Pack Mentality

by Deathcomes4u

Legacyverse AU: Prowl is born into slavery, and worse still, turned into the lowest form of slave at a young age. He knows nothing outside his role as a Wolf-Mech, until a visiting Ambassador decides he and his pack should have better. PxJ - Angst abounds

10. Chapter 9

The clock ticks down towards the event where every wolfmech's fate will be decided.
But in the meantime, Jazz has a whole lot of work to do, and a whole lot of discoveries to make...
one of which is going to change him forever.

Thiiiis took a long time to write. Mainly because writers block and needing very specific music to get into the headspace for writing the raid. Aaand then the word count went mental, as it always does for me.
But yeah, not a lot to say, but three important notes: 1) Listen to this during the raid /lN11iQ0ClI0 - (MadMax Fury Road - The Bog)
2) listen to this when they reach the mystery box /1e-0sqPdEJU - (MadMax Fury Road - Into The Canyon)
3) listen to this near the end when Jazz is getting ready to leave /BF1DQr5dKW8 ( Muse - The Handler)

That is all. Enjoy ~

---

"Run it again. Faster. You know what I need out of you I shouldn't have to say it."

Sunstreaker laid his ears flat but made no other sign of acknowledgement, lining up at the start and waiting for the automatic timing system to signal him to go.

Prowl watched as he made his own measured laps around the room. No obstacles, just constant, low level running to get his stamina up. He'd been going for about a cycle and a half now and was still feeling alright. He kept an optic on the others, making tiny suggestions across their comms to help them shave more time off their obstacle routes.

The course had been modified in order to step-up the difficulty. Thunderwing clearly wanted to take no chances, and the new course meant figuring out new ways to run it. Except their master expected them to do it in a FASTER time than the old route, without any leeway for learning the new configuration.

This wasn't particularly new or unusual for him. It was still irritating, and Prowl had to project a lot of soothing waves Sunstreaker's way as he ran it over and over. Sideswipe was already dreading his own turn, since he didn't think he'd do as well even with the benefit of feeling the route out through his twin.

/You will be fine. Feel your way through, don't think your way through, your instincts always prove more efficient/ Prowl reassured him, feeling Sunstreaker trying to take the advice while pushing his frame to its upper limits.

Thunderwing watched the golden twin like a hawk, scrutinising every move and narrowing his optics at the timer now and then. When Sunstreaker reached the end platform and the clock stopped, the flier's wings twitched upwards.

"BETTER. Alright, switch out with Sideswipe. I expect you to do just as good in half the time."

Sunstreaker rumbled softly as he leapt down off the final platform and trotted over to run with his carrier. The rest of the pack was following Prowl, keeping themselves warmed up between their turns. Their master was yet to call on the alpha, but Prowl had a feeling he would.

/So when we're free, will I be allowed to rip his vocaliser out or what?/ the golden twin murmured through their comms. Prowl threw him a sideways glance before looking over at Thunderwing, who was intently focussed on Sideswipe's run.

/While I wish the answer was yes, I highly doubt it. Besides, any throat ripping or mutilation will be mine first. I will certainly leave you the wings if the chance arises/

Sunstreaker threw him a sharp looking grin, and over the bond Prowl felt Sideswipe's amusement. /You're the best carrier a bot could ask for/.

---

"What are we gonna do about this next alignment, hmm?" Jazz sighed, sitting down beside Red Alert in their shared quarters, running a servo over his faceplate.

Red Alert paused his data-pad perusing and looked up with mild surprise. "Oh… right, yes… I'd forgotten about that. But good question… there's plenty of unused rooms around the palace you could lock me in. I mean it wouldn't be terribly interesting, but I've been through worse."

"Mech I ain't lockin' you in a room alone with nothin' to do. We gotta have a better solution available than that, surely."

Red Alert frowned thoughtfully and tapped the stylus he was holding against his lower-lip plate. "It's not for another two and a half megacycles at least, so we have some time to think of something. In the meantime, what are your plans leading up to the hunt? We still need to train, I have no idea WHERE because I think we might frighten the slag out of the guardsmechs and any other resident nobles if we try and do so in the gardens. I'm not even sure I'm legally allowed to kill petrorabbits on the Prime estate…"

"Of course you can, Optimus ain't gonna care so long as he doesn't have to watch you do it." Jazz chuckled. "There's no law saying all petrorabbits on site are property of the Prime and harm to any will invoke the death penalty."

"Uhm… if he doesn't like seeing us kill petrorabbits in front of him, how is he going to handle watching an entire hunt? Does he not realise how… well… gory, hunts can be? You've seen one, didn't you tell him?"

"Yeah he knows. He's not squeamish, it's the matrix that makes a deal outta stuff like that. Listen, he saw some nasty slag when he was an enforcer. Nastier than half the stuff I saw in that fighting pit, the problem is that now he has the matrix, it kinda… I dunno, hard to explain… I guess it 'flinches' when life-forms get snuffed around it, and it makes him feel weird. He said it ain't a huge deal when it's anibots, their sparks aren't really, y'know, fully formed. They're just lil embers." Jazz showed his forefinger and thumb close together to emphasise.

Red gave him an odd look. "So that's what nobles have been figuring about us this whole time? We're just ember powered drones who can transform?"

Jazz shrugged. "Probably? I can't say I ever thought about it when I first came across your kind. Only ever saw any of ya in wolf mode, so I guess I assumed you were just really big cyberwolves with altered programming to make you domestic? Wasn't til I saw you had mech forms that somethin' flagged in my head as bein' off about the whole deal."

"And when was it you first saw that? When you visited Thunderwing's compound?"

Jazz rubbed at the back of his neck and looked a little uneasy. "Well… no, not quite. That was when I got to see it up close, properly, and while they were… awake. The first time was actually when I uuuh… caught sight of Hound in mech form sleepin' with Mirage. I was so focussed on not wanting to embarrass him by letting him know I'd seen it that I didn't immediately think about the implications of Hound actually HAVING a mech form. So technically, I didn't REALISE it was weird until I saw Prowl's lot. Then things started to click into place and I got properly curious."

Red Alert nodded, his expression non-judgemental. "Had any other bot but you seen them, I'm not sure if it would have caused scandal or just been shrugged off. Depends who saw and how much they liked or hated lord Mirage. Masters lying with their wolf-mechs in root mode is not exactly uncommon, it's just… passé to talk about it openly."

Jazz gave him a slightly hesitant look before deciding to ask. "Did uh… any of your masters force you to do that?"

The wolf mech gave him a surprised look, as if wondering why he'd even bother asking. "Of course. I had several households, most masters will 'try out' their new pack acquisitions, we're honestly as much pleasure-bots to them as we are pets. Again, that's the side of things they don't talk about openly, but it's very much the reality. To be totally honest though, most nobles are mediocre to downright disappointing in berth."

The flat flippancy with which Red made his statement surprised Jazz, who reset his visor while trying to fully process it all. "Primus… I mean… well, I'm assuming you mean bad in comparison to wolf-mech interfacing because, yeah… TOTALLY understand."

"Well of course. Though you know, very occasionally a staff member at a household will take advantage, if they can get away with it. The ones that force themselves are usually security personnel, but I've known wolf-mechs who've had trysts with kitchen staff and chamber-servants willingly. Some are probably likely to carry those on once they're free."

"I don't know why I haven't tapped your wellspring of knowledge yet, I should have known you'd have a broader experience than the others. Prowl's lot know plenty about other pack's they've been in contact with, but you've actually been shunted around to a bunch of different ones huh?"

Red didn't seem at all bothered by the subject matter, tail twitching contently as he nodded. "Oh yes. I think it was 9? Yes, 9 households I've been through. Didn't really stay in any of them beyond a decavorn. I was usually a 'filler' purchase I think. Just to add numbers to the pack, make the nobles who bought me feel better about themselves because they had a larger pack than their friends. Large packs are terrible for the alphas that have to control them, but better for bots like me with problems, I got singled out less for my issues. In smaller packs my problems tended to stand out, became more prominent and problematic. I spent less time in those households."

"Y'talk about being treated like property so casually… aren't you at all bitter about it?"

Red Alert did seem slightly uncomfortable at that question, fiddling with the datapad in his servos. "I… suppose so, yes… to a degree. But I don't have to worry about any of it now. And my experiences were hardly the worst any of my kind has been through. Prowl has it far worse than I ever have." He murmured.

Jazz frowned slightly at that. "Y'know, you don't have to wait until the laws are made official if you want a professional to talk about your experiences with. Just cause it's been your life, doesn't mean you have to carry it without complaint. You know what hurt you… there are bots to help with that stuff. I could talk to a few I know, if you want me to?"

Red gave him a sidelong look that was both a little confused and anxious, audials flicking back and forth a bit. "I'm not… I mean, others have been through much worse than me, I don't know that I need that…"

"Red, it ain't about who's done it worse. Trauma is trauma, any way ya look at it. I get it if you ain't comfortable with the idea of talkin' about it with a stranger yet, I'm the same about… I didn't exactly have a great time of it before Prime pulled me out of the gutter. And I still haven't had more than two sessions with a professional about it, but you're carrying some very particular baggage. Just think about it for later maybe? Let yourself adjust to free life first."

The red and white mech nodded, ears pinned back as he frowned slightly. "Yes… it's not as hard as I thought though, you know. Adjusting to not being a slave… it feels like a weight off my shoulders. Honestly I get lightheaded just thinking about it sometimes. But the prospect of talking to someone about what it's been like… I don't know, I don't feel like any therapists could actually understand what it's like. How can they? Our situation is completely unique. How am I supposed to explain alignments to them, and pack dynamics, ranks… I'm not even sure there ARE any therapists on Cybertron who can help us when we're free."

It was Jazz's turn to frown slightly, visor dim with thought as he mulled it over. "Y'know, you're right… it might take some doing to find a bot with enough experience to even come close to being qualified. And even then, one mech can hardly service the whole of your caste. I'll have to add that to mine and Ratchet's list of 'slag we have to organise pre-emancipation.' As far as the near future goes though, there's still the matter of next alignment. And I think I might have an idea for that".

---

Once again, Jazz had managed to engineer time at Thunderwing's compound before the contest. Unfortunately, it was more for Red Alert's benefit than his or Prowl's.

As he'd hoped, the flier had graciously hosted Jazz and his new hound for alignment. Jazz pretended he was at a loss for places to keep Red during his transformation. In truth he knew several places he could probably have taken him, but this worked far better for their plans.

Not only did Jazz get to ingratiate himself further with Thunderwing, but Red got the benefit of a hunting lesson with the best pack on the competitive circuit. Not that they expected to win, but Jazz couldn't go into a contest without at least TRYING to take it seriously to some degree. He did have his pride, and Red seemed keener with the promise of servos-on instruction from Prowl. The verbal tips he'd gotten at the party were all well and good, but they couldn't compare to actually getting to run and hunt with the pack.

It was unfortunate Mirage and Hound couldn't make it, since Mirage was having to host his creators for the orn. Jazz was so glad he'd turned down the offer to attend and bunk Red with Mirage's pack. It wasn't the pack that would be a problem… he just hated being around Mirage's creators.

They seemed to think he was Mirage's suitor, and neither approved. Sure, he was a high ranking ambassador NOW, with strong connections to the Prime… but they knew he hadn't COME from money, and they REALLY didn't think he was suitable for their precious creation and all his wealth and charm.

Much as Jazz was happy to dissuade them of the idea he was Mirage's lover, his friend had other plans. He LOVED to taunt his parents with the idea. Jazz couldn't stop him if he wasn't there, but he also wouldn't back his friend in his creator-torturing endeavours.

Although dealing with the wealthy pair seemed a far more attractive prospect while he was stuck sipping high grade with Thunderwing. If he had to listen to the blue and yellow flier drone on about how jealous Onslaught was of him and his air force for much longer he just might fake a high-grade induced coma.

Then again, he didn't really trust Thunderwing with his unconscious body. He nodded and made all the right noises to get the flier to carry on the conversation practically on his own. When Thunderwing finally ran out of hot air to billow, he was finally able to excuse himself to his guest quarters.

He may have wanted voluntary unconsciousness when in Thunderwing's company, but once he was free of it, recharge was the last thing on his mind. He knew he couldn't see Prowl face-to-face, but he wanted to at least try to see him from afar… maybe he could talk over coms during alignment? He wished he'd asked Hound earlier.

Jazz knew if Mirage was there he'd tell him not to even attempt what he was planning, but no Mirage meant Jazz's inhibitions were critically low. Besides, it couldn't be THAT dangerous to be outside, so long as he was somewhere elevated that the wolf-mechs couldn't scale, right?

That's what he told himself at least, as he hacked the locks on his window and scaled the outside of the building, mindful of the security cameras covering areas around the compound. Once he reached the roof, he was able to get a good view of the grounds, and began to search for moving shapes between the metallic tree-like formations.

It took him a good three breems to actually spot ANYTHING, and even then he had to squint at the flash of yellow. It got closer to the building, and he managed to make out Bumblebee's form. Assuming that they tended to roam together, Jazz made his way carefully and silently down the outside of the building again. He perched on a second storey windowsill, craning his neck to try and see through the trees and spot the pack.

He nearly fell off the narrow sill when a voice came from directly below him.

"Jazz what are you DOING out here? Didn't Hound tell you how dangerous we are during alignment?"

The words were half hissed, as if the scout was scared of being overheard. Once he'd caught himself, Jazz peered down at him with slight confusion.

"Uh… yeah but I figured if I was out of reach… wait why aren't YOU trying to attack me? Also how the slag did you sneak up on me like that? You have no business being that sneaky when you're that yellow."

Bumblebee did what Jazz could only describe as roll his optics at him.

"If they get one WHIFF of you, they'll come running, and they can definitely reach you where you are now, didn't you watch us train?"

"Doesn't answer why you ain't comin' after me."

Bumblebee switched his weight from side to side, looking around nervously. "You REALLY need to get back inside Jazz, they're not close right now but it wouldn't take them long-"

"I'll go back inside if you come with me."

The yellow bot gave him a startled look, hackles flicking down. "I… I can't, I'm too dangerous to you…"

"If what Hound told me was true, and I'd assume it was because he wouldn't have joked about that kinda thing, you'd already be trying to attack me by now if you were actually under the influence of the magnetic fields. But you're not. So, I'm gonna assume that for whatever reason, you're safe to be around, even if the rest of your pack ain't."

Bumblebee's audials continued to switch back and forth in indecision. He looked up at Jazz and back out at the grounds, rumbling unhappily.

"You'll have to follow me around to the groundskeeper's tool shed. I can't go inside the main compound, Thunderwing will see my tracker in there, slag will hit the fan. But he won't care why or how I got in the shed."

Jazz nodded, making his way along the outside walls of the building, following the flashes of yellow from below. When Bumblebee stopped by a low structure that was built against the back wall of the compound, Jazz dropped onto its roof. He leant his helm over the side as Bumblebee tried to push the door open, gearing up to ram it.

"Hey woah wait, I can just pick the lock. First though, y'gonna tell me if this is some kinda clever ruse to get me cornered so you can eat me?" He grinned at the yellow wolf, getting another optic-roll in response.

"No, we're not capable of reasoning with bots that aren't wolfmechs when we're under influence. Strategizing while hunting bots, probably, but not talking to them."

"Except you." Jazz murmured curiously as he dropped down and got to work picking the lock, which was ridiculously old-fashioned and flimsy.

"…Yeah. Well… that's a whole thing and you're not supposed to know." Bumblebee murmured as he went in ahead at Jazz's invitation.

The silver and white mech followed him in and locked the door behind them, turning on the dim light and settling in against a set of shelves. Bumblebee hesitated slightly before curling up next to him.

"So, why am I not supposed to know?" Jazz asked softly, not presuming to touch the bot until his servo was nudged by a snout very subtly.

The yellow bot gave a long sigh as if resigning himself, leaning into Jazz's careful petting on his helm. "No one is supposed to. The only ones who know are Prowl and the Twins, the less people know the less likely it can get back to Shockwave. It was hard enough hiding it from him when I lived in his labs. Sometimes I think maybe Inferno and 'Breaker know, but they've never said anything."

"Well, secrets are definitely something I'm good at keeping. But I'm still kinda curious about HOW you don't have the killer instinct thing. And why it's so important Shockwave doesn't know."

"Prowl told you what we were always meant to be, right? Trainable, controllable soldiers?"

Jazz nodded, stroking down Bumblebee's fluffed-up neck plates as the small wolfmech continued.

"The reason we were scrapped for that is the alignment thing. Can't afford all your soldiers to go insane and turn on you once every so often. Do you know how much Shockwave would kill to find out how to turn that off? He did so many experiments to try and turn it off in other wolfmechs, but he couldn't do it. Me and my brother might be the one key to him finding out and we don't EVER want that happening."

Jazz made a noise of understanding, demeanour sobering substantially. "That is absolutely not something we want. So… do you have any idea WHY the two of you have no killer instinct?"

Bumblebee shrugged with his hackles, a gesture Jazz had gotten quite used to in this pack's presence. "I always just assumed it had something to do with the fact we're both smaller than other wolfmechs too. There's not a lot of minibot-size wolves. All the ones I know of were either turned as sparklings or one of their progenitors was one. Neither of my progenitors had minibot in them as far as I know, but then… I don't know much at all about them. Shockwave isn't exactly the sentimental type. He told me nothing that wasn't relevant to what he wanted from me, and he didn't want much from me. Except, y'know, go along with the tests and don't complain or struggle."

Jazz made a sympathetic noise, something in his mind pulling at the mention of Shockwave and tests, but it was such a vague feeling he brushed it off as intense empathy.

"Well, if I can data-mine deep enough, I might be able to pull whatever records he has for you when I do my raid."

Bumblebee shifted his helm under the petting servo to look up at Jazz intently. "You're not doing it alone, right?"

"Uuuuh… that was the plan, it's the usual modus operandi, why?"

The yellow mech's audials laid flat. "Nooononono you have to take someone else with you, two more if you can. Shockwave is cocky, even if he doesn't show it, but you can't count on that making him sloppy. He just has SO MANY safeguards in place he thinks no one could get through them. He has drones guarding everything and performing all his menial tasks. When one of them gets damaged, he knows immediately. I know you can hack really well, but that's a slagload of bots to hack… isn't there anyone you can take to help you?"

Jazz scratched behind one of the audials to make Bumblebee relax. "As a matter of fact, I do know a guy… two actually."

Bumblebee stared at him a little longer, gaze scrutinizing. "It's Mirage and Hound isn't it?"

Jazz's petting faltered. "How the slag-… bot you got an uncanny ability to read me, and I can't decide if it's a good thing or a bad thing. Yes, they're my guys."

The yellow bot plopped his head back down on Jazz's lap with a small whuff. "Good. Should probably take Red too, if he's got sensors like yours he'll be able to scout."

Jazz hummed, unsure. "I dunno… his sensors would be useful, but he ain't trained in stealth. I could give him a crash course, but if this op is as dangerous as you say, I'd rather not ask him to take the risk."

"Are you telling me Hound has done this sort of thing before?" Bumblebee rolled on his side and pushed his forehead into Jazz's abdomen, purring as he got jaw scritches.

"I shouldn't be telling you that… but considering you're not likely to go blabbing my secrets around, yes. He has. Not much mind, and always with Mirage. Their skills together are pretty invaluable. Truth be told, I wouldn't mind having you on the op, but for one thing that's straight up not possible, and for another I think Prowl might kill me if you got so much as a scratch."

"Mmmmmmnah. Prowl wouldn't kill you. Twins would do it before he could. I would LIKE to go, 'cause I probably know that place and you definitely don't, but at the same time… I'd rather not have to go back into ANY of Shockwave's labs… EVER." Bee murmured, leaning more into the scritches. "Point's moot anyway, Thunderwing wouldn't lend me out to anyone for anything".

"Understandable" Jazz nodded, feeling rather privileged that Bumblebee was letting him touch him and being so familiar. He hadn't actually been quite this friendly with Jazz in the presence of the rest of his pack. He hadn't exactly been stand-offish, but there'd been a distance. A barrier of protectiveness that separated the two of them. It felt good to be trusted enough by the young bot for him to relax like this in his presence.

"So, you feel ready for this sham of a contest?" he murmured as Bumblebee ended up squirming his whole torso into his lap.

The yellow bot rumbled and whuffed. "I slagging hope so after the drills Thunderwing has been putting us through. UuuuUUUUGH, he's gone mental about the whole thing. I can barely feel my paws after the training sessions these orns."

"Awwww. Maybe I should be offering your whole pack some magnetic maintenance after it's all over. Heck I could give you some now if you want."

To his surprise, Bumblebee gave him a wary look and pulled away from him slightly. "You're not trying to get me lubed up so you can frag me, are you?"

Jazz pulled a horrified face. "SLAG no where did you get that idea? Mech you're not even old enough, primus, NO."

The yellow mech relaxed slightly, audials still pinned back. "I mean, you kept giving Prowl those massages and then he kept wanting to frag afterwards, I thought it must be a thing."

Jazz couldn't help letting out a chuckle at that. "Primus bot no, noooonono that was a side effect because of his injuries… and possibly also because we just… I dunno, we can't help ourselves really, if that didn't trigger it somethin' else probably would anyway. But no, magnetic massages don't automatically make you wanna frag a bot. Mostly they just help with pain."

The chuckling took the tension out of the yellow wolf-mech, who shifted around, giving Jazz a curious look before holding up a forepaw. "Okay then… if you don't mind?"

"Course ah don't mind. Why would I, I've already practically adopted you." He snickered, noting the thump of Bee's tail at that and grinning as he took the paw in his servo.

Jazz got to work rubbing his thumb against the strangely textured pads of the paws, pulsing low magnetic waves as he gently pushed each digit out to its full extent, stretching over-taut cables. Bee squirmed slightly and rumbled before relaxing again. "That feels REALLY weird but also good."

"Honestly the heat and stretching is probably ninety percent of what you need, the magnetics just make sure everything sits where it should." Jazz explained as he continued, leaning his helm down and sideways a little to check out the paw pads a little more closely. "Huh. I haven't seen any bot with this material on their frame other than me. Not that I look real close at most bot's pedes, but still. Not sure why ah've got it, for you it must help a lot with gripping smoother surfaces, it's like rubber but not, right?"

Bumblebee gave the verbal equivalent of a shrug. "I guess? It helps us stay quiet too. We all have paws like that, they kinda stay in root mode but not so springy on the servos. I don't think I've ever seen any bots with them either, well, other than anibots. I'm guessing you mean sentient bots."

Jazz hummed an affirmative, continuing his extending of the clawed digits before flexing the wrist and then moving onto the other paw. He might take the mystery up with Ratchet and Wheeljack later.

"So how's Red been doin out there tonight? Learning anything new? Getting the hang of takin' on bigger stuff?"

"Mmmm he's doing okay from what I saw. I don't think he's got the right…frame of mind, to be a hunter, really. He doesn't WANT to kill anibots, at least not ones he isn't going to eat."

"You guys usually eat what you kill?" Jazz asked, genuinely curious. He hadn't thought of the possibility of them actually hunting for reasons beyond instinct.

"Oh yeah, usually just during alignment. Get a lot of extra trace and base minerals that way, also it kinds feels good to have solid food for a change sometimes. Liquid energon is fine in enough quantity, but when we're pushed harder in training it's just not enough, y'know?"

"Actually, I do know. But all I ever got were Glitchmice and Rotorats. Didn't have a lot of choice back then though, energon was real hard to come by before I figured out the best places to steal it from. I say steal, but the bots I took from had more'n enough, thought it was only fair considering they were also criminals."

"So you really lived on the streets?" Bumblebee murmured, looking up at him curiously.

Jazz nodded, flexing Bee's other wrist. "Can't remember what ah did before that, if I did anything at all. No records of me, no memories that ain't corrupted to slag. I run mostly under the assumption I was a made-to-order and I wasn't what they ordered. Wouldn't be the first thrown out in the cold for that, just kinda lucky I had a grab-bag of skills that meant I could survive it."

"Most bots can't break down solid metal chunks in their tanks though, how did you find out you could? Also what kinda job do you think you were made for?"

Jazz put down the paw he'd been flexing tilted his helm down at the innocent little questioning face. "Concept of personal questions really doesn't exist much amoung your kind huh?" he snickered.

Bee's audials flicked back apologetically. "Sorry… got carried away. Don't get to ask a lot of bots outside our caste about the kind of lives they live."

"S'alright. Considering Prowl seems keen on absorbin' me into your pack, it can't hurt for you to get to know me at some point. Honestly, I'm not one hundred percent sure WHAT ah was made for. But I got an iron cast tank and filters that can handle most mild poisons and toxins without me getting' more than a bit tipsy. Glitchmice and Rotorats went down easy once I was desperate enough to find out I could eat them. Chances are I was made to work in a harsh environment and they rejected me for bein' too small. Most bots made for extremes are twice my size or bigger, with much thicker plating. Y'want me to do the back ones too?"

Bumblebee cocked his helm before realising the last part referred to his pedes. "OH, uuuh… I guess? Might as well keep them all even."

The yellow wolf squirmed the rest of the way into Jazz's lap, making the silver and white bot whuff and chuckle, and stuck one of his back paws in the air.

Jazz took it and got to work, Bee chuffing and grinning when his toes were tickled in retaliation.

---

The acrid smell of the copper smelts fairly burned Jazz's olfactory receptors as he got into the vents. He hoped the air in the facility was filtered, because he was going to have a hard time concentrating if it was just as bad in there. He felt especially bad for poor Hound, who was almost beside himself with the strength of the stench. It whited out almost everything else for him.

He was waiting with Mirage at one of the rear entrances, the plan being for Jazz to get in and disable all the security systems necessary to let them in undetected. It was normally one of the most dangerous aspects of a mission, but in the case of this one, the whole thing was high risk. He had to be alert at all times, ready to pull one of a dozen contingencies out of his aft at any given moment.

Jazz cycled slow, steady gulps of clean air into his vents as he got deeper into the building. He wanted to hurry for Hound's sake, but he knew rushing this would blow the whole thing. So he crept slowly, doing constant sensor sweeps, pausing whenever he heard something in the corridors beneath him.

Slowly, agonisingly slowly, and so quietly… he finally reached his destination. The main power hub of the facility was easy to find, it was a massive electromagnetic beacon on his sensors. He had no idea what kind of equipment needed to draw that much power, but it was thirsty, whatever it was.

Jazz plugged in to one of the more innocuous inlets and got to work. It was almost painful how slowly he had to go, wary of any kind of booby trap or alarm he might trigger. One firewall was slipped past… then a second… he had to mentally army crawl his way under the third, which was so dense and thorny he wondered how long it had taken Shockwave to compile.

After another two slightly easier firewalls, he finally reached the core of the systems. From there it was still difficult to do what he needed to without detection. It had been three breems already, and still he wasn't sure how much longer it would take. Neither Hound nor Mirage had dared to try and ping his comms, but he felt the pressure in the back of his mind to get them inside as fast as possible. Hopefully Hound hadn't passed out yet.

After another two breems of dancing his way around complex security set-ups and learning the patterns he would have to emulate and fake, Jazz finally managed to open the door for Mirage and Hound.

/Primus it's about time, Hound looks ready to offline/

Mirage's terse reply made Jazz wince. He knew the noble well enough to detect when he was angry, even if his friend hid it.

/Sorry about that, Bumblebee wasn't kidding. This place is riveted tighter than a prison ship. Don't move outta that corridor you're in yet, I gotta figure out where all these security droids are and make sure they don't see us. Then I gotta make sure the non-security ones don't see us either. Place is crawlin' with his little minions, every single one of 'em could be a set of audials and optics for him/

Mirage sent back an acknowledgement glyph with a slight inflection of apology. It seemed he hadn't really understood the scope of the job Jazz was performing. It was followed fairly quickly by a grateful glyph from Hound.

Jazz worked away in the little invisible bubble he'd built for himself in Shockwave's systems. He'd never actually hacked anything this big or complex before, and he was extremely wary of missing something important.

Mirage and Hound waited patiently and invisibly in the corridor, happy at least to be drawing clean air through their vents. The longer they waited, the more anxious they became about just how dangerous this undertaking was.

Neither dared disturb Jazz, unsure how sensitive his work was at any given moment. After almost a whole cycle had passed of tense waiting, he broke the silence on their comms.

/Okay, it's safe for you to move through to the room beyond that corridor now. I've faked a loop of every routine, the system reads everything as normal but all security droids are inoperable. Regular duty droids are still doin' whatever they do, but none of them will register our presence or make any record of us. Just don't touch them, I can't hack their on-board sensors from here./

/I'm not sure how you do it, and I'm not sure I'm glad you do, but Primus damnit I'm impressed anyway/ Mirage murmured as he moved with Hound into the next room, finding two large sentinel drones standing motionless. /Where to from here?/

/Short-waving you a schematic now. This place is multi-level, goes down underground way deeper than I thought before. And there's gotta be important stuff here, cause he's not likely to lay this much security on a few useless test-tubes. I'll rendezvous with you in the main atrium where the elevator is/.

Mirage and Hound both pinged affirmatives and made their way as quietly as possible through the facility. Both had become experts at stealth when hunting for sport, and that never included use of Mirage's Electro-disruptor. With it, they were nigh-on undetectable.

They passed more of the frozen sentinels on their way, and more still of the active drones. They were a lot harder to not touch than anticipated, since some of them travelled in packs, little spindly arms full of containers with unknown contents.

After hugging the walls, it was nice to get into the open atrium. They spotted Jazz waiting next to an elevator, blue visor trained on a gaggle of droids as they exited one of the two lifts. His head snapped around to their position before Mirage had even de-cloaked them, and he gestured for them to stand close.

/Don't talk aloud, no idea how many sound recording devices there are anywhere here. I've been watching these things, they seem to have a fairly regular pattern. Not sure what they're transporting around… you two see anything that clued you in so far?/

/I smell something like energon but I'm not sure/ Hound answered, audials switching as he kept alert for any change in the droid's behaviour. None of them seemed to see them, but they made him extremely nervous. /There's something familiar about these drones I don't like. I think… I don't know but I might have BEEN here before/

/If this is where Shockwave used to have the major crèche, then you probably were. You were infected, not sparked a wolfmech, right?/ Jazz asked.

Hound nodded, audials laying flat. /Yeah I think so… not a lot of memories of it, don't think I was in the crèche long. Did Prowl tell you about it?/

/Inferno and Trailbreaker told me most of it actually. Prowl remembers pretty well, he says he was there a fair while. C'mon, we're going down with this lot/ Jazz jerked his head at a gaggle of drones heading for the lift beside them. When it opened to admit them, the three slipped in and hugged the wall, making sure not to touch them.

They said nothing as the lift descended, Mirage and Hound waiting on Jazz's signal to leave as it stopped at different floors. They got off when it finally went to the floor just under the one they'd been on, and hurried down the one corridor that led into the bunker-like level.

/I've been doing ping sweeps across each level, there's life signs on the lower ones but I want to go through this place from top to bottom. We need to fan out and see what's here, if it's wolf-mechs or regular mechs we're getting them out. If not, well… we'll figure out exactly what we're dealing with and try to break any controls Shockwave has over it. I'm not expecting anything on this level because I'm not getting any pings, but we need to be sure anyway/.

Mirage and Hound nodded, the two of them heading to the centre and left of the facility while Jazz went right. He continued to ping as he came to the right wing corridor, off which several doors led into windowed rooms.

They seemed like ordinary labs. Jazz wasn't convinced, and watched drones puttering about before managing to follow one into the first lab. There were no de-contaminators, so it probably wasn't anything major. When he glanced at the benches he passed, peering around drones as they performed monotonous tasks with test tubes and drippers and centrifuges, he couldn't work out what exactly they were doing. It all looked like weak forms of energon going through some kind of testing.

Glancing around, he noted what looked like raw samples being held in a container in the centre of the lab. The drones occasionally plucked one of the tiny rocks inside it out and got to work reducing it to a liquid.

Very carefully, Jazz transformed out a pair of tweezers from his middle finger and got a small plastic canister from his subspace. He put a few of the rocks in it and stowed the container. He did a quick visual sweep to see if there was anything else in the room before leaving.

He checked the other labs on his side of the level, all of them doing the exact same thing. He took samples of the rocks from each of them before heading back to the elevators to rendezvous with the others.

Hound and Mirage reported the same thing across all labs on that floor. The two of them had also collected samples of the stuff being tested. After waiting for another gaggle of drones, they made their way down to the next level.

Here there were just stores of equipment, all of it seemingly not in use. It was one giant store room… and Hound seemed extremely irked by some of the dormant machinery setups. He couldn't even explain why. Jazz didn't feel that he needed to… it all looked suspiciously like surgical equipment for procedures no bot ever wanted to undergo.

The next level down was much worse. The corridor arrangement was a little different, stretching to their left and right, and this time they did not split up. They went left, keeping to the walls even though no drones patrolled the level. When the corridor turned at ninety degrees to the right, they came across rooms. All of them were just small cubes with glass-steel doors the same width as them. The doors had sliding hatches in the bottom, as if they were meant for occupants, and the hatches for delivering energon.

Jazz felt a cold shiver run up his spinal strut. They reminded him of smaller versions of enforcer station cells. Overnight incarceration pods for bots arrested and awaiting transport to a proper jailhouse. Worse still, he noticed that each cell had air-tight seals around the doors and hatches. Small vents lined the tops of them, meaning bots could be gassed inside with anything.

The corridor held about 16 of these cells, and when they came to another right turn, there were more. The entire floor seemed to consist of the one connected corridor that encircled a large, square room on the centre. The room had no windows in, and once they went halfway down the rear corridor, they came to the double doors that led in. They didn't have windows either, and were heavily shielded.

/I've been here. I have to of been here I can't stop shaking, I HATE this place but I don't REMEMBER it so I don't know WHY/ Hound murmured over comms as Jazz plugged into a wall panel and started hacking the door. Mirage rubbed behind his audials in a soothing gesture, concerned by the fact that his usually unshakeable lover was trembling involuntarily. It didn't take long to get the doors open, and when they saw what was inside, it became immediately apparent why Hound was so upset by the place.

The dark room lit up to bright, almost garish white when the doors opened. Inside there was a large slab of a table, right in the centre of the room… no… not a table, a berth. A surgical berth.
Machinery lined its edges, as did anchors with chains and adjustable titanium-mesh cuffs.

Jazz felt sick to his tanks. /Don't go in Hound, stay out here, keep your optics and audials open for anyone or anything comin' this way/

Hound gave an affirmative glyph, sitting by the door with his back to the wall and trying not to shake so much. He didn't remember being on that medical berth but he knew… he knew he had been at some point.

Jazz and Mirage carefully tip-toed their way in, giving the slab a wide berth and concentrating on the benches and terminals lining the walls. Tools and equipment were lined up all neat and clean along their surfaces. Terminals were on stand-by, the place looked like it had never been used… except for the scratches lining the edges of the med-berth. Deep gouges in the metal, showing exactly what Shockwave's patients thought of being strapped to it.

It dawned on Jazz that all of the cells that had lined the corridors were meant for those 'patients'. Wolf mechs awaiting surgery of one sort or another, probably brought along by their owners for mods to be fitted or control modules to be installed. Primus only knew what else, Jazz wasn't sure he wanted to…

But he had to. He stared at the terminal in front of him, gritting his denta before getting down to the task of finding an appropriate access port to hack it from. Mirage stalked about the room pulling horrified faces as he worked. This terminal was on a separate server to the rest of the building, and he wondered how many other closed systems there were here. Probably several, it was certainly safer than having it all linked up, if not somewhat inconvenient.

Hacking it was harder than he expected, but he made progress. After four or five breems, he managed to get in, and browsed the files to see how he could package and dump the lot on a memory bank.

He soon realised exactly HOW valuable this server was. It contained the medical information of every wolf mech that had crossed the surgical slab. Unfortunately, a lot of the information was coded such that Jazz couldn't read it. The glyphs were a nonsensical form of short-hand, probably one Shockwave had developed himself. It might take decacycles to decode, but he took the lot anyway. Ratchet would probably be able to make half of it out without even needing Shockwave's notes. The other half he might be able to pass by Wheeljack and maybe get some answers.

When he was finally done, the three of them couldn't get out of there fast enough. Hound was still shaking a little when they got back to the lift, Mirage petting his audials soothingly and giving Jazz a meaningful look.

/I'm sorry he had to see that… but we knew this wasn't gonna be a walk in the park/ Jazz short-waved him grimly as he popped a wall panel and started hacking the lift. He'd realised they'd be waiting forever if he didn't call it and force it to go where they wanted.

/I know. But I can tell you right now, I REALLY don't want to make a habit out of this. Whatever your next stealth mission is, you'll have to do it on your own/

/Fair enough/

They slipped in beside the gaggle of drones waiting for their stops, and got out on the next level down. The corridors here were much more open, lined with windows and doors leading off to different spacious rooms.

The main corridor simply ran straight from the elevator to the other side of the facility, and even though the last level's layout had made its size hard to judge, Jazz knew it had been oddly much smaller. Maybe the facility was actually pyramid shaped? Each level down getting bigger would mean more work than he'd anticipated.

The three of them walked carefully down the central corridor, keeping to the walls as drones passed by in ones and twos. Jazz was on the opposite side to Hound and Mirage, all of them peering into the windows of large, sunken rooms. Hound put his snout to the ground and followed whatever scent he'd picked up, audials perking.

/Wolfmechs down here… can't tell how many, there's a few different smells but they're not very distinct, might be siblings?/

/Okay, you're with me Hound, Mirage can you scout this place and figure out what these rooms are for? I'm seein' what looks like trainin' setups in some but they're dark. Don't go into any of them if you can't see what's in there/

Mirage nodded as Hound slipped across the hall to Jazz and continued trying to follow the scent trail. Jazz kept on his flank, watching their surroundings carefully so he could warn the green wolfmech if something popped up while he was occupied. The longer they were down here, the more on edge Jazz felt.

A fuzzy feeling in the back of his processor was trying to tell him something, but he couldn't make it out. This place feeling familiar to Hound was one thing. The problem was, Jazz couldn't shake the feeling he'd been here too.

In all likelihood it was just triggering memories of Ratchet's clinic. It hadn't been so dissimilar really, and he'd LOATHED the place when Optimus first caught and dragged him there. It was like a prison, except his wardens had been genuinely concerned with helping him. Of course, that hadn't stopped it feeling like a prison of the pits when he was locked into a room and forced to go cold on the stim addiction.

Shaking off the distracting chain of thought, he touched Hound's flank to make him stop. They'd come to an intersection of corridors, stretching to their right and left. They were slightly narrower than the main one, and Hound peered down both, drawing in huge drafts of air through his olfactory sensors.

/Scent goes right. We can just follow this wall around/

Jazz nodded, following the green bot's lead. He continued to look around, noticing the amount of cameras on this level alone was four times as much as the one above. They weren't a threat, since he'd disabled the feeds and looped yesterday's entire record of footage into the system. All the same, they irked him.

Jazz perked up when Hound came to a stop by a door to a lit room. The window set into the wall showed it was not particularly large, but the walls were lined with more of the glass-box cages like the surgical level had.

He couldn't see any signs of occupants from the angle he was at, but Jazz got to work hacking the door anyway. If there was even a shred of evidence that wolfmechs had been kept in there, it was worth collecting.

He noticed Hound sort of dancing in place at his side, trying to see SOMETHING through the window and snuffling around near the floor again.

/What's up, something smell wrong?/

/No, not exactly… I mean, well… I'm worried. They smell young. Not sparkling young but still pretty new/

/There's a smell to that?/

Hound looked at him as if he were a dullard, and he was briefly reminded of Mirage. /There's a smell to EVERYTHING Jazz. Including the stims you still carry around. Yeah, I DO know about those, but I don't tell 'Raj because I'm not willing to start a fight between you/

Jazz stared at him with something between a grin and a grimace.

/Knew there was a reason I liked you so much/ He scratched Hound's head briefly before popping the door open. The moment he did, Hound slipped in ahead of him. Jazz would have chided him for not doing a trap-check first, except he'd already done one with a sensor sweep. Following the green bot in, he quickly focussed in on something else.

There WERE other wolfmechs in here.

He knew the moment Hound let out a high pitched soft whine and nosed at the first glass door. A confused sounding yip answered from the other side. Jazz quickly tapped Hound's hip and put a digit to his mouth. Even if they'd found bots, they couldn't afford to speak. Wolfish noises at least could be passed off as the occupants, but it was better not to draw attention.

He crouched in front of the glass cage and looked at the wolfmech inside. He was HUGE, all pale blue with red accents, and looking at them like they were ghosts. Jazz did a frequency scan around the same band he used to talk to Prowl's pack, and pinged to see if he could get on the bot's comm.

A head tilt from the huge wolf told him when he'd found it, getting a query ping in return.

/I'm Jazz, this is Hound. We're here to get you out. Please don't make a load of noise, ah don't know how many independent recording devices Shockwave has, and I can't block them all without blocking ALL comms in the area/

Jazz was slightly confused when the large wolf looked between him and the right wall of his cage, then back again a few times.

/That's… uh… not Hotspot's comm link, it's mine/

Jazz blinked and looked around, spotting a small white and red wolfmech one cage along to his right, staring at him. /Yeah it's mine. They don't have working comms, only me/

Jazz gave the large one, Hotspot, a slightly confused look before moving down to crouch in front of the other wolfmech's cage. /Sooo how come he reacted when I found the frequency?/

/He felt it through the bond/ the bot replied simply, as if it should have been obvious.

/You're bonded and he keeps you in separate cages?/ Hound replied, looking and sounding horrified.

The red and white wolf just blinked at him /Uh, yes. We all are./

/Bonded?/ Jazz hated to sound stupid but it was a lot to wrap anyone's processor around. Group bonds were not exactly common… unless-

/Yes, all five of us, we're siblings/

Jazz looked around briefly at the other bots peering owlishly at him out of their cells. /Aaaand Hotspot is the core spark huh?/

The red and white wolf's tail wagged, as if pleased Jazz had finally caught on. /Yes, we're a sibling gestalt/

Hound looked between the two, still confused even as Jazz nodded in understanding. /I'll explain it later Hound. Figures Shockwave would keep you lot down here, so why's he left you a comm and not the others?/

/I need it for my training, they don't. Between us we just use the bond to speak. You said you were here to get us out? What do you mean, did you… did you buy us? I never thought he'd sell us, he never mentioned planning to or anything/

/Nah mech, I didn't buy you. I'm here to get you OUT. As in free, not property, what Shockwave's doing here? Completely not legal, or at least it won't be soon enough. What are your names?/

The small wolf mech just stared at him in answer for a few moments before turning to Hound. /Is he… is he serious? I figured he was your master?/

Hound gave him a wolfish grin and a head tilt. /Nope. Friend, not master. Even my master isn't really my master. He's here too, checking out the rest of this level/

The smaller wolfmech's optics went very wide, and there were shifting sounds in his sibling's cells. They all seemed to be having a rapid and intense conversation between them, and Jazz was reminded briefly of the twins.

The red and white mech focussed in on Jazz again after a moment and stood up /My name is Firstaid. The console near the door controls all our cage locks/

Jazz gave him a small salute, /On it. I need you and your siblings not to make any noise while we get you out of here, okay? I've made it so the cameras and drones don't record us, but I don't know how many independent recording devices there are. Can't touch the drones either, you guys think you can manage it?/

/…Blades says he'll strangle any of us that mess this up so that's a yes. Blades hates this place the most/ Aid responded, putting his face against the door of his cage so he could watch Jazz work. Jazz assumed the mid-sized red wolfmech that whuffed and nodded his head was Blades, and he gave him a wave.

Hound stayed by the cage door, looking Aid over as if to check he wasn't hurt. /Are there more of you here? Other Wolfmechs in this facility?/

/Not that I'm aware of, he doesn't keep any in here with us. Usually he keeps any non-permanent residents upstairs in the surgical suite. Might be some on this level somewhere… he had some other… bots… here for a while, but they weren't wolfmechs. They kinda weren't… mechs, really? But they were? He didn't make me work on them but I saw them briefly/

/Wait he makes you work on bots? How?/ Hound cocked his helm, noting Aid's expression turn uncertain as if he wasn't sure he should answer.

/I… it's my training. I don't know how he could tell but Shockwave said I was sparked a medic. He's used me as an assistant in a lot of his… it's mostly just installing things in other wolfmechs. Mods and stuff, or basic repairs. Sometimes… sometimes autopsies…/

Jazz, who had been listening in while he worked, looked back over his shoulder with a pang of sympathy. /Don't worry bot, we'll get you out and Ratchet can take you on. He'll be happy for a new helper, especially if you know a lot about wolfmech anatomy. Ratchet is a great medic, he's not gonna make you do anything you ain't comfortable with, okay?/

This seemed to perk up the red and white wolf, who startled slightly as his and his sibling's cage doors opened simultaneously. When he stepped out, Hound sniffed him lightly and pulled a bit of a face. /Oh, you're the one who smells of medical cleaning solvent/

Aid just gave him a small nod as the others stepped uncertainly out of their cells, looking around as if afraid Shockwave would come bursting in to catch them. Hound went about sniffing all of them in greeting, tail wagging a little despite trying to supress it. /So… how old are you all? You look full frame but you can't have been for long?/

/Yyyyeaaah… about that… we don't know. We've always been in these frames. We don't remember having a sparker or a carrier or anything, we've only known other wolfmechs that've been here and Shockwave… and some of the other weird bots sometimes, but we don't have much to do with them/ Aid explained, standing still as the smallest of their group walked up and rubbed themselves all over him, presumably to improve his smell. Hound nearly died from how adorable it was, but the gesture seemed totally lost on Jazz as he came back over.

/Aid, do y'know if your siblings have comms at all? Are they just locked down, or were they never installed?/

/Oh no, they have them, they're just deactivated/

/Good, y'mind if I switch 'em all on? Make getting' out of here safer if we can all talk/

Aid gave his consent, and the siblings all sat in a line, ready for him to make the adjustments. It irked the visored mech a little that they were falling into line for him so easily when he was a stranger, even if he WAS there to free them.

As Jazz worked and Hound kept a lookout, he decided to probe a little more into who the other residents had been. /Aid, when y'say there were weird mechs here… what were their alt modes like? Bipedal? Quad? Recognisably animalistic?/

/Most of them were in mech form when I saw them, they've been gone from here a few orns. They just seemed to act more like anibots… the one I saw in anibot mode, he was huge. Bipedal, long tail, BIG head with LOTS of denta-/

/Wouldn't happen to be called 'Grimlock' would he?/ Jazz knew the answer even before wide, surprised optics turned to him from the young medic wolf.

/Yeah how'd you know?/

Jazz grimaced as he finished up on Hotspot and moved to Blades. /I saw him too. Shockwave used him in a fight against another wolfmech I know… wolfmech won but the price was high/

Aid seemed horrified by the news, but Hound gave him a reassuring nudge with his snout. /Prowl's fine, Jazz treated him when his owner wouldn't do it properly. Spine's fixing up nicely/

Aid blinked at him owlishly / You know Prowl? I know Prowl. I mean, only as a patient… I've seen him come through, he wouldn't know me since Shockwave keeps most owned mechs in stasis when they're here. But he used him to show me complex tacnet systems and how to interface with them during mod installation. Prowl has a really neat processor setup/

Jazz nearly laughed at that, /You're tellin' me… Prowl's using that neat processor of his to help free your whole kind. Now, your comms should all work, wanna sound off with your names?/

Each of them chimed into the comm channel with their names in an orderly fashion, and Jazz beamed. Before he could address how they were going to manage getting them all out stealthily, Mirage appeared at the door and beckoned him over.

/I couldn't find any other bots on this level, but… there are some extremely worrying signs that he's been keeping more than wolfmechs down here. Down the other corridor mirroring this one are massive cells, the scratches and claw marks in them look huge/

Jazz nodded grimly, /He was keeping Grimlock down here before the fight. I'm assuming afterwards that he sent him to another location for repairs or to snuff and dissect the bot or whatever it was he planned to do. Whatever other bots of a similar nature he had here are gone too. They ain't wolfmechs/

Mirage gave him a slightly horrified look. /So… I see you've found the life-signs, Hound sent me some basic details on our private channel, what's the plan for getting them out safely?/

Jazz made a motion like he wanted to sigh, but couldn't because he was trying to be silent. /Just wondering that myself. We gotta sweep the rest of the facility, but I wanna get them out as soon as possible. Five is a big group, but I don't like the thought of tryin' to break up siblings into smaller units to escort out. So we either take them all out together, or they stay here until we're done and leave with us at the end/

Mirage looked between Jazz and the gaggle of wolfmechs (not at all surprised to see Hound was already coddling them). He considered the options Jazz had presented and looked back out at the corridors they had come through. The drones were all still going about their business, but there weren't so many on this level. The lift might be a cramped affair though… and the atrium could turn into a disaster.

/How many levels are left in this place?/

/Three/

Mirage worried at his bottom lip with his denta a bit. /What if Hound and I escort them as a spread out group while you scout the last three levels? If you find anything or anyone else down there, we can finish getting them into the shuttle and then come back to help/

Jazz gave him a stony grimace /If someone sets off an alarm, we're not gonna get to finish this raid. What if we end up leaving some bots here? I don't think I could live with that 'Raj/

/Yes, but if we don't get them out before we're done and WE end up setting something off, we might ALL of us get caught and killed. It's a compromise Jazz, I don't think we have a better alternative. And Hound says these kids are smart. They can take instruction and they know this place. We should be able to manage/

Jazz made another abortive sigh motion and ran a servo over his faceplate. /Yeah, yeah you're right. OK, do it, I'll do my sweeps and I'll try to be fast to come help you if there's nothing down there. Chances are you'll have to come down for me though, I'm anticipating databanks I'll need to hack, you already KNOW how long that's gonna take with all the other slag I've hacked so far/.

Mirage nodded, giving him a squeeze on the shoulder before slipping into the room to introduce himself to the new wolfmechs.

Jazz gave them a wave before he left, knowing Mirage or Hound would fill them in on the plan. At least on his own he could sneak around way faster than when he moved with the others. He reached the lift quickly and crossed wires enough to get him to the next level as fast as possible.

The moment he was there, he wanted to leave. He didn't need Hound's sense of smell to know that there were bodies here. The corridors were spaced like a library… the room was more of a storage warehouse than anything else, with huge storage shelves in neat lines. They were encased in metal cages that stopped their contents from falling out.

Jazz dreaded investigating, but he had no choice… this was all part of his collection of evidence, he HAD to know what was in those storage cages. The smell of decaying energon, solvent and dead metal quickly tainted the back of his olfactory sensors, coating them like rancid oil.

Surely enough, the first bins he looked in were just… parts. Body parts. Very clearly used, not all cleanly severed. He took still images as he wandered the rows, disgusted by how orderly the carnage was… one shelf contained only arms of different sizes, one of legs, one of hip gimbles… it went on like this, but he only really figured out who the body parts all belonged to when he reached the bin of tails.

Wolfmechs. All of these bots had been wolfmechs. Jazz felt sick to his tanks, but he continued on through the next row of even more parts, now broken down into smaller, more specific components… shoulder joints, transform cogs, pumps, actuators, tension cables, optics…

This… THIS was the horror show he'd actually been expecting all along. The worst part though… the worst part was reaching the back of the room and coming to a large caged off storage area. It was just a flat expanse of floor… and strewn across it, piled carelessly over one another, where whole bodies. Some had been mutilated before death, some were whole but grey, lifeless. Some were in root mode, others in wolf mode, some… completely unrecognisable as either.

Jazz found himself on his knees in front of the cage for a good breem or two. Time didn't seem to matter in the face of this nightmare… but eventually, something in his processor told him it was time to move. That he couldn't afford to grieve for these strangers right now… that he needed to shut off his emotions and do his duty to record this monstrosity.

It felt wrong to leave without performing some kind of… some gesture to cleanse these deaths of the darkness and unrest, but Jazz was no acolyte of Prima. He couldn't do anything but make sure he got the evidence out and into the right servos. That was what he would do to lay these mechs to rest. When the full raid party came, maybe Elita would go with them to do what he couldn't.

Despite the overwhelming sense of horror and disgust, Jazz noticed something when he passed back by the bin of tails to leave.

They weren't all wolfmech tails.

He crouched by the metal bin in the semi-darkness and shone his headlights into it, shifting his weight from pede to pede to try and catch the contents in different light angles. He flicked his visor to a different setting, trying to distinguish shapes without touching or moving the contents.

There were definitely other tails in there. Some looked like smaller versions of Grimlock's… the rest all looked long, and thin, like tentacles or something… something…

The fuzz in the back of his processor got louder and he scowled. He KNEW what those were, knew they were significant, but couldn't for the life of him place them.

Jazz took more image stills and then left as quickly as he could. The place had every one of his sensors on edge, not just because of its contents and the dimness of the room, but for the quiet… the lack of drones… it was far too much like being in a crypt.

When Jazz got back in the lift he suppressed the urge to take deep cycles of air, keeping his fans level and ventilations as quiet as possible. His spark felt like it was clenching inside of him, hardening against the barbarity he'd witnessed. He needed to focus. He needed to keep his head in the game here or he'd screw up the mission, and he couldn't afford that. Prowl and his whole caste couldn't afford that.

He wanted to check on Mirage, but at the same time didn't want to distract him from what was a difficult and risky task, so he kept radio silence. He got out on the second last level and breathed an internal sigh of relief when he recognised it as a server farm.

He hadn't been wrong about there being more independent systems. This low down, the room was about twice the size of the one they'd found the gestalt siblings in. Unlike the one above though, this was not an open space with banks arranged like a library. This was laid out far more like the surgical suite, with one circular corridor, a room in the middle, and several around the outside walls.

As he stalked past these rooms carefully, avoiding the little drones ferrying datapads and data-slugs about, he noted that each little room with its half clear walls had a server bank in it. They all had temperature and humidity gauges on the doors, along with static electricity meters. He immediately turned his electrical dampers up to full so he wouldn't add to the readings and give himself away.

There was NO WAY he had time to hack every single one of the fifty or so servers in the room. He realised his initial idea of this being a server farm was probably incorrect… a farm would mean they were all connected, but knowing Shockwave he'd have them all running completely independently of one another.

However…

He MIGHT have a system that linked them up so he COULD use them as a farm when he needed that much raw processing for whatever sick experiment or calculation he was doing. Which meant there might be a central terminal that could hook them up.

And if this layout was anything like the one upstairs…

Bingo.

If Shockwave had one failing, it was that his love of order made him predictable. The main terminal was in the same place as the main surgical room had been. The lock on the door here however was a touch harder to crack.

He was at it for two breems before he managed to open it, breathing an internal sigh of relief when he detected no silent alarms. He practically tip-toed into the control hub, doing constant low level sensor sweeps and pings, wanting to pick up any potential traps while not wanting to set them off either. He picked up an odd EM field, but it was small enough he assumed it was one of the systems, and it wasn't pinging on any broadcasting frequencies.

This was a higher risk mission than anything else he'd done so far… EVER. Jazz knew on some deep, undecipherable level that THIS was exactly what he'd been created to do… there was no other explanation for why he was so good at it. He didn't just have the tools and the knowledge, he was able to LEARN and MAKE tools on the fly.

And right now he needed all of them, because he was staring at a massive, multi-screen, multi input terminal. Just deciding where he should plug in was a pit of a task.

In the end, the safe bet was always to plug in where there were no plugs. He got under the console and carefully unscrewed a few panels until he found some suitable circuitry he could jack into. The experience was never pleasant, considering he was basically making his own digital doorway and currents weren't regulated here for user comfort.

Once in, he carefully slid around the edge of the computer's digital mass, scoping and prying to see how it all worked.

The answer, which was not at all surprising, was that it was entirely logic based. The whole thing orderly to within a one hundredth of a micromechanometre. It made it incredibly easy to see how all the systems hooked up, how they were isolated, how they all fit together and how they functioned independently. If he wasn't still so appalled by the carnage from upstairs, he might find it beautiful.

Jazz did the mental equivalent of cracking his knuckles and dove into the grid, setting to working around the safeties and firewalls so he could connect all the databanks and start drawing down everything there.

Before he got very far though, he noticed something odd. Amoungst the order there was a tiny spot of… not exactly chaos… more like organic movement.

Jazz stopped in his digital tracks and started to concentrate on the area it occupied… and to his mixed surprise and dread, it seemed to notice him back.

Was Shockwave using… had he installed AI to run this database, or had he dumped an actual MECH into the systems?

/…You're not Shockwave? Did he get a new assistant?/

/Uh… I'm maintenance, he had a connectivity problem, needed me to fix it. Didn't tell me anything about you though…/

Jazz could not have been tensing his frame any tighter, fight or flight responses locked and ready to fire the moment he was busted. Even if he sounded confident, he was fighting to keep his fans from clicking on from the stress. Stress which tinged with confusion when the immediate response he received was the digital equivalent of a sigh.

/Yeah I think he forgot me in here again. Ignore me, I'm just a data-slug. If you need me out of the system you'll have to remove me manually though, I can't do it myself/

It took Jazz a moment to process that, and slowly he leant out from under the console, looking up at the surface where the input panels were. /Uuuuh sure but… where ARE you?/

/What? I'm right there, on the far right end. Big black box sticking out the side of the input panel, can't miss me/

Jazz did a double take. /OH, I thought that was… thought you were just an extension of the panel, sorry/ he moved carefully, unspooling some of his uplink cable so it wouldn't pull free. He peered at the plug where the data-slug bot was poking out from, wary of a trap. Was it just playing along to catch him out?

/Is there any kind of code I gotta input before removing you? Ah know Shockwave likes to lock down most of his info terminals/

/Oh, right, yeah it's a physical lock. Numpad beside me, 280773473 then star /

Jazz, still tensed up for fight or flight in case he was entering in a lockdown code instead, pressed the numbers and the star key, a tiny red light by the numpad going blue when he was done. He then shuffled over and carefully pulled the large data-slug from the console, setting him down gently on the floor.

It did nothing for a moment, then it cracked, and a teeny mech slowly unfolded in its place. When they stood straight, they were no higher than Jazz's waist. He tilted his helm slightly as the bot stretched and groaned.

"Uuuuuugh I have been in there for daaaays- WOAH" The bot onlined their visor and did a double take at Jazz. "You… sure you're not one of Shockwave's bots turned helper?... If you're from outside the facility then that's… weird."

Jazz tilted his helm, now not only wary but a little confused. "Uuuuh yeah, no, I'm not from in here… y'got a name bot?"

The data bot just stared at him a little longer before refreshing their visor and shaking their helm as if to clear it of static. "Um, yeah it's… it's Rewind, listen, are you SURE? I mean, I'm not sure why I feel like you are but… I guess you just look like something he would make."

"Well did he make you?" Jazz crossed his arms and gave the bot a half-grin, trying to make it look like he wasn't still freaking out internally.

"Well, yeah, kinda… I'm one of the experiments, I wasn't sparked that way but here we are. Surprised you actually care enough to ask, most bots couldn't give a slag, they just… yknow, use me as a tool." Rewind shrugged, "I'll just get out of your way if you don't need me in the systems."

Jazz wasn't exactly sure what he should do with this bot… he was contemplating knocking them out with a dart, but unsure if the doses he had were too strong for such a tiny mech… but then he noticed something rather important about the tiny mech.

"Hangon a klik, wait… are you a wolfmech?" the question seemed redundant now he'd spotted the tiny stubby audials and the short twitchy tail.

Rewind canted his helm at him. "Well duh, Shockwave loves turning anything he can into one just to see if it's possible. Mind I'm the only disposable class mech that's survived the process, don't ask me how." The tiny black and red bot gave him a more scrutinizing look. "Are you… really here because Shockwave sent you? You just don't seem his uuuh, type, for hired outside help."

Jazz weighed his options quickly and bit the bullet. "No, actually… I broke in to get you and any of your kind out. This was a rescue op… of sorts… I'm also tryin' to get all the info and evidence I can pull while I'm here. Name's Jazz by the way."

It was a pit of a gamble to hope this tiny mech would turn against Shockwave immediately and help him, but by the way the tiny mech perked up, he was fairly confident it had paid off. "Slag YEAH, I fragging HATE him, I HATE this place… who are you working with? Jilted noble? Iaconian Science Guild? The copper smelt owners? I can just keep naming his enemies, we could be here a while."

Jazz actually chuckled at that, "Oddly enough, I'm here on behalf of the Prime. Aaaand I don't suppose you know how to pull the data off all these separate banks collectively, do you?"
The tiny bot's body language told him what his visored and masked face couldn't.

"Plug me back into my slot and give me a breem. I've been doing nothing but backing it all up to pass the time, all I need to do is compress and package… you were trying to hack the system into connecting up to get it, yeah? Would've taken way too long. Still, if you can ghost through Shockwave's systems, you can clear up my data trails so he has no idea I copied everything, right?"

Jazz gave him a sly grin, "Not a problem." He picked Rewind up once the bot had changed back and plugged him into his slot, standing and watching the readouts as he worked internally to track the mech's progress.

Primus almighty, he might be tiny but his storage space was INSANE. Jazz didn't think he'd ever seen that level of storage capacity in such a concentrated form before, and he was able to geek out over it a bit while running clean-up in the background. The task was so much easier than what he'd been trying to do that it barely needed his attention to accomplish, and Rewind worked like lightning with all his access and system familiarity.

/So uh, were you sparked with all that storage or was that a mod?/

/It's the only useful thing Shockwave has ever done to me. TO me, notice I said that, because I never asked him, he just does whatever he wants to his experiments… speaking of, when we're done here, we gotta go downstairs. Are you POSITIVE you've never been here and you knew nothing of this place until you got in here?/

Jazz frowned slightly and canted his helm, /Pretty sure, yeah? Ah've never had anything to do with Shockwave, very deliberately. Hate the mech. Everything I knew about this place, I was told by Bumblebee pretty much-/

/OH you know Bee? I liked Bee… never got to talk to him but I watched him through the feeds and I have all the experiment records, not that I can read them, but still-/

/So he WAS kept in this facility?/

/Yes of course. All Wolfmechs have been in here at some point, it's the place he first created them/

/Shockwave made them on his own then? There's no-one else involved?/

/Well kind of... he's worked on some aspects with other bots, for very specific things he couldn't do on his own, but the core project was always his. Also if you're here on behalf of the Prime, does that mean he's finally going to get arrested?/

/That's the plan, this is the evidence gathering part so we can slam him with enough that he can't wheedle his way out of prison using his rich benefactors/

/Yeah, well, evidence is all here but… I hope you have a killer code-breaker on your team, I don't even know how to read most of it. And I've been here decavorns/

/Yikes, mech… and he keeps you down here the whole time?/

/Oh, nono, just MOST of the time. When he doesn't really need me I can wander around SOME of the other levels. I'm done by the way, are you? Can you pull me out now?/

Jazz gave a glyph of acknowledgement as he finished up the trail sweeping. He input the code again and got Rewind out, the bot not waiting to be set down and instead transforming in his arms. Jazz pulled a surprised grimace as he tried not to drop the bot, who ended up hanging off his forearm, swinging his little legs, tail wagging.

"Right… downstairs. You've been through the rest of this place to get down here already, yeah?"

"Uh… yeah. You're REAL KEEN on me getting down there, what IS down there? And why do you keep askin' if I'm one of Shockwave's experiments?" He pulled the little bot up to get him to settle on his shoulder rather than hang off his arm, Rewind obliging as if he was entirely used to riding around on other bots. Which, Jazz supposed he probably was.

"MMmm… don't really know to be honest. I asked about whether you'd swept the upper levels cause I want to know if you've gotten everyone else out already. Also have you been hacking your way through this entire building? I have a connection to the security feeds and I noticed absolutely nothing."

Jazz paused at the door to the control room as he plugged into the panel to pick the lock again. "Yes, me and my bots have been sweeping, we only found the gestalt siblings. D'you know if there's more?"

"Shouldn't be, unless he brought back any of the dinobot experiments but as far as I know they should ALL be at his testing facility in Kaon. If you got the gestalt, then the only bots possibly left to get free would be downstairs… aaaand I have no idea what's still down there. He very rarely takes me down, and when he's done using me to ferry info between those banks and these ones, he has me wiped. I'm not allowed to remember what's down there, but I DO remember that I WANT to know. I managed to embed in my code that I need to find out, that's the only reason I have to go with you, or I'd just ask you to get me the slag out of here ASAP."

Jazz nodded, giving the tiny bot a curious look out of the corner of his visor. "Welp, I was gonna go down anyway. Think you'll be able to copy everything down there if I hack those isolated servers you mentioned?

"Absolutely. I don't expect to be able to read a damn bit of it, but there's more down there than just info. We should be able to find out some kind of dark, dirty secrets to use against him" Rewind's tone had become rather harder and more vindictive, and Jazz rumbled in agreement as he continued working on the door.

"Okay, before we get out of this room though, y'gonna need a rundown on stealth 101. Don't talk out loud, talk t'me over comms, you've got my frequency from talkin' to me through the console. You probably won't have to worry about dampening your EM field because it's already so small even I missed it on the way in, but try not to get too excited or anything in case somethin' picks it up, OK? And don't touch any drones wanderin' around, I only managed to hack the base systems and remote relays. If we touch the drones they're gonna alert somethin'."

Rewind nodded, tilting his head with some amusement. /Got it. But I already knew about the drones. I've been here a loooong time, remember? I already know how the security set-up works. So long as you can hack the systems, I can copy them, and I won't make a sound/ he mimed zipping his lip-plates over his facemask and settled in a little more comfortably on Jazz's shoulder.

Jazz got the doors open and slipped through, creeping past the server banks and staying as far from the doors and their sensors as possible. It didn't take long to get back to the elevator and tweak the panel to get it down to them.

/So how many other bots do you have with you? Are they still upstairs?/ Rewind fiddled with the side of his own helm as he asked, Jazz unsure what he was doing but not paying it much mind.

/Two others, one's a wolfmech as well. They're getting' the siblings out while I finish goin' through this place/

Rewind just nodded, leaving his helm alone and shifting so he had a view of the room they'd be going into right over Jazz's helm. When the doors opened, Jazz crept out into Darkness. There were no lights on down here save for the dim strip lighting marking the edges of the corridor floors.

Jazz altered the settings on his visor until he could see through the darkness and make out the shapes of partitions and pylons… glancing either side of him showed what seemed like endless walkways in both directions. This floor was the biggest yet… it seemed as large as the hangar that the wolfmech fights had been held in, minus the stands and bloodthirsty patrons.

Rewind fiddled with his helm again, and Jazz noticed the faint red light coming off the other bot over his shoulder. /Is that… do you have a camera? Are you recording this?/

/You bet your aft I am. Indecipherable notes on illegal experiments aren't going to lock him up but visual evidence will/

/You… are a natural born enforcer, you're gonna be a hit with Optimus, lemme tell ya/ Jazz grinned, padding silently down the central corridor and trying to piece together what the layout of the Hangar sized room was. The shapes appearing out of the gloom of blackness looked like plain boxes, rooms within the giant room, sectioning off different areas but for what, he didn't know.

He wandered silently until he reached a huge wall, it ran right and left to the ends of the room, and seemed to have only one door and no windows. Even though the door was in front of him, Jazz turned left instead, intent on mapping the open area first.

He moved a little faster, noticing a distinct lack of drones and noise. Some of the rooms hummed with power, cables ran along the roof and down into the boxes, but there were no terminals around the edges of the floor. He searched as thoroughly as he could before he started in on the box rooms.

The first one had windows, and he shone a torch through. Inside were empty regen tanks. In the next box room over, he found exactly the same thing. And again in the third.

The fourth was in a seemingly different 'section', and only had windows in the doors. Shining light through them, he made out what looked like… if he wasn't much mistaken, it was a corpse. Mutilated, dissected, and animalistic… the only clue as to what it USED to be was the long, tapered tail. A Dinobot of some kind, possibly a rotoraptor.

Jazz shuddered, dreading what he would find in the next room. On his shoulder, Rewind made a very soft humming sound that he realised was the tiny bot's form of rumbling. Apparently the mannerism was shared by pretty much all wolfmechs… even ones too small to make the reverberating sound.

Unfortunately, in the next room over, there was another corpse… unmistakeably a wolfmech, and Rewind's tiny clawed digits clutched a little tighter on his collar.

Jazz moved on quickly, glad to find the sixth room empty of bodies, though it looked to also be a dissecting slab.

The next lot of boxes was on the right hand side of the room, and configured quite differently. The first one he came across was a huge glasteel cage with various machines installed around the outside that had functions on the inside of the walls. Finally, Jazz managed to find a console attached to this room and went about plugging straight into circuitry. Once he'd wormed his way in, he shut off any alarms or notifiers that would tell Shockwave this console had been accessed or turned on, and he made his way into the systems that controlled lighting.

He gave Rewind a quick warning before illuminating the cage, his own visor handling the adjustment for him. He peered in, grimacing at the scratches and energon stains all over the floor inside. The size of the scratches varied wildly, telling him the occupants must have as well. Maybe it was some kind of testing room for the various experiment victims he'd held down here… or possibly still WAS holding down here…

The light from this one cage was enough to let him make out most of that side of the room. It didn't take long to ascertain that the other rooms were experiment chambers as well… one seemed to be for administering gasses to the occupant. Another had all kinds of restraining apparatus, Primus only knew what for and Jazz wasn't going to ask him.

Another box nearby looked like a holding pen, with what seemed to be the docking station for an enormous Cryo-pod… except the cryo-pod wasn't there. Jazz could only assume it had been for Grimlock, which meant he was on ice, and had likely been taken to the Kaon facility, as Rewind has said.

In the furthest corner was a massive area walled off with scaffolding and glassteel that held a training room setup not unlike Thunderwing's own… except the equipment seemed mechanical, so it probably moved or could be made to alter itself as part of the obstacle. Something about it made his spark rate increase. In fact, something about the SMELL of the room was putting him on edge, and he couldn't pinpoint what it was exactly, or why.

Steeling himself, and with neither urging nor protest from his tiny passenger, Jazz headed for the door that led into the back half of the level.

The illumination from the large cage showed that the walls were made of thick, smooth metal. Shockwave clearly didn't want anything getting in or out of this section, and Jazz was willing to bet what he was seeing was actually the side of a huge, sealed box, rather than just a partition wall. A fully encapsulated space protecting what was likely the least ethical, or most dangerous, of his experiments.

Jazz started hacking the wall panel by the door. /Rewind… ah have no idea what's in here, or how dangerous it is, but ah think y'should go start downloading what you can off that console at the cage. I already got it so it won't know you're plugged in or pullin' data. If I find Grimlock in here, or his sibling or somethin'… some other monstrosity like it, you'll have a head-start to get the frag outta here, okay?/

Clearly knowing what Jazz was getting at, even if he didn't know what Grimlock was, Rewind responded with an emphatic glyph of agreement and hopped down, trotting back over to the cage.

Jazz wasn't at all surprised at how long it took him to bypass the door's security. It was the highest level in the whole building, and it felt… as weird as it seemed, it felt like it had been made SPECIFICALLY to try and thwart him. It was as if it were designed to predict the paths he'd take to go around it and continuously block him.

About halfway through, Jazz got an unwanted shock of adrenalin from his comm pinging him.

/PrimusalmightyRaj, y'timing is atrocious/

/Sorry. Letting you know we got them all safely on the shuttle. Can you talk now or-/

/Stay put where y'are n gimmie a couple breems I'm ball-bearings deep here/

Mirage acknowledged with a glyph, and Jazz immersed himself once more in his task. After what felt like a whole cycle, but his chronometer told him was only two more breems, he finally cracked the door.

/Slaaaaaaag me I ain't ever wanna deal with a door that locked ever again. Ahm not gonna like whatever the frag is in here/

/Where are you? Do you need me to come help? Have you found any more bots?/

/Bottom level, maybe, and just one. If Hound can stay with the bots in the shuttle and stay ready to burn fuel outta there, ah could use the backup down here. It's dark and ominous and I'm fully expectin' monsters that we'll need t'bust out and detain. Not lookin' forward to it./

/Right, on my way. Might take a while, I'm nowhere near as fast with hacking the lift as you. Also who did you find and how are they?/

/S'fine, just be ready to haul aft out if there's trouble down here. He's a teeny data-slug who's also a wolf mech an' he's bein a real help at the moment/

Jazz sent the command for the door to open, stalking into the corridor that presented itself, trying to make as little sound as possible. All his sensors were tuned up to catch the slightest sound or movement. Lighting in here was a little better than outside the mystery box… ambient strip lights lined the floor and ceiling, bouncing off the darkened glass of rooms that looked very much like a mix between cells and hospital cubicles.

The cells were arranged so that they stood individually, not one touching another, with three sides opaque and one clear. All faced forward. All had their own console inside. Most seemed empty, but as they had what seemed to be cryo-chambers rather than berths, it was hard to tell without more light.

Jazz wandered around the outside, moving along the wall and realising there was a bigger room situated at the far left end. Hacking in was far easier than the door to access the mystery box (as he'd taken to calling it in his helm). Once inside, the lights seemed to be automatic, and he had to quickly adjust his visor so as not to be blinded. The place was white and brushed steel, clinical… something between an operating suite and a laboratory. Recognisable elements like medberths sat beside odd glass chamber setups with mechanical arms. In one corner was a pile of grey husks… they had once been klikats, so far as he could tell.

Klikat tails... that was what he'd seen in the parts bin upstairs that made him feel weird...

Suddenly he felt sick to his tanks, crouching and drawing huge ventilations to steady himself. Something about this place was not right. This place was BAD… it was the worst, he couldn't be in here, in here was pain, and too much light, and…

Jazz scrambled from the room and knelt outside, waiting for his spark oscillations to slow and his fans to calm down. What the slag was THAT? WHY was he going to pieces, he'd never BEEN there… why was that room affecting him so badly where the room of body parts hadn't even made him squeamish? And why did he want to purge his tanks so badly?

/You okay?/

Jazz jumped and clutched at his chestplates when he noticed Rewind standing not three mechanometres away from him.

/Not… not really. This isn't normal for me, I don't… I'll be fine, I just… I need a klik/

Rewind wandered over and peered into the room, making another low humming sound. /Is there a console in there?/

Jazz shrugged. /Probably… didn't see so ah haven't hacked it yet/

/You don't have to go back in if it makes you-/

/No… we gotta do this now, there's no other time. I'll cope, c'mon/

Jazz gathered himself together, shutting out emotional inputs and narrowing his focus to get the job done. He snuck back into the room, refusing to look at the bodies or berths and honing in on the large console. He and Rewind scuttled over to it and he got to work. Pretty soon, he'd opened the system up and let Rewind plug in so he could gleefully start drawing down all the data.

/Gonna sweep the rest of this box t'make sure I don't miss anything. Lemme know when you're done, okay? And keep an audial out/

/Will do. Be careful/

Jazz nodded, getting out of the room as fast as he could and starting to stalk amongst the cells. He managed to click his fans back off, but his spark continued to oscillate higher than was comfortable. He was anxious, twitchy, and his tanks still churned. He'd NEVER felt like this on a mission before, of course he'd had nerves and there'd been some really close calls, but this… this was something else entirely, and he wished he knew what.

Maybe it was part of an experiment left over? Residue of some gas used to send a victim into a panic? But then why hadn't Rewind had the same reaction? Perhaps he'd picked up a bug while hacking, something insidious he'd missed used as a safeguard… something slowly killing or immobilising him…

He did a quick systems sweep, coming up clean. Okay, wasn't that. Primus almighty, he needed to just concentrate and get this over with as fast as possible.

Some of the cells he passed looked like they'd been occupied until very recently. There were still substances in injectors that lined the sides of the cryo-tubes. He scanned each one as he went, trying to pick up life signs. Nothing. They were all emp-

He turned into the corridor of cells at the very back of the box and something caught his optic. Jazz stalked down the line, still sweeping cells he passed while his optics remained fixated on the lights. It was the only cell that seemed to have equipment inside running live instead of being on standby.

Sure enough, a sensor sweep turned up a lifeform… of sorts. The reading was fuzzy, probably due to the… whatever it was being in a cryo-pod. Which was ON.

Jazz started hacking the cell door.

This one was similar to the mystery box's main door, but now he knew the tricks a little better, it didn't take as long. It popped open silently and he crept in, trying to look into the pod, but finding the glass was frosted on the inside as well. He stared at it, spark telling him that this… whatever it was… he KNEW this creature. How? How could he POSSIBLY know them? Unless they were a bot he had met a long time ago that Shockwave had snatched and experimented on, but…

Some tiny voice inside was saying no. No that wasn't it. It was something else entirely. But he wasn't going to find anything out staring at iced up glass.

Jazz went to the console and plugged in. It didn't take long at all to tap into the files for the 'specimen' in this little cell.

There was something so strange about this data… it took Jazz a moment to figure out what it was, but then he realised it wasn't encrypted- wait… no… no it WAS… but he could already decipher it… without any memory of having come across it before…

Jazz didn't immediately download the information, too intent on the contents. He opened the file, the files displaying on the screens, medical information and history scrolling but not what jazz was focussed on.

It was as if someone had replaced his energon with ice.

The schematics were his… his own frame, his own mods, but… no, no the alt mode wasn't the same, this couldn't be right, the programming was off, the… the spark signature…

Jazz's body felt like it was made of rusted iron, joints stiff, every motion almost painful as he turned from the console and started the opening sequence for the cryo-chamber.

Impatiently, he wrenched the lid away the moment it cracked open, steam pouring out to fill the room and obscuring the bot inside. He wafted it away impatiently and stared at the face inside. It was both his and not.

It was his twin.

/Jazz! I found it, I found why I thought you'd come from here/ Rewind's comm came just before two bright yellow optics came online and Jazz's world went upside-down.

He caught himself before he could crash into the door-frame, twisting to see the other mech thrashing and tearing out connectors and tubes to free themselves of the pod.

"Wait, WAIT-DON'T G-" Jazz was cut off as the bot transformed and leapt down upon him. It paused before striking a blow probably meant to kill him, seemingly only just now taking in the fact he looked the same…

There was a long, still, agonising moment before Jazz retracted his visor and they locked optics properly.

Both were stock still, tensed, in shock…

The faint sound of claws on metal flooring broke the frieze, and before Jazz could do anything, the humungous klikcat spring-boarded off him and out the door, disappearing through the cells and into the darkness.

"NO! DON'T, COME BA-"

"Jazz!" Rewind fairly yelped at him, coming to a skidding halt at the door and looking between him and the direction the other bot had gone "Why did you let her out!?"

"I needed… I had to… Rewind what the slag is going on, how is my Twin here, how am I NOT here, how… just… HOW?"

Rewind was still looking between Jazz and the darkness, tail tucked and ears switching back and forth nervously. "I don't know, it might be on that console, but if you're going to get it you might want to hurry. She could trip any one of twenty alarms just trying to leave this level."

The part of Jazz's processor not freaking out was sharpening as confusion turned to anger. Rewind was right… he needed answers, and he needed them fast. "You're right. But don't wait for me, go, now, find Mirage and tell him to take you back to the shuttle."

He plugged back into the console in the cell and started pulling data ruthlessly, not waiting to see if Rewind was leaving, but hearing him when he did. He skimmed the files as he went, face drawing taught with more horror as the mystery started to unfold. The moment he had everything he needed from that console, he unplugged and moved to the cell beside it, hacking the much less guarded door and drawing from that console before the systems had even finished booting all the way up.

This room hadn't been touched in decavorns… none of the files had been moved. It was just as he'd left it… every detail of his frame, his modifications, the experiments, the training… and an entry regarding his escape.

Jazz took everything, and the moment he was done, he pulled a small box out of subspace and stuck it to the underside of the computer terminal.

/Rewind, did you pull the files related to all of these cells from that torture chamber?/

/Yeah, it's all there, all centralised from each cell so far as I could tell/

/Have you met up with Mirage?/

/Yes, he was in the elevator when it came down, we're headed back up now. No sign of your twin/

/And are you POSITIVE that every bot we can save is out of here?/

/Absolutely, Mirage says Hound did another sweep before they all left for the shuttle/

/Good. Tell him to get in the shuttle and get ready to haul aft, I'm not gonna be too far behind but I gotta do somethin' real quick/

He was so glad to be asking Rewind to pass his messages on. If he'd been talking to Mirage directly, his friend might have cottoned on to what his tone meant. He might have tried to stop him. Some tiny voice in the back of his mind was telling him it was a really bad idea and could jeopardise everything…

But a check of his chronometer begged to differ. Shockwave wouldn't have the time to get back here before attending the event that started in only 12 cycles. And he would have no reason to if Jazz manipulated his system communications properly…

---

Jazz pulled out of the computer, having ignored Mirage's pings for the last klik or so. He opened the channel as he stuck another of his tiny boxes on the computer bank.

/Jazz what the slag are you doing in there? Rewind won't tell me what you found on the bottom level, he says it's not his place, are you alright? Hound and the other wolfmechs are getting really antsy, please tell me you're not trying to pull more information, we have MORE than enough, we need to get out of here-/

/Chill Raj, it's fine, I'm done, I'm coming/

The systems showed him the data that was now stuck in the nearest comms beacon on a loop, broadcasting to Shockwave that all was well. He wouldn't know anything was wrong until he recognised the same 25 cycle data patterns were looping and came to see what was wrong. By which time it would be far, far too late.

Jazz would have hesitated… if he hadn't spotted his erstwhile Twin streaking away from the facility on one of the outer perimeter camera feeds. Now there was nothing holding him back. No one left in danger from his plan.

/Do you need me to come back and bring you out under my cloak?/

/Don't worry 'bout it Raj, he ain't gonna see me/

/Are you… are you alright, you sound off…/

/Trust me, soon as I'm outta here, I'll be a whole lot better. Keep those engines ready for lift off, I'm only gonna be five kliks/

He crawled out of the maintenance shaft and made his way through the corridors they'd come in. Anger still had his senses focussed to an intensity he'd never felt before. He thumbed the tiny device in his palm, striding out of the facility and making his way to the road.

There was no glancing back as he input the code and transformed down, tearing away as a series of thumps preceded an almighty rumbling. The building behind him crumbled into a fiery pit, sending out a cloud of dust and shrapnel. A column of slag filled fire and ash shot up to finish off the effect. The heatwave singed Jazz's bumper, but he didn't care.

He drove as fast as he could towards the shuttle, ignoring Mirage's pings since he knew he'd get the yelling anyway once he reached the ship.