Ep. 1 - Ghost Town - (Closed)

[Deleted]

Oh, but Mirage loved it when things went according to plan. As easy as it would have been to retrieve his rifle from subspace, drop his cloak, and rid himself of his human obstacle before he could even begin to regret his poor life choices, he had no desire to end anyone’s life that night. Even if these humans had transgressed against him and his, he was not particularly keen on the idea of bloodshed for its own sake. Did he want justice? Yes. Recompense? Of course. Did he want to take matters into his own hands and punish MECH for their crimes himself? No, not particularly. At least, not firsthand, not by killing them. He would, however, enjoy taking part in their eventual disbandment and arrest. It wasn’t blood on his hands he wanted; it was the satisfaction of knowing he played a part in the take down of an organization which had made the terrible mistake of offending his sensibilities.

That, however, was a long-term goal which he would focus on accomplishing later. For the time being, his focus was upon finding evidence of their missing comrade’s location.

As the guard strayed from his post, falling for the ruse laid out before him, Mirage returned to doing just that. He waited until the man was out of earshot before closing the distance between himself and the now-vacant door, then turned his back towards the direction the guard had wandered off to so that he could safely drop his cloak from his optics without them being seen. With his vision restored, he eyed the door, taking note of the curious lack of locks or traps. It made sense, he supposed. If MECh wished to operate covertly, then a touch of subtlety was required. Making the location of their base obvious by putting high-tech locks on things that ought not to have high-tech locks would be counter-productive to that end.

Once he was sure no alarm was likely to sound if the door was disturbed, he stood off to the side of it, pressing himself against the hillside it was built into as he carefully pulled the handle and cracked the door open. It was never wise to open a door while standing directly in front of it, when one did not know what lied on the other side. Mirage had learned this the hard way, back when he was new to the trade and made mistakes that really should have gotten him killed. He was honestly quite baffled that they didn’t. The first few months of his tenure as a special operative could be accurately described with little more than a cringe and a pitying head-shake, it had been that wrought with mistakes.

Mistakes he learned from quickly and made a point to never repeat ever again. Hence why he extended his sensors range, feeling out the area behind the door to check for anyone lying in wait, before crouching down and slipping inside. He shut the door quietly behind him so that the guard would find his post seemingly undisturbed when he returned, then turned his gaze towards the narrow passageway before him. It was a bit of a tight fit, and he would have to crouch lest he risk cracking his helm against one of the overhead lights, but that was fine by him. After all, he had skulked about in far more confining areas before. He would take a narrow tunnel over a ventilation shaft any day.

[Deleted]

It wasn't long before the guard returned back to his post, unaware of how narrowly he had missed a swift end. Through the door Mirage would be able to hear him speak back into his radio, his voice muffled as he gave his scheduled check-in and reported that nothing was unusual.

Scheduled check-ins. Which meant that if one guard did not report in, the entire base would be alerted shortly after. A good thing for both of them that the man was still alive, then.

Ahead of him was a short passage, dimly lit with crude lights on strung wires along the ceiling. The walls were rough, little more than slatted boards over the original dirt and rock passage hewn back in the day when Ruby Hill was an active mine. This was likely an old entry shaft, meant to provide both men and machines access to the lifts that dropped into the mines themselves. And it was a tight fit - claustrophobically so. It was large enough to accommodate him if he crouched, though it left him with little room to manoeuvre.

But if he relaxed his invisibility and returned a little of his sight back to his optics he would be able to see that there was a brighter light somewhere ahead of him, further down the dark passage.

And if he looked even closer, he would see the entrance of a elevator shaft descending into the earth. There was no lift in sight - likely it had been dismantled a long time ago, the mechanical parts stripped away - but the hole itself remained, wide enough to admit a machine of his size. A bare floodlight hung above it.

[Deleted]

The guard’s voice carried faintly through the door, allowing Mirage to catch his muffled words and hear him give his scheduled check in. It seems letting him live turned out to be beneficial after all.

How splendid.

He pressed close to the wall, his fingertips skimming quietly along its plank surface as he guided himself down the narrow passageway. He detected no life-signs, no heat-signatures, no sounds of movement save for his own, and his proximity sensors showed him nothing but the walls surrounding him, and the open space before and behind him. As far as he could tell, he was the only occupant of the tunnel, which meant he could once more drop his cloak from his optics without risking detection. Assuming, of course, there were no hidden cameras or the like embedded into the walls, but doubted there were. That sort of overly thorough surveillance in low-priority areas was rarely employed by anyone aside from a certain security director who shall remain nameless.

That being said, Mirage felt confident that he would not be compromising himself or his mission if he dropped his cloak for a short while, at least from his optics. A single thought later, and his vision returned to him, his optics glowing bright in stark contrast to the darkness surrounding him. He blinked, his optics cycling off then on again as they adjusted themselves to the dim lighting, and after focusing for a moment or two he was finally able to make out the archway at the end of the tunnel. The lighting was too poor for him to take notice of any fine details, but it was bright enough for him to realize what it was he was looking at - a lift. Or rather, what was once a lift. As he approached the end of the tunnel, he could see that the elevator shaft was empty, the lift itself long gone, leaving behind only a dark black pit which lead down to Primus’ knew where. He brushed his foot along the ground, kicking a small stone down the shaft. He listened closely, waiting for the sound of the stone touching ground to echo back up the tunnel and meet his audials. It took a few seconds longer than he thought it would, which told him that he was standing before a considerable drop.

Well then. Jumping down was not an option.

Frowning thoughtfully, Mirage eyed the stone floor beneath his feet, wondering whether it would be able to serve as a secure mount should he drive a piton into it. Luckily, he was able to find what he was looking for, though it took him a few moments more than he would have liked to have spent, thanks to the poor lighting. From his subspace he withdrew two pitons, and drove each into two separate cracks in the floor with a hard stomp of his boot. He tested them, tugging hard on both to see if the stone would crumble around them or stay firm.

Thankfully, they held. Once assured the pitions were securely planted, he looped a carabiner through each, and through those he looped a length of cable which he tied in the middle, creating a distinct Y-shape. Once finished, he had a two-point equalized anchor, which meant the load each piton had to bear was distributed in such a way that both anchors were less likely to fail under the strain. Though, in the event one did fail the second would still be able to support his weight. Hopefully. Assuming nothing went catastrophically wrong, but he wasn’t about to make any bets and wind up jinxing himself.

Once satisfied with his rig, Mirage secured the cable to himself and began his descent down the shaft, pushing away from the wall with his feet and slowly sliding down the cable a short ways before swinging forward again and kicking back off the wall, creating faint dust-clouds as he made contact with its dirt-dusted surface.

[Deleted]

The pitons held without difficulty. Mirage would be able to lower himself down the shaft, quiet and careful.

As he descended the air grew distinctly cooler, taking on a subterranean chill. The dust he stirred from the walls hung still in the air, moving little. There were few draughts here, no eddies caused by ventilation. The walls were mostly stone and hard–packed dirt, braced here and there by solid beams of both iron and timbre. This part of the mine looked old – perhaps eighty, nearly one hundred years old. The dry, desiccated air likely helped to prevent rot from settling in; wood soaked in creosote did the rest.

However, the lower the spy went the more things changed. The stone walls vanished. Old wood and iron was replaced with steel. The deeper he went the newer the elevator shaft became – until finally his feet touched down upon a polished concrete floor.

Mirage now stood at the bottom of the shaft. Behind him were the gutted lower mechanics of the lift, the old belts and gears and drives that had once hoisted the lift up the shaft. In front of him a steel mesh security cage barred his path forward, standing easily his height. The mesh was rusty but still in good shape; the only way out of it was a simple chain–link gate that slid open and shut on a track. The gate looked as if it could be opened wide enough to accommodate any sort of heavy cargo being transported up or down on the lift. Now it was chained shut and padlocked, locking him inside the cage.

Through the mesh he would be able to see that he stood in a broad room with metal walls, dimly lit with electric lights embedded in the low ceiling – looked like a storage or utility room of some kind. There was a wide sliding door at the far end, with a keypad to the side of it.

It was empty, though the walls hummed with proper ventilation. The air was warmer here, and fresh.

[Deleted]

The further down he traveled, the more the shaft began to change. Stone and wood gave way to steel, and the dust clouds that accompanied his every kick-off against the wall slowly began to dissipate until the stale, musty air that surrounded him faded away and he was once again surrounded by fresh, breathable air. Not that he needed to breath, but still. Clean air was easier on the vents and olfactory-sensors alike, and therefore preferable to what he had been cycling in during his descent.

Once his feet were back on solid ground, Mirage took a moment to unhook himself from the cabling and secure said cable against the wall so it would not swing back and forth and call attention to itself, should anyone come down the corridor. When that task was completed, he turned his attention towards the locked security cage before him. He ran a quick check with his sensors to make sure no one was nearby to hear the chains rattle as he examined the padlock. It was a far cry from the sort of lock he was used to dealing with, though that did not mean it was in any way more difficult for him to pick. On the contrary, simple shackle-locks were considerably less troublesome than locks which required card-keys, pass-codes, or Primus forbid, RFID cards.

It was a lucky thing these humans did not expend their resources on more sophisticated security measures. Mirage did not enjoy wasting precious time dilly-dalling with locks. Especially not when lives were potentially on the line, and it was with that thought in mind that he retrieved eight small picks attached to a ring from his subspace (a good agent never left home without their toys) and tested the first pick on the lock. The results were less than pleasing, though Mirage supposed it really would be too easy if he got the lock open on the first try. The second and third picks proved no more fruitful, but each failure gave him a better idea of where the shear line was, so at least some good came from them. It was on the fourth try with the pick of the same number that he finally raked the pins just right, disengaging the lock with a satisfying click.

Careful not to make more noise than was strictly necessary, Mirage unhooked the lock’s shackle from the chain, then unwound the chain from the gate as quietly as he could. Checking once more to make sure no one was nearby to over hear, Mirage slid the gate back then stepped out of the security cage, before carefully looping the chain back around the gate, so that nothing would look amiss should anyone come walking by. The padlock, however, he kept with him. He doubted anyone would notice it was missing - a glance at the chain and most would overlook the door completely. Besides, he had no desire to rake those pins again on his trip back out.

Once he finished clearing his tracks, Mirage turned to examine the room he now found himself in. Storage center, it seemed like. His inner cat-burglar wondered idly if there was anything worth pilfering from the place, but he quickly quashed the thought. He could take petty gestures of revenge against MECH on his way out, after he had discovered whether or not they had anything to do with Air Raid’s disappearance. (And given the evidence at hand, he had strong reason to believe they did.)

After a cursory glance around the room, he made his way over towards the door and tried not to sigh at the sight of the keypad. Of course, more locks. With no small amount of mental grumbling, he examined the keypad, looking for the numbers which had the most wear. He frowned, unhappy to find that there was no way he could simply plug into the lock and hack it. He would have to do things the old-fashioned way, which meant trying different number combinations, based upon the four worn keys, until he finally found the right combination. Considering two of the four keys were considerably more worn than the others, he could eliminate all the combinations which did not repeat those two numbers at least once, which narrowed down his options a great deal.

Determined to get things right on the third try or fewer, he set about besting the keypad just as he had bested the padlock.

[Deleted]

It was a tested and true means of approaching a keypad lock - and it paid off. On his third attempt he would feel the tiny electric pulse before the pad beeped and a light flashed green. An instant later the sound of the locks disengaging echoed softly through the chamber.

The door hissed open an instant later, spilling light.

Mirage now stood on the threshold of a long corridor. Harsh white fluorescent lighting illuminated the passage; it was cold and grey and impersonal, like a bunker, with concrete walls and looming ceilings that were high enough to admit loading equipment. Evidently this part of the base was meant to for heavy machinery to travel along it. That was good for him - it was room enough a robot of his size to manoeuvre in.

The corridor continued forward for nearly three hundred feet before it terminated in another sliding door, sealed with a keypad. But four other corridors branched from this main artery - from where he was standing Mirage would be able to see two on each side of the hallway. The two corridors on his left ended in smaller double doors with frosted glass windows. Hazard signs were painted on the glass, warning that only personnel with proper clearance would be admitted. The two corridors on his right ended in heavily barred metal doors, with no electronic locks or windows to be seen. If he wanted to get through those, they looked solid enough to suggest it would require either a lot of pushing or a handful of explosives.

Painted along the walls were worn and faded stripes - brown, green, blue, and orange. White letters stencilled on each strip hinted that there was a coordination to each colour: C.SCI.LABS was stencilled on the blue stripes, B.TECH on the green, MAINT. on the brown, and F. RANGE on the orange. The orange and brown stripes led to the doors on the right, the blue and green stripes to the doors on the left. Hmm.

The scent of slightly damp concrete lingered in the air. The fluorescent lights buzzed slightly, a quiet and persistent sound. This part of the base was quiet, but Mirage would be able to hear the occasional droning announcement over a hidden PA system - mostly calling personnel to different parts of the base. If he looked up he would also see small digital cameras embedded at the level of the ceiling - security cameras perhaps. They were all aimed down at the corridors.

[Deleted]

As the lock disengaged on the third try, Mirage made sure to remember the number combination he used. He highly doubted it would allow him access to every area of the base, but would come in handy later if he needed to make his way through other storage areas, or low-priority passageways. Assuming, of course, every locked door did not have its own unique code. He certainly hoped that wasn’t the case; picking locks and typing in codes grew tedious after a while, particularly when he did not have the proper equipment at his disposal to make his job easier. What he wouldn’t give for an interface module that was compatible with human technology so he could just hack the damn door.

Once the faint buzz of electricity met his fingers, Mirage felt a small rush of satisfaction before cloaking his optics once again, as the door before him slid open. Once again, he repeated his usual protocol, pausing and checking the immediate area with his enhanced sensors to make sure he was alone in the corridor, before carefully uncloaking his optics just enough to let him see a few feet in front of him. If anyone was there to observe him, they would have seen two semi-transparent orbs floating in the doorway for a few seconds, before disappearing as quickly as they came.

Mirage had only needed to glance up at the ceiling briefly to know there were cameras there. Tucked as he was against the wall, with only his head peering out from the doorframe, and of that only his optics being semi-visible, he doubted he would have been caught within their lines of sight. That would not be the case once he stepped into the hall, however, and he was going to need to use his optics to navigate the halls and get himself to where he needed to be. He uncloaked his optics and glanced up at the ceiling once more, carefully measuring the distance between the cameras, before studying the floor. He concentrated for a few moments, committing the pattern of the concrete to memory, before attempting to replicate a small patch of it on the floor of the supply room. It took him two tries to get the texture right, but once it was to his satisfaction he cloaked his optics once more, stepped out into the hall, and concentrated on projecting an image of the floor above his head. His electro-disruptor hummed a bit in protest at being worked so hard - creating a hologram long and wide enough to act as an umbrella to shield his optics from being caught by the downturned cameras was no easy feat after all - but Mirage ignored it. The finished projection spanned from the top of his helm to a few feet in front of him, so that even if the cameras were angled slightly, they would not catch sight of his optics beyond the curtain of concrete he was projecting.

Once shielded from the cameras, Mirage dropped the cloak from his optics completely (though he kept the rest of himself shielded, just in case a human were to stumble across him) and made his swift but silent trek down the hall. He paid mind to the colored stripes stenciled on the walls, and quietly wondered where each stripe lead until he reached the fork at the end of the corridor and the answers were given to him. The doors on the right did not interest him nearly as much as those on the left. “C.SCI.LABS” and “B.TECH” sounded far more relevant to his mission than did the maintenance room or firing range. Additionally, those areas had hazard signs and warnings that only those with proper clearance would be allowed inside, and Mirage knew from experience that places where only certain people were allowed tended to be the places he wanted to be in.

With a decisive nod, he walked over towards the doors on the left and paused before them, looking for any sign that they were alarmed. He didn’t see any locks or a keypad on them, so he could only assume that there were guards somewhere beyond them to keep out those who weren’t meant to be inside. Well. There was one way to find that out.

Stepping forward, he pushed against the door, felt it give, and slipped inside the small passageway he had made himself. If anyone was on the other side, they would likely be quite confused by the sight of the door moving and shutting seemingly on its own.

[Deleted]

The holographic umbrella was a clever trick - and it appeared to work. There was no howl of an alarm as he made his way deeper inside, no pattering footsteps of onrushing security. There was only the vague murmur of noise from elsewhere deeper in the base.

So far, so good.

The door swung quietly when he pushed it. Almost immediately it became obvious he had entered a much different area of the base than the part he had just come from.

This hall was darker, narrower, with a low ceiling shot with ventilation ducts and exposed power conduits. The wall to his right was concrete - upon it ran the blue and green stripes he had just followed. The other wall was made up of steel beams and a strange thick plastic that offered a foggy view into the sprawling complex of dark and interconnected laboratories that ran down the left-hand length of the corridor.

Each lab was large and sparsely lit by the sickly glow of a few active computer monitors. In the gloom Mirage would be able to make out steel tables, tool and instrument trolleys, steel cupboards and sinks and facets, monitoring equipment - all of it clean, surgically neat, and precise. Racks of computer servers glittered in several of the labs, tiny lights blinking in the murky darkness.

Each lab had a key-card protected door. More security cameras were visible as well, tucked away in corners.

All of the lab doors were sealed shut and locked - except for one. It led into a room full of laptops on steel countertops, all networked together with cables. They ran around the outside edge of the room, leaving the centre of it open. A technician in a black smock and face mask sat at a desk in far corner, beneath the light of a lamp. Half-hidden by his computer monitor, he was difficult to spot at first. He looked absorbed in his work.

Ahead of Mirage, the hallway and the rows of labs extended another four hundred feet before making an abrupt turn to the right.

[Deleted]

To Mirage’s surprise, there were no guards waiting for him on the other side of the door. He had been prepared to quickly and quietly dispatch a MECH agent or two before they could realize there was an intruder in their midst, assuming he was unable to sneak around them, but there was no one in his path. Fortune must have been smiling upon him that night.

After surveying the halls before him for a few moments, taking stock of the various rooms and their contents (or what he could see of them, given the cloudy windows and dim lighting obscuring his vision.) Save for the steady thrum of power generators, and the buzz of fluorescent lighting, all was quiet. No chattering, no footsteps, no sounds of life. The halls were empty, and the rooms appeared to be occupied by nothing but furniture and equipment.

Of course, Mirage knew all too well that appearances could be deceiving, so he reached out with his sensors, searching for heat signatures which would belie a MECH agent hidden somewhere in the gloom of the sparsely lit rooms. His search paid off no more than four steps into the corridor, when his HUD lit up with a smudge of red in a sea of green and blue. He turned his head towards the source of the heat signature, and spied a man slouched over a desk, half hidden by the monitor before him. His attention seemed to be thoroughly preoccupied with whatever he was working on.

Oh, Mirage did so enjoy distracted obstacles. It made removing them from his path so much easier and (usually) considerably less messy.
Powering down his cooling systems to eliminate unnecessary noise, Mirage slowly crept towards the door to the room the man was housed in, and offered a silent Thank You to the Powers That Be that it was unlocked. He doubted he would have been able to get the blasted thing open without a bit of noise and a lot of force, and that simply wasn’t how he preferred to operate. Thankfully, once he got himself a keycard (courtesy of the unsuspecting man at the monitor in the corner) he wouldn’t have to worry about that.

Creeping forward with all the cat-like grace a 1,000+ lbs mechanical being could possibly possess (which was, surprisingly, a considerable amount), Mirage made his way into the room, pausing every now and then to cease his movements and cloak his optics when he suspected the man might turn around and look his way. The closer he crept, the closer he pulled his field to his frame, as to keep the technician from potentially feeling static in the air as he approached. Soon enough, he stood directly behind the man. Even slightly crouched as he was, he loomed over the unsuspecting organic, and had he been visible, Mirage had no doubt that he would have been a rather intimidating sight for any onlookers. Of course, there weren’t any onlookers.

It was just him, and the man, all alone in the otherwise empty room, hidden away in the corner where the cameras couldn’t reach them.

He almost felt sorry for him. Almost. Certainly not enough to reconsider reaching forward and abruptly seizing the man’s head in his hand, two fingers curling around his throat while the other two blocked his mouth and nose. His other hand was quick to snatch the man’s arms, which had moments before been typing on the keyboard before him. Mirage couldn’t have him failing all over the place, making noise and calling attention to himself, after all. He squeezed gently with his left hand, just enough to constrict the man’s throat and cut off his oxygen supply.

He leaned down close, dropping his voice to a barely audible whisper.

“Shhh. Go to sleep.”

[Deleted]

The technician didn't stand a chance.

When the metal hand wrapped about his throat his eyes flew open. Any startled cry he could make was swiftly cut off however, and when he tried in vain to claw at Mirage's fingers he found his arms swiftly pinned by an unmovable force. The man thrashed, but against an opponent of the spybot's size and strength he might as well have fought a wall.

Within minutes the technician went slack, his gaze clouded. He slumped in his chair, held upright only by Mirage's careful grip. The pulse in his throat made a tiny, fluttering beat. Alive, but unconscious.

The laboratory remained dark, silent. Only the green light of the monitor made any sort of flickering motion as a cursor on the screen blinked idly. It cast dancing shadows against the glass walls.

No one had been alerted to Mirage's presence. There was no alarm, no rush of footsteps in the halls.

The entire computer laboratory was his. On the desk, the technician's computer - so small compared to the Autobot - waited patiently for its next command.

Better yet, it was password unlocked.

[Deleted]

Oh, but Humans were terribly fragile little things, weren’t they? As the technician struggled against his grip, Mirage was mildly surprised by how very flimsy he felt - he had known flesh and bone was considerably more delicate than mesh and armor, but he had never really known to what extent until he was able to make a comparison between the two.

It was a terribly morbid thought, one Mirage was not at all proud of, but as the technician went still beneath his fingers, he couldn’t help but think how very easy it would be to end the man’s life. All it would take was a little more pressure, just an errant twitch of his fingers, and the little human’s head would crack like a fabergé egg.

Mirage pulled a face, his expression twisting slightly in distaste at his own morbid musings, before he quickly brushed them aside and dismissed them as nothing more than the whisperings of the more ruthless, practical side of his mind. Admittedly, killing the man would rid him and his comrades of one more enemy, but Mirage was not terribly fond of the idea of killing unnecessarily. Besides, he would rather the man and the organization he worked for receive their dues through their own people’s justice system. Once he had finished his business there and returned to Outpost Omega One, they could contact Agent Fowler, who would in turn assemble a team to sweep the place clean. That way, things would be taken care of nice and legally, and there would be no reason for the United States government to worry that their alien refugees would one day turn on civilians. The last thing the Autobots needed was to give their hosts any more reason to believe them to be dangerous killing machines who would do more harm to their people than good.

With a shake of his head, Mirage dismissed the intrusive images plaguing his mind, and set to work on seeing what there was to be found on the computer before him. It was a bit difficult, typing on such a small keyboard, but thankfully his fingertips were far more slender and less blunt than those of some of his companions, so the task wasn’t a very frustrating one.

All the while, the technician laid unconscious in his chair, Mirage working casually around him as if he weren’t even there. He would keep him where he was, for now, just in case he woke up at an inconvenient time and needed to be put to sleep once more.

[Deleted]

The computer was little more than a laboratory desktop, at least a year out of date with a hard drive crammed mostly with software and files related to fairly dry cybernetics and electrical engineering data - computational analysis of system dynamics, simulation models, signal processing, etc, that were of limited use without context - but there were some files that might prove of more practical interest to Mirage.

Including an orientation map of the base.

Several sections of it were simply blank, probably security sensitive areas that the computer science technicians did not have access too, but otherwise fairly detailed. It showed office blocks, firing ranges, maintenance garages, chemical and mechanical research and development labs, hangers for military vehicles, security checkpoints, cafeterias - even the location of parking lots and washrooms. It was possible that this sort of map was given to all personnel in order to keep them oriented and away from areas they did not have access too.

The email program was open, and thus could be accessed without need for a password. Unfortunately the inbox, outbox, and trash were kept sparse - the only emails that could be read were an inter-department memo warning of a monthly lab inspection, and another alerting the base technicians that a helicopter would be available to shuttle them to a location designated as the 'Listening Post' at oh-three hundred hours.

A third email warned that firing range 2D and server room 3 were both temporarily restricted to personnel who had been authorized clearance. It stated that the restriction would be lifted in two more days, at twelve-hundred hours.

And finally, a fourth was a base-wide memo reminding all MECH personnel of the location of emergency surface access points in the event a base-wide evacuation was ordered.

Hm.

There was one other point of interest: the filing list cc'ed to the emails included the organization addresses of all the lab technicians, as well as a handful of low-level security officers. The domain was unfamiliar, private. MECH likely had their own scattered servers. It was something, at least.

The rest of the computer was fairly blank; it was clearly kept stripped down to only the basic necessary laboratory software.

[Deleted]

The computer did not prove to be quite the treasure trove of information Mirage had hoped it would be, but he wasn’t about to complain. Any information at all was better than none, after all, and what little he found would be immensely useful in the future. First and foremost was the map of the base, which would make his navigation efforts considerably easier as he scoured the rest of the building. He was quick to download the file, saving it so that he could later reference it once he went back to his investigative work, skulking about the halls.

The emails proved less interesting, as did the trashed files in the recycle bin and the vast majority of the software on the hard drive, though the third and fourth messages provided at least a spark of interest. The former because any places that had restricted access were most likely places he wanted to be, the latter because it would serve him well to know all the other ways he could possibly exit the base, so he wouldn’t have to backtrack all the way to where he had come in. That, and once he finished his business there, they could turn things over to Agent Fowler, who would undoubtedly be pleased to know where to direct his forces, to catch the scurrying little MECH rodents as they fled from their nest.

The thought brought a small smile to Mirage’s face as he worked. Tit for tat, MECH would not be allowed to go about harming his people without suffering the consequences of their actions; Mirage would make sure of that. He did not suffer slights against his comrades well, and while revenge was a pursuit for which he had mixed feelings, he did believe that in times of war equivalent-retaliation could be both justified and called for.

Especially when it came to abhorrent paramilitary organizations attempting to use his species to make reverse-engineered technological abominations.

Just the thought of an alien species studying them, making schematics of their anatomy, turning the designs of their bodies into some...some tool, a weapon to be used indiscriminately as if it weren’t based off of the makeup of a living being---the thought disgusted him. They were not machines to be duplicated, not things to be studied and mass-produced. That MECH thought otherwise only made them all the more despicable in his mind.

That was the problem with organics. Without fail, every species made of flesh and bone seemed to think being comprised of biomatter somehow made them superior, somehow more alive than creatures made of metal and synthetic polymers. This line of thought was a tiresome, endlessly insulting and frustrating trend, particularly when it was held by species who had the gall to treat mecha who had been alive longer than their entire race had even existed as lesser beings.

It was pitiful, really, how important organics seemed to think they were. Mirage almost felt bad for them, for how highly they thought of themselves, despite how incredibly flawed they tended to be. He had yet to meet a single organic species who lived as long as Cybertronians did, or were as physically durable as they were, or who were as intelligent and adaptable, who had technology that did not pale in comparison to their own. Their delusions of superiority were almost sad, honestly, in light of how very weak and flawed they truly were.

It was really no wonder they had to resort to stealing technological advancements from Cybertronian kind; the Humans likely would have needed hundreds, if not thousands of years to reach Cybertronain-level technology otherwise.

That, however, did not excuse the actions of MECH in the slightest, not as far as Mirage was concerned. Hence why he didn’t feel terribly guilty about binding the technician with a spare length of cabling he had in his subspace, and sealing him within one of the cabinets lining the far wall. He would be found, eventually, if he managed to call attention to himself from within his confines - but considering how empty the halls were, Mirage doubted anyone would happen to be wandering by any time soon.

Once he finished dispatching of the still-unconscious technician, Mirage made his way back out into the hall, this time with new direction and purpose.

Server room 3 needed investigating.

[Deleted]

The base was still around him, the recirculated air and claustrophobic corridors stifling.

At least the rest of the computer labs were relatively empty. As Mirage ghosted through them he would see that while several of the labs were occupied at that late hour, the MECH technicians blurred behind the odd plastic sheeting that made up the walls, the hallways themselves were clear of soldiers. He would run afoul of only two security guards during his solitary trek to the server room. One stood in front of a lab door, nodding off. The other lingered in a corner and spoke tersely in his shoulder mounted radio.

That was a bit of a strange conversation to eavesdrop upon, actually. The man was trying to keep his voice down, as many people do when speaking in an quiet place with echoing corridors, but some of the words were clear: something about combat losses in Nevada, a shack in the hills, and microwaves. Hm.

The base map that Mirage had downloaded proved valuable in his infiltration, at least. Not only did it allow him to bypass two active security checkpoint areas, but it guided him straight to server room 3.

It was immediately apparent that he would not be able to enter it, however. The map indicated that it was a small room, filled presumably with tall steel racks stacked with dedicated computers – headless systems, able to be controlled remotely via a network connection. The glossy black door leading into the room was not only key–carded and windowless, but too small to admit him. The temperature outside it dipped by ten degrees; likely a precise air conditioning system was installed inside to control temperature, humidity, and particle filtration.

But Mirage was not out of luck. While the door kept him out, it would not prevent his sensors from scanning through it.

And what was inside was interesting. A detectable presence, a cluster of neural impulses not unlike his. Faint, sluggish.

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Oh, but that was both disappointing and frustrating in equal measure. Upon discovering the door to Server Room 3 was both locked, windowless, and too small to allow him entrance even if he did manage to hack it open, Mirage frowned a bit and rocked back upon his heels, wondering how to proceed. He supposed waiting for someone to go into or come out of the doorway so that he could steal a glance inside was an option, but he did not wish to wait that long on an opportunity that might never even come. Instead, he simply walked close to the door, near enough to almost touch it, before attuning his sensors to see if he couldn’t feel around behind it.

He could, and he did, and what he discovered beyond that thick black door alarmed him.

There was a presence, it was faint, but there. Those impulses hanging in the air were familiar, hauntingly so. He didn’t doubt they were Cybertronian in origin, but whether or not they belonged to Air Raid, he could only begin to guess.

Part of him ached to find a way to into that room, to confirm his fears, to see if perhaps there was some way he could free who or whatever was being held captive there---Autobot or Decepticon, he simply could not, in good conscious, leave the poor soul trapped within those confines to the mercy (or more accurately, lackthereof) of MECH. Not just because such a fate was a cruel one, but because he took righteous offense to the idea of his people being treated as machines, being reduced to test subjects, objects to be examined.

He just wouldn’t stand for it, pure and simple.

Pressing his hand against the door, Mirage silently promised whoever was on the other side that they would not be confined there for long, before quickly making his way back down the other end of the hall, ducking down the corridor which after two rights and a left, would take him to Firing Range 2D. Before he left this abhorrent place, he needed to confirm that there was not something else to be found in the other room - after all, they could not very well stage a rescue mission if they did not know where all the people in need of rescue were.

Assuming there was more than one, of course. Mirage hoped to Primus there wasn’t, but...well, he just had a terrible feeling his hopes were going to be dashed. He blamed it on the cold, lifeless atmosphere of the place. Feelings of dread and doom tended to breed in places like these.