PART 2 – In The Pit
"The business of irrevocable choices began. Doors slipped shut with a faint locking click that was only heard clearly in the dreams of later years."
Cujo – Stephen King
"Collapse! Collapse! Evacuate the tunnel!"
It was impossible to tell who had started the cry, because once it began everyone in audio range took it up instantly as a warning to those nearer the surface not only that the tunnel was collapsing, but that those below were going to be racing for the exit, so anyone further up needed to get clear or there would be a pile up that could get them all trapped and killed.
Knock Out immediately transformed and roared his engine, aiming for the distant, barely visible light of the outdoors. But Bumblebee hesitated. He'd been tasked with doing repairs to the support beams of this section of the tunnel, one of which was cracking in front of him as ominous rumbling and dust filled the air. Bumblebee looked up at the ceiling, and then down into the darker recesses of the tunnel, where he could still hear voices. Then back at the support, which started to buckle.
"What are you waiting for?" Knock Out asked frantically. "Come on!"
"I can hold it," Bumblebee said, and crashed his shoulder into the support, bracing it against the wall, preventing the support from bowing out into the tunnel, and thus from snapping.
"Have you got rust for brains? You'll be crushed!" Knock Out objected.
"Maybe," Bumblebee grunted, straining against the support's natural inclination to snap in half. "But if this support goes, everyone down the tunnel will be for sure."
"So what?" Knock Out wanted to know.
"Either help me… or go," Bumblebee replied, not having the energy to spare explaining, nor the wit to.
Knock Out gunned his engine and fled the tunnel. Bumblebee didn't have the attention to spare to be annoyed. In any case, he understood. Knock Out was afraid of death. So was Bumblebee. But he had learned what it felt like to have someone help him when they didn't seem to have any reason to, even if it cost them something they valued and he could offer nothing in return. Being helped when he was helpless felt good, even if it was embarrassing to have needed the help in the first place. But, if no one helped, then no one helpless ever got to feel that.
Bumblebee was here, now, and he could help. He didn't precisely have a good reason for it, not a reason he could win an argument with anyway, but it felt… like it made sense, in a world that most often didn't. Feeling wasn't a terribly strong foundation for a principle, but Bumblebee didn't have anything more advanced to build on. For this moment, it was enough.
For a little bit, he felt as if he were alone in the tunnel. Knock Out and those who'd been working near him were gone, the rumble of the collapse was so deafening he could hear nothing more distant, and the dust so thick he could hardly see. He started to wonder if he was here for nothing and no reason, if he was throwing his life away completely pointlessly.
Then he saw the beams of headlights coming from the dark. The tunnel deeper in was falling in on itself, and some bots had been caught in the debris, but some had transformed and were racing the tons of dirt and rock as they crashed down. From the clouds of dust emerged first one vehicle and then another. They shot past Bumblebee without pause, or even seeming as if they noticed him, five in all before the support Bumblebee held began to crack in new places, and finally to shatter such that he was no longer holding it up because there was nothing left to hold.
Dropping to the floor, Bumblebee transformed. It was awkward and slow for him. Knock Out had done his best to bend Bumblebee's plating and framework back into shape, and had even managed to improve on the job once they had access to the tools for their mining work, but it just wasn't the same as before. Delayed in his transformation, Bumblebee felt the roof falling in on him, and kicked off from the floor, launching himself forward as hard as he could even before he'd managed to exchange legs for wheels and get his barely functional engine to cough to life.
After that, it was an all out race to survive, at the end of a line of fleeing vehicles that had pedals to the floors, driving far faster than was safe in the confines of the tunnels. One slip, one tire hitting a bump, and they'd swing wildly to the left or right and hit a wall, or land crosswise in the way of the vehicles behind them, and then they'd all crash. And die.
Bumblebee was pretty sure there was indeed something wrong with him because, terrified as he was, he was also exhilarated in a way that he'd never come close to even when he and Knock Out were racing. To face death, to challenge it, dare it to come for him, and then use every bit of speed he had in him to outrun its sting was the most fun he'd ever had in his entire existence.
Even as he just barely made it out of the tunnel before the ceiling caved in behind him, bits of rock firing out and peppering his tail pipe, a cloud of dust enveloping everything, Bumblebee thought to himself that he wanted to do it again. Cheating death was everything he'd ever wanted from life and more, especially when the prize was the Cybertronians who'd come out ahead of him who'd otherwise have died in the tunnels. That was cheating death six times over.
There was no time to celebrate the accomplishment of survival. Skyquake was already demanding they all line up and sound off. Once nearly everyone had been accounted for, and those who were not were scratched off the work roster, Skyquake turned his attention to who was responsible.
Naturally, no one stepped forward. Even if any of them knew what had happened, they had quickly learned not to provoke Skyquake's considerable wrath. One of them had talked back just to one of Skyquake's nameless vehicon lackeys, and Skyquake had shot the spark straight from his chest.
It had been for demonstration purposes, but following punishments for other infractions or failures to perform their duties to his standards hadn't been pleasant either.
"Very well," Skyquake rumbled in his thunderous voice when no one stepped forward. "You," He pointed a strict finger at Bumblebee. "You were last from the tunnels. Therefore, you bear the responsibility for their collapse."
"What?!" Bumblebee objected, in his indignant anger quite forgetting his place. "That's ridiculous! I didn't do anything wrong!"
Skyquake marched over to Bumblebee and towered over him, shouting, "Then who did!?"
Bumblebee didn't answer. He couldn't. Even if he'd wanted, he didn't know.
"Very well then," Skyquake said. "You will report to Shockwave at once."
At this, Bumblebee started to tremble. Rumors about Shockwave abounded, passed from prisoner to prisoner in the cells, as much to warn each other as to simply fill idle time and try to pretend they were socializing. Shockwave's experiments were horrific in nature, and a popular choice with prison guards and slave masters who had a slave that needed punishing, because the fear of not knowing what would happen to you or if you'd come back recognizable or even alive was greater than any clout or public flogging might've been.
"But I didn't do anything!" Bumblebee objected a second time, only for Skyquake to slap him across the face so hard he went spinning and fell.
"Take him," Skyquake told two of his vehicons, who each immediately grabbed one of Bumblebee's arms, dragged him to a standing position and then hauled him away under protest.
Knock Out could have said something, but didn't. He knew where Bumblebee had been, that Bumblebee had been nowhere near the start of the collapse and had nothing to do with it. But to speak out would be to attract Skyquake's notice, and possibly his brutal temper.
It was the same reason none of the bots who'd fled the tunnel with Bumblebee spoke up, assuming they'd even notice he was with them. Worse still, odds were that no one was at fault except unstable tunnels, subpar mining materials, poor maintenance and unskilled workers. All of which could only be blamed on Skyquake and the other Decepticons. And blame falling to any of them was unthinkable.
Even if a miscount occurred when the prisoners were returned to their cell, the prisoner who had been thought missing would be punished for it, though he'd been there the entire time. That was just how things worked in the Pits of Kaon. Who was actually at fault for what wasn't important, just that the blame didn't reach you because of how dire the consequences for that were likely to be. Just speaking up against unfairness of judgment, or to exonerate someone without offering up a new sacrifice in the form of yourself or another bot could get you axed too.
Most likely, on the schedule and duty roster that Skyquake and all the other Decepticons used, there were names and job assignments and they could find out from those where everyone had been and who, if anyone, was most likely to be at fault. But, as mentioned, true fault didn't actually matter down here.
So Bumblebee didn't resent Knock Out's refusal to defend him. But it did hurt.
Just… not as much as a visit to Shockwave's lab was going to.
Knock Out was nervous. It bothered him, though he wasn't sure why, that he hadn't spoken up in Bumblebee's defense. He'd stayed silent to protect himself, to preserve what was left of his once fine finish as well as his own life. But he still got the feeling he'd gone wrong somewhere, like he should have done… well, something. He also worried that Bumblebee would see things differently.
After all, in not speaking up and defending Bumblebee, Knock Out had consigned him to an unenviable fate as one of Shockwave's lab bots, to be experimented on in whatever way the mad scientist happened to see fit today. Intriguing as Shockwave's experimentation sounded, and fascinatingly bizarre as his results often appeared, Knock Out could well understand why nobody wanted to be on the receiving end of his handiwork. By the Pit, that's why Knock Out had held his tongue.
Someone was going to pay for that fiasco with the tunnel, why should it be him? Then again, a small part of him reasoned, why should it be Bumblebee? He did his best not to listen to that thought.
Bumblebee was not returned to the cell the prisoners shared that night.
They were given half rations of energon, and nothing in the way of oil or coolant or other things needed to maintain their technological systems. When asked about this, the Decepticon who supplied them, a large, oafish looking blue and gray bot, said that it was because there had been an Autobot raid on supplies recently and, because of the tunnel fiasco, the Cybertronians in this particular cell would have to bear the brunt of the loss in order to spare those who had not put in substandard work today.
"Well that doesn't seem fair," Knock Out couldn't help but blurt out, thinking more about how badly his joints were going to be creaking tomorrow than his own potentially imminent peril for speaking up. "Most of us were nowhere near where the collapse started. Why should I have to suffer for someone else's mistakes?"
"Why should any of us have to suffer because of the Autobots?" The Decepticon reasoned.
This made sense to Knock Out, actually. If it was the Autobots taking from the Decepticons and that's why there were not enough resources for all, then they were the cause of the unfairness Knock Out was now having to live with. It had sunk in for him that this was the reasoning Decepticons always had, from the time they'd had to march across the Sea of Rust after being shot down to now, but it seemed to him that if they all gave that reason, then there had to be something to it at that.
Not knowing or caring anything about the nature of war, Knock Out couldn't understand why the Autobots would hit basic life sustaining supplies. It seemed to him that they should confine their attacks to things like weapon depots or bunkers full of soldiers. Stealing or blowing up energon and lubricants was just needlessly spiteful.
When Knock Out voiced this opinion, the Decepticon agreed, and said that this was why he had joined the Decepticon cause. He had once been a prisoner as Knock Out was now, but over time had come to see reason, and to understand that the Decepticon cause was just and, more importantly, that they really hadn't taken anything from him that was worth having anyway.
"Living as a scavenger was an unworthy existence, one which was threatened by the Autobots in any case. Their endless craving for battle and refusal to accept the Decepticon way of life has destroyed much of Cybertron, more of it all the time. Have you ever wondered why we have no industry? Why all our buildings and roads are in ruins? Why the very energon we require to sustain our life force is so difficult and dangerous to find?" The Decepticon asked.
Knock Out hadn't. He'd never seen an alternative until Kaon, which itself showed only glinting echoes of a once shining civilization. But it was still enough for Knock Out to see a faded mirage of how far the planet must have fallen from whatever unimaginable glory it had once possessed.
Glory that had been stripped from it due to war. A war that the Decepticons blamed firmly on Autobots, who apparently supported an old and oppressive regime, a caste system of absolute order without individuality or freedom to choose for oneself. At least according to this Decepticon, who had doubtless learned it from other, older Decepticons. Knock Out could only assume it was true. He had not yet gained much experience with lying or incomplete truths.
Thus, he took pretty much everything the Decepticon, who said his name was Breakdown but he hadn't yet earned the right to use it, at face value.