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So I'm back. After even longer than before. I don't have words for how sorry I am to keep doing this to you readers. I honestly don't understand why I've gone through this long period of inactivity - of struggling to work on my fanfictions. It's extremely frustrating, and more than from my end. All I can hope for is to do better next update; and, you know, that you all will enjoy this one.
In spite of my long vanishing, y'all are still awesome. Yet again, there are new people who've followed and favorited. Yet again, there are people who've reviewed. Yet again, there are new people who've reviewed. It's humbling knowing so many people have enjoyed this story over the years. Thank you.
Guest (Chapter 2) - Yup. Uber dead. Thanks for the comment.
Guest (Chapter 43) - Bunch of stuff. Took up nine updates. Had to be done. Thank you for reivewing.
SanguinemCorvus - Think we talked about all that stuff in PMs now that you have an account. Just wanted to say thanks for reviewing.
Guest - Believe there's a saying about that and not paying attention. Think it rhymes with "Ame of Tones". Thanks for the comment.
Usual general reminder: due to the length of time between updates, I recommend re-reading the previous one to get a better idea of what's going on.
Thanks go to Crystal Prime and xDaughterOfKingsx for beta reading. They went over the chapter together, then again with me. Their input was very helpful, and they are generally great.
Disclaimer: Transformers belongs to Hasbro. I only take credit for this story and my OCs.
Sweat rolled down his temple.
Booth didn't do well in heat. Never had. But the sweat had little to do with the weather, and everything to do with their current situation. The entire convoy was packed together on a parking garage's top level. Not the roof—S.T.F's satellites would be watching—but the floor below. It was typically the least used floor of a garage, often near empty save for the busiest of days.
Today, it held only three besides their own. Booth was partially the cause of that. Still, they had avoided entering the garage at the same time, in case anyone was watching and—rightly—found it suspicious that eight vehicles were traveling together.
He walked up to the lookout they had watching the nearby mall doors. "Adrik?" He asked in Russian.
"No sign," the man said. Booth suspected the lookout kept the response simple for his own benefit.
"Call if see," he said, internally wincing. He knew he'd said something wrong. Couldn't help it.
His next stop was the cleaning crew—Dima and two others who were painstakingly searching each vehicle and weapon in the convoy for tracking devices. "Anything?"
"Niet," the ex-Zaslon—clothed in an XXXL black jacket that was vastly out of his regular style for the sake of added anonymity—said, not taking his eyes from the wheel well of a Cadillac Escalade—one of two in the convoy, and the largest vehicle they had.
"Has to be something," Booth said. "Concierge tracked us somehow."
"Maybe he have magic eyes."
Booth didn't appreciate the humor.
He examined one of the weapons on the hood of the Escalade. It was one of their gifted M-320As. Its every part had been disassembled down to the firing pin. Nothing was unusual about the weapon, save its status as the most lethal rifle in possession of a human being. No suspicious wires. No discoloration that would indicate a more high-tech tracking method like a tiny, battery-powered GPS.
Nothing.
And the same was true of the next disassembled weapon he examined. And the next. And the next. How had the Concierge done it? If not the vehicles or the weapons, what? How did he know precisely where Booth had gone?
And how had he appeared and vanished so cleanly?
"Adrik."
Booth started back, passing other members of the convoy that were anxiously wandering around their corner of the garage floor. He arrived at the lookout's left. "Where?"
"Coming out," said the lookout. "He have bags."
That was good; bags meant he had what they needed. "Followed?"
"No."
That was better.
He informed Dima of Adrik's success, then—along with everyone else—waited for the chosen shopper to return to their floor.
He arrived two minutes later, stepping out of the parking garage stairs. They were the safest option; the elevator had a working camera. He carried with him three large shopping bags.
Dima met Adrik as he rejoined the group. He conversed with the smaller man in Russian beyond Booth's limited experience with the language, then looked into the bags. He nodded, obviously satisfied, then called in the others.
Booth took the lookout's spot, letting Dima take care of the distribution of the burner phones Adrik had procured. It wasn't a job he should have taken, being the leader. But Dima spoke Russian far better than Booth ever would. And, if not for Booth, none of them would be in this mess.
Maybe it was time for a new leader.
A few minutes later, every man in the convoy had a simple burner phone in hand, with the numbers of the other burner phones saved into contacts.
Phones in their pockets, the convoy made their way back to their respective vehicles to depart. They'd already discussed their end location—Mexico. It was easier to cross than Canada, and it was far closer. More options once were across the border. But they had to get there first. That was why, when they left this garage, no vehicle would be following the other. Dangerous, but they had no choice.
Booth watched them leave one by one, descending the ramp in SUVs, sedans and one van. Soon, it was just he, Dima, and their little Mazda.
The ex-Zaslon approached, holding out a phone in his large hand. "Has numbers already."
Booth pocketed it and followed him to their car. The Russian got in, but he paused. Stayed in place, frowning.
He didn't like this, using a vehicle given by someone who betrayed him. They'd cleared it of trackers, but what if the Concierge was using another method of keeping tabs on them? What if he had something built into the dash, the engine—the tires? No way to check those; they were constructed too well to take apart.
Probably intentionally.
Dima rolled down the window. "Problem?"
Booth shook his head. "We shouldn't be using this car."
"Good car. Better at hiding. No police bother us."
"You're right about that. It's not flashy, broken down, out of place. Plates and windows hide our faces, keep law enforcement from giving us too hard a look. It's everything we could ever want in a covert vehicle."
Dima frowned, the gesture little different than his default face. Then he nodded, seemingly to himself, and stepped out.
Booth raised a brow. "Figured it out already?"
"Never trusted man who gave it."
If only I'd done the same, Booth thought, already walking to the other vehicles on their level of the garage. One was a straight beater. Old Volkswagen. Probably close to twenty years old. Liable to break down in the first ten miles.
The second was a sharp contrast to the first. It was a Ferrari 458, he believed. Yellow, with a white and black racing stripe down the middle. The owner probably was paranoid about people touching it. Or it was already stolen, and the thief wasn't good enough to get rid of it. Only two reasons a car that expensive was so far removed from the most convenient exit.
The last car was the most promising. It was a Chevrolet Malibu, seventh generation. That made it new enough to be reliable but old enough to be common. Its white color made it even more unremarkable, and, thus, less noticeable. But what really sold Booth on it was the parking permit in the window, stamped the name of local city Chamberlain's Office. It also had a date when the permit expired.
One week from the current date.
Someone just left town and parked their vehicle here instead of, presumably, the airport or train station. Why he didn't care to know. But too bad for them.
Between the two of them, it took he and Dima less than three minutes to put together something to get the Malibu unlocked, and another three to hotwire the car and transfer what little they would take from the Concierge's Mazda.
Once ready, they got in, backed out from the spot, and started for the garage exist, leaving the Mazda behind.
"Should have had others do this," Dima said.
Booth shrugged. "Not enough vehicles for everyone."
"Anything probably better than tracked cars."
"And if the Concierge is still tracking us, the fewer of his cars suddenly stop moving, the better our chance to slip away."
Dima's silence said he agreed with the logic.
One minute later, they were out of the garage. A few minutes after that, they were on their planned route.
The Archer stepped through the space bridge.
The Transit Hub laid before him, operated as always. Four of his Elites stood at the mouth of the bridge, the most advanced models of his in-house weaponry held easily, their melee weapon of choice slung over their backs. The skull emblem on their shoulder-joint armor seemed to shine around the dark color that made up the rest of their armor.
"Productive, sir?" The one who spoke was Malix, a mech he picked up in Andromeda. Sharp CPU. Sharper aim. He wore his armor slightly lighter than others, but added another nano-fiber suit beneath. One of his shoulder-joint pauldrons was taller than the other.
"Not the right one." The Archer slung his bow over his back, near one of his now-empty quivers, and made for Operations.
His Elites fell in step without missing a beat. Taking up positions as a guard detail. The Archer didn't need them. Not here, not out there. They would have slowed him down.
"But," the Archer continued. "That's the last for now."
"You're not tired, sir."
It was true. And it would take a hell of a lot more to tire him. "Not about my stamina, Malix. About priorities. Mine shift for the moment."
"Understood, sir."
The Archer knew Malix wanted to pry. Wanted to ask why. Why attack the Decepticons now, after so long just watching the war with the Autobots? But he didn't ask, and the Archer wouldn't have said. He'd know when the moment was right.
They all would.
They arrived at Operations. The Archer's optics took in the screens of every Tech he passed. Reports from Andromeda, Triangulum, the series of dwarf galaxies of the entire Group—and beyond. Hundreds of thousands of systems, each connected to thousands more. Each one housing a team of Operatives, Cybertronian and otherwise, that were ready to do whatever he asked.
It was good to be a Prince.
"Anything interesting while I was out?" He asked the room, striding over to his terminal in the center.
"Coalition forces in Andromeda are preparing to invade Monarchy Space," one Analyst said, a femme. Naris. Transfer from Triangulum. Didn't want anyone to know about her collection of limited edition game sets from Caminus.
"I said interesting, not expected. Try again."
"The Kin-ri-sha have conquered the Quan and are planning on selling their energon deposits to Cybertronian wanderers," another said, a mech. Roadster. Local. Born to nomad parents here in the Milky Way. Sent most of his paycheck to them on Horon.
"Were you paying attention?"
A third Analyst looked up from their station. Another femme. Orphona. Senior Analyst. Iacon native. New one, not the old. Damn loyal. "Decepticon chatter in this system has ceased."
"That's more like it." The Archer looked to her. "Continue."
"They engaged Protocol Red. All communications to non-local sources have been suspended, and those within the system have switched to tri-step encryption on their point-to-point lines."
Soundwave got the message at last. Good. That meant Starscream knew, too—and the other commanders in system. They'd be in the war room aboard the Nemesis right now. Planning. Coordinating. Bickering, too. But in the end, they'd have a plan of action. A plan to destroy the Autobots. Or try.
"And how about our friends outside Jasper?" He asked.
"Slight variation in their recent activity, sir. Audio captured a fight broke out between some of their numbers. Optimus Prime was an instigator."
Internal conflict. Abnormality; Prime ran a tight ship. Odder still, Prime was part of the conflict.
They were changing. Prime, his Autobots. That didn't bode well.
"Casualties?" He asked.
"Audio suggests Major Ironhide nearly went down, but other than that no one."
"And Question Mark?"
She paused. "Active, sir."
He looked at her, gaze serious behind his battlemask. "You're certain?"
An odd look appeared in her optics—one he'd seen before, during the insanity that plagued the Autobots not long ago. Confusion and apprehension. "Very, sir."
"Show me."
She went to work on her terminal, experience granting her digits high speed over the keyboard. She'd be accessing a program they'd managed to get into the Autobot systems—an espionage tool that allowed them to capture stray frames of footage from security cameras. Safer to pick up what was left behind than steal what would be missed.
After a moment, she brought up visuals. A single frame from an Autobot camera. It was in their base brig. In a cell, he saw the Decepticon he allowed to live. In another cell, he saw Optimus Prime. On the floor, he saw Ironhide looking dazed. Further in the room, he saw Arcee standing in front of a berth with blaster and blade deployed.
And sitting up against that berth, he saw the mech he'd designated in internal reports as Question Mark.
Problem was the cell that had been containing him was missing. As was the Ancient sword that had been embedded in the floor.
And Question Mark himself looked like something from a myth.
Shit.
Shit, shit, shit.
This couldn't happen. Not now. Not so close.
This was a problem.
He turned to the room. "Change of plans. Crossroads is here already. Take us to Redshift."
They acted.
Not as one, nor with a rushing clamor of frantic activity; they were too good for that. Instead, they put what they were doing on the back burner. Priorities changed. Analysts dismissed their reports and brought up real-time communications channels. Techs moved to clear a space in the floor and activated the holotank there, preparing a War Room. Soldiers stood ready, waiting for orders.
An alarm rang. Not just within Operations; within the entire facility. Its piercing, triple note was unique, saved only for this moment. Its sound the summons of need. The cry of warning.
The echo of change.
The Archer looked to Orphona. "Activate HERMES," he said, voice cutting through the ringing alarm.
"It's near the top of my queue, sir," she said, not turning from her work.
"Make it the top. And have the techs prepare the bridge again; seems my break is over." He turned his attention to his Elites. "Get a crew together."
"Mission, sir?" Malix asked.
"Closest system to this, there's a ship. A very important ship. Decepticons have it. I can't bridge you in. Get a pilot. Go get it."
His Elites saluted crisply, three digits snapped up to their left optic ridge, then turned as one and left Operations.
The Archer watched them leave. Then he looked left, right. At the people in Operations carrying out the tasks he just gave them. At the personnel outside, making preparations for space ops to commence.
Then he looked to the still-present image from the Autobot brig. To the terrified Decepticon. The fallen Autobot. The caged Prime. The femme who knew nothing. And the Question Mark, who just earned a new designation in his files.
Open the Doors, Sound the Drums; the Xel'Tor is Here.
Shame flooded him.
Shame for his situation. Shame for being contained within part of a cell he had built. Shame for the necessity of that barrier. Shame for being an object of shock from his own soldiers.
Shame for failing.
In every way, he had. He failed to fight the influence of Cold. He failed to protect himself from his own weakness. And he failed to protect them from himself.
He did not meet the stunned gazes of so many of his soldiers now crowding the brig, investigating the latest anomaly back at base. He was unworthy of seeing their optics. Of daring to stand tall when he had rightly been brought low. Of the Ancient relic at his pedes, idle and faintly coated with the energon of his soldier. Let them see him for what he had become. Let them look upon him and feel not the awe they never should have felt, but the mech he had been all along:
Broken.
A broken mech with no morality to stand on. No longer a history of compassion to cite. No record of giving unceasing mercy to those who had earned punishment. In one moment—in a single, twisted act—that all went away. All his hard work. All his patient effort. It did not matter that he was not the one in control, or that the one who compelled him was now absent. What mattered was that it happened. That it happened to him, the leader—the Prime.
Leaders did not betray their own ideals. Leaders did not attack one of their followers for standing by those ideals. Leaders did not attempt to kill their own soldiers.
No leader worth following did any of those things, let alone all of them.
Was it time?
Optimus risked a brief look upward. To his right and ahead, Ratchet and Moonracer had Ironhide sitting up against the wall, attending him. The Wrecker himself was staring straight ahead, his optics confused and focused elsewhere. Next to them was Twitch's cell, and the Decepticon kept himself flat against the wall, facing him warily.
To his left, Prowl and Jazz worked at the brig terminal, assessing the damage done when Optimus fell to madness. Parts of the computer littered the floor, bent and useless. Discarded during the early stages of their evaluation. What remained of the screen flashed erratically, bathing the two in inconsistent orange and yellow.
Ahead were the stunned onlookers: Bumblebee and Flareup.
Flareup was the more stunned of the two, as if what she looked upon was an impossibility. Bumblebee was the more pained. As if a part of his world had crumbled. The plead in his optics was a moment of shattered realization. The end of a viewpoint held dear.
Optimus could only nod to him. Just one faint, regretful movement.
Bumblebee, appearing to be somewhere else entirely, turned away and slowly walked back into the hallway; Flareup followed. They walked passed the other watcher. The one that did not step into the brig.
Grimlock.
The dark titan stood at the far side of the outside hallway, gazing into the room without entering. His dark optics were fixated on Optimus, blazing with an unshackled contempt that unnerved nearly all who beheld it. Spoke a thousand words without sound.
In that moment, it only said five: I was right about you.
Grimlock remained there for a short time. Then, with his task complete, his silent judgement seen, he puffed black smoke from behind his battlemask, flashed his horns orange, and walked away.
Leaving Optimus in the middle of his sin and shame. His failure and hopelessness.
The negative thought drew a pulse from the Matrix, but even its constant presence felt… Strange. Neither positive nor negative. Hostile nor friendly. Comforting nor scorning.
Indifferent.
Had he changed things, in believing Cold's lies? Had he damaged his standing before the Matrix? Had he changed everything?
Was it time?
Optimus turned to look behind him. There, the two targets of his temporary insanity stood: Shadowstreaker and Arcee.
They were in the middle of discussion he was not privy to, nor should have been. Their appearances contrasted each other. Arcee had yet to receive medical attention, which allowed him to see every dent he had made in her armor, every scratch and scoff. Every mark of shame upon all he stood for.
Opposite her, Shadowstreaker stood without blemish, yet was marked in other ways. He did not look himself. Not anymore. He was a hybrid of characteristics from himself and the Xel'Tors that had inhabited his Animus. A mixture of something new and something ancient.
One could not tell that, not long ago, Optimus had nearly caved in his chestplate.
The Matrix pulsed once more as Optimus looked to the floor. Once more, it felt listless, detached. Insouciant. A reverberation of something that had been, not what was.
Was it time?
For the first time in his thousands of centi-vorns of leadership in political upheaval, economic turmoil, and total warfare across multiple galaxies, Optimus wasn't sure.
One way, or another.
She was angry at me.
I could see it. In her eyes, her frame language, her movement. The way she paced. The way she clenched and unclenched her fists. The way she set her jaw when she finished a sentence. How her optics burned. But it was more than that.
It was what I saw.
The entire room was a mass of color. Clouds and streaks and bolts of all shades and color, but hers was a complex spectrum. Hues of blue, green, yellow, red. Peace and control. Concern and confusion. Eagerness and caution. Hurt and rage. Rage at what I had done, hurt at what I had not. They all came together in a rolling, shifting cloud that colored the air, influencing light itself in a display as radiant as the influencer herself.
I blinked, once at first, then again, and color ceased to live. Compared to how it appeared but a moment before, the world seemed bland.
Bland but for her.
"What were you thinking?!" She snarled quietly, fists clenched. Optics blazing. Voice audibly strained to keep her fury in check. She wasn't doing a good job.
"I wasn't," I said.
"You stopped doing the very thing that was keeping you—you. You realize how stupid that is?"
"Tremendously."
"You deliberately, purposefully, intentionally forced a medic to put you in stasis. Do you realize what could have happened to you?"
"I did not consider it."
"How about logic? How about considering how ridiculous your plan sounded? How about weighing the possibility that we may never have fixed you?"
"I didn't weigh anything."
She turned her helm, glaring fire. "You made that perfectly clear already!" Her voice was a hiss. A figurative blaze born from the anger in her spark. "What happened to sharing? What happened to talking to each other? Why didn't you even wait?!"
I winced, lowering my helm. "I messed up."
"You THINK?!"
The last word came out loud enough to echo. The others looked at us. Prowl with his analytical suspicion; Jazz with his designed mask; Ironhide with open hostility; the Decepticon with puzzlement and wariness. The others with varying degrees of all four.
Optimus continued to look away.
So much for the subtle argument.
"I messed up," I tried again, keeping my voice level and calm—my ice clashing against her open flame, "because I acted like I was the only one with something to lose. That I had no time to delay. No time to stop. No reason to pause."
That drew a huff from Arcee. She looked away, hands clenched as she continued to pace. Stalking back and forth like an agitated panther, waiting for something dumb enough to get close.
I took a breath. Let it out. "With the benefit of hindsight, with knowing what I know, seeing what I now see—I made a mistake. A mistake I can't take back. I am sorry for making it."
She snarled. "I'm getting really tired of you being sorry. Sometimes, it doesn't matter if you're sorry, Shadow'."
"No, it doesn't. Nor does it change the fact it happened."
"You're not helping your case!"
"Was I to defend myself?"
"Yes! No. Maybe…" She shook her helm, growling audibly. "Just… Do something!"
I felt some of my floating armor parts shift in the air, the movements mimicking my frown. "What am I to be doing?"
"Justifying, explaining, arguing. Something. Something else than this. All you're doing is agreeing with me and saying sorry."
"I didn't wait for you before acting. You're hurt that I didn't. I'm sorry that I hurt you. How is that bad?"
"Because stuff like this keeps happening!" She turned back to me, arms out wide, faceplate a mix of furious and exasperated. "You mess something up; you apologize; I forgive. Then we repeat. Is this all I have to look forward to?! A big, broken wheel that keeps turning the exact same way until it breaks?"
I… Oh. Was that how she saw me? Saw us? A wheel—a dull, unchanging thing that was destined to fall apart?
That image of a far-off home, quiet and peaceful, filled with laughter and family, cracked in my mind.
I… I thought…
No.
No, I will not go down that road. I've inflicted enough pain on myself already.
I shook my helm once. "No. No you don't."
"And why not? Why shouldn't I expect that?"
"Because I never intend on hurting you."
A bit of fire waned from her optics. "I know. But Shadow', this shouldn't be hard. None of this should be hard. Not the waiting. Not talking to me. Not…"
She stopped herself, but I saw the words in her eyes. The other fuels to her wrath.
Why didn't you just ask me?
Why did you act without me?
Why did you abandon me?
They were the questions of one who'd been deeply hurt—hurt in a way only someone close to their heart could. I was that someone, and by not waiting, by not even trying to run my theory by her, I'd effectively shut her out from one of my issues. Again.
Only this time, she hadn't had bonds to fall back on. No pillars of support to fall on when she needed a moment to regroup. Collect herself. Be strong for the sake of my weakness.
And I was why they weren't here for her.
"Look, Arcee—"
"Don't. Just… Please don't." Like a switch had been flipped, her voice lost its burning, hard edge. Her optics lost their glow of rage. Instead, they were just cold. Cold and distant. Wounded. "I can't do this right now. Not here."
She walked away.
Without another word, without giving me another chance to speak—she walked away. Giving no indication to follow. Or a desire that I would be welcome.
I opened my mouth to protest, to ask her to go somewhere else to continue. To do something. But no words came. No solution to my failure. No way to fix my mistake.
I let her go.
Seeing her leave the brig without a resolution between us hurt more than I thought it would. It hurt even more to have so much left to say. So much I wanted to discuss what I found out in the Animus. Why I was the way I was. Why I was so bad at us. And that, despite how bad I was at us—I knew, now more than ever before, exactly what I wanted for her. For us.
I looked up at the ceiling as if it held the answer to the pang in my chest. Perhaps this was good. Maybe a little time apart, in our own thoughts, would be good for Arcee and I. Allow us to process what happened, how we felt. How to move forward. Or drive a wedge between us.
I think, this time, I'm going to expect the positive route.
I took a moment to gather myself. Calm my now-aching spark and the fears still lingering in my mind. Then, I set off for my next task.
Ironhide hadn't stopped glaring at me since Arcee yelled at me. There was an anger in his gaze, in his body language, that spoke of a protective fury. A desire to avenge the pain I'd caused his sister-in-bond. But there was something else, too.
Uncertainty. Fear. Fear of how I looked. Uncertainty in what that meant. It made two of us.
That glare stayed locked on me as I approached, and it remained present even after I stopped before him, nearly a body length away.
And there I stood for a while, letting him glare. There was a tension between us. A mutual desire to be elsewhere, for entirely different reasons. It was evident even without Sight. But I had a purpose in being here, and damn if I was going to fail it.
"Chromia says hi."
Just like that, Ironhide waned. His glare lost its edge, his body relaxing. Moonracer took the opportunity to drop a medical sensor into a crease in his armor. "Did you… Is she…?"
I shook my head. "I don't know."
"So what I felt. The break…"
At that, I could only nod.
"But I'm still here. I still feel something."
"The Being was there. Said something about giving them their Chance, to Seek them out, but…"
"You don't know."
At that, I did nothing.
Ironhide looked away, found the floor in front of him interesting. He didn't react when Ratchet stood up, his work apparently done, and left the room. Or when Moonracer did the same after telling him about a spark monitor they would keep him on. If it wasn't for the light in his optics, he looked offline.
"What..." He finally grunted. An attempt to keep himself in order. "What happened?"
"Found out something bad," I said. "Cold had me. Re-broke me. Toyed with me. You… Probably know how that feels now."
He shuddered. Visibly shook, shutting his optics tightly. A man rendered a child for but a single moment in time. He let out a shaky breath. "Yeah."
I let him recover for a moment more, the series of armor pieces floating above my shoulders and behind my head shifting back and forth. "We'd been separated earlier," I went on. "They fought him before we were, but Cold focused on me. Took me away to play. They came for me. Stopped him before he could kill me entirely."
Ironhide focused on me again, silent.
"I couldn't fight, so they fought for me. They moved beautifully, Ironhide. So fluid. Strong. Cold walked through them. Chromia was hurt bad. Real bad. It's what led to… What you felt. He'd won again. First against me, then the Mech of Light. Then he beat them twice. Left them so broken I don't even know how they were alive."
That drew his glare again. Some of the weakness I'd seen a second ago, too.
I ignored it. "But as I'm laying there with a hole in my chest, unfeeling and unable to do anything, I see Chromia. She's even more hurt than I am. Can't make a sound, can barely move. But she acts anyway. Uses the last of her strength to give me the key to beating him. And I do. But without her, without her doing that, I'd have never had a chance. Neither would you."
A look entered his optics. Something far softer than anger, far stronger than happiness. "She saved us."
"Yeah. Yeah, she did."
He smiled, the act not reaching his now-distant optics, and looked away again. Seeing something only he could. "That's my 'Mia. Always saving me. More than she ever accepted..."
Bravery without Inspiration is Folly…
Suddenly, I felt like I was interrupting him. Intruding. The third wheel in a conversation of two. I left him to his reminiscing. Prowl and Jazz to their repairs. Optimus to his silence.
And, for the first time in what seemed a lifespan, I left the brig.
There was a particular medic I owed another apology to.
The Cage was organized chaos.
He watched everything from an elevated position—what S.T.F personnel who worked in the Cage called the Eagle's Perch. It was an experiment in command efficiency, wherein a high-ranking officer overlooked the entire SCIF all at once. Perhaps primitive in premise, but with how many operations S.T.F ran, and how large the Cage was, it worked.
All around him, there were operators viewing sat-feeds, communications techs coordinating field operatives, officers demanding updates, and other screens showing live footage from various operations around the world.
Most of his gaze fixated on those relevant to the disaster closer to home. To the bomb sites. The still-present smoke, the debris, hazmat suits. The victims. The bloodied and mangled. Burned. Scraped. Coughing. Sweating. Screaming. All while emergency crews and agents from half a dozen federal agencies watched on in horror from the isolated safe zone.
Shepherd was going to make him pay for this.
"General!"
Shepherd's heavy gaze fell on the man who spoke—a chief analyst from the Army, with the chevrons of an E-6, or Technical Sergeant. "Go, Parrish."
"We got reports of the virus outside the secured zone."
Shepherd cursed. "Where and how many?"
"Tulsa, Oklahoma. Two truckers got admitted to the ER for our bioweapon's symptoms. Three nurses have been admitted themselves."
"Notify the FBI and the CDC," Shepherd said. "I want everything they touched quarantined yesterday."
"Sir!"
Shepherd looked to the new voice. Another Technical Sergeant. "What do you have, Hawkins?"
"Local PD in Kansas just tried to pull over a Cadillac for a suspected hit-in-run. It's turned into a high-speed chase."
Shepherd waited for more. None came. "And?"
"Cadillac had tinted windows and DoD plates."
There it was. "Get me a view."
As Hawkins had his techs get to work finding a camera to tap, Shepherd looked ahead at the main screen—a fifteen-by-twenty-two foot 8K video panel. It was currently split between feeds from high-altitude drones he'd put on task to find Booth, and muted news feeds to give him an idea how much was getting out. Main stories on all channels were focused on the attacks and the continually rising death toll. They covered how the President was reacting. How many countries had offered both their sympathies and their aid.
One was talking about the S.T.F—what wasn't classified, of course—and how Ned Booth once worked for it. They had his Clearance ID photograph, his job title, rank, his previous employment by the CIA. Security footage of the bombing. Theorized vehicles used by Booth and his associates. Everything that could gain five minutes of viewership.
And presented the exact same way he had to the other members of a classified briefing. One made up of people he generally trusted. Respected.
Apart from Galloway.
"Five seconds, sir."
Shepherd nodded at the notification, then waited.
Exactly when Hawkins said, a new feed appeared on the main screen. It was a dashcam from a police cruiser. With sound, if the icon at the top left was right. He tapped the display at his right, activating the directional speakers of the Eagle's Perch.
—y're easily pushing ninety, heading south on I-135!" The officer in the patrol car sounded tense but calm. Stressed without letting it get to her. "They're coming to you, 1-11."
"I see them," a new voice said through the officer's dash. "Radar's got them at one-zero-one. Advise road closure, Dispatch."
"Copy, 1-11."
"Do we have assets in the area?" Shepherd asked the room.
"We have a HELIOS that will be in coverage in just under four minutes," a satellite technician said.
"HELIOS will be our eyes. What else?"
"We have no ground assets in the area. FBI does."
"Get them this location. Tell them to bring the occupants of that vehicle in alive, if possible."
His soldiers did as he said. He didn't give any other orders. He just watched intently as the police gave chase. Tried to PIT the Cadillac off the road. Then spike its tires. Then shoot the tires.
Nothing worked. The Cadillac kept speeding down the road. A dark, wheeled tank that could not be stopped.
Then it did.
Suddenly. Quickly. Without warning or reason.
The officer in the car they tapped swore, then swerved to avoid the rapidly-decelerating Cadillac. She hit the breaks, eventually skidded to a halt ahead of the vehicle, several other police cruisers stopping nearby.
Shepherd's gut twisted.
"Bring us in on the windshield," he said.
A tech did that in two keystrokes. Their end of the feed zoomed in twice, ruining the quality of the footage. He could barely see anything, but he was able to see that, through the tinted glass, both the driver and passenger seat of the Cadillac were occupied.
And the driver was pounding on the steering wheel.
Something wasn't right.
"Can we hijack their channel?"
"Maybe, sir—why?"
"Do it now."
Time seemed to drag on as his people started their work. Shepherd could only watch as the officers began getting out of their cars, weapons drawn, shouting orders to get out.
He saw the silhouette of the passenger disappear from frame, then return holding something in hand. A weapon. He watched as the passenger opened their door, hopping out in a crouch.
"Where's that channel?"
"Still working on it!"
The officers redirected their attention to the crouched passenger, yelling to drop the weapon. They'd seen.
But then the driver hopped out with a weapon of their own. He saw the glint of it in the sun as he brought it up. Saw the officers swing to engage.
Then everything became static.
Shepherd was jolted out of his intense focus. Thrown by the sudden cut. "What just happened?"
No one answered.
"Someone get me eyes in there!"
"Five seconds to HELIOS, sir," the satellite tech said.
"Main screen. Now."
The static was replaced by a sat feed from the HELIOS in orbit. The image was shockingly clear and detailed compared to the police dashcam. The operator panned the camera left, further from the target location, then right.
Everything was fire.
A growing cloud of smoke and dust rising above the highway, thousands of feet into the air. There was an enormous crater in the road, wide enough that both sides were simply gone. Anything green within a wide radius was leveled or flaming. Debris were in the air, falling back to the ground slowly on camera but quickly in life.
Of the Cadillac, the police cruisers—and all involved—nothing remained.
No one said anything. Not a report. Not a statement of the obvious. Not even an exclamation to themselves.
Then reality set in, and his people got back to work.
"Get emergency crews there right now."
"Send this footage to the FBI and CDC; they need to know what they might be walking into."
"Contact the PD those officers belonged to… They need to know."
Shepherd listened to it all without a blink. He did not feel detached to what he just saw, but he'd known. As soon as the dashcam went to static, he'd known. That Cadillac was wired to detonate, and it had. He didn't know why it had been, and he didn't know if it was yet another bioweapon.
What he did know, was it didn't make any sense.
What kind of suicide bomber jumps out with a rifle?
He looked to the technician who brought up the dashcam in the first place. "Bring it back to the moment before detonation."
Numbly, the technician did his job, then replayed the last ten seconds of dozens of lives.
Shepherd watched it carefully, then saw what he was looking for. "Stop it there."
The tech did, pausing the footage as the driver took aim with his rifle.
A very familiar rifle.
"Bad guys had our stuff," said Sergeant Hawkins, now standing next to the Eagle's Perch. He looked up at Shepherd. "Last cache Booth stored away?"
Shepherd shook his head. "We reran all of his figures, matched them to Engineering's internal numbers. We got them all."
Hawkins frowned. "Then… How…?"
Shepherd's gut twisted again, and a dark answer found its way to his head.
"I have to make a call."
Booth didn't like this.
Their planned route was a no-go; too much traffic. People unable, or too afraid, to use any kind of transit but their own. They'd had to adjust. React to the situation they were placed in my circumstance.
They had to cut through a city.
"Girl to right is staring at you."
Booth turned his head left, leaned his elbow against the window so he could lay his temple in his palm. The move hid his face. "Still looking?"
"Da. We have arrow."
The Russian waited for the light to turn green, then took them left, off course from their planned route. He glanced to the Chevy's rearview mirror. "Still at light. Not following. Sit up."
Booth did but kept his cap down low. He checked his burner phone, seated at the center console. No new messages. "Haven't gotten word from anyone else."
"Zakhar and Leonid should have stopped now."
So should have four others. Three cars on shorter routes than theirs. All unaccounted for. Not comforting, with all that was happening. He sent a text to Zakhar's burner. Nothing special; just a coded phrase about the weather. About all the Russian he knew how to type out on an English-based phone.
Then he waited.
And waited.
And waited.
Waiting was more than ninety-five percent of intelligence work. He'd done thousands of hours of it in his career with the CIA, and hundreds more with the S.T.F. He was good at waiting.
But even he had limits.
After another ten minutes of careful driving, and—on Booth's part—waiting, he started getting antsy. This was too much waiting. Far too much. One unit? Fine; that happened. But everyone? Every last man he'd tried to contact? That didn't fit. He picked up Dima's burner and sent a similarly-worded text to Zakhar.
Still nothing.
"This not good."
Booth looked up from the phone. Traffic ahead was at a standstill. He saw flashing lights, the way pedestrians had gathered at the corners of their streets, far from where the line of cars began.
An accident. Maybe brought on by the panic people felt at the day's news. Maybe not. Either way, a problem for them; stationary drivers got bored. Bored drivers looked around, examined other drivers or passengers. That exponentially raised the risk of someone not just giving him a look that lasted a little too long like before, but someone managing to make an ID.
"Take the right, before we hit the line," he said.
Dima hit the indicator and merged with the right lane. He turned at the light before the accident, and they started down the new road. It led to the city's financial district. Home to money, influence and glass buildings that guarded trade secrets like the S.T.F guarded its aircraft designs.
Those buildings were nearly abandoned at this hour, in response to the bombs Booth didn't plant, but there was still decent foot traffic. Where the money went, good restaurants followed.
"No reply from Zakhar," he said.
"You try others?"
"Am now." He used Dima's phone to send texts to the other, MIA members of the convoy, then set the phone down.
When he looked up, something was wrong.
He couldn't put a finger on it at first. It was an old instinct of his, honed from far too many brushes with Death. It was a faint sense of something dangerous nearby. But he saw nothing. No clear roadblock. No out of place police van or patrol car. No man standing at a street corner, pointing a weapon at their car. Not even someone on a phone, taking pictures.
Wait.
He looked back, to the street behind them, then ahead. The hair on his arms stood up.
Why wasn't anyone on the sidewalk?
Booth looked to Dima, found the Russian beginning to look at him. He saw the same suspicion in Dima's eyes. Saw the same warning that was on the tip of Booth's tongue, ready to be shared aloud.
Their street crossed another.
The window behind Dima's head became a car grill.
The SUV hit the Chevy like a runaway Mack truck. Glass shot out like fired from a rifle barrel, riddling his arm just as he got it in front of his face. He felt Dima's body forced into his as the crumpled in the Chevy's side like a tin can.
Booth felt himself go weightless. Felt gravity cease to work. Beyond his raised arm, he saw the road turn sideways. The buildings, sidewalk, and sky go the wrong way up.
Then the car landed.
He didn't remember it all being over like that. Or recall if the Chevy rolled or hit and stuck after landing. He didn't even remember hitting his head, even as he suddenly found blood dripping to the Chevy roof now beneath him.
Instinct drove him to unbuckle, guided his hand to the release button. It didn't keep his head from spinning, or stop the pain that lit up his side when he fell to the roof. Didn't make the glass shards in his arm sting any less. But it kept him going, made him check on his partner.
Dima was motionless. Hung limp from his seat, eyes wide. A portion of the driver's door was crushed into his side, leaving it a mangled mess of bone and flesh.
His death was on him.
He shoved aside the momentary regret and kicked out what remained of the passenger window, then crawled out.
The street was so quiet. So unnervingly quiet. He heard a hiss from the Chevy, smelled the gas. But that was it, save the ringing in his ears and his own, ragged breaths.
An expensive shoe appeared in his vision, along with an equally expensive suit pant. He looked up.
The Concierge stood over him, unnatural green eyes staring down at him, his ever-present smile missing for once. "Of all the days to grow a brain, you chose the worst possible one."
Rough hands dragged him to his feet. Two large men in black suits appeared at either corner of his vision, each locking one of his arms in theirs. One stuck a needle in his neck.
Booth knew a knock-out drug when he felt one. The needle held one. A bad one made to act quick. His already-foggy mind became a blank cloud, his vision a spinning whirl of color.
The last coherent image he saw was of the Concierge, and the last thing he heard was his rumbling voice, directed at the men holding him up.
"Wrap this up quick; we've got a lot more to do."
Shepherd dialed the number, then waited. The line rang once, and only once.
"Stellaris Financial Consulting," a pleasant voice greeted, far too happy to be genuine. "How may I direct your call?"
"I seek the whirlwind."
The delighted voice was unfazed. "And what would you do before the whirlwind?"
"Quell at its feet."
"One moment, please."
Pop music played in his ear as the voice put him on hold. Last time he called, it had been generic elevator tunes. Before that, classical. It changed every call, both in genre and in the company name itself. But never the words he used. Or even the number—which, despite his best efforts, couldn't be traced to a location.
The music abruptly stopped. A faint click sounded as someone entered the line. "Lance! My friend, I would love to chat, but I am terribly busy at the moment. I'll have more info on your man wh—"
"Are you in the habit of copying my weapons?"
"What makes you say I have?"
"The fact I just saw one in the hands of a terrorist."
The Concierge paused a moment, then chuckled. "I suppose I couldn't keep that secret indefinitely. My apologies, Lance. You'd done such a delightful job I couldn't help myself."
"It's you, isn't it?"
"What? I'm sorry, I don't understand your meaning."
"It's you," Shepherd repeated. "Everything that's happening today. Every emergency I have to rush into. Every threat I have to address. Every screaming face I have to look at, knowing I can do nothing to save them. It's all you."
The Concierge said nothing, and that said it all.
"Booth didn't plant all those charges, did he? Not all of them across multiple states. You did that. You didn't find Carmine's body; you knew where it was. You assisted Booth in making a weapon that can end humanity, then you helped him spread it!"
He hadn't meant to yell, but he was. His voice was iron, grinding with fury. Fury directed at the disaster continuing to spread across his country. At the people who were using it to undermine him personally.
At the animal on the other end of the line.
The Concierge sighed, the sound deep and long. "Oh, my dear Lance. You've always been too smart to be a general."
"You bastard."
"That is a shockingly accurate statement."
Shepherd ground his teeth hard enough they hurt. "When I'm done with Booth, you're next."
"Your anger for me is understandable, but now isn't the time for it. There are things at work bigger than your rage and my sociopathy. Things bigger than humanity."
In all the times they'd spoken, Shepherd had been frustrated by the Concierge's ability to reveal nothing by saying everything. His alarmingly informed knowledge of every S.T.F or CIA operation. His innate ability to make Shepherd feel small. Outplayed. Helpless.
But right then, the Concierge sounded more sincere than Shepherd had ever heard him before.
And that alone was terrifying.
"I'm not going to stop until I find you," the General said, unwilling to let the other man direct him elsewhere.
"That's why I like you, Lance; you never compromise who you are or what you stand for. The human race needs more of such people. That's why I chose you."
Shepherd frowned even deeper.
Chose?
"What did you just say?"
A loud sound carried through the line. An… Explosion? "Apologies, Shepherd—but I'm out of time. And, unfortunately, I suspect you are, too. I wish you the best in what's coming. You'll be needed after."
The line died.
An automated message chimed, "We're sorry; you have reached a number that is disconnected or no longer in service. If you feel you have reached this recording in error, please check the number and try your call again."
Shepherd hung up his phone when the chime came in a second time, breathing heavier than usual. It wasn't often he felt pure, primal anger like this. An almost uncontrollable urge to break something. He was feeling that now.
And the thing he wanted to break was the neck of the man he just spoke to.
The phone rang again. He picked it up before the first ring even ended, "Go."
"Colonel Willems here. Sir… We need you back here right now."
He heard the fear well-hidden in Willems' voice. "What's wrong, Henry?"
"A lot of things, Lance. And they're everywhere."
The ops center was peaceful in its current isolation.
Here, there were no optics beside mine. No sound save the quiet alerts from the workstation. No thought other than my own. It was easy to get lost in the calm. To overthink something. Work helped keep me focused on the now, instead of the questions I'd already asked, only to receive silence as an answer.
Where were Elita and Chromia?
Why weren't the Thirteen in the Pocket Universe?
What was so important about me? Why was I special?
I didn't want to be.
"Shadow'."
I turned, and there stood Arcee in the entrance to the ops center. She didn't look happy, and she didn't look angry. Only neutral. As if about to handle a task, not a desire. The way her servos were crossed over her chest told me she didn't want to be here.
Didn't want to be near me.
"Arcee," I said, taking a step away from the workstation. "I thought you wanted to be alone."
"I thought you'd come after me."
The metal floating near my face shifted back in forth, in tune with my confusion. "You never said—"
"Stop. Just… Forget it." She looked away, rolled her jaw like she'd swallowed something sour. "I came to say I shouldn't have walked out like I did. Or yelled."
"Actually, I thought that part was pretty justified."
"Good. Because it was."
"Took that apology back quick."
She glared, and in that glare was the familiar fire of anger. "You did something monumentally stupid without even waiting for me to say it was!"
"We established that last time."
"And you keep on doing things like that!"
"Established that, too."
"Will you stop agreeing with me?!"
"I don't have anything to dispute."
Arcee growled. Genuinely. The sound fit me more than her. "You're making me feel like I'm just kicking a helpless victim!"
"I'm not usually the victim."
"Stop it!"
I did as asked.
She started pacing, hands coming up to rub the sides of her helm. "This was just supposed to be quick," she said. "I was supposed to just come here, say one thing, and leave. Now all this is starting up again and… GAH!"
She kicked the wall.
As in, really. Kicked. The wall. A full, high side kick. One that had her foot almost above her head. The clang that came from it was loud, and she left a noticeable dent in the metal paneling.
"WHY IS THIS NEVER EASY?!"
Another side kick. Another dent. Another booming clang.
Um...
"WHY CAN'T WE JUST WORK?!"
She kicked the wall a third time—a lightning-quick spinning one—followed up by a vicious, four-punch combination from her left and right hands, creating a non-vocal alliteration that echoed up and down the ops center's entire cavern. An actual sliver of the wall came loose, clattering across the floor and to my feet.
I wasn't brave enough to break the silence that followed.
Arcee remained in place for a time, fist still pressed to the dented wall. She took a deep, shuddering breath, and her hand started to shake. She let it fall away, stood up straighter. Glared at the wall as if it were the source of her suffering.
Her shaking grew worse.
And, so quietly—so softly—I wasn't sure I heard it, she said, "What's wrong with me…?"
Then she collapsed.
Not in a heap, and not for the dramatics of it. She just turned around and slumped against the wall. As if worn out by carrying thrice the weight she should have, and finally deciding she would rest right there. She brought her arms in around herself and stared down at the floor, shaking.
Frustrated snarls and angry tears fell after.
I didn't know what to do.
I didn't know how to help. What to say. Whether to say anything. I was so used to seeing Arcee shake everything off. Process her emotions with a sparring session, a quick talk, or a yell. But not in tears. Real tears. I didn't know what to do with them.
I didn't know what to do.
So I just did.
I joined her at the wall and slumped down next to her. She didn't throw herself on me. Didn't break down further and uglier. But she did let me embrace her. Pull her in close, and keep her there so that her tears fell on me—the reason for them. Only then did she allow herself to sound more than just angry. Only then did I hear more than a growl.
Only then did I hear a single, quiet sob.
For her, that was the ultimate vulnerability. The pinnacle of weakness she loathed to show to anyone. Not to me. Not to Ironhide. Not to her sisters. Not even herself.
And for the first time, I realized that, for all she did to remain unfazed and undaunted by anything or anyone, she still had limits. She could still crack. Could break. Just like the rest of us.
Strength is weaker than they Appear…
I held her close for as long as she needed. I didn't speak. Didn't move. I even dared to comm-link Ratchet to tell him he needed to re-slave the workstation to the med-bay computer. He wasn't happy; I didn't care. She was the priority.
She shook for a while, letting fall tears I knew she was angry even existed. Weeping away a convoluted mess of fury and hurt that she'd prefer punching or shooting out. Something that made sense to her. Something she could do instead of feel. But slowly, her shaking ceased. Her tears stopped falling, and she grew quiet. Quiet but for slightly shaky breaths.
"I'm still mad at you."
I gave a half smile. She was back.
Arcee pulled away from me, and I let her. She returned to her previous position, wiping her optics. She kept her head down and turned away, as if ashamed. "I hate this."
I did, too.
"I'm not some fragging piece of slag stupid femmling who cries because a mechling doesn't return her comms."
"No one would ever say that about you."
"They'd think it."
"They wouldn't do that, either."
She wiped her optics again, growled when they came back wet. "Then what would you call this?"
"Hitting your limit."
"I'd call it pathetic. I'm pathetic."
"That's not how I see you."
She glared. "What do you see me as, then? Someone you get to ignore whenever you want?"
"No. I see a person too strong for her own good. Who's become so used to dealing with every problem on her own, she thinks herself weak for needing help one time."
The glare intensified. "I didn't ask for your help."
"After everything that just happened, you're still sitting here. Close to asking as you'll get right now."
With that, the glare faded. The wall cracked. In her optics, I saw the full extent of her pain. The full weight of what she was feeling. She turned her helm away, swiping a digit under an eye before tears fell again. "I'm not sure I like it when you don't ignore what you see."
"I wasn't here when I should have been," I said. "I didn't wait to talk to you when I should have—"
"Damn right you didn't."
"—but I'm here now. And I regret what I did. Deeply. I know it was wrong. I know it hurt you. So blame me. Yell at me. Rage all you want. I don't care. Because now, all I want to is be here for you. To help you in whatever way I can. Especially when I'm the problem."
She sighed, slowly and deeply. "You're not the only one with problems, Shadow'."
"Didn't say I was. Just so happens I'm to blame for a lot of ours. Just didn't know it."
She frowned and focused on me. Studied me with an intense scrutiny that easily could have been mistaken as suspicion. Only knowing her like I did allowed me to identify it as worry. "You saw something in your Animus."
A struggle. A shot. A cry. A whispered reassurance.
I killed her.
"I did," I said. "Lots of things. Some of them shed a lot of light on why I'm… Difficult."
"Tell me about them."
"Arcee, I think you need a moment's rest from everyone else's problems."
"You're not everyone else, Shadow'. Your problems are my problems. And I'm not just asking about things related to you."
I got the message. I debated with myself for a moment. Found I couldn't justify keeping it from her when it involved her sisters. I nodded. "Alright."
I told her; I told her everything. I told her about my Animus. About Elita and Chromia. About the room and the cage. The voices that tried to warn me.
The Truth I'd been keeping from myself.
She didn't say a word the whole time. Not when I talked about my mother. About the Thirteen. Not when I talked about how Cold killed her sisters. Nothing. She just stared at me, motionless and unblinking. Soaking in every word I said.
When I was done, she looked to the floor, her face contemplative. She went quiet, and so did I. It started comfortably but grew tense on my end. The longer I sat still, the more keenly aware I became that this femme who meant so much to me had lost even more because of me. Because of who and what I was. Because I was special.
I didn't want to be.
I just wanted that house. That future with her.
Finally, Arcee cleared her throat. "So my sisters…"
"Yeah."
"That's, uh…"
"If I could have helped them… Could have stopped it..."
"I know."
Arcee took a sharp breath, her optics growing less expressive. Her walls being put in place. "How are you after all that?"
"I should be the one asking you that."
"I'm fine."
I stared. Waited.
"Okay. I'm a mess. I don't know what to do. What to say. How to say it. I'm lost. I'm here, feeling every emotion at once, and all I can think about is how scared I am—for Ironhide, for you. For me. I don't understand why this keeps happening to us. Why we aren't allowed to live normally."
The raw pain in her voice made my chest stir. But there was something else there, too. A rage not directed at me, at us, our problems—but above. At something larger. More important.
Less mortal.
"You talk like we're being tortured," I said.
"Different torture. Different pains. Everything we rely on fails. Everyone we depend on cracks and breaks. Every plan to do better falls apart."
She wasn't talking about everyone else, was she?
"And no matter what we do," she went on, voice increasingly angry and bitter. "We always end up at the same place: hurt, pushed apart, given expectations. Told to do some grand thing none of us know about or understand."
What is Duty to one who Ignores it…?
My chest stirred again, but not from empathy. "You okay?"
"What gives them the right to treat us like toys?"
"Arcee…?"
She growled, audibly, and looked away, her shaking growing worse. Her frame was tense. Coiled. Ready to snap. A silent fury, fighting to escape. "It's nothing."
"It certainly doesn't seem it."
"I'm fine." She ground the words out through clenched denta. Spat them with a shocking venom I didn't grasp.
Unconsciously, I tapped into that strange Sight. Makin air to breathe life. Every surface to pop in extreme, breathtaking amplifications of color that was alive.
The color that surrounded Arcee was dark. Not black, but not light, either. It was ruby and a deep violet—the Hues of Rage and Suffering; and intertwined with them was a deep grey—the Hue of Indifference.
I didn't know how I knew that.
The Sight faded. Colors dulled. The emotions I saw so clearly in her a moment ago became harder to decipher. "Something's bothering you a lot, isn't it?"
She didn't answer.
"Of almost anyone, I'm in the least position to judge. You can talk to me."
"I don't want to," she snapped, voice low and threatening, her optics fiery and daring.
I sat up straighter, leaned a little away from her level.
Her face fell. "Sorry. I—I didn't…"
"It's okay."
"No it isn't."
"It is in m—"
"It isn't."
This time, I didn't lean back. Didn't retreat. I stared at her. Met her conflicted rage with my calm worry. "Why are you so angry?"
"Have you seen what's happened to us lately?"
"That's not it. Not directly. There's something else."
Her optics darkened. "Leave it."
"You can't blame me for not wanting to."
"I said leave it."
This wasn't working. She didn't want to budge. Didn't want to talk. Even now, I could see her frame tensing again. Readying for a fight.
I nodded. "Okay."
She relaxed. Slightly. "It's not you."
That was a Lie. "I'm just worried."
"I know. I just—" Arcee sighed, deep and loud, and rested her helm in her palms for a long moment. When she lifted her helm again, her face was purposefully vacant. Her walls in place. "I need to hit something." She stood up, but instead of going to the elevator, she remained in place. Frame language anxious. "You wanna spar?"
"Want to. Can't. Took over bridge duty."
She winced. "My shift."
"We had a lot going on at the time."
"I didn't mean for you to take it."
"It's fine."
She hesitated. "Can you keep covering for me?"
"Whatever you need."
"Thank you."
She moved away as I stood up myself, but before I could make my way to the workstation, she turned back. "I love you."
"I love you, too."
"I mean it." Her optics were open. Sincere. As vulnerable as they had been when all I'd done was hold her. "I'm not saying it just to say it. Or make up for how I can't sort out my own helm. I. Love. You."
My spark lifted, and the day got a little brighter. "And I always mean it. Go work out. I'll be here when you get back."
A corner of her mouth upturned in a smile. "Thank you."
A notification from the workstation drew my optics for a second. "But remember something for me," I said, taking care of the alert and letting Ratchet knew I was on duty again. "You're surrounded by people who care about you. Love you. You don't need to sort out your helm—
I turned back, but she was already gone.
"... Alone."
Shepherd returned to a Cage in utter pandemonium.
No one was still, and no one was silent. The air was filled with demands by superiors to get information and return reports from subordinates who delivered the requests. Every screen Shepherd passed was taken up by something different. Sat feeds. Intercepted transmissions in a dozen or more languages. Technical information above his head.
He approached the back office, where Colonel Willems waited. He was a small man with substantial expectations of himself and those under his command, but fair when appropriate. The Cage was usually his when Shepherd wasn't here. "Update."
"More bombs just went off," the Colonel said, his voice calmer than the look Shepherd saw in his eyes.
"How many?"
"Six more bombs like the one we just saw. They were all over the South Atlantic and East South Central Districts. All went off within a minute of the Kentucky blast."
Shepherd cursed. "Casualties?"
"Most were isolated; all six combined don't equal that first one."
"Most?"
"One was at a parking garage across from a mall. Twenty-one dead so far. Place is a wreck."
Twenty-one more families he'd want to call when this was over. But he saw the blank look in Willems' eye. The way he couldn't seem to rest his hands, no matter how he placed them. "What else?"
The Colonel hesitated. Worked his jaw as if fighting the urge to swallow. "Those blasts are the only good news."
"How bad?"
"Worse than we could have thought," Willems said. "We've got confirmed reports of fireballs in the sky."
Shepherd's blood went cold. "Don't tell me…"
"Multiple civilian flights. Early indicators say they all went off within seconds of those car bombs."
He cursed again. Louder. More furiously. It resounded throughout the room. A roar that temporarily drowned out all other noise within the Cage just outside. He clenched his hands to fists, letting himself feel the rage he kept back.
He was going to kill someone for this. Many someones. Every last soul responsible for so much death.
"How many?" He managed to grind out.
"Flights?"
"Yeah."
Willems handed him a piece of paper. It was a collection of flight information. Seven flights, to be exact. End destinations were Beijing, Delhi, Johannesburg, London, Moscow, Seoul, and Tokyo. His eyes flicked to the airlines, then the departure locations.
All of them had been direct flights from Dulles International.
The Concierge became more and more like the Devil by the minute.
"How the hell did we miss seven aircraft when ordering all US airlines to ground?"
"We didn't," said Willems. "All seven passed re-inspection of their cargo."
"You checked?"
"Twice on your way here. All seven were cleared to continue on to their destinations."
Seven flights. Seven cleared flights. How did he do it? How did the Concierge plant bombs on seven aircraft, destined for seven different cities across the world?
Better question: what did he get out of all this? What use was influence and power when you kept spreading a plague that couldn't be stopped?
Willems' phone rang. "Willems," he said. He listened for a moment, glanced at Shepherd, hit a button, then hung up. "Joint Chiefs tried your office, sir. They don't sound patient enough to wait to let you know."
Shepherd was surprised it took this long for them to call him. "I'll take it here."
As Willems got up from the desk, a Master Sergeant appeared at the doorway. He recognized him as Mike Adamson. Good man. Too blunt to be an Officer. "General, we need you out here."
"I'm needed on that phone too, Master Sergeant," he said, taking the offered phone from Willems. "I'll be with you as soon as—"
"General. We need you out here."
Shepherd turned fully to the E-7. His immediate reaction was to glare and rebuke. Scowl at the Master Sergeant for not only insisting on his own interests, but also having the nerve to interrupt a general mid-sentence.
But one look at the man—at his pale face, his wide eyes—and the rebuke died. No Enlisted man, brash or not, would dare talk to a general like this. Not without being willing to face disciplinary action.
Something else had happened.
Something bad.
He raised the phone to his ear. "Standby." He handed the phone to Willems, who—with surprised, widened eyes—put the line on hold once more.
Shepherd followed Adamson out the door, Willems following him. "What's the situation? More bombs?"
"Wished for something as simple, sir."
Adamson led Shepherd directly to a tech's station. An E-3's, still viewing a feed from one of the quarantine zones. He recognized the location: the USNS Comfort, a Navy hospital ship. It had been in port when the bombs went off, and its facilities were better than most hospitals on land.
"Show them," Adamson said.
The E-3 was visibly shaking as he typed on his keyboard, face paler than even Adamson's. The shaking caused him to miss keys in his command, delaying the process twice. When he finally entered what he intended, he hit enter.
At first, Shepherd wasn't sure what he was supposed to see. He saw what he'd seen from the moment the quarantine zones were built: doctors and scientists in full hazmat gear, doing what they could while keeping their distance; people on the ground, screaming. Observers behind protective glass or plastic barriers.
Then he saw it.
One of the poor souls on the ground—one that had long gone still—twitched. Once, then again.
The camera focused on the now-moving woman. Inside the quarantine zone, someone in hazmat slowly and tentatively, directing the others to the airlock and the bleach bath waiting for them.
What started as a twitch became something more rapid. Violent. The woman's body spasmed, jerking her torso one way, then the other. Her shoulders went with the motions, as if being repeatedly shot by an invisible weapon.
The lone worker in hazmat gear reached her side. They looked down at the woman, then back at the camera. Only their eyes were visible behind their mask, but even from a distance, Shepherd knew the worker was lost. Fearful. They backed up and went for the airlock.
The woman kept spasming. Then she started screaming.
It was a scream so filled with anguish, so desperate and loud and frightened that it seemed inhuman. Something akin not to a horror film, not life.
Shepherd felt a chill creep down his spine.
One of the woman's spasms was so violent it left her turned on her side, toward the observation window. Her screams continued in bursts, with fits with heavy breathing breaking them apart. Her eyes opened, big and brown.
And glowing.
The chill became solid ice.
He struggled to understand what he was looking at. Struggled to comprehend it. For the first time in decades, he was numb. Frozen. Unable to move, think, or speak. But he could also feel the eyes on him. The growing number of gazes sent his way.
He looked up, saw that people were, in fact, looking his way. He saw the same fear in their eyes that he saw in Adamson and the E-3. The same mute horror they could neither voice nor adequately convey.
Finally, he worked up some bravado. He looked to Willems and said with all the authority he could, "Tell the Joint Chiefs I'll call back."
As the last defender fell, the Archer knew something was wrong with the Earth.
It was a subtle tell. A dark shape in the corner of the optic. A fleeting thought, gone before realized. A vague sense of feeling small. Irrelevant. A mote of dust to be brushed away by something else.
Something unfathomable.
He started searching the containers of the Black Site, ripping or slicing them open with knife and fist. He needed to find it. The singular gem in the sea of trash Megatron collected in all his wars and slaughters across three full galaxies and nearly two-score dwarves. More rode on it than Megatron would ever understand. Or care to.
His comm-link beeped as he tore open a container filled to the brim with skulls from an alien race the Decepticons had exterminated. He accepted the comm. on his battlemask's internals. "What do you have?"
"Redshift is progressing on schedule," Orphona said. There was no background noise from her end. An encrypted channel, just between them.
"Expected. What else?"
"The Decepticons have yet to come to a decision."
"Don't tell me you're becoming like the others."
"HERMES is in position," she said, ignoring the insult.
"Better." He ripped open another container, spraying the floor with trinkets taken from planets Megatron had personally conquered. "What's it saying?"
"Unfortunately, everything we didn't want to see."
He wasn't surprised, but he still cursed. Everything was changing outside of his will. Using his plans to complicate already-delicate situations in the Autobots, humanity, the Xel'Tor. Now this.
Funny how the universe liked to mess with him.
The latest container contained large bars of rare, valuable minerals. He left them where they lay. "How far along?"
"Core temperatures have risen three point six-one percent above normal," she said. "Real-time data from HERMES indicates it will reach five percent within the breem."
"Effects at the surface?"
"None, even to our sensors."
A rapid heat increase at Earth's core, yet a greater chill beneath the surface. It was happening. By Primus, it was happening. And it was happening too fast. Far too fast. "KHIONE is a go."
"It will be my next task, sir."
"Keep me updated."
He ended the channel, focusing entirely on his search. Far from the first time, he wished Megatron had kept track of what he stored in these trophy rooms. One hacked system, one search through a database, and all of this could have been over. No raids needed. No total destruction of Decepticon Black Sites.
No time wasted on a cycle like this, when time was a resource in itself.
He searched the rest of the Black Site. Didn't find it. He made his way to the central computer, as he had with each Black Site.
With Protocol Red in effect, the terminal was in lockdown. It was a tricky process to unlock it, and took more time than he should have spent on it; a dozen text-based messages marked URGENT appeared in his HUD while he worked. But in time he gained access, started up the sequence, pre—
"Tick-tock, Jetfire. Tick-tock."
The world stopped.
He didn't move. Didn't cycle air. But his mind raced. Went through all he knew about what was happening. What was coming. What it would be like.
Nothing matched this.
"Tick-tock…"
Again, he heard the haunting voice, and again, it shook him.
He turned to the door behind him, where the words came from. He gripped his bow tightly, its string quietly humming to life. Then he waited. Listened.
"She can never know about Etheria."
The voice was at his receptor. Repeating his own words, spoken before all of this started.
He spun, his long experience with the dark places of the universe preventing him from doing more. There was no one there, but he saw the faint line of black on the floor, where there should have been grey. He saw the way the lights outside slowly dimmed as if smothered. He felt the way the air chilled.
He launched the self-destruct sequence. "Bridge on my location. Now."
Outside, the lights faded, then died at last. The black spot became a mist. A black, light-devouring haze that spread faster than it should. Within it, a faint hue of deep purple slithered to life. The air became void of warmth.
"She can never know about Etheria."
The shiver of his spine told him he was being watched.
He turned again, and there—in the darkness—a form stood. A towering, menacing figure of Darkness. Another, identical figured joined it. Then another. And another. In a blink of an optic, they had surrounded the room.
"SHE CAN NEVER KNOW ABOUT ETHERIA."
The Archer—for all his experience, all his knowledge, all that he'd seen in his long, long life—felt his spark stop.
The voice that spoke was new. Not the high, haunting tone. But something far more terrifying. Bass, deep—deeper than anything mortal. He felt it shake the floor. The walls. The air.
This shouldn't be possible.
The space bridge appeared next to him, dimmer than it should have been. He entered it, but before he did, he heard that voice again. Heard it whisper in his receptor.
Felt it touch his very soul.
"Release me…"
In case that wasn't obvious enough: stuff's going down right now.
Bad stuff.
I admit, this one was not as fun to write as I anticipated. Part of that comes from me underestimating how much set up I still needed to do; the other comes from a now-deleted scene that was giving me grief. I'm not upset I cut the scene (it wasn't working for this chapter), but dealing with that and my sloth-like creative process hasn't brought me much joy of late. I will be fixing that.
Because this time, I'm quite confident the next update is going to be a blast.
The credit song for this chapter is "Kings & Creatures - Aberration" This track begins with a slowly. A deep pitch that inspires images of menace. That pitch builds and builds, until it explodes in a long solo of drums. The feel it generates is one of impending doom. It fits very well with the final scene of this chapter.
Thank you for reading. If you liked what you read, please share or suggest it to a friend. And if you really liked it, leave a comment. They are the lifeblood of all writers, and it takes just a few seconds to leave.
See you soon.