Captain: Aaaand I ran off to the mountain anyway. And I will undoubtedly do so again next month. I 100% spent too long kayaking today and now I am buuuuuurnt. But it's all worth it, cause outdoors. X'D
We are getting closer to new content! Unfortunately it does mean a slow down in updates 'cause I don't write that fast generally, I'm working on two fics at once, and since I do run off so much in the summer I generally don't get much written until after hunting season (september and November/December). Which is sucky, but I'm still plucking away! Good stuff is coming...well...depending on your definition of 'good stuff'. :D
Warning: This and the next chapter get gruesome. As in worse than anything we've seen so far. If that kind of thing really bothers you, either back out now or proceed with caution. This is Decepticons being the level of evil they've always been touted to be but never shown as such. You've been warned!
When truth is buried it grows, it chokes, it gathers such an explosive force that on the day it bursts out, it blows up everything with it. ~Emile Zola
It was some time before Darcy pulled herself together enough to release John from the death grip she had on him. He'd brought them to a secluded corner of the cavern and she became quite aware of the others surrounding them. Forty-some mats, blankets, and haphazard piles of fabric were strewn about the floor as far from the entrance as they could possibly get. A single tube of that odd blue lighting ran the length of a single wall, casting eerie shadows on the haggard faces of the humans occupying those make-shift beds. Varying levels of defeat sagged their shoulders.
John looked no better, weariness clung to him like a second skin.
Darcy swallowed thickly, casting a glance towards the robotic cat in the doorway. "How many are there?"
John followed her gaze. If the thing could hear them, it made no sign of caring. Even so, they kept their voices as quiet as they could.
"No one knows. At least six regulars at any given time, but more come and go to bring more victims…" he shook his head, "They've got at least a hundred captives, but they keep us separated so I can't say just how many are here."
Ice crept down Darcy's spine. A hundred! Either they really had gotten better at keeping people alive or the other points on her map were other dumping grounds. Just how many had lost their lives already? She didn't want to know, but she knew she needed to find out.
"What are they doing with so many?" It was difficult to make out any real details in the poor lighting, but it did not look like any of the people in this particular room were suffering any of the horrific injuries that had been inflicted upon the victims in the dumping ground. Were these all NEST relatives then? There was still no clear reason for the targeting in the first place, especially since NEST personnel hadn't even been aware that their loved ones were in the hands of the enemy.
The older man released a long suffering sigh, gesturing weakly to the others with them. "We're the lucky ones, use us to mine some volatile crystals they use to power everything. But others...they experiment on. Why or what for, I don't know, but sometimes we can hear the screams. I would have assumed it was straight torture except I heard one of them mention needing more subjects for the next trials."
She barely kept herself from physically reeling back. The torture had been clear and obvious, but to have all of that done in the name of experiments? What the hell were they testing? The corrosive chemical or how to cause the most painful death imaginable? But that couldn't totally be it. It still didn't explain the NEST connection or why this particular group was used for mining instead of being included in the experimentation.
Too many questions and she doubted answers would be very forthcoming from these things. Opening her mouth, Darcy promptly snapped it shut again. What was there even to say?
Nothing, and John was aware of it as he looked her over. "Come here, we need to get that shoulder back in place before it becomes totally useless."
Darcy nodded, pulling the collar of her jacket between her teeth. Hardly the first time the joint had been out of place in her life, but certainly the longest and now most painful instance of it. John gave her no warning or countdown as he leveled her arm into position and snapped it back into place. She groaned through the fabric, gaining a flicked ear from the mechanical cat in the doorway.
John tore a strip from his own jacket, ignoring the immediate protests from his replacement. "Shut up and take the help, Darcy."
She doubted this cavern got any warmer than the chill it was already drenched in, but the jacket was already torn. The strip couldn't be returned to it so followed his order, allowing him to secure her arm in a mock sling.
"You won't be able to keep it on when they send us down to dig, but it'll help for now." He sat back, shaking his head with a sigh. "How the hell did you get yourself caught?"
Darcy rubbed her head, wincing at the pull on every injury that were quickly making themselves known now that the shoulder had been reduced to a ringing ache. Her entire body felt like one giant, bloody, bruise.
"The FBI never got my call. It was intercepted by the unit set up to fight them," she gestured towards the guard, who had one ear pointed straight back at them. At this point she no longer cared if the thing overheard, Barricade knew it all anyway. "The one they sent, Row, has a beef with the one that grabbed me. Probably more for a personal slight than anything against me."
"So Row got you involved."
She gave a single-shouldered shrug. "Would have happened eventually. They grabbed you after we found their disposal sight and you weren't even on the force anymore."
Another slight, but against her or Row? That one was unclear.
The older man cocked his head, "Know anything useful about them?"
Her eyes flashed to the cat, still one ear turned but otherwise appearing asleep. If robots actually slept. "Bulletproof as a car, not as a robot. Managed to snuff the eye of the one that grabbed me, but it took all of thirty seconds for it to get replaced."
"Not promising or very useful."
"I don't even know what they are. Drones? Robotic suits? A.I. gone rogue?" She watched the cat for any sort of twitch that might reveal which was the bullseye. It revealed nothing.
John frowned in thought, crossing his arms over his chest. "I have yet to see a human who wasn't a victim wandering around here."
"Remote controlled? We've got UAVs, why not cars? The advanced tech could fit there." Even she knew it was a stretch and didn't quite fit. These things were just a bit to...personalized.
"That talk? That have terminology and an apparent language of their own? No, I don't think humans are involved at all here, at least not anymore." It sounded insane, crazy, ridiculous, and yet it fit. Some of the things she'd been called already certainly made it sound like there was a large disconnect between their metal bodies and her soft organs, as if they looked down on it.
Major Lennox and Row were another factor. Why send flesh and blood if metal was under their control? No, the men were there to provide that human element.
Logically, it made sense and yet still sounded like it was straight out of a bad syfy flick. Either way, it provided a grim outlook for them. "So we're in the middle of I, Robot only we can't always tell when one is right in front of us."
John grimaced, rubbing a hand over his face. "So it seems."
Prowl paced across the empty hanger as dawn slowly relit the world. The dim morning casting its light on ridged door wings and a metal frame as taut as a charged cannon. Battle programming fired a hundred different scenarios and plans every second and he contemplated each and every one before shooting the thought down. They didn't have enough information to act on and at the moment, there was little way of getting more.
"Yer wearin' a hole in the fragging floor," Ironhide snipped as he adjusted parts on his favorite gun.
The tactician cast a brief glance to the concrete beneath him before continuing as he was, biting out a sharp, "No, I am not,".
"It was your pit-spawned idea to let him get away," the weapons specialist growled, irritated beyond anything that they had spent the entire night sitting on their afts waiting for reinforcements. Well, he had sat; Prowl had paced nearly the entire time and it was grating the last of his very little patience.
"There wasn't another option and you know it." While his tone did not waver, there was an icy coldness that the black mech knew was reserved solely for any situation regarding the SIC's arch enemy.
"So what options do we have now?" Lennox cut in before his Guardian was tempted to start a brawl. He wasn't even sure which Cybertronian would come out on top.
Prowl's stony silence was by far the most deafening reply the soldier had ever heard. The tactician cast a glance at Ironhide, knowing the big mech was not going to like what he had to say or the plan that was coming together in his processor. "We need more intel before we can make any sort of offensive move."
"Stuck on defense again then," Ironhide snarled, "I'm gettin' real sick of sitting on my aft and waiting for the scum to do something."
"There is not much else that can be done until we know where their base is located."
"What about the trackers you put on the detective?" Ironhide asked, gaining a surprised and disapproving frown from Lennox.
Prowl was predictably unfazed by the look. "I was never able to get one on her person."
Lennox shook his head. "I knew about the one on her car, but chipping a person is beyond unethical, Prowl."
"And yet would be useful at this point, since personal chips, while having a shorter range, cannot be blocked by conventional cloaking."
"Not the point." The soldier could never remind himself in time to not try arguing with the black and white, the mech was as stubborn as a team of mules and as likely to change his mind as one.
"There is no point," Prowl interjected before they could continue falling further off course from the conversation that really mattered. "The closest I was able to chip the detective was her badge and that signal disappeared the moment Barricade left with her."
"You think he got rid of it?" Ironhide asked, shifting his weight in lue of giving in to the urge to pace.
Prowl shook his head. "He would have had to know it was there in the first place. The chips are invisible to all but the ones with the right frequency. The trick will be getting it out from under Soundwave's cover."
"And how exactly do we do that?" the weapons specialist snapped, growing increasingly agitated with the back-and-forth that was keeping them firmly in square one.
Prowl turned his blue gaze to the soldier below. "We need someone who knows what is going on on the inside to get information and that tracker out."
Ironhide snarled, slamming a massive foot down between the Major and SIC.
"You are not using my charge as bait because you couldn't protect yours!" he roared, cannons rolling forward in a deadly display Lennox had only ever seen used against Decepticons.
"If you have a better idea, please do share," Prowl stated, staring down the twin guns with little regard for their power.
It was silent save for the hum of the charged weapons, the tension painfully thick. Lennox stepped out from behind his friend. "I'll do it."
Ironhide's engine revved sharply and the soldier quickly amended, "We can set a trap, try to capture the 'Con that comes after me to interrogate him. But if we can't take him alive, let him take me."
It was insane. There was zero guarantee the 'Con wouldn't just try to kill him right then and there. But Barricade hadn't killed Darcy when he'd had the chance to do so, his chances were probably the best they were ever going to be for being captured alive.
The truck was still growling, but Prowl beat him to speaking, "It is unlikely it will be a grounder that comes for you, if one does at all. They fear Ironhide's cannons too much to risk an open one-on-one."
Said mech snorted, "Rightly so."
"We will have to create a plausible excuse for you not to be with him," Prowl continued. "The Decepticons may be foolish but not all of them are dumb, if they smell a trap we will not have a second chance."
Lennox nodded, hand coming up to rub his chin as he worked through plausible ideas. "They're willing to attack in the open but I don't think they're ready for an outright declaration. We'll hit an uncrowded highway; a flyer won't want to risk getting tangled in the trees."
Prowl's optics sparked with his version of approval. "Ironhide will scout a quarry where he cannot stay in alt mode, then they will know you are with me."
"Do I not get a say in this?" the other mech snapped, his guns finally powering down but continuing to spin and shift on his arms.
Prowl hardly spared him a glance. "You had your say and were overruled. We will need to act quickly; Starscream will think he's being unpredictable the sooner he acts."
"How long until he makes his move?" Lennox asked. It was definitely the last sort of plan he wanted to go through with, but if it meant the chance at stopping the 'Cons once and for all, then he'd do it. Hell, if all they managed to do was save the humans that had been captured, then it would be worth it.
He hoped.
"Within the week." It didn't give them much time to prepare, but war rarely gave notice.
The Major nodded, shifting to start rolling up the sleeve on his left arm. "Guess you better chip me then, just in case I can't get to the badge."
Prowl shot him a blank look. "You were chipped a long time ago."
They had several hours to themselves where John filled her in on how it had been since he was taken. Apparently once a day one of the robots would toss in a sack of food that looked and tasted like it had been pulled from the dumpster behind a bakery. Protein was rare, but asking for anything more was a sure way to get a loaded gun in the face. They didn't appear to care much for keeping up the overall health of anyone, but there was a marked annoyance when one of them died during their periods of rest, followed by a prompt removal of the body. The captives were made clearly aware of the fact that they were not the only humans and that it would not take much for them to be 'transferred' to one of the other groups where survival was markedly lower.
The cat shifted from his position at the door, standing and moving aside as a new, silver and black, robot stepped into view. It was roughly the same size as Knock Out, though the paint was covered in a layer of soot.
"Move it, fleshbags!" it snapped, prompting a flurry of terrified movement.
John reached over as they stood, undoing the sling and letting it drop to the floor. "Don't let them see any weakness."
Darcy followed close behind as the rest of the room filed out after the silver, everyone giving the cat a wide berth. As the detective passed, the feline gave a wicked grin. "Try not to lose too many, Sideways, they get annoying when one dies."
Sideways snorted, "No promises."
A bladed tail whipped around in front of Darcy, wrapping around her neck. Not tight enough to choke, but it prompted her to stay perfectly still, the wicked edge of the blade at the end kissing her cheek. The cat purred as it moved to stand next to her, damn near as tall as she was. "Do make an attempt with this one. This is Prowl's pet. It would be so….unfortunate if he were not around to witness its termination."
Darcy very much wished the cat had kept that bit of information to itself, given the wicked gleam that had just entered the silver robot's red eyes.
Why? Why did they keep thinking she was someone's pet? Or in any way important to one of their enemies? Row had been continuously trying to get rid of her, at best she'd been of minor help, but by no means did she mean anything to him!
Yet she knew arguing the fact would be pointless. They'd hardly believe her and for now, it was a little incentive to keep her alive.
It was also an incentive for extra attention that she knew she wouldn't enjoy.
"Didn't think Prowl was the type; he's gotten just as soft as the rest of them," Sideways chuckled.
The cat's metal tail unraveled from Darcy's neck, leaving only a thin cut on her cheek. She silently wished the robotic feline choked on a hairball.
Sideways shifted, a massive metal foot grinding a loose rock to dust under his weight. "Get moving squishy, pet or not you work or die."
Needing no second prompting, Darcy hurriedly caught up to the rest of the group, falling into step beside a concerned John. Her shoulder screamed, but she forced it to move as naturally as the other. Pain would have to be ignored. She could see the others fighting through it, daring to show no weariness or aches.
They walked in silence down several corridors, heads bowed to avoid the glances of the few robots that passed and were willing to lower themselves enough to even look. They were ants in stature and in value of life to these things. How could A.I. have gone so terribly wrong?
Some of the rooms they passed were guarded by robots of equal size to Ravage and behind them more captives, more victims she was helpless to save.
The passages were slanting downward, heading deeper and deeper into the heart of the mountain. Every step the air grew hotter and more stale. That...wasn't right. Weren't all underground caves supposed to hover right around fifty-five fahrenheit? At least she thought she recalled one of the search and rescue guys mentioning as such over the winter.
A soft sound pulled at her ears, like the squeaking of a mouse, but wrong somehow. It was getting louder the deeper they went, changing tones, fading and rapidly growing again. Her stomach twisted, jumping to her throat as it got loud enough to make out what it really was. Not the squeaking of rodents at all. Screaming, tortured cries and pleas for death.
It was a sound Darcy knew she would never be able to forget.
Louder and louder it grew, the source finally revealing itself as another large cavern encased in a purple glow. Sideways gestured flippantly to it as he passed the opening, "This is what happens when you fail to work."
Darcy felt an invisible punch that sucked the air from her lungs as she forced herself to look at what awaited the weak and injured. A huge purple robot was the only metallic being in the room that was emitting all the heat, its huge solitary red eye casting a glow that mixed with the blue lights to give everything a sickly tainted lighting. People were everywhere, trapped in large tubes half-filled with a blue liquid, strapped to tables with various instruments and tools of torture jutting out of unnaturally bent bodies. There was more, too much more, but Darcy turned away as the bile rose in her throat. This was what had killed so many of her victims in that dumping ground, this was the end that awaited them all if they didn't figure out a way out.
Past the room of horrors the tunnel continued on, shrinking in size until it came to an end at a much smaller opening. A car could still get through easy enough, but anything larger than the cat that walked on two legs would not.
"Don't have all day, squishies, Shockwave always needs new test subjects." Sideways stopped at the smaller opening and the haphazard pile of digging tools in the entryway.
Digging? John had said they mined volatile crystals, but she hadn't imagined it would be with pickaxes and sledgehammers. That hardly seemed like a safe manner to go about harvesting something classified as volatile.
Then again, they really didn't care if it wasn't their necks on the line.
Darcy obediently slung a pickaxe over her functioning shoulder and followed John down the smaller tunnel. Down and down the rabbit hole they went, following the lead who was hauling a smaller, rope-like version of the tube lights up above. It lit things poorly, but it wasn't lighting a match in a literal methane trap.
"So what the hell are we looking for?" Darcy asked several minutes into the descent. At least they couldn't hear the screams anymore, even if the air was heavy.
John stayed silent until they reached the end of the decline, where the tunnel opened up into a wide chamber. The center was dug up tall enough for Barricade to stand comfortably, but the edges were much more human-sized. All around, blue crystals glittered back at them, ranging in size from a pebble to larger than her. The retired detective brushed his hand against a larger one. "They call them energon crystals, apparently it's the natural form of their fuel. There's another thing, some type of metal they want, but we don't find much of it."
She wondered if NEST had to mine this stuff out of the ground too for their machines. "Why have us dig it out? They'd get it out a lot faster than we could."
Were they even capable of moving one of the massive crystals? She rather doubted they were lighter than they looked.
John shook his head. "It's unstable. A single spark down here and this place goes supernova. Also the rock is more prone to collapse. We do the work while they stay safe topside."
He gestured over to a pile of rubble where a cave-in had clearly occurred not terribly long ago. A mangled metal hand peeked out from under it, proving that the lesson in tunneling had been learned the hard way. No wonder the central ceiling was so high, at one point there had been robots mining down here. "We've got to unbury him at some point too, they want the parts."
The queasiness from earlier came back. Not only did they have no problem with dealing death to humans, they also took little to no issue with the end of one of their own. Darcy blew out a heavy breath, wandering over to the rubble, dragging the pickaxe behind her. Grimacing at the pull on her shoulder, she swung with as much strength as she dared at the rocks covering the fallen robot. Perhaps in the time it took to uncover this one, they could find a weakness that could be exploited to gain their freedom. Everything had a weakness, even multi-ton, advanced, robotic, A.I.s.
Day after day they were sent to the mine. The energon crystals proved even heavier than they looked and impossible for human hands to get up the slope and out of the smaller tunnel. Only when they had a decent stockpile strapped together would one of the trucks back down, hook up to the pile, and haul it out. Every swing was murder on her injured shoulder, but each passing of the torture chamber was enough to motivate her to keep going. It motivated them all to the point of collapse. Some dropped in front of one of those things and was immediately swept off to be 'fodder for Shockwave'. Some were given a single day of rest before being removed if they still could not work. They were either other 'pets' or family of important NEST members, Darcy reasoned. They were wanted alive, but not enough to be given a free pass.
The days could only truly be kept track by the food deliveries. Once every twenty-four hours and just as John had said, looking like it was pulled from the dumpster behind a bakery. At best it was stale, at worst covered in mold. Their only water source a crudely created pool below a steady drip in the ceiling. It tasted neither fresh nor clean, but there was no other option.
Four days passed before a commotion stirred Darcy from her exhausted sleep. They were never given enough time between shifts down below, never enough to rest or plan.
Sitting up from the too-thin mat that was her bed, Darcy watched as a new captive was practically tossed into the room. The cat chuckled darkly, "Not so high and mighty without your Guardian now, are you?"
The detective felt her breath catch when the man turned towards them and she found herself looking into the face of Major Lennox.
Ignoring the cat, he pulled himself off the ground and walked straight towards Darcy, his hand grasping for a sidearm that was no longer there. Ravage growled but turned back towards the door, pausing only to hiss a warning before ducking out. "Leave this room and die."
"Where is your badge?" Lennox greeted in a hushed voice as he reached her. The question was so out of left field that it took Darcy several long seconds to realize just what he was asking for.
Pulling the chain out from under her shirt, she held up the golden badge she'd never taken off. "Right here."
"Good, it will be difficult to get it outside, but we'll figure something out," the soldier nodded, motioning for her to hand it over.
Darcy frowned as she reluctantly lifted the chain over her head. "What?"
The Major cast a quick glance to the empty doorway, dropping his voice even further. "Row put a tracker on it, but it won't work under all this rock. I've got one that does but its range is only about fifty miles. The one on that badge is over eight hundred."
When in the seven hells had Row put a tracker on her badge? And why would he in the first place unless he suspected something like this would happen? As helpful as having him and his team know where they were would be, her spiking anger was competing strongly with any inclination towards relief. "One problem, I haven't seen daylight since we got here; so unless you know something I don't about this place, this badge is useless to us."
Still she handed it over and he tucked it away into an inner pocket on his jacket with a nod. He did know about it and have a tracker himself. Perhaps his being captured….wasn't entirely unintentional? Maybe this was the plan, maybe he had a plan to get them out already.
She could only hope.
"Just let me worry about that, we need to start setting up a plan for us. Once the cavalry knows where we are, they're going to hit fast and hard. We need to be prepared to do our part."
Alright, so he didn't have an exact plan yet, but what he did have was a plethora of information. Information Darcy was beyond sick of being without.
She held up her hands to stop him. "Not until you give me the real and whole story here."
The soldier paused, casting a glance around them and the still empty doorway, "Now?"
Darcy raised her brows in challenge, "We need to know exactly what we're up against here and what their weaknesses are. None of us have exactly seen many since getting here."
He sighed, shooting another look to the hall as if expecting Ravage to return. The cat did not. Darcy waited in silence. The slow progress she was making on the dead thing in the mine had provided very little to work with and she was no closer to finding a weakness they could use. They couldn't exactly drop a mountain on all of them.
Lennox dropped to sit on the empty mat across from her and Darcy fought to withhold the wince at knowing it had been occupied a day ago.
"It's a long story," he warned with a note of resignation.
The detective swung her good arm around. As tired as she was, this would be worth losing sleep over. "We've got nothing but time, Major."
He pursed his lips as John joined them, but relented. They would find out eventually anyway, the more they knew at this point, the better. So he told them everything, from the moment his base in Qatar had been wiped out to the brawl in Mission City, to the world-wide alliance with the Autobots.
Aliens. They were mechanical aliens. Living, thinking, alien, robotic lifeforms. The woman groaned, rubbing her temple in a poor effort to reduce the pounding behind her eyes. Aliens that had been at war with each other for longer than humanity had been on the planet.
What kind of crappy horror movie had she ended up in?
"So Prowl and Ironhide are part of the Autobots, what about Row?" Darcy finally asked, giving up on getting her brain to completely wrap around what he was telling her.
"Holoform. They can manipulate light and matter to form a physical body to blend in. They can transfer a little of themselves into the form to fully interact with other people, but they can't feel anything." He wasn't entirely clear on how exactly it worked. Wheeljack had attempted to explain it at one point but he'd lost every single human listening within the first minute.
Darcy frowned, unwilling for a moment to consider the ramifications of these things being able to blend in so seamlessly. "So Row…"
She trailed off, knowing the answer but not wanting to voice it allowed just yet. Lennox finished for her, confirming what she'd so wanted to deny. "Is Prowl."
The detective swore, but it was then that the cat-the alien cat-finally returned to his post, growling out as he slunk back, "Shut it, fleshbags."
There was no more talking the rest of the night. To disobey a direct order was to gain a one-way trip to the house of horrors, so the entire room fell into a deathly silence save for the steady drip of the water and the soft hum of Ravage's systems.
Darcy decided there was not a sound in the universe she hated more.
Captain: Duh, duh, duuuhhhhh! She knows! Finally! Only took forever, but she finally knows! Phew, please drop a review!