Seeker noticed they looked shinier than usual, as if the human were holding back unshed tears.

"And now, Sam?" Starscream asked quietly.

"Now I know it was your main method of reproduction. Now I realise it was literally the life source of your people. I understand that its destruction has placed the Cybertronian race at risk of extinction." Again the human hung his head. "I realise that my actions have destroyed your main reproduction method and I wish very much that there was something I could do to mitigate or reverse this, but killing me is not going to bring Megatron or the AllSpark back. I just wish this could have been dealt with in a different way."

"Sam, do you remember how the AllSpark felt when you carried it?" the Seeker asked gently. The human nodded, wondering where Starscream was going with this.

"It felt alive, almost more alive than anything else I've ever touched, even another human being." At Starscream's shutter-blink, Sam tried to elaborate on this. "I know it sounds stupid, or doesn't really explain anything, but it was almost as if there was so much life, so much energy in it that it would burst out at any minute, almost as if the Cube couldn't contain it all." He held his hands up in entreaty. "I wish I could be more clear about it but I can't."

"But it makes sense to me, Sam, I have never touched the Cube myself, but others who have said much the same thing, that the Cube had a presence and an energy all of its own." Starscream said, crouching so that his face was on a level with Sam's own. "As for the energy bursting out any minute, that is exactly what happened when you dropped it in Mission City, it gave life to many mechanical devices in the vicinity." Starscream flourished his fingers in the air as he finished speaking, a graceful, almost automatic gesture.

Sam nodded, remembering that moment well, when the car had come alive and attacked the driver, the X-box bursting out of its box, the Mountain Dew machine that had attacked a passer-by, and much, much more that he had not seen. The Autobots had rescued those it could, the rest had been destroyed either by the armed forces, the Police, or the terrorized citizenry of Mission City.

"Yeah, it did, didn't it?" he said. "I didn't even drop it hard."

"Bursting with life, Sam, you may well have that right," the Seeker continued. "Every year on Cybertron, during the Golden Age, it would produce thousands of sparklings, yet for many of your millennia it drifted through space, unused and unseen." Starscream half-shuttered his optics and shook his head a little. "Even once it crashed, there were none who could use it, although some of your legends suggest that energy leakage from the Cube may have influenced the development of certain groups of humans. However, until the human group Sector Seven began using it - sparingly at that - that energy had not been used, and it may well have built up." He peered closely at Sam. "Perhaps it needed to discharge that energy. Perhaps it was at full capacity."

Sam nodded slowly. If the AllSpark was used to having it's energy used, perhaps it had built up, maybe leaked into the soil and water, who knew?

"Yeah," Sam said, wondering if Starscream required a response from him.

"Sam, doesn't it make you wonder about the AllSpark's destruction?" Starscream asked. "That it survived in the hostile environment of space for so long, yet was destroyed with such ease? Doesn't it make you wonder how it was so strong in that situation, and so important to our kind, but seemed so easy to destroy? There was so much energy, so where did it go, what happened to it? Even human scientists have worked out that matter cannot be created or destroyed."

"Only converted," Sam muttered, remembering a fragment from his science lessons.

"Exactly," the sharp-hearing Starscream said, rising from his crouch and shifting from foot to foot, his arms and hands making vague gestures and his optics shuttering and unshuttering. Starscream exhibited symptoms that would suggest anxiety or excitement and impatience in a human, but Sam was trying not to ascribe human interpretations of Starscream's behaviour to the Seeker, for Starscream wasn't human.

"Sam, the amount of energy the AllSpark must have contained should have obliterated your planet and incinerated your Solar System until it was no more than a cluster of cinders, but it didn't. "The Seeker's gestures grew wider as he reached one open hand up, the fingers rattling against the hangar roof. "From all the reports I got, not only was the city not damaged, but you were left unharmed, you who was holding the other end of the Cube only inches from the conflagration of Megatron's Spark and the Cube energy." Starscream crouched again, curling up a hand to point one long index finger at the human.

"From what I've heard, your hands were unscathed, with not even a slight singe on the skin."

Sam held his hands in front of him and twisted them to examine them. They looked unremarkable: smooth-skinned and tanned on the upper surface, palms pink and creased as all human palms tended to be, perfectly normal, standard hands, but Sam began to wonder as he looked at them. It did seem strange that he had not even had the equivalent of sunburn, considering he had been holding a metal cube with the other end burning at what must have been a considerable temperature.

"Yeah, that is weird," he allowed. "I never really thought of it before, I guess I just assumed I'd got lucky or that the Cube was non-conductive of heat. It all happened so fast that my memories are a bit hazy, I was fighting for my life, I wasn't really thinking about anything else at the time."

The Seeker sighed through his vents and crouched again. "It was something that I, too, had not given much thought to. When I caught you it was because the opportunity arose, and I had planned to take you to put on trial to distract my mechs, they have been restless recently. I scanned you, planning to remove any Autobot tracking devices in your clothes, and your cell phone, and out of curiosity I scanned your biological systems for energy types and levels. The result surprised me, piqued my scientific curiosity. This is the reason you still live."

"What is it?" Sam asked. Starscream did not reply, but merely continued as if Sam had not even spoken.

"I thought through the events of the last year, went through all the theories that might account for this, and did my research. All my studies only reinforced my first idea. However, so far it is all merely circumstantial. I need proof, not just academic theorizing and records of what happened at the time."

"What are you talking about?" Sam asked. "You're speaking in riddles. What is this theory you have, and how will you prove it?"

Starscream blinked his optics shutters as if only just remembering that Sam was there. He lowered a hand, and scooped Sam into it, bringing the human closer to those glowing red optics. Sam himself blinked nervously. Starscream's past behaviour had indicated that Starscream's moods could change in an instant. One minute they had been chatting pleasantly, the next Sam had been left alone with some of Starscream's mechs. No harm had come from it, but still, it had made Sam very much aware that he still did not know quite where he stood with Starscream, and he wondered if his question had tipped that balance again.

Just as Sam was debating whether to risk calling Starscream's name, he stood and looked at Sam intently.

"Sam, my scans detected something within you I had not expected to see, an energy that not only I, but every other Cybertronian in the ranks of both Autobots and Decepticons would recognise instantly. It was something I had never expected to see ever again, and certainly not in the body of a human, although with hindsight it does make a strange sort of sense, after all, you were the last living thing in contact with the Cube."

"Yes, I was." Sam said distractedly, once again remembering how alive the Cube had felt in his hands, and how he had killed it, destroyed it by pushing it into the hole made by the Air Force in Megatron's chest. He pushed down the wave of guilt the thought always brought to him.

"If the Cube's energy was not converted to matter, or destroyed in a huge explosion, it must have either dissipated or moved." Starscream said. "Had it dissipated, this planet should be crawling with the newly-alive machinery the energy would have given life to. This is not the case. My theory, Sam, is that the AllSpark energy simply switched location, the energy found somewhere else to go." He abruptly pointed at Sam.

"When I scanned you, I detected AllSpark energy within you. It could be residual, I suppose, but my theory suggests otherwise."

He brought his other hand up, clasping it firmly but not too tightly around Sam, lifting him and holding him in his metal fist as he looked at the human intently.

"My theory, Sam, is that the AllSpark moved into you." Starscream explained. "Why it would choose an organic as it's vessel, I do not know. The theory is sound and has much to back it up, but it is solid evidence I need now." He blinked his optics before looking away briefly before bringing his attention back to Sam.

"I theorise that the AllSpark Essence is in you, and I need to prove this, and find out how it can be accessed and used. I now need to work out how to get the solid proof I need to confirm my theory, and whether you are aware of how to access it or not, Sam, I will need you in order to do that."