This time she did not hide from anyone. She just simply opened the groundbridge without asking anyone anything or explaining what happened, and she teleported away to the coordinates almost thrust into her by the freaked out and frenzied Laserbeak. She disappeared in the yellow-green haze almost running, before Ratchet or anyone managed to react.
The coordinates were precise and she landed just right to find Soundwave lying on the ground in the place where they had seen each other last time. Alerted with his dark, unresponsive, motionless shape lying in a strange position, she leaped the last few remaining steps forward to see him totally unconscious blotted in energon on the ground. She cautiously turned him over just to realize what state he was in. Her warrior nature did not give her time to freeze over the sight.
Without any hesitation or unnecessary thinking beyond the reasonable analysis of her fragmented medical knowledge, she lifted him with effort, trying not to damage or hurt him anymore. She felt the heavy dead weight of his frame bending her knees and dragging her hands down as she walked back to the still open groundbridge carrying him in her arms. His body was leaking all over her. The mix of his coolants, energon and sticky lubricants as well as fluids from his hydraulics stained her hands and armour leaving a wet track behind her. A darkening stain was glimmering black and blue in the place where she lifted him, burning the folded mountain grass with its chemistry.
She walked heavily the few steps needed to cross the bridge. These were lead-footed steps and they felt like forever.
The air warmed as she entered the safety of the base. She looked up, standing in the aureole of the groundbridge, to meet the five pairs of painted surprise optics gleaming in shades of blue waiting on the other side.
One pair of small deep crimson-purple eyes glided from behind her with speed of light stopping abruptly above them as Laserbeak shoved forward across the groundbridge.
"Can you… help me, ...please" - she asked with a visible effort towards the astonished crew as heavy drops were splashing down to the base floor collecting at her feet like melting snow, dripping slowly of her thighs and arms as she held him, wings dangling uselessly down to the very floor.
"What the hell…" - Bulkhead opened and closed his mouth as an expression of horror painted on his face.
Ratchet moved forward first. - "To the medbay" - he ordered. - "And close that fraggin groundbridge" - he shot over his shoulder to Bumblebee who stood as frozen as anyone else. Then, he went forward to the surgery as Optimus took over the burden from Arcee.
Laserbeak circled impatiently above them but did not get in the way. Deep fear, that no-one noticed, shone in his eyes full attention paid to his offlined guardian.
They brought him right to the medberth staining all the way with the sticky fluids of his body. His chest was visibly fractured, legs, midsection and arms were covered in lesions. The ankles and wrists were torn and wore visible signs of ties. They placed him down carefully and Ratchet looked closer, his face reminding of a storm cloud not promising any good news whatsoever.
"Spark chamber…" - he murmured - "Out, everybody out." - he ordered in a rough voice. - "Arcee, go wash yourself and come back, I will need your help".
Optimus looked at them in silence and then stared at Soundwaves visor and the wounded chest and ragged tissues on his inner legs and belly. He shook his head and left without a word.
"Get the slagging bird out too, I am trying to work here, in HYGIENE" - Ratchet hissed irritated and Optimus nodded at Laserbeak who reluctantly lowered down and sat on the bossbot's arm looking intensely back at his master.
"Come with me little one" Optimus said almost compassionately to Laserbeak. "He needs medical help now, you will have a lot of time later to greet him back." And he stroke the little bird head and neck lightly. Laserbeak obeyed. His crimson eyes met Arcee's intensive blind stare and it seemed it woke her up. She almost physically felt Laserbeak urging her to hurry up, and sending over his trust in her to do something, what he himself could not do. Laserbeak's fear was intense and deep even though he was not docking she understood his emotions very well.
She set off to the wash rack.
When she entered the bathroom she just stopped for a moment in front of the only mirror they had in the base and looking at her own reflection she realized how much she was covered in Soundwave's fluids. The cuts and the leak must have been really bad, who knows what effect they could take eventually. She smeared her finger across her energon stained frame and raised it slowly in front of her eyes smelling her hand and looking at it closer. It was glowing bluish and was drying much too quickly. Energon thinned by cooling liquids… It was at the same time mixed with oily substances from his protoflesh micro-hydraulics most likely, which would mean that both his cooling and his locomotor systems were badly damaged.
Then some undefined urge made her taste it from the tip of her fingers in an impulsive gesture. It had a mixed flavour of energon, oil and metal, a little sweet, a little bitter. She froze for a moment realizing that it was his blood she was tasting, something coming deep from inside him, his life force perhaps... And she got afraid suddenly. Feeling the taste still in her mouth she recalled his dead weight in her arms, his long wings dragging behind as if he were a very heavy toy, and not a living, or ...a dying... creature. A shiver of fear ran across her frame and she felt her spark shrinking at the thought. Now it smelled and tasted everything that meant death and loss. Yet she resented the idea to wash it of herself as if she wanted to preserve this strange closeness to what was his. As if she gave up... No. This could not be. She forced this feeling away and opened the sprinklers to quickly get herself ready to assist Ratchet. She wanted to be back to the medbay as much as she feared it.
When she was washing herself she realized that there was yet something else… that irritated her surface sensors, and her mouth especially. Strangely bitter, acidic, somewhat smelting her coatings… what else was that he had inside besides what was his own? She washed everything off very precisely and almost ran back to the medbay with a frightening idea building on the top of her tongue…
Ratchet looked carefully at the offlined body of Soundwave assessing the wounds thoughtfully. With a swift glance of an experienced medic's eye he could see that they bore signs of hasty medical interventions as if someone tried to seal the most open and dangerous leaks, maybe secretly and quite in a rush, but anyway it made a difference limiting the bleeding and increasing chances of survival.
The chest was cut open. Or, better said, ripped open, as the only thing cut was the armour, while the internal structures and protoflesh were literally torn apart, spark deep. The real destruction lay inside, as if someone tried to *find* something hidden. Traces of something with corrosive effect were also apparent without too much examination.
The spark chamber fracture, together with multiple perforations and leakages and damage in critical subsystems created the biggest threat. The medical scanner showed some very faint spark activity but it seemed that the spark was unsealed and dehydrating. The first thing to do now was, after connecting to basic life support, to seal the spark chamber or otherwise it would extinguish in a matter of measurable time. While others may have been guessing, Ratchet knew what was that quick drying liquid that leaked the most… and he wasn't even sure if he had an appropriate refill but if he wanted to save the patient, he had to use what he had at hand.
The wounds covering Soundwave's legs and belly were not pleasant either, but also for other reasons than the one in the chest. They were not really as dangerous per se , although they would cure long and in Soundwave's case the distributed memory units did not make it easier to fix. However, Ratchet's long years of medical experience told him clearly that these wounds were not injuries originating from a decent fight between peers, but from something that particularly Arcee would perhaps not want to know about. Not particularly because she was a femme, she has seen worse things than that and she was a warrior all the same as everyone else, but he had an awkward feeling that wounds of this sort on *this* particular mech might be disturbing for her in a special way. Among others, there were long and deep claw marks of and wiring torn out of places beyond normal reach… She was the most medically skilled and best fit for the task out of the whole team, trained well as nurse and assisting to surgeries before. However… *However*. Well... He considered for a moment if it was really a good idea that he asked particularly her for help, and decided to make sure when she's back.
The head was almost the only thing left almost undamaged. The visor cracked a little but was left on. Someone must have known about the infrasonic capacity that was clear for Ratchet from Arcee's story. A good way to preserve the most sensitive data, although the location connected to the head was in this case not fully a perfect match, as it seemed memory was everywhere inside him where any safety could be provided, and only Soundwave must have known how the contents were distributed and backups made… Maybe the tormentor left it to be checked out after getting rid of the subjects spark, which would have likely deactivated the defense system permanently. Not sure however if there was damage under, it would have to be taken off to see for sure. Later.
Ratchet connected auxiliary circulation system to stabilize the basic functions of the body and carefully started dismantling the complex chest plating. He had to get inside in a matter of priority, at least open up a little bit to freely reach and examine the spark chamber and secure the fracture from further leaking, otherwise it could fail even despite the connected life support. It was not easy, as the plating was battered and tangled with sharp edges clinging at each other and not letting go. Massive amounts of small movable elements of the damaged docking ports did not make it faster, they were now stuck and their rooting structures dislocated. The multiple delicate internal data ports were also methodically smashed and destroyed. Ratchet shuddered at how deliberately these sensitive, almost intimate parts were chosen. They contained important sensory nodes and delicate cilia that connected with the symbiont for nutrition and data transfer. In general they were a way in to the circulation and sensory systems. And, as much as Ratchet remembered, the ports were directly connected to the processor networks, transmitting sensations quick and efficient, with touch being the primary sense they operated, as it steered their main functionalities.
He bit his mouth plates as he carefully removed the parts of smashed, corroded and smelted ports, that bared signs of a failed forced connection, along with other loose bits of wiring torn around them. He placed it all in order on the table below. He tried to unlock the blocked chest plates but they required further cutting to get open. The anesthetic must have already settled in the systems of the anyway offlined Soundwave but that was rather just a precaution than real need because Ratchet couldn't imagine his patient waking up now.
Bit by bit he methodically moved forward, cleaning up the huge wound as much as possible before Arcee was back to help cut it back open for the operation, wondering how was that possible that the spark inside was still pulsing while there was no bit so far in the chassis that seemed whole and fully functional. The corrosive substance was a problem leaving toxic contamination that was difficult to remove in the narrow crevices infecting the tissues that were hard to reach. It seemed that the main reason for the presence of it was an attempt to inject it to the overall energon circulation system. Hopefully a failed one, Ratchet sighed to himself, and put aside a sample for examination trying to check what kind of poison was that exactly. Anyway the auxiliary circulation would clean it up from the veins at least. Hopefully.
At the same time a sense of admiration grew in Ratchet for the level of precision and complexity of the construction in the creature that lay in front of him. He seemingly had much more elaborate architecture than any usual mech. He was actually not so well armoured as Ratchet was expecting. On the contrary he was quite fragile and instead filled with very detailed components whose function was not so always fully clear to the medic, but they seemed to have memory and processing functions everywhere, among the obvious mechanical or electronic parts like hydraulics, gears, generators, capacitors and the rest. He could fix these, but the mysterious processing chips and crystals had to wait for self repair to kick in.
He focused on reaching the spark chamber when Arcee entered from the disinfection chamber next door. As in the times when Ratchet was teaching her basics of medicine she was now in full readiness to support.
"Corrosives" she uttered looking at Ratchet who nodded.
"Already took a sample, I will check in a moment what that is exactly, but anyway it needs to be pumped and filtered all out of the system."
The forced professional look on her face faded away the moment once she saw Soundwave stretched on the operating table with his chest opened up and gutted as if he was some rusty corpse brought from scrap-heap for parts. After Ratchets initial cleaning, the wound now was visible to the full of its gravity. Her eyes slipped next to the ruptured legs, and an exasperated sigh escaped her vents.
The medic looked skeptically for a moment seeing Arcee collecting herself.
"You sure you can do this?" - he asked.
"Yes" - she replied very quietly.
"It looks bad. And he is your… ehm, friend." - Ratchet grunted not being able to find a proper word. - "There are things that are not ...nice... here. Someone did a very nasty job on him. If you wanna back off, I will ask Bumblebee".
"I… I see it already." - she said. - "I can… I want to do it".
And he saw how her gaze darkened a little still stuck firmly in Soundwave's chest where a very weak blue light of his spark was showing through the deep laceration. Since the last meeting she longed to see him, to touch him, even more than ever... But never like this. A guilty thought crossed her processor. How much did this have to do with her? Was that her fault? Who did it? Megatron? How much did they know? Her eyes drifted through the medbay door window to the hall meeting the crimson shiny optics of Laserbeak on the other side, and she felt a great anger filling her inside. Laserbeak's anger - which mixed with her fear and denial.
She looked away in determination.
"What do we do?" - she asked firmly.
"In the first place, we need to open him up and seal the spark chamber, refilling it with this" - he raised a glass container filled with crystallic liquid. - "Energon plasma. This is what I found in our stock, it will have to do."
She nodded and approached the table. Ratchet worked slowly and thoroughly, giving her precise and clear instructions. They dismantled what they could without possibly causing further harm, layer by layer, exposing the fragile internals and complicated wirings, complex components including nano-brazings and amazing metallic and crystalline structures. They cleaned carefully the harmful corrosives, removed the overburnt bits, or at least what Ratchet was sure that was too damaged to work or self repair. They tried to be the least intrusive possible, not fully understanding the way he was built and some functions of components they found. Finally they had enough reach to work on the spark chamber.
The faint blue spark was almost extinguished, but still floating in the rest of remaining plasma. It was pulsing very weak with almost indiscernible light, so different to the blissful one that flooded her not so long ago. No strength was left, almost no living force. ::Is this how we all end?:: she thought and felt the bitter-sweet taste from the bathroom in her mouth, with something more in it, the swallowed energon tears that never reached her optics but found her way to be recycled across the system and adding their taste biting through the denial and refusal to internalise the situation she found herself in.
Arcee felt her hands tremble a little as Ratchet asked her to hold Soundwave's armour back to the sides. It took ages while he performed the delicate sealing operations, but she held on, feeling her servos weakening of the monotonous effort and her own spark pulsing in anxiety. But she was grateful to Ratchet that she could assist him. She could not imagine herself sitting next door and doing nothing with no influence over the situation, being flooded with questions from others to which she did not have any answer to. So much better that she could still do something and did not need to talk to anyone. There will be time to wait idly, she knew this. Now she was *doing* something, *addressing* the situation, she took *action*, and that was the only thing important. She was not made for waiting and sighing.
Finally Ratchet carefully brazed and soldered what could be brazed and soldered, making sure the main life-giving arteries were reconnected, plasma filters attached and sealed, any remains of the corrosive cleaned out and energon lines functional. Then he carefully injected the crystallic fluid from his jar, slowly immersing the fainting spark and retracting the air in a delicate process. The medical machinery beeped and ticked in the background, spreading its sound waves across the dense silence of the confined space of the medbay. Arcee glared intensely at the old grumpy doctor's servos as they transformed into all kinds of medical tools, working skillfully on the almost impossible assignment. And Soundwave's spark pulsed very delicately under the hardworking appendages of these old Cybertronian lifesaving hands. She muted a sound of swelling awe and respect. Yes, she was grateful and full of esteem for the old, wise mech next to her, and it filled her for a moment with a feeling of bliss and a small light of hope for that blue light flickering there inside after all. She felt trust and it was rare.
"Now we need to clean the rest of this mess. We have to check the rest and in eight more hours we can perhaps recharge" - Ratchet murmured bringing her back to reality. *Eight hours*? Did they just work eight hours? Did anyone come in the meantime? Bring them energon, anything? What was wrong with her that she did not even remember or notice the passing of all that time.
She only nodded silently and they slowly worked through the rest that needed to be done before closing the spark back to safety. Getting rid of remaining signs of corrosives and the dead, rusting elements was crucial to avoid further decay and infection. She moved slightly towards the lower parts of Soundwaves body starting from checking below the chest removing some bits of abdominal plates in order to finish off and see about the midsection fractures, reconnect and seal some damaged wirings. It was only then when she suddenly saw *THIS*.
A short stifled cry escaped her voice box. She gripped her own belly with both hands and her optics widened while she faltered a bit in place.
Ratchet followed her void staring optics, just to see a new mutilation that they did not take note of so far. Under the now removed abdominal plates, short bits of what remained of Soundwave's datacables was creased and stuffed in the small spacing where these unique limbs usually retracted, now filled with some impossible scrap that contained bits and pieces of the tentacles themselves, his own parts from the main wound and Primus knows what else, all greased in dried energon and oils. Optical fibres were stripped and ragged, the multitool endings with their now dead tendrils smashed and battered fell out to the floor as she opened the casings. Everything was shredded into pieces.
Ratchet sighed loudly raising his optics at the petrified face of Arcee. Arcee stood stiff frozen, immersed in the memory of these same tentacles, most agile and tender, embracing her and hugging her close to Soundwave two days ago. Warm, alive, pulsing. Her memory drifted through the strength and gentleness of the embrace, to the pounding of his spark that they transmitted, and eventually the *kiss* with which he left her before he flew away to the night sky…
She shut and onlined her optics again, but nothing changed. Ratchet saw her face almost changing colour in a moment of pure anger and hate, her optics turning dark blue, almost purplish, and her mouth shut tight nearly bending the cheek plates that did not have enough flexibility to easily follow the steel grip of her fury.
"I will find and kill the slagging fragger who did this" - she hissed through her voice box only. - "He will regret he has ever been sparked" - It was the coldest statement Ratchet has heard from her since long and he made a note to self to tell Optimus to watch out for Arcee and keep her busy in the coming days to avoid a possible disaster. There was enough unknown and danger in this situation as it was without revenge-driven ideas and actions from a fierce Arcee who could be completely unpredictable as they already knew it.
"Arcee, you should rest now. I can handle the rest of this ...patchwork… I just need you for one thing. We need to take his mask off and check his face, if no damage is there."
Arcee looked at him with a question mark in her optics.
"I think that you might know how to overcome this… infrasound thing that I assume took you out last time".
"How would I…" - she started.
"Maybe Laserbeak knows something..."
Arcee raised her optics across the medbay window and saw Laserbeak still there, squeezed to the glass, looking a bit like a scarecrow now, bristling, tired and attentive.
"Go. I will take care of the data links…" Ratchet would in normal circumstances say 'tentacles' but now it suddenly sounded inappropriately in front of Arcee. Actually he noticed how her feelings, though concealed as much as possible, changed the whole attitude of the Autobot team to their current patient. Well, not that they would leave anybody to death on purpose normally, but he was a Con and a badass one, no-one would fetch him to base in the first place if it was not for interrogation maybe. Ratchet himself would complain about it in the first place and never even touch that life saving jar of plasma for such a purpose… But now her determination was all over the place and it brought change in their attitude. It made it important to make Soundwave wake up. It also made himself, Ratchet, curious. Without bringing him to base by Arcee probably they would not have even found out that his wounds came from torture. That says something, puts things in a new perspective and they needed to discuss the further strategy as soon as he was done here.
Arcee left the medbay on soft knees. She ignored the others and headed straight to Laserbeak. She approached him at the medbay window and stroke gently across the neck plates. The avian leaned to the caress for a moment and then, without a word he docked as if he understood what she came for.
::Those miracles happen:: - Ratchet murmured in his thoughts grumpily and continued work feeling tiredness creeping up his backstrut.
Arcee petted on Laserbeaks head delicately and sat down leaning against the wall. She shut her optics and focused deeply on the thought of what she needed. She felt how the energon flowed between her and the little symbiont. It soothed her, same as before, but she also felt the deep angst and anxiety flowing to her from him. - "It's important" - she whispered, stroking the bird's head and cupping her hand around it protectively.
Nothing happened for a few moments but then she felt like her head and body filled with strange emotions from a very very distant past, like a dream, accompanying a semi-conscious file transfer that reached her remote access memory pending to be saved and read. Somewhat shyly she accepted the file and memorised it. It contained a complex specification and a very simple workaround instruction. And then she got up again and entered back to the medbay.
"We don't need to take it off mechanically. There is a port you can tap in. It should work even while he's unconscious and you can run a full medical scan through it. It's heavily firewalled but the health status can be reached with an instruction I have from Laserbeak. The trouble starts if there are serious injuries".
"Show me the port"
She cautiously turned Soundwave's head to the side and sought for it carefully in line with the knowledge she received from Laserbeak. Under a little curve of the armour in the back of his neck there were some looser plates that revealed indeed a small data port that looked as alien as half of the things about Soundwave. Ratchet looked there and considered how to connect. She also checked it and then her attention was again pointed by Laserbeak to cable tips lying among the discarded parts found inside Soundwave's tentacle casings. Ratchet took it following her indication. He connected the wires according to his general logic and after some struggle it seemed to work. The scan revealed only one a bit older wound seemingly sewn together already and taken care of the self repair and no need for additional intervention at this stage.
They both sighed in relief at the findings.
"You can go to bed now" - Ratchet prompted her. - "It is manageable now. I think he will survive"
These words sounded in her head as she washed herself again and then moved staggering over to the big couch in the living room across the hall refusing to go any further. She still heard these words in her head as she was falling into shallow recharge.
::I think he will survive::
After she left Ratchet examined the remaining wounds carefully, shaking his head from time to time as he cleaned up, stitched and stapled the torn protoflesh, welding the broken armour plating and applying decontaminants and anti-rusters.
Although Arcee was a tough cookie, he did not want her to work with these wounds more than strictly necessary. Their origin was more than clear to him and he imagined that a girl in love would not be particularly enchanted to pounder too much over their actual nature. Even if the object of affection was a Decepticon officer. Apart from all that was clear and what they discussed with Optimus, he saw it perhaps most clearly in her optics when she stumbled upon the shredded datacables. It was not hard to decipher from her face and her whole posture. Right, of course, he thought about it before and he still let her work with him. He swore silently to himself.
In the meantime the analysis of the corrosive substance finished in his lab apparatus. He took a closer look at the results and saw what he suspected. It was no corrosive that poisoned and destroyed the patient's tissues. It was residues of dark energon that Soundwave's body rejected and tried to dispose of...
He looked thoughtfully at the outprint on his screen. Dark energon. Unicron's blood. A powerful substance with unpredictable side effects. Infused... and rejected. According to intelligence they had, Megatron had dark energon added to his own system for some time already. So he or someone tried to do the same with Soundwave now. But obviously Soundwave's system treated it as poison and tried desperately to dispose of the substance. Not sure if consciously or was that a natural incompatibility but it seemed to be a fact. His body did not accept the powerful drug, with a devastating side effect of decomposition of the substance to toxic and reactive elements. Strange, very strange, probably even his own, Ratchet's system would somehow intake the dark energon. But not Soundwave's. Why was that? Was he immune to it and the evil it contained? What the hell was that supposed to mean?
Megatron did not know what to do with himself. He paced the floor of the Nemesis bridge nervously back and forth giving chaotic orders from time to time. It has been a few days since the mysterious vanishing of Soundwave from the prison cell. Nobody saw or knew literally anything and no search gave any result, apart from some signs of spilt energon next to the mine entrance from where the infamous footage was taken. But no further trace whatsoever suggested where he could have gone further on. A thorough search of his empty quarters gave no results either. Save for a piece of mirror there was nothing of interest, but nobody had an idea what use could the commbot have of a mirror.
He just disappeared into the thin air. No life signal was detected anywhere neither of Soundwave nor Laserbeak. They were either both dead or really well shielded.
On one hand it was no wonder. As talented and equipped the communications chief was, Megatron had no doubt that he was able to hide his energy signature from the visibility of their systems. He namely could do anything, *if* he were healthy and well. However who else than Megatron could know better how unwell he was last time they saw each other… It was simply not possible that he survived, it was even not possible that he groundbridged at all. How did he get hold of a groundbridge launcher? Wasn't it properly removed? But he saw to it and checked the removal himself... Did he have a second one? Soundwave's biology was twisted and it could contain various things no-one had any idea about. But if he did, he would logically use it and disappear right away from the start, without even getting his armour scratched. Did someone put the bloody device back in?
In the first instance Megatron looked suspiciously at Shockwave as the one who took care of the locking the prisoner in his cell and also had a strong nature of someone who does not obey orders if he finds them unreasonable. Megatron suspected that Shockwave could find the whole thing with Soundwave illogical, as it bore signs of unreasonability even from a large distance. But would he go so straight against a clear instruction? KnockOut was the second suspect as the one who might have failed the proper groundbridge removal… Although if he failed it was back to the same question of usage… Impossible. And how did he wake up? He was in total stasis-lock, spark-chamber damaged, absurd again…
Did anyone help him? The guards and the security cameras saw nothing. Megatron ran all the recordings back and forth across all Nemesis surveillance systems. There was *nothing* to be seen or clarify this miracle.
Both Shockwave and KnockOut were not of much help, peering at him weirdly and seeming to avoid him. Shockwave was mentioning something about necessity to finish the visit and move on in his journey to do some jobs that awaited him elsewhere in the galaxy, which Megatron tried to prevent as much as possible, not imagining who else could manage the complex engineering part of Nemesis maintenance now that Soundwave was gone.
KnockOut behaved as usual, quarreled with Starscream occasionally, took good care of the looks of his sleek sports car chassis plating and did all the usual nice-good-looking-guy-type of things, but for some reason he never landed in the same room with Megatron alone.
Starscream talked too much and annoyed everyone, but at least he was entertaining. He was the only one of the three remaining high-rank officers who learned about Soundwave's situation only from gossips, and being only recently back to the warlord's graces, he commanded the search for the lost prisoner together with some of his remaining clones, with no results whatsoever. He also had good reasons to be happy about disappearance of the surveillance bot who knew much too much about his multiple attempts of coup d'etat and other power struggles behind Megatron's back. So, for Starscream, Soundwave would better not appear back ever again. This made him quite less efficient than desired in the "rescue" missions, and he treated the futile chase after the hated ghost of Soundwave more as an adventure then a real objective.
At the same time having no proof and no good theory, with low personnel numbers at hand and a clearly nervous situation onboard as gossips spread quickly, Megatron limited himself only to exemplary punishment of the unlucky prison guards on duty that night. He played cool and staying as close to the truth he announced officially Soundwave's treachery and high probability of his death, maintaining however a high alert level onboard without ceasing the neverending search. On top he promised a proper reward for finding the missing prisoner, dead or alive.
Days on Nemesis passed nervously but the practical routines of energon mining and searches for the lost Cybertronian relics destined to gain advantages over the Autobots took most of the time not allowing Megatron to think excessively too much of the problem.
But at night, at night it was becoming worse. When the door to Megatron's quarters closed behind him the ghosts were coming alive. Nemesis propulsion and antigrav systems hummed ominously in the silence of the recharging crew. No-one walked on the corridor, nobody disturbed his quiet time, but something heavy seemed to be flowing down from the ceiling and settling itself on his shoulders, whispering alien glyphs, making the air dense around him. Dark energon droned in his veins and shone purple light through his eyes at the walls around him. He tried to power down, but whenever he closed his optics he saw all the same. The bloodied body on the table, bending heavily under the weight of them both and the misshapen tangle of black, fried-like dead wiring that filled the space that was supposed to be Soundwave's face. Numb and empty to the touch. Empty almost literally, leaving impression that if he reached deeper through it, his hand would pass across, right to other side, unhindered by anything real. But it didn't. And the feeling of dead touch stayed there, on his hands, sticking to them fast and not letting go. It couldn't be washed off, it could not be deleted, it remained and haunted him. He raised his hands up in front of his eyes and he saw a black imprint of the dreaded wiring on his palms and fingers. It seemed to flicker slightly and dissolve slowly into ash and leaf off falling down to the floor making a dripping noise like heavy drops of water… or energon. A silent splash, drop after drop… He looked down but saw nothing, while heavy air pressed his shoulders down, down to the ground, and his spark pulsed nervously.
Once, irritated over the lingering creepy insomnia, he got up in the middle of the night and left his quarters angrily passing to the other side of the ship, to Soundwave's quarters. Furiously he smashed the door irreversibly open and without turning the light on he stopped in the middle of the small empty room venting deeply. Then he looked at the desk, at the only object of interest in the otherwise impersonal and sterile premises: the piece of broken makeshift mirror placed against the wall reflecting the light of his optics onto the ceiling at an angle. In slow steps he came closer and took the mirror in his hand. He raised it up in front of his face and looked at his own reflection. The shadows behind him seemed to move and stare as he was watching his own wry face pictured in the glass. They were not sharp but with a corner of his optic he caught movement at the back of the room. A tall, thin, winged, masked figure seemed to condense of the shadows right behind him. He turned around in an instant but there was nothing. Suspiciously he looked at the mirror again focusing on the darkness behind. The hollow shadows seemed to be floating and hovering away from his focus, and densifying right at the margins of what became completely blurry. He was almost sure they were forming into thin fingers, tentacles and long wings coming alive exactly when he did not look into that direction. Fear started creeping up his backstrut cabling pressing energon to circulate faster and faster. He closed his optics and vented heavily. This wasn't happening. Someone or something was playing tricks on him. He felt as anger started filling his veins again. Good. This was what he knew. This was how he functioned… He onlined the optics again.
Driven by a fresh dose of fury he smashed the mirror against the floor in one fast move breaking it into a million small pieces in a loud echoing crash. It scattered to all directions throwing purple reflexes on all the walls, creating a surreal effect of violet-star-prickled sky around him. All the little bits seemed to be looking at him.
He ran out through the broken door that would not close behind him and rushed straight to the bridge. Purple reflexes chased him across the corridor and he had a feeling they were sticking onto his armour shining and blinking at him everywhere he looked.
The night shift of Vehicons on duty looked surprised at the agitated warlord that stormed into the bridge at the most unexpected time of the night. He shouted something at them but felt grateful for their presence, it brought back the feeling of reality. He mocked checking a few things on the main computer and then for a moment he looked through the warships windshield into the night outside while dark cloudy thoughts of uncertainty and revenge crossed his mind.
It just must have been her. That blasted Autobot femme. Why did he not see it before? He remembered clearly her enchanted face and slim and tasty body wrapped in Soundwave's tentacles. The slagged witch used her magic over the communications bot. With her witchcraft, she woke him up from his lifelong emotionless spell, extracting his beauty and attraction to the plain sight, heating up his EM field... And then she took the prize right from in front of Megatron's nose, cheating him, stealing from him, the rightful owner... Oohhh, he had been so blind all those years having Soundwave just right beside him and not doing anything about it. It took the freaking *sensuality* to notice these wings belonged to someone more than a servant machine.
So she made a fool out of him, Megatron, she, ruined his… plans? Opportunities... Crossed his will. Stole away his most valuable property, his most loyal favourite, his chosen, his only friend, his… ... Megatron choked at the next word that emerged in his mind. It went too far. It was unacceptable. And it stood too much in contrast with objective facts and all his own actions. Nobody would do what he did to someone he… … He muted it before it appeared again. Nonsense. What on Cybertron was now happening with him? He clenched his fists angrily, and felt how his weapons charged out of his control. She must have somehow located the unconscious Soundwave on Nemesis and, despite all the shielding, groundbridged him down to their base. Or somewhere he could not be found. That *would* explain everything.
He needed to get to her, find her and smash her, destroy her, burn her down. Let her share her lover's fate if she cares so much. Let her perish and suffer all the same. Let her… taste his wrath.
Slowly and heavily he left the bridge and went out to the landing deck outside. He vented the cold wet air of the cloud-heavy night. After a moment he transformed and took off on a lonely, much too speedy, flight in the stormy electricity-charged starless darkness. The ghosts would not chase him out there.
Would they?
