Prowl walks into A-63's lobby and over to the receptionist.
"I'm here to visit Thundercracker. Can you tell me which floor he is staying on?"
"Which department?" She asks him.
"He should be staying at the Department of Developmental Disorders unless he has been moved."
The receptionist turns to the computer and finds the information for him. He thanks her and walks over to the elevators.
-43rd floor. East wing.-
He encrypts the message with the unbreakable code Shift has provided them with when he contacts his shadow. It is one of the many benefits of having the black hat hacker on their team. No one will be able to decrypt it if they manage to intercept it.
Shift knows her colleagues out there and had shown him how easy it had been for her to gain access to his secure communications line and decrypt his heavily encrypted and highly sensitive messages.
It had worried him deeply when he realized how vulnerable they had been. If anyone had been interested in who he had been communicating with, they would have discovered his link to Nacelle.
With the knowledge he now has, it is only luck that has kept his bondmate safe.
The elevator reaches the 43rd floor, and he steps out of it when the door opens. He looks at the sign above the automatic door leading into the Department of Developmental Disorders while he patiently waits for his shadow to arrive.
A purple mist coalesces beside him a moment later, and Typhoon looks around, his cold, merciless optics studying their surroundings.
"Lead the way." The mercenary says gruffly.
Prowl activates the automatic door, and they enter the department.
Nurses look curiously at them as they walk down the corridors inside the department, and Prowl is aware of how Typhoon once again is assessing their surroundings. The dark blue seeker is clearly scanning for cameras and analyzing potential security issues he will have to handle while on this assignment.
It eases some of his worries.
Despite what Typhoon is, he knows that Nacelle and Thundercracker will be safe in his vicinity.
"I would never hurt an innocent carrier."
It had been the first thing the mercenary had told him when Torment had assigned the dark blue seeker as Thundercracker's protection, and it had eased the dread that had filled his spark at the thought of Typhoon being this close to his bondmate. He knows that there is a code of honor even among the hardened criminals, and while Torment tends to overstep its boundary, it is good to know that Typhoon strictly adheres to it.
Nacelle looks up from the datapad he is reading when there is a knock on the door to his and Thundercracker's room. The door opens a moment later, and Prowl steps into their room.
Thundercracker has developed a lot in the past weeks, and the blue seeker is currently sitting on the berth beside Nacelle's while playing a game designed to increase his vocabulary.
He rises to greet his bondmate but stops when an imposing and sinister-looking sire follows Prowl into the room. The dangerous sire completely ignores him, looking past him at Thundercracker, and a dark expression grows on his face before he swiftly turns around and lets Nacelle be alone with Prowl.
Nacelle can hear him talk in a low, gruff voice with someone on a communications line, his voice full of fury, and he shivers at the sound of it.
That sire is going to stay with him and Thundercracker?
"I promise you that it will be okay." Prowl reassures him gently, clearly noticing his discomfort, and in their bond, Nacelle is surprised to sense how calm his bondmate is with letting an obviously deadly criminal protect them.
There is a sense of 'trust out of necessity' in their connection, an acceptance that Prowl, in the current situation, is unable to do as he promised his bondmate at their bonding. His vow to always protect Nacelle from anyone that wants to do him harm.
This is another way to fulfill that promise.
And the only way he can keep his bondmate safe for as long as there are seven deadly teleporters out there who, without a doubt, will be searching for Thundercracker.
Torment's arguments when they had had the discussion about Thundercracker's protection had been fierce and impossible to ignore.
The assassin is right.
This is the only way to keep them safe.
Thundercracker is still in an extremely vulnerable developmental phase, and Nacelle stubbornly refuses to leave the hospital and move them into a safe house.
"Does he know who I am?" Nacelle asks in a low whisper.
Prowl nods gravely.
"I accidentally revealed your importance to his employer, but you are safe with him. At least until all of this is over. Afterward, we will have to see what happens."
What a mess.
So he is safe with the sire, but not indefinitely.
"What's his specialty?"
It's always wise to know who and what you are dealing with.
"Typhoon is what's called a chameleon. He is an extremely adaptable former special forces agent who can fill out any role required to get an assignment done. Within the law or outside it. After he left the special forces, he has specialized in assassinations, infiltration and undercover operations." Prowl says severely, and Nacelle visibly pales while listening to the description of who the dark blue seeker is. "He is a mercenary and was the one that Senator Flamewar hired when the Senator's little daughter got kidnapped by the Tarnian Syndicate. I'm sure you can remember the political scandal thirty years ago. Flamewar had to resign because of what he did, but he got his daughter home in safety."
"So you are fighting fire with fire?" Nacelle concludes, shaken.
Prowl nods solemnly.
"We need their assistance."
They get interrupted when Typhoon once again enters the room. The dark blue seeker points at Thundercracker while he brusquely addresses Nacelle.
"Is he able to fly?"
Nacelle stares hard at Typhoon, not divulging any vital information about his client.
Typhoon sighs exasperated at the green and white seeker's open display of defiance when it comes to gaining critical information about the one he has been sent here to protect.
"I need to know it to prepare for when Torrent's lackeys show up."
Not if, but when.
Nacelle represses a shudder.
"He hasn't been in the air since Retrograde did what she did to him." He finally answers.
"Then you will have to find out. Thundercracker will be Torrent's primary target while Skywarp is his secondary target, or if we are lucky, he is no target at all. You are the one that doesn't want to move your client to a safe house, and I need to know everything about any weaknesses there are if I am going to be able to protect you and your client. We will have to react fast when they attack, which is why they have selected me to be here. We are all seekers while all of our enemies except for one are land-based vehicles, and I will be concentrating on handling the flight-frame if he shows up."
Thundercracker watches the interaction between Nacelle and the new seeker in curiosity.
The large sire is towering above Nacelle, but it's his large wings that draw Thundercracker's attention.
Or, more specifically, the detailed tattoos that cover them.
He looks at his own wings and gently touches their sensitive surface.
It must have hurt when he got them made.
After another curious glance at the sire and Nacelle, he turns his attention back to the game and saves its progress before he rises and walks over to them.
"This is Typhoon, Thundercracker." Nacelle introduces the new seeker. "He will be staying with us for a while."
Thundercracker looks up into Typhoon's optics, and he feels the sire's field reach out to him to gently intermingle with his. But there is an unusual hesitancy in how the field intermingles with his, which clearly indicates that Typhoon consciously withholds information about himself that usually automatically gets communicated without a thought.
It fills him with confusion, and he studies the sire more in-depth to understand what his instincts are trying to tell him about the other seeker.
"You going to stay in here?" He asks with a frown and turns to Nacelle. "No place for third berth. Where he recharge?"
Typhoon smirks at the sight of Nacelle's utterly scandalized expression when the green and white seeker realizes the importance of the blue seeker's very relevant question. Coming to Nacelle's aid, he addresses Thundercracker.
"I won't need a berth to recharge on." He explains professionally. "And I will not be recharging while you and Nacelle recharge. Instead, I will be watching over you. To protect you."
"Protect against what?"
Typhoon meets Nacelle's gaze.
"Against someone who wants to hurt you." He answers, a deep intensity in his voice while he mercilessly holds the green and white seeker's gaze with his passionately burning optics.
Prowl has to return to Praxus and leaves them. Typhoon shadows Nacelle and Thundercracker when the two carriers leave the department to get down to the psychiatric hospital's gym on the 5th floor.
There he leans against a wall and analyzes what he has found out about Thundercracker so far.
The unbonded carrier intrigues him.
He had been so furious the moment he had laid his optics on Thundercracker and had felt the first brief touch of the blue seeker's completely unguarded field.
Instantly realizing what had happened to him.
He had immediately withdrawn from the room to speak with Torment as a way to get his aggression out of his systems in a good and safe manner, instead of risking destroying something or hurting someone. Torment had been patient and had listened interestedly to him while he had raged and explained the severity of Thundercracker's situation to him.
No one had told him that the blue carrier was sparked, and he found out that Torment hadn't known anything about it either. Prowl had kept it a secret to them. While he had had a strong urge to directly confront the director of the Joint Investigation Unit with this withholding of vital information, it is Torment's business to handle their temporary ally.
His own focus is solely on protecting Thundercracker.
The poor blue seeker has no idea of the chaos he is in the center of, and Typhoon will do his best to keep him unaware of it. Thundercracker's innocent, curious optics had studied him with an uncommon intensity as if clearly sensing that he is different from Nacelle and Prowl. He will have to be careful to not reveal what he is. Not because he believes that the blue seeker will be able to fully understand what he is, but it is always wise to be safe. His assignment requires that the carrier trusts him and won't hesitate to follow his orders when the situation demands that they act.
That goes for both of them.
He resolutely ignores the insisting pressure from his spike as he stares at Nacelle.
He is a sire, has his needs, but the sleek, beautiful wings with their back turned toward him are, unfortunately, an absolute no-go.
Nacelle is at the moment talking to a colleague while Thundercracker participates in a yoga session inside a room secluded from the rest of the gym by a semi-transparent glass wall.
Someone with less restraint would have acted on the primal reactions from his frame, but he is on an assignment, and Nacelle would claw out his optics if he dared touch the green and white seeker.
He will have to deal with his spike when he can have a moment to himself. There is no shame in fantasizing after all.
His optics return to Thundercracker when the yoga session ends. The blue seeker interacts friendly but utterly unaware of societal norms with some of the other clients, and Typhoon clenches his fists in anger.
Torrent.
If they had known the full extent of what their former ally had done, then the Organization would have been done for. They would have torn it apart from the inside and left it burning.
He and Darksteel had been among the special forces that had attacked Torrent's headquarter. It had been a risk they had accepted by going deep undercover within the enemy ranks and something they had prepared for.
Torment knew that Torrent inevitably would be discovered.
The dark blue and white sire is too arrogant and way too proud about his own prowess to not make fatal errors that would reveal him.
It was only a matter of time before it happened, and they had been ordered to follow any order issued by the tactical commander of the special forces or the Joint Investigation Unit's commander the moment it did.
Their undercover operation within the enemy ranks was more vital to the Organization than the Syndicate was.
Switch had kept Torment informed about everything the Joint Investigation Unit had planned in regards to the Syndicate while Shift kept the enforcers oblivious to the fact that what they were working on combating at that point solely had served as a distraction from the actual danger that lurked out there, and which right now is preparing to launch its devastating attack on the social, political and societal infrastructure.
He had 'discovered' the explosives planted within the buildings surrounding the Syndicate's operational headquarter with the assistance of Shift, who had sent him an O-TP encrypted message with the coordinates for the explosives. And he and Darksteel had ensured that they were found and destroyed.
It had been yet another of Torrent's insane plans, and he had been more than happy to stop it.
"I understand that you are armed," Typhoon says casually when he and Nacelle have a moment together without Thundercracker. "How familiar are you with your weapon?"
Nacelle fills with fury.
"Capable enough." He hisses, offended at the clear doubt in Typhoon's voice.
"Show it to me."
Oh, I'll show you!
The ion cannon emerges from his wrist, and he aims it at Typhoon. The sire watches him emotionlessly and arches an optical ridge as if silently telling him to go on, and his fury only grows while he charges the weapon. But his arm begins to tremble when the cannon is ready to be fired, and its charge dies the next moment.
He lowers his arm and silently waits for Typhoon's degrading comment about how weak and pathetic he is, but it doesn't come. Instead, the sire walks towards him and grips gently around his weaponized arm while inspecting the small weapon.
"You will be able to do it when it is necessary."
Nacelle warily lifts his gaze and meets Typhoon's scrutinizing optics.
"The first time isn't easy, and the moment you have decided to do it, you should never hesitate. Our enemies are far more skilled and merciless than you. They won't give you a second chance. If you hesitate, then you are dead, or worse, captured."
Nacelle nods slowly in understanding and makes a decision.
"Will you teach me how I can do the most damage?"
Typhoon gives him an intense predatory smile.
"It would be a pleasure."