It takes a week for the authorities to secure and destroy the biological weapons, and during that time Torment is briefly in contact with Prowl a few times while he contemplates the best course of action now that contact has been established between them.
At least it is a step in the right direction that the Director listens to him and resolutely acts on the information, that he provides him with.
It needs to be done in absolute secrecy and little by little to not alert anyone within the Organization to what he is doing, and to not give the Joint Investigation Unit all the important cards all at once.
Their alliance are still in its early beginning and fragile.
He is after all a wanted criminal.
Prowl, however, is more than satisfied with the information Torment provides him with, because when they examine the origin of the biological weapons they discover that they can be linked directly to Torrent.
It is the tangible evidence they so desperately have needed against him, and Prowl doesn't hesitate to request a new meeting with the Supreme Council to repeat his request to be given permission to use invasive interrogation on Torrent.
The date of the meeting is set for a week later, but they can't wait that long and he urgently presses on to have the meeting moved to earlier.
Unfortunately the council's judicial senior assistant informs him that it is impossible since senator Enigma's schedule is occupied the next week.
Prowl's seemingly unending patience finally runs out and his communication with the council's judicial senior assistant ends with a raised voice, that can be heard loud and clear in the corridor outside his office.
"OCCUPIED WITH WHAT?!"
There is an obvious threat to the society!
What could be more important than that?!
In the meanwhile Athena slowly begins to accept her confusing feelings for Torment.
She goes to work as usual, but now without the officers, who constantly had been following her and finally she gets the chance to distance herself mentally from what had happened.
It is vital for her stressed psyche to finally be able to let go and forget the worst of it, before the anxiety manifests as an actual psychiatric disorder or develops into a case of PTSD. And she feels extremely grateful to the one who had convinced Prowl to give her the necessary space and normalcy, that she so desperately had needed to finally begin to recover from her traumas.
She can now breathe freely and it no longer feels like she slowly is suffocating.
It still fills her with unease when she needs to enter her office, but after a few days without incidents she has begun to relax a little bit.
Her mind tends to wander and at times she fantasizes curiously about how he would be. For some reason she cannot forget the gentleness that had been in his voice right before she lost consciousness. But then she reminds herself, that he is still a ruthless criminal that doesn't care about the feelings of those he harms.
She had only been a means to an end.
A pawn in a game of chess.
Unimportant and disposable.
Athena sighs when she discovers that her mind once again has wandered.
She places the datapad that contains one of her students' Ph.D. thesis, and which she has been trying to concentrate on for the last hour, on the desk as a sign of her defeat.
Who is she trying to fool?
Sexual frustration literally radiates from her.
She wants him and desperately, but he is so emotionally distanced, brutal and harsh, that he doesn't seem to care about that kind of things.
How does he satisfy himself?
Prostitutes?
Or does he simply derive pleasure from killing?
She has seen it before among some of her patients. That they get sexual gratification when they kill or otherwise harm their victims.
But he doesn't fit into that profile.
There is an aura of deadly professionalism about him, which she rarely has experienced amongst the serial killers that she has encountered in her work as a member of the Psychiatric Risk Assessment Authority, and for some unexplainable reason she feels drawn to him despite all her knowledge about how lethal it can be for her to engage in any kind of relationship with someone like him.
She wants him to claim her, wishes to passionately be taken and marked by him and to hear his deep and animalistic groan of pleasure as he overloads deep inside her.
Her valve begins to lubricate at the thought and she blushes in shame when the wetness draws her back to reality.
They have only shared a single forced kiss and yet she seems to have fallen in love with him.
Torrent leans against the opulently decorated wall and observes the many small groups of influential cybertronians that intermingle and converse with each other within the Senate's majestic grand hall.
His optics moves slowly from group to group while he closely studies each of the sires and carriers individually, assessing their worth.
Searching for his next target.
"You look lonesome."
He calmly turns his head to stare at the addresser.
Blue wings greet him and he studies them curiously.
Their owner, a light blue seeker carrier, leans companionable against the wall beside him and stares out over the small groups of gathered cybertronians.
"I'm not used to this either."
Torrent studies the blue seeker intimately and gives the carrier a smile.
It seems like his target found him instead of the other way around.
"Then what are you doing here?" He asks gently.
"I'm trying to get some political connections that I can use in my work." The carrier answers before he turns fully towards him and offers his hand, "I'm Thundercracker."
He looks at the hand for a second before he takes it.
"Torrent."
CLANK!
Torrent abruptly wakes from the dream at the loud sound of a door that gets slammed shut and he glares at the reinforced door to his cell.
He looks up into the ceiling with a deep, dissatisfied frown.
Almost two weeks have passed since his arrest and impatience fills him.
The first steps in his plan to destroy the existing society are intended to be set in motion within few days, but he has still not heard anything.
What are you doing, Torment?
He checks that the signal from the explosive device on the assassin's spark chamber still is active, and he fills with satisfaction when he receives the confirmation signal.
It is ready to be detonated if necessary.
That Thundercracker had fallen in love with Skywarp had both been a curse and a blessing.
What better way to get his hands on the both of them after Skywarp got access to his warp-gate and had looked to be impossible to reacquire?
And the warp-gate was the perfect lure to get Torment to lower his defenses and fall right into his trap.
Because who could refuse the temptation it is to be able to teleport?
Unfortunately Torment had convinced his little hacker to not accept the technology.
Torrent had had her in his trap, had seen her deep interest in the technology, but Torment had absolutely had to argue against it and she had foolishly listened to him. And he knew that if he kept pressing on, then his rival would become suspicious.
Better to take what he could get than risk losing it all in an attempt to get his hands on the hacker's abilities.
Torment is a skilled tactician with the brutality required to get things done, just like himself, but the professional assassin is also cold-sparked and completely devoid of any kind of emotion and solves all of his problems with killing. He is completely incapable of feeling love or understand the power of love, prefers to be with prostitutes and kills his sexual partners when he gets tired of them or they become too troublesome.
It became even more clear when he suggested to kill Thundercracker.
Torrent's little lovely Thundercracker.
No!
He couldn't let that happen back then and still can't.
Which was why he had had to act fast to get a hold of Thundercracker the moment he found out where the blue seeker was. Because if Torment found out that Thundercracker had been located, then he would not hesitate to kill the blue seeker.
As long as the blue seeker had stayed with him he would be safe from the assassin, and when he finally allowed Thundercracker to leave his presence, he had already taken control over Torment.
And if they hadn't so desperately had the need of Torment's extensive network of contacts to make their goal of overthrowing the existing society a reality, then he would never have approached the assassin and involved him in their activities in the first place.
But unfortunately they had needed his aid and Highline had later decided to give Torment an official position in the Organization, after which Torment chose to involved some of his closest contacts in their project which strengthened their position in the criminal underworld considerably.
He had not been happy with the decision and the animosity between them, that had been there from the start, only escalated when he decided to founder the syndicate and take control over the Organization's financial situation while Torment and his network of specialists worked on carrying out the long-term tactical preparations for their attack.
Their rivalry began in earnest and he realized that he needed to do something to take back the control, or he risked that Torment would take the full control over the Organization and all of his careful planning.
Imagine what they could have accomplished if the assassin had been more cooperative with him, had listened to him and not constantly argued against his suggestions? Torment had outright refused to have anything to do with the biological weapons, had been adamantly against anything with the potential of mass destruction.
Pathetic.
The sound of heavy steps coming closer draws him out of his thoughts and he stares hateful at the door as it opens.
"What do you want!" He growls menacingly to the enforcers that enter.
"Your lawyer has requested a meeting with you." Overflow says.
The SIO nods to the two enforcers flanking him and they step forward to put Torrent in handcuffs before he is led out of his cell.
Torrent is so surprised by the information that he for once doesn't fight them, and he is lost in thought while he follows them down the corridor.
What's going on?
He is led into a interrogation room where Nightswitch already sits at the table with a neutral expression, and the enforcers leads him over to the chair across from the lawyer.
His hands gets released and the enforcers leave the room before he sits down in the chair and stares curiously at the lawyer.
"They have found the biological weapons." Nightswitch says calmly with a hand discreetly held against his cheek to hide the movements of his lips while his expression stays neutral.
To prevent anyone from interpreting what he is saying, he realizes.
Torrent looks to his right at the mirror behind which Overflow without a doubt is staring at them and he carefully mirrors the lawyer, making the movement of his hand as natural as possible.
"How?"
The weapons can be linked directly to him.
How could this happen?!
Torment's little hacker was tasked to keep the authorities blind to their actions.
"I have no idea." Nightswitch says, "Enigma is currently running interference. The Joint Investigation Unit will not get permission to use invasive interrogation on you for at least a week. We have time to make contingency plans."
Torrent narrows his optics.
That is not good enough.
He has finally had enough of this charade.
"I want you to contact Highline. Tell him it is time."
He has to get out of here and take back the control.
Highline is utterly useless in controlling the more erratic members of the Organization.
His gaze darkens and fills with suspicion.
What have you been up to, Torment?