A/N: So, story announcement! I'm working on another sub-story (about 6 scenes or chapters) concerning Lockdown's trials at Yoketron's dojo, ending with Yoketron's murder. They're going slowly, but considering all the fanfic I'm juggling… HEYYYYYY I'm doin' alright. They're wonderful and jaded and Lockdown's an unforgivable AFT and I love them already!

Sincerest of thanks to the eloquent cat10, EvilKillerPoptarts you sweetie, darling Kaokat and the merciful Dvana, and of course to my beta Christy, who has been most patient and understanding. You guys rawwwwk and if you have any suggestions for later chapters, PLEASE let me know~! I'd be happy to put your visions into fanfic reality if I can make em work :]


The Sincerest of Betrayals


The hacker's ship was small, obviously a flip-job. The squat mech (all gunmetal grey with an odd, stooped triangular helm and a crane neck and no legs to speak of) had obviously taken a small, busted cargo ship and reformatted it, if poorly. His twig-arms said his skills did not lie in the physical, a vast comparison when Lockdown strode in with the old femme at his heels, already glaring around the ugly ship with smoldering apprehension.

It was a glitch to find a bounty in proximity to where his ship was stationed (and another small cataclysm to tell Prowl he was going alone), but after three more weeks of fishing, he managed it. He met up with Torque after the hunt and they rode her spiny skimmer to the hacker, waiting nearby as per his request.

It was a risk, certainly, if not to his nerve then to Prowl's strength of processor, but the meeting wasn't just for negotiation. He could do that over the Feed. Even as his pistons nearly locked at the thought, he had to see the mech he was handing his partner to. Nothing else would do.

The hacker's name—designation—was F. It was all that remained of his previous title, whatever that meant, but to have it sent directly into their commlinks in a buzzing text/vocal hybrid was strange. Ducking the thick wires that hung from the patchy ceiling, F swiveled from a cramped-looking control panel with a dully inquisitive whirr-click-click when they approached, tiny colorless optics flashing at them. He was so built-over, exposed color-coordinated ports driven into every surface of his chassis, neither could be sure of his alt-mode: he looked like he was a cramped hover-craft. Once.

[The query intrigued F.]

The mech sent it to them without prompt, puttering around his work-station with its sinister glossy black monitors and scratched-up equipment cluttering the periphery. Not a motion was wasted, save for the strange, compact jitters that jerked at his thick frame every so often. His optics blinked in a way that could be considered neither placid nor alert.

[F has followed Quintesson-operated Cybertronian slavery circuit for approximately 113898322343.227 stellar-cycles. F continually searches for new material. In a continuum of value, memory data rates near to invaluable. If intact and free from traumatic distortion, rare. F would be pleased to assist the two mechs.]

Lockdown was about to growl, stung, about how that didn't sound like anything he mentioned in his query, but Torque interrupted him, blocky servo out as if to stop the methodical flood of information in the confines of her helm.

"Wait. You know about the circuit. You have known—for that long?"

F's optics flickered a centimeter to the left, towards her.

[Affirmative. Cybertronian intel regards slavery ring as conspiracy. Untrue. F would pity the mechs under the Quintessons. F has executed 32 hack-deletion services with similar subject matter. Few escapees, in comparison to number imprisoned. Intriguing.]

"Thirty-two recovered slaves? There are more out there?"

[Probable, if survival rate of—]

"You removed their memory banks, you have the most proof of anyone and you've had it for billions of stellar-cycles! Why didn't you do anything with it? Go to the Elite Guard, anything?"

Lockdown should have known better, than to let her come along. She was already in emotional overdrive, looking for any chance to make ruckus and incriminate the 'bot who was looking at them so blankly. Dark and tired as his processor was, he knew her well enough: she thought if she could make them walk out, then he wouldn't do this at all. Should've left her on the ship to mind Prowl, but that would've been suspicious. They had to be so careful of what they did, and even the thought of someone minding his viciously capable, intelligent partner made him grit his—

[Insufficient data,] F responded evenly, unmoved by her mounting disbelief. [Ultimately inconclusive regarding location, management or route. Illogical to seek higher power when risk of F's own exposure increases by over fifty percent.]

"What is this, some sort of cult curiosity to you? It… intrigues you—do you feel no shame?"

Anger and beaten impatience for her melodrama flaring, Lockdown hissed her name and reached for her carpal joint to crunch down and shut her up, but the next text stopped him.

[Affirmative. F feels no shame,] he click-click-clicked, primitive head tilting. [Statement expansion: F feels nothing.]

It was a flat statement, like every other fragment. It wasn't even informative, nor emphasized. It was hard to tell what they wouldn't have jumped at, if just to avoid the fact of why they were there, but Lockdown gestured first, uncertainty evident in his deep rumble.

"What do you mean? You got a Spark, don't you?"

[Correction: Spark provides power-source and base ability. Other steps executed via programming. Deleting software entirely provides no outlet for impulses. Eventually leads 'bot in question to malfunction. Inserting errors into execution software while re-writing said software, however, prevents emotions from manifesting outwardly. Stopcock. Functions acceptably. Resultant tics are only expected from unvarying stream of necessary errors.]

It finally made sense, the way it looked like he was experiencing a short-circuit every so often, mostly in helter-skelter sets of threes. They manifested with an odd, lurching, grinding interruption to F's otherwise silent function. He must have had a separate program to disregard the majority of the errors, otherwise his internal alarms and warnings would have driven him to stall from the constant emotional data a Spark radiated, even if the result did cause lags in his systems. Torque peered at the squat mech as though his very existence made little sense to her.

"You do not feel emotions? At all?"

[Feel is not a technical term. Clarification: F possesses the groundwork for ability classified as EMOTING but is technologically incapable of displaying or experiencing it. Similar to viewing coding and interpreting its intended effect but ceasing motion before a download.]

A long silence followed as Lockdown internalized the meaning of it and Torque rode out yet another slap to her closely-held beliefs.

"May I ask why you did it?" she asked at last, vocals faint.

[Negative. F would find that uncomfortable and mildly offensive.]

His tone and his inflexible words were a clash even ugly colors could not match. It was all executed in the same insect monotone, with that identical 'would' before any subjective feeling. He was aware of what he should be feeling, he simply didn't feel it. F advanced on the two with a bland beep, optics upturned.

[In present, assures two mechs of infinite objectivity when hacking third mech. Query: initiate negotiation?]

Torque flinched slightly next to him, plating clicking restlessly, not just at the fact the deal might be sealed.

"What's the price?" Lockdown asked roughly, trying to ignore the beaten clench of his Spark.

[Clarify: time-period?]

It was the same price for the deletion of one to one hundred stellar-cycles. It chilled any 'bot online to have function put in those cold pixilated terms, in chunks of available space for a fee, no matter what their beliefs, but Lockdown only needed a stellar-cycle or three. The real fee came in the actual hacking. While the 'bot took to calculating, Lockdown interrupted the flurried beeping.

"That and he has some Direct Command software in him. Need you to get that out and replace it with a tracking device." The old musclecar paused—it could almost be qualified as a hesitation, if anyone but him could feel the dizzying waver of his Spark—and his claw drifted instinctively to his mutilated thigh-plating. "And I… uh. Gotta have a merge terminated."

The beeps stopped entirely. F's detailed, almost feminine servos clenched twice, gesture topped with an itchy tic of his blocky optic ridges.

[Complex. Expensive. Connection-empathy-merge-systemsync may be blocked but not terminated. Spark matter, unrelated to F's available skills. State will lessen over time and blockers will nullify when no longer necessary—positive feedback system, 98.3 percent fail-safe. Acceptable?]

"He won't be able to tell?" Lockdown pressed, dentals grit tightly from being forced to talk about Prowl like he was something to be dealt with.

[Discomfort will be present if connection-empathy-merge-systemsync is stressed. Mech will be incapable of tracking source. Blockers are invisible to anything but Beta-level scan.]

F stopped almost expectantly. When it became clear that Lockdown was looking for more, his diminutive helm drifted out and tilted, unintentionally quizzical in appearance.

[Has been described as 'twinge'. Sensation: insubstantial. Conclusion: most advantageous course.]

The price was huge.

Never had Lockdown thought about paying so much for a blank spot. It would gut the rest of his account and the kid's. Leave them hanging in the middle of a cold sector with practically nothing. He felt Torque tense beside him as the demanded numbers sprawled into an eight-digit burden in their respective helms. She knew his account numbers as well as he did, nearly. When the silence stretched too long (as did her hope that they were walking out), she stepped forward as though to implore the gunmetal mech.

"You want… to satisfy your own curiosity, don't you? See more proof of the circuit," the old femme began, still trying to hide the reluctance and revulsion in her vocals even if F wasn't capable of feeling offense. "Can't you lower the price for that?"

Blue optics flashed three times. They could almost feel the numbers line up.

[Price is directly equivocal to the amount of effort F spends in profession,] he buzzed blankly. [F cannot nullify this equation for any emotional appeal or curiosity. It is logical. If mechs wish for the highest level of attention and professionalism with their third mech, mechs must pay the featured price. Imperative.]

Finally, tattooed head bowed low, Lockdown nodded.

"I'll pay it," he muttered. Then, feeling and seeing Prowl shuddering against the berth's edge as he rode out another ghost pain a planet away, his mismatched servos curled into fists. "Pay whatever it takes, if it'll get him runnin' right."


There were no introductions. They walked in together two solar-cycles later, the two of them; it was just Prowl, Lockdown at his back, and an unknown 'programmer' waiting beside his murmuring terminal—the one who would remove the Direct Command software from him, he was texted succinctly with that unnervingly steady buzz. The bike hesitated, tensing as though the scuffed walls of the carrier were closing in, and the electrical storm of anxiety inside Lockdown's chamber was nearly impossible to mask.

"You gotta do it."

"I realize it is… logical, but…"

His vocals were faint with disuse, uncommonly reedy. He'd hardly spoken for the two-some months they had survived together; he was losing his grip, dissolving into something hunted and constantly shaken as the real world failed to offer solace enough to keep him from regressing into his past experiences. Lockdown put a servo on Prowl's shoulder-plating, gripping him roughly as if to keep his trembling partner on the ground and in one piece.

"If that brat shows up again, one word and you'll be at his pedes. You want that?"

He tried to keep himself gruff and dominant, incapable of being questioned--anything to disguise how desperate he was to get the younger mech down onto the table and into hard stasis without Prowl realizing there was anything strange about the equipment or the mech waiting motionless in the corner, watching their exchange without expression. Never had the old musclecar been required to manufacture grinding honesty or detachment before, and his innards nearly locked under the alien stress of it.

"You gotta get that stuff out."

Prowl did not respond, optics focused on a far-off corner.

It wasn't as though he did not fear the software anymore. He still wanted to remove it, remembering all too well what it had caused him to do to his partner. His will-power was one of the most precious things he claimed. Still, he looked at the unknown mech with a forcefully blank expression, because still the fear remained. It was the deeper fear, the one of letting anyone into his inside workings; of being trapped in the dark, helpless to stop anyone from slaughtering his existence with a well-written program and a burst of electricity.

If he needed someone's intentions to fear, he was looking at the wrong mech.

"Lockdown," he barely managed, a shudder quaking up from his core. In the name was a plethora of levels of despair and shame, first and foremost a plea to leave the dark, grubby ship, because it was too soon to have his insides ripped out again or be touched by anyone he did not know or to trust again, but Lockdown grabbed his arm, pulling them chassis-to-chassis.

"If you're gonna do it for anyone, do it for me," he rumbled tensely, tripping on the words and the unwieldy sentiment.

He forced himself to relax his mechanics, and the effect spread in a clicking wave from his spiny plating. His engine gave a reassuring growl when Prowl reluctantly pressed his helm to his partner's chamber plating. For the first time, Lockdown actually used their connection to send a nudge-pulse of goodwill and razor-edged strength (andjustbarelytheredesperation), making the little bike flinch and his intakes catch. Reminding him of what he was going to reboot to, same as always.

"You're gonna be fine, kid. Do it. I'll watch to make sure nothin' happens."

He finally went down.

The wire-clotted headpiece only drew a flicker of the bike's hidden optics as he lay down on the cold table, but once the squat gunmetal mech had connected a line to his audio port and the downer code started to stream like iron slag into every tender sensor, blotting out function as he knew it, Prowl jerked up out of disintegrating consciousness and gripped Lockdown's forearm. Visor angling desperately, fixed on Lockdown's own facial plating, he whispered:

"I trust you."

Lockdown wasn't sure whether it was a plea, a warning or just a fragment before defenseless darkness. The kid was gone the next klik, with a mechanical moan and a dwindling of his fearful aqua luminescence. Lockdown carefully pried the cream digits away from his plating, something in him crunching into nothing as the arm fell back down beside Prowl with a flat clang, nothing left but a shell.

"He's out?"

[Artificial stasis-lock 89 percent engaged,] the hacker reported as he moved to hook Prowl into the tangle of wires looming above him. The bike's glossy black helm disengaged into several shell levels with muted clicks and hisses as F plugged him into at least twenty lines with a swift machine-gun efficiency before returning to his console and plugging himself in to three times that. The squat 'bot shuddered, ticking madly, then went utterly still.

There was silence, at least half a megacycle of it. During that time, Torque arrived, optics immediately paling and jerking away upon seeing Prowl laid out and hooked up. There wasn't a reason for it. She just couldn't stay away and Lockdown didn't care enough to bar her from it. Lockdown allowed her servo to trace the back of his stooped helm while they waited, wiling away the cycles by the most ancient distraction in existence until their commlinks were invaded again.

[Interruption: difficulty.]

Lockdown looked up, red optics reduced to a guttering maroon. F might as well have been a cold shell or a pile of scrap—he was capable of only transmissions but no movement, other than the itchy hum of his core.

[Firewalls are too high for safe entrance and access to memory banks.]

He should have known, but that didn't stop Lockdown from rising to his pedes and cursing. Prowl was terrified. It was an unconscious response, he probably wasn't even trying to double his defenses but--

[F is capable of penetrating firewalls, but it will cause undue stress on mech. May result negatively, impair processor function. Suggestion: induce void.]

"You need me to get him to void," Lockdown repeated slowly, after the curt message had sunk in. "T'get into his banks."

[If possible, affirmative.]

Voiding was an extreme form processor stalling, as a result of shock. Once a system, preferably the emotional system, underwent an overwhelming stress, a horizon point existed where all defenses dropped due to complete absorption in higher processes, such as cognition. The firewalls usually doubled after that, but F was capable of catching it. He assured them of it—or simply stated it, but it didn't matter, because the musclecar still had to take the hacker at his word.

Lockdown searched his banks, but there was only one option: there had only been one option. He turned away from the hacker and toward Prowl, optics running up and down the bike's unarmored, supine form, the shape of his servos and the line of his oral components. As a creature absorbing, for the last time, something that he was about to lose, Lockdown took Prowl in.

"He won't remember it. What I say."

[Affirmative.]

"You can swear to that," he insisted viciously, motor braying tense and short.

[In accordance to the chronological order of the deletion, mech's words will be the first memory to vanish,] F responded with aggravating evenness.

Finally, Lockdown nodded darkly then went to his partner, going down on his knee-plating beside the table. The hacker gave the signal and Prowl came out of it with a jitter of his limbs, flickering back to function.

"Hey. Prowl." His servo drifted out of its own accord (as if to hold on to him) and Lockdown tapped at his fragmented helm, repeating his name softly as he was able. "Prowl."

"Is it—done?" he said weakly, already trying to get off the berth before his systems had even begun to sync. Lockdown pressed him back with horrible ease and a shallow clank.

"Naw, kid. Brought you back to ask you somethin', then you gotta go back into stasis"

Prowl looked up at him in unbearable confusion, unaware even of the wires pouring from his helm—looking not to his scrambled read-outs, but to the other mech for protection and guidance. He stopped trying to get off the berth: his only effort was directed toward keeping his optics locked with his partner's. Lockdown stifled whatever was about to split his chamber in half and pushed on, his servo sliding to the kid's chassis, rubbing.

"You remember… your old master? Yoketron, right?"

Prowl nodded haltingly: the movement decayed halfway through as he started to drift off again, faculties scattering.

"Stay with me, kid, c'mon," the old mech hissed, digits tightening across his chamber-plating. "Yoketron. The old rust-bucket with the helmet like yours; thought that peace was the right of all sentient beings. What happened to him?"

"He… is offline. Was… murdered by a…" His elegant facial plating contracted with the effort of listening, then trying to synthesize the steps of listening, comprehending and then aligning his blurry vocal functions. "How do you know his—his name?"

"I know it 'cos I trained under him a long time ago," Lockdown rumbled into his partner's dislocated audio, digits suddenly stilling on the bike's chest plating. "That and I was the one that killed him."

Prowl's visor snapped wide, everything inside of his chassis lurching and tightening with a frenzied rise of beeping, then froze as though someone had jammed a rod into his gears with an unheard but seismic crack. Everything was preserved, from the arch of his lithe body to the sharp interrupted claw of his digits. Most lurid was his expression: deep horror in a perfect state of defenselessness, only gained through his intense care for an old mech who had shaped his function. Yoketron meant so much to him he couldn't even begin to protest his partner's innocence—and Lockdown never lied. Even in such a state, Prowl knew that.

The silence that followed was some of the deepest of Lockdown's function.

[Void executed. Firewalls reduced to 32%. Entry now secure. F will initiate deletion and blocker installation.]

The old musclecar brushed a servo over his partner's anguished facial plating. He stood up with a weak grind of his mechanics, unable to do much more than turn his back to the bike that he'd been entangled with longer than he'd ever known, even as he feared the final crush of the same senseless forces that had smashed them together without care or meaning.

[Delete one stellar cycle to date?]

"No. Delete… two stellar-cycles and fifty-six solar-cycles." Lockdodwn said stiffly, searching his banks.

That would put them on Tellum. Random job. He needed an indiscriminate point in time: their cover story wouldn't work otherwise. He was almost thankful that the memory of baring their Sparks to one another hadn't been included in the initial download. He'd be too tempted to include it, otherwise, and that was risky. Too close to the real thing. He wouldn't be able to pull it off—and if the rest of their function was going to be a lie, it had to be one he could keep up.

He moved back to the wall where Torque was waiting, looking intensely worried and uncertain as to whether or not she should touch him; he looked as if he would disintegrate into his horribly insubstantial components at the slightest knock to his plating. He wouldn't meet her optics. She asked him what he said to cause Prowl to void.

"Told him I loved him," he said, and moved past her to sit down with a wounded groan of gears, helm in his stolen servos.

To him, the two facts were the same: unspeakable, for fear of what he would lose if they were said aloud.

He was on the floor for little more than a few cycles before the hack actually began. The first flicker of pain that went through him nearly made him growl aloud. The second nearly made him void. Even as Prowl was silent and motionless on the table, his Spark warped into a mauled seed of light at the brutal, hateful invasion of his inner workings. He cried Lockdown to him, pulling the other half of his connection to him through sheer force of blind, pulsing pain and vibrating fear.

The proximity was a death-knell. The old mech couldn't feel much and then he couldn't think much, then before he knew it he was up on his pedes and reaching for his partner, jolted back into cold-coded cognition only by Torque's sharp insufficient grip on his hip-wheels and the sudden script blinking in his head. It shot from the motionless bot like insect lightning with a violence communicated only by urgency and the intense frequency it was relayed on.

[MECH WILL NOT TOUCH. MECH WILL NOT TOUCH. MECH WILL NOT TOUCH.]

Before he knew what was happening, a sliding door was slamming shut and Torque was pushing him onto a bench in what could only be a store-room. He hit like a pile of spare parts, disembodied parts of him jangling and clanking. His optics trailed her hazily as she dug around in shelves and boxes until she found what she wanted, then clanked down onto her knees with an armful of dirty tools. When Lockdown realized what the cans were—some bonding material, a spatula and a can of plating polish—he started to rise upright again, furious at the triviality when Prowl needed him on the other side of the door, but she rose to counter him, grabbed his arm and crunched down as hard as she could.

"You've clawed yourself to pieces for over a stellar-cycle. Observant as he is, do you think Prowl will miss what's left of your thigh-plating?"

It had been months since he had thought about himself. Longer still since he had looked at himself. Lockdown hadn't realized that all the steady, anxious self-mutilation he'd done over the stellar-cycle had worked his plating down to a mauled length of metal with barely a scrap of paint on it.

"He'll know something is wrong and you already have enough to cover up. So sit down and let me do this." He made a sound, low and vicious, but Torque's vocals were steel. "Please, Lockdown."

Because she couldn't say what she wanted to, she texted it in a wrenching rush of information.

We need a distraction, or else you'll snap and touch him. Grab him. I know how you feel, and I can't stand to be in there either. It reminds me of Beta and I might grab him myself. So sit down, for the love of Primus, and let me do this.

That was the green mech's name. Beta.

Caught in that sudden realization, intense only through their shared memory, Lockdown didn't fight as she pushed him down onto the bench again and opened the can of bonding material. She began to repair him, motions quickly turning rote as the spatula smeared and shaped the metal magma over his half-exposed neural net. Lockdown gave up, sagging against the wall of the dark room, processor phasing in and out in time with Prowl's terrified pulses. There was only a door and one femme between him and the mech he knew he couldn't function without.

His Spark strained at the edges of his chamber, glowing out towards Prowl in a permanent ache. After so long, he just wanted to be near the bike. That's all he wanted, and it still seemed like too much after what he'd done; all that he'd stolen from his partner, just to prove he didn't need the old mech who wanted him to doubt himself.

"Never let him go," Torque said suddenly, scraping at the thick substance with a trembling intensity, optics locked on the ugly metal in front of her. "You've seen the other side. You know how it is to be without him: never let him wonder how you really feel."

His old Spark throbbed hard, his name almost materializing from the wrenching blast of panic from the 'bot on the table as his memory banks were finally breached.