Title: A dangerous game
Rating: T

Summary: Games aren't so much fun when someone dies; but is Jazz really responsible or is someone else playing games at Iacon Academy?

Disclaimer: I don't own them, I don't profit from this

Chapter 8

"What the frag are you doing?" Icon demanded.

Jazz surged to his pedes, his patience at an end.

"What am I doing? What the frag are you doing, mech?" he demanded. "I thought you were my friend, and instead I find out you're a monster!"

Icon glared at him.

"You have no idea what you're talking about."

"Oh no? I read your system logs. You killed Piper and Veneer! You tried to kill Prowl. And worst of all you gamed me!"

Even as he made that last accusation he knew it sounded silly in comparison to the previous ones, but the truth was that it was that last fact that hurt the most. Killing via gaming was so abhorrent he could barely fathom it was possible even after seeing the evidence for himself, but they had had a pact that they would never game each other. He couldn't focus on the impossible, but the breaking of that promise was a betrayal that cut deeply.

"I was trying to help you."

"Help me? How? By killin' me too?"

"Don't act glitched, I wasn't going to hurt you. Slimline said you were acting like what happened was your fault when it wasn't anything to do with you at all."

"Well I know that now - it was you all along! But what were you thinkin'? You didn't even know them - you've never had classes wit' Veneer an' your last class wit' Piper was vorns ago!"

"It wasn't about them, they were just tests."

"Tests?" Jazz choked.

"Yes. I needed to know that it really worked. I thought it would, but I couldn't be sure until I tested it. Now that I know it works, I can use it on the ones who really deserve it and get out of here."

"You're gonna kill your family." Jazz abruptly realised where this was going.

"Naturally. You know how much I want to go home, and this is the perfect answer. There'll be no proof, nothing to tie me to it. So I'll go home, and then, oh then things'll be different. We're going to be rich and better than that, we'll have power."

"We?" Jazz asked dubiously. "What do you mean 'we'?"

Icon smiled at him.

"Well of course you have to come with me. You know I've never gotten the knack of identifying targets, so I can't do it without you. But just think about it. With this we can do anything! Anything at all!"

The whole concept was so insane that it left Jazz lost for words, though he sensed it would be a very bad idea to tell Icon what he really thought of the plan, particularly while he was trapped in this corner of the room and with Icon being only half a step from the locker that housed his favourite hunting rifle. He had to keep him talking until he could get out of here. Then he thought he might run to the nearest comm and call in the Enforcers, saying anything he had to if it meant this dangerous mech got taken away: Icon had to be stopped.

"What about Slimline?" he asked, spotting the datapads again and gesturing to them to explain his change of subject.

"What about her?" Icon shrugged. "You can do better. I've told her she'll come with us, to get her to play along and try to convince you, but the femme's crazy. She'd probably kill you in your charge, one orn. She's the one who picked Piper to be the test target."

"But it wasn't Piper who got killed first, it was Veneer."

"That was your fault, not mine." Icon shrugged. "She thought you were gonna game Piper that night, not Veneer. Gave me the wrong code. I had to show her how to check against your logs to get the right codes."

"What'd she have against Piper?" Jazz asked, moving to sift idly through the datapads as a first step to getting closer to the door.

"He caught her cheating." Icon shrugged. "Said he would have her thrown out."

"She doesn't cheat."

"Oh come on, Jazz, you're not that stupid. She's cheated her way through every class she ever took. Except for the ones where she slept with the instructor and she didn't have to bother. But Piper caught her and he turned her down when she offered herself, and oh was she mad when that happened. First time anyone's ever done that. She wanted revenge."

Jazz tried to wrap his processors around what Icon was saying, but then his optics landed on a familiar pad.

"What's this doin' here?"

It was the assignment that he had handed in for Piper's class. The one that had gone missing.

"She wanted revenge." Icon repeated. "And she wanted you to do it for her, except of course you wouldn't. You don't have the struts to actually kill someone. So she tried to make you angry at him by stealing your assignment. Primus only knows what you were thinking when you attacked Veneer instead, but it doesn't matter now. And don't worry, you don't have to kill anyone at all. Ever. I'll do all that - all you need to do is find the targets. Simple. Your hands'll stay clean."

"An' if I say no?" the words blurted out in spite of his knowledge that it was stupid.

Icon's optics darkened.

"You won't dare."

They stared at each other for a moment, then both jumped as the door chime sounded. Reluctantly Icon went to answer it, and Jazz nearly cheered as he saw Clattertrap accompanied by four large-framed Enforcers. He was saved!

"There." Clattertrap said. "See?"

The Enforcers stepped inside, but confusingly looked straight past Icon and focused on him.

"Student Jazz, you are under arrest for the murders of Student Veneer and Tutor Piper, and the disappearance of Student Prowl. You will come with us."

Slimline's attention had been caught by the view through the window of something occurring in the courtyard three floors below. She had her back to Prowl, and he was closer to the door, but it did not help him at all. With his wrists and ankles bound together, and his doorwings damaged from the earlier attacks, he could not balance except to lean against the wall behind him. He was stuck on this bench just as effectively as if she had tied him down.

Determined not to give in to despair, he tried to think of alternatives. How could he rescue himself, other than to get free and run?

The room they were in was a study suite. It was a semi-public space with no lock on the door, so it was possible that someone could work through the door at any moment. On the other hand, it was only the beginning of the term so there was no pressure to study and with classes so badly disrupted by the deaths there were few students who would do more than attend their timetabled sessions. Many did not even do that. So in fact, it was the perfect trap.

Outside the unlocked door there would be dozens of students all on their way between venues. All it would take was one of them to trigger the door and they would see him here tied up and realise that things were not right. But time was passing and that was not happening. They had no reason to come in here. And the room's in-built soundproofing meant that he could not call out to them.

Not that Slimline was likely to take well to him starting to yell.

If he had been a trained infiltrator he would have been equipped with an internal comm system which he could use to broadcast a message or contact his controller directly. But no-one had thought there would be that level of danger here; they had not expected him to be targetted.

"No!" Slimline gasped, suddenly. "They can't!"

She stared for a moment longer, then swung round and rushed up to him, looming over him.

"Why have they arrested Jazz? What have you done?"

Jazz had been arrested?

"It's nothing to do with me."

"Liar!" she screamed, grabbing at him and throwing him bodily to the floor.

He landed awkwardly on one doorwing, crying out as an edge buckled, but he had no time to worry about that as she started kicking at him.

"It's your fault! Everything's gone wrong since you got here! Just like it did back in Praxus!"

She was doing considerable damage, but he tried to stay focused, twisting so that her kicks actually helped him loosen his bindings. If he could get free then he had a chance. He just hoped that he could get away before she hit anything vital.

"Where is Prowl?" the Enforcer commander demanded, looming over him.

"I don't know." Jazz said tiredly for the ninth time. "Did you try his room?"

"This isn't a game. Tell me where he is."

"I don't know."

"You're not convincing me."

"I don't know." Jazz ground out. "If I knew, I'd tell ya. The last time I saw him, he was in his room."

"And what were you doing in his room?"

Jazz glared at him, saying nothing more.

"Sir!" another officer interrupted. "We've got a mech here who says this student has vandalised his terminal and destroyed all his files - he claims his whole vorn's work was lost."

"Send for a data technician to restore it." the commander dismissed the issue, but then refocused on Jazz.

"The charges are certainly piling up for you, aren't they? Are you going to deny that too?"

Jazz stayed silent. He had destroyed Icon's data, alright, but it wasn't a vorn full of classwork and no data technician would never be able to restore it. At least, he didn't think they would. That was a bit of a worry. But more of a worry was what had happened to Prowl.

These officers had apparently come without Prowl calling them, and they had come for him. Clattertrap had obviously gone to them, as he had threatened to do, not knowing that the matter was already in their hands. But why hadn't Prowl called? That had been the mech's intention when Jazz had left him, so what had delayed him and where had he gone? Unless Jazz's fix on Icon's gaming had failed and Prowl had seen Slimline and was now...

"Try the astronomy tower." he croaked, feeling sick. "Maybe he went up there."

Except he wouldn't be up there anymore, if that was what had happened. He would be a long way down from there, either dead or dying.

"What makes you suggest there?" the commander asked, gesturing sharply to two of the officers who left the group immediately.

Jazz shrugged uncomfortably.

"He mentioned it. Said he thought he'd go take a look."

It couldn't be possible, could it? He was sure he had destroyed that line of code, how could it possibly have played out anyway? Or had there been something else that he had missed? He had had so little time, what if Icon had gamed Prowl twice and he had only seen the second one?

A cold chill settled in his spark. With Prowl dead the Enforcers would never let him go, regardless of whether or not they had any evidence. Meanwhile Icon would be free to try to find someone else to rebuild what he had lost. There were dozens of other gamers out there, and he had never really made a secret of his pranks. It was only a matter of time before someone figured it all out for themselves, just as he had.

"How did you meet Prowl?"

The question shook him out of his thoughts, but left him just as speechless. How was he supposed to answer? He had met Prowl thinking he was meeting a monster who had molested his lover only to discover... what? What exactly did he know about Prowl? Or about Slimline, for that matter?

"I don't know." he responded faintly.

There were more questions but he couldn't hear them. Several orns with little rest on top of decaorns of stress finally caught up with him, and his body decided enough was enough. He dropped offline without even realising it.

Brass stared at the mech he had been interrogating, completely at a loss at this culprit who was not at all what he had feared he might be. The student had not shown any signs of violence, had not resisted other than to fail to give the answers Brass wanted to hear, and now had actually dropped offline in front of him! What was he supposed to make of that?

Lighttouch had come along out of concern for Prowl and now took over, quickly scanning the mech slumped at the table. Leaving the medic to figure out what had happened, Brass turned to address his remaining staff.

"Quickstep, go to the administrator's office and find out if there is any surveillance footage that will help. Clutch, call the local office for more support: I want the whole place under lockdown until we get this sorted out. The rest of you search every room, I want Prowl found."

"Sir - shouldn't some of us stay to guard the prisoner?" Meridian asked.

"The prisoner isn't going to be causing any trouble." Lighttouch said drily, straightening.

Brass stared at her.

"He's not dead!"

"No, just dead tired." he was assured. "Without a medical override, he's not going to wake up for at least a joor. He's neither fuelled nor recharged properly in a foolishly long time."

"Sir!" one of the officers burst back into the room. "They've found Prowl - they need a medic immediately!"

Brass clenched his fists.

"Stay with this one. Lighttouch, with me."

Primus help whoever had harmed the junior tactician, Brass was going to make them wish they had never onlined.