And the hiatus is over- for now, at least. I managed to get a different solution for the Iacon Relic plot line (which is kinda essential for everything else I had planned tying into canon, so as much as I would have loved to just leave it out that wasn't an option for me). I have the next few chapters all typed up already as a bit of a precaution for more periods of writer's block, and I'll be posting them at different intervals as well as writing up the rest.

Thanks everyone for your patience, especially for all the other periods of silence that this fic has gone through.

xx

The Ground Bridge took the trio to a patch of desert, already scorched with years of the sun and the concussion rounds blasted from afar melting the sand into sharp glass grains pinging against their armour. Bulkhead stood his ground, safe with his thicker plating, while Arcee ducked behind him and peered out from the guard of his leg. Optimus took his shelter from behind a tower, supports rusted and groaning but still standing tall, as he surveyed their opponent and for any sign of Agent Fowler.

The warning shots stopped and the dust eventually cleared, leaving Optimus staring into a dark and grainy mirror of himself.

Bulkhead's voice crackled over his comm line. "Uh, Optimus, you seein' what I'm-?"
"I am, Bulkhead, and I am... just as confused as you." Optimus resisted another glance over his cover to ensure his optics weren't glitching. "I will draw his attention while you and Arcee find Agent Fowler. Do not come to my aid unless he has been secured."

There was some hesitation, but two voices eventually agreed at the same time. "Got it."

With his open comm feed still crackling faintly, Optimus edged out of safety with a blaster deployed in his servo. The impostor some peds ahead of him let him approach, wielding an identical gun and completely blank optics staring at him. At least he hadn't noticed Bulkhead and Arcee threading up the left side through the cover of the evening.

There was a familiar chuckle when Optimus cleared half the distance between them. "Feeling some de ja vu, Prime?"

Optimus wasn't quite sure what the phrase meant, but he did know what he felt was pure dread. There was a hissed intake of air over his comm feed as Arcee and Bulkhead were hit with their own heavy weights of realisation. "Silas...?"

Another mocking laugh answered his shock. "Not so much in the flesh as in the metal, as you can see." The dark clone waved the unarmed servo over its frame. "I hope you don't mind me borrowing your design. Don't know if you've heard the saying 'imitation is the sincerest form of flattery'?"

Bulkhead wasn't up to keeping his jawplate bolted as he grumbled, "We've got a saying back on Cybertron- 'talk slag, get fragged'."

Optimus clenched his digits, gripping his composure tightly."What is it you want, Silas?" He'd dealt with senseless rampages before, but even Decepticon-grade humans must have had reason behind their actions. Their processors weren't complex enough to malfunction on such a huge scale as he was used to.

"Oh, to list it all would take me all night, Optimus," Silas replied, as if they were discussing the weather patterns of the Hydrax Plateau. "I'd much rather just shoot you and be done with it."

Both battle and evasive subroutines wrestled for Optimus' attention then, sending him into something halfway between an aiming crouch and a roll for cover before he noticed the suspicious lack of open fire a full nanoklick after he'd been expecting it. He blinked, still aiming at Silas' shell while its own weapon lowered and its speakers filled with even more laughter. Only someone with the confidence of a tyrant would laugh in the literal face of a plasma bullet.

"Almost had you there," Silas chuckled. "I suppose I'll start at the beginning. Thanks to our... field work on your friends, my organisation now has a full blueprint for a functioning robotic organism. Not as fancy as your kind, of course, we've not yet cracked the secret of artificial intelligence, but I think a drone suits me quite nicely."

Optimus' audials twitched at the new information. He wasn't close enough to sense anything like an EM field or heat signature, wary of anything living being inside the frame, but now he could shoot at the impostor knowing only dead metal would be damaged. He raised his blaster a little higher just before Silas continued.

"I'd turn off your communications for this next part if I were you," the human advised. "You wouldn't want your team finding out about your little... home away from home, now would you?"

Optimus closed off the feed as quickly as he could. Bulkhead and Arcee would be brimming with suspicion, but he'd deal with that later. "Is this blackmail?" he asked quietly, strength staring to fail in his weapon servo.

"If it makes you feel better calling it that, then yes." He could almost see Silas' smirk in his own covered faceplate. "Sure, you could shoot me down right now. But it wouldn't change what I know about you now. Your... alliance with the spider bot and her whelp. Your associates must not know about it. You wouldn't need to block communications if they did."

Optimus didn't usually slip up in such a criminally simple way. He groaned to himself while SIlas grinned miles away. "I have leverage on you now, Prime. You're more than just a soldier, so I'm sure you know how devastating this can be for you."

Optimus opened his vents wide, filling with cool cycles of air as he stood off against his nemesis. "There is nothing you can do to hurt me, Silas," he said slowly. "Better beings than you have tried and failed."

"Not physically, perhaps," Silas agreed, starting to circle around him and forcing him to turn and track his movements. "But... I do know exactly where you're keeping your little family."

"Then you know how far away you are from them," Optimus pointed out, if only to reassure himself.

"Oh, so many assumptions all at once, Optimus. I thought you were supposed to be smart. You don't know where I am, where this signal is coming from. For all you know... I'm right where they-"

Optimus' blade collided with the drone's vocaliser the same moment that the whole frame went limp, toppling to the ground in a useless heap of metal when he pulled his sword out. For once no energon stained the steel, just a faint sheen of hydraulic fluid that leaked from the hole in his clone's throat. It shouldn't have been enough to deactivate it, but he didn't miss Silas' company in any case.

His processor felt too big for his helm, subroutines tangling together in an aching mess that made conjuring a single thought painful. He was left standing in a waking stasis lock, staring at the scrapheap at his peds even as the sound of tires skidding on the sand ahead announced the return of the other Autobots.

Despite his leader's disconcerting trance, Bulkhead decided to give the good news first. "We found Fowler." He opened his passenger door to show the human slumped on the seat, dazed and bleeding but in no serious state. Arcee didn't wait to stop to transform, sliding on the wheels in her peds in a rush towards the Prime.

"Optimus, what the hell happened here?" Arcee had been adopting some of her partner's language, it seemed. "We lost contact with you a few klicks ago and you didn't respond to any pings!"

Optimus found himself summoning a lie automatically. "My equipment must be malfunctioning. I apologise."

Arcee watched him with as much skepticism as she dared, before following his focus down at SIlas' robot. "You managed to take him out?" She prodded the heap of scrap cautiously with a ped, and the jolting movement seemed to dislodge Optimus back into reality.
"I am not sure," he answered, the truth this time while his blade sucked back into his servo. "The injury inflicted was not severe enough to be lethal."

"That's human tech for ya'," Bulkhead huffed in the background. Still keeping her distance, Arcee propped the empty helm up with a digit and looked closer at a small beacon near the base of the neck.

"Looks like it was just... turned off by something," she said. "The relay signal's not online, at least."

Bulkhead drove himself closer, headlights growing brighter as he saw it for himself. "Can't imagine Silas givin' us a break for old time's sake. But hey, least we don't have to fight his freaky puppet."

Optimus couldn't make himself feel Bulkhead's optimism. "Arcee, is it possible to track the source of the firewall?" he asked, to a shrug and a sigh in reply.

"If we had the right equipment and expertise, maybe... but with what we have it'll stay a mystery." She pushed herself back upright and wiped her hands vigorously on her thigh plates. "Cause Primus knows we need some more of those floating around..."

Optimus found himself humphing in a sad agreement only he could make sense of. As the team prepared for extraction he decided to switch his comm feed back on, only now receiving the slew of pings and missed hails from the Autobots. None of those made his energon freeze cold in his fuel lines, though. Buried between two pings from Arcee was one from Airachnid.

He remembered Silas' words, the subtle warning in his broadcast. And then something hollow spread out from his spark, a weightless feeling he hadn't felt since the Matrix had first chosen him. He was terrified.

"Bulkhead, Arcee..." It was all he could do to keep panic away from his vocaliser. "Take Agent Fowler back to base."

Arcee raised an eyeridge and even Bulkhead's lights seem to flicker. "You're not coming with us?" she asked.
"I will investigate this further," was all he said to explain. "Let the team know I will be unreachable for the next few breems."

He knew Arcee wanted to argue, but her spark wasn't in the right place to start up a confrontation. She commed Ratchet and a Ground Bridge appeared a moment later, whisking all three away back to base.

Optimus waited until the vortex had completely faded before calling for his own transport. "Ratchet, summon the usual Ground Bridge at my co-ordinates." It was tricky to map the incoming co-ordinates differently from the outgoing ones in a Bridge and the resulting portal was often unstable, but it was hardly impossible. He was hoping the commotion of the base would stop the medic from asking questions, but evidently Primus wasn't in the mood for giving him much hope today.

"Optimus? What happened out there, why-?"

"He is fine, everything is taken care of, just send the Bridge over." Optimus forgot a "please" in his frenzy to get to Airachnid, but Ratchet didn't seem to register it since a Bridge spawned after a nanoklick. It was just another thing he'd have to apologise for at the end of all this.