Another chapter is now here! Sorry for the delay, McRiggs. I wasn't home at all yesterday and I worked all day so there was no time to write! But luckily, the writing bug refuses to stop biting and once I returned home, I immediately began working on this. I'll probably have the next chapter up tomorrow evening. Probably. In the meantime, happy reading!
DISCLAIMER (blahblahblah): Transformers = Hasbro. Jade = mine. Starscream = also mine (jk, I wish.) Don't get confused.
Chapter Five – Poison
Shrieking, crying, agony. Three things that resulted from a well-performed torture. Smiling sickly with only half a face, Megatron purred with enjoyment. The small human below him wriggled relentlessly in an attempt to relieve herself from the tight grip that was held on her.
But Starscream didn't budge. He watched with unenthused optics as the human called Jade screamed. That was round two of Megatron's little sessions with the girl and so far, the Decepticon commander was enjoying himself quite thoroughly. Starscream, on the other hand, cared little. His audios were again muted and he kept his gaze on the hard floor so he wouldn't have to watch the young female crying out for help. How pathetic, he thought of her.
Like the last time, Megatron was digging his metal talons into Jade's arms, sending painful electric shocks through her weakening body. However, unlike last time, he had a surprise in store to make things a little more interesting.
Once Jade's cries became quieter, signaling the halfway point between alive and dead, the cruel Decepticon removed his sharp claws and sent them instead towards his lieutenant, whose attention was drawn towards the floor.
Starscream was taken by surprise and released his grip on the human who was pinned against the metal table.
With a slight gasp, which sent a lightning bolt of pain through her chest, Jade retreated to the far corner of the tabletop and watched with wide, puffy eyes as the two Decepticons engaged in a one-on-one battle.
"Ah!" cried a shocked Starscream as he attempted to hold his own. "My Master, what are you doing?" Metal grinded painfully against metal.
Megatron's brute strength was winning out against his subordinate as he said, "It is a small price to pay to watch the human suffer." He spoke as if watching human suffering was a luxury. For him, it most certainly was.
With sudden vigor, Starscream pushed off with a defensive snarl and away from his commander to ready himself a bit more the next time Megatron came at him.
However, instead of rushing Starscream for second time or even drawing any weapons, Megatron reached out with fingers extended and swiped the Seeker across the chest. Sparks flew and gears whirred.
Jade had seen enough. Shakily, she grabbed the edge of the table and rolled off. Ordinarily, it would have only stood a couple of feet off the ground, used primarily for working on jet engine pieces. But Megatron had stacked it upon several cinder blocks, adding quite a few more feet to the table. In other words, Jade's landing was rough and she collapsed weakly upon the cool floor. She was back up in an instant, however. As the adrenaline began to pump furiously through her system, Jade wondered if she could be fast enough to at least get out of the hangar. Sadly for her, she wasn't.
"And where do you think you're going?" asked a demonic voice from behind her. Thumping footsteps then echoed across the vast hangar room and they were soon closely behind the girl.
She yelped as a warm metal hand clasped itself around her waist. Struggling was futile, but she did it anyway. Giving up was not an option. However, she didn't attempt to bite the massive mech as she had done to Starscream.
"You've had your fun! Now let me go!" Jade shouted angrily, her voice scratchy and not in the least bit threatening.
"As you wish," joked Megatron, dropping the girl back onto the table.
Her eyes were immediately drawn to Starscream, who had an unpleasant look upon his face as he clutched his chest with one hand. Blue, glittering liquid dripped out between his fingers, each drop sizzling poisonously against the concrete floor.
Jade was confused. What was the point of randomly attacking him? She wondered. The sudden appearance of a hand before her snapped Jade out of thought.
Forcefully, Megatron slammed his palm into Jade, pushing her back down against the table.
She wheezed as the air was momentarily pushed from her lungs. When it rushed back to her, she was grateful.
"Starscream, if you please." Megatron extended his free hand out towards the Air Commander.
Obediently and with his head low, he approached with a glowering expression. Slagger, he thought angrily towards his "master".
Without warning, although one could have easily expected it coming from the Decepticon, Megatron lashed his arm out and caught Starscream behind the neck, dragging him forward until he was standing over the human.
Starscream yelped pitifully, one hand still clutching his bleeding chest, which had begun to pulse painfully.
With little remorse, Megatron removed his clamped hand from Starscream's neck and dug into an exposed part of one of the claw marks near the Seeker's Spark chamber.
The lieutenant growled and hurried back out of Megatron's reach. He glared at his master, but upon receiving a glare back, Starscream's expression calmed and he lowered his head.
With a mad-scientist grin, Megatron said, "Now watch as I experiment on the reaction of Energon in a human's system."
With curious eyes, Starscream did, in fact, watch as Megatron dripped several drops of blue lifeblood into the open wounds on Jade's forearms.
She shook with terror from the act that Megatron was performing. Jade had never been a germ-a-phobe, but the thought of something foreign entering her body was horrifying. Once it touched her skin, Jade cringed. The burning sensation was tolerable, but her body jolted once the Energon entered her puncture wounds. It was an involuntary jump, but it was the first of many. Her body convulsed, not just in anguish, but because of whatever the blue liquid was doing to her.
Obviously, her reaction was both pleasing and curious to Megatron, who removed his clawed hand from atop her body to watch the human more closely.
Starscream was also interested, for he cautiously approached the table with an inquisitive expression.
Then the real wave of torture rolled in. Starting in her arms, fire sped hastily through her body-into her head, down her chest, through her legs. It was too much to even cry about. There was nothing Jade could do but shrivel up into a tight ball and pray for the pain to stop, even if that meant death. Her stomach heaved and threatened to spill its contents. It probably would have had there been any in it to begin with. She barely ate anything in Egypt and she certainly hadn't eaten anything since she'd been kidnapped. That was one thing Jade was grateful for-an empty stomach.
Less than sixty seconds passed before everything began to settle again. The fire in Jade's body cooled, the head-splitting migraine dulled to a repetitive pulsing, her stomach calmed, and Jade was tossed into a semi-conscious state. Not a coma, but not really awake either. Nothing registered in her mind then, aside from the peace her body suddenly felt as the excruciating pain dissipated. She hadn't even realized she was back into her massive hangar bay, having been put there by an injured Starscream, until the girl's mind slowly recovered.
First, the light from the mid-day sun registered to Jade. It hurt her eyes, despite the warm rays being weakened by the dusty windows above. Then, the cold ground she was curled up on. The smell of cement. The feeling of caked-on blood upon her shirt and arms. The tautness of her cheeks from dried tears. The stiffness of her muscles.
The strong beating of her heart.
She sighed. Alas, she wasn't dead, she hadn't died, she was still here. The sigh was a happy one. Despite how bad the pain had been and how bad it still was, Jade was glad to be breathing.
With another sigh, she uncurled herself, which resulted in a whimper as her joints groaned in protest. Whatever the Energon was doing to her, it wasn't pleasant.
Along the floor in front of her was a trail of tiny burn marks, as thought from a cigarette butt, leading back out of the bay. "Heh," Jade laughed. "And Screamer gets his ass handed to him again," she added, remembering the slices across the Seeker's chest. He had been the one to place her back in the hangar and he left a track of Energon burns to prove it. Jade shook her head. It seemed that she wasn't the only one getting fucked with. When a burst of sympathy entered her heart, she frowned. "The fuck do I need to sympathize with him for?" she growled at herself, feeling comforted by hearing a human's voice, even if it was her own. "No sympathy for a Decepticon. Empathy, on the other hand…" Jade joked with herself, but she wasn't really laughing. Starscream seemed to suffer as much as she did. But what kind of person would she be if she began to feel sorry for the slagging piece of scrap metal? Surprisingly for her, she wasn't sure.
Thankfully, it appeared the Seeker had been gentler on Jade when placing her back in her room, for she had no marks on her to prove otherwise, such as the skinned knee that she received during the last good-bye with Starscream when he had dropped her unkindly.
Thoughtfully, Jade cast her gaze upwards and watched blurry blips of white make their slow travel through the sky. It was the first time she'd seen clouds since her visit to Petra during Sam's search for the Matrix of Leadership. My god, she thought. That was only yesterday. How strange it was to have gone through so much in only a matter of twenty-four hours.
The sudden remembrance of Sam brought Jade's mind onto something that could reunite her with him and the Autobots-her broken cell phone. Shakily, she got to her sneakered-feet and found herself peering into one of the long metal tubes along the wall. Her cell phone rested exactly where she had tossed it the day before. For the second time since she'd arrived at the abandoned military facility, a smile formed on Jade's lips. Time to get to work.