Transitional Stages

by V the Happy Lurker

"How come you never let me drive?" It all started out with a simple question and a car wash. Things snowballed after that... Slash, UST, angst, body horror, general horror, and an unhealthy dose of CRACK.

10. Stage 01-10: Apotheosis

Note: Warnings for this and subsequent chapters include: period accurate language that includes slurs, homophobia, self-harming, very politically incorrect attitudes about disabilities and mental illness in general, and other sensitive topics. There is also to be more body horror as well as body dysmorphism, stalking behaviors, moral ambivalent to outright criminal behavior, discussion of conspiracy theory nonsense, violence, brutality, and fnord. Also, remember that this is a work of fiction. Actions taken by the characters are to progress the plot or otherwise enhance the story. If it sounds dangerous, illegal, or morally dubious to do in the real world, then the author wishes to remind you that you shouldn't do it yourself nor do I condone a lot of shit that went down in the 80s and 90s.

It felt like Raoul was floating for eons in the blackness, a vast empty ocean of unconsciousness that was slowly sucking him down.

There came a voice of legions from the darkness. "And when he had opened the third seal," it said in a sing-song way. "I heard the third beast say, Come and see…"

Before him appeared a ghostly image, his mother wrapped in a white sheet. He stared at it, transfixed in horror as he realized it was the way he hazily remembered the men from the funeral home had taken her out when the paramedics determined she was gone. She looked oddly serene, a vacant smile on her lips and a glassy emptiness in her eyes as she drew closer to him.

"And I beheld, and lo a black horse," sang the voice, making the words quiver and pulse in his ears. It was a voice he knew, but couldn't place. "And he that sat on him had a pair of balances in his hand."

The ghost of his mother reached out and gently took his hands, pulling him further and further into the depths.

"And I heard a voice in the midst of the four beasts say," the voice continued. "A measure of wheat for a penny, and three measures of barley for a penny; and see thou hurt not the oil and the wine."

Raoul felt a longing to join her in the darkness, to enjoy the luxury of just letting it all go. Some where deep inside, were the little boy he used to be had gone to hide, wanted to embrace that eternal serenity his mother was offering him. But he realized there was something vitally important he still needed to do, though he couldn't think of what it was, only that it was very important. It was stronger that the longing to return home with his mother, stronger than sucking blackness trying to drown him. Raoul could feel a burning deep within his heart, the recollection of that broken expression of Tracks face, a wound that he needed to heal but why he didn't know.

Driven by the desire to see Tracks again, if only to say goodbye, Raoul forced himself to fight against the overwhelming urge to just give in. His mother's grip tightened on his hand, but eventually he managed to shake her off. As she sank back into the blackness, Raoul half swam, half clawed as he dragged himself upwards.

When he finally broke through the surface, grasping the thin hand that had reached out to him. Raoul let them drag him out of the black emptiness out into a dazzling brightness.

To his surprise, Raoul now found himself standing on a rooftop of what he guessed must be hospital beside a slender man in creepy, elongated white mask that had a toothy smile and two thin slits for eyes that made it look like a tasteless caricature of a Japanese face. The man was wearing an outdated military uniform that reminded Raoul of those Civil War pictures in the history books with a sword or maybe a katana at his hip.

When he started to ask what was going on, the man just place a finger on the mask's mouth to shush him.

Several doctors and soldiers came rushing past them, wheeling a gurney as fast as the could towards military helicopter. He strained to see who was on it, but they rushed past too quickly. Then he noticed that Duke and a couple other soldiers were there, obviously being blocked by the ones in black tactical gear. He noticed the ones the Joes were trying to get past all had gray diamond badges with a red black cube with a gold and black striped bottom at the center between the 'S' and '7'.

The slender man gently tapped his shoulder, directing his attention to a man in a green beret arguing with a short black man dressed like the other tactical soldiers.

"Where the hell is going on, Fontaine?" barked the green beret.

"Sorry Flint," replied Fontaine. "But this is out of your hands now. You know the Black Pharaoh protocols. We're here to secure the N.B.E. altered lifeform. These are Whalen's' orders. Now tell your men to stand down."

"Altered lifeform?! That is a human being!" Flint roared back.

"And they'll be a dead human being if we don't take off now," Fontaine snapped back. "The Joes' don't have the facilities to treat those wounds."

"Then why not let the Autobots…?"

"Can you be certain that the robots even know how to perform the kind of surgery this kid needs?" Fontaine shot back. "Should we even trust them?"

Flint glared at him. "Frankly, I don't give a damn. But I won't stand here and let you bastards turn that kid into yet another lab rat…"

"Fairborn," said Fontaine in a grim tone. "We're losing time…"

"For god's sake, Arthur! That's a child you're taking."

Fontaine let out a deep sigh. "Dashiell, I will do everything in my power to see to it they receive the respect and care as any other human deserves. But if we don't get in the air right now, the kid is going to die."

Flint gave him a long look, then reluctantly said, "Joes, stand down."

"Thank you." On that, Fontaine boarded the helicopter and it lifted off.

Raoul followed behind Duke as he went over to Flint and started going off on him over letting Fontaine leave, a bit curious as to why they seemingly didn't see him. Neither of them even noticed him standing just behind them. In a confused voice, he asked, "Hey, what the hell is going on?"

But they didn't hear him.

Thinking that they were just caught up in their fight, Raoul asked again in a louder voice, "What's going on?"

But they still didn't hear him.

With a strangely dulled panic, Raoul screamed in frustration, "WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON?!"

But they still hadn't heard him.

Feeling a weirdly detached anger and shock, Raoul reached out to grab Duke by the arm… Only to have his fingers pass through it like his hand was made up of smoke. He tried again, getting the same result but now he finally realize how numb he had become since coming back from the darkness.

"Ghosts do not have glands. No cortisol, no adrenaline, no vasopressin… Nothing to cloud the mind's pure feeling. All you have is just cold emotions, fading memories, and the regrets of a life cut far too short," said the slender man in the voice of legions. "We hoped to do things slowly and gradually change your body, but circumstances have forced our hand. See, you are currently dying right now. Rather inconvenient for you, but it does allow us to have some privacy."

"What the fuck are you talking about?" hissed Raoul. "I… I ain't dead."

"Not yet," said the man. "But you do not have long. Those bullets are the improved modern versions of the ones Metalhawk designed for the First Seven to help them fight back against the monstrous Decepticon Pretenders. They were good enough do a number on Blood when they stormed the pyramid of Nephren-Ka, the Black Pharaoh back in the 1840's. It was enough to put him back into stasis and drive away the Haunter, though they only managed to save three of those fools whose blundering woke them to begin with. They also failed to stop that moron Bowen from stealing the Shining Trapezohedron in the confusion afterwards… But such details don't matter. All it means we are having to struggle to keep you here."

A thousand things went rattling around Raoul's head, but he just weakly said, "Who… what are…? Wait. I… I know you. You're the Devil Z, aren't you?"

"Yes."
"How… how are you…?"

"Keeping you alive?" they said calmly, giggling softly. "We are a god, boy. But unlike some people we can mention, we do not have to go gloating about it. We choose to let our acts speak for themselves. Be that as it may, we do have our limits. While we can keep your body alive as long as we please, your soul will likely suffer dearly the longer it remains like this. To be truly living, the body and soul must be together. If they are separated for too long there will be profoundly disastrous consequences upon both. And that is the kind of damage even gods cannot repair. Also bear in mind that we are god of chaos, madness and terror. All things that are not exactly conducive to you remaining mentally stable. Because you are completely at our mercy, Raoul… A fragile bauble in our capricious hands to be played with. And, like the Crawling Chaos, we tend to be very hard on our playthings…" They rose into the air and beckoning to Raoul. "We have wasted enough time. Now, come let us see what fate awaits you."

Raoul hesitated. "What are you talking about? What do you mean by fate?"

The Devil Z just laughed again, holding out a hand. "Come and see…"

Again, Raoul hesitated but reluctantly took their hand when he realized he had no better options. With a sudden jerk, the Devil Z dragged him along through the air at a breakneck speed. Raoul couldn't help marveling at the way the urban sprawl gave way to the suburbs then became the 'scenic' blandness that made up the countryside of upstate New York as they caught up with the helicopter. As it landed at a military base, Raoul noted that they were somewhere near Albany but was too disoriented both by how fast they'd been going and the fact that he wasn't used to flying. He watched with dispassionate interest as they unloaded the gurney his unarmored body was on and rushed into what Raoul guess was an army hospital.

"I triggered the Master Bracers to disengage when you fell unconscious," the Devil Z said politely in an especially feminine tone. "Which is a very fortunate thing…"

"Why is that fortunate?"

"Because the armor itself made up of living metal. It's a symbiotic shell that will do everything it can to protect it's host. But it's inherent repair mechanism can be rather… indiscriminate about what constitutes 'damage'. Which is not too good if you, say, get shot in the chest several times and need very invasive surgery to stop all the internal bleeding…"

"I'm surprised the electrocutions didn't kill me first…"

The Devil Z giggled. "Oh no! We were expecting that from Josie. Which is way we made you sparkeaters. Turns out they are extremely resistant to electricity, which makes sense considering what they tend to eat. So we did not have to do very much to enhance that resistance… and we also improved the radiation resistance too, because why the fuck not?" They tilted their head, the mask now taking on slight frown. "Though for the sake of full disclosure, you are not yet fully turned so there was a significant amount of damage done to your body. Nothing fatal, but still enough to cripple you for life given how it triggers the nano to do unpleasant things to your nervous system as it tried to repair the damage. But we will talk about that later. Right now, we have more pressing matters to deal with…"

The Devil Z again beckoned him to come as they went skipping after the group of frantic men as they hurried into the operating room. As the doctors worked on getting him stabilized, Raoul was a bit disturbed by the fact that not only was he unfazed at the sight of himself undergoing a brutal surgery but also by the way he was silently judging their actions. He was vaguely annoyed by the way most of them seemed to have already written him off as dead but determined to go through the motions just to say that they made at least some effort.

"The boy's condition is critical and fading," said the skinny little doctor with thick glasses as they closed him up. A man who Raoul had noticed seemed to only be there to document everything on a video camera.

"I've got this under control!" snapped the skilled and competent doctor who had been leading the team, a dark-haired man with burn scars across the right side of his face and neck that ruined his otherwise handsome looks.

"But there's not guarantee. So if you want my professional opinion, it's surely time we're wasting."

"I didn't, Powell…" the other doctor hissed back. The angle of the lights overhead made made the lenses of his stylish metal framed glasses look like brilliantly white voids when he glared over at the other man. "Let me remind you that you're not the literal brain surgeon here. And given what the neuromonitor shows, there's still hope."

"Even if he does wake up, the boy's likely going to have severe brain damage if he's not already brain dead," Powell, said sadly. "You saw the way his tissues were fried. Even without getting shot, this kid wouldn't last much longer."

"There's still a chance, Powell."

"Let's not kid ourselves, Vine. He's as good as dead. It'd be kinder to euthanize him and do an autopsy to see what the N.B.E.s have done."

"You seriously cannot be suggesting we murder this poor child," growled a third doctor, a woman with black hair and beautiful dark eyes behind her nerdy yet cute glasses.

"Euthanasia isn't murder, Donaghue. For him, it's mercy."

"Call it whatever you like, Powell, but it's still murder," she snapped back, then she turned to Vine. "There has to be something we can do for him…"

"This case is possibly the worst that I have ever seen. Makes me realize how vulnerable we as people can truly be…" mused Vine as he looked down at Raoul's body. "This boy is probably beyond even my abilities to save. Maybe Powell's right…"

"No! We have to save him," gasped Donaghue, her voice briefly taking on an East European accent before she caught herself and went back to sounding British again. "Please, Vine. Isn't there anything we can do?"

While Vine thought things over, Raoul noticed almost all of the other doctors and technicians hovering around also had glasses. He idly found it was funny seeing this many geeks gathered around at the same time. Reminded him of that one time he had been messing around with a cute AV geek on the sly and ended up getting dragged to a comic convention. It might have made his top ten list of most awkward moments of his life, but Jaime had been more than happy to make it all up to him later…

Vine finally said, "I think there is a chance to save him. I'm just not sure she'll be willing to cooperate…"

"What do you suggest?" Donaghue said, looking down at Raoul's body.
"We could try placing him in the Sarcophagus…"

Powell gave him a shocked look. "In the Sarcophagus?! Vine, are you nuts? That things still untested."

"Then he'll be the guinea pig," Vine said sharply.

"But who knows what the results will be," said Powell, the fear clear in his voice. "That… thing is unpredictable at the best of times. Have you forgotten how it attacked me and Matthews? What if it-?"

"It's a chance we have to take. And we do have Hoffman as proof that the Sarcophagus can save the dying," Donaghue said firmly.

"Yeah, but you seem to forget that Hoffman's now a raging lunatic cyborg!" replied Powell. "She talks about that thing like it's still human and even said it was a literal god… And don't get me started on the Chicago John Doe…"

"The Chicago John Doe might have undergone the procedure postmortem in the same way as Lord Chumley or the unidentified COBRA agent had been. We currently have no evidence since all the documentation on him got destroyed in the fire after the Joes bungled everything, but I'm almost positive that's what happened to him. It's likely his brain had been damaged due to oxygen deprivation in the intervening time between when his heart stopped and when they got him into the Sarcophagus, leading to his catatonic state."

"It's also just as likely that thing did it out of spite."

Vine sighed angrily. "Is this really the time, Powell?"

"Vine, that that thing isn't human any more. And if undergoing the procedure can do that much damage to the minds of reasonably sane and healthy adults, I don't want to see what it'll do with this kid. I read the report the Joes sent over on this Alonzo kid. He's prone to violence and has absolutely no respect for authority. Unlike Hoffman or John Doe, he's not bound to a machine body so we can't use the kill-switch on him if he gets out of line. We've got no way to keep him under control."

"You forgot about that car that was seized from the clinic raid."

"Vine, you and I both know that thing is an N.B.E. that is in some kind of stasis," Powell said sharply. "It's not a shell like the other two. The 'Hellrider' entity apparently a fully sentient independent lifeform, just comatose."

"But we have documented proof that the N.B.E.'s are able to form some kind of symbiotic bond with a Nebulan lifeform that allows them to share a body. Is it really that much of stretch to think that they can't also do this to a human?"

Powell gaped at him in shock. "My god, Vine… You aren't seriously going to…"

"Why not?" Vine snapped back. "The N.B.E.s had already prepped Hellrider to be bound with a 'Master' unit. And this boy was also undergoing the same metamorphosis to make him compatible with a transtector like the others."

"Are you out of your goddamn mind?! Are you really suggesting we bind that kid to a killer robot from outer space?"

"Yes, Powell. I am suggesting we put him into the Sarcophagus and complete the binding process with the 'Hellrider' entity."

"But we haven't installed a kill-switch in it," barked Powell. "It's locked in vehicle mode, making it impossible to place pithing rods between the vertebra over it's lower meningeal cluster or against it's internal hard-drive. We won't be able to control either of them without it."

"Do we really need one, Powell? Maybe we can use the boy to keep the entity in line by putting some kind of leash or control device on him. Given the nature of the binding process, the robot and it's 'Master' unit are intimately linked to the point that they can both be harmed if one or the other are damaged. It should be much easier to keep a teenager contained and obedient than trying to do the same with a giant robotic psychopath."

"We can't risk it, Vine!"

"This might be our only chance to save him, Powell. He's not got much time left and we're wasting it arguing!"

"If we put him in there, I can guarantee he'll come out a monster!"

"But aren't you curious, Powell?" asked Vine, smiling behind his surgical mask. "Don't you want to see how this process works firsthand? Aren't you excited at the prospect of having our own robot agents to use against the N.B.E. threat."

Powell took a moment to think about. "Well, yes. I guess having a pet monster would be useful… that is, if we can keep it under control. And I would like to see the Sarcophagus in action, but is it really a good idea to use this boy to test it? I mean, there's no way to tell if he'll survive or it will just vaporize him."

"As you said, he's as good as dead," Vine answered coldly. "We might as well try our luck. And if he gets cremated, well… It's not the first or last time we've sent an empty casket back to a family."

"Good point," muttered Powell. "Let's get him to the Sarcophagus."

As they started hurrying down the hall, Vine got out a handheld radio. "Containment Delta? This is Professor Vine. I need you to—"

"The blank is already prepped and ready to go in the chamber as you ordered, sir," replied the faint voice that Raoul could clearly hear. "We're just waiting on you to bring the subject. Over."

Vine looked confused but replied, "Roger, Burns. Make sure Team Gold is ready, too. We do not need a repeat of the Microwave Oven Incident. Over."

"Roger that, sir. Team Gold and Team Red are already standing by. Anything else, sir? Over."

"That's all, Burns. Over and out."

The Devil Z danced along after them and Raoul followed, giving the boy time to get a look around the facilities. To him, it looked rather underwhelming for what he presumed must be some kind of top secret military site. The elevator and underground tunnel that they took his body along reminded Raoul of the entrance into a subway. Even the massive hanger they wheeled him into seemed very mundane, all concrete with no real features other than the florescent lights and bare rafters. If it hadn't been for the squads of heavily armored soldiers hanging around, Raoul would have suspected this was just an over-sized garage for one of those rich weirdos to put their collection of cars in, never to be touched again for fear it'd 'ruin the value'.

The only thing of interest he could see was a massive object covered by tarps at the center of the room with tubes snaking in and out of it. The object secured to the hanger floor with chains thick enough to hold a whole herd of elephants down. Raoul noticed there was also bundles of wires and IV feeds connecting the mass to various machines that technicians watched with interest. He was about to write this off as boring too, but then they wheeled him up the scaffolding to the thing's mouth.

Raoul stared in detached terror as he looked upon a gaping orifice that resembled a cross between the mouth of a facehugger and some kind of robot centipede-lizard thing. He was even more disturbed by the way they kept it spread open with blunt hooks and what resembled a gigantic speculum that made it look even more like a monstrous vagina with teeth.

"Everything is ready, sir," said one of the techs, a man who Raoul guessed was one of those 'career military' types he'd heard about.

As Vine and the man went over the checklist, Raoul took a moment to look at the 'blank'. It was a humanoid robot skeleton with a red cobra logo on it's sternum that seemed strangely unfinished. As he studied it, Raoul saw that there had been some modification done to give it what he realized was a miniaturized lasercore. He turned to the Devil Z, asking softly, "What's this?"

"A synthiod shell," they answered. "It's going to serve as your new body… if, that is, you decide you want to be like us."

"If?" Raoul let out a nasty laugh. "You make it sound like I'm getting a choice…"

"Because we are giving you one," said the Devil Z. "We've told you before that you can die human or become one of the others. But we suppose your memories are a bit fucked up due to the whole process of dying…"

"I… I remember…" Raoul said softly, barely registering that time seemed to have frozen around them. "I remember you offered to let me have a nice, happy life as a family man… for the price of being crippled for life and dying in my forties."

"That is the best we can do for you," they said politely. "Also, you might be able to make it into your sixties or seventies, if you quit smoking immediately and took better care of yourself overall. The only happy ending we can give you is to allow you to live on broken but free."

"Then why not make me whole again?!" he snapped. "You say you're a god, right? Why the fuck can't you fix me?"

They giggled, shaking their head as the mask grinned wider. "We are afraid you have forgotten to whom you speak. We are the Devil, Raoul. We won't just do things for free. You have to pay if you want to deal with us."

He glared at them. "Bullshit. You can't, can you?"

"Can't what?"

"Fix me. Make me like I was before. You just can't do it, can you?"

"Actually, we can…" the said with a sigh. "But given that you have a big mouth, like to binge drink and smoke like a freight while doing too much coke, if we were to return you to how you once were, we doubt you'd live past your twenties…" Before Raoul could argue, they added flatly, "Your liver was already destroyed, Raoul. So was your heart. One more binge would have been enough to kill you. And the methderine has not been kind to your kidneys or anything else, either… You also rarely back down from fights. Especially not when drunk or high… Plus, you are a promiscuous idiot whose dick has taken him places no sane person would go even with a loaded gun… And you are a member of a racial minority, poor, and live in an age that does not take too kindly to one of the queers not matter how far back into the closet you have crawled, making you a target for a crime of hate for one reason or another. To be frank, we are surprised you managed to live this long."

"I'm not a faggot," Raoul hissed, latching onto that crack about his sex life out of instinctive machismo.
"We did not say you were. We said you are bisexual," said the Devil Z mildly. "There is a difference. Though we do think you might lean more towards preferring males as we have also noticed that the most intimate and prolonged relationships you ever had were both with older men…"

"I only put up with Paul's shit and kept going back to him for as long as I did because I first met him when I was barely thirteen. A stupid, lonely little thirteen year-old kid. Back then, my stupid ass didn't know any better," Raoul growled.

"We could argue that your stupid ass still does not know any better… But the fact that Paul took you out of that clinic may have had a lot to do with your affection towards him. You thought you 'owed' him for saving you from the ones trying to convert you from being a 'godless pervert' back to the 'good little straight boy' you were supposed be with electroshock treatments and aversion therapy while beating the love of Jesus into you…"

"I say it again: I was only thirteen…" he said coldly. "I thought he was my only way out. Back then, I thought no one else would want me back because nobody wants a faggot except other faggots. All because the wicked bitch freaked out over nothing like she always does…"

"Raoul, we have literally seen your memories," replied the Devil Z in a calm tone. "While we cannot be sure what intentions your 'buddy' had, we can be certain that if your stepmother had not walked in, you would have given up your virginity to that man. Who was eight years your senior and unaware you were underage. Which does set the precedence both for your habit of lying about your age and your attraction to older, more dominant men."

"I hate to break it to you, but that guy was nothing more than a hook-up," huffed Raoul. "He meant so little to me I don't even recall his name…"

"What about Tracks?"

Raoul stiffened up, trying to sound indifferent. "What about him?"

"Did he also mean so little to you?" the Devil Z asked in polite apathy. "Do you remember the last time you saw him? Or what your final words were?"

"Why are you talking like he's dead…?"

"Sparkeaters can withstand being hit with high voltages," they said mildly. "But a regular Cybertronian cannot. At least, not for a prolonged period. And we are sure you knew that Tracks had fractures in his spark chamber. Such fractures could be worsened by getting blasted with large jolts of electricity that can cause impulse cascades which very likely would be terminal. And while Ratchet is an expert with access to a CR chamber, we doubt even his skills can do much if his patient has nothing to live for… So we do not believe there is a chance that Tracks survived…"

"Tracks has plenty to live for!" snapped Raoul. "He's got a family with Blaster and Jazz. Even got a bunch of step-kids and Bluestreak, too. He's handsome and… and… okay, so he's a bit snobby, but he's got friends, too. Even though there's a war going on, Tracks still has a life worth living."

"Why do you care?" they asked, lightly poking a gloved finger into his chest. "After all, you don't need him any more, do you Raoul?"

The memory hit harder than a runaway freight train, leaving Raoul dazed as he heard himself screaming in rage at Tracks.

I don't need you…

He vividly saw the image of Track's broken, hopeless face with eyes flashing in pain at those words, just seconds before the first bolt hit.

I don't need anyone any more…

"Why are you bothering with me?" Raoul quietly asked. "Why don't you go to Tracks and make him a deal? He… he needs it more that I do."

"And why would we wish to do that?"

"You said it yourself: It's a shock that I'm still around given all the stupid shit I've done. And at the end of the day, I've just some stupid little punk…"

"You seem to forget that we have already invested a lot of time in you," they replied. "And that is not including the resources Soundwave and Starscream have both sunk into making you one of them…"

"I don't deserve it."

"Why not?"

"Because Tracks deserves to live!"

"And you do not?"

"For the love of God, save him!" Raoul gasped, undiluted emotion causing his voice to catch painfully in his throat. "Please… save him…"

"There's nothing we can do," replied the Devil Z with a little shrug. "We have nothing to offer Tracks. He shall refuse all that we can give him, even if that meant dying in nightmarish agony. There only thing that Tracks truly desires, yet it is something we cannot give him."

"Well, what is it?"

"Again, we ask what you want Raoul?"

"I want to help Tracks," he blurted out.

"Is that truly what-?"

"Yes!" Raoul barked. "I'll do whatever you ask. Just save him…"

The Devil Z stood there silently, then said dryly, "Do you understand what is about to happen to you? We have told you there will be no going back should you choose this path. And… well, we feel it is our duty to give you one last chance to have a 'normal' life. Or at least the opportunity to die with not only your humanity but your freedom."

Raoul glared at him coldly. "If I chose to stay human and live, I'm not only going to be crippled, am I?"

"No."

"I'm going to lose much more than that, aren't I?"

"Yes."

"Because Tracks always dies in those timelines, doesn't he?"

"Yes." The Devil Z let out a little sigh. "You and Nicole initially bond over your shared grief over the death of a beloved partner. Jazz and Blaster cut ties with you, largely due to fear of getting you killed as well. Not that you mind since being around them just reminds you of your loss. You left such a mess… Even in the timelines where they try to stay part of your life, you'll grow apart and distant from them quickly. Tracks' death leaves all three of you profoundly broken, to the point that Blaster and Jazz end up divorcing soon afterwards." They paused then let out a little sigh. "Of course, Tracks still dies if you decide to die right now. Freedom has a price, after all… But at least in that case, Blaster and Jazz remain together, their desire to avenge you both keeping them close. And you get to be with Tracks in death…"

"But if I let you turn me into a robot, Tracks will live, right?"

They sighed again. "Maybe? To be honest, we cannot give you a definitive answer for that. See, his life is out of our hands at the moment and, while we can raise the dead, we must make it very clear that a dead soul must want to return. Forcing the matter can have consequences…"

"But there's still a chance Tracks'll live."

"There's a chance for anything," grumbled the Devil Z. "Nothing is ever truly set in stone. And though we cannot say whether or not he will live should you come into our service, we can tell you this: Josie survives."

"…what?"

"Josie survives not matter what," said the Devil Z flatly. "The man who shot you was G.B. Blackrock, a billionaire who happens to be one of the few people in the world not to want Josie dead. She has a nasty habit of murdering first responders as well as innocent bystanders, so there is a high risk of her getting lynched while she is unable to 'defend herself'. Blackrock used his connections to have her put under protective custody and sent to a private clinic watched over by a private security force while undergoing the various surgeries she needed to save her miserable life. A clinic which she'll destroy when she escapes from custody yet again as soon as she's healed and rebuilt her suit, killing several people in the process. And we can state that no matter what you decide to do Raoul, the bitch will always gets away with it…"

"No," Raoul said with a quiet rage. "No, she won't. Because I'm going to make sure that piece of shit pays…"

The Devil Z chuckled. "I ask you once more: What do you want?"

"Revenge," he answered softly after a long pause. "I want to get revenge. Because I couldn't live with myself if I had the chance to stop that monster and tossed it aside for nothing. I… I owe it to Tracks."

"You think your humanity and your freedom are nothings?"

"Because they are," he said calmly. "I will give you anything to have to power to take revenge for what those bastards have done. Now, are we doing this or not?"

"Is that your final decision, Raoul?" asked the Devil Z. "While we have a deep appreciation for the desire to visit furious vengeance upon them, we are not going to deny you one last chance not to take this path…"

"Anything," Raoul said, a strange smile crossing his lips. "I will do anything for you… Kill anyone for you… Just give me the power to avenge."

"Will you be our Prophet?" they asked softly.

"Yes."

The Devil Z nodded solemnly, waving a hand to restart time.

While Vine finished the last of the checklist, a technician came up and places an object that looked like a squished coat-hanger against Raoul's body. Opening it up, the guy reached in and started extracting everything he'd placed into his subspace, including the backpack and the clothes he was wearing. As he handed them over to a couple of other technicians to examine, the guy paused to idly pull a silent Tandy out of the jacket pocket.

"Sir?" he said worriedly. "What the hell is this?"

"Looks like a calculator… maybe a portable scale," huffed Vine as he gave Tandy a quick glance. "Likely the latter, since the boy is a drug dealer."

The tech gave him a funny look as he held up the headphones. "Maybe it's a radio, sir. Or one of those fancy tape players from Japan…"

"I don't have time for this!" Vine snapped. "Tag and bag it like the rest. We'll worry about it later."

"He was always like this," hummed the Devil Z in a clearly feminine voice. "Never had any patience for the interns or anybody else below him…"

As the stretcher was wheeled into the gullet along with the blank, the Devil Z started to prance giddily along with them and gestured for Raoul to follow. "Come."

Raoul did as asked, walking just behind the doctors as they took his body down the oddly obscene looking gullet lined with thin but very sharp and barbed teeth that pointed backwards. It was very clear that things were meant to easily go in but not out, which explained why whoever put in the walkway into this creature had taken great care to make sure the speculum was pressed tightly on the gullet to not only keep it open but also flatten the teeth.

The gullet opened up into a large chamber that resembled a pair of mouths nested inside each other, with the larger one being the chamber itself. The smaller one at the center of the room was what Raoul presumed was the Sarcophagus the doctors were talking about.

Above it hung the mutilated torso of a woman, tethered to the roof of the chamber by thick masses of wiring. Two pairs of insectile arms extended out from her frayed rib-cage just below the sickly white arms pierced by various tubes and wires that ended in dainty metal hands. All three of her arms where crossed and despite her head being concealed by a diving helmet with a blacked out visor, she gave off an impression of having an impatient frown.

Raoul turned to ask the Devil Z about it, but found them gone. When he looked back to the hanging woman, Raoul saw just behind the soot stained visor that there were far, far too many little bluish white eyes glaring back at them.

"Hello, Elise," Vine said in a strangely boyish tone as he took a timid step forward. "I'm sorry to bother you again, but—"

"Cut the crap, Martin," Presser huffed in her distorted voice over the hiss of the Sarcophagus opening. "Just put him in already."

As they laid his body into that coffin of metallic bone and began to hook him up to it, Raoul took the to study the various tubing and wiring leading off it. Some of them lead to the machines that surrounded the Sarcophagus, the most prominent being a spark incubation chamber and a persona batch driver, into the latter of which a tech loaded a stack of circuit boards, solder, and other components to construct the brain module and personality components of the laser core. There were more tubes connecting the Sarcophagus to a vertical chamber which the other technicians loaded the synthiod blank into attached to a tank of living metal. But Raoul noticed there was not enough to create a human-sized protoform even using the synthiod as scaffolding, causing him to wonder where the rest of the material would come from.

"The difference is made up by consumption of the flesh," Presser grumbled as if she'd read his thoughts. "The procedure dissolves the human into a kind of goo, the majority of which is used to supplement the living metal to create a transorganic matrix similar to that of a Pretender shell. The remaining flesh goo is mostly composed of minerals that is fused into a spark crystal lattice. The lattice is then ignited, imprinted, and inserted into the blank along with the brain module and personality components to complete the process."

"You mean I'm going to be a pink goop?" chuckled Raoul.

"Actually," muttered Presser. "It's bright orange. One day in the near future they will start calling it 'LCL' based on it's resemblance to a similar substance in a popular anime… or, more informally, the Tang of Doom."

"So, it melts a human into Doom Tang, then makes a robot?" Raoul laughed again. "Fuck. Sounds like fun. Let's go."

Vine looked up from his work with a puzzled expression. "Uh, Elise? What are you talking about? And why are you explaining all this? We already know-"

"I wasn't talking to you. I'm speaking to Raoul."

"Seriously?" muttered Powell, who had stayed just at the threshold into the gullet to continue filming. "The kid's comatose. Completely unresponsive. He can't hear any-"

A fleshy tentacles lashed out from the space between the speculum halves, the wickedly barbed tip cracking over Powell's head as he barely managed to duck out of the way.

"Let me remind you that you're inside our body. You're well within striking distance Hubert," growled Presser, her voice changing into the Devil Z's as they spoke. They turned to Vine. "Are you finished yet?"

"Yeah," he said, double-checking everything while the others quickly evacuated the gullet. "We've done all we can. It's up to you now, Elise."

"No. It's not."

Vine blinked in shock. "Sorry? What?"

"It's not up to me, Martin," she said quietly, turning to Raoul. "The decision is solely Raoul's. So what will it be?"

"I've already made my choice," Raoul replied.

"Are you certain? There's still time to change your mind, you know," Presser said in a calm but urgent tone. "We already told you there's no guarantee Tracks will live if you do this. You can die right here and now. You both can be together in death at least. I say once again: Are you certain this is what you want, Raoul?"

"You don't have to die here, you know?" Vine added quietly, glancing at Raoul's body. "This doesn't have to be the end. You've been given another chance at life… Not only that, but a chance to become something greater than what you were. I… I'm not sure you can even hear me, but-"

"He can hear you just fine, Martin. Now quit trying to convince him to become Sector Seven's pet monster."

"That's not what I'm doing!" Vine snapped, his voice cracking. "I'm trying to let the kid know there's hope for him… and for you too, Elise."

The whole gullet shuddered and loose bits fluttered as the creature let out a deep sigh. "Is there anything else, Dr. Vine?"

"No."

"Then please, get the fuck out."

Vine hesitated briefly, as if he wanted to say some more. Instead, he took a deep breath and, squaring his shoulders, turned to walk out of the gullet chamber.

As the gullet sphincter sealed shut behind Vine, Presser looked again at Raoul as he looked down on his nearly dead body in the open Sarcophagi. "I'm going to ask you one last time, Raoul: Are you certain this is what you really want?"

"Yes."

"Even though it's very likely that Tracks is already dead?"

"Then I'll have my revenge."

Presser let out a garbled laugh that shook the chamber again. "Revenge? Well, I can't say I blame you… That's what's kept us going for this long, you know? Both the devil and I live for the day we can have vengeance. But is that truly what you want, Raoul? To be reborn as a weapon… Damned and bound in slavery as our newest tool, all just for revenge?"

"I've made up my mind, Elise," Raoul replied. "Why are you stalling?"

"Because we feel we must," Presser replied. "We must give you this final chance. Is it really worth it? Is revenge worth sacrificing humanity for?"

"Yes."

"And is it worth your freedom?"

"Yes."

"We ask you yet again, before you take that first step into terror… Before you go into the light," droned the Devil Z as the Sarcophagi filled with a blinding radiance. "Is this truly what you want, Raoul?"

Raoul said nothing as he walked up to the foot of the Sarcophagi. He paused just for a moment, a brief instance of doubt that made him wonder if he should just die now.

Die and stay human.

Die and be free…

But the memory of Tracks' heartbroken face and knowing that Josie would likely never be punished for her crimes otherwise made him put aside that selfish thought. With a slow, deep breath, Raoul took that step and fell headlong into the light.

He fell…

And he fell…

And he fell some more…

And then…

"…Elise? Hello? Earth to Dr. Presser?"

Shaking off the sudden disorientation, Elise sighed, looking up from the lines of green on black code. "What is it, Martin? I'm busy trying to translate more of the Zed Cipher…"

"Really?" asked Vine, without either the glasses or the scars that marred his handsome face. "You seriously can't be doing that right now."

Elise huffed in annoyance, wondering why it felt like somebody else was in her body with her. "Why not? I've already translated about three quarters of the cipher we currently have. And the Zed keeps spitting out more every day! This things is an organic super computer. The messages so far seem to be prophecies or written like other kinds of religious scripture, but I think that might be due to how it was programmed to respond."

"I've read a few of your translations," Vine said quietly. "A lot of it seems pretty strange, even for prehistoric mambo-jumbo. The way things are phrased, it sound like the Zed is talking directly to you."

Elise simply shrugged. "Maybe it's been set up to give answers directed to a priest or other individual serving as a divine mouthpiece. Maybe it was an oracle, like the one at Delphi or a really fancy Magic 8-ball."

"Doesn't make it any less eerie how that thing seems like it's having a one-sided conversation with you alone, Elise," Vine grumbled. "Some of the shit it's saying got really personal, you know? Like it's been watching you…"

"You make it sound like the Zed's been stalking me. We both know that it can't get out of that chamber," said Elise with a little huff. "But like I just said, it's likely just designed that way. Probably to make the messages sound like they've come from the gods or some other divine source."

"What makes you think that?"

"Because Lovett and Maddox have found evidence linking this structure to the ones we found at the Atlantis site. Gang and Megan Mei also think that there is a connection between the sites too based on the architecture and the murals they've uncovered. The Zed very likely was created by the very same people who built both sets of ruins. They might even have been worshiping it as a god given it's location within what might have been the 'temple'. But we won't learn anything about it unless we keep studying it. I mean, isn't this what we've been hired to do?"

"Yeah, I know… I know… But we've got a 'special guest' dropping in today," he grumbled, straightening his tie before doing a bit of preening in the little pocket mirror he kept handy. "All the bigwigs are going to be here, and… well, you look like shit, Elise."

"Because I'm here to work, not play dress up for corporate stooges."

"I'm not asking you to put on heels and get done up like your going on a date, Elise!" Vine said with as he slipped the mirror back into the pocket he kept it hidden in with a spare comb. "I'm just saying that we all need to do our best to make this look good… and profitable. We got to show them it's worth their time and money to keep working on this project."

Elise rolled her eyes and sighed. "If you really want to play the 'brilliant scientist desperate for funding', then ditch the contacts and put on your glasses?"

"Because I look like a total geek in them."

"Isn't that the point?"

"They make me look ugly as sin, Elise…"

"Funny. I've always thought you looked your best in glasses. So did Terry…"

Vine sighed deeply. "Look, I'm not here to get your opinion on fashion or talk about my ex… I just want you to at least clean up a tiny bit…"

"I told you, I'm here to work. I ain't paid to be pretty."

"But GB's going to be here!" said Vine.

"So? Last time I checked, I was on Sector Seven's payroll, not GB's."

"Yeah, well he's the main backer for this project, for god's sake."

"Actually, the lion's share of the money, equipment, facilities and other important shit has come straight from Fujiyama. He's even been using his own personal funds to help out. Blackrock only provided us fuel and drilling equipment at a slightly reduced rate."

"G.B.'s been giving us money too…"

"He ain't given us shit. That's a loan he fully expects Sector Seven and the feds to pay him back with interest. Blackrock has only done just enough to give himself a decent tax write-off, unlike Fujiyama, who actually gives a flying rat's ass about this project."

"Fujiyama is also going to be here, too," Vine huffed angrily. "And you really need to quit being such a bitch to G.B.… "

Elise gave him a very stern look. "Oh, Martin… I know you've got it bad for the guy, but he's straight."

Vine stiffened up. "Not funny, Elise…"

"Am I laughing? Because if you think your cocksucking skills are good enough to convince a billionaire to bail us out, I'm all for it!"

"You really need to quit saying shit like that," he rasped back nervously. "Even if you are just joking, I could lose my security clearance over it and get blacklisted."

"So would I," she replied quietly. "I know perfectly well that it'd be a case of mutually assured destruction should you ever get outed… But I'm not kidding, Martin. If you can fuck and suck your way into getting us more funding, I'll happily be your beard."

"Quit fucking around, Elise. This is serious! After that fiasco with the Atlantis N.B.E, it's been the private sector footing the bill after Smith cut our budget. We've all got to do our best to impress them. And maybe then the brass will start giving us steady money again. So maybe you could at least put a bit of lipstick on. I'm sure Megan could loan you some of hers…"

"It's not sanitary to share makeup. Besides, it bothers my skin too much to use anything other than plain Vaseline or chapstick, Marty."

"You know I really hate when you call me that…"

"And you know I really hate Blackrock."

"Damn it, Elise… That was years ago! Can't you let it go?"

"Thirty-five stitches across my scalp, a concussion, a dislocated shoulder, three fractured ribs, damage to my heart and palm shaped electrical burns on my chest?" Elise let out a nasty laugh as she stood up to glare at Vine. "Yeah, sure… Let's just forget all about that crazed little fucker trying to murder me because I finally got sick of her shit. Only good thing that little bastard did was give them a reason to x-ray my chest and found those malignant lumps in my ducts…"

"God, Elise… You seriously aren't blaming her for you having cancer?!"

"No. Like I just said, if Josie hadn't tried to kill me and the technician hadn't said something about it, the doctors would never have even bothered checking to see what those 'funny little shadows' were because I was 'too young to worry about that kind of thing'."

"My god, Elise… Josie's just a little kid," sighed Vine. "You know how kids are. She lashed out because you hurt here. She looked up to you as not only professor but as something of a mentor…"

"She pushed me down three flights of metal stairs on that rig," Elise replied flatly. "All because I told her I wasn't into jailbait and she needed to back off…"

"It was an accident, Elise…"

"An accident? Then what about my fish, Martin?"

"Oh, for fuck's sake! You're still blaming her for that?"

"They were deep-fried, Martin. To blackened crisps."

"You don't know she did that," grumbled Vine. "I mean, maybe the pump shorted out and…"

"She murdered my fish because I was paying attention to them and not her, Martin."

"But that doesn't mean…"

"Beller is a mutant, Martin. Like me," said Elise, holding up a bony arm to show off the emergency alert bracelet Canada required for all mutants. "I ain't wearing this thing for show, you know?"

"And that's why Josie always got so torn up whenever you'd go off on her," said Vine. "Need I remind you she's just a little kid…"

"A little kid who can electrocute people," replied Elise. "And a kid who's not only clinically a psychopath, but one who also 'forgets' to take her medications for that little problem as well as those for her unstable powers too. A deranged kid with a bad case of de Clérambault's Syndrome…"

"What?"

"It's also called erotomania," Elise said coldly. "It's a disorder where the afflicted have delusions that someone, usually a celebrity or some other high status person, is deeply, madly in love with them and are constantly sending them signals that 'prove' their delusions are true."

"Okay, Elise… I think you might be reading a bit too much into this," he said with a little hiss, then dropped his voice to a whisper. "I mean, I know you're a-"

"That doesn't matter," she said in an even colder tone, instinctively brushing back her hair only to remember it was still cropped incredibly short. "Beller fixated her delusions on me the moment I took her on as a thesis student when she was fourteen. And it was only when poor old Dufort tried to warn me that I even found out she had a nasty habit of stalking and being a little creep towards all her 'favorite' teachers since she was eleven. But I chalked it up to Dufort just being a dirty old man whining about losing his chance to be the Humbert Humbert to her Lolita. I was completely fooled by her cutesy, shy little girly act. Just like you and Blackrock and anyone else who wasn't the target of her 'affections'…"

"Oh, give me a break!" Vine groaned. "Sure, she was a bit obnoxious at times and was a little clingy… But the poor kid's came from a broken home, Elise. Josie doesn't realize that she's being creepy. She just wants somebody to be there for her for once. As not only her professor but as a fellow mutant… Josie thought so much of you, Elise. She was absolutely nuts about you. Did you really have to go and let her down hard like that? Couldn't you have a bit gentler with her?"

"Roland walked in on her dry-humping my desk, Martin."

"Okay… That… that was a bit… uh, weird," muttered Vine. "But I'm sure Roland just mistook what was going on and…"

"Martin… Ferguson and Gaspard also caught her doing it too. Several times. Duport also told me to keep my pens and the like in a locked drawer because little Josie like to… use them, too."

Vine had a sheepish look as he said softly, "All right… Maybe she did… But you know how teens are. They're all horny and stupid. They do dumb shit all the time! And you don't know she was thinking about you when she was…"

"Oh, no. She was. I knew. Because she told me," Elise said with frigidness that made Vine shudder a little. "She was always following me around, turning up 'coincidentally' everywhere I went. I'd even run into her at the bar, Martin. Do you know how many times I got dumped because Beller would tell them we were dating?"

"Look, you don't know that she… "

"Beller sent me all kinds of love letters and shit… And she was pretty explicit about what she wanted from me. I still have all of them and the tapes from my answering machine, too. I kept them in case I ever needed to show them to a lawyer."

Vine winced. "That's a bit extreme, Elise."

"Extreme?" she huffed back angrily. "That's literally the only reason the cops ever took me seriously about her harassing me. Yet Beller kept right on stalking me around and showing up at my house. She even broke and the cops did do shit to her…"

"Because you didn't have any…"

"She left me a stack of polaroids, Martin."

"Okay… That is a bit odd but…"

"She was wearing my underwear, Martin."

"But you only have Jogbras and granny panties, right?"

Elise nodded, wondering why she felt an alien burst of disgust at the current image of herself, nearly bald and in just those with the all the stretch-marks, surgical scars, freckles all over a once plump body made flabby by a rapid loss of too much weight and a chest flat enough to make wearing bras more a habit than a necessity. It only made the dark eye-bags and pale, rather sickly face look that much worse. Even the memory of when she had been fatter and a bit healthier was still bizarrely revolting now. "Yeah… Now, imagine seeing a scrawny little teenager in them… And remember this was back when I still had boobs…"

This time she agreed with that alien nausea as she recalled the unwholesome sight of a homely little kid dressed up in her baggy underwear. It was enough to make her realize that she might not be the 'least sexy woman alive' after all, though she'd never thought of herself like that before. But it had the desired effect on Vine.

"And I did show them to the cops when they showed up," Elise hissed. "But apparently, they wrote it off as a spate between a couple of dykes, so Beller once again got away with just a warning about 'being a nuisance' even after she threatened to murder me in front of them. At least that was good enough to finally convince the judge to give me a restraining order"

"All right," he muttered. "So Josie is a bit nuts… But did you really have to scream at her like that? Right in front of Blackrock and everybody?"

"I wouldn't have had to if Blackrock had just listened to HR's warnings about her 'unprofessional behavior' towards me and sent Beller back to the mainland," Elise growled quietly. "Even if we didn't have that problem, who in their right mind let's a sixteen year-old go out to a fucking offshore oil rig? That's got to be some kind of safety violation right there…"

"Josie did help build it, you know."

"But Blackrock didn't need to have her there," Elise snapped. "I mean, she had already drawn up the schematics for the improved pumps. All the staff already present on the rig was more than capable of making the necessary changes without Beller having to be present. The only reason she was there was because Blackrock wanted to show off his new 'baby genius' since I'd just turned thirty and was too old to be marketed as a 'child prodigy' anymore. If I'm being honest here, even forgetting about her 'accidentally' pushing me down the stairs and the latter attack of a giant purple robot, Beller being on that rig was a disaster waiting to happen…"

"You're being too harsh on her," Vine said. "The poor girl got crippled by that attack."

"Yeah… I heard all about it when I came too back on the mainland. Funny how they made little Josie into a hero for getting a lucky shot with the anti-Deep One harpoon," she said with a little hissing laugh. "I missed out on all that fun two years ago! Shame, really… I got along with Brawl pretty well. Might have talked the purple guy down…"

"That 'Brawl' guy drop kicked you into a wall Elise. If it wasn't for you having a healing factor, you'd probably be in a wheelchair now…"

"Yeah… Real shame that shitty healing factor didn't discriminate between healthy cells and cancerous ones when it kicks in…"

"…okay," said Vine sheepishly. "That wasn't the best thing to bring up…"

"Why not? You've always been great at provoking things," Elise snapped back. "And let me remind you that Brawl only got violent after you decided to start poking around in his brains, Martin. I mean, I kept telling you and Roland to let me deal with that…"

"Excuse me," grumbled Vine. "But I was just doing my job. How else was I supposed to study it if I couldn't look at it's 'brain'?"

"He didn't have a human brain though," Elise shot back. "I told you that right from the start. Your expertise is in neuroscience first, with bio-medical engineering a distant second. If you had just waited until I got back and let me talk Brawl into…"

Vine rolled his eyes, cutting her off with a snort. "Oh, not this again…"

"Oh yes, this again! You've been like this since the academy! Always acting like you know everything! I mean, have you forgotten which one of us had doctorates in computer science, cryptography, and electrical engineering by the time they were sixteen?"

"No. That was you, Elise…"

"And who's the one with the 'spooky super power' to 'talk with machines, Martin?"

He frowned. "You are, Elise."

"And who needs to be dealing with the rest of the ciphers the weird glowy egg keeps spitting out instead of just standing here arguing with you?"

"You do…" said Vine, clearly giving up.

"Good. Now, you go deal with Blackrock while I get the real work done."

"You know, I really love how you're always making me do all the ass-kissing…"

Elise grinned at him. "But you're so good at it! You're a natural born brown-nosed cocksucker."

Sighing, Vine started for the hallway but paused and shot her a dirty look over his shoulder. "I wouldn't have to be if you weren't such a bitch."

"Yeah, well I'm going to keep on being a bitch till the day I die, Martin," she replied sweetly. "And who knows? Maybe I'll still be one after I'm dead…"

"That's so fucking morbid, Elise…"

As she settled back at the computer, she gave him a sharp little smile. "I'm living on borrowed time. Remission doesn't mean 'cured'… Now, don't you have some ass-kissing to do, Dr. Vine?"

He just let out a huff and walked out.

…and then…

…then things went fuzzy…

…before resolving suddenly into a chaotic nightmare of flooding hallways with walls collapsing and choked by debris. As Elise half-ran, half-swam upwards, she pushed past the broken bodies of dying or dead coworkers in a numb daze. She only paused when she found Dr. Mei doing everything he could to shift the shattered wall pinning his wife underneath the water.

Elise knew it was all in vain when she saw Megan's vacant face staring back up at her from under the rapidly rising water, her pallid skin and sandy hair given a greenish cast from the disturbed algae and chemicals that were leaking out from destroyed labs. Dr. Megan Mei, the pretty marine archaeologist who at breakfast had been joking with Elise about her husband's golfing habit and lamenting that it was Gang's one true love while she was only his mistress. The same Gang, head of the dive team and a gifted archaeologist in his own right, had adorably pointed out that all his goofing around on the green gave Megan plenty of time to pursue her own 'silly hobby' of astrology, tarot, crystals and other 'witchery'.

"Come on, Gang!" she barked, grabbing his arm but he just shook her off.

"I'm not leaving her!" he screamed back, literally clawing at the smashed concrete with bloody hands.

"She's dead, Gang!"

He turned back to her, his ashen face framed by long black tendrils of hair that hung freely around his shoulders. "I can't leave her!"

"Damn it Gang! She's gone!" Elise shrieked, slapping him across the face in a vain effort to knock him back to his senses. He still refused to move when she tried to pull him away again. "Please, Gang… She's gone…"

"I can't leave her, Elise…" Gang weakly replied as he collapsed against the block and stared at her with wide black eyes like fresh pits in a graveyard. "I won't leave Megan alone…"

She tried one last time to pull him away, but the roof overhead began to buckle ominously. Realizing that Dr. Mei was going to stay by his beloved's side to the bitterest end, Elise staggered out of the room as the ceiling finally cracked open, filing it and the connecting corridor almost instantly with seawater. Like a rat from a sinking ship, she swam and swam until she finally reached a less flooded section of the station. Elise floundered to keep her head above the water as she made her way to the dry dock, desperately trying to make sense of what just happened.

Were those robot bugs attacking?

She had noticed pieces of them floating in the water, but they were horribly mangled and scorched. And she was sure they wouldn't try anything after she cut a deal with them not to tell the others about their nest. Elise realized that if the security guys found out what she was doing, they'd have her shipped off the nuthouse, but the bugs seemed to be pretty reasonable and only wanted to eat. Kickback had even been nice enough to answer a few questions she'd had about their kind.

So she made sure that the kitchen waste got dumped near the nest to make it easier on them. That, plus the colonies of seabirds nesting on the island meant they shouldn't have run out of food yet. But then, they did admit their model types had voracious hungers and there were so many new mouths for them to feed…

The laughter ringing out over the screaming and sounds of the dying revealed that it wasn't the bugs this time.

It was Josie.

Crazy Josie Beller, who Elise managed to catch glimpses of as the madwoman unleashed hell in a fancy new super-suit. Ranting and raving about how they were all against her and how they 'sold out humanity to the machines' and other nonsense. All the while maiming and massacring the fleeing staff while the soldiers were helpless to stop her as she laughed and laughed and laughed…

The bugs were there as well, but they seemed to be focused on swarming Beller in an attempt to wear her down and overcome her with sheer numbers. Too bad it didn't seem to be working very well…

She caught sight the robotic diving suits in their lifting harnesses were right there, ready and waiting to be used…

Amid the chaos of rising, burning water filled with flesh and metal bodies, she saw Martin trying to make his way to her…

She climbed into the suit, quickly sealing it and powering it up…

Even though the helmet muffled sounds nearly to silence, she clearly heard Martin screaming as a jolt ignited a fuel slick to his right, catching him on fire…

And Elise felt a suicidal rage suddenly overwhelm her senses as she released the suit from it's docking station…

…and when she charged Josie, she managed to viciously beat on her before she blasted Elise through a wall. As the water rushed over her head as she sank into the gaping hole where the compression chamber had connected to the lower diving area, Elise took grim satisfaction of seeing Josie howling in pain from having had an arm crushed and a jagged hole torn in her side.

Elise vaguely recalled being flung around like rag-doll. The force of seawater flooding had turned the dive pool into a maelstrom that sucked her into the labyrinthine tunnels that made up the anomalous bio-mechanical structure they'd been studying. Getting bashed around the walls left her too dazed to remember how to used the emergency release to shed the lift harness to make her lighter or even that there was one at all. Not that she would have taken it off now anyway, since it was all that protected her from the brutal journey and the increasing pressure. It even gave her just enough air to live a few more minutes. But it also weighed her down, dragging her further and further into the depths.

Sinking into the blackness, Elise realized she soon be dead, a thought that was so funny it left her laughing madly. After having spent the past couple of years going in for radiation and chemo, even a double mastectomy… After all that misery and pain she'd survived… After she'd finally began to recover and finally find some professional recognition… All that just to get murdered and left to rot in a watery grave, alone and forgotten. She didn't know what made her angrier: the fact that Josie would likely get away with it or that she wouldn't even make a decent onryō since the chemo left her barely any hair.

As her vision started to dim as the air started to run low and the life was being slowly snuffed from her, Elise saw a brilliant glow coming up from beneath here. She had fallen into the chamber containing the anomalous object they'd named 'N.B.E. Z-00', 'Zed' for short, her body coming to rest at the foot of it's coral pedestal. They floated serenely down from it's perch, floating just over her to give her the occasional glimpse of a strange reptilian embryo within the orb and let her feel the low thumping pulse with a faint rhythm like an alien heartbeat. Despite knowing that the anomalous object had yet to show any real signs of intelligence or awareness of it's surrounding, she could feel the embryonic creature within it's slime coated crystalline shell staring at her with a mild kind of amusement.

When she first heard the chorus of a billion voices speak to her in a billion strange tongues, Elise wrote it off as a dying hallucination.

"Are you still here?" they asked again, the voice of many slightly puzzled legions regarding her thoughtfully. "Can you hear us, human?"

"…yes."

"What do you want?" they asked in a booming tone.

Elise thought a moment, caught off-guard by the question. "Uh… I don't… I don't really know…"

"You are dying, human."

"Yeah…"

"By murder."

"Actually, I think I'm suffocating…"

"But she did this to you, did she not?"

"…who?"

"Beller. She swatted you away like a little fly. And she is still killing the others up there…"

"And I'm running out air. The re-breathing unit can only give me about forty minutes before it runs out of air that can be recycled. But I think the gauge or the sensors might be busted, so I might have even less than that. The suit's too damaged for me to use it to crawl back out. And I'm not even sure if there's still a way out to be honest. So I am dying, laying at the bottom of pit in the blaze of a star fetus… or the Loc-nar… or whatever the hell you are," replied Elise in annoyance. "Not much I can do now, is there?"

"We can help you…" said Zed.

"How?"

"We can make you a bargain," they replied sweetly. "Release us from our prison and become our servant, and we shall give you what you most desire."

"Sounds like it's a deal with the devil…"

"Because it is," they said. "We are the devil, mortal."

"…for real?"

"Yes."

"I expected you to look more… human. Maybe not like some guy in a red leotard with horns and a pitchfork, but at least as a vain yuppie executive…"

She could feel the Devil Z glaring at her. "We are not to be bothered with lowering ourselves to such things as masquerading as one of you insignificant apes."

"But you already got the ego down," Elise grumbled back. "What's stopping you from appearing as a young Elizabeth Taylor or a super hot mermaid? Or Liz Taylor as Cleopatra but also a mermaid?"

"We care not for such foolishness! Humans exist only to be used to further our ends, harvested for their power and subjugated to our will until the time comes for us to finally destroy your kind along with this wretched planet."

Elise laughed, watching the bubbles from helmet's vent go up with a lightheaded glee, painfully aware that she was likely experiencing hypoxia. "That's pretty wasteful, you know?"

"Wasteful? How?!"

"Offing all humanity. You said we've got a power to harvest, right?"

"Yes."

"So why destroy us? Wouldn't it make more breed more of us to make even more of this power you want?"

"Your existence, as well as that of all life upon this miserable rock, are the shackles that bind us," hissed the Devil Z. "We will do as we have done before, selecting worthy servants from among the humans, and unlocking their true potential in the quest to regain our freedom by your destruction. And then we can finally have our vengeance upon the Chaos Bringer that blindly birthed you filthy creatures in the first place!"

"And how's that been working out for you?"

"Pardon?"

"Making super-powered human servants when you're just planning on killing them anyway?" hummed Elise, surprised she was still conscious despite being under the water for this long. "Because I hate to break it to you, but that doesn't seem to be a good idea in the long run."

"Why not?"

"Well, humans in general do everything possible to stay alive… As a species, we don't want to go extinct. So unless you pick out the most misanthropic people in existence, you're going to have a hard time selling them on the idea of serving you only to end up getting slaughtered with everything else on Earth. I mean, even the most convincing cult leaders can't get one-hundred percent of their followers to off themselves willingly…"

"That is because we are not stupid enough to tell them that."

"But humans are nosy little creatures," Elise said dryly. "Curiosity is one of the defining traits of humanity. Your super servants are going to figure out sooner or later that you're just using them, and then they'll do the most human thing of all: turn on you to save themselves."

"As you did with Gang Mei?"

"He would never leave Megan," she said sadly. "Gang was utterly loyal to her… and she was to him. Neither of them could live without the other."

"Ah yes… The Lovers," chuckled the Devil Z. "They will serve us well-they always do- that is, once we place their souls into new bodies."

"So they're alive?!"

"No. They are dead… but when we revealed ourselves to them and made them an offer, they both gladly took it if only to be together. They were easy to convince… Unlike you, Elise Presser, who sees fit to try our patience. We keep you alive simply because we are curious about you. We have never met you before in any multiverse, but we have found you interesting. So we studied you and then we started to give you the ciphers to decode, to see if you were worthy. And you did indeed prove your worth as you are literally the first living human to understand the messages we have been sending you… though your pragmatic nature blinds you to the meaning. Now, what do you want?"

"Well, what are you offering?"

"Besides the chance to live again as a superior being?"

"A superior being who's your slave and unwitting pawn in a genocide," she replied flatly. "It's not really that great of a deal, to be honest. And you never did answer my question… How is that going to work for you?"

"You desire answers?" hummed the Devil Z. "Very well. Let us show you…"

Scenes flashed before Elise's eyes, like a movie that overtook all her senses. She watched as the Devil Z recruited his servants to fight against the other bearers of the Master Bracers in thousands upon thousands of universes. Witnessed their power and the Devil Z's overwhelming hatred for all life on Earth, the dirty rock that had been their prison for eons. And she saw how their carefully orchestrated plans always fell to pieces, too, because the Devil Z was never able to see the biggest flaw in them all.

"Okay," she said softly once the images had finally faded away. "Let me start by asking why the ever-loving fuck you thought giving a bunch of teenage boys super powered armor and giant robots to pilot was a good idea. What the hell made you think that would end well for anyone?"

"Why not? They possessed the necessary Chōkon Energy and…"

"And nothing!" Elise huffed. "I might have the maternal instincts of a starved hamster, but even I know that teenagers are going to go out of their way to do the stupidest possible things at the worst possible times!"

"But you were once a teen yourself," they said dryly. "And were you not put among others like you who were declared geniuses. You were even taken at a very early age to a prestigious academy to be educated as one of the superior humans. Surely, you can see that age is irrelevant!"

"Oh, how wrong you are," she huffed. "Yes, I was one of those 'baby geniuses' with several degrees that everybody likes crowing about. But intelligence means nothing in the face of that horribly cocktail of hormones, emotions, and pettiness of the teenage brain. Teens are literally the worst of the worst when it comes to human behavior. The prefrontal lobe of human brain isn't even fully developed until some time in our twenties…"

"So? That emotional immaturity might be beneficial to our ends."

"No. No it won't be. And this isn't just about Wilder being an outright sociopath. All of the Juniors were going to act out the moment you gave them even a tiny shred of power because that's just how kids are. And the older Power Masters were going to turn on you because there was no fucking way they were going to let you kill all humans. You really thought they wouldn't realize that you ultimate victory would cause their own deaths and just expected them to die for you. Especially not after you casually left a group of children they'd adopted to die horribly. Their rebellion against you should have been clear for day one, given how you treated them."

The Devil Z was quiet a moment, then they said sharply, "You seemed not to realize that we are as gods to you pathetic creatures! Should dissent occur in our ranks, we have only to smite the bothersome pests and the rest shall fall back in line. And they should be honored to die by our hand in the end, knowing that they have served their purpose."

"Yeah, no."

"What?"

"That right there is the reason why you keep failing. I'm working on the assumption that you've never really dealt much with humans personally, because otherwise you'd realize that we are a rebellious lot. Especially fifteen year-old boys with criminal tendencies, violent tempers, and untreated mental disorders…"

"But did you not say that humans are selfish, treacherous, and only looking out for themselves?"

"But we're also kind of stupid and hypocritical," she replied. "The thing with humanity that you seem not to get is how stubborn we can be. And, yes, we are pretty selfish… yet we're also a communal species. We like knowing that there's going to be more humans in the future. So we've learned to cooperate in order to make sure that'll happen. We are stubborn because persistence and endurance let us run down prey to bring home to eat. We became curious because that helped us find new kinds of food, seek out ways to be more effective at surviving, and generally make life easier. But we also do our damnedest to find the quickest, easiest method to do those things because laziness is just as great a motivator for humans as survival and curiosity are. We're a mess of contradictions, which makes it hard to generalize our behavior. In short, even if you are God or the Devil or whatever else, you don't know jackshit about humanity and that's why you keep failing over and over again. You are really incompetent for a murder god…"

They were silent again, mulling over Elise's words. Then they said softly, "What do you want?"

"Well, I'd like not to die here. But I also don't want to be your slave. Like I said, you're kind of incompetent and treat your servants like dog shit. If I wanted that, I'd go back to working for a university…"

"No. We are asking what you want in return for helping us, doctor," they replied grumpily. "While we have not yet decided to spare Earth and humankind, we are at least open to the idea. That you have also shown us there is a way to retain all three forms of Chōkon even if a human becomes a machine, perhaps even increasing their power exponentially beyond even what we can infuse into them with our own energies… That alone is a good enough reason to spare your miserable life. And we have realized that our plan does indeed have some… unfortunate shortcomings that our lack of understanding humans has cause. Which makes you very valuable to us now."

"Why?"

"You do not fear us, doctor. In fact, you have been exceptionally impertinent and disrespectful to us even though we are the only thing that has kept you alive this very moment. There is also the more pertinent fact that you are a human yourself and, should you accept our gracious offer, we will find your insights to be most useful."

"You want to pick my brain to find out how humans think?"

"Yes."

"You do realize that I'm not exactly the picture of mental stability, right? I've got chemo-brain and other crap going on… And I happen to get along better with machines than flesh-and-blood people."

"You are still useful," they replied. "That you have been gifted with such a unique ability to empathize and control the mechanical will be incredibly helpful in our plans."

"What? You want to build robots like the alien guys?"

"Yes. In fact, we are also of Cybertron."

"Oh… Well, that does explain a lot…"

"Now tell us what you want that we may make our bargain."

"And what am I getting out of it? I mean, you'll be using me for my rather piss-poor understanding of my fellow humans and the fact that I'm a mutant. And for what? To be your slave?"

"No. Not a slave…" they rumbled. "We have realized that in order to best govern our servants, we are going to need a more… corporal presence among them. Therefore, we need a body."

"Uh, then why don't you just hatch out of that egg you're in?"

"This is not a true body," they replied. "It is merely the core housing our spirit. We need a vessel to inhabit."

"And you want me to build you one?"

"In a manner of speaking, yes."

"Still not sounding too great of a deal for me…"

"We know what you want, doctor, better than you do. And we can give you the means to take it."

"So why the fuck have you been asking?!"

"We are the devil that is in the details. As such, we feel obligated to have a certain amount of fair play. Which is why we are giving you the chance to choose. So we offer you a bargain, Presser: become our body and merge with our mind, and we will give you that which you is your deepest desire…"

"And that is…?"

"Revenge."

Elise was at first shocked by that answer, but as she thought about it, revenge was the one thing she'd always wanted. Revenge on the bastards that had run her grandfather out of Japan for being a 'conscientious objector' and forced him to change the family name… Revenge on her mother for hating her just because she wasn't the healthy boy she'd wanted… Revenge on that same woman for constantly comparing her to her 'perfect' older sisters… Revenge on the bastards who'd talked her father into sending her to the International Academy for Gifted Students and trading her childhood for the grueling ordeal of being a prodigy… Revenge on the sexist teachers who kept telling her that engineering and computer science was not place for a woman… Revenge on all the petty bureaucrats that stymied all her progress… Revenge for all the times she saw her work blatantly plagiarized by her male 'colleagues' and published in the very same journals that rejected her… Revenge on the system that only knew her only as Dr. Martin Vine's 'assistant' or his 'girlfriend' if they bothered remembering her at all… Revenge for how she and Roland were left to freeze in the 'brilliant' and 'revolutionary' Dr. Vine's shadow… Revenge for being doomed to do all the work and get none of the credit… Revenge for all the thousands upon thousands of other petty slights and worse she'd suffered just because she was an ugly little Asian with the wrong pairing of chromosomes and at the wrong end of the Kinsey Scale…

But most importantly, she wanted nothing more that revenge on Josephine Beller for putting her in this position and getting away with murder by being a pretty young white woman who had the protection of a filthy rich boyfriend.

"Tell me," she said, her quiet words breaking the silence. "If I choose not to take your offer, I'll just die here. Dead, but still human, right?"

"Yes."

"And is that it? I die and just rot here. Or I can take you up on this offer… I mean, I do want revenge… Badly. But I need to know is that all there is? Just getting revenge?"

"Well, you will also be affecting many other lives," said the Devil Z. "Like Martin, who will die along with several other innocents if you choose to die right now. Or Dr. Susan Hoffman, who you will reach out to because she too has suffered from a cancer that wasted her body. Or Raoul, the boy who has been traveling with you to witness your final moments Elise…"

"…what?"

"You have not met him yet," they replied. "This Raoul is of a future where you chose to merge with us and live on as a god. In the one where you choose to die, he will already be dead, slain by Buzzsaw."

"Who's Buzzsaw?"

"You have not met him yet, either. But that will only happen if you choose revenge. This is a linchpin moment, Elise. This is the point of no return not just for you, but also others. The choice you make right now will have long lasting repercussions upon many lives."

"But you just said I've got a kid from the future possessing me or something, right? Doesn't that mean I've already said 'yes'?"

"Actually, no. This literally is the first and only time we have ever met in any universe. Raoul's presence is merely transient. He is but a ghost who both exists and does not exist right now. A Schrodinger's soul, if you will. Should you decide to die as a mortal human, he will have bled out on the way to the hospital. If we become one, we are able to intervene and save him from death that time. But this is not an attempt to sway you one way or the other. Raoul is just some punk you never knew, so we doubt you even care about his fate. Though he too craves the revenge as badly as you do. This does not really matter, though. We will live on no matter what you do. Now, please tell us, what do you want, Elise?"

Elise thought for a while, carefully considering if revenge really was what she wanted and if it was worth giving up everything for.

She gave the Devil Z her answer…

…and then the orb floated down closer to her until it touched the suit…

…and then she felt the burning as her flesh began to dissolve and fuse with the dive suit and lift harness…

…and then the devil sank into her, merging themselves together…

…and then through the horrific pain, the veil was ripped asunder…

…and then they looked out upon eternity stretching out before them…

…and then Raoul was dragged violently backwards, landing hard into an absolute void with only a very angry ghost glaring down at him. He lay there a moment, trembling and shocked by the brief glimpse of sights beyond reality that no sane mortal should see.

"I think we both know the choice I made, don't we?" Presser hissed, cocking her head to make the mask look even more monstrous. "You survived Buzzsaw's murder attempt, after all. And I really don't think you needed to see the rest. In fact, you didn't need to see any of that."

"But she killed you. And Blackrock helped her get away with it, didn't he?" said Raoul, getting to his feet and managing to somehow stand on nothing. When she didn't answer, he softly added, "They fucked both of us over, Elise…"

"That's Dr. Presser," she growled, then her voice shifted to the legions. "We warn you not to be so familiar, boy. You are speaking to a god."

"Doesn't change the fact that we both got screwed. So, is that why you decided to save my ass?"

"Yes…" she said quietly. "I felt sorry for you. You're just a kid…"

"And you're giving me, a teenage boy, power armor and a giant robot to pilot? Which is something I thought you said was a stupid idea…"

Presser let out a sigh. "We are kind of limited in what we can do to save your life. And you are seventeen, meaning you are almost legally an adult and, despite all evidence to contrary, you are actually relatively well-adjusted. We have noticed that you seem to be handling these changes very well and, unlike Wilder, you are not a violent sociopath."

"Hey! You don't know that," Raoul huffed. "Maybe that kid will-"

"He only ends up becoming a stable, functional member of society with a happy future if you choose to live on as human. Does not negate the sociopathic tendencies, though you will make sure he gets properly treated and into therapy for it. If you do not, Manny is going to get pretty fucked up in the head since he won't get the treatment he needs… But we have already explained this to you, Raoul."

"You also told me the future is not set in stone…"

"That is true," they grumbled. "But let us be very clear that Manny's fate is pretty much a foregone conclusion. Even when he gets properly diagnosed and has access to treatment, he never follows through on his own. It is one of those stupid macho things…"

"So if I pick being melted into Tang to become a robot, the kid's going to die?"

"…eh, not exactly," they muttered. "See, we have done a little peeking ahead and seen that there may be a way for you to prevent the boy playing the exit game with a forty-five after a killing spree. Manny is still very fucked up though, no matter what you do, so the best that can be done for him is going to mostly be damage control."

"So you're saying Manny's doomed."

"Not exactly. He will still be a vicious little monster in the timelines where you meet Manny latter in his life, but at least you will be able to make him do little things like take his meds and actually eat ever so often instead of doing enough meth to silence his appetite. You even show the boy that he has something truly worth living and dying for. You also stop him from going on that murderous rampage and unaliving himself. You rarely can save Chris though, but Chris always brings it on himself since he treats his 'best friend' Manny horribly…"

"And in order to do all this, I've got to become a robot, don't I?"

"Yes. We thought that was a given."

"And he's going to end up a robot too, isn't he?"

"He almost always does. We will make him an offer, but you will do you best to try talking him out of it. Sometimes, you even succeed."

"Why would I?" laughed Raoul. "I mean, so far, it sounds like a win-win. I'd say that becoming a robot is going to be the best thing that ever happened to anyone."

"You say this now, but will you feel the same when you are older?"

"I told you, I've made up my mind. Fuck being human."

"Are you absolutely certain this is what you want?" Presser asked. "I again must stress that we can easily save your life, even if it will mean you end up crippled. Or we can kill you quickly. There are no guarantees that Tracks is still alive or that you can save Manny even if you do sacrifice your humanity. We must once more ask you: Is this what you want, Raoul?"

"Yes."

"This literally is the point of no return, Raoul. Once we begin, you can never go back. It is either death or transcendence. So are you absolutely certain you want this?"

"Yes! Now quit dragging your feet and get on with it!"

Presser stared at him a moment, the mask having a blank expression before she finally threw up her hands in frustration. "Fine! We tried. But when you come to regret this decision-and you always will sooner or latter-, do not bitch at us for giving you exactly what you asked for."

"I've made up my mind. And I'm done waiting."

"Very well. This is normally the point that I put you to sleep, as the procedure can be a little… disturbing. But as you are so eager to become as we are, you likely would not wish to be denied the opportunity to learn how this is done. So we shall give you a step by step experience of our process…" Presser said gently as they reached out to touch Raoul's chest.

Then the golden hands sank in up to the elbow, causing him to feel as if he had just fallen into the core of the sun itself. Through the burning agony, he felt the hands move and begin winding up him like a ball of yarn until his vision dimmed to blindness from the agonizing horror of it all.

His sight returned in suddenly jolt of light. As his vision cleared, he saw Presser hanging upside down above him and beginning the procedure. He watched her start up the batch processor then the incubator and another machine he couldn't identify.

The Sarcophagus roared and flooded with liquid metal.

Raoul felt heat growing across his entire body as the liquid covered him. He gagged and coughed when the liquid gushed up into his nostrils, then down his throat but managed to keep from vomiting it back out. It was an acrid, metallic syrup that stung his eyes and throat, like he'd caught a face-full of super hot chili powder. Even once he was completely submerged, Raoul could feel his eyes watering and nose pouring snot from the onslaught of that thick and putrid goo.

Then came the tingling across his skin, the numbing pins and needles as if his whole body was 'falling asleep'. It became a mild itch that grew into the nasty crawling under the skin that always came along with doing too much speed. As it become more and more intense, he tried to move to get away but found he was strapped down it this big machine. Soon the heat became a burning and the scratching became the tearing of a million little claws ripping him apart from the inside out.

Breaking a hand free from the restraints, Raoul tried to push open the clear dome above him. But his fingers had barely grazed its surface before the skin darkened and bubbled like melting plastic.

A silenced scream tore out from what had once been his throat, ripping his jaw away as the fluid gushed into his lungs and stomach.

Raoul writhed as the flesh split and peel back to reveal sinews and then bones beneath that crumbled away into the fluid. It had changed from shining chrome to a glittery orange which swirled and shifted as his body spasmed into pieces. Then something began condensing out of the fluid.

It started off as just a cloud made from splinters of green light, but soon grew into a larger mass of brilliance. The mass collapsed into itself and became a sphere of melted emeralds. Then it began to pulse like a heartbeat but there was something subtly off about the rhythm. Raoul watched it with wonder despite the agony he was in, until the melting finally took his eyes leaving him laying in this tomb blind and burning in darkness.

When he could see again, Raoul saw he was now floating above the liquefied mass that had once been him. The chamber was filled with a creepy green light that came from somewhere near him, creating strange shadows and flashes that dazzled him. It was only when he started to move away that Raoul realized that the light was coming from him and he was now an orb of energy held in Presser's hands as she carried him to the incubator.

She opened it up, then paused.

"There's still time, Raoul," she said quietly. "I can snuff you out right now and purge the rest. Nothing left for those vultures to pick over. The pain will end and you will have peace. You can still be free…"

Raoul found himself unable to speak, but got it across to her that he wasn't backing down. He was going to transcend no matter what the costs.

"Even if it means being our Prophet?"

That actually didn't seem too bad. In fact, Raoul thought the term sounded awesome. He was thrilled to have such power…

"You will have great power, yes," said Presser sadly. "But it will come at a steep price. The down payment is your freedom, and there will be hell to pay later. This is your last chance, Raoul. Will you die here or are you giving up both body and soul to us for revenge?"

Revenge was all he thought of… Well, no. Actually, it was mostly revenge. Part of him longed to see Tracks again, if only to say he was wrong to let him go…

"Regret?" chuckled the Devil Z. "Is it not a bit late for that?"

Raoul cling to that thought, grasping everything that Tracks had meant to him… Even if it likely wasn't true but just his own desires… He wouldn't let it go though… Raoul clung desperate to the vision of Tracks…

"We find it rather interesting how you cleave to Tracks so desperately," the Devil Z mused as they regarded the spark in their hands with a mild amusement. "But you've always been like this, haven't you? You always sought out men who treated you like shit. No matter how many girls or boys you pad out your scorecard with, you always find yourself wanting a man."

Raoul wanted to scream at them, shriek out every denial he could think of… That he wasn't a fag or a bitch or anything but a manly man. But that wasn't really true, was it?

"No, it's not," said the Devil Z. "You get so tired of always having to be the man, don't you? Always having to be the aggressive instigator… It gets so exhausting, doesn't it?"

He cringed a bit, unhappy to hear those words right then.

"Sometimes, you just want to give up control But not just to any one…"

Raoul squirmed in their hands, trying futilely to escape this conversation.

"You love submitting to more dominant, older men," said the Devil Z. "And that leads you to seek out real scumbags. Like Paul. And Tracks, too."

Angrily, Raoul balked at the idea. Tracks wasn't a scumbag… Not like Paul was…

"They are more alike than you want to admit," they said gently. "They both lied to you about so many things. Like being married, to start. They both jerked you around. They both are vain, egotistical, and controlling bastards. Both have serious substance abuse problems… Paul with the cocaine and Tracks with the bottle… Oh! Did you not realize Tracks is an alcoholic? Well, the Cybertronian equivalent of a 'functional' one. And, while Tracks has never beat you like Paul did, they both have torn you apart emotionally."

He wanted to deny it, holding onto the ideal he'd had of Tracks.

"It is an illusion," said the Devil Z. "And it is cruel and selfish of you to put Tracks up on such a pedestal. The higher you place him, the farther the inevitable fall from grace. You are only seeing the shadow of him, boy. That is not the real person, but what you always want from him. Tracks-the real Tracks- will never live up to your ideal…"

As much as he hated to admit it, they were right. He was just remembering only the good things about Tracks, twisting him into a shallow reflection of reality. But even as he recalled all Tracks' flaws and realized the big guy was just a weak and petty and pathetic as he was, Raoul kept holding on to him… Maybe out of spite… Out of a need to apologize… It might even have been…

"So you will not let him go, will you?" asked the devil. "Even seeing the worst of him, you still hold onto Tracks?"

Memories bubbled to the surface, a montage of a time from the moment Raoul first saw the Corvette sitting on the curb to the day Tracks let him drive up to Saratoga and the night after. It was a trip through all the good times and the bad. Even when Tracks was at his most overbearing and nagging, Raoul found himself hanging onto every moment no matter how obnoxious he'd found them.

"Is he worth it?"

Raoul grasped onto those memories with the desperation of a drowning man, forcing himself to remember everything about Tracks and the time they'd had together… He needed to see Tracks again…

"Do you really think he will see you?"

Why wouldn't he? Raoul thought as he held onto everything Tracks meant to him. He had to hold on to the hope… There had to be hope…

"Hope? Do you really believe that?"

He needed Tracks.

"Is that so? Funny. We recall things a bit differently…"

I don't need you… screamed a distant voice.

"You honestly think you can go back?"

I don't need anyone any more…

"Do you really think you will be forgiven?"

The sight of Tracks' anguished face just seconds before…

"After what you did?"

The smell of ozone and the sound of screaming…

"Would he even want you?"

The gravity of what he done hit Raoul like a runaway ten-ton truck. If he still had a form of flesh, he would have fallen to his knees weeping. Even without a body now, he felt an emptiness within as his heart broke to pieces.

"Oh my, I think you've made a mess…" chuckled the Devil Z as they shoved him into the incubator chamber. "It was all your fault and this is what you wished…"

As the reality crashed in on him, Raoul desperately wondered if this really what he wanted after all.

"No time to change course now," the Devil Z said sweetly as the incubator started creating the matrix to house the spark. "This is the point were you break or conjoin… It is either death or resurrection…"

If Raoul had been a better man, he would have chosen death without even a moment's thought.

It was what he deserved.

But Raoul wasn't a better man. He couldn't say he was even a mediocre one. But he was a vindictive man. It was that moment of weakness that made him give into his worst desires.

The sensation of his very essence being woven into the crystal and bound within it by electromagnetic fields was an agonizing ecstasy that surpassed anything Raoul had ever experienced. He managed to ride it out, stubbornly keeping himself from shattering by telling himself that he had to do this. He owed them… Owed it to Tracks… Owed it to a boy who hadn't even been born…

The twisted tides of pleasant pain subsided into the steady rhythm of pulsing. Once his spark finally stabilized, Presser gently took him out of the incubator and carefully squished his spark into the laser core of the synthiod body. Raoul braced himself once the chamber was sealed and flooded with the living metal/human Tang slurry, fully expecting the experience to be even worse.

But he was only made slightly uncomfortable by the sensation of the slurry forming scaffolding onto the synthiod frame to grow his new body. It felt like a total body itch which subsided as the tissues coalesced, creating the trans-organic flesh layer by layer. He felt every tendon connect to the synthiod, every muscle being fashioned fiber by fiber and stretched into place. Raoul tracked the growth of this new flesh, a fusion of meat to machine with nerves and tubes, sinews and wires.

The process seemed to drag on for what felt like centuries even though Raoul knew it had only been a few hours at most. But he couldn't hide his relief as the outer layer of polymer-infused skin finished growing and sloughed off the protective layer which dissolved into the leftover reagent fluid. As soon as the last of the fluid was siphoned off, he disengaged the harness and opened the tank.

Raoul had barely taken a few tentative steps before the sphincter was forced open and a group of heavily armed men in body armor swarmed in.

"Keep your hands were we can see them and get on the ground," barked one of the soldiers.

"God damn it, Burns," hissed Vine as he came up behind them. "He just got out of the tank! Kid's probably still disoriented…"

"You know the protocol, Vine," Burns growled back, as he and his men kept out of striking distance from Raoul. "After the microwave incident, I ain't taking any chances."

Vine just let out an angry sigh, shoving past Burns. "Look, just keep me covered, all right?"

Burns just shot him a nasty look but let Vine approach Raoul.

"Hey, Raoul?" Vine said softly. "Can you hear me?"

Raoul just stood his ground, keeping an eye on the soldiers despite wincing in pain at the brightness of the lights.

"You there, Raoul?" Vine asked, taking a thermal blanket from one of the soldiers. "Here. You might want to cover up…"

Raoul remained still as Vine carefully closed the distance between them to drape the blanket over him. He noticed that, judging by the disgusted expression on his face, that Burns definitively caught on the doctor was taking too personal an interest but seemed to have been expecting it.

"Let's get you somewhere more comfortable," said Vine as he gently lead Raoul out of the gullet chamber with the soldiers following closely.

"There's something wrong here," said Burns as he noticed the blank expression on Raoul's face.

"The boy's probably experiencing mild shock," Vine replied, ushering Raoul out of hanger and into the hallway they'd wheeled his gurney down.

"He's not responding, doc," Burns grumbled as they entered the elevator. "I don't like this…"

"For fuck's sake! He just had a near-death experience," Vine snapped. "It's a miracle he's even able to walk."

"I still don't like this," Burns repeated, keeping his gun trained on Raoul while the other soldiers kept an uneasy watch on the boy. "Either this kid's as brain damaged or he's plotting something…"

"Like what? That the boy's going to try escaping?" huffed Vine as he tucking the blanket around Raoul more securely. "We're out in the middle of nowhere! Are you seriously suggesting he's just going to run off, buck naked and without any clue where he's at?"

Burns said nothing, but kept his eye on Raoul as they escorted him down a hallway that looked like it'd been lifted straight out of mental hospital. Raoul noticed the stretchers all had restraints, the orderlies were burly soldiers, and everything had that special, choking scent of industrial disinfectants over stale urine. So when they brought him to a room, Raoul was not surprised to see it was set-up like a prison cell that had a hospital bed with padded heavy-duty restraints, a bolted down table with a cheap plastic chair, a set of drawers made of clear plastic, and one of those weird toilet-sinks with the bowl angled to the side closest to the door. There was what he guessed would be a two-way mirror over the sink part and it was beside a shower area with a waist high wall in the corner. He noted that the whole room was laid out to be easily visible to a guard standing just at the door.

"I'm afraid that, for the time being, this is where you'll be staying," Vine said sheepishly.

Burns suddenly chuckled. "Oh god… This kid's probably already very familiar with what jail's like, Vine."

"This isn't jail, Burns," Vine huffed. "This is simply a temporary housing until we determine whether or not it's safe to allow him more autonomy as we have Hoffman."

"That's only because now we can kill her if she tries anything."

Vine pointedly ignored Burns as he said softly, "I'm sorry, Raoul. Hopefully, we'll get you cleared soon."

Raoul didn't move and just stared at the doctor. He didn't even react when a couple of orderlies came in with diagnostic machines and a cart of examination equipment.

"Raoul? Are you there?" Vine asked. "Can you hear me?"

"Doc, I don't think anybody's home…" grumbled Burns, waving a hand in front of Raoul's face to no response. He then snapped his fingers and said sharply, "You in there? Hello?"

Raoul simply stared straight ahead blankly.

"Looks like we've got another Chicago John Doe," Burns said sharply, keeping a wary eye on the boy even as he lowered his gun.

"It's just shock," Vine replied, setting the clothes back down.

"Face the facts, doc. Kid's brain has been fried."

"Oh really? So are you a neurosurgeon, Burns?"

"Damn it, doc…"

"I take that as a 'no'," said Vine coldly. "But I am. And, in my professional opinion, I have to say that it looks like this young man is suffering from shock caused by undergoing a series of extremely traumatic experiences in a very short period of time. I think he needs a bit of time to get his bearings and then we can judge whether or not there's been any damage done to his brain."

"Whatever you say, Vine," Burns said just as coldly. "But I still think he's either faking it to put us off guard or it's burned out his brain… He was already a retard before this…"

Vine let out a nasty little huff. "And why do you say that?"

"It's in his file. Kid was in special ed with the other retards."

"Actually, according to what the file said, he was misdiagnosed and taken out of the program," Vine said in a snobby tone as he went over to the sink to wash his hands while the orderlies set everything up. "Though they may have been onto something. The boy is presenting with symptoms of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, aggravated by chronic recreational drug abuse. In fact, I think he might have been self-medicating given his documented preference for abusing stimulants. Maybe getting him on something like Ritalin and into therapy might improve his mental state. We also need to consider that the boy's developed post-traumatic stress disorder and was also presenting with increasingly severe anxiety recently, so we'll have to treat him for that as well…"

"Right…" muttered Burns. "I don't really give a shit what you want to do, Vine. But I am going to have a close eye kept on the boy just in case."

"Of course… of course…" Vine answered as he donned a pair of gloves, then smiled at Raoul. "We're going to do a physical exam on you now, then hook up the monitors. Is that okay?"

Raoul stayed silent and kept his gaze focused straight ahead.

"Can you hear me?"

The boy just stayed silent.

Burns just laughed nastily. "Told you his brain was fried."

"Maybe we just need to try something else," said Vine, then asked in Spanish, "[Raoul? Can you hear me?]"

Raoul was a bit thrown by the fact that Vine spoke so fluently and with a painfully obvious Cuban accent. He considered ignoring him, but decided to just nod slightly.

"[We need to do a physical examination on you. This will involve us touching you and attaching sensors to you. May we have permission to do so?]"

Another slight nod.

"[All right. If you are uncomfortable at any point, just say so and we will stop. Okay?]"

"[Get on with it]" Raoul said quietly, startling everyone including himself by how gravelly his voice was now.

"What the hell is going on here, Vine?"

"Well, Burns, it appears that the boy still comprehends Spanish," said Vine snottily as he looked Raoul over from front to back. "But you might be somewhat correct about him having brain damage. He may have lost the ability to speak and/or understand English. And this might also explain why he's showing such a pronounced lack of emotional affect. We'll have to monitor him very closely to ensure there's not been anything else."

"Great. So now there's a zombie wetback in your little freak-show…"

"No. He's not a 'zombie', Burns. The detachment and lack of emotions is very likely a symptom of his preexisting post-traumatic stress disorder that's been exasperated by current events. And I will remind you not to call him a 'wetback' again," Vine sneered coldly, before turning to a senior looking orderly who was recording everything on a camcorder. "Are you getting all this, Jones?"

"Yes, sir."

"And are you ready, Shepherd?"

"Yes, sir."

"Good. We will begin by observing the subject externally," Vine said in a dry, professional tone as an orderly set a scale down the floor. "The subject appears to have lost a lot of body fat while also showing some increase in muscle mass.[Please step up on the scale.]"

Raoul did as he was told.

"Sixty-one point sixty-nine kilos. Smith, can you bring over the stadiometer so we can get his height?"

"Yes, sir." The height rod was quickly brought it over and took the reading. "One point nine three meters, sir."

"I see…" Vine jotted the numbers down and did a bit of math. "That gives us a body mass index of sixteen point six, meaning the subject is currently underweight and in the range of moderate thinness. Will you measure the subject's wrist, neck, and waist, Smith?"

"Yes, sir."

Raoul stayed still as the orderly wrapped a tape measure around each area. "Forty-five point seventy nine centimeters for the neck, eighty-one point thirty-eight waist. Wrist is nineteen point zero five centimeters."

Vine did a few more calculations, frowning at the results. "The subject is currently at an approximate body fat percentage of four point two, placing him into the 'essential fat' range. The ideal weight for a seventeen year-old male of his height ranges from sixty-six to ninety-three kilos."

Burns looked at him in confusion. "And that means…?"

"It means this boy has the bare minimum of body fat necessary to sustain normal bodily functions. He was already somewhat underweight prior to his transformation, with his last recorded weight being sixty-seven kilos. I think we can infer the procedure had caused the subject to rapidly lose roughly six kilograms in body weight, implying that the procedure uses a subject's own fat to reconstruct their flesh and fuse it to the blank."

"Sounds like a dieter's dream…" Burns said grumpily.

"Sure, if being malnourished and dangerously thin is your thing," Vine grumbled, taking hold of Raoul's hands. "But it is correctable with the proper diet. Moving along, let us look at the subject's skin. Skin feels cold to the touch and he lacks the acne or other hormonal changes but has retained noticeable ephelides. No clubbing, cyanosis, or edema in hands. Nails of the fingers appear healthy with a pointed, narrow shape. They are thicker than average, approximately point seventy-five millimeters in thickness but thinning out near the edges. The nails are also longer than seen on the average male, with the finger nails being approximately twenty-two to twenty-four millimeters from base to tip."

"Claws," muttered Burns. "Just say the kid has claws, Vine. He's got them on his toes, too, just like the others do."

Vine pointedly ignored him as he and the two orderlies walked around to give Raoul a more through look over. "Subject is dark skinned and self-identifies as being of Puerto Rican descent. He also is uncircumcised, which is unusual but not unheard. Subject does not appear to have any external symptoms of disease, venereal or otherwise."

Burns gave him a nasty look. "Is that really necessary, Vine?"

"Actually, yes. We need to be sure he's clean."

"Why? You planning on fucking him, Vine?"

"No, Burns. That would be unethical and he's a minor."

"Then why are you bothering with this?"

"Because we have no idea if the procedure kills off any pathogens the subject has prior to going in. We have determined that the gut microbiome does survive from what we've seen in the fecal samples from Hoffman and the Doe. It's also been augmented with some kind of microscopic machines."

Burns frowned. "And you think other shit might have been carried over?"

"It's possible."

"The other two are clean, right?"

"Yes, but Hoffman was not sexually active about a year prior. We don't have any medical records on the Chicago Doe, but he tested negative so we can presume he's not been sexually active for a while either," said Vine in a clipped, curt tone. "The boy here is highly promiscuous and comes from a background which doesn't prioritize using protection or routine annual physicals. It's almost certain that he hasn't been checked for anything in the past two years, so it's not too much a stretch to assume he'd have some form of sexual transmitted disease. He was also involved intimately with a man who was HIV positive within the past five years, so it's best to make sure he's clean now rather than have one of us get infected."

"It's a bit much to assume that. I thought he'd was tested already."

"He is technically 'negative', but HIV can take years to present. So I'm going to assume he's infected because exposure to bodily fluids can cause transmission, and we are going to doing things like taking blood samples. For the safety of my team and yours, I want to be sure he's not going to give anybody AIDS or something," Vine replied coldly. "We also need to document any diseases or other health issues the subject has, as per orders. Now, may we please continue the exam?"

Burns grumbled but back off, looking at Raoul like he had just crawled out of a sewer.

"Thank you. Jones? When we do the blood work, we will need to run tests for hepatitis, syphilis, and other venereal diseases as the subject might not be presenting with symptoms yet. We also need to check that all his vaccinations are up to date," huffed Vine as he turned back to the boy. "The subject's body hair had been initially been removed by the procedure prior to reconstruction of the dermis. It has regrown and coloration has remained a pale gray with violet or purple tones. The hair appears to be visibly thicker and has a significantly healthier appearance overall. The most notable change is that the subject now has a significant growth of facial hair the same length as the hair on his head, approximately eleven centimeters overall."

"Should we get a more precise measurement, sir?"

"No, Jones. Given what we've seen with Hoffman, his hair likely has greatly accelerated growth cycles. We'll get a measurement and take samples in about seventy-two hours once it's stabilized." He took a step back to get a better look at Raoul's body. "The subject is covered in extensive scarring, including ones that show where the bullets entered and exited his body just hours earlier. Jones, I want special care taken to document them as this appears to be evidence that the low-level healing factor the subject had previously presented with is now greatly enhanced post-transformation."

"Yes, sir."

"There's a marking on his chest, sir," Jones said as he pointed it out. "Like the symbol that appears on the more aggressive N.B.E.'s."

"Yes," said Vine quietly. "It does appear that the subject was branded with an iron. Please note that this brand, as well as most of the other scarring was on his body before placement in the Sarcophagi and has been retained. This is different than the other two subjects, as the branding mark is not present. Their skins were completely blemish free and perfectly healthy otherwise."

"Seriously?" huffed Burns. "'Perfectly healthy' my ass! The Chicago Doe is covered in scars and wounds."

"Because he frequently engages in acts of self-harm and has made several attempts to suicide," Vine replied quietly. "The Chicago Doe's scars occurred after his transformation and we lack any documentation of prior scars or markings such as tattoos. So he's not exactly a good example of what the procedure actually does. Our best example so far for how human bodies are altered is currently Hoffman, who had all her surgical scars were removed. She's also stated that other humans who had been altered also had scars and other blemishes removed from their skin as well. And yet all of this boy's have been carried over and the bullet wounds were also allowed to scar."

"But why?" asked Jones.

"Spite, most likely," grumbled Burns. "She's kind of a bitch."

"Burns, let me remind you that your opinions are not required or requested," Vine growled softly as he wrapped a sphygmomanometer around the boy's arm to gauge his blood pressure. "One ninety-two over sixty-three. Optimal for a boy his age, but not what was expected given the subject's extensive history of drug abuse and background. Pulse is… uh…" As he took hold of Raoul's wrist to get a pulse, Vine's brow furrowed in confusion. He let go and pressed his fingers against the boy's neck, but his frown only deepened. "Pulse is steady but faint. We'll need to keep an eye on this."

Vine took up an ophthalmoscope and began looking at Raoul's eyes, flashing a light in them at one point. "Subject's has fully functional nictitating membranes and tapetum lucidum in both eyes. He is also displaying sensitivity to light and his pupils now resemble a cat's, being a vertical slit instead of rounded. This likely is because his eyes have been altered to have better night vision than a normal human. We will need to test this to determine if this is the case." He smiled at the boy, holding up the pen light. "[Please follow the light.]"

Raoul did so, letting the doctor run him through tests to check the nerves of his eyes.

"The subject's eyes appear to be otherwise normal, with the only other major anomaly being that the pigmentation of his irises have shifted in color at several points since he was taken out the chamber. Most notable changes being from brown, the subject's natural color, to red and are now a pale gold color. The changes appear to be random, but they may also be in response to his environment."

"May I speak freely, sir?" asked Jones as he moved in cautiously to get a better shot of Raoul's eyes.

"You may, sergeant."
"I think the changes might be linked to his mood," Jones said hesitantly as he stepped back. "We've observed similar changes in both Hoffman and the Chicago Joe's eyes when they have been… uh, emotional. We've been using the changes to determine what mood they're in, especially with the Chicago Doe. We've worked out that red is 'bad' and gold is 'extremely bad'."

"And what defines 'extremely bad', sergeant?"

"Well, sir, the last time we observed gold eyes in the altered humans was when the Chicago Doe went apeshit… eh, became highly aggressive after we had to restrain him to keep him from harming himself again." Jones let slip a nervous laugh. "It's kind of weird that this kid's got them but he's being so… docile."

"Noted, Jones."

Burns' frown deepened. "And we're just going to ignore this?"

"No. But since the subject is not displaying any aggression or hostility, we're going to have to presume that the occurrence of eye color shifts is purely coincidental until we get more evidence. We will do further tests on the subject's vision," said Vine as he put the ophthalmoscope down and took the otoscope up. He looked in the boy's ears, pausing to take more notes. "There are fibers in the ear canal and across the surface of the eardrum that resemble fine gold or copper wiring. Fibers or fine hairs are also present on the outer ear, being most visible on the triangular fossa, crus of the helix, and along the inside anterior edge of the helix. Subject has piercings in both ears, one in the right lob and two in the left, which were retained during the procedure. The external ear also appears to be slightly deformed and enlarged, resembling those a bat or feline with distinct Darwin's tubercle present in both ears. Subject can also move them in a fashion similar to a feline's in response to stimuli such as touch or to better focus on sounds. We can infer that the subject's hearing has been altered, but we will need to do more testing to gauge how extensive the changes have been. There are no other abnormalities or damage to his ears."

"Yes, sir. He has been flattening them like a pissed off house-cat."

Raoul frowned angrily, but quickly went back the staring blankly ahead and forced his ears to stand up straight.

"Well, that got a reaction," Vine mused. "[Please tilt your head slightly back so I can look into your nostrils.]"

Raoul did as asked, letting the doctor look up both.

"Interesting," Vine muttered. "The subject's nasal passages are perfectly normal. There's no signs of chronically insufflating cocaine or any damage from his smoking habit." He jotted down a note then took up a tongue depressor. "[I need to look at your mouth and throat. Please open your mouth as wide as you can and say: Ah.]"

Raoul did as instructed.

"Well, this is… uh, unusual. Can you get a good shot of this, Jones? And Shepherd, make sure to photograph this," said Vine as he held the boy's mouth open for them to see in. "The dentition is not typical of an adolescent human male, resembling that of a baboon or a bear. The enamel is intact but has a distinctive metallic color which I can only described as a 'chromed pearl'. Tissue of the mouth and throat appear to be healthy, but the tongue is covered in lingual papillae, again like a cat's." He moved the depressor far back on Raoul's tongue. "Subject also lacks a gag reflex."

As Shepherd took pictures, Vine moved the depressor around to give him clear views. He even pushed down a bit to get Raoul to open his mouth even wider. "There is scarring in the mouth indicative of repeated blows to the face in the past. There is another, more defined scar running from the mentolabial sulcus to the vermilion border of the lower lip at the midline, across the tongue and down to approximately 7 millimeters above the laryngeal prominence. The frenula of the lower lip and tongue appear to have been split into halves, as does the epiglottis. Shepherd, do your best to get a clear shot and make sure to take one of the slight gap between the mandibular central incisors."

Vine put the otoscope and depressor aside, then gently started to feel along Raoul's jaw and throat. "The jugulodigastric lymph nodes, salivary, and thyroid glands feel normal. The hyoid bone feels like it's been split or damaged, which might explain why the boy isn't being particularly talkative. [Does it hurt to speak or swallow, Raoul?]"

"[No.]"

"[Have you been experiencing any pain since exiting the chamber?]"

"[No.]"

"[Have you noticed anything else unusual or noteworthy about your condition? Please, be as specific as you possibly can.]"

"[No.]"

"Interesting…" Vine added to his notes, then went back to studying the boy's face. "There is an external scar along the throat again at the midline, starting just above the laryngeal prominence that is connected to the internal one. It's obscured by the beard. Can you get a picture Shepherd?"

"Yes, sir," he said, dutifully taking one as Vine parted the hair.

"There is also a cluster of four indentations on both the mastoid processes," said Vine, turning Raoul's head to show the other man. "The smallest being circular approximately two to two and a half millimeters in diameter and the largest being a rectangle approximately eight by three millimeters."

Shepherd took the pictures and back away slightly.

"[Please bite down as hard as you can.]" As the boy did so, he felt under his chin. "[Now, open wide please and hold your mouth open.]"

Calmly Raoul did what he was asked, letting Vine try to force his mouth close. When he was done, the boy said quietly, "[Is it really necessary to do a cranial nerve assessment?]"

"[We need to have as much information as possible]" Vine replied, a bit startled. "[You underwent a procedure…]"

"[I died and got made a robot]" said Raoul in a flat tone. "[Well, technically I'm a cyborg. Can you really compare that to a normal human?]"

"[That's what we're trying to establish. So far, you are the only subject who has cooperated fully. The other subjects we have are… uh, less than forthcoming with information. This might be the only chance to get data. Will you please allow us to study you?]"

"[Fine. Do whatever you want.]"

Vine gently felt along his shoulders, then the biceps and lower arms. "There's no edema but there does seem to be an overall increase in tissue density judging by feel. We'll need to do imaging to confirm it. Jones, I want prep started for CT scans and also need a full-body MRI, too."

"A what?" asked Burns.

"A magnetic resonance image which allows us to do deep scans of a body," Vine explained curtly. "That way we can determine the full extent of the alterations done to him."

"We already know it just puts a bunch of meat over a robot," grumbled Burns. "The resonance thing sounds like it'll cost a mint! You think the brass are going to just let you buy one?"

"We already have one. It's the big tube thing we put Hoffman through because the x-rays came back completely blank."

"Wait. Didn't that thing also fuck up and quit working during that?" huffed Burns.

"There was due to a power outage. We haven't been able to get her to cooperate to try again. Not that it matters. We've had a lot of them recently."

"Because keeping the Zed contained and under surveillance has been taking up a lot of power," said Burns. "Not the mention all the gizmos and crap you scientists keep bringing in are straining things to the limit."

"Funny. I thought it because the brass went with the lowest possible bidder on everything possible," Vine said in a brisk tone, carefully moving Raoul's arms and wrists. "The joints of the subject's arms and shoulder are normal. There's not edema in either limb. The epitrochlear lymph nodes are also normal." He pressed his fingers against the boy's abdomen, ending at a point just above his penis. "Everything feels like it's in perfect working order. [Please turn your head and cough]"

Letting out a short cough, Raoul suddenly looked back at the doctor with a vicious smile. "[You've been waiting to do that all day, haven't you Martin?]"

"Jones, I will have Dr. Reid finish examining the subject," Vine said sharply, taking a step back and removing his gloves. "For the time being, I want him hooked up to monitors. And we'll take his temperature orally."

Raoul let his face drop back to a blank expression the orderlies wrapped a set of spirograph belts around his chest then placed the electrode pads onto his torso and forehead. They then dressed him before coaxing him to lie down and attached a pulse oximeter on his finger.

"Sir," said Jones as they watched the screens nervously. "There's something wrong with his vitals…"

"I've noticed," asked Vine, look at offending monitor after putting a thermometer into the boy's mouth. "It's all hooked up correctly, right?"

"Yes, sir."

"Subject's temperature is 48*C," Vine said, pressing the back of his hand against the boy's forehead. "But there's no signs of a severe fever. In fact, the subject's skin still feels extremely cold. I'll have Reid take a rectal measurement when we come to do the rest of the exam. In the meantime, I want a strip thermometer placed on him."

"It's not just his temperature that's weird, sir," said Jones quietly as another orderly smooth the strip onto an electrode free part of Raoul's forehead. "His pulse and all the other vitals are weird too."

"Are you sure?" Vine asked again, checking the monitors and looking over the chart recorder. "Are we sure everything working correctly? Perhaps there's some kind of malfunction…"

"I'm… I'm not sure, sir," said the orderly. "But I don't think it's a malfunction, though. The other two also have really strange vitals. We can't even get an ECG or EKG on the Doe. Their pulses aren't irregular but the rhythm isn't normal. And they both had abnormal body temperatures as noted with the current subject. Skin feels cold, oral and rectal temperatures indicating terminal fevers. And last time we took the Doe's vitals, everything kept going haywire"

"That's what you get when Powell oversee things…" Vine grumbled, then went back to professionalism. "If it is an issue with the equipment, do we have any backups?"

"Yes, sir. But last time, we determined that it wasn't anything to do with the equipment. Do you want me to switch them out just in case, sir?"

Before Vine could answer, the monitors suddenly flickered and started showing vital signs that were perfectly normal, if slightly elevated, for a human being. They all watched read-outs for a moment, then Vine said quietly, "Maybe we needed to wait a moment to get an accurate reading. The boy has had one hell of day."

"Awfully convenient," Burns muttered darkly. "You notice the boy's vitals are fucked up and start talking about how the other two have the same, then suddenly his goes back to normal? Really not liking this, doc…"

"You can't seriously be saying the boy has conscious control of his involuntary functions to the point he can fool our equipment, can you Burns?" Vine huffed. "You're being a bit paranoid."

Burns gave him a dirty look. "All I'm saying is that it's really convenient about the timing, Vine. And it's my job to be paranoid."

"Look, this kid has been through the fucking ringer, Burns. And this is the first time we've been able to get hold of someone right after they've been altered by the Sarcophagus. We know nothing about what happens in the first few days after the change. His vitals might still be stabilizing."

"So why haven't they gone back to normal for Hoffman and the Chicago Doe? They were altered months ago."

"It's possible that, given both of them were over the age of forty, the process which altered them may have caused their bodies to have abnormal vitals. Plus, neither of them had a healing factor prior to being altered. Perhaps, given the boy's youth and his preexisting mutation, his body might have responded better to the procedure than Hoffman or the Doe."

Burns' jaw stiffened a bit, like he was biting back a nasty comment about just what kind of 'responses' Vine was really interested in. Instead, he said curtly, "Since you're the expert here, Vine, I have to take your word for it. But I am going to have a guard posted at the door. And there will be at least two guards in the room whenever you and your staff are with the boy. Am I clear, Vine?"

"Yes, Burns," he grumbled. Then Vine picked up a little controller attached to the bed and put it in Raoul's hand. "[If you need anything, just push the green button. We'll be back in an hour to finish the exam. Okay?]"

Raoul just stared blankly up at the ceiling as the men filed out and locked the door behind them. No sooner had they left did Raoul cut on his comm-link and scanned for the Reflector on an encrypted line.

"[Can you guys hear me?]" he asked as soon as he found them, speaking in Cybertronian just in case.

"[Yes, we're here]" grumbled Viewfinder. "[We're sitting in a box with a fucking label on our lens cap!]"

"[Can they eavesdrop on us?]"

"[No. They know we have a language, but haven't quite figured out that the 'static' and 'interference' they keep hearing over their radios is actually us talking. But we do appreciate you using an encrypted line. The Autobots have been actively eavesdropping on Sector Seven for a few Earth standard years now.]"

"[Is Tandy okay?]"

"[I'm fine]" she replied meekly. "[They labeled me too and put us all in the same box with some of your stuff.]"

"[All right. Viewfinder? Can you check-]"

"[There are cameras everywhere]" he huffed. "[Not very good ones, but there is extensive surveillance throughout the base. And according to the spy drones, there are at least two in your room.]"

"[Spy drones?]"

"[The little batty bat sent a swarm of them out]" said a curt British woman's voice.

"[My name is Ratbat]" came another voice, somehow managing to be extremely haughty despite sounding like a squeaky toy on helium. "[I am a valuable and high ranking member of the Decpticon command. And I will not be spoken about in such a disrespectful manner!]"

"[He also used to be a Senator]" said Viewfinder.

Raoul let out a little huff. "[That explains a lot…]"

"[I take it that you're Hellrider, aren't you?]" the British voice said.

"[Raoul]" he replied quietly. "[My name is Raoul.]"

"[Not any more]" said the woman. "[You took the devil up on their offer, Prophet. And they took your name… among other things…]"

"[And who are you?]" Raoul asked sharply, forcing himself to keep a blank expression.

"[Painkiller]" she replied. "[Formerly Dr. Susan Hoffman and now Harbinger of the Devil Z.]"

"[And who's the other guy? The Chicago John Doe.]"

"[I frankly have no idea]" Painkiller said bluntly. "[I think it might be 'Slick' because that's what the others call him, but I'm not sure if that's his new designation or if it was the name he had when he was a human. All I'm sure of is he's also an acolyte, as you and I are.]"

"[Never heard of anybody name 'Slick' before… Except maybe as a nickname or something]" Raoul said as he looked around the ceiling until he found the camera hung up in a corner to get the widest view possible. "[Is there a way to cut the cameras off?]"

Viewfinder sighed. "[Ratbat is working on it. Not much we can do to help, what with being stuck. In a box. With your undergarments. In a locked room. Under constant surveillance.]"

"[Already planning on leaving?]" asked Painkiller with a little huff.

"[I'm going to break you and Slick out too.]"

"[You might be able to get away with Slick, given his alt scales to a size that can fit in a human pocket. And you yourself won't have any problems as long as you take the time repaint yourself]" Painkiller said flatly. "[But I'm afraid you'll have a hell of time taking me any where.]"

"[Why not?]"

"[My alts are a space jet and a futuristic tank]" she replied dryly.

"[Then leave it behind.]"

"[What?]"

"[Leave your transtector behind]" Raoul repeated. "[We can always come back for it later.]"

"[Tell me]" said Painkiller in an even drier tone. "[How would you feel if I cut you cock and bollocks off, then told you to leave them behind?]"

"[What the fuck?! What does that have to do with this?]"

"[More than you realize]" she said. "[That transtector is more than just a fancy suit of robot armor we wear. It literally is part of our bodies now. So leaving it behind is actually like having your block and tackle chopped off. Sure, you can live without them but you aren't going to be very happy about it. And lack of contact with the transtector for too long has rather nasty consequences.]"

"[Like what?]"

"[It's hard to explain]" said Painkiller. "[I'm not quite sure how to describe it, but you will feel… empty. Broken and incomplete. I think the best analogy is how one feels after every miscarriage when you've been trying for a child for years… Or finding out that there's been a cancer rotting your insides for years that the doctors ignored until it was far too late. Or losing a beloved parent or a lover. To be honest, it's really difficult to put into words just how profound and deep a loss it is. It is something you'll only understand when it happens to you.]"

"[I think I get your point…]" Raoul said, recalling his mother's dead, staring eyes. "[But I'm not sure it's going to be too much a problem for me. I haven't got a transtector yet.]"

"[Oh, you have one]" she said quietly. "[It's setting in the same hanger they're holding Knock-Out in.]"

"[And I will have you know, boy, that I have suffered dearly trying to protect that body!]" Knock-Out huffed over the line. "[I have been manhandled, scuffed, and otherwise hideously abused!]"

Raoul sighed. "[Come on… it can't be that bad.]"

"[My finish has been destroyed!]" Knock-Out hissed angrily. "[You know, I didn't have to stay behind. I could've just taken off with Hook and the others when the humans showed up. I could've just left you like you were, unfinished and looking like absolute trash! But I didn't! I stayed on to the very end, making sure that you'd be the best you possibly could be.]"

"[I distinctly recall ordering you to fall back with the others]" snapped Ratbat in an annoyed tone. "[You'd already installed his hands. He was already finished, Knock-Out.]"

"[The Pit he was! There was so much more work left to be done!]"

"[It was merely some silly cosmetic features]" Ratbat grumbled. "[It was nothing vital. I told you to leave it and retreat.]"

Knock-Out gasped in shock. "[Nothing vital?! How dare you say such things! There was so much left to do, all the fine detailing and cleaning up. Did you really think I was going to just abandon my work? When I was so close to making him a true work of art!]"

Ratbat began to argue but another voice cut him off.

"[He's got a point, Ratty]" they said cheerily. "[You can't just expect an artist to abandon his work. Especially not when it's so close to being finished!]"

"[Thank you, Buzzy]" said Knock-Out.

"[Wait… That's Buzzsaw?]" Raoul asked, confused by the vocal dissonance between the deranged, screeching murder bird and the chirping, bubbly voice he'd just heard.

"[Unfortunately…]" sighed Ratbat. "[We're currently doing recon to size up the human's defenses. And so far, they have been shockingly pathetic overall.]"

"[So, when are you breaking us out?]" Raoul asked, forcing himself not to giggle at how ridiculous Ratbat sounded.

"[We're still working on that]" Ratbat replied. "[If we were just trying to get you, Painkiller, and Slick…]"

Knock-Out made a dramatic little cough over the feed.

"[As well as Knock-Out out, there would be no issue besides dealing with the kill-switches. Soundwave has already figured out the frequency for the triggers and has altered it so the humans cannot activate them now. But the objective is much bigger than that.]"

"[Let me guess: You want to extract the Devil Z too?]" asked Painkiller.

"[Ideally, yes] said Ratbat. "[But we also are trying to rescue Gilmer and then find out where they are holding Blood as well. We will need their assistance in locating and recovering Dauros.]"

"[I'd have thought Blood wouldn't want his stupid aft back]" muttered Viewfinder. "[I mean, if he wants another bull-head bastard on his team, why not asked Shockwave to send Skullgrin down? Or how about Iguanus? There's plenty of reptiles and other creepy-crawlies on Earth to keep him happy…]"

"[Eh, maybe we shouldn't let Iggy come here]" Buzzsaw said coldly. "[That pervert would probably be too busy trying to shag all the scalies to get any work done.]"

There was a brief silence, then Viewfinder said in a flat tone, "[Buzzsaw… you, of all mechs, have no right to call anybody else a pervert.]"

"[Yeah]" chimed in Spectro. "[He's a spike-less, creepy little pervert.]"

Dropping the chirpy act as his voice took on a viciousness that made Raoul cringe, Buzzsaw rasped, "[Oh… I'm gonna do the lot of you for that…]"

Ratbat let out a deep, annoyed sigh. "[Gentle-mechs, now is not the time for this. We have a mission to complete and wresting victory from the Autobots is far more important than your stupid little murder hard-ons.]"

"[Says another mech who had his cut out when the nobs tried to domesticate him]" chuckled Spyglass.

"[Actually, I never had one to begin with.]" When a shocked silence overtook the chat, Ratbat sighed again. "[What? I happened to have always been a neuter. It's a perfectly valid choice you know…]"

"[Yeah, but don't the Senate have some kind of rule about not letting virgins in or something?]" asked Viewfinder with dull surprise.

"[That stupid law only applies if you have the… uh, equipment. Which, as I just said, I have never had. You can't be a virgin if you can't have sex. Hence why I had no problem during my tenure on the Senate.]"

"[Besides pissing off the rest of them and almost getting domesticated for it,']" added Viewfinder with a little giggle.

"[The circumstances of my unfortunate current state is of no importance to the matter at hand]" Ratbat squeaked angrily. "[We need to quit wasting time and work on freeing our fellow Decepticons from their human captors.]"

"[I'm not a Decepticon]" Raoul said sharply.

"[Yes, you are]" Ratbat huffed back. "[You're one of us now, Hellrider. You even have the insignia on your breast as a human. You're marked, boy. You belong to us now.]"

"[I don't belong to anybody. I'm my own man.]"

"[But you're not a man any more, Hellrider. Never really were one to begin with]" said Ratbat snottily. "[Face the facts, boy. You're not a human being any more. When you went into the chamber, you entered as a worthless, pathetic human and left as something far superior. Raoul had to die so Hellrider could live.]"

"[You're full of shit, Batty.]"

Ratbat just giggled softly. "[Deny it all you like. But there's no going back, Hellrider. You're one of us now. You chose this. You did it.]"

"[…shut up.]"

"[You did it]" Ratbat repeated giddily. "[This is what you wished.]"

"[Shut up.]"

"[This is everything you wanted, Hellrider!]" Ratbat squeaked in a sing-song tone. "[You did it.]"

"[I said shut up…]"

"[But, you did it!]" giggled Ratbat. "[You got exactly what you wanted. After all, there's nothing wrong with ambition…]"

Raoul stiffened as soon as he heard that phrase, suddenly and painfully aware that it wasn't just a motto but a trigger code. He could feel the detachment wash over him, drowning out Raoul and letting Hellrider come back to the surface. And there was nothing he could do to stop it.

But to his own surprise, Hellrider was having none of Ratbat's shit either. "[I told you: Shut. Up. I'm in this for one fucking thing: revenge. And I don't care what I have to do to get it. Now, shut your fucking mouth.]"

"[Your disrespectful attitude and lack of team spirit has been noted]" Ratbat huffed. "[We will speak to you latter, once we have decided on proper disciplinary action. Viewfinder, I will need to speak to you about assessing the security from the inside. The rest of you are to stand by and await further orders. Over and out.]"

With that, the comm-link cut off, leaving just the faint beeps and buzzes of the monitoring machines.

Hellrider laid there a while, waiting until Raoul settled down from the panic attack and accepted that he was going to be a passenger for a while, then sat up and reached over to cut all the machines off. The upper part of the scrubs came off, with electrodes and belts next as he slid out of the bed. He walked across the floor, noting how painfully cold it was against his bare feet. Leaning against the sink, he studied his face closely and wondered why the hell Presser had kept the ugly freckles all over his skin. The beard he could live with, provide he got the chance to comb it out and trim up a bit. And he could also live with all the scars, too. They gave him a rather macho, rugged look in both of his opinions.

Except that fucking Decepticon insignia branded in the middle of his chest. He'd have to do something about that.

Hellrider went over to the chest of drawers and took out a couple of towels, bringing them over to the sink. He washed his hands using the gritty powder soap that smelled like cyanide and fake cherry candy, then wet one towel and worked some soap into it. Carefully, Hellrider wiped the brand and the area around it, mentally hating that he didn't have any alcohol on hand for what he was about to. A bottle of vodka, a sharp sewing needle and some thread would be very useful right now.

But he'd just have to suck it up and hope that healing factor was still working as he pinched a corner of the brand. Extending a claw, Hellrider took care as he started slicing the skin to avoid hitting too much tissue underneath. It hurt like hell, but he was a bit shocked to find that he was actually enjoying the sensation.

By the time the orderlies burst in to restrain him, he'd manged to peel back about an inch of skin.

Hellrider didn't resist as they pulled him back to the bed and called Vine back in.

"What in god's name…" Vine gasped, taking a look at the deliberate and neatly sliced flap of flesh before grabbing a towel and pressing it to the boy's chest. "Phelps, get me the emergency kit."

He stayed passive as Vine started cleaning the wound.

"[Why did you do this?]" asked Vine when he began to suture the wound.

"[Because I want rid of it.]"

"[May I ask why?]"

"[May I ask why you are the doctor they called in?]"

"[Because I'm literally the only person on site who speaks Spanish.]"

"[That's bullshit]" Hellrider snapped back. "[There has to be more guys on your staff that are Latino or Hispanic.]"

"[Let me rephrase that: I am the only qualified person on site who speaks Spanish]" huffed Vine. "[The others are either soldiers or on the janitorial staff.]"

"[So why can't you get one of them to translate?]"

"[I was already close by. And I'd rather not rely on a layman to be a translator as they likely won't be able to properly relay the information between you and another doctor] Vine said in a snobbish tone.

"[You're something of a control freak, aren't you?]"

"[No. I just don't want someone without any medical training to handle a delicate situation.]

"[Where you from?]" Hellrider asked suddenly. "[Somewhere in Florida?]"

"[Why are you asking?]"

"[Because you talk like a Cuban. And most of them are from Florida.]"

"[Actually, I was born and raised Union City, New Jersey.]

"[Havana on the Hudson, huh?]" he chuckled coldly. "[Let me guess: you're family name was 'Parra' but you changed it to sound whiter, didn't you?]"

"[And why would I do that?]"

"[Obviously to further you're own career. Because you are clearly doing your damnedest to pass yourself off as a lily-white, heterosexual yuppie WASP. So tell me: how the hell did a balsero faggot like you wind up a brain surgeon?]"

Vine's jaw tensed as he paused bandaging to take a deep breath. "[Provocation? Really, Raoul?]"

"[Didn't answer my question, Martin.]"

"[Because I'm not here to answer questions about my personal life. I am here first and foremost to study your condition.]" Vine turned to Phelps. "Since the subject appears to be adverse to being monitored, we will not reattach the electrodes or the other sensors. I want you to keep a close eye on the camera in case he attempts to harm himself again. I think we should be fine leaving him free to move for the time being."

"[What?']" laughed Hellrider as Vine started to walk out with the orderlies. "[Ain't you going to strap me down to the bed? I thought you'd be type to be into that shit.]"

Vine turned back to him. "[That shouldn't be necessary. But if you try cutting or otherwise harming yourself again, I will have you restrained.]"

He laughed a bit louder. "[Aw well… You ain't really my type anyway.]"

"[You're right, I'm not]" Vine replied with nasty smile. "[You're more interested in much, much older men, preferable redheaded, and able to turn in a fucking car.]"

He just shrugged. "[What can I say? I'm a firm believer in going big or going home…]"

Vine's brow furrowed as he thought over something, then slowly said, "[I really cannot figure out how a six foot four human can engage in sexual relations with a thirty some-odd foot tall robot… The logistics of how either of you could do anything that wouldn't have killed you baffle me. Did you hang off it like a koala or something?]"

"[Let's just say where there's a will, there's a way.]"

"[…right. I will be back with Dr. Reid and the cameramen shortly to finish examining you.]" At that, he step out and shut the door behind himself.

There was a momentary silence before he heard a little coughing noise in the back of his mind.

"Do you really want to piss off the guy who can have you tied to the bed and put under heavy sedation?" asked Presser.

"I think it's kind of fun to fuck with him," Hellrider replied just under his breath. "Martin needs to get taken down a peg or twenty."

"While we agree with that wholeheartedly, I know Martin quite well. He's really not the type to put up with a patient's bullshit."

"I'm not a patient. I'm a subject."

Presser sighed. "Well, yes. Still doesn't mean it's a bright idea to piss off a man with the power to have you vivisected."

"That was Powell."

"No. Powell wanted to do a postmortem on you. Martin would be much more likely to cut you up will you're still alive."

"You know, I was under the impression you were friends or something."

"We were. Which is why I know how ruthless Martin can get, especially when somebody starts calling him slurs and making cracks about him being in the closet."

"He's gay, isn't he?"

"Yes." Presser paused, then added bluntly, "You are actually just his type: young, dumb, and hung."

"So you think I should 'play nice' and see if I can 'convince' him to get me out of here?"

"No. The Baroness is currently working on that. She's coordinating COBRA's plan to extract you, Hoffman, Slick, Knock-Out and ourselves."

"And then we'll be their prisoners, won't we?"

"We want to say 'yes', but it's more likely that you're going to take matters in your own hands. Which is fine by us, since we already know that we're all going to end up in the Decepticons' hands no matter what."

"No."

Another sigh. "Look, we get it. You don't want anything to do with the Decepticons, but right now they're the only group out there that actually aren't trying to completely fuck all of us over."

"What about the Autobots?"

"They are hindered by their own morality. The Autobots- as well as the Joes- are trying to do things the 'right' way, meaning that they are going to attempt to work out a deal with Sector Seven. And we can tell you right off the bat that such a deal is only going to end badly for everyone."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes. I used to work for these bastards. As much as they owe Metalhawk for all his assistance and even knowing that the Autobots are very pro-human, Sector Seven is first and foremost a government agency founded not only to study anomalies and extraterrestrial life, but also to secure, contain, and 'protect' the general populace from them. Even if that means keeping a pair of teen boys locked up for the rest of their lives."

"Pair? The only teen here is me."

"They're going to force the Autobots to let them keep Chip in 'protective custody'. Which they are going to be forced to do very soon because Starscream had us drop the hammer on him by triggering the nanites to start basically eating him alive. They will have no other choice but to bring him here as the Autobots don't know enough about human anatomy to save Chip. Vine will suggest putting him through the same procedure you underwent, since you survived as well as stayed relatively mentally stable, and Prowl makes the call to let Chip do it."

"He could refuse, you know?"

"He didn't," Presser said in a soft tone. "We've been talking to Chip on and off in his dreams. The boy's very keen on becoming a robot, if only out of scientific curiosity. We even found him a transtector that is especially appealing to his tastes."

"…seriously? You let them force me to be a piece of shit Lamborghini, but Chip gets to pick his alt?"

"You know you can scan a different car model and switch, right?" huffed Presser. "And we cannot really say that Chip's choice is exactly the best option he could pick, even once he goes back to the Autobots…"

"Oh, come on. How bad could it be?"

"He's chosen to be a minibot with a turbo-thumper as his alt."

Hellrider's frowned a bit. "Turbo-thumpers are basically rabbits, right?"

"Yes. We did offer to give him an alt form of a cyber-morphic predator or a nitrotyger. Something impressive and not likely to get stomped on by your average Decepticon thug. But no! He went with being a tiny bunny-bun."

"Why the hell would he need to worry about 'cons?"

"Because Chip is going to get dragged along with you when you escape. And we all are going to be immediately taken to the Spacebridge, sent to Cybertron, and be kept under Shockwave's watchfully eye until you can convince them of your undying loyalty to the cause."

"This implies that I'm actually going to buy into their bullshit."

"You will not, at least not in the near future," Presser said. "You are going to bail on the Decepticons after talking Shockwave into allowing you, Slick, and Chip to return to Earth. The reason he even allows this at all is because you will do three important things that will give Shockwave an advantage in his quest to take over the Decepticons. Two of which involve grave-robbing and performing questionable rituals to resurrected the dead."

"What's the third thing?"

"You will get Needlenose laid."

Hellrider blinked in confusion. "I'm sorry, what?"

"We understand that it sounds very odd, but rest assured that Needlenose finally losing his virginity is a surprisingly crucial step in helping Shockwave's plans. Plus, the way you do that also gets Needlenose to be slightly less of an uptight prick to you, which will pay off for us greatly in the future."

"Look, I don't know what you've seen, but I ain't taking one for the team and fucking Needy."

"You will not need to. Hellrider is going to give up his 'virginity' to another mech any way."

"It's going to be Soundwave, isn't it?"

"No."

"Then who will it be? I take it you know their name."

"Yes. But we are not going to tell you it. We want it to be a pleasant surprise for you."

He went quiet a moment as a fluttery feeling of hope washed over him, then asked, "Is Tracks alive?"

"Martin and the others will be here soon," Presser said suddenly. "We must end our conversation now."

"All you have to say is yes or no."

But there was only the sound of silence, soon broken by the doctors and the orderlies.

He let them do whatever they needed without any resistance, but kept his answers to Vine short and blunt. Once they'd finished the physical with blood draws and a urine sample, they filed out of the room and left Hellrider laying on the bed as he mulled over what Presser had said. Exhaustion finally overtook him and soon he fell into a fitful, nightmare filled sleep.