Quick note for those of you who have already read the chapter before I reposted it. Just had a little whoops with the editing, please forget everything that happened after Side's and Sunny's little chat after the prison break embarrased blush
Inside Job
"Sideswipe."
Someone was calling him. He pondered that thought for a moment, wondering who it was and what he should do about it.
"Sideswipe!"
Whoever it was, they were persistent.
"Uuhhnn." The red twin groaned as the urgent voice cut through the thick fog that muffled his thoughts. All sorts of error messages started popping up as he slowly levered himself up off the cool floor tiles and rolled onto his back, staring at the ceiling until he could scrape together the wits to sit up and take a look around.
As he had expected he was in a cell, barely wide enough for him to lie down in. Energised bars blocked the entrance and formed one wall of his cell, and he didn't have to look to know that he'd already been disarmed and his subspace access had been cut off. A heavy transform lock was clamped to his back, further complicating matters. Great. No weapons, no alt mode, no pile drivers, and he felt like someone had staved his head in with a king-sized sledgehammer.
"Sideswipe!"
Sideswipe turned his head towards the sound, finally registering that his brother had been calling to him all along. Right now, Sunstreaker was kneeling the cell beside him, half reaching out to his twin but staying well clear of the crackling bars separating them. The russet warrior adopted a similar position as soon as he could get his legs to work.
The yellow twin didn't look to bad, all things considered. Even the set of parallel scorch marks from when he had probably full-body slammed the energy bars at some point would eventually buff out. "Are you okay?" Sunstreaker asked quietly.
"Feels like Devistator stood on me again, but apart from that I'm fine." Sideswipe replied as lightly as he could. "What happened out there?"
"Focused EMP stun blast."
The twins looked in the direction of Jazz's voice as he walked to the front of his cell, situated across the hallway and opposite to theirs. They hadn't even noticed he was online, much less that he had been captured along with them.
"It hurts like heck th' first couple o' times, but ya get used t' it." Jazz continued. "Before ya ask, we got sold out. Someone in HQ relayed our plan to 'em. It's th' only way they knew how to catch us."
"Deck?" Sunstreaker guessed. "He hates you enough to do it."
"Nah, not him." Jazz shook his head. "Despite what he is, he's loyal to the core. It'll be someone else."
The twins took a moment to digest that.
"So…now what?" Sideswipe asked.
Jazz sat down and smiled slightly. "Finish th' op, what else?"
"But how?" Sunstreaker frowned. Jazz's smile grew wider as he worked a thin piece of metal free from his forearm and started prying at the seams on his lower right leg.
"Jazz? What are you doing?" Sideswipe asked, watching as the Porsche methodically disassembled the plating. To the warriors it looked like the black and white had finally cracked.
"It's th' Black Ops Survival Code, my man." Jazz grinned and started fiddling with the inner workings of his leg. "One, never trust th' pretty femmes who come outta nowhere. Two, always keep an optic on th' quiet ones. Three, if it's too good to miss you should ignore it, an' four, never go anywhere without packin' some extra heat."
Three laser knives and a set of vials clattered out of a shielded compartment in the Porsche's leg. He quickly picked them up and re-assembled his leg before crouching and carefully examined the wall around his cell entrance. "Keep watch, this'll take a couple of minutes." Jazz instructed. He carefully pulled the cap off one of the vials and with utmost care poured a little of the bluish fluid around the base of six of the bars. An evil sounding hiss came from the energised metal as it was slowly eroded away by the potent concoction. While the liquid did its work, Jazz reached behind his back and used one of the knives to hack at the transform lock. Finally something broke and the clamps retracted, the device clattering to the floor.
By now, the liquid had eaten through a good inch of the metal bars and their bases. With the circuit broken the bars were no longer 'live', so Jazz could safely bend them backwards and crawl out of his cell. The control panel at the far end of the hall proved no challenge and the twins were quickly freed. "C'mon, there's sure t' be alarms goin' off now and we gotta move!" Jazz ordered as the two warriors exited their cells.
"What the..!"
The startled exclamation came from the opposite end of the corridor, where a guard had just entered through a security door and spotted the escapees. Jazz swore and sprinted towards him, ducking into a roll as the startled mech started spraying the area with laser blasts and swung his free arm out to slap the intercom.
"Pris…" The guard trailed off into a wet gurgle as Jazz shot up out of his roll and lunged, his first two fingers spearing deep into the underside of his chin and ripping down to split the mech's throat open before hooking his fingers and tearing out the primary fuel line. Jazz snatched the dying guard's rifle out of his hand and shoved the body into one of the open cells. "C'mon, let's move!" Jazz barked, shaking off the worst of the fluid on his hand.
Sideswipe and Sunstreaker exchanged a hurried glance and quickly followed the Porsche through the maze of interconnecting hallways. "Wait here an' ditch those locks." Jazz ordered, pushing the twins back into a dead end hall and giving them two of the knives. "I'll check things out."
As soon as the black and white was gone, Sunstreaker turned to his twin. "Did you see that?" He demanded.
"Yeah…" Sideswipe replied, bewilderment in his voice. "His expression, it was almost like he… enjoyed it." He shuddered. "That wasn't Jazz."
"Yes it was." Sunstreaker corrected, looking in the direction the Porsche had gone in. "That was definitely Jazz."