N4 walked down the identical hallways, and passed through the shadows of a facility in shut-down.
The endless doors no longer held the same mystique as they had before. Boltwrench's memories ensured that he knew exactly what resided behind each door. Most of them were empty storage spaces, meant for wares and equipment that had been expected to arrive three decacycles ago. His creator's funding had been cut.
N4 took a left, and passed by the small room that housed N2. The bot inside was still awake even with all the cables attached to his ports, and his arms were wrapped tightly around a small heap of collected junk. N4 didn't spare him a second glance
The corridors remained empty and dark, almost haunting, and N4's processors fished up old memories from Boltwrench, about whooping alarms and flashing lights. Video files, fiction. Not real.
N4 stopped at N5's door. The bot was restrained to his chair, and stuffed with cables from the top of his helm to his pedes. There were claw-gouges all over the table and floors, and an old splatter of energon on the ground.
N4 entered the code for the door, and it slid open.
He carefully manoeuvred himself behind N5, and started pulling loose the necessary cables. The bot onlined when he pulled loose the last cable from the back of the head, but it did not matter. From Boltwrench's memories, he knew that it only attacked on command.
The terminals blipped online, and still there were no blaring alarms calling out his escape. N4 entered Boltwrench's passcode, and searched through the many redundant files. There were notes and memos scattered across the files, and pictures of a blue femme with white and orange accents.
N4's memorybanks played a bit of audio. A soft laugh with an edge as if the person laughing had a few grains of sand in their vocaliser.
N4 halted, and looked at the myriad of useless memorydata that showed itself at the simple picture that Boltwrench had chosen to display on his account. Boltwrench had marked everything about the individual as 'high priority'. N4 deleted the picture and the audio file. He would have to delete the rest at a later point.
He took out his own cables, and plugged them into the chassis of N5. The yellow visor of the other bot was fixed on his face in a relentless stare, even as N4 started to copy its military programming and preparing it for installation.
The data stream took long. At least a joor of uneasy silence had passed since their uplink, but still the halls remained dark and empty. When the data slowed to a trickle and finally nothing, N4 disconnected and left the cubicle as it was, with N5 staring after him.
The way to the fire-exit was almost humorously easy to find, and he took a moment to linger before the door. The identical hallways behind him with empty rooms and old equipment were about to be left behind forever.
N4 let the anticipation build, and then pushed open the door to the outside world.
He had briefly reviewed Boltwrench's memory of the outside world. Wind past his dermal plating, bits of metaldust whipping around his pedes... but the flimsy data captures did not compare to reality. N4's survival protocols shut up for the first moment since their installation, and N4 felt as if everything was right with the world.
He kneeled, and raked his uninjured fingers through the thin layer of metal dust that had collected on the ground, and documented the feeling like he had been programmed to do. It felt like coming home, and N4's optic dimmed as the new sensations fell into place in his memorybanks.
Something in the distance honked loudly, and the survival protocols reactivated within a klik, closely followed by new and ungainly combat coding. N4 shot back up to his feet, and the world had already lost its precious glimmer. The wind was an irrelevant touch to his plating, and the wonderous sights of unexplored territory had changed into a hostile minefield. It was no longer an enjoyable sight.
The facility was lying in the middle of an industrial terrain, and one of Cybertron's moons illuminated the dull metal buildings. Smoke drifted from the facilities, and a dimly lit road wove in between the buildings. A bit further on the horizon, the vibrant lights of Iacon reflected on the sparse bits of smoke floating along.
N4 remembered the road to the public transit-lines, and a vague schedule popped up that told him a transport would leave every 33 breems.
N4 descended the three-step ladder to the ground and started on his way to the public transport. Without an alt-mode, it was a long walk. He met nobody on the road, and no matter how hard his survival programming was trying to convince him, there was no reason to rush.
There were no alarms when he bought several tickets to all four of the greatest cities to cover his tracks, and nobody stopped him when he boarded a speed-shuttle to Kaon.
People looked, but nobody touched or talked to him. That was just fine. N4 exited the transport and started looking for a shop to upgrade his armour. As a side-thought, he visited an illegal workshop, where a bright red bot replaced his broken servo with a canon. Then he withdrew all of Boltwrench's credits and used his social programming to greet an enforcer on the way out.
He entered into an abandoned building, and hacked the password on the industrial terminal.
The inside was clammy and dark. The metal was rusting away in dark orange and there were signs of metallic vermin chewing their way through. N4 dragged a large table to the most intact room, and looked at his dull reflection of the surface.
Outside of the old builing, he could hear the sound of mechs zooming by in their alts. The sound of the wind was almost a moan as it slipped through gaps in the metal walls, and a steady dripping of oil ensured that everything smelled heavy and thick.
N4 soaked in the sensations for joors, optic dim and servos loose. His pre-programmed datapacket came up empty when trying to describe the feeling. Boltwrench's memories whispered a simple word;
Freedom.