Convergence
Chapter 4
The supposed Agent Daltry mingled with the bar crowd with an ease that spoke of years of practice.
Barricade's Holoform had claimed a seat near the back corner, bottle of beer sitting untouched in front of him as he observed his target. Occasionally he would pretend to take a sip for the sake of blending in, but it wasn't like he could actually ingest anything in this form. The bottle was too dark for other patrons to be able to tell the difference.
He watched the human work the room, keeping a close visual tab while he was busy hacking into the nearest wifi, hoping he could dig up some useful information. He ran a broad search of the man's face, hoping they could get a better idea of who him and his partner actually were. But human faces could be so alike, so getting a true match would no doubt take time.
This roadtrip of theirs was little more than a short reprieve anyway. Barricade's thoughts drifted back to his recent mission, his first, where the Autobots actually came and asked their resident defector for help. They had tracked down the human woman to the Decepticons current base of operations, and had retrieved her while she was still alive, but he knew his old comrads had grabbed her for a reason and they were sure to try again.
Starscream was as stubborn as he was volitile, and Barricade doubted he would just let her slip from his grasp so easily.
It was one of the only reasons they were allowed this little foray unescorted. Consensus all agreed that the Decepticons would all have their eyes elsewhere, but that didn't mean that they couldn't take precautions, and that he was granted access to his primary weapons was proof of that. He was sure more that one Autobot was less than thrilled when that order came down the ladder. Unfortunately other rules of his probation were still in effect, absolutely no permanant damage was to be done to a human under any circumstance, and less than permanent damage was only deemed acceptable if his charge was in danger and there were no other options.
If he was to kill a human intentionally, under any circumstance, he would once more find himself locked up in the lowest levels of the Autobot base with no weapons and no liberties, and Jodi would be promptly relieved from his protection.
Permanently.
Barricade refused to let that happen.
So if reporting in a couple of fake federal agents would help keep him in good graces with the Human-Autobot alliance, then so be it.
Though if he had anything to actually report remained to be seen.
So far the most sinister thing he had witnessed from Daltry was shameless flirting with the one female bartender, and a couple rounds of pool where he scammed a rather large bearded man out of a short stack of bills. It irritated Barricade that only one of the imposters was here, but he reasoned that since this one was in possession of the car, the other couldn't be too far.
He hoped he could wrap up this little surveillance trip soon, wanting nothing more than to retrieve Jodi and leave this town in his rearview mirror. It was getting difficult to keep his physical body still, having to constantly keep himself from shifting on his shocks. Having his Holoform activated helped by giving him a bit of an outlet, but it was minimal at best.
Over the last thirty minutes he had developed a small itch in the far back of his processor. At first it had been small and easily ignored, but it remained insistant, growing by a fraction with every passing minute until it was impossible to tune out. It made him restless and irritable in a way he hadn't been since before his repairs, reminding him closely of those rare surges of instinct that sometimes happened in the middle of battle, the ones that urged you to move, or warned of danger that nanosecond before your sensors read anything.
It was similar to that, but not, and the unfamilar sensation was driving him insane.
A welcome distraction came when he got a single hit from his search, and he quickly pulled the article up on his HUD.
It was a fairly recent news article from St. Louis regarding a string of murdered women, and how the prime suspect was was found dead in the home of the one woman who had escaped him. Near the bottom was a mugshot of Barricade's false agent, listing him as the deceased murderer as well as a name.
Dean Winchester.
Who apparently had a pretty hefty rap sheet even before graduating to murderer.
Well, that was more than enough for Barricade.
Abruptly he rose from his seat, weaving through the small bar crowd and into the dingy little restroom, letting his Holoform dissolve as soon as he knew he was alone.
Barricade took a full scan of Dean Winchester's big black car for easy tracking later before peeling out of the parking lot, tires squealing.
As soon as he was back on the main road he paged Jodi's comm to update her of the situation and to tell her to start packing up.
There was no answer.
That driving itch in the back of his processor slammed back into the forefront, now flavored with a hint of fear and a hefty dose of stress.
He pushed it back viciously, wondering if he should pay Ratchet a visit upon their return. This was far from normal, even if it didn't exactly feel wrong, and he was worried something was glitching in his systems.
Jodi was fine. Odds are, despite the order of keeping her comm unit close, if the girl decided to take a shower she most likely set the it by the sink. There was a good chance she didn't even hear it. Aggravating as it was, it was well within the realms of Jodi's normal behavior.
As often as Barricade and Prowl agreed that Jodi was far from battle ready, by their standards, she had shown herself capable time and again. The girl was scrappy and resourceful. Impulsive under pressure, but her instincts were usually sound, and her reaction time had even impressed that lanky fight choreographer.
Jodi was fine.
All that conviction died as he rolled into the motel parking lot to find the door to their room ajar, the interior dark and all too quiet.
His spark froze in it's casing.
He stifled to urge to transform then and there to tear the place apart, leaving him to bury his fear with rage of the likes he hadn't felt since his first (and only) meeting with David Hunter. If he found Jodi injured, or worse, Primus help whoever was responsible.
His mind went back to his little surveillance mission, and was reminded that Winchester's partner was suspitiously absent.
As soon as he reeled in his temper enough to think properly he reactivated his Holoform and made a show of approaching the open door, even as his sensors swept the vicinity for signs of life. The results weren't comforting.
"Jodi?" he called, but there was no answer. His avatar was so intune with his physical body that his limbs began shaking, but from rage or fear, it was hard to tell. The room was pitch black, not even the bathroom light was left on, which in itself was odd. Riley was always complaining about her leaving the light on. He found Jodi's comm where it lay forgotten on the nightstand, the little screen displaying one missed call, a small photo of his Holoform next to the blinking message. He picked it up, expression blank.
It didn't take long for Barricade to determine that the room was empty.
With monumental effort he forced himself to focus.
Smothering the steadily growing fear, he accessed the program that worked with most cybertronian-based trackers, and accessed Jodi's specifically. His vents cycled in a deep sigh of relief as the tracker was still listed as online, the program showing a steady (if rapid) heartbeat. Ratchet had customized Jodi's tracker to work in tandem with the implants embedded in the girl's spine. If the girl was to flatline, or be further than fifty meters from the tracker itself the signal would be flagged and an alert would be sent directly to Ratchet, and he suspected Prowl as well.
Needless to say, he was thankful that not only was his charge alive, but he also didn't have a posse of Autobots gearing up to charge in for the rescue. He would rather handle this his way than having some straight-laced slagger dictating that he follow some golden moral code. Especially with Jodi missing.
He would be more reassured if the GPS on the damn tracker was working properly. The signal was getting some sort of interfearance, and so wasn't pinpointing her location. But it was placing her somewhere within a ten mile radius. Wherever she was, it couldn't be too far.
Then again, with how dense the surrounding woods were "not too far" could be a drastic understatement.
Keeping the steady rythym of Jodi's pulse as background noise, he turned his attention back to the entry way, frowning when spotted a small hole in the door. It was then he settled in full investigation mode, using deep scans and carefuly examined visual to search for clues. It was hard to take in each new bit of information without his circuits sizzling.
The hole was from a small caliber firearm, the bullet had pierced through the cheap wood of the door to lodge itself deep within the wall. There was an unopened bag of chips in the middle of the room that clearly hadn't been there when he left, the snack had been either tossed or dropped. A lower section of the doorframe was freshly scraped and chipped, suggesting a struggle. There was a few drops of blood on the carpet and another crimson smudge on the pavement a bit down the walkway. Near the smudge were three empty 9 mm shell casings and a small crumpled set of papers stapled together. Each page was a different news article of the missing humans, random parts highlighted in yellow.
He was beginning to get a vauge picture of what happened, even if he couldn't properly put the puzzle pieces together. There had been an ambush of some sort as Jodi had entered the room, and Primus, why couldn't that girl stay put for once in her life? At least two others had been present, whoever had grabbed her and whoever had the gun. Three shots fired, two of which had found their target.
For the first time, Barricade wished for more sensitive sensors when it came to biological matter. All he was able to discern from the blood was that it was fairly recent and human on both accounts, but he couldn't say if any of it belonged to Jodi.
The blood better not have come from Jodi. He had seen enough of it to last him the rest of his existance.
Jodi's back was laid open in three diagonal lines, displaying layers of muscle and tissue. Sand had packed deep into the wounds, and Barricade could see something white under the sea of red. Blood was everywhere.
He shook himself forcibly from the memory, concentrating on the constant rythym of Jodi's heartbeat, still relaying to him through the tracking system. The tempo had changed, speeding up and accelerating even as he took notice.
That nagging itch became a burn, then an inferno, suddenly invasive and consuming. Cold terror followed on it's heels, overriding any and all rational thought, and then a sharp pain lanced across the width of his arm, the sensation echoed in triplicate in his holoform. The sheer force of it nearly sent his hologhraphic emitter on the fritz, his avatar flickering with static as it fought to stablize. Jodi's comm unit clattered when it fell, tumbling right through him to skitter across the ground, the stapled stack of papers fluttering after it.
Scrap talking to Ratchet, Barricade already knew what this was. The cold terror and the pain, though intense and sharp, were obviously not his own. Barricade had delt with this constantly as a youngling, and then less when he got older and he and Prowl got more proficient at minimizing the sensations they would broadcast to the other. The more intense the emotion, the more difficult it was to keep under wraps.
He knew what this was, just as surely as he didn't know how the slag he was feeling it.
Because the link it should have been coming though had been long broken, brutaly severed the day Barricade put a knife in his twin's back. He had personally made sure the edges of that link were so frayed that it would be impossible to ever truly reconnect at that level. His and Prowl's relationship was on the mend, but they would never recover what they lost.
But this wasn't Prowl.
This was new, and impossible, but there was no doubt as to who was on the other end of the connection. There was no one else in the universe he lowered his guard to.
His processor was still reeling from his realization and all it's vast implications when there was a slam of a car door and the sharp clack of a human firearm being primed. The voice that followed was low and dangerous and full of it's own barely contained fury. "Where the fuck is my brother you son of a bitch?"
Sammy may have been the one who managed a full ride to Stanford, but Dean was far from stupid. Plus he was more observant than he was given credit for. By the time he ordered his second round from the busty brunette behind the bar he realized he was being watched.
It wasn't obvious, but once he had that tell-tale prickle run up the back of his neck, he subtly scouted the room to see what had his instincts on edge. It didn't take him long to pick out the guy sitting near the back of the bar, posture a tad too predatory to pull off the pretense of being a regular that was minding his own business, drinking a beer. Plus, even though he wasn't openly staring, his focus was almost exclusively on Dean.
He played it cool, going about his usual bar routine even as he sized up his new-found stalker, just in case the guy was looking for a fight. It wouldn't be the first time someone tried to jump him. It was always fun when he proved he wasn't easy pickings.
The man was tall, probably Dean's height, or close to it, his build broad and solid. Realizing he looked familiar, Dean suddenly remembered seeing the guy when he and Sammy were getting dinner. Him and some kid leaving the diner together, piling into the shiny new mustang that had been parked next to his baby. He had watched the girl like a hawk even as Sam yakked his ear off, making sure she didn't scratch his car with the door as they left.
During his game of pool he learned that the the man wasn't local. His opponent had lived in the area all his life and had never seen him before. If he was to be believed, the most recent addition this town had seen (besides the few kids born out here) were some crazy recluse and his son some twenty years ago.
Dean debated calling Sam, but opted to wait and see how the evening panned out. No point in making a big deal out it until there was something to worry about.
It wasn't too terribly long after his pool game when his stalker abruptly stiffened and then launched himself from his seat to book it to the bathroom. Dean waited about a minute before trailing him at a sedate pace, subtly checking for his knife and his sidearm before pushing the swinging door open.
And blinked in confusion at the empty room. The stalls were all open and clearly vacant and there was no window.
Tires squealed outside, signaling that someone was leaving in a hurry.
Son of a bitch, Sam might be right about there being a hunt here after all.
Dean bolted to the parking lot just in time to see the mustang dissappear around the bend.
Distantly, Dean was thankful he was still in the fed monkey suit, because in the next breath he was at his car, pulling out his sawed off from the trunk and throwing it in the passenger seat. As soon as the impala's engine roared to life he hit the road, giving chase. Small as the town was, the mustang had to pass by the motel in the direction his quarry dissappeared to.
He speed-dialed Sam on the first straightaway, fingers drumming impatiently on the steering wheel as it rang. "C'mon Sammy . . . "
It went to voicemail.
"Shit!" He tossed the phone next to him and put his foot to the floorboard.
The motel had been completely empty when they had checked in just a few days ago, the run down building recieving business due to lack of options more than anything else. Now there was a single car sitting in the lot, idling several doors down from their room, which looked as dark and vacant as the rest of the building. Dean quickly killer the lights on his baby as slowly rolled into the lot. In front of the familiar mustang was his stalker from the bar, back to him as he flipped through a packet of papers.
And then the image flickered, distorted and staticy, and staggered like he had been struck by a two by four. The papers and whatever else he had been holding fell to the pavement.
Seeing red, Dean snatched up his sawed off, pleased that it was already loaded with rock salt rounds. He had no problems blasting Casper in the face.
The door slammed behind him, the rough slide of the shotgun satisfying as he cocked it and took aim at tall dark and deceased. "Where the fuck is my brother you son of a bitch?"
He turned, posture back to that predator intesity from the bar as he considered Dean with bright crimson irises. Dean's never encountered a red-eyed ghost before, and quickly ran through other monsters that fit the bill without possesion, and drew a blank.
"Brother . . ." The chuckle was dark and sarcastic and almost to himself. "The other one was the brother. I should have known." Those bright eyes flicked towards his gun and then away dismissively. "Put your toy down fleshbag, it won't kill me."
"No? Doesn't mean it won't hurt," Dean bit back and pulled the trigger.
Dean's premature grin faltered instantly. Instead of dispersing like a proper ghost filled with a full shell's worth of rock salt, it did nothing. Not a flinch, a twitch, nothing! Whatever he was, he picked up a particle of salt that clung to his jacket and eyed it curiously before grinding it between his fingers, leting the resulting powder drift away. "Salt? I have no time for you or your brother, human." Those burning eyes turned back to him, irritation clearly growing. "Now. Out of my way."
Author's Note: Good going Dean, shoot first and ask questions later. Considering that I decided to throw these two hot-heads into the fire together, this chapter gave me very little trouble. Here's hoping the next chapter is just as easy.
ALSO! Have questions regarding the story or Wayward Ones as a whole? Feel free to PM me here or hit me up on Tumblr (sharysisnhmoonshadow). Happy reading everyone! -Shadow