A Captured Beast within a Human Skin

Chapter 3 - Silence

By Uniasus

Sam had no idea where he was. Back at the lab he had put up a fight, and to be honest he could have put up a better one but he had desperately tried getting at his phone to call Bumblebee. He knew, despite all the self-defense classes he took, that there was no way he was capable of taking out three guys, not that the guy in the suit joined in but Sam was pretty confident he could fight. Getting a message to Bumblebee would have been the only way to let the Autobot know what was going on, that him not coming home was not something to do with the All Spark (was it?) and rather with a forcible removal from the lab.

He knew he was no longer in the Silicon Valley, the cold and sterile room he woke up in spoke of an actual base and not just some hidden location in California's urban areas. Quickly he sat up and checked his pockets for his phone. He really did not expect them, who ever 'them' was, to leave Barbie in his possession and he was not disappointed. There was nothing in his pockets, not even the granola bar he had place in it earlier.

His watch was gone too. Probably taken just in case it was possible for Bee to track him with it. Which it was not, but secret government agents tended to be paranoid if his past experience with Sector 7 counted for anything.

Sam looked around his room, cell, and did not notice anything of use or interest. Plain gray walls, rough cement floor, stiff cot with itchy blankets and a flat pillow. He turned his attention to the ceiling and found what he was looking for; a small camera in the corner with a red light on indicating it was watching him. He snickered as that Geico commercial song entered his head.

"Hey!" he waved at the camera, "Can I get something to drink or eat?" He would have asked about where a bathroom was, but the small pan underneath the camera announced that if he asked about that he would not get an answer. He did not get one about the food either.

His stomach was making pitiful noises, and not seeing anything else to do he collapsed back onto his cot and looked up at the ceiling, planning on spending some time seeing shakes in ceiling cracks. That plan kinda fell through when he realized that the ceiling, like the floor, was made out of cement and thus lacked any cracks begging to be turned into fantastic creatures. Sam sighed and closed his eyes, trying to not to think of anything.

Or maybe not. He never did inquire about that vacation. Sam opened his eye a crack and peered at the camera. Guess he was taking a forced one now. He almost wished he and Bee where with the Autobots and he was participating in an experiment on circadian rhythms for Wheeljack. At least then he knew being stuck in a room would eventually have an end.

Suddenly, the lights clicked off and Sam jumped up in his cot thinking it was some type of electric failure. But after several minutes of just staring into the dark he came to the conclusion that it must be night now and the lights had been flipped off to permit sleep. Sam lay back down, bringing the up the blanket to settle around his shoulders. He looked out at the red light of the camera before drifting off to sleep.

His waking was not pleasant; it included the lights begin turned on full blast and while his eyes were still recovering being pulled to his feet and forced to move.

"Hey, hey!" he protested once he was half way coherent and able to figure out he was being led down one monotone hallway after another by someone in Air Force attire, "Where are you taking me?"

His answer was practically being thrown into a locker room. At first he just blinked stupidly, taking in the empty room. Really, should not there be other people here?

"You have fifteen minutes," a voice growled from outside the door.

Fifteen minutes to do what? Sam asked himself before he noticed an extra set of clothes and some bottles next to the nearest shower. Well, at least they allowed their prisoners to be hygienic. But first things first, he did not realize how badly he had to pee till now.

He gratefully peeled off his clothes, feeling like they had been slept in not one, but two nights. Man, he smelled like it too. Sam wrinkled his nose and then stepped under the stream of water. Ah, it felt good to wash away the sweat and corn chip smell even if the water did not get any warmer than lukewarm, a product of either the military trying to save money or the machoness of the men enlisted here.

Sam just spent some time letting the water run in rivulets down his back and chest before he remembered he had a time limit. Not knowing how much time he had already used, he quickly grabbed the bottle labeled shampoo, squirted a dollop in his hand and scrubbed it in his hair.

As it was, he was just a little short on time. The air force man barged in and grabbed him by the upper am before he had even had the chance to zip up his jeans. He had refused to wear those olive gray pants and was quite certain they would not fit well, but the clean shirt was nice. Sam grabbed it as he was pulled out of the locker room.

"Can't we stop for a moment so I can put my shirt on?" he asked his escort. The airman did not respond and so Sam had to try to put in on one handed. He had gotten it over his head and halfway through his arm before he was led through another door and roughly forced into a chair. Sam shot the military man a glare and then proceeded to finish getting dressed with a grumble about harassing civilians.

"Nice to finally meet you, Mr. Witwicky."

Sam looked up to see a business suit dressed man leaning against a desk in front of him. He was shorter than the figure Sam remembered approaching him at the lab, but just as fit. Sam glared at him.

"My name isn't Witwicky."

"But it used to be, yes?"

Sam just narrowed his eyes. "Who are you?"

The man gave a dismal gesture with his hand, "That doesn't really matter, all you need to know is that I'm from a section of the FBI."

"The FBI?'

"You didn't really think that after learning that the All Spark had an effect on you that the US government would just let you go? There was more than one reason the Air Force offered you a job." He gave a sickly sweet smile and Sam decided to name him Candy.

"Actually, I did. Considering there's a treaty in place with the Autobots and you helped me hide," Sam wondered how much Candy knew. Just what Sector Seven files said or more. No, it had to be more if they not only knew his old identity, but also his current one.

Sam leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms. "Look Candy Cane," the agent's left eye gave a twitch and Sam allowed a small smile to bloom on his face. "I have no idea what you could possible gain from keeping me here. Yes, the All Spark played with my brain. But all it did was turn me into a smart person. That being said, I think you should let me go back to work."

He made to stand up and leave the room, to go where he had no idea, but a heavy hand on his shoulder pushed him back in the seat. Sam shot a look at the solider behind him, the same one who had brought him in, and then returned his attention to the FBI agent in front of the room with a roll of his shoulder.

The agent seemed, smug for some reason. "It doesn't give you bouts of insomnia?"

"Insomnia?" Sam repeated innocently.

"Yes, lack of sleep."

"Nope, none at all." When in doubt, deny, deny, deny. And when that does not work, blame someone else.

"Then would you care to explain why you spend about a night a week at your lab and not your home?" Candy walked forward and started to circle Sam's chair.

Shit. Shit, shit, shit! Sam thought, refusing to follow Candy's rotation around him. They had cameras in the lab! Or an informant. It was probably Airman First Class Stacy. Working as a stripper at night must not bring in the needed money.

He tried to play it cool, he really did, but it was hard to make his body relax and his voice sounded a littler higher than normal to his ears. "I'm a workaholic, any one you ask will tell you that."

"Hmm." Candy stopped in front of him and stared at Sam who stared right back, defiant to his every eyelash. The agent nodded to someone behind Sam. There was the sound of squeaky wheels and then a television set on a cart appeared in front of him pushed by a woman in a business suit. She was obviously an FBI agent too.

"What are we watching? Your favorite Barbie movie? I heard the sparkles are really well done," Sam was surprised he did not get a hand slap for that comment. Instead, Candy grabbed the remote and the lady agent turned on the DVD player.

Sam watched the male agent move through the DVD menu, each chapter labeled by a number but there was not any image to indicate what the movie was. Finally, Candy selected the chapter labeled "1300".

What started playing on the screen was a security video. It was black and white, and a rather high bird's eye view. But the quality was good and it did not take Sam long to recognize the lab shown was his own, or that he was the only in it at the moment.

It almost made his heart stop when he realized that what he was watching was himself discovering that Ed was communicating in Morse code.

"Let's turn the volume up, shall we?" Candy pointed the clicker towards the screen and the volume went from zero to 42. It had to be a really good camera they had installed because it picked up every one of Ed's finger taps against the table. Sam paled. They watched the scene play out and then Candy turned to face Sam with a triumphant grin.

"Care to explain that?"

Sam gulped. "Your guess is as good as mine, I have no idea how that happened."

"I think you're lying, Mr. Witwicky."

"See, that's where we run into a bit of a problem. Because what ever happened to Ed, I didn't do it. I swear."

"I don't care how many times you deny it," Candy gave another nod to the female agent who pulled the cart back into the corner it came from, "I know you did it and I'm asking you, politely for the moment, to do it again."

The female returned, now named Helen Keller in Sam's mind since it looked like she wasn't going to speak, pushing in front of her a handheld trolley that looked like it belonged in the supply building of Home Depot. Sam could get over the neon orange color eventually; it was the shape of a body underneath the sheet covering that freaked him out.

"Mr. Witwicky, I give you Lilith." Candy pulled the sheet off of the trolley and reveled not a dead body to Sam's relief, but a robot.

It was ceramic white, all the joints very simple ball and socket ones but for the fingers which were hinges. It lacked toes, and a face. In its stead was a dark LCD screen that put Sam on edge because it was creepy. The robot was also disproportioned, the elbow and knee joints were abnormally large and the legs and arms were longer than those of an average human. It was the same width of a slender, yet naturally muscular woman.

Sam stared at it, and then turned his attention to Candy who was standing on the opposite side of Lilith from Helen. He returned his glance to the robot and then again switched his focus to Candy to raise an eyebrow.

"What do you want me to do, say hello?"

"No," Candy snarled. "I want you to animate her like you did that robot in your lab."

"But I can't," Sam began before the agent cut him off with a hand slash across his chest.

"Don't tell me you can't Witwicky, because that tape says otherwise," he pointed his finger at the TV behind Sam's head, "And if you can't wake her up we don't have a use for you, understand!?"

Sam had to swallow a couple of times before he was capable of speech, but by that time Helen and the airman had already left the room. Candy only paused long enough to leave a parting message. "If she doesn't move by tomorrow morning, you'll be getting a bullet in your head."

The door solidly closed behind him and Sam heard it lock with a heavy click. It took him a lot longer to get over his dry mouth this time.

"Fuck," he whispered, collapsing his head into his hands and resting his elbows on his knees. "Fuck!" Sam launched himself out of the chair, picked it up, and threw it into the wall. There was a sound of splintering wood; a front leg broke off.

Sam spent a moment staring at the pile of wood, breathing heavily, and then turned away from it in shame. Throwing it had not helped matters; in fact it worsened them because he no longer had a chair to sit in. The cement floor looked cold and uninviting.

So instead he sat on the only other suitable thing to set his butt on, the desk Candy had been leaning on earlier. He hopped up and turned so his back was facing Lilith before crossing his legs and staring at the wall in front of him.

They thought it was his doing Ed had moved. Well, technically Sam was the one who had built him from scratch and enabled him to move, but Ed moving on his own was something that was not planned. Nor something Sam thought possible. And yet he had seen it, not a day—how long had he been here anyway? And where was here?

He cast the questions aside, knowing fully well that he was not going to get an answer unless he cooperated and even then it was iffy. Which brought his mind to the other little problem he had, he could not make robots move. What ever happened to Ed, he had know clue but really wanted to find out. Sam was positive though it was not him who caused it. Sure, the All Spark had that type of power, but he only had information from the Cube and not the abilities. Plus, you would think after six years something would have happened, if it were possible. But it had not so it was not.

Then what had caused Ed to move? Sam ran through the day in his head, trying to pick up anything that might have happened. Tom and him had plugged in commands to Ed that evening, but Ed had moved before that during lunch. And before even that, his mind whispered.

Monday night, when Sam and Tom had left the office Ed had waved good-bye. Sam had figured it was just a trick of lighting and an achy brain, but if it was not? The only similar thing between the two days was plugging Ed into Tom's netbook, but they had done that before and nothing happened. Maybe Tom had a faulty piece of coding he developed over the weekend that had gotten into Ed's processor.

But Ed did not have a processor; that was why he had to be hooked up to the netbook. Ed was part of a whole, not his own robot. The main processor for the satellite, Angela, was still in the works, being tinkered on here and there. She was built, sure, but they could not put in all the software until the programming for all the individual parts worked. The was no physical way Ed could have moved on his own, let alone tap out Morse code, by himself! He had to have had outside help. And as much as Sam hated to admit it, the only thing that made sense was him. The All Spark messed up human.

He groaned, really wishing Bumblebee was there so Sam could talk to someone. Maybe have Bee send data to Ratchet to have the medic tell him this was all made up and some crazy delusion in his head. Because if this was not and he actually had the ability to create sparklings or what ever they were called…

Sam shook his head, not wanting to go down that path. There would be no hiding, no living the semi-normal life he had now. There would be giant robots asking him for kids and government agencies trying to get a hold of him.

He let out a dry laugh. Government agencies had already gotten a hold of him and were now trying to get him to obey their wishes. Sam wondered if they would follow through on the threat to kill him if he did not obey. If Candy did put a bullet in his head and the Autobots found out things could go to hell, but if there was not any proof…

Politics had never been his strong point but even he could see things would not be pretty.

Be that as it may, if he did not cooperate life here at whatever base he was kept at would not be fun. Sam was not a masochist; he would prefer to avoid pain if he could. In order to do that, he had to make Lilith move. And he had no idea how, even if he was slowly accepting that maybe he could. Only by default.

With a defeated sigh he pushed himself off the desk and walked around it to face Lilith. He turned her around so she was facing the desk and then once again scrambled on top of it to stare into her not-face.

Right, so what did he do to get Ed to move? Worked on him and talked to him; seeing as how Lilith was already done Sam went with the latter.

"Hello Lilith. You know, it would be pretty silly if you came alive and only to say you are a guy. That's very likely, all the sentient robots I know are male. Though Bee's told me they don't actually have genders like we do and they just chose male voices because males seem to be the gender with the most power here on Earth. But who knows, being made on Earth you might decide you have a gender." Sam shrugged and cocked his head to gaze up and down the robot in front of him.

"You're certainly built like a female. Very thin without those broad Terminator shoulders." Lilith did not say anything and Sam sighed, running a hand through his hair and turning his head to the side.

"This is going to take longer than I thought," he muttered to himself. Lilith's black face unnerved him, and he wondered if talking to her really was the way to go. But he did not have any other clue. Then there was the issue of what do you talk to a non-responsive robot about. He always talked to Ed about the work he was doing, but here it was as if he was talking to a corpse and waiting for it to turn into a zombie.

Everything he thought about telling her he vetoed because he was sure Candy and Helen had the room bugged and he did not want to give them any information they might not have. So no talking about his family, no talking about the Autobots. That left work, since Sam was pretty sure they knew all about that any way.

Knowing what to say did not make it any less awkward.

"So, did you know I'm an engineer? Yup, I'm working on building a self-repairing satellite right now." God, he felt so silly. "Been working there for two years now, ever since I finished my PHD. It's a pretty cool project, it'll reduce long term costs for the military and private companies that relay on satellites like phone and cable companies."

The black face kept on staring at him and after a while he could not take it. So he shifted his gaze to her chest while he talked. Once he remember that Lilith was potentially, most likely, a girl robot he cast his gaze somewhere else and concentrated on her right hand.

At first he had to struggle with what to say, what was worth saying and safe to do so. But as the hours fell away he delved into the little details just to have something to talk about. If Sam did not talk, the room filled up with silence and he would get the creepy feeling that Lilith was actually listening to what he said. Talking distracted him from the creepy feeling.

His only indication of time was an airman coming in to bring him food. All of it was on par with high school cafeteria eats, but he was starving so breakfast and lunch disappeared while just shy of dinner was eaten a little more slowly. Eventually his eyelids became tired, but he had to talk to Lilith because that the only thing he could think of that had caused Ed to move and if Lilith did not move herself the consequences would not be fun.

He laid out on the desk, eyes closed but he continued to ramble on; this time about how his old bedroom as a kid had been set up. A private bathroom, industrial shelves, posters galore. Sam did not want to fall asleep, could not allow himself to, but he drifted off any way.

Sam did not come home Tuesday night, but Bumblebee had expected that. After all, the human had said the All Spark was acting up and when that happened he usually stayed up working at the lab and it was just easier on him to sleep on one of the beds the Air Force provided.

If Bee was allowed to drive Sam to and from work, he would make sure Sam slept in his own bed All Spark be slagged. But he was not allowed to because the Air Force wanted to keep the lab base secret and the Autobot decided not to push the issue. The military would protect Sam, of that he was sure. And if push came to shove, the yellow Camaro could easily find the base and download all of it's secrets.

When Sam failed to come home Wednesday night Bumblebee got nervous. Usually Sam let him know if he was going to spend the night in the lab. He had not on Tuesday and Bee figured it was because Sam had let him know the night before and just forgot the customary text.

But to not come home two nights in a row…

His central processor said the most likely thing that happened was that the challenge was larger than Sam had expected and required a second stay at the lab and had not contacted Bee because his mind was either not thinking about that or his phone had died and he had no way of contacting him. It would not be the first time Sam had been forced by the All Spark to spend more than one night away from home, but all those occurrences had been early on in with the Air Force when Sam was still learning to reign his mind in as much as possible around such advanced (for a human) equipment. This would be the first time however that Sam had not given him fair warning.

The time frame Sam was usually dropped off during came and went on Thursday as well and Bumblebee's logic circuits said there was no way the young human would stay there three nights. It had never happened, and even when he was struggling with an All Spark riddled mind in college he had never lost himself for more than two days. At that point his body over-rode his mind and Bee would be forced to take care of him while his body recovered with lots of sleep and food. In such instances, Sam would end up sleeping inside of the Camaro because that was as far as his body could go before collapsing. Bee had always driven to the apartment he rented but could never wake the human and his hologram was not capable of carrying Sam up to a real bed.

So when Thursday resulted in no Sam demanding sleep and food, nor any communications from his charge Bumblebee knew something had happened. He tried calling Sam's phone, but all he got was a message about the number no longer being in service. Bee's protective protocols went on high alert and he did the first thing that his HUD suggested. He called Optimus Prime.

A/N: Hoohoo! What's this? A new chapter? Oh my goodness! Don't you just love a snarky Sam?

Poor Sam, stuck in on of those catch-22 positions with a creepy looking robot. I keep trying to draw Lilith, but keep failing. T.T I'm just not meant to draw giant robots. Or human size ones as the case may be. Someday though, someday, once I finally get around to reading that 'How to Draw Robots' book I snagged from a Borders bargain bin. I've been too busy reading about cat wizards . That and I bought one of those really detailed image/design coloring books and simply coloring one pages has already taken so much time! *wiggles* I love it!

I do have long periods at work where I should be doing something other than play Farmville and I'm going to try to get some writing done on a regular basis. But fair warning, as of yet this still is on a third burner, though little one-shots may escape, especially in my Doll verse or an expansion of Zirconium since many have asked for it. If you want something in particular for Dolls, check out the poll I have on my profile.

So, in the mean time I encourage you to enjoy the up coming summer (and I hope you guys don't have the heavy storms I've been getting. They've woken me up two days in a row now!). Go to a steam punk convention or something. Or the midnight showing of Iron Man ^_~ Looking forward to that one myself.