Chapter Thirty
22nd December
2027hrs
Chip had entered the lab at a few minutes before ten minutes till the change of the hour. Humans had such a simplistic yet rather convenient method to designate time, though, from what he'd come to understand, some of them still had difficulty keeping track of it.
The human simply asked outright, it was toned with such inflexions and low drops that it almost sounded as if he was making an accusation. Perceptor had put down the digipad he was studying; it had images from the human's culture that detailed demons drawn in the 1500s from Europe and more modern photographs, including one of a "Brown Lady" taken in England. Perceptor was yet to discover while "she" was deemed a lady, let alone brown. He'd turned to face down at the human who was still demanding an answer.
Had he known of the mass graves?
The Autobot had replied that he had heard rumours of it.
What do you mean rumours?
Chip had yelled angrily.
Perceptor tried to remain calm, he was aware that human culture, especially western cultures had issues dealing with death, and the concept of the mass grave was considered rather unpleasant and morally if not religiously repugnant to them.
He'd spoken calmly, explaining the need to take care of the number of human dead, not only as a method of infection control but also to ensure the humans assisting in reconstruction efforts did not discover any remains. He went onto give the human the "official line" that there were so many "remains" that they discovered after they truly thought they had returned to the human authorities the bodies of those who had died. It was a sad fact of war, and Chip of all people should understand that. Perceptor had continued with his usual string of long winded esoteric semantics and impeccable accent.
Chip realised he couldn't remain angry at Perceptor, certainly not if he was working with him, and if anything, this was important information relevant to their investigations. Chip pointed this out, feeling as if they'd had this conversation before, but if they had, Perceptor had said nothing. The scientist had learnt quickly that humans sometimes had a slight memory span, and even the healthy, young ones, could forget points within a conversation. It must have been a nuisance for them, he wondered, to forget information so quickly. Of course, they seemed to have a good memory of foodstuffs and anything that involved money or reproduction – of course, the Autobot knew better the to say those thoughts out loud, even in the company of his good friend.
Chip yawned, obviously tired, he said he needed a good night sleep and said he was going off site to find it. He didn't elaborate further and simply left, telling Perceptor he'd see him tomorrow and they'd see what else they could do, and perhaps they could have a meeting with some of the Brass. Chip made a quick mention of Rodimus' offer of assistance.
2100hrs
Perceptor raised an optic and mumbled to himself what an absolute bother clocks stopping suddenly were, especially after he had a run a systems check over all the external chronological metres the humans used. It made them feel at ease, and as they didn't have an internal clock they could refer to they needed an external source to tell them time. During his first few weeks on this world he'd wondered why humans just look at the sun and its position in the sky, it was Carly who explained to him that looking at the sun for an extended period not only painful for human eyes it could very seriously damage them, which of course lead Perceptor on an adventure of discovery of the human anatomy and form, he found the human body an absolutely amazing biological machine and was quite frankly, in awe of it. It was then Sparkplug who had told him that a few humans could tell the time quite precisely by the position of the sun, but they were few and far between indeed – he added his time in the service had made him one such human. The other point here was that a good majority of humans could guess the time to within a couple of hours, and if not all of them could tell it was midday if they'd been educated in school or by one in the know. So yes, that is why humans needed "clocks". Of course, the fact these things would often stop or break or not work correctly could be quite a nuisance.
But it helped make them comfortable.
Perceptor simply took the large clock down from the wall, wondering if the battery had died he scanned it, it was fine. He mmmed to himself and then ran a full scan of the clock.
"How odd".
He stated softly to himself as instead of the internal functioning of the clock being given to his CPU he was given static from the direction of the cheap device. He placed it in his "too do" pile – he didn't like to have things broken without a cause and without hope of repair. A thought passed through his CPU and he stood still for a moment a look of concern over his face. He marched intently across his lab and then rummaged through a mound of digipads nicely stacked until he picked one up, he ran his optics over it, scanning for something he was sure he read. And then he found it.
"…another very common indication of paranormal activity is a sudden disturbance to electrical equipment".
He read out loud to himself. He considered the clock and then wondered if it was perhaps just a coincidence. It wasn't like a human could climb up the wall and change the battery and he certainly wasn't interested in its maintenance… but then something had caused a static read out.
"…electrical equipment being used by paranormal investigators will often pick up drops in temperature, loud static or…"
"Oh my".
Perceptor took a slow look around the room, scanning as he did so. But there was no more static. Approaching the clock, he picked it up again and scanned it. That's when he noticed the "second hand" ticking around the clock again, the static gone. Perhaps it was just a temporary glitch in his own systems? He ran an internal scan which showed no quirk. Given his recent experiences he decided not to push the issues, as much as his personality circuits argued at him to do so. He returned to the digipads on his desk and picked up another, it had a series of religious literature discussing the matter of ghosts and hauntings. He scrolled through and as his optics scanned the letters on the seen he heard the whispers. He was very much aware immediately that they were not someone playing "cheeky buggers" and certainly not in his imagination. He knew what it was, and again, decided to ignore it. The whispers continued, but did not increase in speed, pitch or volume. They just sat there in the atmosphere about him, their conversation he was unable to translate, and part of him was thankful for that.
Hands were suddenly on him.
He froze.
The hands were gentle.
A hand on each shoulder.
He tried not to panic.
The thumbs of the hands brushed against his neck.
There was no malice.
Not yet, at least, he heard himself think.
They started to massage him.
It felt good, actually.
Comforting.
The whispers didn't seem to be apart of the entity "comforting" him.
The non-existent body seemed to lift above him so the hands were now pointed down on his chest and began to slide.
There was a chill that ran through every sensor on his body as the hands moved.
The chill was strange, it didn't seem to have the same sensation as something cold, but his body responded the same way as it would perhaps towards a physical crispness.
There was no visible evidence to say they were hands, but the way the sensation moved, the way the sensation was formed, everything about the sensation… they were definitely hands.
The whispers continued.
Above the crowd of non-sensical murmurs came words Perceptor was able to understand, clearly, perfectly.
Perceptor.
It shocked him out of his current state of mind. His focus pulled from the hands.
You're enjoying this.
He felt guilty.
You commit a grievous sin.
The whisper was louder, the whispers were louder, they were accusing him now. He didn't like that.
Pervert.
He had been called a lot of things by a lot of individuals in his life, but never that word, never like this, and certainly not by "ghosts". Stepping forward, trying to escape the deathly caress of those hands.
"No".
He whispered back to them.
YES!
The desk in front of him shunted. Everything upon it went skidding off onto the floor and smashed at his feet. Digipads were sturdy, they could sustain a lot of force and remain functional, however, they looked as if they had fallen from the moon to the earth, they were essentially shattered, small sparks dancing over the cracks in their destroyed forms.
Perceptor stepped back from the carnage and decided to leave before the intruders got more irritated. But he walked back into something that felt, well, physical. He turned and saw nothing, but he felt the hands on his back this time, and a body against his front. The shape told him the visitor who was touching him so was a femme. Movement towards him and "she" was pressed so close to him he could feel her lips against his. Under any other circumstance where a femme embraced him in such a manner, it would have been pleasant. But the stench that came from her mouth, it travelled out from between those cold, dead, invisible lips and wrapped itself around his olfactory sensors. It was disgusting. It smelt like every creature on the earth had died and then spent three weeks in the summer's heat, slowly decomposing, maggots and flies and any other organism that saw fit to survive by feasting on the dead. It also had the tinge of metallic death, as if mixed into a throng of dead humans were dead mechs and femmes, it carried that nasty rust stench. He wanted to void his holding tanks, out of his mouth.
The Autobot scientist pulled back, or attempted to, but found himself trapped against the ghostly invader. Its hands crept down his back and then reached his aft, they groped it and he was sure the whispers were speeding up, that some were laughing, and not in a good way towards him. It was a callous kind of laugh, it was drenched with malice and hatred and distain and it wanted him to suffer, to be shamed.
His armour was ripped from his aft and suddenly found himself flying through the air where he then slammed into the wall; he slumped down on the ground landing on the pile of broken smouldering digipads. A sob past from him, a sob of both fear, pain and shock. He rolled onto his hands and knees and scurried towards his discarded aft plate. He would make contact, but not in the way he wanted. It was used by the force so malice to strike him across the face. The power behind him flung him over onto his back where he lay stunned for a few moments, he sobbed again, a few times in a row. All he could do was sob, it seemed.
"Please… please, please just leave me be".
He was weeping now.
The whispers changed.
He could hear them now.
He's a coward.
A fool.
He's not intelligent, he's just an idiot.
Yes, yes, he's ignorant.
Ignorant of many things.
He's a stupid idiot, a stupid moron.
Absolutely!
No intelligence whatsoever.
A dunce!
A fool!
He is truly pathetic.
What a small mind, he has no gift of intelligent, he's just arrogant.
He's not special.
He's nothing worthwhile.
What a fool.
Who did you have to fuckto get this job?
He's not special.
He's ignorant of so many things.
Of everything.
Yes, yes, of everything.
Stupid.
Moron.
Idiot.
Fool.
Dunce.
Ignoramus.
Imbecile.
We should kill him.
Yes, yes, put him out of his misery.
NO! Don't kill him, it'd be funnier to watch him go insane.
He's already insane.
No, no, you mustn't confuse insanity with stupidity.
He's just stupid.
The insults drifted off into the incoherent whispers that continued at a rather loud volume.
The hands were back on him now, on his face, on his neck, they squeezed tightly and when Perceptor put his hands up to fight off his assailant he found he made contact with nothing. His scientific mind twisted with the incomprehensible situation that his neck could feel physical form but his own hands when reaching out to the source of such an attack, could not.
He wept.
"Please, please".
He begged.
"Just stop".
Cold lips embraced his, a freezing tongue forced itself into his mouth and he tasted the smell. The smell of death was now dancing across his mouth's sensors and it was abhorrent. His holding tanks protested and then won, his recent fuelling erupting out and down over his front. The whispers started into fits of laughter again. The hands were on his face now; fingers were probing into his mouth and causing him to wretch. He tried to fight it off, he begged it to leave him, he sobbed and wept and kicked out.
He was then picked up, and slammed against the wall, he was dragged up and up and up until his head smashed the ceiling, he was then back against the ceiling being dragged along. It was slow and felt as if several cyber-tonnes were pushing against his chest as his aft dragged painfully, the soft metallic skin started to tear and sensors screamed at him. He was stopped mid ceiling.
"Oh Primus".
He whispered sadly, depression setting in.
YOU ARE WORTHLESS!!
The whispers had graduated to a unified, screaming howl that ripped into his audios.
"Please".
He watched as tears of energon dropped down to the floor below.
He followed suit.
Perceptor hit the ground with such force he was knocked into statis.
0000hrs
His optics opened.
He pushed himself up off the floor.
His vomit was dried on him.
His tears dry on his face.
His aft naked and covered with grazes.
His mind broken.
He chuckled.
His once polite and soft spoken accent gone.
His chuckle turned into a cackle.
He turned and walked towards the exit.
He left the lab and began down the corridor.
Cackling all the wall.
He made it to the exit.
No one met him.
No one came towards him.
The cold chilled hands accompanied him.
The whispers returned and told him where to go.
He obeyed.