Instability

by Steelfeathers

Post-ROTF. On board the air craft carrier headed back to Diego Garcia, Sam has a slight mental breakdown.

13. The Gathering Storm: Part 1

'She's going to be okay. She's going to be okay.'

Powerful headlamps flashing from stone walls, parting the curtain of blackness.

'Nothing to worry about. We'll find her, kick some Decepticon butt, and everything will be okay.'

The roar of an alien engine beneath him, rumbling through his chest, his arms, like some great beast shaking the bars of its cage. Plunging forward down the unlit tunnel, speedometer cresting 90mph. Walls flying past, appearing from the darkness before them and vanishing again into the pall over his shoulder.

'Everything's going to be okay.'

Hands griping the handlebars until the tendons stood out on his forearms. Teeth clenched, eyes held wide open (--don't forget to breathe--).

'It'll be okay.'

Sam only wished the mental reassurance sounded more forceful and less like the trembling plea of a tiny child. But at the moment, he felt about as helpless as a little kid-- once more the world had begun to crumble beneath him, careening out of control, and there was nothing he could do to stop it. He wasn't Superman or God or Optimus Prime-- he couldn't leap over a building, bend a few steel bars, stop a bullet or two with his chest, and set things back the way they were. He couldn't reverse time and stop Mikaela's phone from being crunched like a tin can, couldn't prevent whatever had happened from happening again; he couldn't snap his fingers and teleport them to her side (where was Jetfire when you needed him?). He was only Sam. Just human, vulnerable, easily-squishable, terrified Sam armed only with a gun and a spindly metal engineer that would probably be as much use in a fight as a newborn chiwawa against a pit bull. So he was stuck doing things the superpower-less way.

The logical part of his mind assured the rest of him that it had taken less than thirty seconds for Wheeljack to tear from the room at something approaching mach 3, skid around a few corners, and dive down into the abandoned sea floor tunnel. That same part was also confident that they had only been traveling down said tunnel for about eleven seconds (--one-one-thousand, two-one-thousand, three-one-thousand--). But every atom of his being, from the tips of his toes to the ends of his hair, screamed that even one second more-- even a fraction of a second more-- was far too long. After all, it would only take an instant for a robotic foot to crush her skull, or for a powerful blow to snap her in half, or a blast from a cannon to dissolve her broken body into red mist and scraps of clothing.

"Your heart rate is approaching 112 beats per minute, Sam. You need to relax." Wheeljack's voice whispered from the helmet. A small diagram appeared in the corner of the visor to accompany the words, showing an eerily detailed rendering of his own heart palpitating far faster than he would have thought possible. Funny, it didn't feel like it was racing that fast.

'She's going to be okay. She has to be. She WILL be.'

"We humans really aren't so good at making ourselves relax," he ground out.

Walls blurring past, glowing witch-fire green through the night vision setting of the visor.

(--four-one-thousand, five-one-thousand--)

How long is this stupid tunnel?!

The floating heart continued to pound for a moment in the lower left-hand corner of his vision, then abruptly vanished with a small click of disapproval. Luckily Wheeljack didn't try to convince him otherwise with Rachet-speak mumbo-jumbo, or else soothe him with meaningless platitudes.

"The exit is approximately 532 yards and closing from our current position, although it has been bricked over to discourage human entrance from the other side."

Sam held a groan in check, teeth clicking together in agitation. An exit that was no longer an exit meant that they would have to stop and break down the cemented wall before they could get out of the tunnel. How long would it take for him to dismount? How long would it take Wheeljack to pull down the mortared bricks-- two minutes? Five? (--no time!--)

"Great. I should have brought a shovel."

Rather than reply, Wheeljack snatched control of the HUD display on the visor, zooming in on the brilliant green wall rapidly approaching them at the end of the tunnel. Dozens of alien programs opened and began to scroll through reems of data, analyzing the obstruction.

"If my readings are correct, you should have no need of a shovel. A single ultra-sonic emission for a duration of .53 seconds should suffice."

"'Ultra-sonic emission'? What-- oh shit!"

The engine between his legs gave a dark, dangerous snarl, and the white motorcycle leapt forward as though it had not already been traveling close to 100mph. The wall hurtled towards them, rapidly expanding to fill his field of vision.

"Wheeljack! Are you trying to kill us?!"

"Quite the opposite."

The sides of the helmet abruptly seemed to shrink inwards, foamy material pressing against then stopping his ears. A shiver danced up his spine from his lower back to the crown of his head at the contact and the sudden absence of sound. He hadn't realized how mind-numbingly loud Wheeljack's engine was until he could no longer hear it-- not even a whisper. His chest rose and fell as he breathed, but he couldn't hear the air whistling past his lips. When he tried to call the alien's name, he couldn't be sure that his vocal cords were even working, despite the fact that he felt his lips move.

Then suddenly, radiating outwards from the body of the motorcycle, came a thrumming pulsation. More vibration than sound, it resonated through his bones, standing his hair on end. If his ears hadn't been sealed tighter than a new pickle jar, the force of it alone probably would have punctured his ears drums. It started a low, grumbling bass, then swiftly ascended up the scale to a fluttering twitter rapid enough to pace a hummingbird's wings. A faint trickle of sound reminiscent of a dog whistle leaked past his alien-made ear plugs. Ouch.

The high-pitch squeal only lasted half a second; the green rectangle that marked the outer wall-- hurtling towards them like a truck, so close that if Wheeljack had boasted another coat of paint they would have collided-- shattered like glass. A hail of brick chunks the size of golf balls broke around them as they barreled through the crumbling wall, bouncing harmlessly from Wheeljack's armor and less harmlessly (OW!) from his own back. Once glanced off the helmet with a loud ping!, though the blow itself felt as light as someone flicking their finger against the white paint.

The green haze filling the visor immediately cleared as they emerged into the startlingly bright morning. Wheeljack must have retracted the foamy ear plugs while he was distracted with contemplating the hurtling wall pieces (he destroyed a three-foot-thick wall using only sound?) because the tire-squealing, horn-honking, zooming-car sounds of a busy highway suddenly broke over him like rip tide, dragging him into the chaotic world that existed beyond the tunnel.

Sam gave an inarticulate cry of alarm. He threw up a hand as if to ward off the sudden crush of sound and motion-- black asphalt, gray concrete, rushing blurs of cars and trucks-- buffeted from all sides by the pounding slip-stream given off by the speeding rush hour vehicles.

Just his luck-- saved from becoming a greasey smear on a brick wall only to face an unavoidable destiny as a mangled hood ornament.

It figured that the post-it wielding alien would come bursting from a hidden tunnel at 120mph straight into oncoming traffic.

A red toyota came bearing down on them, its driver distracted by her cellphone. But Wheeljack-- possesed of reflexes to put fly-snatching ninjas to shame-- simply reared up with a squeal of protesting tires and leapt up onto the rusted hood, drove across the roof, and went sailing through the air off the back of the car. While still suspended above the pavement, facing down the grill of a Mac truck tailgating the red toyota, the handlebars twisted in Sam's grip, jerking the bike around in a one-eighty. The back wheel contacted the ground with a jaw-rattling bump-- the front end of the bike swung to face in the same direction as the other cars, engine roaring. But the truck was too close for them to accelerate out of its path.

Before Sam even had the chance to let out an eep of fear (--don't wanna die, don't wanna die!--), the white motorcycle touched down on both wheels, fishtailed, and tipped so far to one side that Sam's jeans scraped the ground. And they went under the Mac truck, dropping back between its wheels, the air thundering around him with a force of a jet engine, the light dimming in the rumbling shadow. While still tilted at an angle that should have reduced them both to road kill, the bike turned, and they slid out from under the mammoth steel monster. Wheeljack righted himself between the lanes, wheels riding the broken yellow lines separating the streams of cars, and accelerated again. The needle rocketed up the dial, sending them flying past the truck and the red toyota (whose driver had dropped her cell phone and stared after them in amazement).

Sam let out his breath, feeling faint (--somebody stop the world, I want off--).

"Okay," he warbled, "I think I've had enough excitement for today."

Only after the fact did he realize that he was trying to squeeze the handlebars into playdough. He ordered his hands to loosen-- they remained locked firmly in place.

"Are you referring to the common recreational pastime of seeking near-death or death-like thrills in order to induce a release of adrenaline?"

Of course the eccentric robot had to sound chipper-- even curious-- about the whole thing, as though they hadn't both avoided a fatal collison by millimeters. Sam shook himself (don't cringe-- those cars are a foot away from hitting you.....okay, cringe), brushing off the question and replying with one of his own.

"What was that? That sound thing-- how did you smash the wall?"

"That was an ultra-sonic emission tailored to the frequency of the mortar between the bricks which, when used at a sufficient decibal level, caused the wall to vibrate apart."

Sam had seen the Autobots do a lot of cool tricks before, but he had never known they had ultra-sonic whatevers up their sleeves.

....wait.

"Is the ultra-sonic doohickey that self-defense weapon of yours?"

"Yes. It is very useful for disabling attackers. If you had heard it without any sort of aural protection, it would have completely destroyed your audio recievers."

"Oh. That sounds...pretty awesome," he replied weakly.

The howling currents of air tore at his jacket, threatening to wrench him from the bike if not for the death grip he kept on the seat with his knees. His own reflection flashed back at him from car windows as they passed, strange and mysterious-- too strong, too confident, his face no more than a dark shadow beneath the angular planes of the gleaming white helmet. He didn't look scared out of his mind with dread; the effects of the adrenaline flowing through his veins like a thick, black ichor-- pounding through his skull, spasming in his muscles-- vanished when viewed through the reflected image.

(--all a lie, all a lie, don't let them see it's only Clark Kent, only powerless Sam with his stolen gun and jacket--)

"I'm delighted that you think so," Wheeljack preened, apparently missing the sarcasm (and the bad pun) in his voice. "The technology itself is rather complex, altougth the concept behind it is really quite simple. First--"

"Stay on topic. We need to find Mikaela, remember?"

Something in Wheeljack's voice changed then-- a concealing sparkle, an affected lightness, dropped away, leaving the utter seriousness Sam had heard when the alien confronted him over Dave's unconcious body.

"Yes, Sam. I do remember. Ever since we exited the tunnel I have been scanning the various radio frequencies of the local police, fire, and emergency services departments for any reports of Decepticon attacks or any reference to a young female of Mikaela's description." Dozens of chattering voices abruptly filled the space around his head-- dozens of separate conversations whose paricipants continued on unaware of the alien eavesdropper. There were a few english words peppered throughout the jumble, but trying to follow what was being said was impossible-- not only were there far too many chattering voices to catch on to any one conversation, but most of what he heard was spoken in a language far too exotic to be encountered in the foreign language department of any high school. "So far I have not been able to find anything that might be of use. We are currently en route to the airport from which Mikaela was scheduled to leave, as that would be the best place to begin our search."

The chaotic tangle of foreign words switched off, leaving only Wheeljack's voice whispering in his ear. Sam's stomach tightened at the implications of his words, both good and bad-- good, in that it would have been the talk of the town (well, okay, the airwaves) if a Decepticons had cropped up nearby. Bad, in that he still had no idea where Mikaela was. A timer in the back of his mind continued to tick, counting off the seconds (--one-one-thousand, two-one-thousand, three-one-thousand--).

Every second held an eternity of bleak possibilites.

Every second fled past like a rushing stream, red numbers reeling, blurring, counting down far faster than a motorcycle could drive, even an alien one.

Tick-tick-tick-tick-tick--

Wheeljack spoke again after a meaningful pause, tone changing, growing almost timid. "As there is nothing we can do at the moment but wait, I had hoped a discussion with a neutral-- although enthralling-- subject would help to reduce your adrenaline levels since, as you said, 'humans aren't so good at making themselves relax'."

Coming from Bee, the comment and the attempt behind it would have been edged with humor and concern. From Optimus, both would have been matter-of-fact and gravely (apologetically) delivered. Rachet would have come across as blindly arrogant, making him feel inferior without really trying too. Mudflap and Skids...well, they probably couldn't have said something like that in the first place without breaking down in simulated laughter, so it was a moot point. But with Wheeljack, Sam once more got the sense that the robot was moving out of his comfort zone, extending an olive branch and a wavering hand, terrified that he would be bitten for his efforts. And suddenly, he realized what he had been picking up from the engineer all along-- though Wheeljack had the habit of diving into problems (and personal-space bubbles) without reservation when engrossed in a project, on the whole the alien was shy.

Huh. Sam never would have thought an immortal, incomprehensively intelligent being could be shy. And he wondered what unhealed scar, what dark secret, ('--tortured for three weeks--', '--murdered by my best friend--', '--wanted to complete the bond...but by then, it was too late--'), had made him that way.

Maybe he didn't really want to know.

"Thanks. I, uh, appreciate it," he replied.

A drop of something wet and cool landed on the back of his hand. Water. He tilted his head back and looked up at the sky, for the first time realizing that the light was far darker than it should have been at ten in the morning-- dark, roiling clouds loomed overhead, hanging so low in the sky that the blanket they made seemed likely to snag on the tops of the skyscrappers in could see in the distance. Perfect. Monsoon season.

As another rain drop splatted against the visor on his helmet, his mind kicked into overdrive. A sudden squall would really put a crimp in his finding-Mikaela plans-- he didn't know if Wheeljack came equipped with all-weather tires, but if the roads were flooded no amount of alien ingenuity could keep them driving, much less at their current pace (he felt certain they were trailing at least three cop cars as it was). And sheeting torrents of rain would make it harder to locate a broken, Mikaela-sized lump.

Another glance at the clouds (he didn't dare risk taking his eyes off the cars rushing past them for more than a second or two at a time) confirmed that they seemed ready to burst at any time, likely at the most inconvenient moment possible just to spite him. The universe was like that-- and it had a grudge against him.

Okay, so, problem one: Don't know where Mikaela is.

Problem two: It's going to starting pouring sooner or later. All money on sooner rather than later.

Problem three: As far as Wheeljack's top-of-the-line eavedropping equipment can tell, she's simply vanished from existance, and there doesn't seem to be any Decepticon wreckage we can follow back to the scene of the crime.

It was problem three that was the real stickler. Mikaela had been in a taxi on the highway when she was k-- (DON'T SAY IT) injured by a Decepticreep. Since logically any one Decepticon-- or even an entire army of the things-- couldn't wipe out all the witnesses (and simply turning the area into a sheet of glass would attract even more attention), there should have been someone, somewhere, who had seen what happened and was blabbing about it all over the place.

Unless....

Unless there were no Decepticons involved. Unless something as simple, as mundane, as frighteningly ordinary as a car crash had caused her to scream like that. In which case it was entirely plausible that the story had caused less of a ripple in the news media than a grain of sand dropping into a pond. Nothing interesting here, folks, just another car crash, just someone else who's died-- but who cares about that, millions of people die everyday-- just another death, another statistic, box it up and pack it away on a dusty shelf full of boxes in a dusty warehouse full of shelves in a dusty lot full of warehouses, no more important than a dead fly or a falling leaf-- happens every day, every hour, every minute, every second-- not important, not important, doesn't matter that one world ended and cast another into darkness--

Sam ruthlessly shut down the spiralling train of thought. It couldn't be that easy to end it all. No, it had to be something more dramatic, more meaningful than a car crash. Someone so brave, so loving, so kind could not have been cut down like any other worthless blade of grass in an endless lawn--

He slammed the brakes on that thought as well, taping it up in a cardboard box and tossing it over the cliff in his mind where all the other things he feared to look at or examine had found their final resting place. It didn't matter whether it had been a Decepticon attack or a car crash that had wrenched such a nightmarish scream from his wife (--wife! woah--). It didn't matter in the least, because she wasn't dead.

"Wheeljack. Scan ambulance radios, hospital calls, heck, even those police transmitter things truckers use. Look for any news of a car crash involving a taxi," he ordered, hunkering down on the bike and tightening the muscles across his shoulders as if in preparation to do battle. Which he was, in a sense-- a battle against time. Lounging in a lawn chair at the forefront of his mind, Panic counted the minutes, the seconds, in blood red numbers.

One-one-thousand. Two-one-thousand.

They were going to make it. There was no other option.

Thunder rumbled lazily through the clouds overhead.

Able to follow his human chain of reasoning for himself, Wheeljack didn't bother with asking why, but merely gave a warble of affirmation and began to furtively, silently, hunt through the tangled threads (--lifelines--) of inaudible sound being transmitted through the air.

Sam focused his gaze on the sky. Where they were at ground level the air was still, but hundreds of feet above them the wind drove the billowing gray mass across the sky at a gallop, dragging still more thunderheads into view over the horizon, rolling out an endless carpet of swollen clouds. Though he was loathe to interrupt the alien's search, the appearance of the menacing, strangely malignant storm seeded worry in his heart. Would the torrents of rain it promised drown them where they stood?

(--alone, all alone, crumpled body in a ditch, a pool of water-- water veined with red, darkening to scarlet-- pounding rain frothing from the surface, inching up over her broken form, closing over her head while unconcious breath continued to bubble from between slack lips--)

"It looks like it's going to pour," he mumbled, as if keeping his voice low would be less of a disturbance, "Please tell me you're water-proof. It would be really bad if you suddenly rusted solid."

Wheeljack answered at once, which indicated that his radio scan didn't use up the entirety of his processing power (thank God...and Mojo). "Not to worry, Sam. As our bodies are composed of a dense alloy rather than iron, we do not rust." Oh. Somehow, he felt he should have seen that coming. Megatron hadn't looked rusty when he came back from the dead, after all. "And as for being water-proof....barring massive internal damage and disablement of the self-repair systems, our electical circuits always remain closed. Every wire itself it sheathed in a flexible, tear-resistant, non-conductive material," he explained, voice regaining some of its hyper enthusiasm at having a willing listener, "and if for some reason a wire does become disconnected, the surface layer of metalloid cells along the raw edges of the break transmute their internal structure to become insulating rather than conductive, instantly sealing off the wire and preventing an unwanted discharge of electricity. The self-repair systems never even need to become involved in small-scale damage-- at least, not right away-- as the trasmutation reaction is automatically initiated without any command signal or energy input. The entire process could actually be compared to the formation of a scab. Your white blood cells do not need to seal the cut-- the blood itself hardens when exposed to the air (with the help of coagulants, although that is beside the point), thus forming a protective layer over the cut. The process within our own bodies is greatly accelerated, of course."

Good old bumbling Wheeljack was trying to distract him again. Not wanting to upset the timid alien by calling him out, Sam merely drawled, "So....to sum all that up, we don't need to worry about being caught in a downpour."

Wheeljack gave the equilvalent of an electronic sigh when he refused to take the bait, mood darkening once more. "Although I myself am in no danger from heavy amounts of precipitation, our search would be severely hampered if I attempted to drive through four feet of standing water."

"Yeah," he grimaced, "I see your point. We wouldn't be able to make good time trying to slog through a river."

"I fear that will be the least of our worries." Wheeljack's voice turned grim as digital windows opened across the visor, reeling through countless charts and aliens symbols far faster than his eyes could track. "The weather pattern we are observing is highly unusual-- the monsoon season should not have started for a few weeks yet, and this storm is far larger than normal."

The ominious implication behind the words tickled the back of his neck with a chill wind.

"How much larger than normal are we talking about here?"

A new image appeared before his eyes, the semi-transparent lines overlapping the sight of the heavy traffic around them. For a moment or two he stared at it in incomprehension, not quite understanding what exactly he was looking at. But as his mind picked out the familiar shore line of India and Saudi Arabia-- memorized during many grueling hours in geography class-- he realized that the amorphous blob stretching across the visor was not a glitch in the data, not an unfamiliar ocean on a strange map.

Sam swallowed heavily, his mouth going dry, as he realized Wheeljack was showing him a sketched image of a giant storm sweeping inland from the Indian ocean-- a storm several thousand miles wide that stetched all the way across the Indian coastline and continued west to brush the middle eastern states. And the swirling mass wasn't just wide, but long as well-- even as it swelled up over the coast, its bulk remained adrift over the Indian Ocean, reaching halfway to Austrailia.

"That's....pretty big. Like, apocalyptic big. Jesus."

"If the storm breaks before we can find Mikaela and transport her back to base, rate of travel will be the least of our worries. I could survive quite easily beneath twenty feet of water, but you would surely drown."

"Then I guess we're just going to have to be faster than the storm."

"Ideally the monsoon would hold off for about three days, as is quite common during the rainy season. However--"

The alien voice suddenly cut off, replaced by a furtive silence.

"Wheeljack?" Sam questioned hesitantly.

As if in answer to his query, the handlebars suddenly jerked beneath his hands, turning sharply to the right. Sam struggled to remain seated as the bike skidded sideways down the highway between the screaming cars, throwing up a shower of sparks, tires locked and squealing in protest.

"$%#&!!!"

At the last possible instant, sliding rubber found traction again-- the bike leapt forward, plunging between the oncoming lines of cars, once more traveling in the wrong direction down the crowded highway. But before Sam had the chance to hang Wheeljack out to dry for giving him yet another massive dose of adrenaline and pushing him another step closer to heart failure, the motorcycle dodged sideways between the traffic, weaving its way in and out of the cars, and vaulted over the concrete median. Several cars on the other side of the highway lurched out the way to make room for the roaring white machine, though at least these were traveling in the right direction.

Sam reclaimed his swallowed tongue and croaked, "What--"

"I've found her, Sam," Wheeljack cut him off, twisting the throttle as far as it would go. Sam didn't dare look at the numbers flashing across the speedometer. "You were right, it was a car accident. About six miles from here, a truck jack-knifed and collided with the taxi she was riding in."

His heart stuttered, missing a beat.

"...is...she...?"

"She's alive, Sam. Gravely injured, but alive. An ambulance is carrying her to a nearby hospital at this very moment."

Sam stopped listening at the word 'alive'. He rolled it over his tongue, spelled it out in his mind--backwards and forwards-- breathed it in, lapped it up, and hugged it to himself so hard his eyes started to water. As much as he had tried to force away all thoughts of her death, at some level he must have expected her to be dead. Otherwise, the fact that she was wonderfully, gloriously alive wouldn't have come as somewhat of a surprise.

He focused only on the reassurance that somewhere her heart still beat (--so close, close enough to hear, to feel--), refusing to dwell on the fact that her injuries might, at any moment, force it to still. The darker possibility-- repressed, yet still lingering overhead like the sword of Damocles-- gave the single word 'alive' an even greater light. He had never known a word could hold such power, could be so utterly beatiful. It rested like a butterfly in his cupped hands-- the goodness and grace of an entire world contained in its tiny body, infinitely wonderful, infinitely fragile. Stunning, awing, uplifting (that fraying thread of life never seemed so strong).

"Alive," he whispered. A word. A question. A prayer.

"Yes."

Bones both ratting and still-- breathing and yet not daring to breathe-- he redoubled his grip on the handlebars, hunkering low over the lean body of the motorcycle.

"Let's go make sure she stays that way."

And for once, he welcomed the unimaginable speed of the alien beneath him, grinning at the speedometer as it screeched towards 150. Reason said the Decepticons may not have been involved at all-- but Sam believed that about as much as he believed those free laptops advertised in pop-up adds were actually free. For whatever wonky alien reason they were lying low at the moment, waiting-- he was sure-- for the chance to finish what they had started.

The feel of the stolen gun pressing up against his side no longer felt awkward, accusitory, fearful. Instead it was a welcome friend, one he would use to stop any alien that tried to harm Mikaela.

He felt out for her heartbeat across the open, empty space, letting its imagined sound fill his mind.

'Don't you even think about giving up. We haven't even exchanged rings yet.'

NNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN

Location: Baghdad, Iraq

"Life," Barricade murmured to himself in a sing-song voice, "Is but a walking shadow. Poor player. Who knew his tale would be told by an idiot?"

The sniper drew back into the shadows of a mud-bricked building, grabbing at his battle protocols and bringing them online. External sensors zeroed in on the market square three streets away, flooding his primary processors with terabytes of data on every stone and speck of dirt contained withing the lopsided area between the human dwellings. The Autobots had not yet arrived, but he knew they would come. They always came. It made everything much more exciting.

ERROR, EMOTIONAL CORE OVERFLOW. CONCULSIONS ILLOGICAL. CONCLUSIONS--

((Instability alerts disengaged. Rerouting.....complete. Safety codes successfully fragmented. Blocking attempts at restoration....))

Barricade focused his optics on the tiny slice of the market square visible at the end of an alley. The sniper needed the unobstructed view in order to complete his mission, but he was also eager to be able to watch the drama unfold through his visual receptors rather than through infrared scans alone. Oh yes, it would be very exciting. Pleasurable, even. Humans possesed an astounding number of facial muscles capable of the most delicious expression of terror. Or agony. Preferably both at the same time. It would be interesting to watch them discover the bait he had laid.

"A tale of sound and fury, fury and sound, like those commonly told by idiots."

English. A simple language that nonetheless had its practical uses, especially when it came to interrogating Terran lifeforms. But while most of the Decepticons refused to lower themselves by speaking in the human tongue, Barricade held a certain fondness for its cadences and range of meaning that bypassed his fractured and fizzling logic relays and caused him to employ the human language even when not strictly necessary. He had also discovered that he preferred certain authors, most especially those that dabbled in darkness and deceit, weaving tales of melancholy and despair-- their inability to grasp the true nature of evil and the universe tickled him to no end. Especially Shakespeare, whose words he found to be almost as effective a tool as threats and torture when used against humans. Ah, such sweet irony.

"A good thing it signifies nothing-- there might really be a god, otherwise."

An irritated message pinged from his localized transciever as he spoke.

::If you insist on continuing to talk, it will be you, and not life, that is the idiot. I can shield our spark signatures from the Autobots, but they will still hear you speak::

Barricade snapped a jarring string of binary in return, replying in the closest Cybertronian equivalent he could find to a farting noise. His mortally wounded logic relays, somehow still limping along after so many orns despite the Virus' frequent and brutal scourings, informed him in a stuttering string of glyphs that it was illogical to try to imitate a human bodily noise-- and that the stealth-type did, indeed, have a point. But even attempting to start up his secondary processing unit sent a flare of agony through his systems--

((Action restricted. Hampering self-repair codes....))

--So he didn't bother trying to remove the illogical impulse. Just like his use of english and his preverted love of Shakespeare, it was better to accept the madness than to resist.

::Be it one your own head, then::

"I am a dyslexic agnostic insomniac. I lie awake at night wondering if there really is a Dog," he stated with a smug tone of triumph. If for some reason their plan failed and the Autobots failed to defeat the power of Unicron, Barricade wanted one more chance to enjoy himself before he was cast into the Pit with the sentimental fools, secrecy be damned. Besides, his own probability calculators-- untouched by Soundwave's ruthlessly efficient Virus for fear of making him less productive-- informed him that there was only a .98% chance that the approaching Autobots would pick up on his 3 decibal words and deduce that there was a hostile entity nearby. Without being able to pick up his signature on their sensors, they would never speculate that the softly uttered humans words (if they heard them at all) had come from a Decepticon.

::They are here:: the stealth-type radioed over a private channel.

Barricade's external sensors alerted him to the rapid approach of the Autobot medic and several human vehicles just as the short burst of communications data finished filtering through one of his side processors.

"Show time."

He studied the open ground visible at the end of the alley where he had carefully arranged his chosen bait. Lots of structural damage, executed in as flamboyant a manner as possible, had served to draw the sniper's intended prey to the city itself. But it was the seventeen humans laid out in an intricate pattern in the square that would bring the Autobot into his line of fire. Sixteen of the seventeen fleshbags were dead-- the last still lived, but only just. Lying directly in his line of sight, acting as the perfect lure, the pitiful creature moaned, an ominous gurgling sound coming from its chest. Not long ago its thrashing had settled, the pure energon he had pumped into its abdomen slowly but surely devouring it from the inside out. It wouldn't die for some time yet, but with every moment it weakened, its fractured pleas dying away as its organs rotted and dissolved. And just to add a dramatic flair, Barricade had cut deep lacerations into its limbs and torso, carefully avoiding the arteries that if severed would bring about a swift end, making sure that it would be drenched in enough of its own scarlet fluid to inspire horror while still avoiding a premature deactivation. Its screams had been delicious when the sniper first snatched the creature into his claws and introduced himself as Lucifer, as Beelzebub, as Abaddon, as Satan. Gently petting it before ripping into its flesh had created the sweetest data file of all-- a snapshot of the creature's face that he would savor for many vorns, its mouth open in instinctual fear but its eyes showing the first signs of tenative trust. How he had reveled in the passionate sting of betraying that trust.

A faint vibration rumbled through the ground beneath his feet as a proximity alarm went off in his processor, alerting him to the fact that the vehicle caravan had just entered the city limits. Rachet-- Autobot medic, repairer of bodies, restorer of souls-- led the way. Just as Starscream had planned, the multitude of simultaneous attacks had forced the Autobots to spread their numbers as thinly as possible, leaving each to investigate the damage with only a small contingent of humans for back up. Poor Starscream was intelligent enough that he might have actually amounted to something had he not been so absorbed in his own byzantine plans. As it was, the Seeker was so preoccupied planning the downfall of the Autobots at human hands that he had never even stopped to question Barricade's loyalty. Which, all told, was a good thing, considering the fact that Barricade had been relaying information to Megatron in order to bring about the ruin of the seeker.

Only Megatron deserved to lead the Decepticons. Only Megatron understood the sublime pleasures of torture, of facing down one's enemies and destroying them with strength and wit alone, reveling in the fact that even at their full strength they still lost. After all, what was the universe but a dark hole without pleasure?

Babbling human voices-- interspersed with gasps of surprise and revulsion-- arose from beyond his line of sight. Barricade would have loved to be close enough to record their beautiful expressions of fear. But alas, the sniper had work to do.

The sound of a transformation echoed from the buildings as human medics dashed into view, kneeling around the dying specimen and attempting to revive him. Deciding to play a little game with himself, the sniper started a countdown on his HUD. The Virus, in one of its darkly humorous moods, added a little smiley face to one corner. At times the Virus almost reacted like a separate conciousness, a demented personality nestled within his own-- a malignant seed, a tumor that both helped and hindered, spreading both healing and poison, always poison, destroying him and building him back up askew. He had lived with if for so long since the forced interface with Soundwave that they had become friends, in a way. A bond of mutual loathing.

Even now, the Virus continued to seep poison, smashing through the budding lines of code growing from the internal wreckage of his programs and pasting a smiley face on his countdown. Twisted little freak.

"Blood pressure is still dropping. We need to stop the bleeding--"

"I've lost him! He's not breathing!"

"Get that bag over here, now!"

Poweful scanners detecting the virulent poison of which the human medics remained unaware, Rachet burst into view, shoving a few of the fleshlings aside.

"Move! Out of the way!"

His countdown reached zero. Right on time. He knew the medic far too well.

The Autobot knelt to one side of the prone human, facing Barricade, his hands transforming as he went. Despite the shouted protests around him, he slit the dying insect's abdomenal wall and jammed a tube into his dissolving guts. A silvery liquid rushed up into the tube and sprayed out the other end, splattering harmlessly against the dusty earth. Energon removed, the medic drove a pair of needle-thin prongs into the top of his rib cage, a mild surge of energy jolting into the placid flesh and causing his back to arch from the ground. And to the other humans' shock, the dying man gasped in a deep breath, eyes flying open, and began to hack. Severely damaged, alien impliments stuck into his body, the fleshling was nonetheless alive. And knowing first hand the quality of Rachet's treatment, the fleshling would stay that way-- the spared sinner who would become Barricade's disciple.

::Why use energon?:: the stealth-type questioned, ::We have precious little of it as it is::

The message could have been accusitory, even livid. Instead, it was merely curious-- one psychopath investigating the methods of another.

'What tangled webs we weave.'

Barricade transformed one arm into a thin-barreled rifle. It was far too unwieldy to use in normal combat situations, but it never missed a target when striking from afar. Too bad his mission was only to injure rather than kill-- it would have been interesting to see exactly what fun places he could hit on the interfering medic in order to cause deactivation.

::As a reminder:: he sent back electronically, not willing to risk being exposed at this stage of the game by speaking, not when he finally had the chance to begin his revenge against the medic.

While Rachet worked steadily to stabilize the gasping human, oblivious to the concealed predators that watched him from the shadows, Barricade raised the knife-thin weapon and loaded his advanced targeting programs. Taking up far more processing power than those of the average Decepticon, the targeting programs running through the sniper's processors could hit the center of a bullseye fifteen miles away with only a .12 millimeter margin of error. With the medic only a few hundred yards away and completely unaware of his presence, there was no chance at all that he would miss. None.

::A reminder of what?::

This mission, this objective he needed to complete, would not even come close to satisfying his need for revenge. But soon, when the planet Earth lay barren and devoid of life, its seas crusted with the snows of a nuclear winter-- when the Autobots were utterly alone and without aid-- then, then, he would demonstrate to the medic the true meaning of pain. Give him a taste of the poison, let it consume him.

::Of the cruelty of mercy::

His targeting programs did not rely on data input from his optics-- he could have pointed the gun behind his back and blasted a hole through the stealth-type's chest without turning his head. But feeling in a mood for drama, he raised the keen black weapon and sighted down its length, moving the crosshairs from the medic's head to the shoulder joint of his right arm. He needed only to injure, not kill. Starscream was no fun. Oh well, maybe he could presuade Ravage to let him have a little fun with the Sam-creature before disposing of it.

The stealth-type did not react to his enigmatic comment, and his probability simulators indicated that it was likely-- given the nameless spy's ability to seemingly know things it shouldn't have known-- that the black robot fully understood the vehmence behind the blip of electronic glyphs. Just as it had known of Soundwave's plan to summon Unicron to Earth, it knew of the oozing wound in his spark, knew what kind of demon he had befriended, and precisely how it had come to be there.

With a twitch of his circuits, Barricade created and packaged the electronic command to fire, the single byte of data that would send a lance of energy shooting from the dark muzzle of the weapon his arm had become.

Yes. Soundwave, Soundwave, Soundwave. Two purposes to be fullfilled, two messages to be delivered, all tying back to the same creature. Wonderful, ironic symmetry. The communications officer was a paragon of insanity, a fanatic worshiperer of the darkness. Barricade could relate to the insanity part, but he worshiped no one and nothing, and not even the Virus could stop him from turning his cannon on his own head if it ever came to a choice between death and bowing to Unicron. And so when the Stealth-type had approached him, bringing news of the dark god's impending arrival, he had readily agreed to do whatever was necessary to stop Soundwave in his tracks-- including passing on a warning to the Autobots. The stealth-type had wanted him to simply carve the ancient symbol in the sand. But doing so would have been momentously boring. So instead, Barricade had killed enough fleshlings to construct the hidden warning with their bodies. Besides, a message was more effective when painted in blood. Now if only the Autobots were smart enough to figure out what they were looking at....

As for the second and more personal message, Barricade had been perfectly willing to siphon off a little energon in the name of chaos. Energon, it its unprocessed state, was extremely toxic to humans-- the fleshling he had poisoned would survive, but thanks to Rachet's 'helpful' intervention, he would spend the rest of his life in the grip of agony. Perhaps it would serve to remind the medic exactly what he had done when he supposedly 'saved' the sniper's life a millenia ago. And then, when the Autobot knew a full measure of regret as the weak fools always did, Barricade would give him a first-hand demonstration of the Virus he had left the sniper to be devoured by. A taste of madness. A taste of poison.

In a way he didn't really blame Soundwave, only Rachet. Though Soundwave had thrust the Virus upon him-- though he had torn ruthlessly into his systems, interfacing with him at the deepest level, and shattered the core around his spark-- though he had left Barricade with his own hellish brand of poison to ensure that he never healed, it was the Autobot medic for whom he held a hatred so powerful it melted his emotional cores and overloaded his processors. Rachet could have saved him from the Virus; Rachet could have deactivated him and spared him an eternity at its mercy. But he didn't. He'd left Barricade-- then a neutral-- to the cruelest fate of all in order to spare his own conscience.

So the sniper would wait until the time was right, until the skies had darkened and hope lay slaughtered in a ditch. Then, he would strike.

::We need to go:: the stealth-type roused him from his musings. A glance at his chronometer told him that he had been standing motionless, weapon armed and locked, for 2.13 seconds. Far too much hesitation to be acceptable. He would have to work on that.

((Purging surface readings from emotional cores. Wiping data pathways....complete))

The Virus sometimes had it uses.

Bringing his battle protocols back online, Barricade took aim at the Autobot's shoulder joint once more.

Soon.

Just wait. Soon.

"Dark dark dark-- they all go into the dark," he giggled, quoting T.S. Eliot, another of his favorites.

::All hail Megatron::
The gun roared.

NNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN

Location: Moscow, Russia

Optimus Prime knew the instant Samuel James Witwicky left the confines of NEST headquarters in Diego Garcia.

A small, continuously looping program in one of his sub-processors pinged as the transmitter signal progressed beyond the boundaries of the base, sending an alert to his primary processor. But because the alert was only a notification rather than an alarm-- and a klaxxon would have begun to wail throughout his systems if the looping program had detected a Decepticon data bloc near the transmitter signal-- he shunted it aside for the moment to concentrate on the immediate threat before him. Though when he cycled the unfolding scenario through one of his situational routines, he realized that perhaps 'threat' was too strong a word to use.

Arriving in Moscow with a deployment of thirteen human soldiers, three human medics, six armored vehicles, thirty-two AKA-47's, nine sub-machine guns, and four sig saurs loaded with the experimental thermite projectiles, Optimus had expected to find Megatron himself tearing apart the city. The damage assessments that had been continuously flowing into his processors from the moment the attacks had first begun indicated that Moscow seemed to be the focus of the Decepticon mobilization. 3,756,778 battle simulations later, his logic relays had concluded that at least three Decepticons must have been on-sight to cause so much collateral damage.

Yet observing the scene before him, Optimus was forced to run a full systems check, concentrating on his external sensors and data processing units. All internal systems were running at 100%, and his physical/mobility structures only lagged behind by a 2% difference. Unless he had been infilltrated by a virus so complex as to make the destruction it wrought appear seamless, what his central processing unit was telling him matched reality.

Standing in blanket of snow 4.37 inches deep, awash in a gentle swirl of wet snowflakes that heralded an early Russian winter, Optimus retracted his ion cannon after a slight hesitation and activated a smaller weapon, one that would carry less force behind each blast. The soliders at his feet-- dressed in black winter gear, weapons held at the ready-- seemed just as confused as he was.

"....what the hell?" Epps breathed, taking a bold step forward, "Where are all the evil alien robots? And don't tell me that thing is a Decepticon."

Optimus surreptiously shifted his foot to prevent the Sergeant from approaching any closer. Though the odds were in Epps' favor with only a 32% probability that he would not be able to deactivate the awkwardly constructed drone busily tearing at the wreckage of a stone cathedral, Optimus did not want to take the chance that the mostly unthreatening machine would turn out to be far more dangerous than it looked.

"It is not," he replied, mimicry circuits introducing a touch of bewilderment to the words, "It appears to be a class D drone."

"And a class D drone would be...?" A female marine spoke up, throwing back her hood and relaxing her grip on the weapon in her hands, moving her finger from the trigger itself to the trigger guard. Though unlike Epps, she remained where she was.

"On Cybertron, there were many non-sentient machines created to preform monotonous and/or dangerous tasks. Class D drones tended to be larger; they were made to be slow-moving builders that would repair-- or, alternatively, tear down-- a city as they traveled through it. Most possesed no more intelligence than an earthen rat."

"Yeah, well, some rats can be pretty damn smart," a gangly man towards the back interjected. Rather than a gun, he held an advanced radiation scanner in one hand and a palm-pilot in the other. He waved the scanner in a loose circle around them, frowning. Nervous. "As far as I can tell, you're the only alien anywhere around here, Prime. That thing doesn't even register on the geiger counter."

Forcing down the growing anxiety in his emotional cores-- and painfully shunting aside another passive alert from the transmitter-- he brought the short-wave blaster extending from his arm online, stepping towards the drone. It didn't seem to register his presence, continuing along its bumbling way without pause.

"That is because it is not, in fact, Cybertronian. It is constructed from sheet metal and pre-made armature like that commonly found in human prosthetics."

Epps shuddered, briefly turning his gun from the drone to check their flank, expecting-- as Optimus himself did-- for an ambush to descend upon them at any moment, despite the lack of Cybertronian energy signatures. "There's no way this butt-ugly freak tore down Moscow and scared everyone here shitless. Man, my dog is bigger than that thing."

Optimus sincerely doubted that any species of dog in existence crested ten feet, but he understood and sympathized with the expression.

"A better question would be: Why destroy a city, then leave behind a slapped together drone to continue sorting through the wreckage?" The female marine speculated with a frown. Optimus focused briefly on her tiny form and scanned the skeletal structure of her face, comparing the data to NEST employee records. Ann Button, a marine for twelve years, specializing in covert ops and communications. A list of credentials a mile long. Intelligent. He sent a memo to his secondary processor to request her for his team more often.

No one seemed to have a solution to the conundrum.

Epps turned to him. "So what now? Do you want us to destroy it, or should we try to haul it back to base, see if we can get some info from it?"

"Wait, wait! Hold on. What if it's rigged to explode if we so much as touch it? Maybe that's the trap-- fool us into thinking that this drone is what all the fuss is about and have us blow ourselves up trying to get rid of it." The human wielding the radiation scanner-- Thomas Rein-- jogged forward, pulling a hand-held bomb detector from a pocket of his quilted jacket.

"That will not be necessary, Thomas," Optimus stopped him, "As it is not constructed from Cybertronian materials, my scanners are able to penetrate it quite easily. Fortunately for us, it is not designed to explode. And any attempt to transport it back to base would most likely be a wasted effort, as I doubt we could gain any useful information from studying it further."

"Cool. Then let's take the little shit out." Epps raised his gun to his shoulder, sighting down the scope. Optimus preempted him, stepping forward and firing his primed weapon into the drone's primitive head. The blast destroyed the flimsy structure entirely, reducing it to a few twisted pieces of scrap. The electrical currents charging its body abruptly cut off as the circuit was blown open-- the drone's headless body seized in mid-motion. Caught in an off-balance postion, it tipped ponderously to the side and fell with a resounding crash into the snow. Another detailed sensor sweep indicated that it was fully deactivated and no longer operational. He folded the blaster back into his arm.

Ann simply stared. "Well that was ridiculously easy."

78% certain that they were not in immediate danger of attack, Optimus accepted the newest alert and opened the data file it contained. After leaving NEST, the transmitter signal had apparently crossed either over or under the ocean to mainland India and had begun to travel one of the busiest highways at close to 120mph, changing direction twice in a short span of time. At the moment, it continued to race to the east.

His logic relays spun, processing the information.

The transmitter itself-- having been inserted into Sam's watch while he slept-- could not logically move at 120mph, even if the human ran as fast as he possibly could. Therefore, he must have acquired some sort of mechanized transportation-- the ease with which the signal moved from land to water to land again indicated that he had not ridden across the ocean in a boat, but had rather traveled by vehicle through the sea floor tunnel connecting the base to the mainland for use in emergencies. And while it was entirely possible that Sam was capable of driving a vehicle at such a daunting speed if desperate enough, his scenario processors indicated that it was unlikely that the boy had ventured out without an accomplice, especially given the fact that he would have needed to stop to dismantle the wall blocking the exit if he had been alone.

Snatching at his communications receptors, he sent a signal to Special Agent David Schwartz's cellphone. The signal bounced back, indicating either than the agent had not accompanied Sam, or else had left his cell phone behind to throw off pursuers. He sent another signal to the NEST PSAI mainframe, labeling the connection request priority 5, the second highest available. Almost immediately, the agent he sought picked up the phone, as if he had been waiting nearby for just such a call.

"Prime, he's gone. Sam's gone."

Tamping down a surge of fear and the beginning sparks of anger, Optimus turned to Epps.

"Excuse me for a moment. There is a small problem back on base I need to take care of."

"Got it. We'll contact the clean up crews and tell them to be on stand-by to look for survivors."

"Thank you."

Optimus moved away a few paces, extending his sensors out on the spherical plane to monitor for hostile activity.

::I have deduced as much:: he replied to the agent non-verbally, although the words emerged in his adopted human voice at the other end of the line. Despite his attempts at maintaining a cool facade, his mimcry circuits added a touch of harsh displeasure to his tone. Sometimes, their far-reaching control could be aggravating. ::How, precisely, did he leave? And under what circumstances?::

"I'm not entirely sure how he left-- I was rendered unconcious while speaking with him, and when I awoke both my sidearm and jacket were missing, along with Sam. But all of the base personnel are accounted for expect for Wheeljack, which should tell you something. And as for why....Prime, something has happened to Mikaela. She and Sam were speaking when something forcefully disconnected the call-- something that caused her to scream bloody murder and may very well have left her dead."

Optimus couldn't reply for a long moment.

He position in the war had left him intimately familiar with death in all its many forms. And as a leader, it was his duty to shake off grief, fear, and pain in order to move on and protect those that followed him. Sometimes the burden of being a Prime became almost unbearable; the mantle had long ago been forced upon him without his knowledge or consent, leaving him with a lingering sense of bitterness even thousands of years later. The chains of an unwanted duty chafed harshly at times, most especially in those instances when his deepest desires had to be buried in order for him to do what was right for the whole rather than for only one. Countless friends and comrades had died, some horrifically, but he had been unable to mourn them-- too many counted on their last Prime for him to falter. Fierce battles had left him badly damaged, aching and weak, but he had been unable to huddle in a corner to nurse his wounds-- his people were dying and they needed him, needed him now now now.

And sometimes, like that snowy morning in Moscow, his duty hung from him like the weight of Cybertron itself for a far different reason. Sometimes, he longed in the deepest recesses of his spark to be anything but a Prime not for his own pain and grief, but for another's.

Optimus did not doubt the agent's interpretation of events-- he had hired him partially for his cool, clinical attitude and clear head. If the human said that Mikaela was in grave danger, possibly already dead, none of his logic relays would raise a protest.

Mikaela had always been a good friend and a relyable ally. He sent a silent prayer to Primus to spare her life, or to guide her human soul to its home if she were no longer counted among the living. His emotional cores pulsed with worry for her, and her loss would hit him as hard as the deaths of any of his close comrades had. But it was not for Mikaela that his defense/guardian protocols repeatedly attempted to come online even as he beat them back down.

Optimus was a leader. And as a leader, there were always choices he had to make, some unbearably difficult. His duty was to his soldiers and to the humans temporarily under his command, and to the earth and its people as well. Once the threat in Moscow had been neutralized to his satisfaction-- and it probably already was, as he suspected that the Decepticons would not return-- he would need to re-deploy himself and his team to one of the other attack sights around the globe. There we innocent humans in danger-- men, women, and children whose lives could be saved by swift intervention. Hundreds of them. Thousands of them. As a Prime, he had no time to spare on sentimentality; they needed to stymie the Decepticon incursion before it could fully begin and seek out the true purpose behind the bizzare nature of the attack on Moscow... and discover if it had been repeated elsewhere.

His processors and sub-processors said that his adopted home needed him.

His spark said that his new son needed him more.

Mikaela might have met a swift and brutal end-- but Sam had acted as an intimate witness to what could have been her last moments. Optimus knew the human loved her as he himself had loved-- and still loved-- his spark bonded. Even a Prime could feel pain, and the sort of pain the boy was probably experiencing at that exact moment was the most excruciating of all.

His logic relays prodded him with the knowledge that even if he could escape his duty and rush to Sam's side, he hadn't the faintest idea how to comfort him, or if the human would even accept his attempts at comforting. He wanted to leave the icy wasteland Moscow had become that very instant and fly back to India. He wanted to track down the transmitter signal and tear Sam away from Wheeljack, then do as he had originally intended and surgically implant the transmitter beneath the human's shoulder blade so he would no longer be left with only a blip of location data and could, instead, relax into the tender solace brought by the sound of a steadily beating human heart, able to heard from anywhere on the planet. He wanted to hold the warm body close to his spark and teach it to be unafraid of his touch. He wanted to kidnap him and take him far, far away where he didn't have to be Prime and where death didn't exist-- where Mikaela was still whole and alive, where Sam's soul was still unshattered. He wanted to protect him as he had failed to protect Bumblebee, wanted to make every scar and bump and bruise disappear. He wanted to show him the stars and the wonders of the universe-- he wanted to show him planets where the sky glowed orange and the plants were blue instead of green, wanted to enjoy the wonder on his small face as he saw the birth of a galaxy, the brilliant flash of a supernova. He wanted him to see the Cybertron that had existed before the war, take him to all the hidden places and show him the planet's beautiful secrets.

He wanted to be able to gently stroke the side of his face or pet his hair without having to watch him cringe in fear of the hand that could crush him without a second thought, a hand that could transform into a weapon powerful enough to level the strongest buildings and had torn countless thousands from life, a hand that wanted only to soothe the fragile creature.

He wanted to rip Megatron down to his atoms for hurting his son.

He wanted to destroy all the Decepticons, every single one, so that none could ever threaten him again.

He wanted to make it so Sam would never have to die.

But he could do none of those things, least of which because he was a Prime and it was his duty to protect the many...even at the expense of the few. And even if he had sufficient reason to try to rush to Sam's side-- even if the transmitter signal were suddenly lost, indicating that something had gone terribly wrong-- the storm that had drifted in over Moscow and its twin over India would prevent the cargo planes from flying back to NEST for some time.

He would have to trust Wheeljack. At least for the moment.

"...Prime?"

Optimus yanked himself firmly from his dismal mood. ::I assume Mikaela had left the airport before the event occured?::

The agent knew about the transmitter-- Optimus had informed him of his plan to insert it into Sam's watch after the boy had demonstrated a frightening inclination to run away in order to help someone in danger. He would make the connection that the Autobot was monitoring its signal, which was currently headed east, away from the airport.

"Yes. She left in order to buy herself time in which to marry Sam. He had planned to use the loophole in the Geneva convention to allow her to move to NEST by making her his wife..." The agent paused. Optimus said nothing, chosing not to react in favor of letting the agent continue with his explanation. He was hardly surprised that the two had decided to join-- had they been Cybertronian, the depth of their commitment to each other would have already resulted in the establishment of a spark bond. "....Unfortunately, the incident occured just after the ceremony had been completed. He's not just out there looking for his girlfriend-- he's looking for his wife. It's going to be a hell of a job getting him to come back."

As much as it pained him to acknowledge the fact, the danger to Sam at the moment was minimal. The nearest Decepticon attack was several thousand miles away, and with Wheeljack as an escort he was unlikely to be confronted with a potentially fatal situation. Logically, Optimus should have simply allowed him to continue on his quest to seek her out.

But with his defense/guardian protocols still snatching at his scenario routines and logic relays despite his best efforts to squash them, doing so was not an option. Another human might recognize him and attempt to apprehend him, or else he would encounter a rogue Decepticon or be injured-- possibly killed-- in a random accident. The only permissable recourse would be to order Wheeljack to bring him back to base no matter how strenuously the human objected. Later, once the Decepticons had been subdued, he could submit himself for use as a verbal punching bag for Sam's anger, even if the thought of being told exactly how much he was hated made him want to cower.

::I will make the necessary arrangements:: he informed the agent stiffly, and broke the connection.

Taking a moment to cycle the crisp air through his vents to cool his processors, Optimus glanced at the readings from his external sensors. Nothing more dangerous than a cat had appeared during the 46 seconds he had spent in conversation with David. Still exuding an aura of vague unease, the humans had moved to take up point around the ruined square-- two scientists took readings from the fallen drone while a ring of nine outward facing marines stood guard around them. The remaining humans, including the unneeded medics, had retraced their steps to their all-terrain vehicles and were currently trying to contanct the teams deployed in other cities, attempting to assess whether the drone in Moscow had been a singular phenomenon. The usual storm appeared to be hampering their efforts.

When his scenario routines had processed every byte of incoming sensory data and concluded that there was nothing which needed his immediate attention, Optimus pulled up his communications relay and opened the line connecting him to Wheeljack. He swiftly constructed a data packet containing the order to bring Sam back to base and sent it through the channel.

.000000162 miliseconds later, it bounced back at him, reflected from a temporary firewall. His logic relays whirred, spitting out the conclusion that Wheeljack was blocking his communications reciever. Carefully prodding the firewall, Optimus discovered that the block was selective rather than universal-- Wheeljack had cut off communications with him specifically.

Apparently, Sam had found a willing accomplice, one who would employ measures bordering on insubordination in order to help him on his search. Rather than defy an order outright, Wheeljack had simply made it so that Optimus could not give him an order in the first place. And because the engineer was classified as a scientist rather than a warrior directly under his command, he did not have the ability to forcefully removed the block around his communications receiver.

Again Optimus considered simply allowing Sam to continue with his search. Primus knew they could not spare the man power to hunt for Mikaela, so perhaps the human's hastily concieved plan would bear fruit and enable them to bring her back to safety. Every probability engine and scenario routine indicated that the chance of substantial harm befalling the boy was less that 6% while in the company of the engineer.

And maybe just a little bit selfishly, Optimus was loathe to pull him away from his wife and cause the human to resent him even further. He knew logically, rationally, that the boy could not continue to hate him over the course of several decades. But while in his company the hours did not seem like trifling grains of sand, but rather fleeting moments to be cherished. He didn't want to wait a decade or more for Sam to forgive him.

Reluctantly shutting down his communication relays, Optimus moved back towards the ring of humans. Epps glanced towards him briefly at his approach, then back out towards the ruined buildings, cocked weapon slowly panning left to right in search of potential threats.

"Man, I got a baaaad feeling about this," he mumbled, "If this ain't some sort of set-up, I don't know what is."

"But every piece of equipment we have keeps saying that we're alone out here," an unfamiliar marine spoke up.

Ann Button suddenly stiffened. "What if it's not an ambush? What if the threat isn't here?"

Optimus turned to her, processors jacking into high gear at the speculation behind her words. "What do you mean?"

"It's like the old bait-and-switch routine," her breath plumed as she spoke, eyes narrowing in thought, "Obviously a Decepticon must have done this to Moscow. But it left before we arrived, leaving behind a drone to make it look like something was still actively causing damage."

Epps hissed through his teeth in understanding. "That way we'd still haul our asses out here when there's nothing to find. I'll bet you anything those mutant piles of scrap pulled a stunt like this in every damn city they started to attack-- they're freeing themselves up to do something else."

Without warning, the female marine suddenly took of for one of the jeeps.

Epps spun to track her movements. "What the hell?! What's gotten into you?"

"It's not an ambush," she explained breathlessly, "All these attacks? They're not trying to level a few cities or spread us thinly enough to kill us off-- it's only a distraction."

"...oh shit!" Epps leapt after her, signaling to the other soldiers to pack it up and head out, ASAP. "They're going to attack the base!"

Optimus hesitated before transforming back into his alt mode, analyzing their conclusion. Logically it suited the current situation, and it was far from the only time the Decepticons had tried to draw them away from their base of operations in order to attack while they were otherwise occupied. Still reeling from the defeat in Egypt, they might have been desperate enough-- or fractured enough-- to attempt a large-scale invasion and strike at the heart of Autobot power on Earth.

And yet his intuition programs, far more advanced than those of most other Cybertronians, repeatedly countered every sweep of his battle simulators, forcefully denying the results that agreed with the humans' interpretation. They continued to whisper quietly in the back of his processor, pointing to the logical flaw of assuming that the Decepticons saught to attack the base-- as far as the Autobots could tell, the Decepticons did not know of the whereabouts of NEST. The inconsistent nature of the attacks themselves also unsettled him. No effort had been made to disable them and prevent them from returning in defense of the base, and unless the drone sent to roam Moscow had been defective and had failed to engage them in battle simply by accident-- unlikely, given that even the lowliest of the Decepticons was not deluded enough to believe that it could have caused any noticable degree of damage-- the Decepticons had left them untouched. Another inconsistency; they were not known for sparing their adversaries.

The entire situation did not sit well with him, though at the moment he could not devise another possible scenario to explain the bizarre string of events. But as he started his engine and drove to the head of the convoy, Optimus consoled himself with the knowledge that Sam would not be trapped within the base when and if an attack commenced. The human was safe as he could be lost in the crowds of India. Wheeljack would serve as an adequate temporary protector, and the Decepticons would not know where to search for him when they could not find him within NEST--

And the alarm he had hoped never to hear began to sound.

The driver of the humvee behind him shouted in surprise as his brakes suddenly locked, bringing his truck form to an abrupt halt.

No longer restrained, his defense/guardian protocols roared to life, sending a flood of data and mission parameters surging through his processor, reorganizing priority codes, shifting action/inaction commands to accommodate responses his processor had previous rejected as too radical.

He powered up his long range sensors to the maximum possible distance, stretching them towards the transmitter signal suddenly occupying the rapt attention of every primary and secondary system-- the faint pulses of data they could gather across the many thousands of miles confirmed what the transmitter signal itself had already conveyed, causing his defense/guardian protocols to flare and infiltrate previously untouched systems, locking into place to prevent deactivation.

The programmed transmitter alert continued to shriek through his internal systems, flashing over his HUD with a violent red light, a klaxxon wail of alarm far different from the nagging ping that had signaled Sam's earlier exit from the base. Because this time, the program loop wasn't merely informing him of a passive perimeter breach.

This time, the steady dot that represented Sam was not alone.

Swiftly approaching from the northwest and northeast, traveling at a speed low enough to avoid unwanted attention and yet fast enough to cross the twenty miles distance in a short span of time, two Decepticon signals closed in on Sam. One of them came with an attached data bloc announcing its identity as the High Protector.

Megatron.

"Hey Optimus!" Epps called over his radio, "What's the deal, man? Have they already beaten us back to base?"

Optimus accessed the weather map again, cursing silently as he realized the storm over India had progressed too far to allow them to immediately fly back to Diego Garcia.

"They are not attempting to infiltrate NEST."

But just in case, he pulled up his connection with the PSAI mainframe to confirm that the confines of the base had not been breached.

"So then what the hell is going on?"

Driving back to India from Moscow would be foolish and would certainly take much more time than simply waiting out the storm. But neither could he simply leave Sam to face his doom.

Unlocking his tires, be began to drive again, swiftly picking up speed.

"You are correct in that these attacks were only meant to be a distraction. But their ultimate purpose was not to facilitate an assault on NEST."

"Still not making too much sense, big guy."

There wasn't enough time to explain the situation revolving around Sam-- including how Mikaela most likely had been attacked to draw him into the open-- much less convince the soliders that the mindset of the Decepticons would encourage them to recklessly seek the boy's death rather than attack the base. He needed to act now.

Opening his communication network, he sent out simultaneous alerts to the Indian government and NEST headquarters, informing them of the Decepticon presence. Oddly enough the two signals had slowed and remained at a distance from the location of the transmitter, possibly awaiting the opportune moment to strike. But because of the Decepticons' reticence, it was entirely possible that a dispatch of humans-- hailing either from NEST or the local law enforcement-- could transport Sam to a secure location and protect him until the storm relented enough to let them land.

Possible, but highly unlikely. He needed to reach Wheeljack.

Since he himself could not contact the engineer, he would need to relay the message through another of his soldiers. Rachet and Ironhide would both be too obvious as substitute carriers and would probably be blocked, and in any case he dared not distract any of his soldiers from their missions, lest the hesitation brought by recieving and sending a message caused them to make a fatal error.

His only option was to attempt to reach Bumblebee.

Though Optimus doubted that he would be able to make contact, when he sent a location/status query to the scout's assigned link port in his communications hub, he discovered that not only had Bumblebee returned to the grid from radio silence, but also that he was not, as expected, buried deep within Nigeria. Instead, he was in the middle of the Indian Ocean, traveling in the direction of Deigo Garcia without heed to the danger the storm presented.

Optimus's processors reeled. Bumblebee had not sent a report on the success or failure of his misson to intercept the 'mirage'. Neither had he alerted them of his intention to return to base, although when Optimus accessed the PSAI mainframe he discovered that the scout had sent out a flurry of real-time data requests to the NEST databases.

But then, as he analyzed the requests themselves, he discovered the reason behind Bumblebee's abnormal behavior-- each and every data file centered in some way around Sam. There were even several hacks into the security cameras on the mainland around the entrance of the hidden tunnel, all dating from hours before Sam had left NEST.

Somehow-- either due to his partial bond with the human or through even more occult means-- Bumblebee had known that Sam was in danger, and was en route to rescue him.

"Optimus? Hey, you still there?"

A status/mission query aimed at the scout prompted nothing but silence. Determined to relay a warning to Wheeljack, a warning which only Bumblebee could deliver, Optimus established a looping relay that would send a status/mission query every .0048 seconds. Then, he turned his attention back to Epps.

"There is no immediate danger to the base, but the situation in London has yet to be resolved. We should depart at once to aid Sideswipe."

Though Rachet doubted its existence, Optimus knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that humans possesed a sixth sense when the Sergeant picked up on the hidden meaning behind his words and settled back into his job as a soldier without a protest.

"Let's do it. We got jipped, and now I'm itching to kick some Decepticon booty."

The cargo planes had deposited them just beyond the edge of the city before taking flight once more. As the caravan plowed rapidly through the cracked and desolate streets, Optimus sent a signal to the pilots that they were ready to be picked up. And after a short moment of hesitation-- and with a wrench of will that tore painfully at something inside of him-- he notified them to set a course for London, England.

"As am I," Optimus murmured in return, although the Decepticons he wished to destroy lay far away in India rather than in Britain.

Sam's survival now rested on chance and the scant abilities of a deeply scarred engineer. And maybe, just maybe, on Bumblebee, who still would not reply to the continuous stream of link requests pecking at his recievers. Yet he feared the lengths to which the scout would go to protect his newly bonded-- and what drastic action he might take should the worst occur. After all, it had taken no less that the combined efforts of four Autobots, including himself, to prevent Sideswipe from sticking his cannon inside his own chest cavity when Sunstreaker died in a crash landing shortly after the battle in Shanghai. And he doubted that Primus himself could have deterred Bumblebee from attempting to follow Sam.

Optimus wanted-- no, needed-- to protect them. His spark twisted and screamed for him to save them, draw a line in the sand and say 'no more' to death, it ends here, you will not take these, they are mine-- you have taken all the others, but these you shall not have. Take anyone, everyone, else-- burn down the cities and build towers from their bones-- but no more will you rob me of those I hold most dear, no more will I stand aside and watch them fall by your hand into the darkness from which there is no return.

Some part of him held out hope that if he could only save just those two lives, the chain would be broken, the legion would cease to advance, the wildfire would halt its all-consuming blaze, and no more would have to die after them. He prayed and writhed and sobbed for the chance to draw that line and hold it against the universe itself.

But he could not.

He was not a god-- he was as mortal and capable of dying as any human.

He could not defeat the impersonal power of a storm; he could not simply give an order and force the Decepticons to relent.

And he was a Prime. His duty came first. It always came first, as it ever would. There was no feasable course of action he could take to help his sons, and London and Sideswipe needed him to come to their aid.

Faith. Wisdom. Responsibility. The three creeds of every Prime, programmed into every system and processor when Vector Sigma had remade the greviously wounded Orion Pax into the savior the anicent robot had dreamed for his people.

Optimus didn't feel much like a savior, not when had done more killing than saving. But even had those three words not been a programmed imperative, he still would have adhered to his duty for the sake of the desperate and dying people who still looked up to him and expected him to be able to protect them, even when he sometimes felt unable to even protect himself.

He tried again to contact Wheeljack, but the block was still in place. Now, more than ever, it was imperative that the engineer be made aware of the danger. Once more he sent a priority 6 link request to Bumblebee.

Finally, after a total of 4,925 queries had pinged from his reciever, the scout reluctantly opened a channel. As soon as the connection snapped into place, Optimus hurried out an urgent message to Bumblebee, telling him to order Wheeljack back to base. No doubt he would do a far better job of 'presuading' the engineer than even Rachet-- after all, there was no limit to what Bumblebee would say or do to protect Sam.

Data file transmitted, Optimus settled back in his processor, watching his chronometer. Finally, after nearly 1.755 seconds had elapsed-- a far longer span of time than such a task would have ordinarily required-- the scout responded: Wheeljack had agreed to bring Sam back to base.

His emotional cores sagged in relief. There was some hope now that the engineer was aware of the danger around him and Sam. And if Bumblebee arrived in time to help-- if, Primus forbid, they ended up needing help-- the Decepticons would find that murdering the boy would not be quite as easy as they had originally thought with the scout there to defend him.

Optimus wanted to protect his sons and pull them out of harm's way.

But he could not. He could only trust in their ability to protect one another and continue on with the fullfillment of his duties. Because though he was a Prime, a ruler, a king, he was helpless to do otherwise.

Faith. Wisdom. Responsibility. The three binding chains.

A proximity alert interrupted the fragmented looping of his programs. Optimus eyed the cargo plane as it swept into view on his sensors and came in for a landing on one of the intact runways at the Moscow airport. His thoughts consumed by the turbulent tide of the thwarted defense/guardian protocols, he reached for the link port that had for so long lain dormant in his communications array. And ignoring the protests from his logic relays that there was no one on the other end to recieve the signal, he sent out a brief message into the blackness, shunting it down the truncated tunnel to nowhere.

::You were my beloved brother, once. But if you harm my human son again, the Pit itself will not offer refuge from me-- and this time, I will make sure there is nothing left of you to revive::

There was no answer. He had not expected one.

Night would not fall over Moscow for some time, yet a darkness had crept in that no dawn could hope to break.

Snowflakes, like silent watchers, continued to fall without comment.

NNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN

Author's Note: ....aaaand yet another example of a chapter that spiraled wildly out of control. This is really only half of the whole thing, because I didn't want to have a 40k chapter. Sets a bad precedent. So I found I good stopping place and chopped it off. But the good news is that I've already gotten ahead on the next chapter, so it shouldn't take nearly as long as this one to post.

And before I get flamed for taking two weeks to spit out this 'measly' chapter, may I remind you all that I was on vacation for a week? AND my life has been very hectic recently, cutting down the time I have to write. The next chapter should come fairly quickly, but after that I will be starting college, so my update speed is going to take a nose dive. I will try to have another one up every month (or sooner if I make the chapters shorter), but please don't bug me with e-mails saying 'are you dead?'.

Oh, and another thing-- LOG IN BEFORE YOU ASK ABOUT THE PROGRESS OF A CHAPTER, YOU LAZY BUMS!! That's not to say that I don't want annonymous reveiws-- I LOVE reviews of any sort, but I can't fill you in about how the next update is coming along if I have no way of getting in contact with you. And some of the badgering is really starting to stress me out. I WANT to get the next chapter up for you guys, but my fingers can only move over the keyboard so fast and there are only so many hours in a day, some of which must be devoted to sleep. Annonymous reviews are okay, but if you want a status report, leave me a way to reply. Please.

Ahem, on to story notes:

1) Yes, I took liberties with Barricade's character. But he's another one of those background mechs that only had two lines (the fact that he repeated one of them doesn't count), so I needed to expand. The writers themselves stated that they had cast him as a 'deceiver' (hence the cop car disguise) who enjoyed breaking the trust of others, so I decided to run with that.

2) Yes, I know this chapter is short. It's also a part one of two.

3) No, I did not make Optimus giggle like a school girl and throw confetti when he heard his darling boy had gotten married, because he already knew how much Sam loved Mikaela-- and on Cybertron, loving someone that much meant that you were as good as 'married'. Especially since the human ceremony doesn't really involve any physical bonding, only symbolic bonding. A mech would, for the most part, look at it and go 'Yeah, so what?'.

ONE MORE THING (No more after this, I promise)

Do you guys know of any contests I can submit this too, or other places besides I can post it? I'm technologically challenged and can't figure out how to put it on livejournal (*sob*).

Technical note: The shakespeare quote Barricade paraphrases is actually, "Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more: it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing," (Macbeth, Act 5, Scene 5).