Ep. 0 - Triage - Closed

Unable to hold Megatron in place, Breakdown swore he could see Knock Out cringe inwardly when Megatron's claws connected with his arm. He had to control his own reaction as he met Knock Out's optics. He'd be cleaning that later.

Several long nanokliks had passed when Knock Out nodded to him, and he knew what that meant without needing to be told: get the neural suppressants. They got a fair number of patients who thought they wanted them instead of stasis. When the soldiers asked, Breakdown usually told them like it is: listen, you won't want to be awake for this.

With Lord Megatron, he just rushed over to the compartment containing the suppressants, picked out several in different strengths, and delivered them for Knock Out to choose. That done, there was nothing to do but take hold of Megatron's arms again to lead him toward the table, and hope for everyone's sake that he wanted to be moved.

The berth against his back seemed to drain the very last of his strength, trembling hydraulics giving out at the sense of external support, and Megatron shuttered his optics trying to hold onto it. Suppressants and relaxants stole the broiling emotion that had fueled his systems past the point of pain and catastrophic failure. He felt hollow and disconnected, vaguely aware of his physical injuries as points of grey amidst his form.

Without anger, without pain, however, the poisonous crack of agony pulsing out from his core was all-consuming. Turning his helm away from Knockout to fix his optics on the wall, where his expression would not be read, Megatron stiffened with a sharp ex-vent at the form waiting there. His vents stalled, choked with fluids leaking from dozens of shredded lines and turned tacky with heat. Overcompensated massively to cool his systems, and he didn't think to temper them when they'd turned short, shallow and rapid.

Saturated with energon, chassis torn open to the obviously defiled core, Barricade leant against the wall with both optics crushed yet fixed on him blindly. His alligned was silent but radiated a sense of pain, accusation and disappointment. There was a roaring sound in his audios and processor, chassis flexing erratically as systems too slagged to work at a normal rate abruptly accelerated. The Saleen flickered once with static and was gone before Megatron snapped his helm away, back towards Knockout.

Barricade was missing - hurt, slagged, tortured and near death, and Prime was still standing. Limbs immobile from the relaxants and the lack of power in his systems, Megatron shook from struts to plates.

"...Can't..." The word was rasped out, shredded and torn and enraged and despaired all at once.

::Here,:: Knock Out sent to Breakdown, optics not moving from where his hands were buried in the Decepticon leader's slagged chassis. ::Need you here. Start here, clamp everything. Once he's not leaking like a fragging sieve, get him on the drip, then grab the aspirator and suck all this slag out of him. I can barely see some of the damage for the fluids, and he's overheating from the blocked vents.:: Knock Out's optics flicked up to catch Breakdown's. ::Nothing you haven't done before. Just stay cool and do it.::

Once Breakdown was moving again, Knock Out's hands dove into the tray for the absorbants and the sutures, coming up full but stopping as Megatron's chassis moved in ways he shouldn't have had the strength to do voluntarily. "Sir, are you in pain?" Megatron didn't appear to hear him, shaking, stiff, head turned away for a klik before turning back, his optics dim but his expression...a pain both physical and not that Knock Out was nearly shocked to see on the warlord's faceplates. "Can't? Can't what, my lord?"

Then the medberth lit up with errors like a fireworks display, exploding across Knock Out's HUD with urgency and impending doom at the same time that Megatron's frame went utterly rigid, relaxants and nonexistent hydraulic pressure be damned.

"FRAGGIT!" Knock Out streamed instructions to Breakdown as he dropped the supplies back onto the tray. ::Get him cuffed down. He's seizing. I need to jack in or his processor's going to slag itself.:: He cursed, quickly, fluently, and in several languages, as his plug snapped out and he went for the medical port that Megatron had kept him from before. He looked up to meet Breakdown's optics. ::I'm going for a med-level scan. If I seize or lose responsiveness, disconnect me. IMMEDIATELY.::

There were other instructions, other things that could be done externally, but Breakdown hadn't been trained in them and there wasn't time to explain. Slaggitall.

Knock Out was not a praying mech. So he didn't pray as he jacked into Megatron's dark-energon-slick medport. He just hoped that there wasn't going to be anything waiting for him on the other side of his superior officer's firewalls.

<<Krax has said that Megs can be down for the count for a bit here, so KO and Breakdown can go along for a few exchanges, and she'll come back in when Megs wakes up. I figure BD can keep on keepin' on with the external triage while KO tries to sort out Megs' processor-and-spark slag.>>

Knock Out was a cybernetic engineer. He dealt with metal and energon, coolants and hydraulics and all the parts that moved them as they should. He could build a frame from scratch, from schematics through fabrication to assembly. He could (and had) rebuilt limbs from scrap; designed and installed unique weapons systems, resequenced transformation cogs, and aided in designing and reformatting one of the few successful gestalts that had ever existed. He had, at one time or another, repaired, replaced, cleaned, or yanked out for scrap just about every part in a Cybertronian frame.

None of this trained him to deal with programming and code. Oh, he knew the somatic systems, the pure if-then and tolerance arguments, predictable as a circuit pattern, that controlled the movement of the parts that he designed, installed, and maintained. He could write and troubleshoot those to assure graceful and powerful movement. That went without saying. But the higher-order coding? The spark-adapted threads, the autonomic links to the personality matrix, the overrides of thought and desire imposing their will on efficient and logical defaults? There was a delicate, fussy logic there that Knock Out had never sought to learn, and he was a rank amateur at its care.

Which was why the hardline connection with Megatron's systems made him wince. It wasn't as bad as he'd feared (no strange, alien sentience seemed ready to crawl up his cable and take him over, for instance), but what met him when he'd bypassed the Decepticon leader's outermost firewalls was a whole lot of his least favorite types of errors.

Oh, there were plenty of familiar, secondhand physical status alerts and damage reports as he patched himself into Megatron's processor activity stream. They matched the medic's own medscan logs, cataloging the truly impressive amount of damage Megatron had taken. As Knock Out observed absently, a few of the alerts winked out, the energon depletion errors lessening and pressure drops slowing as Breakdown clamped torn lines.

But the processor crash itself...that was something else.

Knock Out was familiar with crashes as a result of energon depletion and battle damage, especially in systems as old as Megatron's. The processor would slow and slip its threading or become overwhelmed by errors and cascade into a grinding sort of lockup that could lead to permanent corruption. Megatron was working his way through such a lockup, but Knock Out's foray into the warlord's processor error logs did not point to the lockup being due to the usual physical issues. Megatron WAS dangerously low on energon, WAS riddled with errors, but many of the most grievous had started even before this last fight. His systems had been dealing with the triage and queueing just fine until that first seize, by which time the majority of physical damage had been listed, catalogued, and accepted. No, it was something else, Knock Out realized as he started terminating locked threads, soothing congesting errors, and getting Megatron's processor, node by node, to a place where he could shut it down safely and reboot.

Knock Out watched the reboot blossom across his awareness, system after system coming back online. As they did so, he saw those same errors pop back up again. Not all of them, just the persistent ones. Cleared as the error log had been by the shutdown, he could pick them out much more easily...and he didn't like what he saw at all.

Spark-adapted threads, most of them. The kind he was least qualified to treat. Wonderful, Knock Out thought as he steadied himself and ran a spark diagnostic.

The results were so unbelievable that he stopped reading the log and ran the diagnostic again. Then ran a diagnostic on the diagnostic systems.

What. The frag. Is THAT?

Knock Out knew WHAT it was, of course. He had been trained in the spark splitter's installation (if by trained one meant he'd seen it done once and might possibly be able to replicate the procedure without killing the mech on the table...with a lot of luck.) It was medtech used to isolate small portions of a damaged spark to stabilize the whole. SMALL portions.

This splitter was NOT isolating a small portion. It was only because he was so very much NOT a spark technician that he'd not caught it before, Knock Out suspected. What had been done to Megatron's spark was...butchery. Madness.

What was doubly stunning was the age of it. The splitter was recently installed, according to the logs. Certainly after he'd been appointed CMO. He'd obviously never seen it before, so who had installed it? Why? And what effects were it having on Megatron's spark and systems?

Knock Out kept reading through the log, searching for the differentials in Megatron's spark resonance and...stopped. Almost ran another diagnostic.

Oh, frag no. NO.

The knowledge settled into Knock Out's processor like a drop of white-hot energon, ready to eat through everything and possibly explode.

Megatron was bonded. Aligned. The bond was recent, fledgling, but undeniably there. Also as undeniably it was the hub of a horde of previous and current persistent errors spidering out into personality matrix, spark regulation, even reaching all the way into sensory systems. Knock Out did not have the training to read the errors' fine details, but he could understand the records of fluctuating power flows, ebbs and flows and surges, a sustained power drain that had to have been crippling, followed by a fluttering jerk back toward baseline that had been nothing of the sort. That altered spark baseline had spread its errors in a wave that Knock Out could clearly see, terminated only because Megatron's personality matrix was not online and could not propagate it. The erroneous threads waited, though, a black tide ready to spread their poison just as before.

The medical reboots had completed. As troubling as the spark-born errors were, reboot had improved the general health of Megatron's processor a few thousandfold. He was stable, the cascade stopped and corruption averted. Megatron's systems pinged the medic their readiness, awaiting further medical directives.

Knock Out, unsure what to tell them, left them idling as he disconnected, optical feed switching back on.

After all, what did one do when one knew the Lord of the Decepticons' greatest secret? A secret that was slowly driving him mad?

I am fragged. Well and truly fragged.

Knock Out knew that it was only medical protocols that were keeping his processor ordered as he moved to help Breakdown finish stemming the tide of broken fluidics. At Breakdown's questioning glance, Knock Out said aloud, "He had some minor corruption that I can take care of once he's physically stable. I'm...queueing up a treatment plan right now." He forced his field to calmness, but it was more for his benefit than to hide anything. He wasn't that good of an actor, not that close, his field brushing Breakdown's. Slag the big dolt, he wasn't going to miss it.

::Don't ask aloud. In fact, if you're smart, you just won't ask, period.::

Fragged, he thought, as he grabbed the aspirator. Utterly. Fragged.

Knock Out thanked Primus for medical protocols. Meant to keep battle medics from becoming overwhelmed and emotionally entangled in their work, they nipped and tucked the personality matrix just enough under professional conditions to allow medics to...shove their emotions aside.

Knock Out shoved, letting the consideration of what he'd learned slot in with the rest of the triage hierarchy in his processor.

1. Physically stabilize the patient.

Knock Out briefly considered letting Megatron die. He was fairly sure he could convince Breakdown to go along with it. With lies, if necessary. But a long few nanokliks' thought brought him to the same conclusion he'd worked off of since he'd run through the 'bridge: his chances of getting away with it were slim. Knock Out had no illusions about how many angles of surveillance feed Soundwave had originating in the medbay, and if the spymaster wasn't watching all of them right now, Knock Out would eat his laser scalpel. No. Fixing Megatron was required, and Knock Out's hands moved on autopilot, aspirating, clamping, aspirating some more, then starting the tedious task of patching severed lines. His manipulators were smeared with dark energon. He wished dearly that he could have used the forcefield generators, but this was too delicate. He couldn't sacrifice his deftness to keep his hands clean. He grimly stuck a full decontamination for all medical personnel at the very end of his triage list.

2. Reassure your aide.

Breakdown wouldn't want to know about the sparkbond and wouldn't thank Knock Out for telling him. Primus knew that Breakdown already was not Megatron's favorite mech. The last thing he'd want would be this dangerous of a secret. Knock Out might be able to lie and obfuscate his way out of this. Breakdown...slag, no.

::He's...stable, yes. Physically.:: Knock Out kept his optics on his work and Breakdown's. ::This goes no further than you, but his processor is a mess. He's throwing errors like grenades. I'll do my best, but be wary of him. He's not going to be the most rational mech.::

::Your faith in me is appreciated, Breakdown.:: Somehow, his usual sarcasm markers didn't make it into his comm.

Knock Out soldered one connection, moved on to the next, already swabbed clean of flammables and ready for his attention. He was going to have to thank Breakdown properly after this. He was doing exactly what he should, anticipating Knock Out's needs and not adding to Knock Out's obvious and un-obvious problems.

As Megatron's vitals moved back into the green and the medberth's alerts petered out, Knock Out had to face those un-obvious problems. What in the PIT was he going to do?

Well...that was easy.

3. Get Megatron back online
3a. ...functional.
3b. ...not crazy.
3c. ...without making it obvious you know about the sparkbond.

Easier said than done, and there were other points, but everything balanced on those.

Once the last error message winked out and Megatron's internals were as good as they were going to get, Knock Out closed him up. He stood straight and stretched out kinked hydraulics lines. He reached for the decontamination solvent again, cleaning off his hands. His plating was CRAWLING, and his arm was already starting to ping with minute but strange power fluctuations. He stared at the arm, watching the power readings. It could be nothing.

Right. And he was a combiner.

He looked over at Breakdown's dark energon-streaked arms. "You'd better not have any open wounds under that slag." He poked at his own wounds. Deep, protometal deep. Getting the contamination out was going to be a pain in the aft. He narrowed his optics, an easier (though admittedly more drastic) solution occurring to him.

Better safe than sorry, in this case.

He handed Breakdown the decon solvent. "Clean off your hands. THOROUGHLY. I want this arm off." He headed back to the storage shelves. He had a replacement arm in his own configuration in there, he was fairly sure. A backup that was probably still dinged from the last fight it saw, but close enough....