Disclaimer: I do not own anything from the Transformers universe. I only own my original characters (Jane, Nora, and Morgan)! Thank you! See the note below for more details!
The sight of so many people in cages was more disturbing than any horror movie could portray. The room Thundercracker brought them to reminded Jane of animal cages in a pet store with the way they were lined up so easily. On either side of the room, there were four smaller cages made out of durable glass, eight smaller cages total, with intentional holes for airflow at the bottom. Bright white light illuminated the glass containers from underneath, bathing the people inside with an unnatural glow that made their waxy skin pale and their dull eyes narrowed to slits, keeping the light out. Jane didn't have enough time to peek over Thundercracker's sharp fingers to see exactly why there was only one person in each of these cages as the hand started to tilt.
Her sisters gripped her tightly as they were tipped into the larger cage that took up the back part of the room. She found it odd that there weren't any tops to the cages, but when her legs caught the floor, her stomach flipped as she looked up to the high glass walls. There was no reason to add a top, the walls were too high for anyone to get out and, she could already tell without feeling, the glass was too slippery.
Thundercracker glanced down at them before turning away, the loud steps of his retreat made the floor roll.
"I know nobody knows the answers, but," Nora turned about, watching a group of ten other people slowly approach them. "Where are we?"
"A holding room." A man answered, coming to stand in front of the group with narrowed green eyes. His skin was papery and pulled taut against brittle-looking bones, so Jane didn't try to guess his age. "The Decepticons put us here if we haven't been experimented on."
"Decepti...what?" Nora glanced at Jane, who shrugged in equal confusion.
"Decepticons," The man continued, crossing thin arms that were accentuated by the baggy suit he wore. "They're what the giant robots are called. If you live through an experiment then you're put in those cages for observation; we call it an isolation hellhole."
"And what do you call this place?" Jane crossed her own arms, stepping in front of her sisters as she spoke. She didn't like the way the man, and a few others, were glaring at them; she wouldn't know what to do if they were hostile.
The man took his time looking around the plastic bin they were in, eyes roaming over to the corner where a pile of thin grey blankets was wrapped around a few people who didn't get up to check out what was going on. He turned his attention back to Jane and she nearly stepped back from the way his eyes dimmed, lost.
He shrugged, "Another hellhole."
"Geralt, haven't you done enough?" A woman's voice broke through the small crowd before said woman pushed her way through, standing between the man, Geralt, and Jane. Her finger wagged at him, a deep frown on her face as she berated, "Stop scaring them. We're all fed up with your fear tactics. Now, go sit down and be quiet."
Geralt growled, "Just because you've been here longer doesn't mean you tell me what to do, Angela."
"Now we all know that's not true." Angela rolled her eyes before shooing the crowd away. "Go sleep. Who knows when you'll be taken."
Easily following the command, the group dispersed to different corners of the glass room, curling up with one another as they spoke quietly. Jane scanned the groups and realized no one was alone, sitting by themselves or anything, not even the grumpy man, Geralt. His haunting green eyes were locked on Jane and her sisters, but he didn't move from the group of two men he sat with, speaking to them in monosyllabic words. It didn't take a genius to know that those men were dangerous, so Jane made a mental note to keep her sisters away from them.
"They're just tired of seeing new people come and go," Angela spoke softly, gesturing for them to sit down. Nora and Morgan easily plopped down, their legs basically giving out as they shook, but Jane stayed standing. She didn't want to give anyone the opportunity to come at her or her sisters again, not without a fight, not without trying to see it coming first.
"Jane?" Nora questioned.
"I'm good." Jane shook her head and leaned against the glass before looking back at Angela. "What the fuck is going on?"
Angela smiled humorlessly before leaning back on her hands, taking them in as she retorted, "Exactly what it looks like. Not too much. I'm Angela Beauford, by the way, and don't feel like you have to thank me for saving you from Geralt. He's a pea-brained jerk. Has been since he came here last month."
Jane blinked at the matter-of-fact attitude but was cut off when Morgan suddenly gasped and pointed at Angela, "Wait...Beauford? You're the girl that disappeared from Langston University—you've been missing for five months."
"Well, I've been here ever since." She shrugged, winking a blue eye at Morgan with another mute smile. "I was trying to get a ride from the bar, but the car...wasn't a real car, turns out."
"The same thing happened to us." Nora nodded, wrapping her arms around herself and staring down at the bloody blue lace on her dress. There was a bruise swelling on her forehead, but it wasn't bleeding at all. "Um...Breakdown—I think that's his name—took us. We were on our way to a...bridal shower. Weird."
"Oh, Breakdown, yeah, I'd stay away from him. He's one of the few Decepticons that let you take breaks between tests, but don't ask him too many questions or he'll make you move along." Angela nodded.
"Wait, wait, wait, back up," Jane shook her head, pushing herself off the glass to gesture toward the door. "What are Decepticons? I mean, seriously, you've told us nothing, and all I've been wondering—we've been wondering—is what they'll do to us. If we'll live. Or die! I just need some sort of answers that'll tell us—"
"From what I've gathered," Angela held up a hand, making Jane pause as she continued, "The Decepticons are...aliens. I don't know how long they've been here, but I can guess a while. I'm not sure what they're doing with us, but...the survival rate isn't good."
An image of the woman on the table with her stomach cut open and neon blood coursing painfully through her body slipped through Jane's mind. She could have guessed that survival was low, but Angela had been here for a few months. Even with her pale skin and sickly features, she didn't seem entirely done living, hadn't given up on life just yet. Perhaps it was only a matter of time?
Angela continued, "They're not the good guys, but I think there are good ones, just not here. Sometimes they mention Autoscum or something similar, so I think there are two factions; one good and one...well...the other one's the Decepticons."
"What are we here for?" Morgan snapped, black eyes flaring like a starless sky. "What's the experiments all about?"
Angela sighed, "I don't know what they're doing, honest, but they're making us do a ton of weird things. I've worked on puzzles, connecting codes, putting patterns together out of nothing, and I've had shit injected in me. We're fed these nasty blocks of protein shit and given water, but it's nothing too weird; so, the food's fine, if not given enough."
If these creatures, these Decepticons, were feeding them and giving water then Jane could only assume they knew their pets. It seemed appropriate to call them pets since they were in cages and given feed every so often, but this information only seemed to confuse her more. The aliens were a race of robots? What was the purpose of them being on Earth? If the experiments that Angela said she endured were so focused on brain capacity then perhaps that was a clue to why they were there.
Or she was entirely wrong.
It seemed the only logical thing to do was focus on survival, on keeping Nora and Morgan alive until she could figure a way out. First things first, she needed to know which of these aliens were more dangerous than the others. It was obvious from Angela's dissection of Breakdown, the red-faced Decepticon, that some were more lenient than the others. She just needed to know which was which; lenient or...killer.
"Okay, well if there's not much to go on why we're here, then how do we survive this? Which one of the...Decepticons...can we trust?" Jane butt into whatever Angela was saying to Nora and Morgan.
"Oh, you can't trust any of them." She replied easily, leaning forward and cracking her knuckles. "You need to know which ones you can manipulate. Their leader, Starscream, has a superior complex worse than any ancient god, so if you inflate his ego then you can sometimes get out of certain tests. Let's see," She sighed thoughtfully, blue eyes rolling around as if she were recalling details. "You know about Breakdown, Starscream...Shockwave is one of the ones you need to worry about the most. He's completely ruthless and he's in charge of the experiments; chief of science, or whatever. He'll kill you."
The one-eyed robot with purple coloring. She'd have to stay away from him.
"There's Knock Out, the medic, but you won't see much of him unless he messed something up for Starscream. He'll babysit every now and again, but only with Breakdown. Don't ever touch him or annoy him; he's very...obsessive about his paint job." Angela pressed a few fingers down, counting on her hand. "Skywarp is on, like, crack cocaine all the time. Stay away from him. Barricade's...stay away from him too. I think that's all the ones I know off the top of my head. Usually, they won't talk to you, just administer tests then send you back here."
"What about Thundercracker?" Jane tasted the alien's name in her mouth, wondering how they got their names or if they meant something special to each Decepticon. She still found his eyes slashing across her mind; deep red pools of incredible emotion. Of regret.
Angela smacked her lips, "I've only ever seen him. The only thing I really know is that he's in cahoots with Skywarp and Starscream, though I'm not sure why or how that works either. He'll watch over people testing if they're in the pods up there."
She pointed a thin finger to the glass cages against the wall where Jane could see some of the people in them better. A few had veins that were neon blue as well, pulsing through their thin pale skin. Most sat curled up in a corner, their faces buried in the laps in total silence, their shoulders barely moving up and down. She wondered what happened to them.
Would she become one of them? Would Nora or Morgan?
"What's the blue stuff?" Nora gestured to one of the cages where a man was sitting, staring at the metal ceiling. His veins were pulsing as well, but his skin was mottled dark blue, and every time he shifted, the man would grimace in pain.
"They call it Energon. It's like a chemical they use to refuel them." She watched the man carefully, eyes darkening with sadness. "That's what Thrust told me one time."
Jane could only imagine what a Decepticon named Thrust would be like, so she ignored the question peaking in her brain and turned to her sisters. They were tired-looking, with dark circles already forming under their eyes, and their bodies sagged in a way that made Jane wonder if she could keep them alive at all. They weren't weak, far from it, but what would they do if hopelessness settled in?
She knew Morgan had a history of anxiety and depression, something that was more prevalent over the past year with all the exams and pressure she took on. They were lucky their parents caught it flaring up again, so they switched her medicine dosage, but now...there was no medicine for her to take.
The thought set her teeth on edge and soon she was settling down next to her, wrapping an arm around her slender shoulders. Morgan nestled into her side, Nora scooting closer, as Jane asked Angela, "What do we do in the meantime?"
"Sleep. Wait for them to come." Angela tilted her head toward a group huddled in the corner under blankets. "It gets pretty cool in here, so you're welcome to join my group and share some heat."
It was the best option.
More like, it was the only option.
Jane nodded and soon they were cuddling against strangers that smelled like body odor and musk. Their clothes, she noted, were from all different seasons throughout the year and hadn't been changed since. If this were the case then it was a shame Jane didn't wear the lounge jumpsuit Morgan told her looked like a sad blanket.
Morgan's long hair tickled Jane's chin as they curled into each other and Nora pressed Morgan between them, acting as a shield from the others. It didn't take long for them to fall into an uneasy sleep as Jane's thoughts ran a mile a minute. These aliens were worse than those shown on tv, but Jane tried to figure out why. Of course, the aliens were evil enough to experiment on them, to kill them, but there was more to it than that.
The part that she tried to understand became a looser and looser thought until it slowly echoed to the back of her brain, hovering there in wait.
The days and nights drifted in one since there was no distinction between night and day. The cages emitted their yellow light every minute of the day, but it was becoming easier to sleep through. The aliens came through every day, sometimes to give disgusting chunks of protein or jugs of water and other times to collect people from the smaller cages. In the course of what felt like a week, Jane watched three people in the smaller cages scream as their bodies slowly sizzled and liquified, leaving a quickly disintegrating corpse behind. The electric smell of burning flesh filled the room and stank to the point that the no disinfectant that the aliens used would take the smell away.
The cages were quickly filled with two girls from Angela's group, the very group that Jane and her sisters cuddle up to all day.
"Donna and Carly...god...I hope they come back." Someone had said sadly.
After the second day of testing, they never returned to the small cages.
One more person liquified after that and soon more people were being pulled for testing. Angela was one of those few, but she was always sent back with an explanation that she was either passing with flying colors or failing miserably. Jane could see that either option was probably bad.
"What'd they make you do this time?" A young man with shaggy brown hair asked, nibbling on the edge of a protein chunk.
Jane perked her ears to listen as Angela snorted, "Actually, it was something new. They shot me with some gooey white stuff then made me take a test. They were little symbols, so I thought they wanted me to match them. They sent me back after one round though."
"Guess you did well then." The man shrugged.
"I hope so," She leaned back against a girl she curled up with the most, sighing, "What's the worst they'll do? Liquify me?"
It was a terrible joke, but a few laughed nervously.
To pass time, Jane and Nora came up with a game using bobby pins from their hair. They tried to flick the bobby pin at certain marks on the floor and, depending on where the pin landed, they either had to answer a question or do a dare. Whoever didn't answer the question or complete the dare lost.
Nora easily flicked the pin midway to the other wall, next to a sleeping Geralt, and smiled, "Hit me with a question, baby."
A ghost of a smile slipped over Jane's lips, "What's something you love...about Geralt?"
"Hmn…" Nora tittered to herself thoughtfully before a broad smile beamed across her lovely face. "His big juicy ass."
The group, somehow smaller now, laughed boisterously under their blankets, watching them play.
Geralt, who was not sleeping after all, even chuckled at her, "Better watch yourself or this juicy ass will crush you. Don't get those pins too close to me."
"Wouldn't dream of it, G." Jane muttered, grinning as she flicked her pin next. It slid just a foot behind Geralt's body. "Shit."
"Okay…" Nora giggled, looking around for inspiration. "I dare you to...oh! I dare you to sing something!"
Jane's screwed her face up in distaste, "Uh, how about no?"
"Am I the winner then?"
"I…" Jane groaned silently as she thought about it. She hadn't sung in forever and, honestly, she was nervous her throat wouldn't sustain a note. She woke up a few mornings ago with a sore throat and still hadn't gotten over it. "Give me a second to think."
She cleared her throat as the song came to mind and soon she was belting out low bars to Rhiannon. The rasp in her voice cracked a few times, but she slipped through the verses and sang the chorus, making sure she sang in a lower key. The notes were a little off at some parts, but after she belted out a low 'Rhiannon' the song was over.
Everyone clapped quietly, some snapping their fingers, and the praise made heat rise from Jane's chest to pool on her cheeks. She nodded at them then stood to grab their pins, calling back to Nora, "I hope you get a dare next time because I have such a good one for you that you'll be—"
The sound of the large electric door sliding open stopped everything, the groups of people were frozen under their blankets as they watched the cerulean Decepticon walk in.
Jane stopped in place, just a foot from where Geralt was lying stiff as a board. The robot made a quick round on the eight cages, sparing quick glances at the four empty ones then its red eyes caught the main cage in the back. Slowly, as if antagonizing, Thundercracker made his death march toward them and peered down.
The times when a Decepticon took someone from their cage, she was usually huddled in a corner with her sisters buried underneath her. Now, standing out so bare in the open, she wasn't sure what to do. She was an easy target.
Thundercracker turned his eyes on her and tears welled in Jane's eyes, she didn't want to go. His hand dipped down toward her and all Jane could do was close her eyes shut and hope that his talons didn't rip her already torn dress.
Morgan's voice rippled across the stale air, making Jane's eyes snap open, "Wait, take me!"
Jane twirled, pointing a finger, "No. You stay."
"No," Morgan crossed her arms, but Jane could see the way her shoulder shook. "If you go then I go."
Nora stood and Jane's hands gripped at the roots of her hair, pulling in shock as Nora looked up at Thundercracker and asked quietly, "Can I go too? I can't...they're all I have."
"No, no, no, stay. Just stay." Jane croaked, tears falling fast down her cheeks. She wasn't about to have them act like a bunch of idiots and have them come along if they didn't have to. She didn't want them to end up like those other girls either, to be fine one day and just...gone. Gone the next without any idea of what the hell happened to them. "You are not going—"
"You will come as well." Thundercracker interrupted, gesturing to Angela. "I only needed four."
In the blink of an eye, Jane was scooped up by Thundercracker before her sisters and Angela were toppled on her. There was no sense of care in his handling, not like before, and the small trace of regret was completely void of his face. It was as if the creature she'd seen before was completely gone.
Once they were in his hands, he turned and walked out of the room then made his way down the large metal hallway. Jane had no concept of where they were as he glided through corridors and two doors, but she was getting incredibly annoyed with Nora's elbow digging into her gut.
"Get off!" Jane hissed, trying to wiggle herself out from under Nora.
Nora growled back, "I'm trying, but Morgan's holding my legs, and Angela—could you sit up a little? You're sitting on my hand—ahh, thank you!"
Nora leaned back, giving Jane enough room to pull her stomach out from under the sharp elbow. Jane turned her attention to her sisters and Angela as they tried to pry Morgan from Nora's feet without slipping out of Thundercracker's hands. Thankfully he was silent, but she knew he was watching them, waiting to see how everything would play out. Well, he was about to be in for a wild ride.
Scalding anger flushed Jane as she watched her sister bicker with the young woman for another minute before she finally burst. Jane spoke quickly, tone full of ice, "You two are doing a terrible job keeping yourselves alive. Who the hell volunteers like that? Huh? What were you thinking? Now we're all gonna die because...because...why? What was the point of all that?"
"We didn't want you to be alone." Nora blinked.
"Yeah," Morgan chattered through her tight jaw, eyes clenching tighter and tighter with each step Thundercracker took. "Plus, that's, like, what Katniss did for her sister."
"Are you…" Jane's jaw dropped, eyes wide in disbelief. "Are you serious? Did you volunteer because...because of Katniss? The fictional hero?"
"No," Morgan snapped, "We volunteered because we love you and didn't want you to die alone, dipshit."
"This is beautiful," Angela whispered nonchalantly.
"No, no—ugh." Jane rolled her eyes as she leaned on her back, the only comfortable position she could get herself into without crushing anyone. "Okay, no more talking. I don't want our last conversation to be so fucking stupid."
Nora and Morgan ignored her, chatting incessantly about their bravery and how she should be grateful that they loved her that much. The anger in Jane's chest didn't subside, but she couldn't stop the corners of her mouth from twitching up at how normal they spoke. It was comforting that they were still able to act like sisters, that this whole ordeal, the death and people liquifying around them and aliens that were diabolical, didn't destroy the part of their friendship that lit a small spark of hope in her chest.
A hue of red made her glance up from her reclined spot to find Thundercracker looking down at her, intently, curiously.
Her smile flatlined and she slowly sat up, remembering where she was and who was holding her.
They moved down another hallway before it opened up into a large room with more small cages lined on one side and enormous monitors mounted in the middle. It looked like a control room or observation facility, but Thundercracker made no indication that he would tell them. He plopped each of them in one of the glass containers then pulled out a datapad, clicking on it for a moment.
Jane's container was suspended on a counter of some kind, the glass allowing her to see her sisters on one side and Angela on the other, setting herself at Thundercracker's chest, if he stepped closer. She wasn't sure what they were doing, but she could tell they wouldn't do anything physical, not with such a small space to work in.
A screen suddenly popped up on the transparent glass, flashing a jumble of symbols that she couldn't make out. Her fingers traced over them and her mouth popped open as the symbols she touched dragged along with her fingers. Curiously, she focused on Thundercracker through the symbols as he clicked a few more things on his datapad.
What was this?
"Your task," His voice rumbled, red eyes not looking away from the pad. "Is to arrange the symbols on your screen for ten kliks. The screen will disappear once the time is over. You may begin."
Jane focused on the screen, brows scrunching together thoughtfully as she tried to make sense of the squiggles and lines for each symbol. Glancing at Angela from her peripheral vision, she saw Angela's fingers pushing the symbols around, matching them as she'd done before. Yet, when she glanced to her other side, toward Nora, she could tell Nora was having trouble deciding what to do as well. It wasn't entirely clear what the symbols were or what they stood for, but she had a feeling this wasn't a matching game.
This was a test.
A knowledge-based test on something they'd never seen.
Leaning back, she stared at the screen thoughtfully for a minute before turning her head to see what Morgan was doing; her fingers were dragging similar symbols together as well, matching them.
Nora caught her eye and gestured to the screen as if to say, "What are we supposed to do?"
Jane shrugged back, looking at her own screen curiously. She could see that there were similar symbols for sure, but there were no discernable patterns she could make out. After another minute of confusion, she asked Thundercracker, "Is this supposed to be a language? Do you want us to write sentences with this?"
The girls all paused to look at her as Thundercracker stopped clicking on the pad to join them, red eyes burning through Jane. His tone was careful, "Arrange the symbols as you see fit."
"Kay…" Jane sucked her teeth as a flash of irritation coursed through her. He wouldn't give her a clue, nice. She brushed her fingers over the glass, picking up random symbols then seeing if they'd flick across the glass and hit the other ones. They didn't, but this small game helped her pass the ten kliks until the screen disappeared, leaving a stiff Thundercracker in place.
The tips of his wings quivered slightly as he glared at the datapad for another moment, staring intently at something they couldn't see. After another moment, his red eyes dimmed a dull red before brightening. As he moved towards a group of computers in the middle of the room, Jane found herself wondering what the hell they were experimenting on them. There didn't seem to be a purpose for making them match symbols. To take a test that humans would never know how to succeed. It seemed ridiculous.
The doors opened to reveal the large one-eyed Decepticon, Shockwave. He took the datapad from Thundercracker without a word, shifting through the information for a moment then turning the pad off. He approached the top of Angela's cage, the proximity making Jane's chest tighten, but all he did was stick an arm in that swiftly shifted into a thick needle. The liquid was iridescent and white, almost creamy looking, and Angela easily stood before lifting her left leg for the needle. The creamy mixture shot into Angela's leg, making her grimace before Shockwave moved on to Jane's cage.
Jane stood just as quickly as Angela, but she flung her back into the corner, trying to put as much space between Shockwave's incoming arm and herself.
"A large muscle is required for the proper injection site. Lift one of your lower extremities for the injection." Shockwave spoke, voice just as unfeeling as when Jane first met him.
She vaguely wondered what would happen if she declined, but thought against it when she heard Morgan whimper a few cages down. Slowly, she lifted her right leg and the new needle slid into her skin, shooting a sharp stinging pain through her. The liquid pumped into her, raising her skin slightly from the fluid then the needle was gone, then he moved toward Nora then Morgan.
Jane settled back on the ground and tried to rub the pain away, her leg throbbing with a pulse of its own. She tried to curl her legs and move the muscle as Shockwave finished up, moving away to check the datapad again. After realizing that Thundercracker and Shockwave weren't going to ask them questions to have them continue their testing, Jane forced herself up to move around, completing simple leg movements that made the liquid flow through her.
They were there for over an hour when Nora started rubbing her eyes, blinking back on something that was making them leak.
"You okay?" Jane questioned, stepping closer to Nora's wall and pressing a hand against the glass, worry etched across her face.
"My eyes are burning and my head...it feels like it's being torn in half." She turned to Jane, blinking hard against burst blood vessels. "What about you?"
"Nothing…" Jane searched Nora's eyes, trying to understand what was happening when Soundwave made a curious noise. It was a mixture of an electronic hum meeting a huff of wind; a sigh.
"...Intriguing," Shockwave commented, holding the pad out for Thundercracker, effectively ignoring the girls.
Thundercracker's eyes flickered over the pad once, then twice, then a third time before he spoke, "What does it mean?"
"The bonding must require certain organic proteins to activate it." Shockwave turned his attention to Nora's cage. "We seem to have a viable candidate again."
Uncertain what that meant, Nora's body turned a visible sheet white as she rubbed at her eyes.
Shockwave continued, "Run the test again."
The screens with the strange symbols popped up on the glass of their cages again. Thundercracker came over and rumbled the same directions before setting them free to work again, all while Nora tried not to rub her eyes and, instead, held her forehead tightly. Jane could tell that something was different from Nora's first-round compared to this one as she hesitantly took the symbols in before quickly arranging them. In less than a minute, she leaned back, holding her hands over her eyes and cradling her head with a groan.
"You were right," Nora whispered.
Jane tilted her head, uncertain, "About what?"
"It's a language. Their language."
Jane's eyes narrowed as Nora rested, turning to her own screen and watching in confusion as the symbols seemed to wobble on the screen. They shifted slowly, but not into words that Jane knew, they weren't English, but she could...she could understand them. Her fingers moved across the screen, picking the symbols up and slowly placing them. She couldn't read what they said; rather, she understood it. It was as if she were describing the color green without saying that something was that color. Green was different shades of tickling leaves and foliage that curled around your hands. It was a sign of life and came with a distinctly sharp scent; fresh-cut grass.
Understanding these symbols was just like that; not having words for something that you knew was true. After stringing the symbols together, she knew they vaguely said something about the different states in America.
"What the hell?" Jane whispered to herself as a dull throb echoed in the center of her head. Her eyes didn't start watering like Nora's were, but she wondered when it would happen.
Thundercracker stepped closer to her cage, datapad in hand, and dipped his head in a slow nod, "It seems we have another candidate as well."
A candidate for what exactly?
Shockwave nodded, coming closer to look between Nora and her as he affirmed, "Indeed. It follows logic seeing as they share the same lineage. Starscream mentioned they were a trine, yes?"
Thundercracker nodded.
"It seems the protein is absent in the youngest," Shockwave added before searching the datapad further, trying to see something they couldn't. "Keep them in separate containers. I want their progress monitored and another dose of CNC within the next cycle, possibly a joor."
Thundercracker's wings stiffened, but his face remained neutral as he declined, "I have surveillance duty with Skywarp in a joor, perhaps Knock Out will—"
"Knock Out is not allowed in the presence of a human without Breakdown or me. Starscream has directly ordered you to aid in my surveillance of these projects as Knock Out cannot do it. You will give them another dose of CNC in a joor then survey the air with Skywarp after." The giant red eye mounted on Shockwave's face shone a burning color that seemed to brighten at Thundercracker's bristled appearance. As if he were waiting for a challenge.
Jane could taste the bitter power struggle between them before Thundercracker barely dipped his blue helm and spoke forcefully, each word laced with ice, "Very well. I will comm Starscream and Skywarp for your updates."
Shockwave was still peering at Nora and Jane, her hands going numb and sweat pooling at her spine as her left eye started to swell with fluid. He rumbled something unintelligible before clicking at the datapad when Thundercracker walked away.
He paused at the cluster of large computers to glance up, finding Jane's watering eyes. The sight only made her heart pound at the thought of seeing this clawed blue creature again for another horrible shot in her leg, but he only continued looking at her, deliberating something.
When Thundercracker spoke next his voice was hushed, filled with a lethal promise, "Your anonymity with me will only last as long as your experimentations work."
Shockwave paused, "Meaning?"
"Meaning if these two viable candidates become any less than that...I will personally see your program shut down. It's frivolous and takes up precious scouting time." Thundercracker's face was still neutral, but the promise was there and landed on its target. "There's only a matter of time before the Autosum finds out the location and we have to rendezvous to the next spot...we are only as strong as our leader, after all."
Shockwave paused for ten long heartbeats before inclining his head, "If that happens then I will allow it."
Thundercracker scoffed, turning to focus on the computers again as he muttered, "If it happens. Primus."
Jane and the girls sat in their cage for a long time after that with no one daring to start any sort of conversation. Her eyes leaked something fierce now, but there wasn't much she could do besides dap at her eyes with her dirty dress. As she sat there, her heart skipped, slightly lighter than when she'd been dumped into this cage earlier. She learned two new things today; first, she needed to figure out if Morgan would be better off as a 'non-viable candidate' and, second…
The Decepticons were a little more human than she expected and that humanity was something she could work with.
It was something she could manipulate.
HA! Remember when I said that it would be a little later in the week before I updated? I apparently lied, even to myself, so here is this wild little chapter. I love that Jane's just completely not sure what the heck is going on, but knows that it's bad and will only get worse. Yikes. Next chapter we'll see a cool scene between Thundercracker and Jane, but I've been thinking about picking up the perspective of the story in the other sister's POVs...that'll be a little later I think! Regardless, enjoy and stay tuned for the next installment (it might be earlier than expected).
-VD