Ep 0 - San Juan Mts, Colorado - Closed

Shadow's memories of her early months on Earth were spotty, at best. She remembered waking up outside the twisted ruin of her ship, the metal hulk barely offering shelter from the pouring rain. She remembered crouching by a road, mud covered and barely functional, with no clue how she’d gotten there, waiting for something, anything to come by so she could scan a disguise. She remembered traveling halfway across the continent in the form of a rattletrap old Studebaker that had been in nearly as bad of shape as she was, then she had gotten tired of the risk of being towed as a derelict every time she tried to recharge by the side of the road and scanned her current alt.

What she did not remember was ever returning to the wreck, not even to scavenge supplies when she'd been starving and desperate enough to dare the local fuel supplies (a day and a half of purging her tank, and that she devoutly wished she could forget; in the end, the only thing that had saved her was a torrential rain washing the Central American road out from under her wheels and literally dumping her in a small energon deposit).

She knew where the wreck was, though, and she set the coordinates in the ground bridge with no visible sign of the conflict within, refusing to hesitate to activate the bridge, or walk through it, even though she didn’t think she was being observed. Whatever she found there, whether it was confirmation of the half-memories haunting her, or proof that she had simply let Barricade worm his way into her processor, or nothing at all, she needed to do this.

From a distance, forty years of overgrowth had hidden the gleam of metal and softened the ship's Cybertronian outline where it wasn't covered by the rockface it had half buried itself in; Shadow doubted any human stumbling into this little valley would see anything but an oddly-shaped outcropping. She recognized it immediately, though, a sick feeling rippling through her spark. The shape, the size, were all wrong; not her swift, sleek little Stardancer, but one of the larger, more heavily armed ships, Viper's or Wildfire's or Interlock's.

Relay's, she thought, the sick feeling growing, and she suddenly wanted, desperately, to be anywhere but here, facing anything but this. Walking toward the ship was like forcing her way through a storm, her whole body rebelling against her processor’s commands to keep moving.

Up close, the thin veneer of organic matter was less convincing camouflage, dark score marks and gaps in the hull visible beyond the tenaciously clinging plantlife. Shadow swayed, shuttering her optics as the bright daylight around her was replaced by utter blackness of a ship gone dead in space, and the unexpected beacon of the weapons panel flaring back to life, testament to Relay's need to always get in the last shot, the multiple redundancies he'd built into his weapon system.

She cycled her vents and pushed the memory back, unshuttered her optics and made her way to the blown-open hatch. She didn't remember using the emergency charge to open it; she did remember lying in the resultant crater until rain had started pooling around her, and she'd dragged herself to slightly drier ground.

The crater was no more than a slight hollow, now, the hatch door buried under years of shifting dirt and grass. She stepped into the entryway, optics brightening to compensate for the darkness as she moved deeper into the ship.

Energon. Energon everywhere, the floor awash in it, slick under her pedes.

Energon splashed across the floor, a trail of her own making, but there was more, on the walls, even overhead, splatters indicating brutal violence.

Bodies everywhere, too. Tundra, most of her torso blown away and a look of utter shock on her greyed-out face. Wildfire, his colors fading even as she watched in frozen disbelief.

Her steps slowed, walking through ghosts. Phaseshift, half her beautiful face torn off, chassis sliced open. Interlock, collapsed atop Hardwire as if she'd been trying to defend him. Mistral, his mainline severed.

I’m the mech who killed your recon unit. Thought I’d made a better impression.

Labyrinth, impossibly still alive, his exposed, guttering spark filling the air with an acrid tang. Dumping data into her so fast and hard there was no room left for thought, just lock it down lockitdownlockitdown and move, driven by a command imperative that overrode everything else.

"Get this to the Prime!"

It flooded back, all of it, until she was on her knees, shaking, the only ghost left the shredded, shattered remains of Relay. Shadowrunner screamed and pounded her fists against the wall above him, until mesh tore and energon smeared bright across dark metal, until her vocalizer glitched and locked into a wailing, high pitched keen.

Finally, both sound and motion shuddered to a halt, leaving her hunched over Relay's body, exhausted, drained...empty of everything except pain and the despairing realization that there was no hope left, no chance of being found. She was utterly, completely alone.

She would have screamed again had her overstressed vocalizer been capable of it. Her battered fists curled tighter as she shuttered her optics and turned inward, found the one thing which survived beneath the grief and despair.

Hate. Hate hot enough to burn the rest away, hate that fed on itself until it cooled into an icy resolve.

Shadow pushed herself back to her pedes, optics flaring bright. There were things she needed to do. Inform the Prime that her unit was dead. Arrange to scavenge the ship for supplies and equipment; even if Barricade had been using it, there was no way he’d gone through all of the emergency supplies and rations Relay obsessively hid away. Most of the ship’s systems were probably slag, but they should still pull the computers, see if there were any parts Ratchet could use.

Dispose of Relay’s body, just in case humans did wander near enough to realize this was something other than a strangely shaped lump of rock.

But first...first, she needed to find Barricade.