[Fic] A dangerous game, chapter 6
Title: A dangerous game
Rating: T
Summary: Games aren't so much fun when someone dies; but is Jazz really responsible or is someone else playing games at Iacon Academy?
Prowl took care not to show any outward concern, but internally he was terrified. He had been gamed once already, by Jazz, and that attack had only intended to intimidate. If Icon truly was a murderer - and the weight of circumstantial evidence to date suggested that he was - then he could well be in serious danger.
The walk back to Jazz's room seemed interminable. What might trigger him? It could be anything at all. Was he safer alone or with others? Veneer's actions had only harmed himself, but Piper's had been viciously heedless of who might be nearby. Had they known what they were doing, as they did it? Watching themselves act and unable to stop? Or had it somehow blanked out their awareness along with their control? His own experience had suggested that he would be aware; not at all a palatable prospect. His self-control had been enough to save him last time, but would it be enough this time?
Jazz had insisted on taking the extra two breems to download the file containing his data, in spite of the risk of being seen or heard. Under the circumstances Prowl hadn't felt strong enough to argue with that, and as it happened they saw no-one until they were well into the general causeways; nowhere at all suspicious, though merely their common purpose may be enough to generate comment. Jazz greeted a few of the mecha they passed, several of whom seemed surprised to see them together. Would any of them mention this strange occurrence to Icon? What would he do if they did?
Finally arriving back, Prowl sank onto the side of Jazz's berth, feeling shaken.
"Hey, you okay there, mech?"
"No." Prowl admitted hoarsely. "No, I am not."
Jazz hesitated, seeming about to say something, then changed his mind and turned towards his terminal.
"Right, well lets see if we can figure out what he's done."
"I should leave you in peace to work."
"Oh no y'don't. Can't leave ya alone, y'might do somethin' unfixable!"
"Only to myself." Prowl pointed out. "If others are nearby when the script is triggered there is no telling how much damage I might do. Besides which, if I perish you can still go to the Enforcers with the evidence."
"You ain't gonna die." Jazz told him. "I'm gonna sort it out."
"How?" Prowl asked flatly.
Jazz scowled.
"I dunno yet. But I will. Now sit there an' shut up an' let me work."
Interlude
Location: Enforcer Headquarters, Praxus
"So how is Barricade doing?" Checkdigit asked.
Brass looked at him wryly.
"Don't you mean Prowl?"
"I know who I mean." Checkdigit insisted. "Prowl is an identity he gave up when he became and Enforcer. He is undercover now as much as any other infiltration agent."
"I disagree." Lighttouch frowned. "We were able to restore most of his memories, and while he has settled most comfortably into his role here it's not beyond the realms of possibility that being surrounded by members of his former age cohort will have an effect on him. I have my doubts that the mech who returns to us will be quite the same as the one who left."
"Well you're right, there." Brass allowed. "He's slipped straight back into the dramatics of his age group. He called less than an orn into the mission because someone was jealous of him. Apparently he had previously been in a relationship with the femme who is now Jazz's partner - now what are the odds of that?"
Lighttouch frowned.
"I very much doubt that is true."
"Just because he's been totally committed to his training since we took him on doesn't mean he didn't have a life beforehand." Checkdigit chided his friend.
"No, but his programming does." Lighttouch said firmly. "He had not yet had his interfacing upgrades at the time of the accident. He had not even had the pre-programming. His creator and the medic at the local clinic both confirmed that he had requested a delay in implementation so he could focus on his studies."
"And that got approved!" Checkdigit choked.
Lighttouch shrugged.
"It is not recommended due to socialisation issues, but there are actually no physical reasons to insist on the standard time frame. Most have the programming installed simultaneously with their physical upgrades, but it does not have to be done that way. It is a regrettably common request amongst some military models."
"But he has had the upgrades now?" Brass demanded. "And applied them?"
"His programming is complete." Lighttouch assured him. "Beyond that, you will need to ask him yourself."
"I'm confused." Checkdigit confessed. "If he didn't have the code for it, what does that mean about Jazz being jealous of him?"
"It means," Brass began, paused to check a detail on his terminal, then continued grimly. "It means I may have ignored a serious problem. Particularly since Prowl has not made contact since that call."
Buried deep in a mass of code, Jazz was confused for a moment when something impinged on his concentration. After a moment he registered it as noise that was being picked up by his audials and began to pull out of the sequence to better concentrate on it, then paused as his hasty rearrangement of a couple of lines of code suddenly made several things synchronise. Part of the script was now legible and the rest was unravelling, and with a little more effort he thought he might even start to... but his concentration was being disrupted. Irritated, he pulled out of the program and onlined his optics.
"What the frag, mech?" he began, turning in his chair to rail at Prowl.
Only it wasn't Prowl he found standing behind him.
"Mech?" Slimline demanded. "Who did you think was here?"
His processor still half on the task, he looked about in confusion. Where had Prowl gone? Jazz had told him it was dangerous to head off alone.
"What? Oh, no-one. I just... never mind. What's up?"
"What's up?" she shrilled. "You skip classes the whole day and you didn't go watch the fights so don't even try to tell me that, and then you leave me waiting outside the bar by myself for ages looking like an idiot..."
Jazz stared at her, suddenly remembering the agreement to go out to dinner tonight. The revelations of the orn had thrown all other engagements completely out of his processor, along with any thought that she might start to wonder where he was.
Uncharitably, his very next thought was a wish that they had gone back to Prowl's quarters where she would not have found him. Though of course Prowl's terminal was not set up for this.
"I'm workin' on somethin'."
"I see that. What is it?"
"A new bit o'code." he told a half-truth.
She saw straight through it.
"Liar. You said you weren't going to game anymore."
"I changed my mind."
"Oh sure you did. Or maybe you're just trying to hide what you've done."
"I'm tryin' to help you." he insisted, finally thinking up an excuse.
"Me? How?"
"You wanted Prowl gamed. I'm tryin' again."
She snarled.
"You were seen with Prowl. You brought him back here and he was here for ages. Best mates now, huh? Or is it berthmates?"
Primus help him, but he hated the gossip chain sometimes.
"I needed to pretend." he explained. "Needed to get him where I could get into his code. I didn't frag him, Liney. He's been on that berth, yeah, but not wit'me. You gotta believe me. You're the only one for me."
He felt sick to his tank saying such things after realising what she was caught up in, but his act must have appeared sincere because she relented a little.
"So you got in?" she asked.
"A little way." he hedged. "His processing's way diff'rent to anyone else's I've met. That's why it didn't work the first time. I'm tryin' t'find a way 'round it now."
Her optics flicked to the screen. It was blank, Jazz knew, just as it always was when he was gaming. He preferred to do the actual planning and programming in his own processor first. It made it look like he didn't ever write a failed script, rather than the truth that he only used scripts he knew already would function properly. That was part of what Icon did wrong: he tried to do all the steps at once, instead of breaking them down.
On the other hand, it now seemed that Icon had learned better, he reminded himself.
"How's it going, then?"
"Hard work. I was gettin' somewhere, but then ya pulled me out." He paused. "Sorry about the bar - I lost track o' time. Wanted to surprise ya wit' havin' this ready t'go."
She looked at him pensively, then nodded.
"Okay. Well, since you were doing it for me, I'll forgive you this once. But tomorrow I want to see it happen, okay?"
He stretched his lips into a smile.
"Sure."
She beamed at him, then leaned in for a kiss. He returned the gesture, but then pulled back when she appeared to want to go further, shrugging apologetically.
"Better get back t'work if I'm gonna meet your deadline."
"You want me to stay with you? To help celebrate when you're done?" she asked.
"Nah." he said, trying to sound reluctant. "Better wit' no distractions. That way it'll get done right."
"Alright then. See you in the morning."
"Yeah. See ya."
She sauntered out and he waited a moment, then got up and locked the door. Then hacked into the keypad to make sure it could not be opened again. One scare was more than enough for one orn.
Prowl lay still on his berth, not daring to recharge in case that exposed him to further manipulation, but also not daring to do anything else. If it had not triggered yet, then so long as he stayed still and did nothing he should be fine. There was nothing in here to trigger him, he had locked the door and muted the alert on his terminal. Now he was just waiting for Jazz to come and find him.
It was horrible.
He had had a lot of practice at lying very still, doing very little. The early stages of his recovery after the accident had left him with more time than he could adequately fill, and sometimes in the long groons of the night when he had no external stimulus it had felt like he was starting to go crazy. This felt the same. He wanted badly to get up, to walk or eat or wash or do anything at all. The urge was entirely natural, but he did not trust it. It might be part of the programming.
So instead he lay very still and stared at the ceiling. A ceiling which he had visually measured and assessed. He knew its exact dimensions, the precise position of every crack and stress point and mark. He had spent several breems contemplating a faintly yellow scrape in one corner; it looked like mech paint, but how had someone managed to leave such a mark up so high? His tactical centre told him the most likely scenario was that the room had once had bunks (a theory reinforced by the patch plates strategically placed on the wall) and that someone in the top bunk had been acting in a somewhat rambunctious manner. But he let other scenarios play out, trying to fill in time.
He was just contemplating whether it was possible for a flier model to actually get into the air in the confined space of the room when he was distracted by a creaking noise coming from the ceiling. He stirred unhappily. Was he becoming delusional? He tried to ignore the sound but it came twice more, then there was a shuffling sound. Then nothing for a long moment and he started to relax.
Until there was a squeaking noise. Very faint, but dragging on. Pause, then again at a higher pitch. A soft thud. Then suddenly a section of the ceiling - fourth row, second panel, from the way he had counted them - dropped to the floor with a loud clang. And before he could respond to that, it was followed much more gracefully by a familiar figure.
"Jazz!"
"Hiya. Hope ya don't mind me droppin' in."
Prowl felt his processors threatening to seize up. Jazz was behaving as though this was a totally normal occurence rather than a method most commonly employed by thieves and spies.
"Why were you in my ceiling?"
"I wasn't for long." Jazz responded easily, brushing himself off and moving the ceiling panel neatly off to one side where it was out of the way. "It was just a way o'gettin' here."
"Why didn't you use the door?" Prowl ground out.
"Too many watchin' optics. This way no-one knows I'm here."
"And do you do this often, sneaking about in this way?"
Jazz looked hurt.
"Hey, mech, I ain't here for a lecture, I'm tryin' t'help ya. An' I'm pretty sure I can, too."
Prowl sat up.
"You cracked the code?"
"Yeah. Easy enough once I figured it out."
"So what am I going to do?"
Jazz pulled up the desk chair, settling on it backwards and resting his chin on the backrest, his expression worried.
"You're gonna go for a walk right off the edge of the astronomy tower."
Prowl offlined his optics. The tower was the highest point in the academy grounds that was accessible to all students. Nothing suspicious about him going up there, and the fall was considerable: off to the side of the tower was a fissure that went down deep into the planet. He was not at all sure how far down it was, but it was certainly far enough for the fall to be fatal. And even if it wasn't immediately fatal, it would take time - perhaps even orns - for anyone to get down to him.
"And the trigger?" he asked.
"Slimline touchin' ya." the answer came reluctantly.
And once again, Jazz's lover was involved. Exactly how was she entangled in all of this?
"By touching, do you mean...?"
"Just a touch, nothin' kinky. She could do it in the middle of a class, no-one'd realise she'd done anythin' at all."
Prowl tried not to think about how easy it would be for her to get away with such a thing, choosing not to even acknowledge the word 'kinky'.
"Do you have a solution for me?"
"Yeah. I'm gonna interface wit'ya an' see if I can deactivate it that way."
Prowl booted his optics up in a hurry, staring at the other mech in shock.
"You're going to what?" he yelped. "Why do it that way? Why not use your software?"
Jazz shook his head.
"The software'll only pick ya up if you're rechargin', an' we don't dare let ya do that or you'll be a target again. They might do somethin' worse while I'm tryin' t'sort this out. Nah, it's gotta be fixed online."
"And there's no other way?"
"None I can think of. Y'can't jus' stop chargin' forever. An' no matter how hard y'try to avoid her, if she's determined she'll get to ya an' that'll be it."
"Then it seems I have no choice. Are you sure this will work."
"Nope. But I'm good at what I do."
"Just keep your processor on what you're supposed to be doing, and off any other activities."
Jazz shrugged.
"Your loss, mech. Now lie back, turn off your optics an' let your ol' friend Jazzy do the rest."
"Old friend? But we only just met..."
"Mech? Stop jabberin' an' jus' lemme get on wit' it, eh?"