Livewire: Chapter 8
Critical errors flooded Livewire's rebooting systems, overlapping in rapid succession, each screaming for immediate attention: ruptured fuel lines, overheating, low fuel reserves, and fried circuits. They were still cycling across her vision when her optics online, the messages dying down only after a full minute and giving way to the dark, empty cave around her. She was hot, to the point of feeling she was on fire. Her internal fans were buzzing angrily in a futile attempt to cool her body, but the heat was nothing compared to the knife wrenching, shredding out her insides pain stabbing through her lower chest. Still lying on her side, the hand she wasn't pinning under her own weight flew out, digging into the dirt while the other clenched her side, denta plates barred.
What woke her up wasn't the pain - she had been blissfully unaware until the moment of starting up - her systems had intentionally woken her up in response to an incessant pinging in the back of her head. It was hard to focus inward, the notification was driving her insane and she was determined to turn the darned thing off. A mental switch flipped when she reached it and Wheeljack's worried voice reverberated through her head.
:Finally,: He dripped with relief. :Livewire, what happened? I've been getting warnings from your systems for hours.:
A strange glyph on her HUD flashed in tandem with his words.
:Wheeljack?: Static spilled from her vocalizer.
:Yes, it's me. What's wrong?:
She focused on the connection, transferring her thoughts instead of spoken words. :I don't feel good.:
:Why not? Where are you?:
She struggled to her feet, scattering the thick bed of dead leaves in the dinobot den. She hobbled outside with one hand gripping the glass centered on her chest. She needed to get back to the Ark. Something was seriously wrong with her.
:Livewire? Answer me.:
:Not...I need..:
She made it to just inside the tree line in front of the cave before stumbling to her hands and knees. Cooling fans roared in her audials and sweltering air gushing from her vents.
:Listen to me.: Wheeljack ordered with uncanny calmness. :You don't have a tracking device installed. I need you to tell me where you are.:
:Outside – the Dinobot den,: she squeezed out between kicking rivets into the dirt and clawing breathlessly at her burning midsection.
:Good. I can't come myself so I'll be sending a couple 'bots to get you. Why don't you walk me through what you're feeling?:
Where could she start? Every sensor node was burning; something was trying to rip her insides to shreds. Critical warnings were reappearing with a vengeance and a bolded notification of an imminent system shutdown overtook her vision.
:Fire. M-chest hurts.: An electric serge jerked her frame and she bit back a scream. :Wheeljack,: she pleaded his name, desperately wanting him to make the pain stop.
Confidently Wheeljack told her, :Don't worry, help is coming. I'm sure it's nothing that can't be fixed.:
A silence fell between them and Livewire was overwhelmed by the loud, erratic buzzing and clicking humming from her body, building and stuttering with frightening intensity.
:I read on your human file that you worked as a computer programmer. What kind of jobs did you do?: Wheeljack's asked out of the blue. Livewire couldn't fathom why he would want to know about her program skills at a time like this. She obliged him anyway.
:Mostly website management. Writing small programs. Fixing crashes.: She hadn't been in the job for very long, a few years tops. There really wasn't much she could add, or coherently get across at the moment.
Her vision began to fuzz with white and black spots. The loud snaps of tree limbs breaking was followed by multiple footsteps crashing through the woods. She tried to tilt her head back to see and was rewarded with static and blurred moving shapes.
:Here.: She thought weakly through the communication link and received static white noise.
Her vision was gone, body completely limp when a pair of hands grabbed at her, feeling along her armor. The pressure disappeared and was replaced by several hands pushing under her, lifting her frame into the air. The movement was jarring. Pain struck through her body in a violent electric pulse. She involuntarily jerked before falling still, gritting her denta so hard they felt close to cracking. There were voices all around, hollering for vitals, calling her name, asking questions – she gave up trying to answer when her vocals seized with a loud, painful pop. Her body was turning into dead weight, arms going numb. External sensors failed one by one until all she could feel was a hot and painful pulsing in her chest.
She wondered what would happen if she died again. Would she become a ghost? Wake up as a fish the next time? Simply vanish? Her chest squeezed tighter, demanding all of her attention. Ghostly tears prick her optics. Livewire reached out to Wheeljack, trying to convey something over the radio. All she could produce was static and she could no longer understand his reply, if there was one. She hung on as long as possible, clinging to the burning in her chest to anchor her consciousness. All at once the errors ceased relaying her condition in glyphs she didn't understand and a single message popped up on her static filled HUD. System shutdown initiated.
System reboot
Programs initiated, scanned her vitals – fans kicked on, humming quiet and healthily. For a blissful moment Livewire hung in a limbo between sleep and wakefulness while systems booted up on their own accord. She didn't know what the diagnostic scans were saying, didn't care to. Her mind was muddled, running on autopilot until higher functions kicked on and she was thrust into the present. A gray metal ceiling greeted her optics and a soft clicking floated into her audials. Her limbs felt heavy and a weight sat on her chest as she laid on something solid, splayed on her back. She soaked in the fact she wasn't dead and relishing the lack of pain.
Livewire eventually tried to sit up and earned a sharp jolt to every cable that functioned to help her move.
"I don't think so." A rough hand pushed her back down and a light blinded her optic. Her vision corrected itself to make out a hovering white and red mech with a light coming out of his pointer finger.
"You won't be moving for a while after an injury like that." He fiddled with a tube full of pink liquid that was attached to her midsection. "Berth rest for at least two earth weeks, maybe four. Yes, make that four," he mused mostly to himself.
"What happened?" Her vocalizer felt rough, but it worked.
A sour expression tugged at the mech's face plates. "You, my dear, have done the impossible and beaten the odds of a 98 percent death rate. You nearly offlined on my table three times."
She gave him a tired look, not particularly caring how many times she might have died; she wanted to know why.
He might have read her mind when he picked up with, "Somehow, a spark is forming in your chest cavity, but since that body of yours was never meant to carry one, the new spark started melting vital components that got in its way, trying to make connections that weren't there. Essentially you were being dissolved alive from the inside out by your own life force and hemorrhaging internally. Wheeljack and Perceptor had to aid in make room for it."
A spark?
"It appears this has been going on for a while, undetected because it was too small until it rapidly started growing. I still have no idea what triggered its growth. Wheeljack and Perceptor didn't have a clue about its existence either, and without them, an emergency spark chamber couldn't have been constructed in time." The mech flailed his arms; talking vicariously through his hands like Perceptor often did, emphasizing a crossover of harsh venting and a dutiful explanation of her condition that sounded more like a scolding, as if the whole thing was her fault.
"What is your level of pain right now?" He questioned.
How could she spontaneously grow a spark? To her understanding it was comparable to suddenly growing an organ, but then Wheeljack said it was also their soul - could it be someone else's soul, the one that was supposed to be in this body? A small part of her wished she were still a simply stray consciousness living in a solid metal frame. A knot formed in her tanks at the thought of being a possible body snatcher. Maybe she was overthinking things.
"Are you listening to me?"
Livewire flinched at the volume and when she focused on the mech's face that had become uncomfortably close to hers' without her noticing.
"Sorry, what?" she asked meekly.
He frowned deeply. "What were you doing by the Dinobot's den? We're you trying to offline yourself faster?"
"What's wrong with the Dinobots?" She wondered earnestly.
The new 'bot looked angry. "They're violent and have no regard on whom they inflict injuries, even allies. In your condition you're lucky they didn't simply step on you for being in the way or screaming too loudly."
She understood the Dinobots were semi-tamed mountain lions, but they were alright as long as they were respected. Silence was her answer, neither making a promise nor denying his claim. The mech huffed. A displeasured grunt rolled from his vocals as he walked out of her line of sight. Livewire rolled her head sideways, but still couldn't see where he had gone.
A loud bang from a fist connecting with solid metal made her flinch.
"Wake up and take some responsibility for your creation. I know you heard the conversation." The red and white mech grouched.
A low, unintelligible grumble accompanied by plating scrapping against a metal surface reverberated in the room. A new pair of clanging pedes joined the white mech's as the two transformers relocated within her line of sight.
"Morning." Wheeljack's bright optics betrayed a smile and his ear fins blinked rapidly with his amicable greeting. He sounded far too chipper.
"Was I hit by another truck?" Livewire mock groaned.
Wheeljack's responsive humorless laugh fell flat.
"Another?" The white and red mech roared.
"It was a bad joke," Wheeljack easily dismissed. "This is Ratchet, by the way. Our resident medical officer," Wheeljack introduced to Livewire.
Ratchet shot Wheeljack a warning look and walked around to Livewire's vacant side.
"When did you start feeling pain?" Wheeljack asked softly. "You should have let me know you weren't feeling well."
Livewire had to think for a moment, she wasn't exactly sure when it had started, only when it had escalated. From the start she hadn't felt quite right, but she had no idea what passed for normal in this body. Additionally, the various popups that always floated across her HUD at intermittent times when systems weren't a hundred percent meant seemed to mean nothing. No machine runs at perfect efficiency, she was sure transformers were the same. There was always something that could be tweaked or added onto.
Ratchet prodded at the edges of her chest and her hands reflexively swatted him away. He caught her and pinned her hands at her sides. "Stop that. I need to clean this area again." He then added in a grumble, "I would give my right leg for a laser sterilization room right now."
She tried to hold still to make his job easier, but the next time his fingers touched the rim of her lower chest area she immediately squirmed and fought to not fly off the table. "That doesn't feel right," she confessed when he moved back, giving her a stern look.
"As it should. Your spark is not only injured, but is utterly exposed to the elements. Ideally, you would be in a clean room free of any microscopic particles, which this planet is full of. Because I do not have such a facility. I need to manually clean your lower chest cavity hourly until the spark itself and the inner spark chamber finishes forming." Ratchet was waiving his hand around and Livewire couldn't help but stare at the various medical tools his fingers had transformed into.
"You should have seen Ratchet earlier when he discovered the spark burning through your hardware; I thought he was going to glitch." Wheeljack's optics sparkled with humor and Ratchet barred his denta plates.
"You should have built in a proper spark chamber to begin with. Even a sudo one, which comes standard in every drone, mind you, would have made the process much safer instead of having to clean out melted internal parts and create one from scratch around a completely unprotected spark." Exasperation oozed from Ratchet.
"You've already decoded all of her specs; you know she was never meant to have a spark. No one could have known this would happen," Wheeljack said defensively.
"She nearly offlined! Human or not, that is a beating spark and your inattention to detail nearly cost a life," Ratchet snarled with such ferocity that Wheeljack looked away, his optics turning hard with shame.
"Stop it." Livewire's asserted, snappish command made the two mechs look her way.
"Stop blaming him for everything. I would have been dead for over a year now if he hadn't built this body." The spokes in her optics dilated and narrowed as she glared up at Ratchet's hardened expression while Wheeljack watched in stunned silence.
"I will keep blaming him for everything so long as problems that keep arising are a direct result of his negligence."
Livewire felt angry for Wheeljack. "That's too harsh."
"When the integrity of another spark is involved, nothing I can say is harsh enough." Ratchet gave Wheeljack a harsh look and the inventor stared at him quietly.
"Why don't you let me take over for a while?" Wheeljack offered. "I'm sure you need some energon and a good recharge."
Ratchet shook his head. "Cleaning out the area around the spark is a delicate procedure, and you need to stay off your leg as much as possible until I finish repairs."
Wheeljack looked like he was going to insist on making Ratchet rest, but the medic was already carefully maneuvering to reach into her opened lower chest area. "This might feel a bit strange, try not to move," he warned mere klicks before a cool, tingling liquid sprayed over her spark.
"A combination of a cleaning solution and numbing agent," He muttered for her sake.
The feeling of someone prodding around inside her, despite knowing they had good intentions, didn't stop her from being uncomfortable. It took all of her willpower not to squirm, even at the feather light touch of Ratchet's tools sucking away microscopic debris. It wasn't long before the constant prodding became irritating, like he was rubbing something raw, then a sharp jolt of pain nearly sent her flying off the table. Ratchet wasn't fast enough to pull away, her jerky movement bumped his hand jarringly against her insides and she sat up, clutching her stomach area.
"I said don't move!" Ratchet forced her back down even though she fought him.
"I'm fine, it's clean," she strained against his hold, tired of hurting. She just wanted to be given some kind of pain meds and be left alone.
Ratchet wasn't convinced. "It's not clean until I say it is. Trust me; an infection would be a thousand times worse than this."
"Can't it wait?" She pleaded.
"No, it cannot," he said sternly.
A ghost of frustrated tears stung at her optics. "Is this the only thing you can feel?"
Both mechs shared a confused look. "What do you mean?" Ratchet cautioned.
Livewire was losing the battle of holding back a dam of welling emotion. "In this body I can't feel how soft anything is, or temperature unless it's really hot. Is the only thing you can feel, pain? Because I'm sick of it."
Ratchet's optics went wide with shock. "Of course not! Why would you even think that?"
She avoided looking at either of their optics, angry that everyone expected her to know the answers to so many things that were literally alien to her. Livewire stared at the tube protruding from her body. It was the only thing she could see past her breast plates.
Pressure blanketed her clenched fist and large servos gently manipulated her smaller ones until they held her hand and they squeezed gently. "You can feel this, can't you?"
She rolled her head over and looked at the hand holding her own and trailed the owner's white plated arm with her optics until she was looking at Wheeljack's blue optics. A small sniffle betrayed the impossible tears she was holding back. "A little."
His optics lit up with recognition. "I forgot how dependent humans were on tactile contact, or rather; it never crossed my mind before now. Our species rely on different crucial methods of socialization."
"Wheeljack," Ratchet warned. "Her spark is completely exposed. Don't even-"
"Relax, I remember our discussion earlier. Keep the EM fields tight, got it. Though I have to say, she does a good job of keeping hers out of reach all by herself, even with the spark completely exposed. I can't sense it after moving five inches away from the core." Wheeljack shrugged off Ratchet's persistent, pinning look and met Livewire's optics.
"Ratchet really needs to finish cleaning out the area around your spark. How about when you start feeling pain you squeeze my hand and focus on the pressure there?"
Nervousness shot through her at the thought of being subjected to more painful jolts on her already overtaxed mind and body. She relented with a tense nod, wanting to simply get it over with.
Ratchet resumed his work, spraying more of the sterilizing agent over and around her spark. Livewire squeezed Wheeljack's massive hand. The anticipation of the coming pain made her core temperature rise.
The first brush near her spark was just as gentle as last time, but it still made her want to crawl out of her protoform. Ratchet worked as quickly as he could without risking a slip of his hand. Time crawled by as his prodding began irritating her internals. Livewire tried to focus on the pressure she was exerting on Wheeljack's hand and imagined what his palm might feel like if they were both human. Probably calloused and warm.
The poking sensation around her insides turned from irritated to raw; her motor cables were on the verge of spasming when Ratchet finally pulled away.
Ratchet's servos twisted and folded back to normal, stowing away his precision medical instruments. "Finished," he vented tiredly and held up his forearm, checking a monitor embedded in his armor. "Vitals are slightly elevated. I'll adjust outlier sensory nodes and add another dose of donated repair nanites. Systems appear to be responding well to them, no signs of rejection present. The next mandatory cleaning will be in three cycles."
Wheeljack flashed his fins at Ratchet. "You power down and get some recharge before I have to perform emergency resuscitation." The lighthearted tease didn't crack Ratchet's tired glower.
The medic's parting words were a rough declaration. "If there is so much as a flicker of change on the spark regulator, I'm coming back in here. And don't let anyone else in unless they're offlining."
Wheeljack mock saluted. "Yes sir."
Ratchet retreated into his office. The large door hissed angrily shut behind him, projecting his attitude as if it had picked up his personality from years of abuse.
Livewire's mind was spinning in time with her fans that were slowly winding down after Ratchet's invasive cleaning procedure. She still hadn't fully processed what had, and was still happening. Her body felt heavy; tired was the closest thing she could associate to the feeling. Her hand flexed involuntarily from a stray electrical signal and she became acutely aware she was still holding Wheeljack's hand. Embarrassed, she loosened her grip and he let her go when she pulled away.
"Did you cause that explosion earlier?" She asked quickly to cover up her quandary.
Wheeljack looked immensely pleased with himself. "Yep. It was the best one in a while. I was trying to recreate the Decepticon's new sound weapon in hopes of finding a better counter wavelength and I might have made it a little too strong. I blew out the door, a knee joint, and my audials. I couldn't hear a word of what Ratchet or Prowl were saying when they found me." He grinned.
Curiosity colored her question, "How does a sound weapon explode like a bomb?"
"Well, an internal component didn't like the frequency I used and the strength of the amplifier blew it out and there was chain reaction from there."
She never expected someone to be so open or feel so damn proud about making things blow up on accident. She was starting to think he liked and encouraged the other Autobots to fear his projects. Enjoying explosions in movies was one thing, being giddy about harming oneself after a catastrophic failure was another.
She snorted but couldn't help smiling. "You're insane."
Wheeljack put a hand over his spark in mock hurt. "You wound me, femme."
Her smile was replaced by confusion. "Femme?"
Wheeljack returned her inquisitive look. "Your model type." There was a klik of silence before his ear fins brightened, signaling he had picked up on the source of her blank stare. "Each transformer has a certain model type. There are hundreds of molds that can be further customized after the base frame is molded, but there are some that no matter how modified they're still easily identifiable. Femme frames are one of them. Well, you could possibly upgrade with so much heavy armor that you look like a mini bot, but that would be counterproductive to your frame type's strengths."
"You're talking about body types?" She tried to clarify.
Wheeljack nodded. "There you go."
Livewire's face twisted when it dawned on her that she could have wound up in a body that looked like a burly man, or one as tall or taller than Perceptor or Optimus if Wheeljack had chosen to build one of those bodies.
"You should power down for a few joors. Your frame is still having trouble adjusting to the new spark and needs time for the self-repair systems to do their job" He sensed an argument coming from her so he added, "Your cooling system is fighting to regulate your core temperature, that's a sign of a serious problem."
Livewire's face twisted into a pout and she rolled her head in the opposite direction. "Night Wheeljack," she drawled.
"I'll be a couple berths over in case you need anything. I'm stuck on bed rest for my bum leg so I'm not going anywhere."
She heard his scrapping footsteps indicating he was dragging his injured leg over to a berth. He noisily situated himself before the room fell silent.
The first time Livewire tried to roll over on her side out of habit from her human days, she was greeted with lacerating pain through her abdomen that sent her body into spasms. Ratchet burst out of his office and Wheeljack sprang off his berth at her shrill scream. Much to her embarrassment, she was chided by both mechs after accidentally ripping out the energon line feeding her spark. The way they spoke about the orb in her upper abdomen made her secretly a little squeamish. She knew it wasn't going to grow arms and it wasn't a tumor, but the thought of something else growing in her already foreign body was unsettling.
Over the course of a few days she was taught more transformer biology terms than she would ever know what to do with. Half the time she couldn't understand what Ratchet was referring to, except when he uttered the words 'spark cleaning', sending a chill of dread up her spinal strut. Each session was painful as sin. She took Wheeljack's offered hand a few more times before refusing his aid, not wanting to become dependent on him for comfort. The good news was that each session of Ratchet's prodding gradually hurt less and less. Though his invasive tools were still insurmountably unwelcome in the general area of her spark. It was almost like someone was poking at her eyeball and she didn't have the capacity to blink the irritant away.
A week went by in which she felt heavy and tired. It didn't help that the only mechs around were Ratchet and Wheeljack. No one came in or went out except Perceptor on the rare occasion to check on her progress by reading through Ratchet's data.
Her only saving grace from boredom was the program that allowed her to shut down any time the silence of the lab or Wheeljack and Ratchet's mumblings become unbearable. Her human self would have killed to have the power to fall asleep on command.
Halfway into week two she was craving to just get up and move. Wheeljack was showing similar signs of restlessness, fidgeting on his berth, tinkering with whatever was in his hands at the moment. It turned out a destroyed knee required a series of delicate reconstructive surgeries and extended days of staying off the afflicted leg to allow internal repairs to finish the job.
Livewire was able to sit up with the help of the conveniently rotatable berth and was reading a novel she'd ripped from an online store. Her data pad that had been providing entertainment while she mindlessly chewed on the bottom of a stylus. Her lower chest plates were fully closed around her spark that had finished forming, and the inner spark chamber, a delicate glass-like wall that protected the ball of energy from the smallest foreign objects as Ratchet described, was almost completely fused together.
Livewire was engrossed in her book when a soft knock came at the door. It sounded like a thunderclap in the quiet room. Ratchet sprang to his pedes and Wheeljack hardly took notice as he fidgeted with his project. Livewire stowed her donated data pad and twisted to look around the back of her seat to get a better view of the door. It hissed open and a spike of adrenaline jerked her back around in her seat after catching a glimpse of Optimus Prime filling the doorway.
"You can see her, but make sure your EM fields are kept close. Her inner spark chamber isn't fully fused and the outer shell still needs to be completed," Ratchet, cantankerous as ever, spoke to Optimus like he was reminding a sparkling not to stick their hands in their mouth.
Livewire cringed, but Optimus' didn't even sound marginally offended when his sonorous voice floated into the room. "You can be rest assured old friend; we do not wish for harm to befall our new member in any way"
Ratchet stepped aside and several clanging footsteps marched into the room.
"Wheeljack," someone other than Optimus greeted.
"Prowl," the engineer replied in turn, finally putting aside his tools.
The room filled with mechs she recognized: Optimus Prime, Prowl, and Jazz. Livewire fidgeted in the suddenly crowded room and her spark pulsed in her closed chest at the sight of all their optics trained on her. She glanced at the three of them in turn, a silent question in her optics that none of them picked up on.
"Livewire," Optimus addressed, causing her to still.
"Yes sir?" She asked uncertainly, wondering if she were in trouble for something she had unknowingly done.
"Forgive me for not coming to greet you earlier, Ratchet was not allowing visitors in fear of your health."
She glanced at Ratchet, angry that he hadn't told her about this imminent visit and annoyed at his insistence on blowing her hospital stay out of proportion.
She didn't get the chance to see his reaction, if there was one at all, before Optimus continued. "Before this event I had meant to speak with you about your presence here on the Ark after Perceptor told me about your condition."
She nodded her head apprehensively. Her spontaneously growing a spark and nearly dying because of it was an event? If that was all he was going to call it she wondered how he would describe a Decepticon attack wiping out an entire city.
"I do not seek to pry into your personal affairs, but I must know where you stand for the safety of yourself and my soldiers. The emergence of your spark makes this matter a bit more urgent."
Livewire didn't fully understand what he was trying to say. "What do you mean? What does having a spark change?" She was beginning to wonder if she had stepped on some sort of taboo even if she hadn't actually done anything, not consciously anyway.
Optimus looked over to Prowl who took his queue, clasping his hands behind his back and addressing Livewire. "It means you are more than mere programming, and protocol dictates that you must make a conscious choice. You may choose to stay or go. If you stay you must claim neutrality or swear allegiance to the Autobots to gain asylum. In either case of staying you will be expected to aid in tasks you are the most qualified for."
Her life suddenly felt more like a dream than it ever had. Her body wasn't real; she wasn't sitting on a medical berth inside the Autobot's base. She was floating, disconnected from this reality. They were giving her an option to stay or go. Both Optimus and Prowl held professional tones and everyone's faces were stoic and unreadable, a stark contrast to the invisible pressure that had draped across her.
Her first thought was to leave. She had no business being here, her presence was the result of a freak accident – but then where would she go? She couldn't simply rent a new apartment and start over as a ten foot plus robot, and there were still a lot of unknowns about her new body. The future of striking out on her own as she was now was akin to jumping off a cliffside into a thick mist and hoping for the best.
Livewire shouldn't stay and make them take her in. These were the Autobots, the giant aliens she saw on TV and grew up reading about how they stopped the Decepticons from plundering Earth's resources time and time again. Even so, she knew so little about them, about their war. Getting caught up in their mess was the last thing she wanted to do. But she already felt irreversibly caught up in it all.
"Don't sweat it too much," Jazz broke through her spiraling dilemma. "Right now your job is to get better. After that you can decide what you want to do."
Prowl's optics simmered. "We don't have time to let her sit on a decision. Without an allegiance she serves as a gray factor we cannot afford." He took a step towards Livewire. "What is your decision?"
Her processor froze and a string of unintelligible filler sounds were all she could produce as she internally battled with the choices: leave, become neutral, or join the Autobots. The three choices swirled in her head, no longer connected to rational thought as they repeated over and over with building anxiety.
"I agree with Jazz," Optimus momentarily released her from her terrified loop. "It's apparent you are conflicted and need time to think this through. I only wanted you to be aware of your options."
Livewire vented a heavy sigh of relief.
"Though," Optimus added and Livewire tensed, "The matter remains no less urgent. Please put careful consideration into your answer."
All she could give him was a nervous nod.
"Optimus, with all due respect, this is not what I thought you had in mind." Ratchet strained to keep his composure, unhappy with the stress Livewire was experiencing. No doubt he was getting readings from her spiking vitals
"I did not mean to tread on your trust, old friend. Forgive me. I won't disturb your patients any longer."
The three officers filed out of the room; Optimus tall and imposing, Prowl with his door wings erect and back stiff, and Jazz mock saluted her with a parting smile he had withheld until now. The aged door hissed slowly shut and Livewire had the chilling feeling that things were about to get a lot more complicated.