Will Lennox lay on the warm sand, eyes closed behind dark glasses, enjoying the silence and the remote location. It was desert. Lonely and far away, hot throughout the day, cold at night, but it wasn't the least bit like Qatar. For once, this was the United States. This was Nevada. And he was in very good company. His men, a team he trusted implicitly, were back at the Autobot base, but Ironhide had accompanied him to this lonely place. While the Autobot didn't understand the beauty of being in this remote location, he understood the need for distance, quiet and time to reflect.
Will had never asked about Ironhide's past, though he had an inkling as to what the Autobot had lived through. The amount of time was another thing altogether. As a human, the grasp of Ironhide's, or therefore any of the Autobot's age, was limited. Thousands of years were incredible already, but more? It boggled the mind and led only to short circuits, Lennox thought.
"I'm surprised you came here," he finally broke the silence.
The massive robot turned his head, blue optics looking at him. "Why?"
"Barricade."
Ironhide snorted. "Ratchet locked his weapon and transformation circuits. The security measures are enough to hold even Megatron. He's not going anywhere."
Lennox shrugged. "Yeah."
"I don't like his influence on MacKenzie, though."
"I had the impression it was the other way 'round."
"Barricade's a Decepticon. He'll try and get Nick to conform to his ways," Ironhide rumbled.
"Nick has Karr. I haven't seen much of the guy, but he's protective."
"He's no Cybertronian. He has no chance to fight Barricade when the scum bag recovers."
Will was silent, watching clouds drift by. "I wouldn't be so sure," he finally said.
Ironhide huffed, flexing his fingers. "I'd rather dispose of him than keep him around."
"I'm not feeling too hot about a Decepticon in our base either, but killing him might kill Nick. We all saw what Nick's absence does to Karr."
Another huff.
"Weren't you going to see your wife?" the weapons specialist finally asked.
"Yes."
"But you're here."
"Yes."
Blue optics narrowed. Lennox sighed.
"Sarah and I have had some… problems lately. She has taken Annabelle and gone to her parents for a while."
Ironhide seemed to contemplate that. "Are females of your species always this problematic?"
Will laughed, sitting up. "I don't know. Sarah understood my job. She married an Army Ranger. I think she hoped that a baby would change something. It did. I love her, I love my baby, but I can't just quit. I have a new assignment. It's on my home ground, but it still keeps her away. Normally soldiers move from base to base with their families, but she can't move here. She's not happy," he concluded.
Ironhide regarded him solemnly. "Warriors are not meant to be tied down."
"Speaking from experience?"
"We do not have mates like you do."
"Did you have a female?"
"I had a companion," was the answer, Ironhide's voice softening. "She died in the war."
"I'm sorry."
"Our existence is different than yours, Will. Our bonds are different. We do not mate to reproduce, but we share feelings."
"You bond," Lennox stated.
"Yes."
"For humans, the bond of marriage is filled with obligations and responsibilities. We vow to love and honor each other, till death do us part. I love Sarah, I honor her, but she cannot accept what comes with my life. We had long talks about it before Annabelle was born, but I cannot change who and what I am."
"A fellow warrior would understand."
He looked into the bright blue optics, saw exactly this understanding there. Ironhide was an alien robot with an alien mind and alien concepts, but now and then there was a common ground, the understanding as it was now. While he couldn't follow the way of human bonding and mating, he had downloaded enough information on the subject to not outright tell Lennox that it was a hopeless cause.
"Do you give up on her, Captain?" he now challenged.
"No. I can't. Not just like this. I love her, Ironhide. I just don't know how to make it work."
Will flopped back with a sigh. His country, his duty, his obligation, his oath as a Ranger… and his wife, his baby and his oath as a husband. He knew many of his friends had gone through a lot of bad times. Some had managed to find a middle ground. Some had divorced. He had no idea where he would end up, but he would give his damned best for his wife and child.
+++++
With nothing much to do throughout the day but to try and hack the Net and see what interesting things were going on in the world, Nick had taken to exploring the Autobot base. Not that the Net held no interest for him. The Autobots had highly sophisticated machinery and access to areas that had taken Nick days to crack in the past. But there was only so much of 'normalcy' that could him occupied.
Sometimes he experimented with the implant, tested it like he had tested the original way back when… but that only got him so far. Talking to Barricade was mostly like talking to a brick wall, so explorations it was. Ratchet was reluctant to have him leave the base in case there was another malfunction and for the first time Nick actually did what the doctor ordered. This was far more than a broken bone or a shot wound.
Throughout his explorations Karr was, as usual, sitting parked in the hangar, much to the continuing bafflement of the Autobots. The times his partner was using his bipedal form were few and far between, though weapons training and maneuvers with Ironhide took up a large chunk of that.
"I'm not like them," Karr argued again and again.
No, he wasn't, but he now had a new 'mode' and he had to learn how to handle himself.
Nick walked into the depth of the cavernous base, curious as to what the military had left their new allies. The hangar was just the surface structure of a very imposing complex that had been used for tests in the last fifty years. It was in the middle of the desert, miles from any of the smaller towns and about one hundred fifty miles from Las Vegas. Only dirt roads led here, and each held several warning signs that this was a military site.
The Autobots used the hangar as their general area and it was also were the military team under Captain Lennox's command usually had their bunks. There was a room on the first underground level for that purpose as well, mainly because it was too small for the Autobots to use. There were storage facilities, holding fuel and generators, food, water, and whatever else a military unit needed, even ammunition and special weaponry. The rest of the first level was used by the Autobots.
It was because of his explorations that Nick ended up in a room, hewn out of the rock, filled with all kinds of machines. Some looked human-built, but others had the distinct looks of Cybertronian. Nick had asked Ratchet about how they had gotten here and the medic had told him about the Ark and their flight here, how they had landed in individual pods and then gone to protect Sam and retrieve the glasses to find the Allspark. So somewhere out there was an Autobot ship – as well as a Decepticon one.
What they had brought along was now in here, in this room, and Nick browsed around. At the far end was what looked like… a dead robot shell. He stopped and looked, part of him wincing in sympathy at the obvious battle wounds. Someone, probably Ratchet, had repaired the largest tears. But the robot seemed dead.
//He is// Karr whispered. //His name was Jazz//
Nick nodded to himself. Something skittered over his senses, using the new implant, and he turned to look at the new-arrival. Bumblebee's blue optics glowed faintly in the twilight, his body, despite the yellow coloring, almost invisible. Somehow he had sensed him.
"You're keeping your dead here?" Nick asked.
"The Decepticons were sunk, buried under your oceans. Jazz didn't deserve that fate."
No, he didn't.
"He lost his life defending your kind against Megatron. Just one of many."
"Ratchet put him back together?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
It was like a doctor sewing shut wounds on a dead person. There was no sense.
"His spark was destroyed when Megatron tore him apart," Bumblebee said, voice soft. "Our sparks come from the Allspark and they return to the Allspark after death."
"The Allspark was destroyed."
Again Nick felt something skitter over his senses, like a bad reception on an old radio station before it logged into a clear signal. He frowned and looked at a storage cabinet.
"Optimus managed to retrieve a shard of the Allspark," the Autobot told him. "I don't know what Ratchet hopes to gain from it. It's a tiny, tiny fragment of the whole. There is no power there."
Nick walked over to the cabinet and looked at something deep inside. It was jagged, slightly triangular, and there was something carved into the fragment. Like glyphs. It was suspended in some kind of force field, floating, looking like junk.
"So that's the source of it all," he murmured.
Bumblebee joined him, looming over the smaller human. "Yes. The Allspark. At least what's left of it. It's what gave us life."
"Where did it come from?"
"No one knows," the mechanoid confessed. "Our best scientists have puzzled over it for as long as we have known about it. The Allspark regulated the vast currents beneath our planet. It created us, but it's power is so immense, in the wrong hand it could create chaos."
Nick studied the shard. It seemed to 'ping' on his radar. The shard was probably reacting to the changed implant inside him.
"With its loss, our world lost its power as well," Bumblebee continued, voice heavy. "Megatron was Lord High Protector of our planet. He abused his power and gathered a large following. They became the Decepticons. The war brought our planet to its knees, plunging it into a chaos far greater than anything before."
"What happens to the dead sparks now?"
"We don't know. Our history shows nothing like this ever happened before. The Allspark was never destroyed. We didn't think it could be destroyed."
"You hope you can restore your friend Jazz?" Nick wanted to know.
The blue optics dimmed a soft noise emerged form the Autobot. It was a pained sigh.
"Ratchet and Optimus do. They believe with the absence of a vessel to contain the spark of life there might be a way to retrieve it."
"If it hasn't disappeared."
Another pained noise. "Yes."
Nick's eyes were on the dead body shell. Karr sent a shiver through him and from the sudden presence, Nick became aware of Karr approaching. In his robot mode. Amber eyes glowed, the dark body almost hidden in the twilight. Jazz's fate was too much of a reminder of his own so many years ago. First deactivation, then near-death because of the final confrontation between him and Kitt.
"How do you want to fix something that is dead?" he asked roughly.
Bumblebee looked sadly at him. "There is no way, but Ratchet has hope."
"A false hope."
The small antennae on top of the Autobot's head rose briefly, then fell again. "Maybe."
"If you can find his spark, your enemies might find their leader's, too."
"Megatron's spark was obliterated."
"Can you be sure?"
Bumblebee gave him a hard to interpret look. "No," he finally said softly with another twitch of the antennae.
Nick pushed his hands into his pockets, gazing up at the fragment. He felt his implant twitch, as if trying to log onto something, and deep inside, Barricade moved further back. As if he didn't like what the hybrid systems were doing.
This could be him, Nick thought. That's why. He survived the last battle and right now he's at the mercy of the Autobots. He might die. He might become a dead body shell and his spark torn apart by his enemies.
They walked back outside, Bumblebee as silent as Karr as they accompanied the human in their midst. It had grown dark while Nick had explored and he felt Karr's wish to go for a drive, to expend some energy.
"See you," he told Bumblebee when Karr transformed and opened his door in an invitation he was sure Nick would take.
They tore through the desert, Karr sending exhilaration through the link at the speed and the freedom he felt when racing. Nick let him drive, enjoying his partner's happiness, chasing away the sight of the dead husk. Karr wasn't like the Cybertronians. The Allspark had given him transformation, but not life. He had been alive before.
And deep inside him, Barricade shared the free spirits, letting himself get pulled along.
Nick didn't look much different on the outside than before his fateful encounter with the Allspark's radiation in Mission City. He was human to the naked eye, but Karr and every machine that scanned him knew that under the deceptively human façade was something of both worlds. It was a creation by Wilton Knight and the Allspark. It had spread throughout his body and it was showing in strange ways.
His body and mind had healed, according to Ratchet, and the implant had shown no sign of expanding any further. What it could now do, it was a mystery. His body wasn't rejecting the changes. It seemed like whatever the Allspark had altered, it had made the implant like a natural part of his body. Ratchet had no other explanation for it.
Nick leaned against the warm Stealth, eyes hidden behind glasses. He was gazing at nothing in particular, probably because there was also nothing really to see out here.
He had a decision to make.
Leave or stay.
Leave and continue his life like he had done before. Leave and forget this ever really happened. Leave Barricade behind.
Or stay. Karr and him were now hybrids, part of the Cybertronians, whatever the faction was. They could learn a lot more. He might discover more about himself. And there was Barricade.
As much as the Decepticon was an intruder into the neuro link, he as also dependent. He didn't want to hear it, but Nick knew that without him around, Barricade would either fall catatonic again or try and find a way out of his imprisonment, going after Nick and Karr.
Karr had remained in the back of his partner's mind, letting Nick think. He wasn't spying on him. It was an unspoken rule.
Feeling the fluctuating emotions he moved forward.
//Nick…//
The presence of his driver shifted. He was still the cool, blue light when Karr looked at him through the neuro link, and still so much was different. There was more power there, more strength. There were the old pain, the old scars, the familiar control and resolution. There was the love between them, the trust, the absolute knowledge of the other. And still, the implant was no longer of Earth origin. It was now partly Cybertronian and it tasted wrong in Nick.
Karr touched the blue light with a tendril of his essence, initiating the contact. It rarely happened, but sometimes, like now, it was needed. Nick leaned into the touch, closing his eyes, muscles relaxing minutely.
//Is Kitt aware of the situation yet?//
//No. He has been trying to contact me, but I haven't answered him. He and Michael Knight know nothing of what happened either here, nor to us//
But one day the would. Because Kitt and Karr shared a bond and Kitt would always hunt for his older brother should Karr shut down the active connection. And Nick was sure Michael would do the same when it came to Karr's driver, himself. Years of working side by side, years of building a trust that Nick had never given anyone else before in his life, had left their marks.
"How do you handle it?" Nick asked out loud.
"Being able to change my shape hasn't changed me," Karr rumbled. "I still prefer this form, though."
Nick smiled humorlessly. "At least you had a choice."
A sliver of pain sparked through their connection and Karr wrapped this extension of his own mind more firmly around Nick.
//You are not different, Nick//
//I am. I just don't know what it will do to me in the future. When I look at things, it's like there is something lurking at the edge, waiting for me to find the right trigger or button//
Karr's presence swam around his driver, probing gently. Nick smiled slightly.
"What doesn't kill us…" he murmured softly.
"Lots has. No one ever succeeded," came the cool reply.
Karr suddenly shifted his whole shape, transforming, and went down on one knee. Nick met the alien optics, set in a strange face, and when the much larger hand touched him, he felt no different than always with Karr. It was a warm contact, gentle and caring, and he smiled at the quizzical expression in that face. Karr had never been expressive. As a car he had no facial features and through their shared link he was just a dark, inky mass. Emotions were shared, but he had never looked into his partner's eyes in a physical sense of the word.
Nick felt something inside of him shift and ripple and he clamped down on it. Karr tilted his head, curious.
//This is still strange// Nick only murmured.
//Agreed//
He smiled wryly.
Barricade was still a presence inside his mind, passive, never interfering, and incommunicado except when spoken to. Nick had no idea how to deal with that part of their change. None at all.
Ratchet watched as Karr transformed smoothly, going down on one knee to touch the man who was closer to him than any human could ever be to a machine. Gentle fingers touched Nick MacKenzie, ever so careful, ever so tender. Whatever Karr was or had been, he was no more a Decepticon spy or a threat than any of them. He cared a lot for this human and he would die for him. That much was for certain.
"Will they be okay?"
The medic looked at Optimus, frowning a little. "Physically yes. It's hard to determine their psychological state. I have read Nick's files and he is an impressive human, but still only human. His reaction to the alterations to his physical structure were strangely calm and composed."
"It might be his long contact to Karr."
"Maybe."
Twenty years bound to an Artificial Intelligence like MacKenzie had been were a long time. Not for a Cybertronian, but for a human. Karr hadn't always been this friendly around his driver and from what Ratchet understood, he had tried to kill the man in the early days. Nick had survived. Both had. And it had cemented a partnership no one could ever really come to understand.
"What about Barricade, Optimus?"
"I don't know, old friend. We cannot release, but we cannot keep him prisoner here either. For now he is docile, but he will regain his old confidence. It's in his core programming. Before Barricade joined Megatron he was just as confident and powerful and single-minded. He was one of the best. He needs Nick's mental echoes, but the rest of humanity is not protected that way."
"Taking the ability to transform from him is all I can do. His weapon systems are off line. But he could still run over a person if we allow him mobility. I was hoping for Nick to be able to exert some control over him," Ratchet confessed.
"He'll never submit to a human."
Ratchet was drawn out of his thoughts by the approach of the two people he was thinking about. Karr was still wary around them, rarely talking to anyone, aside from Ratchet himself when he asked medical questions, and Nick looked extremely guarded, too.
Looking at Optimus Prime, the human's face gave nothing away.
"What now?" he wanted to know.
"You are free to leave," Prime answered, understanding the two worded question perfectly.
"But?"
"Nothing. We offer both of you our help in any way you need it. While neither of you are of my people, I would like to understand you as our allies," Optimus said calmly.
"You do know who we are, right? You didn't erase that from your data banks," Nick asked levelly.
"Yes." Optimus didn't even look guilty. "Information was needed to make decisions."
"Like whether to keep us alive or not?" Karr growled, eyes narrowing.
"No. Whether to contact your government on behalf of yourself. You were affected by our technology. It was our fault."
Karr snorted. Nick just reached out and rested a hand against one black leg. Optimus was still intrigued by the fact that the implant in the human's head gave them the ability to communicate the same way Cybertronians could. Mind to mind. No barriers. But the neuro link was even deeper, allowing access to the other mind, to the other's emotions. It was a great asset and a terrible liability.
Now Barricade was connected to this bond as well and it was what gave Optimus a headache, figuratively speaking. Ironhide was having daily conniptions about the Decepticon remaining in the base, and he argued that Barricade would try and take over the human when he felt strong enough.
Optimus wasn't so sure.
"Then you know who I am," Nick simply said. "You know my record. You know my work. And you the baggage I come with, namely Barricade."
"We also know about your affiliation with the Foundation for Law and Government after you contacted Michael Knight."
"What I did later doesn't change my programming of before," the human said, voice level. "It doesn't change Barricade."
Programming. Yes, in a way the man had been programmed. Taken as a child from an orphanage and molded to become a soldier for a secret government branch. Not unlike Sector Seven, only a lot more deadly, Optimus mused. He had been selected, hand-picked, by Wilton Knight to be the first partner to Karr and while the experiment had failed, it hadn't been a complete failure. Both units had survived and become what Knight had dreamed of – only a lot later.
"It also doesn't change what Karr is. You would let us go free, knowing our past?" There was a hint of sarcasm in the level voice.
"You were never prisoners, Nick;" Optimus replied softly. "We are not your government's police force. We only helped."
Blue eyes as intense as any Cybertronians regarded him. Karr stood beside his human, wary, tense, but not showing any tendency to transform a weapon and attack.
"What about Barricade? He is part of this deal as well."
"He is a Decepticon," Ratchet reminded them.
"And he wove a connection to me, using his interface unit. If we stay, he'll be there, too."
"You think that if you leave we would let him go?" Optimus wanted to know.
"Sooner or later he would break free," Nick answered reasonably.
"Could you stop him from harming another human?"
A shrug. "I don't know."
"That is why we can never let our guard down."
"I'm the one forever linked to him, guys."
Optimus looked slightly pained. "And I feel responsible, Nick. Without the Allspark your lives would be normal."
MacKenzie laughed. "My life never was, never has been, never will be normal. This is just another notch higher up on the scale of strange things. Believe me."
"Will you stay?"
There was a moment of silence, then Karr suddenly transformed. Nick shrugged. "We will. Sooner or later we have to tell Karr's brother and his driver, and things will get definitely interesting from there."
As for Barricade, Optimus thought, things were already interesting. They would keep the Decepticon under tight guard, watch the development, see what was going to happen. Karr had been a killer machine, too. Nick had tamed him. Barricade was not from this planet, was not human made. His mind was alien and his motivation, his core programming, influenced by Megatron, but now he had a connection to a human and that, Optimus mused, would be highly interesting to witness.