Numb.
The bright flash of lights. Shouted orders, requests for items not in arm's reach. The waning night bleeding red and blue. Sirens piercing the still air.
Numb.
Padded metal trays on wheels. Crisp movements of men in uniforms. The girl wailing, sobbing, blood soaked hands. Strong arms caught her, stern words spoken in soothing tones.
Numb.
White lights, the snapping of cameras, professionals documenting the events with a dispassionate and oddly artistic eye. A sheet thrown over a body, a corpse eyed without sympathy.
Numb.
Samples taken, a winch attached to his rear bumper, an unseen machine dragging him up to the road where comments were made, heads shaken. A pity this happened. Damn shame.
Numb.
The journey to points unknown, sunlight growing on the horizon, the world awash with colors which seemed to have lost their vibrancy in response to the tragedy which had taken place.
Numb.
And then the parking lot. Left behind amidst vehicles which were torn and mangled beyond recognition, row upon row of skeletons, all that remained of those who misused them.
Numb.
Now Bumblebee was alone, oblivious of the bright sun rising blinding white in the colorless sky. He thought nothing, felt nothing. He did not move, did not intend to ever move. Waiting for the inevitable. Somehow, the Autobots would learn what he'd done. They would come. They would end him before he could hurt anyone else. That would be good.
Numb.
Bumblebee only slowly became aware that he was not as entirely alone as he thought. A car was parked to his right. A bright green Urbana Viper with sharp black trim. From the side, it seemed to have a sly expression, sinister thoughts percolating beneath the polished hood.
It was there. It was right there. Right next to him. He hadn't even seen it when he was towed in, and the people who'd handled that operation didn't appear to have noticed either. The Viper wasn't there. They'd have seen it, known it didn't belong. And yet, here it was, like it had been lying in wait this whole time.
This product of his mind, this devil inside, it came without his bidding it, arrived when he least expected it, almost as though his own thoughts were somehow turning against him. He felt like he was drowning, suffocating, disappearing into a thick fog, like the world was vanishing from sight, until only the darkness and demons were left. His personal demon. His own private nightmare.
{Why won't you leave me alone?} Bumblebee moaned miserably.
{Did you enjoy that?} the question was answered with a question, the one question that Bumblebee did not feel like even contemplating the answer for.
{What? No. Of course not. I was scared. I wasn't thinking. It was an accident.}
{An accident?} the Viper scoffed in a harsh voice, {Do not lie to yourself, Scout. You are a soldier. You do not proceed across the street without having thought first. Don't kid yourself. You thought out all the angles, you knew exactly what you were doing. Don't tell me you didn't want them dead.}
A chill ran along Bumblebee's door panels. Yes. For just a moment, hearing the terror in the girl's voice, feeling her fearful trembling in the back seat, Bumblebee had wanted to rip those boys apart. Their laughter still rang through his head, like a maniac playing a dirge as if it were polka music.
He shook himself.
{No. That's not true. All human life is sacred. I would never do anything to hurt a human being. I am an Autobot. Autobots do not take human life. They are not murderers or assassins.}
{Correction: You were an Autobot. You are Autobot no longer.}
That wasn't true! Perhaps he was no longer a part of the war, perhaps his fellow Autobots would turn their backs on him, ashamed to have called him their brother, but he was still Autobot in spark, bound to be that and nothing else until the day he went offline.
He knew that. And yet still the Viper pressured him to denounce that fundamental truth, to become something he was not. Or, perhaps, merely something he did not want to admit he was. The Viper was right; Bumblebee was a soldier. He must have thought his actions through in a split-second, anticipated exactly what would happen. He didn't feel like he had, but he must have.
Somehow he was misremembering the sequence, believing he hadn't realized what would happen until too late. Surely he must have known. He had the time to think his course through. He'd had time. All the time he needed. He had done this. He had done this to himself, to those people, to the Autobots. And he had done it all on purpose.
But if that was really the case, why didn't it feel true? Why did it feel like a lie? Why did he feel like he was being manipulated? Deceived? Was his mind just trying to protect itself, and him, from the truth?
Suddenly he was filled with a feeling of recognition, of hate, and of fear. Rage clothed all these feelings in a blanket of fire. Fury seethed through him, inexplicable as it was undeniable. In a frenzy of rage, he gunned his engine, shifted gears, turned towards the Viper and hit the accelerator.
He wanted to destroy it. He wanted it gone, out of his head! Cold, bitter hurt and frightened bafflement had turned into a furiously boiling rage all in an instant. From tired, confused, scared scout, there came a fierce, furious and utterly irrational warrior. He felt no fear now, only burning. Seething fury, irrational rage, a painfully aching need to lash out, to vent his frustrations upon a deserving target.
The Viper seemed to be startled. He tried to reverse, get out of Bumblebee's way. He nearly succeeded, but Bumblebee's front left fender smashed into his right fender. The metal crumpled with the impact, a shrill screech of tearing metal the auditory proof of contact.
The Viper could be touched. It could be felt. It was real.
This knowledge brought with it a new wave of hate, all consuming animosity. The anger Bumblebee felt had an almost physical effect, it was painful. It burned. He didn't like it. Not the hate or the sensations that came with it. It was gripping, crushing, forcing him to bend to its malevolent will. It fueled his desire to destroy. Not just the Viper, but everything. He hated everything, everything was painful, wrong, a reminder of his weakness and damaged mind.
What's happening to me!?
He had to put a stop to this. He had to take control.
Instead of turning back, Bumblebee launched himself forward, darting between the broken bodies of these half-demolished cars, dodging through the machine graveyard. He spotted the gate, shut and locked, meant to keep people out of here. He didn't care, didn't acknowledge it, merely plowed through it. The gate exploded outward as though it had been struck with a missile.
It crashed aside, leaning on bent hinges as Bumblebee hit the exit speed bump too fast, jolted violently over it and sprang out onto the road at the back of the police station. He roared down the road, swung right without pausing or signaling, continued.
The anger coursed through him, preventing him from thinking. He drove on, blind and speeding, trying to escape the inescapable, to avoid the inevitable. He was losing his mind.
He'd probably smashed into one of those demolished cars, believing somewhere in his obviously twisted mind that it was the Viper, the vehicle he had destroyed day before yesterday.
Was it the day before yesterday? He was losing all track of time.
Terror had caught Bumblebee in its iron grip even as he had turned on the Viper. For one blinding instant, his rage had almost convinced him to rip the nonexistent Viper to pieces. Then he had realized what he was doing. And fear chilled him to the spark, driving him away like a sheepdog from Hell.
And so: Bumblebee fled. He had to get away, far away, before he did something he might regret. For a time, fear froze over his inexplicable rage, though sanity was still beyond his grasp. The world seemed to be shrinking, until the sky was hovering just a few inches above his roof. It felt like the edge of the universe was chasing at his bumper, driving him onwards to an ever shriveling horizon.
He went on and on, ever farther, trying to escape everything that was familiar, everything that had suddenly ceased to make any kind of sense to him. Beyond the desert, he ran into an icy rain storm. The drops of water seemed to hit him like punches, echoing as they slapped the ground. Lightning flashed, thunder rolled. The air crackled with electricity, shuddered with water. Noise. There was so much noise. It was so loud, never stopped. Voices in his head, whispering thoughts and desires which were not his own, yet must be his own somehow.
The noise was maddening, all-consuming, relentless, endless.
The memory of the frail human body tumbling brokenly down the hill after the Viper hit with physical force, Bumblebee swerved across the road like a drunk, tires squealing on the blacktop as he struggled against the water-slick tarmac.
He got back in the correct lane, lining off. He was shuddering, trembling from the force of the memory blow. He didn't understand it, or the panic that came with it. He knew what had happened, and yet now he wasn't so sure. He knew what he'd done, but no longer had a keen grasp of what his motivations had been. He wanted to tear himself apart, be rebuilt. He wanted the pain to be gone. He didn't want to feel the anger or hate or fear. He couldn't understand it, much less control it. He wanted the madness to end. He only wanted the world to start making sense again.
Madness. Descending into it, drowning in it.
And then he knew. He knew what he had to do.
He cried out, swerved wildly, crashed over a guardrail. And fell. Down, down, down. Falling into eternity. The silence was far worse than the noise could ever be.
The words 'Yellow Car Rampage' made up the headline of the news story. With practiced breathless excitement, a brunette reporter gushed over the details of the 'mysterious car'. She spoke with all the sincerity of a used car salesman overselling a piece of junk and the enthusiasm of a sports commentator.
"People are calling it 'the Ghost Car', though that is something of a misnomer. For, while the driver might as well be a ghost for all anyone has seen of them, the car itself is all too real."
The reporter disappeared. In her place was a freeze frame which looked like it had been taken by a street camera. It appeared to be the exit of a parking lot. But the only item of interest to those watching was the yellow Urbana 500 with black trim which was at the photo's center.
They all knew it was Bumblebee. His tinted windshield concealed the absence of any driver, but his friends would have known him anywhere, with or without one. Even if he'd gotten new license plates, Jack would have known him. There was an indefinable quality to Cybertronians. You could just feel that they were alive, that they were different from all the other vehicles around them.
He recalled that had been true even before he knew of Autobots and Decepticons. When he'd first seen Arcee, he'd instinctively referred to her as a she, not even because motorcycles were often called she. It was because he knew, somehow, that he was looking at a thing which was very much alive. Sometimes he wondered, if he'd seen Bee or Bulkhead first, would he have recognized them for what they were?
He returned his attention to the news broadcast.
"This photo was taken just before the car went on a fifteen minute race through a small Nevada town. What followed was nothing short of harrowing for those involved."
There was a cut to an earlier interview with someone identified as a bystander.
"I saw this sports car just flash by, like a bat outta hell," the bystander said, gesturing with one arm, "Shot out of the parkin' lot, cut in front of a bunch of drivers. They hit their brakes, honked horns, but this guy didn't care. Launched into a lane the wrong way, just kept on goin' like he was bein' chased. Way he was goin', he probably was."
As the witness related their story, the frozen image was returned, the witness pasted into a corner and the film played. It was obvious more than one camera was involved in capturing the described incident.
"What was Bee thinking?" Arcee exclaimed, appalled.
"He wasn't," Optimus replied curtly.
The yellow muscle car careened from one lane to another as though he owned all of them, rocketed through traffic lights and then suddenly went screeching around a corner, out of camera view.
"Though no cameras captured the event, witnesses say that the Ghost Car drove onto the Interstate, went the wrong way and was nearly hit by oncoming semi-trucks. Another car collided with it, and both went off road. By the time police arrived, however, both cars were gone, leaving only tire tracks and stunned witnesses. The car made the local headlines, but did not gain greater attention until early this morning, when it, or a car very much like it, was involved in another incident, almost sixty miles East of the original incident."
"A police officer stated that it was all over by the time he and his partner arrived. He stated that the investigation is ongoing, but did say that one person was killed, and the person in the driver's seat was unlicensed. Our reporter on the scene has informed us that the car appeared almost undamaged. If this is indeed the same vehicle from the earlier incident, someone went to the trouble of repairing and repainting it. But things get even more bizarre."
The image cut to a security camera across the street from the police impound lot. Jack knew what was coming, but gasped anyway when the film showed Bumblebee smashing his way out of the lot, onto the street, careening wildly from side to side.
"Authorities speculate that someone broke into the lot and stole the car, with the intent of using it in more crimes of the same bizarre nature already witnessed. They request that anyone who sees a vehicle matching the description or license number of this car call them immediately. The mystery remains: who owns the Ghost Car? And what will be their next crime?"
Fowler clicked off the television.
"There," Fowler grunted, "Satisfied? Your Scout's gone on the war path, Prime. I'm sorry, but he has to go down. If you won't bring him down, then my men will."
"I understand," Optimus said, his voice unusually subdued, his eyes distant, "But I feel there is more to this story than has been revealed. Much more."
"Agreed," Fowler replied, "But that doesn't change the facts. And the facts are that Bumblebee has driven from town to town, leaving chaos and death in his wake. It has got to stop. And it's going to stop right now."