Chapter Ten: He's Here

- One week ago -

It's wrong. It's all wrong. The images… oh Primus, the images.

Sideswipe kneels next to a pile of rusted pipes. To his right, the thing that is not his brother lies moaning and twitching. Sideswipe wipes his mouth, turns away from the puddle of energon seeping into the dirt, and tries to stand. His limbs are shaking too much. He ends up flopping into a sprawl.

He can see it, what they've done to Sunny. His head suspended from the ceiling, plating torn off, his face mangled. Those… those meat-bags forged a connection, an unnatural hard-link, forced themselves into his brother's head and took his thoughts, his emotions, everything that makes him Sunny.

Headmaster. That word is burned into his memory. Little echoes of his brother's spark-resonance. Little ghosts of Sunny.

There's a strange buzzing in the air. Sideswipe shakes his head, tries to clear it, but the sound persists, burning into his thoughts.

Headmasters. At least five of them. Separated from each other, confused. A gap in their collective memory, a flash of white and pain and nothingness until two planetary rotations ago when this one—Gordan—woke up alone.

Something taps his foot. He looks up. The Headmaster—no, the thing—is on its hands and knees. It's trying to crawl away. It whimpers, calls for help. Sunny had called for Sideswipe at the end, lying strapped to a table while the humans skittered across him, ripped him to pieces. He'd called and no one had answered. He'd been alone.

The next thing Sideswipe knows he's scrambling up. He tackles the Headmaster and they both go down. The thing reaches up and claws at his face. Sideswipe ducks back, shifts his arm, and punches.

Misses.

The thing screams. Its shoulder is crushed. Sideswipe cuts the power to his audios.

He hits it again, catches one of the sensor fins—Sunny's fins. Another hand reaches up and fingers latch onto his mouth. Sideswipe bites down. The hand tries to pull away but he grabs it, pulls the arm taut, and smashes it with his other hand. Armor dents, rips apart, energon sprays. He can feel it tingling as it drips down his face. He tosses the hand—Sunny's hand—away. The thing bucks beneath him. It needs to hold still. It needs to stop moving.

It needs to stop existing.

He hits it in the face. Its head knocks back, smacks into the ground. It shudders. Still moving. Still there. It needs to go away. He hits it again and again, with both hands, one after the other. Over and over and over. It stops trying to grab him. It stops trying to fight him. The horrible mockery of Sunny's face buckles and caves in. He can feel the change, can feel it grow soft as liquid spatters and spreads beneath it. It's not energon.

Slowly, the world comes back into focus. The buzzing has gone. He can't feel the phantom signal of his twin anymore. His hands are wet. He straddles the mangled, yellow remains, looks down at the flattened mess that had been its head. His hands are filthy.

Sideswipe throws himself to the side, kicks away, and purges his tanks.

Eventually, his arms stop shaking. He can pick himself up, swaying on his legs. The construction site is dark. Lights have come on in the houses across the street.

Humans.

They'll be out here to see what the commotion was. For one, terrible moment, rage wells inside him. The sight of those dwellings, the life forms inside; this miserable planet and it's disgusting, soft inhabitants. It would be easy to go over there and rip into them, smash them, smear them all over the road.

Headmasters. It's the Headmasters he's after. They're the ones who took his brother. They're the ones who are going to pay. There is nothing in the universe that will stop him from obliterating Machination.

He can sense the other five signals. They're faint, but they're there. One of them must know where Sunny is. He doesn't care how long it takes, what it takes, he will find Sunny. And he will wipe those things off the face of the planet.

- Present day -

Sideswipe materializes on the deck of Jetfire's ship and collapses against one of the command consoles. His right leg refuses to take his weight.

Sensing his movement, lights come on throughout the deck. It's quiet. And empty.

He pushes off the console and hobbles over to the wall. He leaves a trail of energon on the floor. He waves a hand over the door sensor, waits for it to slide open, and starts to drag himself down the hall toward the lab.

It takes a few kliks to get there and he flops onto one of the medical berths with a groan. He lays there for a moment, leaking all over the place, before he can convince himself to sit up. The medical tray is still there, on the other side of the berth, where he left it after patching Hunter up. He paws it over and sets to work. Nothing too serious. The bullets had gone straight through. They'd punctured an energon line and clipped his main coolant one, but it's nothing that'll kill him.

I wonder if they left Hunter alive?

He shakes his head. He doesn't have time to think about that. Sunny doesn't have time.

He stops the leak, patches the lines. He starts to weld his armor back together.

Hunter had been on this berth. He'd lain right there. He'd tried so hard to mask how terrified he was. He'd done alright, for a human.

Almost half a cycle it takes to finish. When he's done, he slides off the berth. His leg aches, but it holds.

There's an access port into the ship's processor in the lab. Sideswipe finds it, formats his hand into a jack, and plugs in. He scans. Less than a klik later, the ship picks up a tracer signal.

On the covering over his optics, a map appears. There's a glowing blip in the center of it, moving north. Machination has taken the bait.

"Sideswipe? We're gonna get out of here, right?"

Sunstreaker could be anywhere on this mud-ball. If Sideswipe wants to find him in time, he needs information, information he won't get chasing drones around. He needs to find one of their facilities. He needs to find where they would take a captured Headmaster.

When that blip stops, when his tracer stops, Sideswipe will strike.

Hunter is cold. He's lying on something hard, something that rattles. He can't move. There's a terrible pressure crushing his legs and arms and chest. He thinks his eyes are open, but it's hard to tell. It's dark, wherever he is, and he feels funny, like he's swimming. He feels sick.

Time passes. Sometimes he hears voices jumbled together, in and out, and then it's quiet again. Sometimes it's rattling and he's swaying back and forth, like that time Dad took Megan and him out on the lake. When Mom still talked to him, before everyone died or left him.

A sudden bump and he's sure his eyes are open and looking at a face, one he knows. A man, older, with dark hair and a graying goatee and glasses. The man reaches up and Hunter feels a dim pain in his neck and his body goes cold again.

Ha! Cold robot boy!

Another thump. He tries to open his eyes but they're too heavy. He manages to turn his head. It takes forever. His cheek presses against the hard surface. More voices. Someone touches his face.

Moving again. He's swaying. He can see Dad's face. He's smiling, helping Hunter keep the fishing rod from bending all the way beneath the boat. Hunter wants to drop it. He doesn't want the fish to drag him in the water where Megan said the turtles will eat him.

"Hey, calm down, kiddo," Dad says. He takes the rod in one hand—they're so large—the other, he places on Hunter's back. "We'll do this together, okay? And then we can show Mom what you caught."

He remembers standing next to the grave and looking at Mom. Her sister, his Aunt Jean, holds her and even though it's her husband they're lowering into the ground, her eyes are dry and blank. Megan is silent next to him. Her face is puffy and her eyes are bloodshot. He looks back to the shiny casket sitting on the fake lawn. It doesn't seem real.

He hears a hiss.

Mom is sprawled out on her stomach on the couch. One leg hangs off the side. He sighs and sets his keys on the counter and walks over, picking his way through cartons of half-eaten takeout. The only light comes from the muted TV across the room. He reaches the couch and pulls the throw-blanket off the back. He drapes it over her still form. He can smell the alcohol on her. He's careful not to touch her any more than necessary. The last time she woke up after one of these binges, Megan ended up with a black eye and three stitches.

"…know it's not what you were expecting," a man says.

"That's alright. We needed…"

He cracks an eye open. Everything is hazy, a blur, moving shapes.

"…expect a recovery?"

"I see no reason why not. We'll have to take him down to the lab first, get him fixed up. Fluid levels have dropped dangerously low and he'll need a complete flush." A pause. "I'll get started, then. It should take an hour, two at most."

"Good." This voice is deeper. It speaks with a southern drawl. "We'd like to know what you find."

"I've got a theory on that. Nothing concrete, mind you, and I won't be able to test it until he's fully conscious, but I think it has something to do with the, ah, organic factor. I suspect that when the link was severed, the human mind managed to absorb most of the shock. Not without damage, of course. Which explains the lack of activity until last week."

"So they're no longer connected? At all?"

"I don't believe so, no."

"Interesting."

"I'm eager to see if there were any other side effects."

Another long pause. He hears cloth rustling.

"Well, you let us know when you get started."

"I will, sir."

Footsteps. Hunter turns his head again, sees a door swinging shut. He hears a click and a rattle.

Wha…

There's something else there, another presence. A familiar presence. His eyes don't want to move and it takes minutes, and then he's looking up, through a glass window into an empty room, into darkened optics of a robotic head.

Hey. That's…

"Okay, let's get you down to the repair bay," a man says. The room moves as Hunter is wheeled away.

Simmons is in deep shit. He's handcuffed to a chair in a room with two goons standing by the door. He thinks he might have a concussion. His left shoulder does not like the way he's been cuffed. He doesn't like the way he's been cuffed. He likes it even less when the door opens and another goon walks in and Simmons catches a glimpse of the small, black case he's carrying. It's not big; about the size of his iPhone. But the real kicker is what's inside it.

"Is this really necessary?" he says.

He doesn't expect an answer, so he's not disappointed when he fails to get one. The man with the case comes to a stop next to Simmons. He sets it down on the cheap table, unzips the case, and starts to pull its contents out.

"I mean, seriously," Simmons says. "It's a bit overkill. I'll tell you whatever it is you think I know."

The last thing to come out is the syringe. The goon pulls on a pair of latex gloves; he screws on the needle, and picks up the glass vial. To Simmons's cynical eye, the movement looks practiced.

"Not that I actually know anything, I mean. You guys," he says and looks around the room. "This is very professional. Very serious. But hey, mistakes happen, right?"

They're not even looking at him. The goon steps up. One of his buddies leaves the door and comes to stand behind Simmons. Hands clamp onto his shoulders and hold him down as the man with the needle rolls up Simmons's shirt sleeve. He pulls out an alcohol pad and swipes Simmons's arm.

"I hate this part," Simmons mutters. The needle sinks into his skin and he feels a cold burning.

Matt Summers isn't paying attention to the screen in front of him. He's too busy balancing his chair on two legs. Outside, the parking lot is quiet, the air dead and still. He reaches for his now-cold cup of coffee when a burst of light flashes through the booth's tiny window. He starts to straighten.

Wind blasts through. The chair falls back and Matt tumbles to the ground, landing on his back with his legs in the air.

"Shit!" he says.

He rolls to the side, starts to pick himself up.

"The fuck?"

He looks outside. At first, his brain doesn't really register it. It's not until his gaze travels up that he sees the head and the face.

It's a goddamn giant robot. It's crouched right outside his booth, staring at the warehouse behind him.

"Oh Christ," Matt says.

The robot's head turns. Its glowing eyes fix right on him. Matt hears himself moan and he's backing away, even though there's nowhere to go. The giant moves, a piece of it rises into the air. It's a leg. Matt has enough time to realize this and then it rushes at him.

Jerri Stephens splashes cold water onto her face. She runs her wet hands through her hair and then pulls a handful of paper towels out of the dispenser. She pats herself dry and heads back out into the locker room. Her headache is coming back. She reaches into her locker and pulls out a bottle of Tylenol. She drops that into her bag and starts to zip it up when the lights flicker. She pauses. The ground rumbles.

She waits. Less than a second and the lights flicker again. Off in the distance something big goes boom!

The explosion is distant, maybe two stories up, at ground level.

She stuffs the rest of her gear into her bag and slings it over her shoulder. She stops long enough to grab a weapon before she opens the door. To the right is the elevator. She turns left, toward the stairs.

Somewhere above her, someone starts shooting.

Dr. Paul Berkman stares with growing alarm at the security monitors as, one by one, they blink out. He takes a deep breath and wipes his glasses with the bottom of his shirt.

"Are you sure this is going to work?" he says.

He puts the glasses back on. Behind him comes a deep, whirring grind. Another monitor picks up the intruder, the large, red body moving shockingly fast across the room. He can see flashes near the floor where the guards open fire. The robot doesn't even slow down, even though Dr. Berkman knows that the guns are more than capable of piercing the thing's armor.

The robot scoops up one of the security golf carts and chucks it across the floor like a bowling ball. The flashes stop. Then it turns and looks into the camera. Its right shoulder shifts. A very large cannon unfolds. A bright flash and the monitor cuts off.

Hydraulics hiss and Dr. Berkman turns, watching the immense form rise.

"Quite sure," a deep voice says. It carries no trace of the familiar drawl. Dr. Berkman has heard it numerous times, yet the synthesized voice still sends a shudder up his spine.

Sideswipe stands in the middle of the burning and screaming and scowls.

This place is a fragging maze, he thinks.

The hallways are large. Far larger than a human would need. He can walk upright with room to spare.

Humans scurry everywhere. A couple of them take shots at him, but he's beyond patience. His ion cannon vaporizes their weapons and the occasional limb.

He moves deeper into the building. The entire place is blocked; he can't get a reading on anything. More humans appear in the hallway. He blasts the ceiling over their heads. They scatter as it comes down.

Where would they stash what they don't want found? he thinks.

More of them swarm behind him.

Bullets snap and twang through the air by his head. Some sort of miniature explosive grazes his leg. It skips down the hall and detonates. Shrapnel blows through the air. Sideswipe ducks and shields his face with his arms.

The only option is to go down. He can hear reinforcements. They're small, but their weapons can do some damage and there are enough of them to surround him, pin him there, keep him busy.

They're stalling him.

Farther down is a set of smaller doors. Sideswipe backs toward them. They open up into a lift. It's way too small for him, but where there's a lift, there's a shaft, and the walls are so thin. He punches right through it. He tears and stomps until the hole is big enough to squeeze through. He sticks his head in.

The top of the lift is right there. He sets his left foot on it. It dips beneath his weight. Sideswipe grins.

He pulls back out and blasts the floor in front of another massing group of squishies. Then he reaches in and wraps his hands around the cables holding the lift up. He hops in.

The cables, already pulled taut, stiffen and squeal. Something overhead groans. Sideswipe looks up.

He jumps and comes down hard.

It's too much. The lift rips free and he falls.

Jerri is almost to the stairwell when she hears the roaring. Seconds later and the elevator doors burst open in a shower of sparks. A cloud of dust billows into the hallway. She stumbles back, pulls a shirt up over her mouth and nose. She can hear something else: metal screeching. It's coming from inside the walls.

"Goddamn," she says.

She has a pretty good idea what's coming down that shaft. She turns and runs. The screeching gets louder. A minute later and something goes whump! A clang. The crunch of the walls being torn apart.

She passes a set of double, hangar-type doors. The ground shakes. Metal squeals. Another hangar door, one of the big, sliding ones. Just beyond it, she spots a smaller, people-sized door. Another tremor and the walls actually ripple and then she feels more than hears the large object tumble out.

Jerri grabs the door handle, throws it open, and freezes.

Sideswipe stumbles out into a deserted corridor. Rubble spills onto the floor, crunches beneath his feet. He can hear human voices above, human voices to the left, but they're distant. There's no one waiting for him. He pauses.

Where to go?

The hallway to his right ends in a couple hundred metras. It's lined with three large, sliding doors. The hallway to his left leads deeper into the building, into the heart of the complex.

There's no one to stop him.

He huffs. His cannon hums next to his head as he starts down the hall. It's quiet. The lights flicker. A human-sized door is just ahead. He thinks he hears scuffling inside.

Something in his chest flutters.

Sideswipe stops.

What?

It's there again, soft, weak, a whisper. It's his spark. It's something pulling at his spark.

No, he thinks.

Sideswipe turns around.

Three doors and the end of the hallway. Three doors and something else, something tugging at him. Someone. There's only one person in the universe connected to him, one person able to call to him like this.

No way. There's no way.

Scanners are useless; he can't even tell which way he's pointed. It doesn't matter. That presence draws him. Past one of the doors, two of them, over to the third. He stops outside.

Sunny?

It's so weak. He's barely there. What should be a blazing presence is a trickle, choked with pain. Sideswipe lifts a hand and sets it on the door. This close and he should be able to see his brother's resonance.

No way. There's no way they would lead me here. It's too convenient. Something's wrong.

And yet he can't turn away. His legs lock. His arms reach up of their own accord. Fingers slip into the small gap between the doors. He heaves. They slide open.

Sunny… oh Primus.

There, on a pedestal across a large room dotted with small, black things, is his brother's severed head.

A flash and blinding pain and Sideswipe reels back, hands clawing at his face, trying to clear the burning from his optics. His back hits a wall. He stumbles and slides down. He can hear popping, hissing as humans shoot at him.

He lashes out with one hand. Small things crumple against his arm. They keep shooting. He brings his legs up, curls in on himself, protecting his chest and neck and head. Optics reboot. They flicker once, twice—one doesn't come back on at all. The other seems strangely bare and he realizes that the cover is gone, half-melted from whatever they exploded in his face.

The air buzzes. He can see the meat-bags in the room, coming out into the hallway, fanning out around him. Behind them is the room. Behind them is Sunstreaker. His brother's head stares back with dark, dead optics.

Sideswipe kicks both legs out. Humans go flying. Then he's surging up, rolling across the floor. He grabs one of the doors in both hands and rips from the ceiling.

Some of the humans see what he's about to do and start to run. Sideswipe lifts the door in front of him like a shield and then throws himself down. He hits the ground. Something beneath crunches.

He's in the room. Sunny is right there, within reach.

I'll get you out of here.

A hiss. Sideswipe starts to turn. A small piece of metal hits him on the side and sticks there. He has a nano-klik to wonder why it's not doing anything.

Sideswipe is hit by a wall of agony. He can't see, can't hear, can't think. Warnings scream in his mind but they don't make any sense. He sees blue and white. His circuits burn.

Blank. Nothing.

Loud whirring; sounds close. Dark. No… not right. Warning. Warning.

Am I dead?

Crunching. Another sound. Softer, organic. Babbling, nonsense language.

I must be dead.

A hand brushes his face. He knows it's a hand. He's not sure how, but he does. A presence, too. Warm, familiar. Soothing. The burning starts to fade.

He can't hear words; they're not words, but they're there just the same and he knows it's Sunny.

You have to get up, is what he hears.

Too hard, he thinks.

Get up.

Don't want to.

Get up.

No.

"…got it."

"Don't get too close."

"I've got more people out here! We need med-evacs, now!"

"I told you, they're on their way."

Voices, human, maybe four of them speaking. More low groans, someone whimpering.

Sideswipe's vision is gray. For one, terrifying nano-klik, he's sure he's gone blind. Then he spots movement to one side and he realizes he's looking down at the floor. The door. Close enough.

It's hard to think through the lingering haze of pain, but he thinks he's lying on one arm, his legs twisted beneath him. Something scrapes nearby. The door trembles with human footsteps.

What the slag did they hit me with?

He waits and listens. Four humans; he can make out their intakes. One next to him, by his left shoulder; another in the hallway. Two more by his feet. He can't see his right hand, trapped under his chest. He wiggles his fingers and succeeds on the third try.

Primus, that hurts.

His other limbs function: right leg, left leg, left hand.

"Did you see that?"

Sideswipe freezes.

"See what?"

"I think it moved."

The meat-bag by his shoulder doesn't say anything. He feels a minute tremor in the door as the humans start to ease away.

"Hey, Stephens, was it? Circle around, see if you can't—"

Sideswipe reaches out. Fingers wrap around a small, thrashing object. He pushes himself up on one arm and glares at the thing.

The other humans freeze. Then the two by his feet lift their weapons. One of them has something big set on its shoulder.

He doesn't give it the chance to use it. He shoves across the floor. Metal squeals. He kicks. He catches both of them and they go flying into a wall. They land in a heap and neither of them gets up. The fourth human doesn't bother. It runs.

Oh no you don't.

He lurches to his feet and stumbles out the door. The fleeing human has gone maybe a metra. It's not far enough. Sideswipe cocks back his arm—the organic in his hand shouting—and throws.

The human lets out a shrill scream as it soars through the air. It hits its companion and they both go down in a flurry of limbs. They lay unmoving.

Sunny.

There's just his head in there, hooked onto a pedestal. Glowing, pink lines of energon run up to his neck. His brother doesn't react at all. His eyes don't move. His head is still.

Where's his spark?

Sideswipe circles the pedestal. He doesn't see it anywhere.

It's got to be here.

The spark is the 'bot. Without it, Sunny's head is just a data collection, a drone with no feelings, no emotions. It's Sunny's memories, but it's not him.

What the slag did they do?

It's not natural. What Machination has done to him, tearing his essence out and leaving it bare to the world…

Sideswipe shudders.

A flutter in his mind.

Sunstreaker? he thinks. He reaches for Sunny's head. What is it?

He's not sure what tips him off. Maybe it's Sunny or maybe it's the subtle shift in lighting or maybe his audios register some small noise. Either way, Sideswipe looks over his shoulder.

Someone is standing there. He has a moment to register this, register the thing's sheer size. It's Cybertronian, a mech, standing on two legs. He stares into the orange visor over its optics. The thing cocks its head to one side.

"Ah," it says.

It moves. Sideswipe brings his arms up, tries to block it but pain rips—

KayDeeBlu points out when the zipper is showing on this thing. And lildevchick lets me know when I'm doing alright. Thank you both.

Next chapter: Déjà Vu.