"What… do you… want from… me?" Quickshadow pants, shaking as she weakly lifts her helm to look at Fracture.
"I want you to suffer," Fracture growls, his servos curling into angry fists. "I want you to feel pain, excruciating pain like you've never felt before. I don't have to kill your pathetic rescue team and puny human pets now. Killing you is enough. Your precious, helpless sparkling will never see the light of day, and it will be because you were stupid enough to come after me and endanger your sparkling."
Tears of coolant create artwork on her energon stained face. Fracture picks the injured Rescue Bot up from under her arms—relishing in the anguished groans she makes—and roughly drags her limp body into a cave. He throws her down and she gasps in pain. "I'll leave you with a choice. Either let yourself die along with your sparkling, or call for your sparkmate and let him die at my servos. Because I will be waiting."
"What… do you… want," Quickshadow weakly lifts her helm, her blue optics piercing through the dark gloom of the cave.
"I want you to suffer," Fracture grins, his glowing red eyes meeting her soft cyan ones with no hint of compassion. "There's nothing you can do to change my mind. No negotiating. What you can do is choose between your sparkling's life or your sparkmates life."
Fracture begins to leave the cave. "Remember, I will be waiting for Heatwave when he comes to rescue you." He turns around to smile at her. "Ta-ta, Uncia!"
Quickshadow weakly attempts to get up, but can barely get her arms to cooperate. She can feel Heatwave trying to talk to her. Knowing Fracture was out to kill Heatwave made her hesitate to answer. Tears of coolant drip down her faceplates as she grits her dentals and tries to decide between two lives precious to her.
"She's not answering!" Heatwave shouts, pacing back and forth wildly on the firehouse driveway. "Quickshadow's in mortal danger. She's dying! Yet, she still won't talk to me, and I can't find her anywhere on the island! Where is she? Is she far? Is she even on this island, for Primus's sake?!"
Knowing his loved one was dying, but not being able to save her was driving the firebot absolutely mad. Chase puts his servo on his brother's shoulder. Heatwave roughly grabs the policebots servo, as if to throw it off, but he doesn't. Instead he grips his brother's hand and sighs, trying to stay calm.
"We flew over the entire island, and saw nothing," Dani says, hoping out of Blades and running towards them.
"She's an expert at camouflage and espionage," Tigris repeats herself for the one hundredth time. "There's no way to locate her when she's determined to hide."
"Well she's injured now," Kade says. "Would she still be able to hide while injured."
"You'd be surprised," Onca sighs.
"How is she injured, Heatwave?" Graham asks.
"I don't know!" Heatwave sighs, clutching the sides of his helm in agony. "All I know is that she's in pain! It would be so much easier if I could tell!"
"Let's assume she met up with Fracture, had a fight, and he injured her in the fight," Graham says. "What would he do to her?"
"Claw and stab her," Tigris says, showing more emotion than she had in the past few days.
"Not helping, Tigris!" Heatwave shouts, angry.
"Yes, helping," Blades says timidly. "If he's clawed and stabbed her, we might be able to locate her. Trace for Energon signatures."
"We tried a while ago," Boulder says. "We've tried everyday. She's found a way to disguise her Energon signature."
"But could she hide her Energon signature if it's… not hidden?" Blades asks, glancing at Heatwave.
"If she's bleeding out, there might be enough Energon spilt to locate her," Tigris says, much to Heatwave's dismay.
Blades elbows the stripped femme. "She doesn't have to have bled out a lot to leave an Energon signal, Heatwave," the copterbot says sympathetically. "Had Fracture attacked her and wounded her, she wouldn't have stayed in one place. She'd probably leave an Energon trail that she couldn't hide."
"Allowing us to locate her," Boulder says.
"If a fight did go down, it would've been in the woods far enough away that civilians couldn't hear," Chief says. "That cuts out at least half the island. Add a half a mile radius around any area recently inhabited by a human or bot."
"One mile," Chase corrects. "We can be pretty loud when fighting."
"That still leaves a lot of Griffin Rocks forests," Dani says.
"At least it's a start," Chase says, turning to Heatwave. "If we head out with Energon tracers, we might be able to locate a trail. It's not like we've spilled any Energon out there recently."
"Thank you, Chase," Heatwave sighs as he grasps Chases outstretched servo tightly. "Let's roll to the rescue, team!"
"Am I left to die?" Quickshadow pants heavily, giving up on stopping the flow of Energon from her many, deep gashes. "All alone in this abyss, dying in this dark, torturous fate? Primus, help me."
There is no answer from the Cybertronian deity.
"I never should've left," Quickshadow thinks bitterly to herself, hating her rash, stupid decision. "Why couldn't I have known that I was carrying? I never would've left if I had known I had a sparkling!"
The injured Rescue Bot strains to get up, but she can feel her energy slowly being sapped by the minute. "Will Heatwave come to my rescue? Would he want to rescue me after what I've done? Did I push too far when I turned my back on him? Why is my life unraveling?!"
Quickshadow feels Heatwave trying to talk to her. She grits her dentals, trying to choose between him and her sparkling. "I left to protect you," she thinks sorrowfully. "And now I've endangered our sparkling."
A tear of coolant slips out and she sobs.
"We'll find her, Heatwave," Kade says, guiding the Cybertronians steering wheel as he starts to veer off the road.
"Sorry," Heatwave mumbles. "She's not answering."
"Do you think she'd allow herself to be killed?" Cody asks, blinking back tears. "Without saying goodbye to us?"
"I don't know, Cody," Heatwave sighs. "She's pretty stubborn. If dealing with Fracture at all costs is her top priority, then she's going to finish it through."
"And she's a seasoned war veteran," Hayley adds from the backseat. "Wouldn't she follow orders to the very end? Even if she gave them?"
"But she cares about us," Cody argues forcefully. "She wouldn't just leave us without any last words."
"Cody, that's exactly what she did three days ago," Kade sighs. "She left because she thought giving her life and stopping Fracture would protect us. Face it, the only way she'll be found is if we find her first."
"I'd give it all just to find her," Heatwave says. "To save her. My spark burns for her. I can't give up on her."
"You're so romantic," Hayley says quietly.
"I'm sorry if I'm not as romantic, we can't physically join hearts, you know," Kade says, giving Heatwave his first laugh in three days.
"Primus help me," Quickshadow pants. "What do I do?"
As the pool of Energon around her painfully grows bigger, seeping into the cracks and crevices and illuminating the cave, the white femme realizes how little time she has left to decide. "It comes down to saving Heatwave or saving my sparkmate," she thinks. "And there's no choice. I'm sorry, Heatwave. Our sparkling will come first before your safety. I'm sure you would want this."
"Heatwave," she calls out weakly, opening their sparkbond for the first time in three days. "Heatwave, I need you."
"We've circled over the entire island!" Blades exclaims through the coms. "Nothing! It's like everything's safe in the woods out there, which we all know it's not!"
"She's out there," Chief Burns says, scanning the woods through Chase's window. "Time's running out, though," he says to Chase quietly.
"Could Fracture have disguised her spilled Energon?" Cody asks from the Firehouse. "Maybe he's trying to slow kill her? Or draw us in to kill us?"
"For that, we would need a trail," Chief says. "And we have no trail so far."
"None of the town has seen her," Boulder says through the coms.
"And nothing around Doc's house is destroyed or shows any signs of extraterrestrial fighting," Graham adds.
"She can't be on Mount Griffin," Dani says, scanning the island beneath her. "There's too many open spaces for us to see. She wouldn't be able to hide. Neither would Fracture."
"What about the base of the mountain?" Cody asks. "Lots of green foliage, many caves large enough to hide a Cybertronian. It'd be the perfect hiding place for both of them."
"Good idea, Cody," Graham says.
"We've searched the mountain before," Blurr says, driving around Old Canyon road. "Wouldn't we have seen them? Or at least signs of them?"
"We searched before Heatwave felt her pain," Cody says. "She could be there now."
"Then let's head there," Kade says. "Woah!"
Heatwave screeches to a halt. Kade gets out and Heatwave transformers. "What's wrong?" Kade asks, but the Rescue Bot isn't paying attention. Instead, he stares off into the distance as if hearing and talking to someone. Kade had become annoyingly familiar with that look—he found Cybertronian sparbond talking mushy and disgusting—but now it gave the firefighter hope for his partner.
"Quickshadow!" Heatwave exclaims through their sparkbond. "You're alive! Where are you?!"
"I'm dying," Quickshadow says. "Fracture left me in a cave near the base of the mountain. He's waiting for you. He'll kill…"
"Quickshadow?" Heatwave asks. "Quickshadow!"
"Where is she?" Kade asks.
"She's at the base of Mount Griffin in a cave!" Heatwave shouts on the com. "But she's passed out now!"
"We're on our way!" Onca says.
Next chapter: Not Gonna Die