just before the fall out
part two
The first thing he saw was light.
He’d been in the dark for too long, and his optics took a few seconds to recalibrate. Blurry spots of color and shadow became clear. He was still flat on his back on a lab table. The room around him was white, clinical.
He panicked. As he tried to get off the table and run away, another mech tried to restrain him. It was pointless; his body wouldn’t move the way he wanted it to; his movements were slow and clumsy, and there was no way he could run anywhere. A diagnostic showed that he was in perfect condition, but the list of programs that came up was unfamiliar.
This was not his body. Now that the panic was abating, prowl looked down at himself and realized his new body was black, armored, with spikes. He looked at his hands, and saw the claws set in his wrist. They extended out over his fingers, and then snapped back in.
“Do you know where you are?” The green mech who’d restrained him spoke.
“No.”
“This is the Autobot camp outside Iacon. We found you hiding in one of the buildings there- it collapsed on you. My name’s Ratchet. I’m the medic here.”
“Where are the others?” Prowl asked.
“What others?”
“I wasn’t hiding.” Prowl said. He searched his memory and found it didn’t match the medic’s story at all. Was this a trick? Were they experimenting on him again? “I was kidnapped during the riots. There were other mechs captured as well. They were…”
“What happened?” Ratchet asked. He was afraid of what Prowl would say; the scans he’d already done had given him a good idea of why Prowl had been kidnapped and why he’d been hiding.
“They…experimented. On our sparks.” Prowl said slowly. Ratchet nodded.
“Sit down.” Ratchet said. “I checked your new frame against your database specs and…”
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His spark was hurting him again. Jazz lay back on the berth, one arm under his head, the other idly rubbing the plating over his spark chamber. It was a faint pain, but it was there; he could feel it even through the mental wall he’d erected between his spark and the little piece of…him…that was left.
Jazz knew that he ought to just ignore the twinges; though they’d been steadily getting worse rather than better, they were of no consequence. Yet while he never opened the bond enough to see if he could really feel them, he never actively tried to push them away, either. In the end, he was unwilling to either acknowledge his attachment to the phantom pains or extinguish the connection entirely.
He had been assigned a real job. Megatron had been pleased with the seven ships he’d brought ,and more pleased still with the crew members, who could be traded for ransom later and used to get some needed information as well. Jazz had passed the test- a test he suspected had been meant to be failed. His new assignment: seize the Autobots’ latest technology, their warp engine, and insure by whatever means necessary that the Autobots’ couldn’t reproduce it.
It would be his first time aboard the Autobots’ central hub- a giant ship that doubled as a city, run by a sentient ship-spark called Teletran-1. It was currently parked in orbit around a moon somewhere near Cybertron, but where exactly was unknown- the Ark, as it was called, was deep in Autobot territory. Getting that far alone had killed plenty of Decepticons.
Tomorrow he would see the Scientists again, and then he would begin. Mind spinning out a thousand plans, Jazz forgot his pained spark.
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“…sir?” Optimus looked up to see Prowl enter his office. “He’s getting closer.”
“How close?”
“Within out territory.” Prowl said. He came over to the terminal Optimus had been working on; Optimus nodded, and Prowl pulled up a map of the area. There were routes of all Autobot ships with real time locations marked out on it, and Prowl spun the display and highlighted a few routes in particular. “I cross referenced all possible routes for inbound ships with the pertinent factors. These are the most likely possibilities.”
“You think he’s coming here?”
“One of our spies just reported in. Megatron wants our warp engine technology, Prime. He knows that perfecting it will give an edge in the war.” Prowl paused, pulling up another map ,this one far less detailed and of Decepticon territory. “Right now we are fighting the entire war within the no man’s land between our respective territories. Megatron’s limited warping technology is only good if the user has a detailed knowledge of terrain and can only affect a limited mass. I project that our warp engines, if successful, could end the war within three years if utilized correctly.”
“And his saboteur has already proved that he can break into an Autobot base without any problems. Frag.” Optimus said tersely. “We need to update our security.”
“I’ve spoken with Red Alert, sir, but I propose something else.”
“What?”
“That we immediately gather all data and materials pertaining to the project and move the elsewhere.” Prowl held u pa had not stop Prime’s objection. “Sir, they will never expect us to risk losing the project by moving it.”
“What are the odds, Prowl?”
“There is a sixty percent chance we will lose the warp engine if we do not move it. A fifty seven percent chance if we do.”
“Only three percent.”
“It is not only three percent.” Prowl said. “And it is the only chance we will have. At the speed he is coming, within a few days it will be too late. We cannot risk anyone knowing that the warp engine is being moved.”
“And if there’s a leak?”
“Ninety six percent.”
“Do it. Put it on the Lightspeed, within the hour. Tell no one. If anyone asks, we are moving everything to the emergency pod down below.”
“Yes, sir.”
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Spark aching, he stopped to collect himself. The pain was fiery, deep set in his spark, making him almost shake with agony. The spasm came and went, and they lasted only seconds, but even a moment of lost concentration could get him killed.
Jazz crawled along the ceiling, held there by the magnets in his hands. It was dark, deep in the underbelly of the Ark. There had been many problem with getting this far, most them having to do wit Teletran-1. Because the ship’s core was alive, with a widespread sensor net, getting past it meant either sticking to the least monitored areas or hacking in and playing with Teletran’s processor.
Since the warp engines were in protected areas (although thankfully outside the ship’s core, the parts that were actually Teletran’s body) Jazz had been forced to spend a few days looking for the right mixture of frequencies to make himself invisible to the sensors. He would still be caught if someone actually saw him, or heard him, but the security system wouldn’t know- at least for a few hours. Teletran-1 had too much processing power to be permanently affected.
The warp engines had been moved from the lab; Jazz had checked there first. When he found nothing there, he moved down into the emergency pod down below. It was a long shot, but the Autobots’ might be willing to destroy the tech rather than lose it. Jazz had already decided that if he didn’t find anything in the pod, he’d grab one of the scientists and see if a little interrogation didn’t prove worthwhile. He didn’t think the warp engines would have left the ship; the odds of the cons getting them were about the same either way, so the Autobots’ had probably taken the safer option of leaving them onboard.
The emergency pod was sealed shut, with enough sensors aimed at it to make simply being sneaky impossible. They were independently connected to alarms, and didn’t go through the security system first- meaning that they were good for extremely high risk situations but caused too many false alarms in real life.
Jazz started to set a disruptor for the mini-reactors that powered the whole system. It took several tries and a few close calls, but eventually the system shut off. Jazz pulled a magnet strip from subspace, attached the disruptor at a convenient angle, and then pressed close to the door, searching for a latch or a port so he could get it open.
The level he was on was silent and dark, and Jazz’s sensitive audios and high powered sensors told him he was alone. But another jolt of pain one that seemed to go on and on, sapping the strength from his limbs and making his claws shudder, kept him from noticing the approaching Autobots until it was too late.
The pain built and built, deafening Jazz to the cannon pressed to his helm, and when eh blacked out, he missed the triumph of the Autobots who carried him away.
“Got him.” Ironhide crowed. “Prowl, hand me the- Prowl?”
The tactician collapsed heavily onto his knees, clutching at his chest. “…get him to the brig.”
“Are you-”
“Now.” Prowl produced the stasis cuffs Ironhide had wanted and tossed him at him. “I’m on my way.”
“You look like you’re slagged, prowl.” Ironhide activated his comm and switched to a specific frequency.
:Ratchet. We got a problem.:
:You slagged the spy?:
:It’s Prowl. He just dropped- right after our spy went offline.:
:Frag. I’m on my way.:
Ironhide dropped the connection and made another. :Prime? We caught him, but Prowl’s injured.:
:Prowl? I’ll be there within the hour.:
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There was a medical area for injured prisoners within the brig, to minimize the risk of escape. Ironhide dragged Jazz’s offline frame by the cuffs, his other hand on Prowl’s shoulder. Prowl was still too unsteady to walk unsupported, and it was a mark of how much pain he was in that he made no attempt to walk unaided or to even regain his composure.
Once they reached the brig, Ironhide strapped Jazz to an examination table and helped Prowl onto another. Ratchet was on his way, and the big black mech paced impatiently.
“Call Prime.” Prowl said weakly.
“I did.” Ironhide hesitated, and then plunged forward- he was not a subtle mech. “You know him?”
Before Prowl could answer, Prime and Ratchet charged in. Ratchet rushed over to Prowl and slapped what seemed to be half of a solid metal ball onto his chest. The metal quivered, and Ratchet pressed one finger against the top for a few second, measuring.
“You have energy building up-that’s what’s causing all the pain. This will help it leave your systems faster.” Ratchet pulled out another one of the metal half-spheres and slapped it down on Jazz’s chest. He noted the lack of a Decepticon insignia there- it was on Jazz’s shoulder instead. “Do you feel anything? Emotions, phantom sensory input?”
“No.”
“Prowl, is it him?” Prime asked urgently.
“Yes, sir.” Now that the energy was dissipating faster, Prowl dragged himself off of the berth and walked over to where Jazz was lying. He checked the cuffs again, and simply stood there, looking down at him, expression inscrutable.
You haven’t changed at all. Except for some flashier silver paint and the Decepticon insignia, Jazz’s frame was basically the same. Prowl recognized the visor that covered the top of his face, the set of his mouth, the shape of his body. It was like stepping back in time.
The other three mechs watched Prowl, aware of an odd sort of tension in the air. They waited for him to do something. Finally, Ratchet laid a hand on his shoulder.
“We can take him to the brig now.”
“Of course.” Prowl removed the energy dissipater from Jazz’s chest and handed it to Ratchet. “Ironhide, if you would assist me.”
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