Author's Notes: My brain is tired. I've been so totally drained lately. A lot of the fics I read haven't updated in a while and that makes me cranky when I don't get my TF fic fix. Lately I've been occupied with the TF mosaic pieces I've picked up too. I have four to finish. Three of which I've had sitting on the shelf for about...a couple months. People are getting ready to revolt, I just know it. lol. The fourth is part of a special Mosaic project that focuses on the TF Animated universe. I'm doing the Sari Mosaic. Yay! lol. Anyway, enjoy this chaater. It's a little shorter then usual, but I garantee that it'll be worht it.

Phase Four: Blind

Chapter Eight

The lights dimmed to near darkness as Xeon left, the city light beyond the glass casting the room in an eerie glow of violet light. The room that had been her world for so many months, the room she had just began to feel welcome in, comfortable in… was now nothing but a vast cage, the gold ring around her neck; just a symbol of oppression and submissiveness, and the food and water sitting inconspicuously in their containers; rewards for being a good little pet.

Her head pounded with a headache born of inconsolable tears, the remnants of which stained her cheeks. Red, moist eyes gaze out through the bars of her cage (shut and locked) and she began to wonder…

Why didn't she see it before?

Xeon…how she hated him.

He had been behind the entire thing. It was his decision to enslave her people, to make a profit off of them. He could have let then die…but he chose to enslave them. And he seemed to think she should be grateful for it?

The city she had been gazing at through glass all this time with a sense of wonder and discovery…had turned ugly and wretched. Now that she knew what made the lights sparkle so brilliantly, what made the alien hover cars zoom by like a cardiographer ballet, and what fueled the Mechs who pilgrimaged to Lady Viral's parties every other week.

Energon, it was called. The life blood of Cybertron and it's inhabitants. Energon that was refined from Terran soil at the cost of human freedom, human lives, and human blood.

She mourned her planet, dreading to think what a mess these heartless machine had made of it. She mourned her people and the horrors they must be experiencing while she sat in her cage safe and content. She mourned her family…her mom and dad and little brother. She choked back a sob as it bubbled up at the thought of them. How they would react if they saw her now. No. She didn't want to think about them. She didn't want to imagine the endless atrocities that could or had befallen them too. We're they even alive? No—she couldn't think about it.

She leered out into the darkness.

Xeon.

She hated him…for everything…

She hated herself…for not seeing.

Brea's face scrunched up in a scowl and she reached down to the floor and grabbed her sneaker and pulling her arm back to chuck it at the cage door in absolute anger, to release the mounting frustration and demoralization, when…she paused. Her eyes widened and her breath hitched in a stark realization.

Her ears were ringing.

Stunned, she blinked and dropped the shoe in shock. Slowly, eyes searching the room and Brea lowered herself back onto the bed. She crossed her legs and scanned the room with her eyes, looking for anything.

A flicker of motion turned her head close to the door where a shadow hung, cut off by the cascading light of the window. Just beyond the light, she saw a vague outline of something, the air inside seemed to be warped and bent.

She licked her lips and in Cybertronian she called out, "Hello?"

She waited for a response. There was none.

"I know you're there. I can hear the generator," She said.

There was the barest scuffling noise, but no movement.

"I don't know who you are…or how you got in," She said, "But if you want, take whatever you're after," She said. "I don't care. Xeon plans to exchange all these with fake ones soon so if you want them, take them now. Before they're gone. I won't stop you," She looked around her and laughed hollowly, "It's not as if I could, even if I wanted to."

Her words were met with silence.

Brea rose from the bed and walked to the cage door. She grippe the gilded bars and looked out beyond them. For a long moment, her thoughts muddled and congealed in her head.

She huffed a laugh, short and humorless. "You know what's really funny…really sad about all this? I thought I was doing good by obeying him…I though that…as long as I was good and did what he said…there was a chance…" She coughed as her throat began to clog and more hot tears dripped from her eyes, still raw and red. "I thought there might be a chance…that maybe…he…that I could…see my…"

Brea pressed her forehead to the metal bars, cold to the touch, as a wave of tears over took her. Her arms trembled and she struggled to breathe past the sobs that clogged her throat and lungs and her stomach and surrounding muscle ached.

"I didn't mean to…" She declared, sobbing hard, and returning to English. She didn't have the mental resolve to speak the alien language. "I wouldn't have helped him protect this place…if I had known…I didn't know…I didn't…"

Her voice disappeared followed by a long bout of silence, broken only by her hopeless whimpers, which seemed to last forever. Until…

"What is your name, youngling?"

Her head jerked up so fast, her vision blurred for a second and sent a sharp pain through her head. She shied back from the crouching shadow looming outside the cage and stared up into peering blue eyes.

"…m-my name…?" She stammered inanely.

"Yes," the shadow said, his voice low and attentive, almost cautious. "Or have they taken that from you as well?"

Brea would have laughed had she the moment's wit, but all she could do was stare up into those blue eyes. She'd never seen any alien Mech with blue eyes…everyone else's had been red.

"…Brea…" She replied, voice soft and meek. "My name is Brea…"

"Brea," The shadow repeated. "How old are you Brea?"

"I…I'm seventeen…I think," She said. The blue eyes squinted down at her and she had the inane impression…he was smiling.

"That is a good age to be," The shadow told her, a smile in his voice. She merely gawked at him, utterly confused.

"Why are you showing yourself? Won't the cameras catch you?"

"There are no cameras inside this room; only outside in the halls and throughout the rest of the tower. My scrambler will disrupt any other sensor." The smile left his voice as he said, "Xeon would never risk incriminating himself by having security cameras in here."

Brea shook her head, "I…I don't understand…who are you?"

"Just know that I am a friend," He assured her, placing one large hand atop the cage and for the briefest moment, his eyes softened. "I will return soon, but you must no tell Xeon you saw me. If all goes according to plan, I can get you out of here. Very soon."

The shadow stood and she got a very brief glimpse of him before his whole body dissolved into air and the ringing returned. Brea looked out trying to find some shimmer of movement to locate the mysterious Mech.

"Wait! Can't you tell me your name?" She asked. Silence answered her and Brea stared out into the room. After a long moment, she turned back to her bed and was about to climb back onto it…

"Mirage," the voice said. "You can call me Mirage."

She did not tell him about the Mech when he entered his office. She merely laid on her bed and faced the wall. In her mind, thoughts raced and speculated.

Mirage, he said called himself. She smiled at that. It was an apt name for someone who could turn invisible at the drop of a dime. Brea absently nibbled on some piece of fruit, barely aware she was eating at all. She couldn't think of anything else except for the encounter.

The people she was supposed to help keep out of the office…they were trying to get at the information Xeon kept inside. The data-pads and all the information they carried. Xeon meant for all these data-pads to be replaced with faux ones, to fool the investigation the Senate was initiating. Maybe she could find a way to help stop it…

She jerked in surprise when she heard the cage door unlatch. She turned around to see Xeon kneeling down next to the cage, one hand just outside the open door, beckoning.

"Come," He ordered simply. Brea stared for a moment, ready to refuse, but surprised herself when he body obeyed without question. As she stepped outside the cage, Xeon gently scooped her up and made his way over to the window. For a long moment he stood in silence while Brea sat submissively in his hands. One large black finger gently stroked her shoulder as he stared out through the window. "You are useful, little Brea. I would be dismayed to see such a gifted being go to waste because of…ill feelings. You can still redeem yourself."

Brea felt anger bubble up inside her and even the fear of what would conspire couldn't suppress it any longer.

"Never," She said softly, just loud enough for him to hear her and the restrained anger in her tone. "I'll never forgive you."

The hands that held her so gently abruptly tightened and for a fleeting moment she was certain he was going to kill her, but the killing blow never came. Her heart raced as the fingers gripped her firmly, but not painfully so. She heard his inner workings grind and growl.

"I must admit my disappointed," Xeon admitted in Cybertronian. "So much time and money has been invested into you…with less then satisfactory results."

Brea struggled to keep her breathing normal and her heart from pounding clear out of her chest.

"It's a small price for the pain you've caused my people," She replied, forcing the words from her throat. They needed to be said and god as her witness she was going to say them!

Xeon abruptly turned and dropped her onto the desk. The landing jarred her and she fell back onto her rear, mind spinning with vertigo.

"Do you truly believe that your race's survival takes precedent over ours?" Xeon asked, the barest inflection of anger in his voice, as he loomed over her. "Given the choice between the survival of Cybertronians and humans, Prime himself would not choose the latter."

"Do you think I care about your stupid politics?" Brea snarled, tears swelling up. "You took me from my home, my family! You enslaved my people and desecrated my planet! You're a murderer!"

"I am a hero!" Xeon yelled, voice rising to a level of anger she had never heard. "Cybertron would be dead by now had your little planet not been found by my exploration team. That little mud ball is fueling this planet and keeping it from tipping over the brink; I doubt you would find a Mech anywhere who wouldn't be willing to sacrifice a few organics to keep from entering another never-ending war. Not one Mech."

A flash of anger turned her vision white for a moment and before she could stop herself…

"You're wrong," She yelled. "Mirage would!"

The anger in Xeon's face drained instantly and he stared stupidly for a moment before pure rage filtered into his eyes and he slammed his fists into the desk, mere feet from Brea. The surface under her fell and she rocked as metal beneath his fists buckled and bent under the force.

"Howdo youknowthat name?" He snarled, his red eyes flashing dangerously. "How do you know that traitor?"

Brea instantly felt remorse for breaking her word to the mysterious Mech, but refused to back down. No more being scared of him, no more willing to bend. Her mind shrieked as innate survival instincts tried to override her anger and shame, but failed utterly. No more…

"It doesn't matter how I know him!" She shouted. "The Senate's going to find out about this, all of this, and you're going to pay for it all!"

A deafening silence befell the room and the two beings stared into each other, both seeing what was in the other's souls. In Brea, there was an undying light that refused to be contained, and in Xeon…there was darkness that refused to be cast aside. The only light came from his eyes…

Those eyes…

Brea would never forget those blood red eyes as their owner unleashed the unreeling anger he had so proficiently controlled until then.

"I did as many as I could within the given amount of time," Said an unpleasant sort of voice. "But it should be enough for them."

Tap. Clink. Shft. Tap. Clink.

"I am not concerned with the amount, Swindle," Xeon replied brusquely, "Only the invoices and contracts are of importance. I have already deleted the correspondences from my mainframe. Once you've completed your assignment, there will be nothing left for the inspectors to investigate."

Brea made herself as small as possible, wedging herself between her bed and cage wall, ignoring the horrible burning pain in her ribs as her position agitated the bruises. She licked her split lip, still occasionally tasting blood when the thin tissue of the healing wound broke. Her arms and legs were covered in purple and green patches and she was almost certain her wrist was sprained…maybe broken. It hurt so much.

She listened to Xeon and the strange Mech named Swindle talk in hurried tones. She heard clinks and clanks as data-pads were removed from shelves and, presumably, replaced with the faux ones. She felt dizzy as she sat there and it seemed as though the world had become an abstract painting. Nothing made sense and yet she felt as though she should be able to see what was going to happen. But her mind blocked those thoughts.

"Ratbat called to inform me that the inspectors are on their way here," Swindle said, a twinge of panic on his voice. "We have less then five breems before they arrive."

"Then take the rest of these and destroy them," Xeon's voice snapped. "They can search your sub-space pocket, so don't draw attention to yourself."

"Of course, my lord."

"One more thing Swindle…"

Brea's cage rocked and swayed as it was picked up. She braced herself against the wall, muttering incoherently.

"Here. I want you to get rid of her. Make sure all traces of her are erased. All traces. I do not want any existing evidence that I ever owned a human, is that clear? This human never existed."

Brea's mind froze.

"Yes sir."

Author's notes: And the plot thickens...