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tfic_contestTitle: Belonging [2/3]
Rating: M/NC-17
Universe: Transformers: Animated
Pairing: Megatron/Optimus Prime
Word Count: 18,239 (in three parts)
Author's Note: Spoilers for A Bridge Too Close, follows an alternate ending into a new continuity. Warnings for dubious consent (for both parties) in Part I.
Part II
Lockdown's ship was just as unpleasant as Optimus remembered.
Admittedly, he recalled very little of his first stay. Even the memory of pain faded under the combined influences of shock and partial consciousness, but he did recognize the maze of winding corridors, the walls' strangely organic curvature, and the machinery that hummed steady and sibilant underfoot. He kept close to Megatron—not by choice, but by the necessity of the cuffs that still connected them.
Not that they wouldn't be connected without them.
“I want these stasis cuffs removed,” said Megatron, echoing Optimus' only reasonable wish.
Lockdown aimed a narrow grin over one spiked shoulder. “Ask and you shall receive.” Coming to a bend in the corridor, he palmed an activation pad with his single hand, opening a split door panel to reveal a room that Optimus had never wanted to see again. The table stood just as he remembered it, with restraints in place for wrists and ankles, and tools in various states of disorganization on benches and counters. Optimus came to such a sudden halt that he stopped Megatron with a jerk, and the Decepticon turned to glare at him before yanking him over the threshold.
Moving to a far corner of the room, Lockdown took a moment to exchange his hand with the chainsaw that Optimus remembered only too well. The bounty hunter chuckled at Optimus' expression. “Don't worry so much, Prime...looks like all the worthwhile parts of you are already gone, if you know what I mean.”
Optimus unwillingly followed Megatron's lead and stopped just shy of the table, raising his arm to draw the cuff link tight between their wrists. “Don't be insulted if I'm not really reassured.”
With another chuckle, Lockdown started the blades, measured the distance. Severing the cuffs required three attempts; they were Elite-issue restraints.
“Have to say, I'm surprised to see you still alive at all,” Lockdown confided as the saw folded out of view. His hand returned, the fingers flexing once or twice. Beady optics studied the scarring wounds on Optimus' arms, then the ragged hole in his chest, and Optimus fought the urge to cover himself with both hands. “Then again, looks like it was a pretty near thing.” He slid a smirk in Megatron's direction. The Decepticon didn't return it, outwardly consumed with dismantling the remaining ring around his wrist. With an arch of an optic ridge, Lockdown snagged Optimus' wrist with his hook, producing a sharp-edged tool that removed the cuff in two separate pieces.
Optimus twisted his wrist, rubbing along the marks left in the metal, and he glanced up again to see Megatron doing the same.
“Can't quite figure why you didn't finish the job,” Lockdown said with idle interest.
Ignoring him, Megatron met Optimus' gaze instead, and though the Decepticon didn't move a step, Optimus felt the complete refocusing of his attention. “You will have that repaired,” he said, optics flicking downward to rest on Optimus' chest plates. Not a request, not concern, just pure self-interest. Optimus glared back at him.
“Do you really think I'm planning on leaving it?”
“I was not asking your opinion.” Megatron scowled at him a moment more, then redirected his attention at Lockdown, who was watching them with banked speculation in the dark glitter of his optics. “I do not suppose you have anything so refined as oil.”
“Nothing that'll suit your tastes. But I've got the basic amenities covered.” Lockdown dug through a storage unit in the back corner of the room and reemerged with two nondescript cannisters. He tossed one to Megatron, who spent a moment inspecting it before working it open.
Lockdown tossed the other; Optimus caught it. He knew little about oil—and knew enough to avoid taking it from someone with motives so suspect—but his fuel levels had lowered during their time in space, and he didn't dare face his uncertain future without fortification. He opened the cannister, took a sip, and then grimaced with a shudder. Watching him, Lockdown chuckled again, setting Optimus' receptors on edge. The silence lasted for a cycle or more, and Lockdown leaned back against a wall, arms crossing over the asymmetrical planes of his chest.
“Congratulations,” the bounty hunter said.
Optimus looked up from his disgusted contemplation of the cannister. “What?”
“The two of you. Seems like you're sparkbonded.” Lockdown spoke so casually that all of Optimus' base programming screamed in warning.
His back to them both, Megatron stiffened. Optimus wondered if only he could sense the sudden menace in every movement when Megatron lifted the cannister, swallowed, and finally spoke. “Do you mention that because you are coming to some unexpected point? Or do you simply enjoy stating the blindingly obvious?”
“Hey.” Lockdown pushed off the wall and raised both hands—or rather, one hand and a hook—in an ineffectively disarming gesture. “No need to get uptight. Big occasion, right? Not everyone's so...lucky.”
Megatron faced him, a grim smile stretching across his mouth. Lockdown retreated a step when the Decepticon advanced. “What uncharacteristic and unnecessary consideration.”
Retreating another step, Lockdown tried a smile. “Can't blame a mech for seeing the truth. Besides, he needs a medic—medical assistance, guess I should say—since you can't exactly dispense with him in the traditional way.” Unnerved, Optimus jerked a hand toward his chest, an aborted movement that he quelled before Lockdown could continue. “Thought I might offer you my services in that regard. For a very reasonable price.”
Megatron's smile widened. It wasn't pleasant. “I do not require your assistance, bounty hunter. Your tools will do.”
For a moment, Optimus didn't comprehend the significance of the statement. Sudden understanding hit him a staggering blow. Of course, Megatron wouldn't trust anyone but himself with his own spark—with Optimus' spark, by association.
Lockdown frowned, but tried for diplomacy. “Anything gets broken of mine—”
“Your compensation shall be more than adequate to replace anything damaged during the process,” Megatron replied, and Optimus had the sickening sense that he wasn't talking only about tools.
Lockdown cast an uneasy glance at Optimus, then back at Megatron, before curving his lip components. “I'll leave you to it, then.”
“What, you don't want to watch?” Optimus snapped.
“I don't mind surgery, kid, but sadism doesn't turn my engine over, if you get my meaning.” Lockdown grinned at Optimus over one shoulder. “'Least not in a purely observational capacity.” He turned a wary optic toward his tools, then disappeared through the door. The panel slipped shut behind him.
“You will not enjoy this,” Megatron warned with casual disregard, picking up a welding instrument and testing its highest setting against a metal scrap that might or might not have once been part of a living mech.
Optimus edged away from him, covering the worst of the cracks with one hand. “I really hadn't planned to.”
Apparently satisfied with the tool, Megatron glanced at him, arching an optic ridge and beckoning with one finger. Optimus shook his head. Undergoing surgery—however necessary—without the benefit of a real medic or any form of anesthesia didn't fit into his survival subroutines, especially with the villain of Cybertron's legends holding the equipment.
“Given the...connected nature of your spark to my own, I have no little interest in preserving the safety of both.” Megatron stepped forward, a clear threat in his reaching hand. Optimus managed perhaps three or four swift dodges before the Decepticon caught the ribbed metal beneath his chest plates and crushed him back against the wall. “I am afraid I must insist,” Megatron informed him, pressing hard enough to crumple the armor plates at Optimus' back before beginning to weld.
Despite his sensors screaming warnings for both high temperature and dangerous proximity, Optimus made no further protest beyond wrapping one hand hard around Megatron's wrist. The karmic nature of the bond between them revealed itself again in moments, as the heat increased and both he and Megatron hissed in pain.
“Haven't you the sense to shut down your pain receptors?” Megatron snarled, nevertheless welding a patch into place.
Optimus clamped his dental plates together and spoke through them. “I would if I could. But you've done plenty of damage already—ah!” Searing bright pain crackled through all his sensory nodes. He heard Megatron growling distantly in simpatico. “Stop,” Optimus panted, “mercy of—stop.”
“Not until I finish it.” Megatron's heavier frame trembled against his own, fingers clenching and unclenching in the grip of the same agony. Optimus wondered what sort of lunatic persisted in hurting himself in order to hurt someone else.
The only mercy was that shared suffering made the assault quick, efficient, and as effective as possible under the circumstances. Not a pretty job, but a passable one. Megatron backed away with unsteady steps, and Optimus collapsed against the wall, hands lifting to explore the temporary plate welded over the worst of the wounds. It would protect his spark, and he supposed that was all that mattered to them both.
“You're no medic,” he muttered, shuttering his optics and waiting for his systems to settle.
Megatron chuckled, low and harsh. “I've done enough self-repair in battle to keep from killing you, Autobot. A little gratitude wouldn't be misplaced.”
That made Optimus flicker one optic dimly online, at least. “Get slagged,” he said. “Straight to the Pit.”
“Careful not to wish me anywhere you would not follow.”
He had a point, so Optimus said nothing. The pain faded to a dull ache—just a shadow over his sensory net—and while the silence between them wasn't comfortable, it was at least bearable. Optimus drifted deeply enough into himself that Lockdown's voice from the doorway made him start.
“The two of you done playing doctor? We've all got places to be.”
Megatron straightened and shifted his shoulders to readjust the plating of his chest; he was probably still troubled by Optimus' pain. “I wish to send a transmission to my servant. The comm line is private.”
“Bet I know the one,” Lockdown quipped, catching a hook through Optimus' neck cabling and hauling him to his feet. Optimus hissed in discomfort and twisted free, wishing so badly for weaponry that he nearly risked giving Lockdown a face full of fire-retardant foam, retaliation be slagged. Unconcerned, Lockdown nodded his head toward Optimus. “What about him?”
“He will be coming with me.” Megatron stood, adjusting the weight of his cannon. “Of course.”
“Right.” Lockdown rested his hand against the panel edge of the doorway. His fingers moved along the edge, and with recognition but no comprehension, Optimus saw the switch beneath those fingers and saw them flick against it. “Well, turns out I can't really allow that, after all.”
A routed forcefield snapped upward from one of the paneling seams in the floor, dividing the room in tidy halves. It also divided Optimus and Lockdown from Megatron, who loomed on the other side of the barrier, cast in the moving golden glow of powerful, dazzling electrical energy.
Megatron barely missed a beat. He punched both hands into the electrical barrier, sparks flashing off all the contact surfaces. Optimus cried out as searing agony spread upward through both his arms, burning into his connectors. Staggering backward, Megatron favored Lockdown with a look that promised barehanded mutilation and worse. “This is extremely unwise,” he said, so softly that Optimus felt chills ripple through his neural cabling.
“Yeah.” Lockdown grinned, but he didn't waste an instant in shoving Optimus toward the door. “Move it, kid.”
Stumbling through the portal ahead of him, Optimus caught his balance and turned just in time to see the panel slide shut on Megatron's murderous expression. Lockdown snagged his wrist and started dragging him down the corridor. “Hold on—what the—” He managed to complete a sentence when Lockdown paused to palm open another door. “Why would you help me?” he hissed, resisting when the bounty hunter tried to pull him through it.
“C'mon,” Lockdown growled back, urgent. “That won't hold him. I can put up real shielding from the command console. Move.”
Suspicious, bewildered, and vaguely hopeful, Optimus let the other mech drag him into a branching corridor and down into a passage with flickering, unsteady lights. The farther they moved from Megatron, the more the pain in his arms eased. Proximity apparently made a difference.
“Why are you helping me?” he demanded again once their pace slowed. He jerked at Lockdown's arm, forcing the bounty hunter to face him.
“Call it a little glitch of my conscience, if you like.” Lockdown rested a hand over his spark, and then he palmed open another door, gesturing for Optimus to precede him through it. “Something about how I can't bear to give up the best possible deal.”
Optimus froze. Lockdown delivered such a blow to his back that he staggered, nearly fell, and stumbled into the harsh light of an unpleasantly small room.
The door slid shut.
Optimus whirled and pounded both fists against it, denting the metal but doing little else. Furious, but hardly surprised, he shouted against the seam between the door panel and the wall. “Lockdown! Whatever you're up to, I'm not about to let you get away with it, and neither is Mega—”
A crackling over the intercom interrupted his tirade. “So sorry, boys, but there's been a change of plan. And of venue. Y'see, I have this acquaintance who's amazingly keen on the subject of scientific oddities, and I just had to give him a call. Your unusual situation has captured his interest like not much else.” A pause, and Optimus heard a distant, electrical clanking in the distance, like someone trying to break through a routed barrier with nothing but fists. A moment passed, and the rising thrum of igniting engines muffled the sound. “He's so eager to meet with the both of you that I just couldn't resist.”
“What's the price?” Optimus demanded, both hands slamming into the door again, rebounding from the force.
Lockdown could hear him. “A fair price. Let's just say...it makes your usual generous rewards look like small change, Megatron. So settle in for the long haul. 'Cause this is as comfortable as the accommodations get.”
The static crackle of a closing connection filled the room, followed by silence. Optimus pounded his fists against the door, expending fury that felt satisfying only so long as it lasted, then settled cold in his fuel tanks as he slumped to the floor. Any of Lockdown's business associates could only have a vested interest in reducing them to their base components, undoubtedly while studying the scientific effects of that dismantling on their bonded sparks.
Covering his face with both hands, Optimus tried not to imagine how his circumstances could grow any worse. Sparkbonded to Megatron, trapped once again by Lockdown, waiting to be the subject of someone's twisted curiosity...at least the others were likely still online and still protecting the shattered remains of the Allspark back on Earth. Rescue seemed impossible, nevertheless. With no way to track the path of the malfunctioning space bridge, the Elite Guard had recourse to nothing but the benevolence of bounty hunters and the reliability of its own informational network, the latter already compromised by Decepticon agents. Moreover, Megatron had never sent a signal for his own double agent to intercept.
Optimus shuttered his optics. Megatron, at least, probably had someone seeking him already—someone who might be en route to their previous interstellar position, if only by the grace of Optimus' own Autobot signal.
Though Megatron liked to cheapen him by terming him an optimist, he knew he could be practical when the situation demanded realism. Moreover, he could despise a course of action while still recognizing its benefits. He had done so with Elita a thousand stellar cycles ago. He didn't need to worry about whether or not he could forgive himself, afterward. He only needed to concern himself with reaching Megatron, and Megatron could concern himself with finding Longarm. Shockwave.
The door wouldn't give—not under his strength alone. Optimus tried subtler methods for the better part of a megacycle before abandoning that strategy. The room itself was nothing more than a storage unit, crates standing in haphazard stacks up to the ceiling, and when he forced a couple open in hopes of securing a weapon, he found only canistered oil and a few energon cubes. While the cubes might be useful, he didn't dare risk setting off a chain-reaction explosion on a pressurized ship. Breaching the hull wouldn't kill him, but he would be little better off floating defenseless through space. Yet again.
Besides the door panel, the other walls of the room stretched featureless in three curved directions. The ceiling had an emergency vent.
Venting shafts on older-model ships served dual purposes. They carried flammable fumes away from the power core, eventually jettisoning them into space through single-direction locks. During the Wars, they had also allowed minibot crews to move between ship partitions without damaging cargo or risking injury under the feet of larger mechs. Optimus measured the space with something less than exact optical calculations before scaling the nearest stack of crates.
Lockdown had welded the vent cover shut, and the angle made exerting the necessary force more than awkward. Even so, the weld wasn't strong, and several directed strikes buckled the metal until Optimus could work his fingers into a gap and pull.
The cover peeled back, then snapped at a hinge, clattering to the floor. Optimus hooked both hands over the edges of the vent and hauled himself upward, hissing in frustration when the movement sent the crates toppling over. He kicked his feet, seeking leverage, briefly hanging in place as his arms began to ache. He spent a few long cycles deciding just how he might wedge his shoulders through the vent, knowing that the rest of him would fit easily enough, and he had contorted himself just enough to get one elbow over the edge of the vent when the door panel slid open.
Actually, it didn't slide so much as it tore free from the wall with a wrenching shriek. Swearing, Optimus dropped to the floor with a clang, denting his plating on impact.
Looming in the warped frame of the door, Megatron looked in far worse condition. The plating on his arms and shoulders had scorched black, revealing patches of raw circuitry beneath, and Optimus smelled singed metal and a tinge of leaking coolant. Frowning, the Decepticon glanced pointedly upward at the dismantled vent, then downward at Optimus. “Pity you did not think of that somewhat sooner.”
“Give me a little longer, next time,” Optimus said, taken aback at so much unnecessary damage. “Not everything needs so much force.” Phantom pain flickered restlessly along his wiring, unmistakably foreign in origin. Little wonder his arms had begun to ache.
Paying him little mind, Megatron kicked the remains of the door aside and stepped into the room. “A gift for you.” The Decepticon brandished something, flung it.
Optimus flinched sideways. The blade of the ax sliced cleanly into the metal of the wall, leaving a sizable rift bare centimeters from the edge of Optimus' jaw. He hooked a hand around the handle, pulling the weapon free and examining it with deep distrust. Not his own...but a reasonable facsimile, he supposed. Undoubtedly one of Lockdown's acquired trophies, and in that case, he wouldn't mind putting it to good use. He allowed himself a single test swing, putting the force of his frame behind it and using the propulsion to twist and leap at Megatron with the ax swung high over his head.
The blow would have been lethal, delivered across the center of Megatron's chest and slicing through the chamber that held his all-too-familiar spark.
It would have killed them both.
But Megatron kept still, unmoving but entirely resistant, optics narrowed but hatefully calm. Optimus slid to a painful, ragged halt, the ax poised but trembling. Shuttering his optics, he drew in cooling oxygen through all his intakes, then released it through all his vents. His growl echoed off the walls as he flung the ax away, its blade clattering against the rough steel of the floor.
The echoes faded. They stared into each other.
Megatron spoke. “I suppose I should be reassured, to know that you are just as much a coward as I.” His slow smile was ghastly. “Where our own lives are concerned.”
Shuttering his optics, Optimus shook his head in wordless denial. Everyone he had ever fought with or fought for would be disappointed in what he had not done.
“Where is Lockdown?” he said at length.
“I haven't the slightest idea.” Megatron took a backwards step, and Optimus activated his optics at the sound. They watched each other for a long cycle more before Megatron deliberately turned his back, charging the great gun as he peered out into the corridor. “In an escape shuttle, if he values his continued function,” Megatron said, leading the way back into the maze of corridors.
Optimus collected the ax before following.
He expected Lockdown around every turn, but the ship stayed silent. Perhaps the bounty hunter had fled, after all. Then again, they hadn't had particularly good luck thus far, and Optimus doubted Lockdown would abandon this ship. After vorns of military service, Optimus knew a highly personal place when he saw it, and Lockdown seemed to place more value on material possessions than did most Cybertronians.
Ahead of him, Megatron touched a hand to the wall, flashing a swift scan through the paneling before following something with his fingertips.
Optimus whispered his question. “What are you doing?”
“This ship was once Decepticon,” Megatron said at normal volume. “The cable routing is familiar. The design leaves limited choices for communication arrays.” He chose a door and pressed a hand to the identification plate. When the ship's systems gave no reply, he dug his fingers into the seams and pulled the plate off, exposing its wiring. Optimus recognized basic override techniques in the movements of Megatron's fingertips: wires separated and then reattached to pass over alarms and around recognition software.
The door opened, and Megatron bent to negotiate its narrow dimensions. Optimus followed him, edging around one of his shoulders to examine the room. It was smaller even than the storage area, with a grated floor and circular walls that surrounded a communication console and a selection of sizable screens. Megatron touched the interior plate, forcing the door panel closed behind them and entering a locking command into its compromised system.
Pressing back against the wall, Optimus tried to make more space for both of them. He didn't want to touch by accident or otherwise. “What are you planning?”
“I intend to hack his defense systems and gain control of this ship.”
Ambitious intentions, Optimus thought, but Megatron had already succeeded in struggling his way through an electrical forcefield and tearing this room open for them, so he kept his doubts to himself. Besides, as Megatron had pointed out, this ship had once been Decepticon. Optimus could have guessed as much from its twisted interior and minimal lighting, though he didn't doubt that Lockdown had made a great many unpleasant modifications during a long and lucrative career.
Megatron settled uncomfortably into the console seat; it was too small for him by almost half. He made a brief movement, linking his fingers and stretching his servos before splaying them over the keys. For all its simplicity, the gesture startled Optimus with its normality, and he felt his own fingers ache distantly in sympathetic discomfort when Megatron began to type.
“This ship possesses a tachyon transmitter. Provided that Shockwave is in range and not otherwise occupied, a signal has some chance of reaching him.”
Optimus folded his arms around himself, as uneasy about rescue by Decepticons as he had been about rescue by Lockdown. While he intended to survive, he imagined that his survival would be only marginally less intolerable in the hands of Megatron than it would have been in the clutches of Lockdown's associate. “That's a lot of less-than-reassuring maybes.”
“What did you expect?” Megatron sneered, the words a little too uncomfortable to dismiss as idle cruelty. “Comfort? From your bondmate?”
Optimus couldn't help himself; he laughed. He stifled it, but the damage was done, and Megatron turned the chair to face him, arching an optic ridge. Begging comfort from Megatron... Slow nanite poisoning would be preferable, or at least less painful. “No,” Optimus said at length, regaining his composure, wondering if he might be near hysteria. Probably not—the notion just struck him as ridiculously funny. “Not what I expected, no.”
Frowning, Megatron regarded him narrowly for a moment more before returning his attention to the console. “Marvelous that one of us finds entertainment in misery.”
“Are you miserable?” Optimus said, genuinely interested in the answer.
Silence reigned for a cycle or two, but Optimus imagined he had the luxury of patience just now. He spent the time wondering uneasily at Lockdown's whereabouts, and worrying about whether these defense systems might not incorporate some variety of physical—even corporal—punishment if tripped. Megatron tapped at the keys, a rhythmic sound. Optimus thought unexpectedly of rain in Detroit, a patter of drops running cold down his windshields.
“No more miserable than usual,” Megatron admitted at last, interrupting Optimus' fonder memories of downtown's Slipper-Eaze automatic wash and wax. “But my usual level of misery is far beyond your comprehension, Prime.”
“Of course.” Weary, Optimus shifted from foot to foot, coming to stand behind Megatron at the console before speaking again. “Lockdown hasn't been a Decepticon for vorns. Can you really bypass his codes?”
Megatron rose smoothly to his feet, forcing Optimus backwards a step. “I just have.”
With that cue, the blocked screens of the console cleared to perfect black, and then the Decepticon shield flashed across each one. Readouts followed, paired with system reports, navigational information, and a hissing scrawl of static where the main control room comm link should display.
“I'd say that Lockdown knows we're in here.”
“Pity for him.” Megatron never paused, moving to the secondary transmitter pad and programming his message. Optimus knew very little about communication technology, but he could tell when the signal began to transmit, as a frequency meter appeared on a lower quadrant of the screen. Its bars fluttered in rhythmic hues of green and gold. “It is done.”
A shockingly metallic shriek cut through the ship's speaker system. Optimus clapped both hands over his audio receptors and heard something in a nearby room shatter under the decibel level. The noise cut off, only to be replaced by an even less welcome sound.
“Y'know,” Lockdown said over every functioning speaker in the ship, “I gotta admit, I've worked up a certain sort of respect for the both of you. I mean, I never seen anybody go bare-servoed through a double-routed field before. Really kind of expected you to give up, by the by, Prime. You seemed like the type.” They waited in silence through an increasingly sinister pause. “But there's just some things you don't do to a guy. Hacking through his defense systems is one thing, but taking over his ship? That's low. And I ain't going to take it.”
“Where does kidnapping mechs for scientific study fall on that list?” Optimus seethed.
Megatron activated the speaker link in the console and spoke with lower volume and tenuous restraint. “Think with great care on what you intend to do. Before you attempt something particularly foolish.”
“Oh, I don't much need to think about it,” Lockdown chuckled. “The gift I got in store for you is a little something I wired together vorns ago. It ought to quiet you down a bit. Too bad you won't be in much condition to enjoy a little relaxation.” With another oily laugh, Lockdown shut the channel down.
The certainty of a trap hung heavy in the claustrophobic confines of the room. Optimus held Megatron's furious gaze for an instant, then flicked his optics over the walls, across the floors, even up to the ceiling. He was nothing like Lockdown in model or mentality. For just an instant, he wished for Prowl's insight into the mind of the monster. “Every door has a lock,” he muttered, “but every lock has a key.”
Megatron growled. “Are you trying to poison me with platitudes?”
“I'm being prosaic,” Optimus said, his fingers digging under the edge of metal just above the main console screen. “If you were paranoid—” and of course, Megatron righteously was, “—where would you start an attack?”
Far taller in stature, Megatron easily reached where Optimus could not, setting his hands into the console and ripping the facing out with brute force, screws scattering across the floor and raining downward through the vents. “From the point of greatest vulnerability. And least accessibility.” They both paused, going still at the sight of the device tangled into the inner workings below the dismembered keypad. Its wires branched in all directions, unpleasantly leggy.
“Right.” Optimus gradually withdrew his fingers from the components of the console. “Is that a bomb?”
Megatron's growl was nearly subconscious—just a low grinding of stressed machinery. “No. A short-range impulse detonator, rigged to a timer. Properly triggered, it will place a mech in involuntary stasis, and it will render us less than a quantifiable threat.” The curve that spread across Megatron's mouth was in no way comforting, but Optimus felt incongruous encouragement, nevertheless. “What a pity that it needs time to properly charge when remotely detonated, else it is rendered equally useless.”
In a single movement, Megatron curled the fingers of his left hand around the detonator and ripped it free, wires snapping and snaking. The great gun hummed to life. In belated understanding, Optimus made an inarticulate sound of protest, surging forward. He shook his head, his hands wrapping around Megatron's wrist. “You'll blow a hole through the hull!” Surely they'd spent enough time freestyling through space.
“And what would you suggest?” Megatron snarled.
In reply, Optimus raised his battlemask and hefted the borrowed ax into both hands.
Megatron knew the value of expediency, at least, and they had no further time for argument. The Decepticon flung the detonator toward the chamber ceiling, a perfect arc interrupted on the descent by the ax blade as it cleaved the device in half.
The concussive blast shook the room. Optimus dropped to the floor. Megatron shifted in front of him, an afterthought of protection, shrapnel impacting in a harmless shower against his far tougher exoskeletal plating.
Shaken more by that unexpected consideration than by the explosion itself, Optimus stood slowly once the smoke began to clear. The dimensions of the room left the manufactured atmosphere acrid; their vents worked harder than usual to filter damaging chemicals. Megatron's expression twisted with distaste as he dusted off both arms and shook fallen bits of the ceiling from each foot. “It appears you are useful for something after all,” he said to Optimus, and slammed a fisted hand into the speaker system beside the door, activating it with a scream of static. “Your gift is a disappointment, bounty hunter. I would advise you to prepare for perfunctory annihilation.”
“And after vorns of such loyal service, too,” Lockdown's voice crackled back. “I guess job security really is a myth, after all.” The contrived pleasantness of his voice turned razor-edged. “Still my ship, boys. Take one step out of the that room, and I'll blow you both straight through the Pit. And out the other side of it. Whatever hell that might be.”
“We're at an impasse,” Optimus muttered. “He has weapons I've never even heard of, and we're like petrorabbits stuck in a hole while he bides his time.”
Megatron growled, and the sound itched beneath Optimus' plating. He felt a terrible urge toward hasty action. “We have the advantage of numbers.”
“And the disadvantage of low energy, damage...distrust...” Argument was difficult; Optimus felt weary down to his fundamental struts. The urge to act was not his own, but it was astonishingly powerful, and he had no idea how to fight what he wasn't really feeling. Megatron's gun was charging, and Optimus dropped the ax to clench both hands around Megatron's wrist, resistant. He pushed back with his own exhaustion to keep the Decepticon from getting the both of them summarily killed.
Megatron glared at him, but the tension began to ease. The gun stopped its whirling cycle.
Another static burst filled the room, this time originating in the splintered console. Desperately grateful for the interruption, Optimus withdrew his hands.
“...response. Lord Megatron? ...received your signal on incoming frequencies.”
Optimus recognized the distinctive inflections of that voice.
With or without visual communication, Megatron never lacked decisiveness. Refocusing his attention on the console, he twisted the remains of its components enough to allow a response. “Message received. Proceed immediately to this location with available military forces.”
“My liege, we are already en route. Sixty-two cycles to earliest interception.”
“That will have to do. Leave this channel open for the duration.” Megatron cast a wry glance over one shoulder at Optimus, optics flaring in fierce satisfaction. “It seems we have the advantage, after all.”
Rating: M/NC-17
Universe: Transformers: Animated
Pairing: Megatron/Optimus Prime
Word Count: 18,239 (in three parts)
Author's Note: Spoilers for A Bridge Too Close, follows an alternate ending into a new continuity. Warnings for dubious consent (for both parties) in Part I.
Part II
Lockdown's ship was just as unpleasant as Optimus remembered.
Admittedly, he recalled very little of his first stay. Even the memory of pain faded under the combined influences of shock and partial consciousness, but he did recognize the maze of winding corridors, the walls' strangely organic curvature, and the machinery that hummed steady and sibilant underfoot. He kept close to Megatron—not by choice, but by the necessity of the cuffs that still connected them.
Not that they wouldn't be connected without them.
“I want these stasis cuffs removed,” said Megatron, echoing Optimus' only reasonable wish.
Lockdown aimed a narrow grin over one spiked shoulder. “Ask and you shall receive.” Coming to a bend in the corridor, he palmed an activation pad with his single hand, opening a split door panel to reveal a room that Optimus had never wanted to see again. The table stood just as he remembered it, with restraints in place for wrists and ankles, and tools in various states of disorganization on benches and counters. Optimus came to such a sudden halt that he stopped Megatron with a jerk, and the Decepticon turned to glare at him before yanking him over the threshold.
Moving to a far corner of the room, Lockdown took a moment to exchange his hand with the chainsaw that Optimus remembered only too well. The bounty hunter chuckled at Optimus' expression. “Don't worry so much, Prime...looks like all the worthwhile parts of you are already gone, if you know what I mean.”
Optimus unwillingly followed Megatron's lead and stopped just shy of the table, raising his arm to draw the cuff link tight between their wrists. “Don't be insulted if I'm not really reassured.”
With another chuckle, Lockdown started the blades, measured the distance. Severing the cuffs required three attempts; they were Elite-issue restraints.
“Have to say, I'm surprised to see you still alive at all,” Lockdown confided as the saw folded out of view. His hand returned, the fingers flexing once or twice. Beady optics studied the scarring wounds on Optimus' arms, then the ragged hole in his chest, and Optimus fought the urge to cover himself with both hands. “Then again, looks like it was a pretty near thing.” He slid a smirk in Megatron's direction. The Decepticon didn't return it, outwardly consumed with dismantling the remaining ring around his wrist. With an arch of an optic ridge, Lockdown snagged Optimus' wrist with his hook, producing a sharp-edged tool that removed the cuff in two separate pieces.
Optimus twisted his wrist, rubbing along the marks left in the metal, and he glanced up again to see Megatron doing the same.
“Can't quite figure why you didn't finish the job,” Lockdown said with idle interest.
Ignoring him, Megatron met Optimus' gaze instead, and though the Decepticon didn't move a step, Optimus felt the complete refocusing of his attention. “You will have that repaired,” he said, optics flicking downward to rest on Optimus' chest plates. Not a request, not concern, just pure self-interest. Optimus glared back at him.
“Do you really think I'm planning on leaving it?”
“I was not asking your opinion.” Megatron scowled at him a moment more, then redirected his attention at Lockdown, who was watching them with banked speculation in the dark glitter of his optics. “I do not suppose you have anything so refined as oil.”
“Nothing that'll suit your tastes. But I've got the basic amenities covered.” Lockdown dug through a storage unit in the back corner of the room and reemerged with two nondescript cannisters. He tossed one to Megatron, who spent a moment inspecting it before working it open.
Lockdown tossed the other; Optimus caught it. He knew little about oil—and knew enough to avoid taking it from someone with motives so suspect—but his fuel levels had lowered during their time in space, and he didn't dare face his uncertain future without fortification. He opened the cannister, took a sip, and then grimaced with a shudder. Watching him, Lockdown chuckled again, setting Optimus' receptors on edge. The silence lasted for a cycle or more, and Lockdown leaned back against a wall, arms crossing over the asymmetrical planes of his chest.
“Congratulations,” the bounty hunter said.
Optimus looked up from his disgusted contemplation of the cannister. “What?”
“The two of you. Seems like you're sparkbonded.” Lockdown spoke so casually that all of Optimus' base programming screamed in warning.
His back to them both, Megatron stiffened. Optimus wondered if only he could sense the sudden menace in every movement when Megatron lifted the cannister, swallowed, and finally spoke. “Do you mention that because you are coming to some unexpected point? Or do you simply enjoy stating the blindingly obvious?”
“Hey.” Lockdown pushed off the wall and raised both hands—or rather, one hand and a hook—in an ineffectively disarming gesture. “No need to get uptight. Big occasion, right? Not everyone's so...lucky.”
Megatron faced him, a grim smile stretching across his mouth. Lockdown retreated a step when the Decepticon advanced. “What uncharacteristic and unnecessary consideration.”
Retreating another step, Lockdown tried a smile. “Can't blame a mech for seeing the truth. Besides, he needs a medic—medical assistance, guess I should say—since you can't exactly dispense with him in the traditional way.” Unnerved, Optimus jerked a hand toward his chest, an aborted movement that he quelled before Lockdown could continue. “Thought I might offer you my services in that regard. For a very reasonable price.”
Megatron's smile widened. It wasn't pleasant. “I do not require your assistance, bounty hunter. Your tools will do.”
For a moment, Optimus didn't comprehend the significance of the statement. Sudden understanding hit him a staggering blow. Of course, Megatron wouldn't trust anyone but himself with his own spark—with Optimus' spark, by association.
Lockdown frowned, but tried for diplomacy. “Anything gets broken of mine—”
“Your compensation shall be more than adequate to replace anything damaged during the process,” Megatron replied, and Optimus had the sickening sense that he wasn't talking only about tools.
Lockdown cast an uneasy glance at Optimus, then back at Megatron, before curving his lip components. “I'll leave you to it, then.”
“What, you don't want to watch?” Optimus snapped.
“I don't mind surgery, kid, but sadism doesn't turn my engine over, if you get my meaning.” Lockdown grinned at Optimus over one shoulder. “'Least not in a purely observational capacity.” He turned a wary optic toward his tools, then disappeared through the door. The panel slipped shut behind him.
“You will not enjoy this,” Megatron warned with casual disregard, picking up a welding instrument and testing its highest setting against a metal scrap that might or might not have once been part of a living mech.
Optimus edged away from him, covering the worst of the cracks with one hand. “I really hadn't planned to.”
Apparently satisfied with the tool, Megatron glanced at him, arching an optic ridge and beckoning with one finger. Optimus shook his head. Undergoing surgery—however necessary—without the benefit of a real medic or any form of anesthesia didn't fit into his survival subroutines, especially with the villain of Cybertron's legends holding the equipment.
“Given the...connected nature of your spark to my own, I have no little interest in preserving the safety of both.” Megatron stepped forward, a clear threat in his reaching hand. Optimus managed perhaps three or four swift dodges before the Decepticon caught the ribbed metal beneath his chest plates and crushed him back against the wall. “I am afraid I must insist,” Megatron informed him, pressing hard enough to crumple the armor plates at Optimus' back before beginning to weld.
Despite his sensors screaming warnings for both high temperature and dangerous proximity, Optimus made no further protest beyond wrapping one hand hard around Megatron's wrist. The karmic nature of the bond between them revealed itself again in moments, as the heat increased and both he and Megatron hissed in pain.
“Haven't you the sense to shut down your pain receptors?” Megatron snarled, nevertheless welding a patch into place.
Optimus clamped his dental plates together and spoke through them. “I would if I could. But you've done plenty of damage already—ah!” Searing bright pain crackled through all his sensory nodes. He heard Megatron growling distantly in simpatico. “Stop,” Optimus panted, “mercy of—stop.”
“Not until I finish it.” Megatron's heavier frame trembled against his own, fingers clenching and unclenching in the grip of the same agony. Optimus wondered what sort of lunatic persisted in hurting himself in order to hurt someone else.
The only mercy was that shared suffering made the assault quick, efficient, and as effective as possible under the circumstances. Not a pretty job, but a passable one. Megatron backed away with unsteady steps, and Optimus collapsed against the wall, hands lifting to explore the temporary plate welded over the worst of the wounds. It would protect his spark, and he supposed that was all that mattered to them both.
“You're no medic,” he muttered, shuttering his optics and waiting for his systems to settle.
Megatron chuckled, low and harsh. “I've done enough self-repair in battle to keep from killing you, Autobot. A little gratitude wouldn't be misplaced.”
That made Optimus flicker one optic dimly online, at least. “Get slagged,” he said. “Straight to the Pit.”
“Careful not to wish me anywhere you would not follow.”
He had a point, so Optimus said nothing. The pain faded to a dull ache—just a shadow over his sensory net—and while the silence between them wasn't comfortable, it was at least bearable. Optimus drifted deeply enough into himself that Lockdown's voice from the doorway made him start.
“The two of you done playing doctor? We've all got places to be.”
Megatron straightened and shifted his shoulders to readjust the plating of his chest; he was probably still troubled by Optimus' pain. “I wish to send a transmission to my servant. The comm line is private.”
“Bet I know the one,” Lockdown quipped, catching a hook through Optimus' neck cabling and hauling him to his feet. Optimus hissed in discomfort and twisted free, wishing so badly for weaponry that he nearly risked giving Lockdown a face full of fire-retardant foam, retaliation be slagged. Unconcerned, Lockdown nodded his head toward Optimus. “What about him?”
“He will be coming with me.” Megatron stood, adjusting the weight of his cannon. “Of course.”
“Right.” Lockdown rested his hand against the panel edge of the doorway. His fingers moved along the edge, and with recognition but no comprehension, Optimus saw the switch beneath those fingers and saw them flick against it. “Well, turns out I can't really allow that, after all.”
A routed forcefield snapped upward from one of the paneling seams in the floor, dividing the room in tidy halves. It also divided Optimus and Lockdown from Megatron, who loomed on the other side of the barrier, cast in the moving golden glow of powerful, dazzling electrical energy.
Megatron barely missed a beat. He punched both hands into the electrical barrier, sparks flashing off all the contact surfaces. Optimus cried out as searing agony spread upward through both his arms, burning into his connectors. Staggering backward, Megatron favored Lockdown with a look that promised barehanded mutilation and worse. “This is extremely unwise,” he said, so softly that Optimus felt chills ripple through his neural cabling.
“Yeah.” Lockdown grinned, but he didn't waste an instant in shoving Optimus toward the door. “Move it, kid.”
Stumbling through the portal ahead of him, Optimus caught his balance and turned just in time to see the panel slide shut on Megatron's murderous expression. Lockdown snagged his wrist and started dragging him down the corridor. “Hold on—what the—” He managed to complete a sentence when Lockdown paused to palm open another door. “Why would you help me?” he hissed, resisting when the bounty hunter tried to pull him through it.
“C'mon,” Lockdown growled back, urgent. “That won't hold him. I can put up real shielding from the command console. Move.”
Suspicious, bewildered, and vaguely hopeful, Optimus let the other mech drag him into a branching corridor and down into a passage with flickering, unsteady lights. The farther they moved from Megatron, the more the pain in his arms eased. Proximity apparently made a difference.
“Why are you helping me?” he demanded again once their pace slowed. He jerked at Lockdown's arm, forcing the bounty hunter to face him.
“Call it a little glitch of my conscience, if you like.” Lockdown rested a hand over his spark, and then he palmed open another door, gesturing for Optimus to precede him through it. “Something about how I can't bear to give up the best possible deal.”
Optimus froze. Lockdown delivered such a blow to his back that he staggered, nearly fell, and stumbled into the harsh light of an unpleasantly small room.
The door slid shut.
Optimus whirled and pounded both fists against it, denting the metal but doing little else. Furious, but hardly surprised, he shouted against the seam between the door panel and the wall. “Lockdown! Whatever you're up to, I'm not about to let you get away with it, and neither is Mega—”
A crackling over the intercom interrupted his tirade. “So sorry, boys, but there's been a change of plan. And of venue. Y'see, I have this acquaintance who's amazingly keen on the subject of scientific oddities, and I just had to give him a call. Your unusual situation has captured his interest like not much else.” A pause, and Optimus heard a distant, electrical clanking in the distance, like someone trying to break through a routed barrier with nothing but fists. A moment passed, and the rising thrum of igniting engines muffled the sound. “He's so eager to meet with the both of you that I just couldn't resist.”
“What's the price?” Optimus demanded, both hands slamming into the door again, rebounding from the force.
Lockdown could hear him. “A fair price. Let's just say...it makes your usual generous rewards look like small change, Megatron. So settle in for the long haul. 'Cause this is as comfortable as the accommodations get.”
The static crackle of a closing connection filled the room, followed by silence. Optimus pounded his fists against the door, expending fury that felt satisfying only so long as it lasted, then settled cold in his fuel tanks as he slumped to the floor. Any of Lockdown's business associates could only have a vested interest in reducing them to their base components, undoubtedly while studying the scientific effects of that dismantling on their bonded sparks.
Covering his face with both hands, Optimus tried not to imagine how his circumstances could grow any worse. Sparkbonded to Megatron, trapped once again by Lockdown, waiting to be the subject of someone's twisted curiosity...at least the others were likely still online and still protecting the shattered remains of the Allspark back on Earth. Rescue seemed impossible, nevertheless. With no way to track the path of the malfunctioning space bridge, the Elite Guard had recourse to nothing but the benevolence of bounty hunters and the reliability of its own informational network, the latter already compromised by Decepticon agents. Moreover, Megatron had never sent a signal for his own double agent to intercept.
Optimus shuttered his optics. Megatron, at least, probably had someone seeking him already—someone who might be en route to their previous interstellar position, if only by the grace of Optimus' own Autobot signal.
Though Megatron liked to cheapen him by terming him an optimist, he knew he could be practical when the situation demanded realism. Moreover, he could despise a course of action while still recognizing its benefits. He had done so with Elita a thousand stellar cycles ago. He didn't need to worry about whether or not he could forgive himself, afterward. He only needed to concern himself with reaching Megatron, and Megatron could concern himself with finding Longarm. Shockwave.
The door wouldn't give—not under his strength alone. Optimus tried subtler methods for the better part of a megacycle before abandoning that strategy. The room itself was nothing more than a storage unit, crates standing in haphazard stacks up to the ceiling, and when he forced a couple open in hopes of securing a weapon, he found only canistered oil and a few energon cubes. While the cubes might be useful, he didn't dare risk setting off a chain-reaction explosion on a pressurized ship. Breaching the hull wouldn't kill him, but he would be little better off floating defenseless through space. Yet again.
Besides the door panel, the other walls of the room stretched featureless in three curved directions. The ceiling had an emergency vent.
Venting shafts on older-model ships served dual purposes. They carried flammable fumes away from the power core, eventually jettisoning them into space through single-direction locks. During the Wars, they had also allowed minibot crews to move between ship partitions without damaging cargo or risking injury under the feet of larger mechs. Optimus measured the space with something less than exact optical calculations before scaling the nearest stack of crates.
Lockdown had welded the vent cover shut, and the angle made exerting the necessary force more than awkward. Even so, the weld wasn't strong, and several directed strikes buckled the metal until Optimus could work his fingers into a gap and pull.
The cover peeled back, then snapped at a hinge, clattering to the floor. Optimus hooked both hands over the edges of the vent and hauled himself upward, hissing in frustration when the movement sent the crates toppling over. He kicked his feet, seeking leverage, briefly hanging in place as his arms began to ache. He spent a few long cycles deciding just how he might wedge his shoulders through the vent, knowing that the rest of him would fit easily enough, and he had contorted himself just enough to get one elbow over the edge of the vent when the door panel slid open.
Actually, it didn't slide so much as it tore free from the wall with a wrenching shriek. Swearing, Optimus dropped to the floor with a clang, denting his plating on impact.
Looming in the warped frame of the door, Megatron looked in far worse condition. The plating on his arms and shoulders had scorched black, revealing patches of raw circuitry beneath, and Optimus smelled singed metal and a tinge of leaking coolant. Frowning, the Decepticon glanced pointedly upward at the dismantled vent, then downward at Optimus. “Pity you did not think of that somewhat sooner.”
“Give me a little longer, next time,” Optimus said, taken aback at so much unnecessary damage. “Not everything needs so much force.” Phantom pain flickered restlessly along his wiring, unmistakably foreign in origin. Little wonder his arms had begun to ache.
Paying him little mind, Megatron kicked the remains of the door aside and stepped into the room. “A gift for you.” The Decepticon brandished something, flung it.
Optimus flinched sideways. The blade of the ax sliced cleanly into the metal of the wall, leaving a sizable rift bare centimeters from the edge of Optimus' jaw. He hooked a hand around the handle, pulling the weapon free and examining it with deep distrust. Not his own...but a reasonable facsimile, he supposed. Undoubtedly one of Lockdown's acquired trophies, and in that case, he wouldn't mind putting it to good use. He allowed himself a single test swing, putting the force of his frame behind it and using the propulsion to twist and leap at Megatron with the ax swung high over his head.
The blow would have been lethal, delivered across the center of Megatron's chest and slicing through the chamber that held his all-too-familiar spark.
It would have killed them both.
But Megatron kept still, unmoving but entirely resistant, optics narrowed but hatefully calm. Optimus slid to a painful, ragged halt, the ax poised but trembling. Shuttering his optics, he drew in cooling oxygen through all his intakes, then released it through all his vents. His growl echoed off the walls as he flung the ax away, its blade clattering against the rough steel of the floor.
The echoes faded. They stared into each other.
Megatron spoke. “I suppose I should be reassured, to know that you are just as much a coward as I.” His slow smile was ghastly. “Where our own lives are concerned.”
Shuttering his optics, Optimus shook his head in wordless denial. Everyone he had ever fought with or fought for would be disappointed in what he had not done.
“Where is Lockdown?” he said at length.
“I haven't the slightest idea.” Megatron took a backwards step, and Optimus activated his optics at the sound. They watched each other for a long cycle more before Megatron deliberately turned his back, charging the great gun as he peered out into the corridor. “In an escape shuttle, if he values his continued function,” Megatron said, leading the way back into the maze of corridors.
Optimus collected the ax before following.
He expected Lockdown around every turn, but the ship stayed silent. Perhaps the bounty hunter had fled, after all. Then again, they hadn't had particularly good luck thus far, and Optimus doubted Lockdown would abandon this ship. After vorns of military service, Optimus knew a highly personal place when he saw it, and Lockdown seemed to place more value on material possessions than did most Cybertronians.
Ahead of him, Megatron touched a hand to the wall, flashing a swift scan through the paneling before following something with his fingertips.
Optimus whispered his question. “What are you doing?”
“This ship was once Decepticon,” Megatron said at normal volume. “The cable routing is familiar. The design leaves limited choices for communication arrays.” He chose a door and pressed a hand to the identification plate. When the ship's systems gave no reply, he dug his fingers into the seams and pulled the plate off, exposing its wiring. Optimus recognized basic override techniques in the movements of Megatron's fingertips: wires separated and then reattached to pass over alarms and around recognition software.
The door opened, and Megatron bent to negotiate its narrow dimensions. Optimus followed him, edging around one of his shoulders to examine the room. It was smaller even than the storage area, with a grated floor and circular walls that surrounded a communication console and a selection of sizable screens. Megatron touched the interior plate, forcing the door panel closed behind them and entering a locking command into its compromised system.
Pressing back against the wall, Optimus tried to make more space for both of them. He didn't want to touch by accident or otherwise. “What are you planning?”
“I intend to hack his defense systems and gain control of this ship.”
Ambitious intentions, Optimus thought, but Megatron had already succeeded in struggling his way through an electrical forcefield and tearing this room open for them, so he kept his doubts to himself. Besides, as Megatron had pointed out, this ship had once been Decepticon. Optimus could have guessed as much from its twisted interior and minimal lighting, though he didn't doubt that Lockdown had made a great many unpleasant modifications during a long and lucrative career.
Megatron settled uncomfortably into the console seat; it was too small for him by almost half. He made a brief movement, linking his fingers and stretching his servos before splaying them over the keys. For all its simplicity, the gesture startled Optimus with its normality, and he felt his own fingers ache distantly in sympathetic discomfort when Megatron began to type.
“This ship possesses a tachyon transmitter. Provided that Shockwave is in range and not otherwise occupied, a signal has some chance of reaching him.”
Optimus folded his arms around himself, as uneasy about rescue by Decepticons as he had been about rescue by Lockdown. While he intended to survive, he imagined that his survival would be only marginally less intolerable in the hands of Megatron than it would have been in the clutches of Lockdown's associate. “That's a lot of less-than-reassuring maybes.”
“What did you expect?” Megatron sneered, the words a little too uncomfortable to dismiss as idle cruelty. “Comfort? From your bondmate?”
Optimus couldn't help himself; he laughed. He stifled it, but the damage was done, and Megatron turned the chair to face him, arching an optic ridge. Begging comfort from Megatron... Slow nanite poisoning would be preferable, or at least less painful. “No,” Optimus said at length, regaining his composure, wondering if he might be near hysteria. Probably not—the notion just struck him as ridiculously funny. “Not what I expected, no.”
Frowning, Megatron regarded him narrowly for a moment more before returning his attention to the console. “Marvelous that one of us finds entertainment in misery.”
“Are you miserable?” Optimus said, genuinely interested in the answer.
Silence reigned for a cycle or two, but Optimus imagined he had the luxury of patience just now. He spent the time wondering uneasily at Lockdown's whereabouts, and worrying about whether these defense systems might not incorporate some variety of physical—even corporal—punishment if tripped. Megatron tapped at the keys, a rhythmic sound. Optimus thought unexpectedly of rain in Detroit, a patter of drops running cold down his windshields.
“No more miserable than usual,” Megatron admitted at last, interrupting Optimus' fonder memories of downtown's Slipper-Eaze automatic wash and wax. “But my usual level of misery is far beyond your comprehension, Prime.”
“Of course.” Weary, Optimus shifted from foot to foot, coming to stand behind Megatron at the console before speaking again. “Lockdown hasn't been a Decepticon for vorns. Can you really bypass his codes?”
Megatron rose smoothly to his feet, forcing Optimus backwards a step. “I just have.”
With that cue, the blocked screens of the console cleared to perfect black, and then the Decepticon shield flashed across each one. Readouts followed, paired with system reports, navigational information, and a hissing scrawl of static where the main control room comm link should display.
“I'd say that Lockdown knows we're in here.”
“Pity for him.” Megatron never paused, moving to the secondary transmitter pad and programming his message. Optimus knew very little about communication technology, but he could tell when the signal began to transmit, as a frequency meter appeared on a lower quadrant of the screen. Its bars fluttered in rhythmic hues of green and gold. “It is done.”
A shockingly metallic shriek cut through the ship's speaker system. Optimus clapped both hands over his audio receptors and heard something in a nearby room shatter under the decibel level. The noise cut off, only to be replaced by an even less welcome sound.
“Y'know,” Lockdown said over every functioning speaker in the ship, “I gotta admit, I've worked up a certain sort of respect for the both of you. I mean, I never seen anybody go bare-servoed through a double-routed field before. Really kind of expected you to give up, by the by, Prime. You seemed like the type.” They waited in silence through an increasingly sinister pause. “But there's just some things you don't do to a guy. Hacking through his defense systems is one thing, but taking over his ship? That's low. And I ain't going to take it.”
“Where does kidnapping mechs for scientific study fall on that list?” Optimus seethed.
Megatron activated the speaker link in the console and spoke with lower volume and tenuous restraint. “Think with great care on what you intend to do. Before you attempt something particularly foolish.”
“Oh, I don't much need to think about it,” Lockdown chuckled. “The gift I got in store for you is a little something I wired together vorns ago. It ought to quiet you down a bit. Too bad you won't be in much condition to enjoy a little relaxation.” With another oily laugh, Lockdown shut the channel down.
The certainty of a trap hung heavy in the claustrophobic confines of the room. Optimus held Megatron's furious gaze for an instant, then flicked his optics over the walls, across the floors, even up to the ceiling. He was nothing like Lockdown in model or mentality. For just an instant, he wished for Prowl's insight into the mind of the monster. “Every door has a lock,” he muttered, “but every lock has a key.”
Megatron growled. “Are you trying to poison me with platitudes?”
“I'm being prosaic,” Optimus said, his fingers digging under the edge of metal just above the main console screen. “If you were paranoid—” and of course, Megatron righteously was, “—where would you start an attack?”
Far taller in stature, Megatron easily reached where Optimus could not, setting his hands into the console and ripping the facing out with brute force, screws scattering across the floor and raining downward through the vents. “From the point of greatest vulnerability. And least accessibility.” They both paused, going still at the sight of the device tangled into the inner workings below the dismembered keypad. Its wires branched in all directions, unpleasantly leggy.
“Right.” Optimus gradually withdrew his fingers from the components of the console. “Is that a bomb?”
Megatron's growl was nearly subconscious—just a low grinding of stressed machinery. “No. A short-range impulse detonator, rigged to a timer. Properly triggered, it will place a mech in involuntary stasis, and it will render us less than a quantifiable threat.” The curve that spread across Megatron's mouth was in no way comforting, but Optimus felt incongruous encouragement, nevertheless. “What a pity that it needs time to properly charge when remotely detonated, else it is rendered equally useless.”
In a single movement, Megatron curled the fingers of his left hand around the detonator and ripped it free, wires snapping and snaking. The great gun hummed to life. In belated understanding, Optimus made an inarticulate sound of protest, surging forward. He shook his head, his hands wrapping around Megatron's wrist. “You'll blow a hole through the hull!” Surely they'd spent enough time freestyling through space.
“And what would you suggest?” Megatron snarled.
In reply, Optimus raised his battlemask and hefted the borrowed ax into both hands.
Megatron knew the value of expediency, at least, and they had no further time for argument. The Decepticon flung the detonator toward the chamber ceiling, a perfect arc interrupted on the descent by the ax blade as it cleaved the device in half.
The concussive blast shook the room. Optimus dropped to the floor. Megatron shifted in front of him, an afterthought of protection, shrapnel impacting in a harmless shower against his far tougher exoskeletal plating.
Shaken more by that unexpected consideration than by the explosion itself, Optimus stood slowly once the smoke began to clear. The dimensions of the room left the manufactured atmosphere acrid; their vents worked harder than usual to filter damaging chemicals. Megatron's expression twisted with distaste as he dusted off both arms and shook fallen bits of the ceiling from each foot. “It appears you are useful for something after all,” he said to Optimus, and slammed a fisted hand into the speaker system beside the door, activating it with a scream of static. “Your gift is a disappointment, bounty hunter. I would advise you to prepare for perfunctory annihilation.”
“And after vorns of such loyal service, too,” Lockdown's voice crackled back. “I guess job security really is a myth, after all.” The contrived pleasantness of his voice turned razor-edged. “Still my ship, boys. Take one step out of the that room, and I'll blow you both straight through the Pit. And out the other side of it. Whatever hell that might be.”
“We're at an impasse,” Optimus muttered. “He has weapons I've never even heard of, and we're like petrorabbits stuck in a hole while he bides his time.”
Megatron growled, and the sound itched beneath Optimus' plating. He felt a terrible urge toward hasty action. “We have the advantage of numbers.”
“And the disadvantage of low energy, damage...distrust...” Argument was difficult; Optimus felt weary down to his fundamental struts. The urge to act was not his own, but it was astonishingly powerful, and he had no idea how to fight what he wasn't really feeling. Megatron's gun was charging, and Optimus dropped the ax to clench both hands around Megatron's wrist, resistant. He pushed back with his own exhaustion to keep the Decepticon from getting the both of them summarily killed.
Megatron glared at him, but the tension began to ease. The gun stopped its whirling cycle.
Another static burst filled the room, this time originating in the splintered console. Desperately grateful for the interruption, Optimus withdrew his hands.
“...response. Lord Megatron? ...received your signal on incoming frequencies.”
Optimus recognized the distinctive inflections of that voice.
With or without visual communication, Megatron never lacked decisiveness. Refocusing his attention on the console, he twisted the remains of its components enough to allow a response. “Message received. Proceed immediately to this location with available military forces.”
“My liege, we are already en route. Sixty-two cycles to earliest interception.”
“That will have to do. Leave this channel open for the duration.” Megatron cast a wry glance over one shoulder at Optimus, optics flaring in fierce satisfaction. “It seems we have the advantage, after all.”
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