Author's Note: Thank you to all my readers for sending nice reviews. Here is the third chapter. In this chapter the rating will be changed. As you read the chapter you will see why.

Disclaimer: Ultra Rodimus, Jennifer Murdock, and the general are all my characters. Everyone else, with a few exceptions, but even I'm not sure who those exceptions are yet, belongs to Hasbro.

Burning Skies

Chapter 3: Torment

First Aid seemed to frown at the screen of the med sensor he was holding. He'd been running scans on Ultra Magnus for the past ten minutes, trying to find a reason for the city commander's sudden collapse. Magnus had been fine, looking a bit distant, which was normal when he was communicating with his mate through their lifebond, when something had happened. His expression had changed to pure panic. Then he'd let out a scream loud enough to wake the dead and collapsed in a motionless heap. No one had any idea why.

"Anything?" Springer asked, pushing away from the wall he'd been leaning against.

The Protectobot medic shook his head. "I can't find anything that could cause him to collapse like that."

"Has anyone heard anything from Ultra Rodimus?" Jazz spoke up.

Everyone looked at him, confused.

"They're lifebonded, right? So whatever affects one affects both. Perhaps the problem isn't Magnus. Maybe it's coming from the other end of the link."

Everyone looked thoughtful. That had never occurred to them. But it did make sense.

"He hasn't returned from meeting General Johnson yet," Kup told Jazz.

"If something bad enough to put Magnus into shock happened to him, he may not be coming back anytime soon," Jazz announced.

"We have to send someone out to find him!"

"But who? Anyone we send might fall victim to whatever happened to Ultra Rodimus."

"I know just the person." Jazz headed for the wall-mounted comm panel. "Blurr, would you come down to Medbay, please?"

Moments later, the doors opened to admit a streak of blue and silver as the fastest Cybertronian alive zipped in, skidding to a neat halt in front of Jazz.

"I'mherewhatdoyouwantmetodowhatwhatwhat???" the speedy bot asked, almost too fast for them to understand.

"Whatever caused Magnus to collapse came through the lifebond from Ultra Rodimus. We need to find Prime. Any one of us, if we went out to look, might fall victim to whatever it was that hit Ultra Rodimus. You're fast enough to dodge anything that tries to shoot at you. I want you to go and see if you can find any trace of Ultra Rodimus. Keep moving as fast as you safely can. Once you've looked everywhere along the routes Ultra Rodimus might have taken to and from the air force base, return and make your report. Got it?"

"YesyesyesIgotitandI'mgoingtogoanddoitrightnow!" Blurr whipped around and disappeared, moving almost too fast to see. The doors barely opened fast enough to let him out.

The others watched him go. They hadn't thought of Blurr, but his speed was precisely what was needed to find their missing leader without losing another Autobot.

A deep groan from behind them made them all jump. Then they turned around to see Magnus trying to push himself up to a sitting position on the table. First Aid grabbed his shoulder and helped.

"Roddy!" Magnus's head swung around blindly.

"Magnus!" Kup snapped his fingers in Magnus's face, and the larger bot blinked until he could focus on the old bot's face. "What happened?"

"He was on his way back from the base when...when he was attacked."

"Attacked? Attacked by what? There were no Decepticons anywhere near here!"

"Not Decepticons. Humans. Humans with strange weapons."

"Humans were shooting at him?"

"Yeah. He and I were communicating when one of the humans hit him with something, and he blacked out."

"He was knocked unconscious? How is that possible? Even Galvatron's strongest blasts only bounce off his armor! How could a human knock him out cold?!"

"There is a way," Sandstorm spoke up for the first time. All eyes turned toward the pacifist, who was leaning against the wall. Sandstorm's eyes were serious. "A stun bolt through the eye socket. His eyes have no armor, and all of the circuits are close to the surface. Plus, it's a direct path to his brain. Why do you think his battle helmet has a visor? If a Decepticon shoots him in the eye it would be fatal. His eyes are his one weak spot. It takes a skilled marksman to hit him there, especially when he's moving, but it can be done."

"So what do we do now?" Sideswipe asked.

"First we wait for Blurr's report. Then we figure out what to do next."

Blurr was back in less than twenty minutes. He raced down to Medbay to give his report.

"Did you find anything?" Smokescreen asked.

"IdidIdidIdid!"

"What did you find?"

"Onthemainroutefromthebasetoheretherearethesignsofastruggle!"

"A struggle?!"

"Footprintsandtiremarksandacarthathadbeencrushedflatbysomethingheavyfallingonit!"

"A crushed vehicle? That must be where Ultra Rodimus went down. Did you see anyone nearby?"

"Therewasnooneanywherenearthesite!"

"Then we'll send out a team to see what they can find that might tell us what happened to Prime."

With a clearer idea of what to do, the Autobots scattered. Only Magnus remained. First Aid wanted to keep him for observation, and so he would know if anything else happened to Ultra Rodimus.

Sounds assaulted his ears, and blurs of color and light swam before his eyes. Ultra Rodimus groaned and tried to get his bearings. The last thing he remembered was a stun bolt in the eye, and hearing his mate's scream as he collapsed into darkness. Wondering what had possessed those humans to shoot at him, he tried to sit up.

The first thing he noticed was the fact that he was restrained. Metal bands held his arms and legs to the sides of the hard table he was lying on. Another band crossed his chest, holding him still. He tugged at the restraints, but they were solid, and he was too weak to fight them for long.

He opened his eyes again, blinking furiously until the blurs of color and light settled into focus, and he could see his surroundings. What he saw left a cold knot in his stomach.

Somehow, he was human again. How, he had no idea. His snakeskin jacket and silk-like shirt were gone, leaving his upper body bare, but his pants and boots were untouched. Probably because his boots were hard to remove at all, and impossible if you didn't know the trick to it.

He was strapped to a tilted table, hard steel bands holding him in place, in a room that looked uneasily like a lab. Bare wires were looped around his wrists and neck, and one ran down into his pants, toward a very sensitive part of male human anatomy. The wires were connected to a device that looked uncomfortably like a switchboard. Small sensor pads like the ones used in hospitals had been applied to his chest and forehead. Nearby was a wheeled table, and on its surface was an array of scalpels, needles, drug vials, and objects he couldn't identify. None of them made him feel any better.

"So you're awake."

His eyes fixed on the speaker, a human woman dressed in silk and a lab coat. She was watching him with a cruel sneer on her face.

"Who are you?" he growled.

"Don't you remember?"

"Why should I? I've never seen you before."

Her eyes flashed. "Years ago, during a battle with the Decepticons, laser fire killed my family and my boyfriend. You should remember that!"

He frowned. "How could I remember that? I wasn't even on Earth back then."

She glared, her eyes flashing with hatred. "You are one of those murderous machines, and all of you will pay for what happened to my family!"

"I had nothing to do with that!" he roared at her. "Let me go!"

She reached for the switchboard and flicked a switch. Electric current coursed through the wires and into his body. He let out an ear-shattering scream of agony as the electricity burned him from the inside out.

Finally, she shut off the current. He hung limp in the restraints, head hanging, his body twitching and convulsing from the powerful shock. His breath came in harsh bursts.

"I will not let you go," she announced coldly. "I will kill you, and you will die a slow, painful death for what your kind have done to me."

With that, she turned and left, leaving him alone.

To be continued...

I guess you can tell that I was in a bit of a bad mood when I started planning this fic, and it kinda took on a life of its own. And you can see why I'm upping the rating on this fic. Do you think I should up it to PG-13 or all the way up to R? Review and let me know what you think. And here are some reviewer responses:

Foxey: Glad to know you're still alive. And I seem to have a gift for making the bad guys really creepy. You should read the review ckret2 sent me for the second chapter of Transformation. Hope you continue to read my fics, and hope to hear from you again soon!

Gromia: Is this update fast enough? And as for Circuit Breaker, I only read one fic with her in it and that was a long time ago, so I don't know a thing about her, but I'll take your word for it.

LoneGenesis: Thank you for reviewing my story, and I hope you send me many more juicy reviews.

Simply Crisis: Yeah, trouble is brewing, and it's gonna be bad for all of the Autobots. Hope you continue to send me reviews.

Thank you to all of me reviewers. I love you all!