Chapter 17

When everything came back into focus, the first thing he realized was everything hurt.

But at least he could still feel and move everything, and nothing felt broken, which he was thankful for.

Eric felt like he had kept his eyes closed long enough and forced them open, staring up at the darkness in confusion.

Why did his bedroom smell like earth and dirt?

Why did his bed feel so hard and bumpy?

Why was there the distant sound of rocks settling above him?

Then, it all came crashing down on him.

Well, his thoughts, not the rocks.

Slowly, as not to further hurt his already aching body, Eric sat up. It took a moment for his head to stop spinning and his stomach to settle a bit before Eric attempted to stand.

"Ugh…...ouch."

Every bone in his body ached. But it wasn't too severe.

Eric struggled to his feet, swaying a bit as a dizzy spell washed over him. He must've hit his head a little bit. He then remembered that two others were down with him. Two members of the Rescue Team, the firefighter if he remembered correctly. Eric glanced around the almost suffocating darkness that seemed to press down on him but couldn't see anything.

"Anyone here?" He called out into the darkness.

"Yeah…." The groaned response was hard to pinpoint in the echoey darkness, but the shuffling of metal feet on stone helped him zero in on a location, a couple steps to his left.

"Don't move," Eric ordered as he fumbled his way towards the firefighter, "I'll come to you."

"What happened?" a deep voice, the voice of the Cybertronian, asked.

"The ground just dropped out from underneath us." The human firefighter said.

"It…. must've been the over-saturation of the soil, and we must've been standing over an entryway." Eric wheezed out. He stopped, the darkness pulling at his center of gravity. For a moment, he understood why Maya was so uncomfortable in enclosed spaces.

The rocks overhead could collapse any moment, crushing them. It made him…. dizzy, lightheaded.

"What caused it?"

"I'm sure if we had the brainiacs here, then we would know."

"I think I know." The implication of what he read in his ancestor's journals made him chilled to the bone, but the fact that those implications being true, what was causing them being real, gave him goosebumps.

"What are you talking about?"

"I think…. I think I know what's going on. But I need some light."

A moment later, Eric was blinded by the sudden orange light that filled the cavern. When he cleared the spots out of his eyes, he glanced down, noticing that he was a step or two from the Burns firefighter. He jerked up, his brown eyes going wide as he scrambled away from the masked man they were chasing not five minutes ago.

Or, you know, however much time had passed.

Eric stepped back as the Cybertronian stood to his full height. His eyes lingered on the insignia on his chest, trying to keep the flashbacks from popping up. He was only able to get pulled out of his thoughts when the firefighter groaned.

"Are you alright?" He asked.

"Yeah, I'm fine." Eric assured him. His eyes went to the walls, searching the strangely smooth stone for anything that looked like a glyph or a mark. If Cordelia's directions were true, then they were right where they needed to be to figure this out.

Lucky for me, Eric thought sarcastically. He turned to the firefighter, his eyes turning up to the fire bot. He noticed his shades were down, and his body was stiff. Eric rolled his eyes, scoffing.

"Tell your friend there he doesn't have to pretend around me. I know what you are already."

There was a shlick as the visor retracted and surprised entered those yellow-orange optics. "You…you know?"

"Yeah. Cybertronian. From Cybertron. I, uh... let's just say I knew Optimus Prime a while back so…. yeah."

He missed the shocked expressions, but he could feel them on the back of his neck.

"You…. You know Optimus?"

"'Knew' him, past tense, would be a better way to phrase it." Eric said. He turned his face so they didn't see him wince. The man didn't mean to sound so snippy but the sight of that Autobot symbol dredged up memories of three years ago.

The argument between him and his sister…..

Her storming out…..

Her capture and death….

"I take it you two didn't separate on good terms."

"Not really." Eric touched the side of the wall. The sounds of rocks sliding drew his attention upward. With the light, he could see the full blockage and he knew that they wouldn't get out that way. "We're going to have to find another way out."

The firefighter scoffed. "No kidding. Heatwave, do you think you can punch a hole in the wall?"

"That won't do any good either," Eric interjected. "These walls are old, ancient beyond belief. It's a part of a building that holds the upper part of the island up. This is basically a support column. If we disturb the integrity of it, the roof's going to collapse on us, along with the entirety of the island."

"What are you talking about?"

Eric touched the wall, noticing something faint chipped into the wall. Something akin to hope bubbled inside his chest. "Optimus told you who I was right?"

Red-head cocked his helm, but it was the Cybertronian, Heatwave, who spoke, "You're Brother. You're apart of the, uh, the Assassins."

"I was a part of the Assassins, three years ago." Eric dusted off some of the wall, getting a clear view of the symbol. It was an Isu symbol, the one they used to mark a laboratory or an Observatory. "But something happened, and I left."

Eric grunted as he pushed the wall. It gave a little but not in the way that would worry him. It slid, almost like a secret door.

"Just a little more…..." He wheezed.

His foot slipped when Heatwave pushed the wall, giving it a push with his hand. It slid open, revealing a tunnel with stairs. Going down.

"We're not seriously going down there are we?" the human asked.

"Well, we're certainly not going up," Eric said, pointing upward towards the ceiling that was obviously blocked. "So, we're going to have to go down to go up. Are your coms working?"

"Don't know." The firefighter touched the com on the lapel of his jacket, "Dad? Dani? Graham? It's Kade, do you copy?"

All they got was static.

"What about yours, Heatwave?"

He shook his head. "Already tried. It's the same."

Eric pursed his lips. He glanced back down at the tunnel, a dry breeze blowing through. He didn't know if he imagined it or not, but he thought he heard his name being whispered as the breeze blew by.

The same voice that he heard in his basement.

"I've been in situations like this before." He told the two first responders. "You can stay up here and wait, or you can follow me. Either way, it's up to you. But…...there's something I need to do."

He took a step down into the tunnel, the dry air rushing into his nostrils. The walls were much smoother down here, decorated with imagery that looked all too familiar to Eric.

"Wait for us!" Kade shouted. He turned and saw the two patter down the stairs after him. Eric gave a small chuckle.

"Afraid of the dark?"

"Please." Kade scoffed, giving Eric an air of bravado that he himself was guilty of doing in his younger years. "It's just, you know, I have to stay with the, uh, victim."

Eric's eyes flashed coldly. "I am not, nor I will ever be, a victim."

The three walked in relative silence for the first thirty minutes. Every so often, Eric would examine the walls to make sure that they were heading in the right direction.

"These markings…" Eric heard Kade whisper. It bounced off the walls, echoing down into the darkness. It honestly chilled Eric to the bone. "They look…..old."

"Almost like Cybertronian." Heatwave added.

Eric grunted. "They're actually Isu, an ancient civilization that predates humanity. Probably even the Cybertronians. The Assassins and the Templars have always fought over the artefacts left behind by the civilization, going back to 431 BCE, back to even before the orders took their modern names. There's not much known about the Isu, where they came from, who they really were, ectara, but what we do know is that they were powerful. Scientifically advanced, even more so than the Cybertronians."

"What happened to them?" Kade asked.

"Before written history, there was a massive solar flare that disturbed the ozone." Eric gently stepped down from the last step, waiting for Heatwave and Kade to catch up. He made eye contact with the human as he said, "The cities were destroyed and the majority of the Isu were killed in the first few minutes. Only a few survived and those that did became deified by almost every ancient civilization in the world."

"Whoa…." Kade muttered.

Eric turned and continued his trek downward.

"How'd you get involved with the Big Guy?"

"You're just full of questions, aren't you?" Eric asked, trying to keep the annoyance out of his voice. He had no desire to get into his past, and had an even less desire to tell these strangers.

Unfortunately, he was stuck with them until they could find a way out.

He sighed, feeling as though he snapped unintentionally. "I'm sorry. My sister and I were on a mission three years ago in Nevada. We encountered the Autobots there by accident, forming something like a mutual alliance. We scratch their back, they scratched theirs."

"You guys fought the Decepticons?" Heatwave asked.

"Only once and it wasn't really a fight. Though that encounter was more than enough." Eric shuddered as the memory of that spider robot surfaced. "Anyway. There was a mission that went bad and…...my sister didn't make it."

"Oh…." Kade muttered. "I'm sorry."

Eric bite his tongue, swallowing the reply 'like that will bring her back'. Instead, he managed to say, "Don't worry about it," with only the barest hint of emotion that he was struggling to keep in check. After a moment, Eric continued.

"My sister left behind a daughter, and since I couldn't get in contact with her husband…. I took it upon myself to raise her. I didn't want her to grow up wondering if her mom didn't love her, or, on the opposite side of the coin, I didn't want her growing up to become a weapon like me."

"So, you brought her to a place that could be literally falling apart?" Kade let out a dry chuckle. "Fat good that did."

"Well, once we figure this out, Griffin Rock'll go back to being it's old…..self…." Eric trailed off when they came to the bottom of the steps, finding a bare wall blocking their way.

"Dead end." Heatwave announced needlessly.

"No…..." Eric muttered as he placed his hand on the wall. It was plain but smooth. It was flanked on both sides by walls that were covered in glyphs and runes, making the plainness stand out far more than it should've. "The Isu always made sure to hide entrances in plain sight. If it doesn't look like there might be a way out, then it could very well be a-"

The sound of old gears kicking into place interrupted Eric's train of speech. His heart dropped to the bottom of his feet as he heard the sound of rushing water and put two-and-two together.

Kade and Heatwave it seemed, were a bit slow on the uptake.

"What's that?" Kade asked meekly.

Eric swallowed his panic but he feared it showed all too clearly in his eyes. "It's a trap."

Moments later, the three were greeted with a sight of a wall of water in rushing headlong towards them.