If you are asking yourself how this chapter exists after I lamented in the last chapter that life has been hard, the reason is... I'm dead and this is my ghost typing! Okay, no, for serious: I had this wicked bout of inspiration and ended up writing this chapter in less than twenty-four hours. A lot of it had to do with the amazing response for the last chapter. I could have cried from the love and understanding so many people showed, not to mention how many readers sounded eager to find out what happened next. And with me being so eager to show off what Shockwave has been playing with in his little lair of horrors... I was absolutely possessed with finishing this chapter.
I do hope you all enjoy it. Or are horrified by it. Or both. ^_^
Major thanks to the reviewers of the last chapter who reminded me that life is still worth living and this story is still worth continuing: DemonSurfer, VyxenSkye, Katea-Nui, A Lurker, renegadewriter8, Boredtech, Psyche102, Camfield, Daklog73, Anodythe, Kai-chan94, TransformersLover95, MoonWallker, White Aster, ReveilleWolfie, Pruhana, Wanderling, StarscreamII, sparklespepper, Faecat, CNightJoy, luinrina, Peacewish, Fianna9, Muffing, Optimus Bob, Sideslip, Prowls-little-angel, smoking caramels, femme4jack, SwedishDragon, evilbunny777, Midnight Marquis, Wise Crack Idiots, and Astsadi.
My love for you people only grows.
Chapter 36
"Ah can't believe they didn't leave any energon behind," Jazz sighed, kneeling on the floor of the generator room below the base. His arms had disappeared up to their elbows into an open access panel in the side of one of the large generators that lined the floor.
Prowl leaned his shoulder against the warm metal of the machine, watching his partner work. He did not offer his thoughts concerning the bare state of the energon storeroom that had just come from. It was unfortunate that every cube had been taken, but it was not necessarily unexpected. Energon was a resource that could scarcely be wasted by being left behind.
Jazz was not surprised by the lack of response. Prowl had been even less talkative than he normally was ever since they came onto base. Obviously it was because of what he had hallucinated out in the cold. Jazz was curious about it, but he wasn't about to press for details. Instead, he carried on his one-sided conversation for the pure fact that he knew it would bother Prowl enough to get him to start talking again.
"Ah'm not asking for much, am Ah?" he intoned, casting a brief glance in Prowl's direction. The tactician was not looking directly at him, but instead at the place where Jazz's arms disappeared inside the access panel. "A single cube would'a been nice, y'know? Even half a cube. A quarter. Ah'd even take a poisoned cube, if it was decent enough energon."
Something snapped closed on his finger, gouging the metal.
"Frag," he cursed, jerking his offended finger out to inspect it. There was a small nick in the metal near his joint; he flexed his finger and frowned when the movement stung a little. The internal designs of the generators were unique to Jazz's careful optic; he had never seen the likes of them before, not on Autobot nor Decepticon bases. Shockwave most likely designed them himself to cope in the hostile environment. One thing to note about them was that they appeared to be three hundred more times efficient than any generator currently in use by anyone else.
Unfortunately, their unique designs also made it harder to fiddle around inside them.
Prowl shifted, his optics darting down for a moment to inspect Jazz's minor wound.
"Ah got pinched, is all," Jazz intoned when he sensed his partner's attention.
"Be more careful," said the tactician, his gaze wandering from Jazz to the rest of the large, rumbling room. Generators lined up down the middle of the room in perfectly measured paces, hooked up to pipes and wires and other feats of machinery that that tactician did not know. He had little training in engineering, and the basics of energy distribution were foreign to him aside from efficiency calculations. Prowl hadn't known what to expect when he and Jazz came down to this level. Dirt? Dust? Screaming victims? The dismembered frames of the missing Neutrals? Instead, they were met with a manner of orderly spotlessness that bordered on psychotic the same way Prowl fussed about the order of his desk or Jazz obsessed over being the best at something. Even the design of the whole lower level was stunningly efficient. There did not appear to be a single detail out of place.
If this were not the creation of an arguably demented Decepticon scientist, Prowl felt that the engineers of Iacon base would do well by taking notes on Shockwave's designs.
"Yeah. Careful. Sure." Jazz rolled his optics and returned to his work. If he bent low, he could see the muted glow of energon as it was piped through the machine. There had to be a release valve somewhere. An emergency pressure valve. Something he could break open with a poke of his claw. Something.
"Ya sure don't like ta make things easy, do ya?" Jazz cursed softly, promising to himself that the moment he did find Shockwave, he was going to punch him in the faceplate just for making it hard to steal energon from him.
"What was that?" Prowl wondered, assuming he was the one being cursed at.
"Nothing," Jazz sighed.
Prowl nodded silently. Much to his embarrassment, his tanks decided that this was the perfect moment to remind everyone present of how empty they currently were. The silent alert flashing across his vision was not enough, now his tanks had to demand with an audio cue. A humiliating audio cue. A low internal groan came from deep inside him as air passed through empty cavities. While it could be said that the noise of hunger was better than suffering from EM-induced nausea, Prow much would have preferred to keep his need for energon to himself.
Jazz smirked. "That was you, wasn't it?"
"Who else would it have been?" Prowl muttered stubbornly, turning his faceplate away.
"Ghosts?" Jazz offered lightly.
"Not likely," Prowl countered with a snort.
Jazz chuckled lowly. "Alright, just give meh an astrosecond ta figure this thing out and Ah'll have ya some energon."
"This is taking longer than I thought it would," Prowl commented with some amount of consternation lacing his tone. It seemed his hunger was driving him into a more conversational mood. "Isn't there a lever you can disengage? A valve, maybe?"
"Sure there is, and as soon as Ah find it that's exactly what Ah'm gonna do," Jazz drawled, accompanied by the sounds of his continued work. "This ain't exactly mah area of expertise. Ah'm not an engineer, y'know?"
"You have more experience than I do," Prowl pointed out.
Jazz snorted.
One optic ridge arched expectantly. "Don't try to tell me you haven't ripped memories from engineers before."
"Sure Ah have," Jazz replied easily, not bothering to deny the fact. "But stealing knowledge and abilities from bots don't mean Ah always know how ta use what Ah got. Knowing something is easier than actually puttin' it inta practice."
"Fair enough," Prowl acknowledged with a small nod. To keep his mind off his demanding tanks, he asked, "Do you remember much of what you take from others?"
Jazz frowned, considering the answer. "Not all of it. Faceplates, designations, places... Those things didn't register with meh before Ah met you. Ah'd forget them as soon as Ah moved on ta something more interesting." He shrugged, his back to Prowl while he crouched for a better look at what he was doing. He was getting close to figuring out what all the doodads and thingamajigs were meant for.
"What of the information that was not faceplates, designations, and places? How much of that do you remember?" Prowl wondered, choosing not to linger on the 'before Ah met you' part. It was already an accepted fact that they were both changed bots from when they first met.
"Most of it," Jazz admitted. "Anything Ah want ta remember, Ah'll remember. It just tumbles around in mah head until Ah need it. Ah don't defrag mah hard drives or clean out my data caches as obsessively as you do, but Ah manage ta keep everything in order enough for meh ta understand it. It's just the way Ah am."
"You amaze me sometimes," Prowl murmured, careful not to look directly at his partner as he said the words.
"Give meh another astrosecond and you'll be even more amazed," Jazz grunted. From within the large machine he was handling, there came a muted click and a long, low hiss as the pressure released.
"Okay, give meh a cube," the silver mech ordered, one hand freeing itself from the innards of the machine to motion in the air distractedly. Prowl quickly handed over the ready cube, which then disappeared into the generator. A moment later, a drainage spout was opened and energon oozed out into the container. Once the cube was full, Jazz withdrew it and held it out.
"It's gonna be disgusting, but at least it's something," he said with a shrug.
Prowl murmured his thanks before taking a mouthful, gagging as the slimy and gritty flavour hit him. Energon used in operating heavy machinery was distilled differently from energon meant for consumption; different manufacturing processes, different additives so that it was a thicker, more viscous fluid that was less likely to ignite when applied to high temperatures. Although it was compatible with living Cybertronain systems, it was not a very pleasant form of energy to consume.
This was not the first time Prowl had been forced to drink energon meant for a machine, but the flavour remained as disgusting as the first time he'd tried it.
Jazz watched the progress of the energon from the cube, frowning when Prowl started to pull away. "Finish it," he ordered.
"You need some too," Prowl pointed out, offering the cube back.
Jazz pushed it away. "Ah'll get mah own. Ya need it more than Ah do."
Prowl cast a stubborn look down to his partner. "Seems a little ridiculous to have me finish this when I am only going to purge it when we leave this place."
"You're just complaining 'cause it's disgusting," Jazz countered. "We'll deal with what happens when we leave later. At least while we're in here ya can absorb most of the energy ta recharge your energy reserves."
Seeing the logic in such an argument, Prowl ceded to his fate. With great reluctance, he finished the cube just as Jazz finished filling his own. With no hesitation at all, the silver mech tilted his head back and finished the cube off as if it were nothing. He even ran his fingertip around the rim and sucked off the sludge that accumulated there. Prowl's incredulity must have been blatantly obvious, because as soon as Jazz caught his stare, he sent the tactician a rakish grin.
"Believe it or not, this is not the worst stuff Ah've ever had," Jazz laughed, wiping his mouthplates with the back of his hand.
"I cannot fathom what could be worse," Prowl intoned flatly.
"Consider yourself lucky ya can't imagine it," Jazz replied wryly.
Overhead, the lights flickered enough to pause the rest of their conversation. Both bots stared upward to scrutinize the bare fixtures above them, seeing no obvious cause for the disruption. Exposed pipes echoed with hollowed groans, rattling against their brackets. The generator Jazz sat next to rumbled deeply, its body shaking. Ominous static sounded above them as an automated message came on:
"Generator 4 has exceeded recommended pressure levels. Relieving pressure in 5, 4, 3-."
Prowl grabbed Jazz and yanked him from the floor, both of them running for cover just as the open panel in the side of the generator ejected a massive spray of bright blue energon. It hit the opposite wall with enough explosive force to leave a small crater. Ricocheted sprays of energon flew everywhere, spattering the floor, walls, and ceiling in a scene of bizarre gore. Prowl and Jazz ducked around generator 3 and slid to the floor until the roaring sound of pressurized energon tapered off into wet gurgling.
"Told ya Ah wasn't an engineer," Jazz joked, shaking his arms to dislodge the spatters of energon that clung to him. "Ah don't even know how Ah managed ta over-pressurize that thing."
"During your memory-stealing escapades, did you ever happen to steal memories from Wheeljack?" Prowl enquired wearily, tipping his head to the side to shake loose a gob of energon in his audio.
Jazz groaned, banging the back of his head against the heavy metal behind him. "Yeah, Ah did. In mah defence, Ah did it before Ah knew he was an idiot."
"At least you didn't blow the place up," Prowl sighed, peering around the corner to make sure the coast was clear. He tensed when a shadow flickered in the open doorway. His hand flew for a weapon, which instantly had Jazz reacting for battle.
"Decepticons?" Jazz hissed.
"Wait a moment," Prowl warned, wary to jump out without formulating an appropriate attack plan.
Any planning turned out to be needless as a pair of mid-sized drones wandered into the room. They held a wet-vac between them, dragging it toward the mess their calibrated sensors would have picked up the moment the generator depressurized. They squeaked at each other as if exclaiming over the waste of energon, proceeded by their mindless mission to clean it up.
"Drones," Prowl breathed, relaxing. "Two of them."
Jazz leaned back with a frown, putting away the two stained blades he'd brought out. "That's strange."
"How so?"
"Shockwave packed up every drop of energon he could, but he left his drones behind? Doesn't seem like something he'd do."
Prowl peered at the drones again. "They look like maintenance drones, not speciality designs; expendable resources. Besides, if we failed to find this place, the drones would have continued with maintenance until Shockwave was able to return. I imagine Shockwave attended to every possible contingency plan."
"True, Ah suppose," Jazz admitted with some amount of reluctance.
One of the drones slipped in a puddle of energon, falling with a screech and a crash. It's partner squeaked in admonishment, proceeding to wet-vac right over the fallen drone as if it wasn't there.
"Come on, let's get moving," Jazz said, ushering Prowl from the room without disturbing the pair of drones.
They made it back into the corridor and found the set of stairs they originally took to get down to the generator level. Back in the building above, everything remained eerily still. Just as before, an ominous feeling permeated the atmosphere. It was a strange tension that was difficult to pinpoint, an omnipresent sensation in the air possessing a physical weight and awareness. While the base was essentially empty, save for the presence of two bumbling drones currently flailing around on the floor below, there never ceased to be an evanescent malaise. A tasteless, colourless, odourless miasma that seeped into every crevice, every corner, and clung like a film to every surface.
Jazz felt the touch of wrongness in the air and it set him on edge. It was much like when he had first heard Bluestreak's shattered wails, seeing him writhing across the floor of his cage while trapped in a nightmare made by his own memories. He could not be sure if it was his own affinity for depravity that made him acutely aware of his surroundings, but he knew that whatever Shockwave had been doing in the base, the disturbed nature of it had somehow settled into the very foundation. Even the particles in the air seeped with a sense of unease. The longer Jazz remained in touch with it, the more he could feel it being absorbed into him. Dark filth he could feel settling on his armour, filling him up inside.
Prowl was less attuned to the unnatural disposition of the base. Although he did feel off-put by the sheer unwelcoming sense of the foreboding empty space, he did not sense depravity in the air as sharply as Jazz did. Instead, he mused over the existence of the base and allowed himself to be disturbed that such a creation could be built without a single living Autobot aware of its existence. Reasonably, Cybertron was a large planet and its entire surface could not be monitored at all times. However, the massive amount of materials, energon, and bots needed to construct and maintain a compound like this... how could no one see anything? Scouts lined the borders between Kaon and Tyger Pax. Someone should have seen something before it moved too far south into the poles. How had Shockwave managed to remain invisible? Assuming he had been practising his brand of science for longer than just the war, how was it possible no one had ever heard his designation before?
Together, they passed into an enclosed walkway between one building to the next. Its transparent panels gave them a stunning view of the towering glacier on the south side. It was still an intimidating sight, though Prowl held a new appreciation for it. A low rumble announced a large chunk from the upper half of the glacier crumbling from the body, crashing into the shield. Sparks flew into the dark air, obscured in a haunting haze of white-grey steam.
They did not notice the danger happening much closer to them.
A red light flickered on above the door they just passed through; a warning light. Jazz remained distracted by the glacier. Prowl was unable to see the red hue of the warning light. A heavy steel door slid and locked into place. It was only when the tumblers of the lock fell into place that Jazz jerked around to stare at the now blocked entrance.
"Slag," he grunted, grabbing Prowl's wrist. "The glacier must have set off a seismic warning system."
"What-?"
A secondary door slid shut at the opposite end of the walkway. Vents in the floor snapped open, heralding the hiss of a heavy powdery vapour being pumped in.
Jazz dug his heels in, Prowl ramming into his back. "Not a seismic warning system," he corrected himself.
"Trap?" Prowl wondered.
"We must have tripped something when we walked in here." Jazz withdrew a plasma blaster, aiming for the door ahead of them. "Ah'll get us out. The saturation is still low; if Ah ignite the gas, it'll probably just singe our afts."
Prowl cycled air, and then coughed.
"It's not gas," he wheezed, heaving to clear his vents.
"What?"
"Not gas!" Prowl grabbed Jazz's wrist before the saboteur could fire. He cycled the powdery air through his vents more carefully a second time, immediately identifying the substance as one of the most dangerous elements known to Cybertronians. His hand cinched tighter around Jazz's wrist. "Please tell me my sensors are wrong about what element is currently pouring in through the vents."
Jazz jerked his arm away, scanning his surroundings. He nearly choked on the information. "Magnesium."
"Magnesium powder," Prowl confirmed darkly.
Of all the elements in the known universe, magnesium was among one of the most dangerous to Cybertronians. Among its significant properties were its ability to burn in nearly any kind of atmosphere, burning at extremely high temperatures, and being nearly impossible to put out. Weaponized forms could have catastrophic effects in battle. When ignited, magnesium could burn through a Cybertronian's armour in astroseconds. What made flash powder particularly dangerous was that it could get inside a bot's vents, work its way toward the heat of the spark, and ignite from a touch of the spark's energy. In a sudden flash of bright white light, a bot could burn into a blackened husk from the inside out and there would be nothing to do to help him.
All vents on Prowl and Jazz's frames sealed tight to prevent any more powder from entering them.
"Shockwave sure knows how to plan for every possibility," Jazz spat, glaring at the thickening haze of white filling up around him. His sensors were going haywire. "We can't shoot, we can't hotwire the door, we can't even claw our way out in case we accidentally make a spark and incinerate ourselves. Ah'd punch something right now, but Ah'm afraid that might blow us up too."
"We will have to find an alternate escape route," Prowl said.
"Genius! Why didn't Ah think of that?" Jazz hissed. "What do ya propose, oh genius tactician?"
Prowl sent a squinty glare down to his partner, who now appeared more white than silver. "Less sarcasm would be nice."
"World peace would also be nice, but ya ain't gonna get it."
Prowl rolled his optics, turning in one slow circle to evaluate their worsening situation. He shook the fine coating of powder clinging to his armour. They needed an option which afforded them no possible sparks to ignite the magnesium, and preferably one which was low temperature for the same reason. It then occurred to Prowl that his own weapon would do nicely. Sometimes the simplest solution was not always the easiest to realize.
Jazz bristled as Prowl withdrew his blaster.
"Shootin' ain't gonna work," the saboteur sneered.
Prowl arched an optic ridge. "Shooting plasma won't." He patted the side cartridge on his weapon where highly effective get-out-of-jail-free pellets were stored. "Acid should do nicely, shouldn't it?"
"Acid?" It dawned on Jazz that Prowl's weapon suddenly looked a thousand times better than it ever had before. "Have Ah ever told ya Ah love a mech who packs for every occasion?"
"Love me later; we have to get out of here now," Prowl replied. Three acid pellets flew into the nearest pane of clear polymer. While acids in their most normal states were normally not very fast acting on dense materials, particularly metals, the acid that Prowl loaded into his pellets was a brand of manufactured acid meant specifically for fast-acting damage on metal, mineral, and polymer. In moments, a sizable hole had been eaten into the metal frame keeping the clear window pane in place; the polymer of the pane had turned to a clear, oozing sludge.
Jazz shoved the pane from its frame, careful not to let the acid come into contact with his hands. He squirrelled out with an impressive amount of agility, motioning for Prowl to follow.
An ominous cloud of white powder followed on their heels as if reaching to draw them back inside.
"Ya get the feeling this base is tryin' ta kill us?" Jazz said off-handedly.
"It might have come to my attention briefly," Prowl drawled. "We better flush our vents before we ignite ourselves by accident." He immediately followed his own advice, finding himself in luck that the ice in his joints had thawed, the liquid still running freely inside his frame. Magnesium, aside from being such a troublesome element, was also highly soluble, soaked up by the melt and subsequently dribbled from his vents with ease.
Two paces away, Jazz scooped up a handful of snow and rolled it into a ball, using it to clean away the remnants of the powder that still clung to him.
"Clever," Prowl observed absently.
"Don't give Shockwave any more credit than he deserves," Jazz spat. "Anyone could'a set up a mag-powder trap. It's such an old trap that it was old when Ah was new."
"I was referring to your snowball," Prowl replied lightly.
Jazz blinked, looking down at the handmade tool. "Oh. Well, this is an old trick too." Once he was done, he immediately scooped another snowball and walked over to Prowl, running the cold handful across vents and over armour.
"I can do this," Prowl offered, reaching for the snowball.
"Ah got it," Jazz assured, moving out of reach of the grey hand that reached for him.
With his neural circuits sensitized to the cold after so recently thawing, Prowl felt the snow acutely and shuddered from the touch. He then recalled his hallucination's advice and shuddered again, though this time it was not from the touch of cold. He did not think he wanted to consider too closely what Evasia had meant.
Jazz finished with his work and stepped away, weighing what was left of the snow in his right hand. "We should keep moving. There's still two buildings left ta snoop through. One of them has ta have Shockwave's labs in them."
Prowl surveyed the yard from where he stood, eyeing the building they had been on their way toward before the walkway tried to kill them, and then observing a distant building set away from the rest of the cluster of the small compound. A low, squat building possessing one door and no windows. The dark metal which armoured its outsides was obviously reinforced. The ominous aesthetic of the building was only emphasized by the bizarre pristine appearance of it. There were no scuff marks on the walls; no icicles hung from the overhang of the roof. No living being looked like it had set foot within the vicinity in a very long time, if ever.
Jazz's attention was likewise attracted to the singular building set aside from all the others. Even under the fizzing lights of the energy dome above them, it was the one structure that remained set in shadow.
"Ah'll give ya three guesses which building Ah think we should search first."
Prowl thinned his mouthplates into a straight line. "The building which categorically looks like the site of a horror vid where all the protagonists die horrible deaths in the end?"
"Seems like a good place to start, don't ya think?" Jazz paused for a second, and then swung an incredulous look in Prowl's direction. "You've watched horror vids before?"
"I have done many things you may not be aware of," Prowl replied with a ghost of a smirk. "You do not strike me as the sort who enjoys sitting still long enough to watch a vid."
Jazz laughed a low note. "Why would Ah watch a horror vid? Real life is scarier."
They approached with caution, expecting the worst. The light dusting of snow that had somehow managed to filter through the force field laid like a warning around the windowless entity. Not for the normal optic to tell, Jazz was able to see a pattern in the manner of footprints walking around the building. Not just that whoever had been on base before now avoided going within a certain distance of the building, but that they walked with caution around it. Strong footsteps suddenly took on a timid gait the closer they came. Feet angled away as if even pointing in that direction was dangerous.
Whatever was inside, the Decepticons knew they didn't want anything to do with it.
Jazz felt the prickling of bad energy across his armour.
"The building's wired for motion and energy signatures," he announced, canvasing the vicinity for any sign of the sensors. "Only Shockwave and one other must have been able to come in and out."
"One other?" Prowl wondered.
"Two sets of prints," Jazz said, pointing to the barely visible shadows ghosting across the ground. Someone had tried hard to hide them, the smaller bot walking within the set of the large bot, but the manner of his gait caused disturbances that gave him away.
"Apprentice, maybe?" Prowl offered.
"Or accomplice," Jazz intoned darkly. He rolled a large snowball from the cold, damp dusting across the ground. Larger than the balls he had used to clean his armour off. Once sure it had enough mass, he lobbed it into the empty zone in front of the building. Before it had time to land, it was shot down by three magnesium-burn lasers. "Ah'll take out the sensors, you take out the lasers."
"Consider it done." Prowl was already aiming to take out the first of the three lasers.
Jazz was gone from Prowl's side in a blink, searching out where the hubs for the grid were. He found them in the places where the ground was slightly warmer than the rest. The dusting of snow had melted just enough to be noticeable. Each had been rigged with a landmine so that if stepped upon, it would have blown the unfortunate bot apart. Jazz dealt with each easily enough, if not with a little less finesse than he normally did things. Grabbing heavy crates and throwing them on the sensors felt like thug-work, but it blew the mines up and took the sensors out with them.
He was about to throw his last crate, one which had a strange organic residue clinging to it, when he became aware of how very odd a crate with organic residue on it was. Of all the compounds on Cybertron, naturally occurring or intentionally manufactured, organically-based material was the most rare. What were the chances of finding organic anything all the way out in the middle of nowhere on a base inhabited by a creature capable of unspeakable things?
Instead of throwing the crate, Jazz set it down and eyed it warily. His life experience included contact with organics, though he could not claim to remember much of it. What he did remember was that organic species could not survive on Cybertron very easily. The planet's distance from its sun made for a cold planet on the surface; massive amounts of industry and machinery had once kept Cybertron at a lukewarm stage, though still too cold for most organics. Lack of industry now made for an even colder planet. Cybertron's atmosphere was largely composed of hydrogen, carbon oxides, nitrides, and sulphides; most organic lifeforms required oxygen, which existed on Cybertron, but in low saturation. Not to mention the size of the planet lent toward a heavy gravitational pull. Cybertronians were adapted to withstanding their planet's gravity, but foreign bodies were usually crushed.
Morbid curiosity piqued, Jazz pried the edges of the crate loose. A thin veil of steam issued from the cracks. The smell that rose from it was alien and disturbing. The insides of Jazz's olfactory sensor twinged. Sensor readouts splayed across his screens, announcing the chemical makeup of the gases to be methane, ammonia, and hydrogen sulphides among other unidentifiable organic compounds foreign to Jazz's databanks. What he did know was that those gases together were indicative of organic decay. When he removed the lid completely, a waft of foetid air hit him in the faceplate. It made him feel dirty, though it didn't stop him from taking a closer look at the garbage that Shockwave did not deem important enough to take with him.
"What the frag...?"
Body parts.
It was a box full of organic body parts.
By the looks of things, the hundreds of bodies that filled the box were all in different states of decomposition. Putrefaction had produced a sloppy brown liquid from the heavily decayed corpses. An organic slush that swilled as the crate rocked, sloshing up and over the sides when Jazz shoved the box away. Chunks of rotting material floated freely on top of the mess, or else still clung by fibres to the stunning whiteness of organic endoskeletons. One round, sightless organic optic no bigger than a drop of water bobbed its way through the gore, following Jazz with a lonely, accusing stare. A moment later, it burst from the pressure of internal gases hitting the sharp blade of cold air rushing in.
Jazz wrinkled his olfactory sensors, and then decided he did not need a sense of smell as of that moment. He shut down that sensor to prevent anymore offensive stenches from getting caught up there. Cautiously, as if he expected other body parts to start randomly exploding, he levered to his knees and peered down into the crate for a second look. It was as disgusting as his first look. But now that he knew what to expect, he saw the creeping details that made his discovery all the more disturbing. The body parts were missing pieces; many dismembered sections had been skinned. Sections of exposed bone sawed away. The microscopic threads of nerves had been pulled out.
Steeling himself for the feeling of wet rot seeping through his finger joints, Jazz reached in and lifted out a tiny organic arm. It was so small that he had to pinch it between two fingertips to hold it. Decay was so advanced that it simply slid apart in his grip, slopping back into the corpse soup with a muted splash. The next part Jazz picked up was not as far gone. It was a thick torso from a species that was large enough to take up space in nearly his entire palm; Jazz regarded the portion of corpse with a measure of disgust. He felt no pity for the lifeless pieces, but he did accept that that he never wanted to find out what it was like to be torn in half.
Squinting at the scraps of flesh left on the torso, Jazz came upon disturbing evidence. Across the rotted, blistered skin was a multitude of black lines. They ran like circuitry over flesh, like a road map that cut off sharply where large swaths of skin had been cut away. They were deliberate designs with obvious Cybertronian aesthetic to them. It took a moment for Jazz to place where he had seen similar lines before. They were graft lines.
Jazz dropped the torso back into the crate and shoved the lid back on.
"Prowl," he called out, hoping his partner was near enough to answer. "Prowl, ya gotta see this!"
"Jazz-?" Prowl yelled, sounding startled at first and then abruptly cut off by the sharp sound of plasma fire.
Jazz took off in that direction without thinking, moving around the far side of the squat building where the ground lay in heavy shadow. Prowl was easy to spot, splayed on the ground as a dark, uneven lump. Jazz immediately scanned for a spark signature, and then cursed himself when he realized both he and Prowl had yet to unmask their spark resonances. Prowl's frame was still warm as it was turned over. Jazz laid his hand to the centre of the tactician's chassis and felt the steady pulse of a spark beneath the metal.
One weary optic cracked open. "I did not just go through the pit to end up shot dead in here," the tactician grouched, trying to sit up.
"Mah thoughts exactly," Jazz added, noting the oozing wound in Prowl's left shoulder. The metal was caved inward, meaning he had been shot from the front. Luckily, the shoulder was not a vital part of Prowl's anatomy; no weaponry in that area, no redundant processor units. Just the basic mechanics to make an arm work.
"Did ya trip one of the lasers by accident?" Jazz enquired, watching the flow of energon taper off.
"No," Prowl grunted. "I think a drone shot me." He nodded to the darkened corner of the building where night's touch had settled the deepest. "I thought it was you coming around the corner over there. I could see light from a visor- it looked white to me. It must have been a red visor and I just couldn't pick up the colour. It was not until you called out that I realized whoever was walking toward me was not you. That's when the drone shot me and ran off."
Jazz growled softly, shuffling over to inspect the prints left behind. The manner of the gait set off warning bells in his head.
"I should have realized sooner that the drone wasn't you," Prowl sighed.
"It was dark. Ya can't see the colour red. You're just lucky ya didn't get shot in the head." Jazz shuffled back to inspect the wound again. "It took out most of your interface panel."
Prowl craned his neck with some trouble to look down at the mostly shot-off section of his frame. "You must see that as a terrible loss."
"There's more than one way ta interface with a bot," Jazz laughed, winking. He took out his blaster and charged it so that the tip glowed with yet-to-be-discharged plasma. "How about some quick field repairs before we go anywhere?"
"I already shut down neural wires in the area for you to work."
Jazz unhooked a section of Prowl's shoulder armour from the opposite shoulder and took cut out a decent piece of the thin plating beneath. He bent it with his hands and banged it against his knee until it was in the right shape to act as a patch over the wound. Welding it on would reduce mobility in Prowl's left arm, but it also reduced the risk of something getting into his frame that didn't belong there. After seeing what Shockwave was keeping in crates, Jazz knew there were things around the base that no one wanted in their frame.
"You never told me why you called for me," Prowl said as he rolled his shoulder, testing the cooling welds.
"Found something," Jazz said, rocking back on his heels. "A crate that Shockwave must have left behind. It was filled with organic remains."
Prowl stared at him quizzically. "Organic remains?"
"Frames...er, bodies," Jazz amended. "Bits and pieces of alien bodies. They were so mangled that Ah couldn't see much from them, but some of them looked like species from neighbouring planets. Looks like Shockwave's been working off-planet. There had to be a couple hundred chunks of organics to fill a crate that size."
Prowl's gaze turned shrewd, mind racing. "That is a disturbing development."
"Ya don't know the half of it," Jazz lamented. "Ah touched the stuff. Ah still feel it in mah finger joints." It was a good thing he still had his olfactory sensor shut down or he was have been able to smell the corpse juices still reeking on him.
"What business would Shockwave have with organic aliens?" Prowl questioned, ignoring Jazz's off-handed complaints. "Their technology is not as advanced as ours, and their bodies are far from compatible with this planet..."
"What do ya wanna bet the answer's in there?" Jazz wagered, jerking his chin to the looming presence of the dark building next to them.
"I believe our chances of finding answers inside are very high," Prowl estimated quietly.
Jazz threaded his arm underneath Prowl's good shoulder and hauled the other mech to his feet. They adjusted themselves until their positions were comfortable. This time, Jazz did not need to ask Prowl to lean his weight against him. It was done without a thought. They made their way together to the single unguarded door at the front of the building.
"Ya know," Jazz murmured, arm cinching tighter around Prowl than what was necessary. "Ah have a feeling that whatever we're gonna find in there ain't gonna be pretty."
In fact, what they were going to find was going to be a whole lot worse than either of them could ever imagine.