Ep. 2 - East of Eden - (Closed)

[Deleted]

…Well that was a bit anti-climatic.

Mirage wasn’t sure what he had been expecting to find, exactly, but it certainly wasn’t Fortress Maximus. He had assumed he would discover the white mech once more, or something similarly mysterious, or perhaps even something insidious given the nature of MECH and their proclivities. Instead, he found himself faced with the presence of an ally, a face that, while unexpected, was familiar to him.

It was almost a little disappointing, really, to have all the signs point to something dangerous and instead find a Mech who was admittedly VERY dangerous, but not someone Mirage felt the need to be afraid of…generally speaking. He was painfully aware of the fact that if he had the mind to, Fortress Maximus could pop his head off like a dandelion and toss his body across a lake like a skipping stone, but the actual likelihood of the mech doing either of those things were slim to none.

...While he was in his right might, at any rate.

With that said, Mirage dropped his guard somewhat upon realizing it was Maximus he was facing off against, rather than the white robot or some other unholy abomination concocted by MECH. He reeled in his sensors a bit, settling into a more comfortable level of vigilance once it became apparent he was not facing off against an unknown threat after all.

“Fortress.”

He greeted the mech with a faint nod of acknowledgement, before looking from him to the building he had so graciously offered to break into for him. He smiled faintly, amused, before folding one arm over his middle while fanning the other out to gesture towards the building, leaning forward slightly in a mock-bow.

“By all means, after you.”

[Deleted]

Optimus would be able to hear the cavernous echo of each of his blows, even as the car alarms wailed in the background. It definitely sounded as if there was something man-made below him, hidden beneath a layer of cement and earth.

By the time he reached a layer of buried concrete he had dug down nearly a dozen feet. Dirt had fallen back in the hole, but the foundation he had laid bare was still plain to be seen. He stood atop what seemed to be a subterranean bunker of some sort. Possibly it was connected to the rest of the facility somehow. There could well be an entire network of tunnels beneath his feet, secret and dark.

His fist slammed into the concrete.

It cratered with a resounding boom of impact. Fissures shot out from beneath his knuckles. There was an ominous crack, loud and sharp, and the concrete shuddered beneath him. And then, all at once, it gave way.

The hole collapsed. It dropped Optimus without warning. As he fell through the shower of rubble and earth he would be able to sense the presence of a immense and yawning space all around him, though it was too dark to see into what he had fallen. A few lights glittered far below, though it was difficult to make them out through the dirt and dust cloud that surrounded him.

Luckily for a mech of his size it was not a dangerous drop. Nearly one hundred feet down Optimus would feel his feet slam into a hard surface - concrete. Dirt and chunks of cement and rock crashed into the floor all around him. High above his head was the ragged hole he had fallen through. The night sky twinkled down through it, illuminating him with a wan patch of starlight. The rest of the vast chamber was pitch dark.

The air within it was still and cool. It smelt sterilized, like air conditioning. Something quietly hummed behind him, the mechanical drone of a computer or a fan.

Thousands of tiny pinpoint lights shone in the dark. They surrounded him in a massive ring. Perhaps he stood in a circular room, or at the bottom of a huge dome.

[Deleted]

Now that he was near, Mirage would be able to make out the dark and violent looking scorch marks seared across the front of Maximus' armour. His plating was streaked in them. It looked as if he had been hit with multiple firebombs, or by an arsenal of something that had detonated across his frame with explosive force.

But the big mech only nodded affably to Mirage when he appeared through the smoke. He seemed in a rare good mood.

"My pleasure," said Maximus.

He reared back one fist.

The tortured scream of tearing metal roared across the compound. Maximus did not punch the wall so much as ram his hand through it as if it were water, his fingers flattened like a knife blade. He calmly tore his hand upwards through layers of steel beams and reinforced siding, rending a massive gash in the building. Then he gripped the gash in both hands and ripped it open wider, while placing one heavy foot on the bottom of it to stomp it down all the way to the ground.

Damaged electrical wiring sparked weakly in the gash. It was tall enough for not just Mirage to step through with ease, but probably Maximus as well.

Satisfied, Maximus stepped back. He critically surveyed his handiwork.

"That should do it," he said. "Go on ahead. Tell me if it looks like I can fit in the corridors. If not, I'll stay here and watch your back."

Inside, the building was dark and quiet. Moonlight spilled through the gash and illuminated a patch on the floor. Mirage would be able to see a large room inside, as big and hollow as a gymnasium. There was a large electrical furnace in one corner, and rows of metal storage lockers against the walls. More silvery heat and ventilation ducts ran across the high ceiling.

There was a door on the east wall straight ahead of him, and a big pair of glass-set doors on the north wall to his left. They appeared to be electronically locked with a keypad.

Except the keypad had been torn from the wall with force. It lay on the floor, trailing wires behind it.

One of the glass doors was open.

The hall beyond it was pitch dark.

[Optimus Prime]

Upon seeing the concrete, Optimus was rather certain he had stumbled across something rather notable instead of a simple sinkhole or other mine like opening. Concrete just doesn't form naturally, and being as deep underground as it was, there was no way it was any kind of support structure for the upper layer of asphalt. There was an opening beneath him of some kind, and by the sound of the echoes it was rather notable in size, or the hallways and passages connected to it aided in making one heck of a reverberation.

This only hastened his dig, progressing forward steadily so that whatever may be beneath him wouldn't have a chance to be fully purged of any sensitive data. It is this reason that had prompted him to strike the concrete, feeling confident in his broad stance distributing his weight enough to not cause a collapse. His intended goal was to just punch a hole maybe a bit bigger than his forearm, but plans didn't always follow along how they were intended.

The sharp cracking noise caused a spike of alarm, his optics snapping down to view the fissures that snaked beneath him and disappeared under the dirt at the edges of the hole he had created. It did not take a the wisdom of the Matrix to understand what was happening here, and just as soon as it started he had lurched back, system roaring into immediate action to try to make a couple steps in reverse away from the impending fall.

He was too slow.

Optimus' immense weight only aided in making the hole larger, in turn permitting his frame to crash through with nothing to grab onto on the sides. He had not considered grasping for the edges of the hole though, he had not foreseen actually falling that far once he accepted his fate. The decent only lasted a couple fractions of seconds, but the transition of thought was almost played out in slow motion, his processor screeching into gear to try to figure out what had happened.

His mind went from alarm at the possibility of falling, to acceptance, figuring it would at most be a twelve foot drop. When his feet plunged past that point and the opening passed by his helm, there was confusion, wondering just how deep it actually was since he was not a particularly small mech in the slightest. It was only when he reached the fifty foot mark that he hit that point comparable to when someone goes to step to the end of a staircase, only to continue falling.

This caused some legitimate alarm.

Arms fanned out on either side, and his stance changed minutely in the exceptionally limited time he had. The pose change wasn't that much, but it aided for when he landed, his peds slamming into the ground with a resounding bang and a scream of his internal mechanisms trying to absorb the impact. His knees bent to cushion the fall, outstretched arms keeping him from losing his balance with the unexpected halt.

Concrete and dirt rained down atop him a moment later, the thick clouds of debris and dust kicking up into the air to flood past his field of vision into the inky abyss. Once the worst of the collapsing rubble slammed past him, Optimus eased upright into a combative stance, not really sure where he had found himself.

The area was much larger than he had ever anticipated, and was far beyond what you would EXPECT from MECH. Large hangers and open areas to work on their experiments was to be anticipated, but this was something else all together, and he could simply not piece what he knew of the natives into an explanation of what humans would need with such an area. All he could come up with was an observatory, but its location underground provided conflicts with this assumption.

The second thing to hit him was the fact there was a humming of mechanics, which meant that they were getting power down in this region in some way. He would not have an opportunity to digest this information more, as the small pinpoint lights caught his optic, circling around him. Not knowing what they were exactly, and wanting to get a better view on things around him, both of his servos folded back into his arms, the armor flaring out momentarily before the rifles took shape.

The bright seething glow of the massive gun's barrels would provide some illumination, but to further help aid in trying to see, the headlights upon the bottom edge of his 'ribcage' flared to life as well. They were trying to wash the area in front of him in light, while the guns angled in two other directions. If everything appeared sound, he would attempt to move forward.

::I have located an underground cavern of questionable origin. It is receiving power from an unknown source::

He did not sound particularly alarmed, the notification wasn't a cry for help, it was more trying to keep his team updated on where he even was. As a cautionary measure, he tried to attach his coordinates on with the statement while keeping his audio receptors keyed up.

[Deleted]

The war had made most mecha who actively fought in it rather good at destroying things, but Fortress Maximus had a particularly noteworthy talent for absolutely demolishing any(and every)thing that had the terrible misfortune of standing in his way. Mirage watched with a morbid sort of fascination as the mech’s hand stabbed through the wall like a hot knife through butter, tearing through the steel with frightening ease.

It was sights like this that reminded Mirage why he was so very grateful that Fortress Maximus was standing on his side of the faction divide, and not the other. The mech was a fearsome sight to behold regardless if one was his ally or enemy, and Mirage was not at all interested in finding out just how much more intimidating the mech became when one happened to be wearing a Decepticon sigil.

For some reason, he had the feeling he would not fare much better than the wall did.

Once Fortress finished cleaving an entrance into said wall, Mirage canted his head slightly to the side, taking a moment to admire the larger mech’s handiwork. It really was a spectacular job, one Mirage couldn’t help but be a bit envious of. While his slighter frame certainly had its advantages when it came to dexterity, flexibility, and agility, it lacked considerably in the brute strength department. He could only imagine how convenient it was, having such raw power at one’s disposal.

After a few seconds of appreciating Fortress Maximus’ skills, Mirage straighten, muttered a decisive “Right, then.” to himself, then proceeded through the gaping hole in the wall, mindful not to trip or otherwise catch himself on the jagged tears that bordered the improvised doorway. As he traveled into the area beyond, he was happy to note that it did indeed seem large enough to accommodate a mech of Fortress Maximus’ size. The room was spacious, its ceilings high, though perhaps not so high that the colossal mech wouldn’t have to slouch a bit.

“Fortress,” He called, over his shoulder. “This particular room seems large enough to permit your height, though whether or not the floor will bear your weight is another matter.”

He frowned thoughtfully, taking a moment to peer around the dark in the hopes of finding something which would indicate whether or not there were sub-floors in the building which Fortress might fall through, should he try to follow after him. Alas, he could find no such indicators in the inky dark, however, he did find something else of interest.

On the wall to his left was a pair of doors, one of them open when it ought to have been locked shut, if the mangled keypad on the floor beside it was any indication.

Clearly, someone had wanted access to what lie beyond those doors badly enough to force their way in.

Clearly, it was a place of interest.

Clearly, Mirage had no choice but to satisfy his sudden burning curiosity investigate this highly suspicious scene.

“If you feel it is worth the risk, you may follow me at your own discretion.” He added, raising his voice a bit as he descended further into the room so that he could still be clearly heard.

“If you chose to stay behind, however, and you happen to hear horrified screaming in the distance, please don’t feel alarmed. I’ve likely just found some sort of abomination onto Primus and have responded accordingly, as one does when faced with something horrifying beyond measure.”

He supposed such a heavy dose of dark humor was not entirely called for, considering the circumstances, but he found humor of any sort tended to make heading into the unknown a far less disquieting experience. Considering he was drawing closer and closer to Primus only knew what with every step he took towards that eerily dark corridor, it was understandable he would want to lighten the mood a bit.

Four steps away from the opened door, the Prime’s comm reached him. Mirage paused mid-step, pulling one foot back to stand beside its twin as he put a hand to his helm, his keen optics narrowing as he tried to peer through the pervasive darkness beyond the doors.

::Would you like assistance, sir?:: He offered, out of obligation rather than any actual desire to drop what he was doing to help the Prime.

[Deleted]

"Would - ike assista - ir?"

The reply over the commline was faint and broken up. Something was blocking the radio reception. Likely it was the earth and cement that was the culprit. Or perhaps something in the room itself was generating a form of electrical interference. It was hard to say.

Optimus' headlights cut through the gloom.

He was able to illuminate a clear path ahead of him. The light revealed that he stood in the middle of a huge geodesic dome-shaped chamber constructed of concrete and steel beams. The beams formed an elaborate lattice overhead, from which hung dozens of florescent lights. None of the lights were switched on, leaving the chamber cloaked in darkness. Beneath his feet the floor was polished cement, like that of a hanger.

A row of tall and featureless grey computers surrounded the perimeter of the room. Lights glittered on them. They quietly droned with power. A backup generator, perhaps.

In the middle of the chamber stood a circular concrete platform, thirty feet wide and raised two feet off the floor. In its centre was a work terminal dominated by a huge flatscreen monitor held up by steel struts. Eight other smaller monitors orbited it, four to each side. A control seat was positioned in front of the big monitor, along with rows of sleek keyboards. Heavy power cables snaked down from the monitors to a small hole in the floor, where they disappeared.

All of the equipment was spotless. Not a trace of dust lay on any of it, aside from that which had drifted down from the crumbled hole in the ceiling.

The air was cold. Air conditioned.

The monitors shone white whenever Optimus' headlights passed over them.

[Deleted]

Maximus chuckled as he stepped through the hole in the wall. His voice was a low rumble in the gloom.

"Understood," he said.

Once inside he straightened to his full height. The beamed ceiling was high enough that he did not need to duck his head. Moonlight shone through the high windows and fell across the upper half of his massive body in pale bars.

Maximus looked about himself. He took in the furnace, the lockers, and the crumpled keypad. His red optics glowed in the dark.

"Grim sort of place," he said. "All right. I'll follow you shortly, Mirage. I'd just get in your way if I tried to tag along at your heels now. From the look of things we're on our own for the moment."

He stood still and listened. Sure enough, the sound of men shouting echoed from a another part of the facility. The voices were faint, muted by layers of concrete, steel, and glass. A gunshot rang out, muffled by distance.

Only silence came from the corridor beyond the glass doors.

It was a long, dark hall. The florescent lights overhead were without power. Although it was narrow its ceiling was high, as if it had been designed to admit tall machinery or equipment. The walls were painted a sterile grey and were bare of any signs or markers to provide directions. There were no doors. Cold, air conditioned air seeped from vents in the ceiling.

At the far end of the hall was a darkened T junction. There, Mirage would be able to make out another set of wide, wire mesh glass doors locked by a keypad. The glass was foggy and difficult to see through, like water in a still lake.

A blurry white figure was reflected against the glass.

It beckoned to Mirage. It vanished.

[Optimus Prime]

The cutting beams of light sliced through the darkness, and revealed to him the depth of the expanse that previously he could only sense by general feeling and sound. Optimus took in the presence of the distant computers along the perimeter a moment, before changing the position of his frame to angle the lights up. His torso leaned back a bit, one leg drawing behind him as well for balance, in order to shine the rib mounted headlights up towards the ceiling above.

The geometric triangular panels that created the dome definitely confirmed this was entirely human made, or they had repurposed and refined a cavern that had been created in nature beyond recognition. Whether they expanded something that had been there before, or made it from scratch, it was an impressive amount of work for the little creatures (Especially for it to be considered large even for his standards). Optimus did not linger on that sight for long however, and his frame eased upright into a natural stance once more just as Mirage's reply, or rather partial reply, had filtered through.

::Come again?::

Optimus eased into a far more lax stance once he realized there appeared to be no immediate danger. He did not feel the need to keep in a combat position, especially when the cables in his legs were still thrumming with ghosting effects after the impact they took on from his fall. His left hand remained as his rifle, not intent to put his guard down fully in this mysterious place, but his right did revert to a servo to be able to place to the side of his helm.

Pressing on the small panel there, he was trying to find a better frequency that could reach the others, not terribly pleased about the interference. It was not a large surprise however, he had fallen underground some distance, but the ground directly above him was not that thick. It had been thin enough for him to hear this cavern below with a bang from the heel of his foot. Would that truly impair the radio frequencies to this degree?

::There appears to be interference. I will continue to check incrementally::

Optimus decided to move on, assuming (hoping) at least the concept of his message may get through. It was with this thought he turned about, casting the headlights across to flood over the raised platform that was settled not far from him. It seemed very important, which was a bit of an understatement. It was effectively a centerpiece amongst all of this, this cavern possibly constructed just for whatever it was. The screens lit back at him with reflected light as if to draw his attention that much more.

Carefully he approached, mindful of his footing and the small ledge, clearing it with no issue whatsoever. Optimus halted before the central hub, and eased down in order to get a better view at what exactly he was working with. This kneeling stance settled upon one knee, ended with his headlights casting nearly straight down to the ground below, keeping the glare from occurring on the monitors. He only kept them on to create general ambiance lighting so he wasn't cast entirely into the inky darkness. Once he was settled he moved a hand forward to carefully try to find a power or other key to activate whatever this system was.

Curiosity was a hindrance he always harbored, but what was even more bothersome at this time was just how big he was. He moved with calculated care, and had to use the side point of each square tipped finger to try to push the keys in front of him. Each pluck was immensely restrained, hoping he didn't just crush the human technology or unintentionally tear a key off... or just bash three keys at once...

Time to see what exactly this thing was...

[Deleted]

Optimus’ reply did not meet Mirage’s audios intact - words were cut off, some came through so faintly they were scarcely audible, while others were obscured almost entirely by bursts of static. What was left of the Prime’s original message was an unintelligible collection of half-words which, try though he might, Mirage simply could not string together into a coherent sentence.

Needless to say, this was more than a little worrisome.

Though the Prime’s tone gave no indication that he was in any danger, or that he even had any cause for concern, it was troubling to know that he might be able to call for assistance, if he found himself in need of it in the near future. Mirage could only hope that whatever interference was blocking their communications would not silence the mech completely - Primus only knew what he might have been walking into.

Of course, the same could be said for Mirage’s own situation, however unlike Optimus, he had the benefit of Fortress Maximus’ company. In terms of backup, one couldn’t do much better than a literal and figurative tank within earshot who could be called upon at a moment’s notice.

Mirage glanced over his shoulder, turning slightly to look at the tank in question.

“Noted.” He replied with a nod. “If I find anything, or conversely, if anything finds me I’ll be sure to give you a call, or failing that, a particularly loud shout.”

With that oddly chipper announcement made, Mirage turned back towards the doorway, squared his shoulders, then ventured into the darkness beyond it.

The corridor he found himself in was long, lit only by the glow of his optics which flittered about, taking in his surroundings with the sharp, fleeting glances he was accustomed to making whilst traveling into the unknown. Luckily, it seemed he was the area’s only occupant, for which he was glad. He did not particularly wish to be forced to kill any straggling MECH soldiers that may be lurking about, or worse yet, send them running for their lives down the hall towards Fortress Maximus.

...Alright, he actually wouldn’t have minded the latter. It would have been amusing to see, the moment when the hapless little mouse realized they had just run from a house cat's claws straight into the jaws of a lion.

The thought put a faint smile on his face, a smile which promptly vanished the moment he saw the white figure appear once more upon the glass of the doors at the end of the hall. It was not a startling sight, nor a particularly unwelcome one, but it was difficult to reconcile what he saw with what he knew could not actually be. He was, simply put, hallucinating vividly, and he was not accustomed to such things, nor was he used to silent figures beckoning him hither and yon for what he assumed (and hoped) were constructive purposes, which would be to his benefit.

Truly, this was turning out to be quite the strange day for him, and something told him that it was only going to become even stranger the further he ventured into the building.

Undeterred, Mirage continued forward until he reached the wire-mesh doors, which he examined idly as he came to a halt before them. He was unsure what sort of set up MECH had used for their doors, what sort of locking mechanisms they used to keep their restricted access areas secure. He did, however, know that someone had gotten around the issue by simply tearing the keypad off the door and forcing their way in, which implied that the locks did not disengage despite losing power.

It seemed he would have to do things the forceful way, then.

With a sigh, as this was a rather unrefined way to maneuver one’s way around a lock, Mirage retrieved a blade from his subspace, held it in a saber grip, then thrust it downward between the crease where the top of the keypad met the door. With any luck, the weaker human metal would yield easily enough, and he would be able to pry off both the pad and the lock it connected to with only a moderate amount of fuss and pulling.

[Deleted]

There was a soft whir when Optimus touched one of the keyboards. Almost immediately the monitors flickered and sprang into life. Evidently the computer system that powered the central console was still powered on, but in some form of rest mode.

The big monitor remained dark. But small windows were popping up in the small monitors that surrounded it: diagnostic managers, system performance reports of the various computers within the room, active services, start-up information, power usage, active processes, etc. One monitor displayed an overview of the electrical load of the various facility grids. One of its reports flashed red, most likely indicating the grid that Mirage had shut down.

Another monitor showed a diagram of the outer perimeter. Numerous points along it also flashed red, where the Autobots and Fowler’s men had breached it.

A third monitor simply showed a dark screen with minima text and a command prompt. Not much help there.

A fourth showed a list of the servers within the room, with options to explore each one.

And a fifth monitor…

A small window was flashing on it.

It signalled an incoming transmission.

There was an option to accept the transmission, or to close it down.

[Deleted]

Sure enough, his knife cleaved into the lock with ease. Mirage would be able to tear off the keypad without much trouble. It seemed that his assumption was the correct one: without power, the locks engaged and would remained sealed shut unless removed by force.

After that, the glass doors swung open with a touch of his hand.

In front of him was a massive room. The ceiling towered upwards into darkness. Mirage would be able to stand without the need to duck his head. Even Maximus could walk with ease throughout a room like this one. The whispering susurrus of the doors echoed to every distant corner of the chamber.

There were no windows here. A soft hum filled the room, within which a wintry chill lingered. A subtle trace of artificial humidity hung undisturbed in the air. Usually such antistatic climate control was only in force in areas where sensitive electronics were stored, particularly exposed circuitry.

The room was very dark. The only light present was what little moonlight seeped inside from the hall. It touched upon rows of equipment inside: huge welding machines, precision robotic cutters and saws, grinders, sanders, injectors and seaming machines. The machinery stood high above him. Painted lines on the floor guided workers throughout the various sections of the room, each area separated by partitions of glass. It was as if Mirage stood at the foot of an enormous manufacturing plant, where various parts of a single machine were independently assembled - or disassembled - in various lines throughout the factory.

What little of this Mirage saw in the dim light was neat, clean, and open, a maze of glass.

And at the very back of the room…

Moonlight gleamed upon something huge there. It stood against the back wall like a sentinel: a giant headless figure pinned in place by scaffolding, by steel bars, by industrial plugs and cables. It loomed over the rest of the machinery in the room, silent and cold.

Much of its paint had been scraped away. Only a few scraps of orange still clung to the ground metalwork.

[Optimus Prime]

The illumination of the side monitors caused momentary blindness to the screens, his optics trying to adjust rapidly to the newfound light. The visible rings housed around his optic lens twisted and clicked in small flinches until finding the proper shutter to permit him to adequately view the information before him. However, being tuned to view the brightened monitors caused the darkness around him to seem that much more inky and distant. To compensate he keyed up some of his sensors, in order to try to keep a bead upon his surroundings and not permit anything to catch him off guard.

Looking from monitor to monitor, it made him wish he had full access to his communications, as being able to try to send over said information would have been valuable to assisting Fowler's men in securing the area far better. It would also aid Mirage in knowing where other generators were housed. However wishes and hope would fuel nothing, and instead he simply stared down the facility grids and diagrams to commit them to memory. That was one good thing about his previous employment before he became a Prime, and that was cataloging and remembering some hefty amounts of information in temporary databanks in his processor.

Moving on, he skimmed over the command prompt screen, before settling upon the servers and the fact it was something to actively explore. This caught his attention more than the previous ones, causing him to shift his weight and angling a bit towards that particular screen. He was going to consider looking into the first server to start cataloging information, when the flashing caught his attention and pulled his gaze down.

Optimus stared at the incoming transmission with some apprehension. If this control station was wired to relay information past this MECH outpost to others, than by accepting it he could betray the fact this particular point was under siege at the moment. This was exactly what the other team was trying to prevent via seizing the tower though. They were ideally cutting down long range communications if all went according to plan, and he had to trust they had that handled. However... satellites were still a thing, though possibly risky in betraying MECH's location.

It could be an old message, sent before the siege and simply needed to be played, information that could supply needed intelligence. Or it could be something deadly to the stored data here. Who knows if these databanks could still be remotely purged.

This thought caused his jaw to set some, displeased and reminded of Air Raid seemingly having his processor purged right in front of his very optics. While these computers weren't sentient, ((He would pray to Primus they weren't trapped Cybertronian processors or anything that grotesque)) they were quite valuable.

Carefully Optimus raised his helm some, before opting to accept the message. However most of his weight rested upon his limb that had its ped planted to the ground. He was ready to lurch up and charge the computers if needed in order to sever the cables that connected them to the walls via his sword if anything was threatened for deletion. This tension could almost be seen in the knee 'ligament' the banded cable pulled taunt.

[Deleted]

The metal gave way beneath his blade with little resistance, and it took Mirage no more than a hard twist and a solid pull to dislodge the keypad from its housing. Casting the now-defunct lock and keypad aside, Mirage wasted no time pushing past the doors, into whatever awaited him in the room beyond.

Cold, humid air greeted him as he made his way inside, which would have come as a welcomed reprieve from the heat he had faced outside moments prior, if not for the fact that such a climate tended to be more hospitable towards delicate machinery than to human beings. Mirage felt safe in the assumption that whatever the room was used for, it was not designed with human comfort in mind.

Or Cybertronain comfort, given MECH’s proclivities.

Knowing what he did of MECH, Mirage felt he had a rather solid guess as to what the room was used for, though dark as it was, it was difficult for him to ascertain anything without closer examination. He could guess all he liked that, judging by the climate, the room was used for storing, studying, and perhaps reverse engineering highly advanced, sensitive technology, but a hunch was worth nothing until it was proven to have validity.

As he made his way further into the room, optics glowing brighter in an effort to cut through the darkness and illuminate his path, Mirage could not help but wonder about the particulars of the room he found himself in. The further he traveled, and the more he saw of the room’s contents, the less sure he became of the idea that its purpose was for storage. Judging by the rows of machinery he passed, cutters, welders, grinders, and like, the more it seemed as if he were taking a tour of a factory. He felt as if he were walking along an assembly-line, though just what was being assembled, he could only begin to guess. Weapons seemed to be the most likely suspect, though he supposed he wouldn’t have put it beyond MECH to be attempting to develop new devices with which to more easily track and disarm anything with a spark signature.

Or worse, they might have been attempting to construct some sort of drone, a twisted mimicry of Cybertronain life based off of the information they had managed to steal from the poor unfortunate mecha they had captured in recent months. The very idea outraged him, but at the same time, Mirage could not help but shudder at the thought of what sort of twisted abomination MECH could potentially make in his species’ image.

Grimacing, Mirage shook his head, not liking where that line of thought was taking him, or the grisly images it was painting inside his mind. He continued onward through the room, keeping his optics sharp as he searched for anything that might be of interest in the dark, but surprisingly neat room.

It did not take him long to find something. Unfortunately for him, this something could not be erased from his mind with a simple shake of his head.

At first, he wondered if perhaps it was a trick of the light, his optics making up information to fill in the blanks which the darkness would not permit them to see. He stared, uncertain, until he could confirm that the silhouetted figure looming against the far wall was far more than his own shadow playing tricks on him.

In that moment, when everything clicked and he realized just what it was he was looking at, Mirage went still. A chill ran through him, from the back of his neck, down his spinal strut, all the way to the floor, where he stood, frozen. His hand moved to his mouth, seemingly of its own volition, and his optics flickered as they glanced hurriedly over the silent figure before him, as if afraid to linger on any part of it for too long.

He stood silence for a long, quiet moment, letting the horror of his discovery settle over him as he stared up at the headless figure, wondering who they had been while at the same time mourning their fate. Autobot, Neutral, or Decepticon - no Cybertronian deserved such a terrible, degrading fate.

After standing in respectful silence for a klik, Mirage quickly collected himself, turning his gaze away from the figure as he cleared his throat and set himself back to his task, as if his momentary distraction had never occurred.

He brought a hand to the side of his helm, hoping the comm. connection between himself and Fortress Maximus was not as garbled as that between himself and Optimus.

::Fortress:: He began, sounding far more grave than he would have liked. ::I’ve found something. A lab, and inside it, a body::

He glanced back to the still form to his right, unable to check the urge.

::...One that appears to have been vivisected:: He added, not wanting the mech to venture into the operating theater of horrors without being aware of what he might find inside.

Knowing the former warden’s... history, Mirage felt it was in everyone’s best interests to warn the mech of sights and environments which might be particularly offensive to his sensibilities.

[Deleted]

With a simple keystroke, the connection was established.

The largest monitor flickered. An image sprang up - evidently this was a video call. It depicted a pale room, numbly lit with white florescent lighting. Rows of glass and stainless steel shelves stood in the background, stacked with glassware and tools - soldering irons, clips and wire strippers and tweezers, cutters and hemostats, precision screwdrivers, test led sets, power supplies, breadboards, extruder cooling fans. A spotless autoclave, transparent fume hoods. A vacuum machine. Network racks and cluster computers.

The image itself was tilted upwards, as if the camera that was filming the room was angled slightly towards the ceiling rather than the floor. The white tile walls of the room were polished to a sheen. Against them he would see the reflections of white-clad figures moving hurriedly through the room, as indistinct as ghosts.

White light radiated from the monitor. It lit up Optimus and cast an oasis of light around him.

A moment later, a dark shadow loomed into the shot.

“South Lab?”

A figure in black fatigues leaned into the shot. It gripped the top of the camera and peered straight into it. A rifle was tucked across the chest of its body armour. Its face was obscured by a dark mask. White light reflected of the lenses of its eyes. When it spoke its voice came harshly through the filters of its mask.

“South Lab, this is North Lab,” it said. “We have re-established on-site communications. What is your evac status? We have approximately eight minutes until vaporization - I repeat, eight minutes. South Lab, what is your stat-“

The figure cut off. It stared at Optimus in silence.

“Acknowledged,” it said.

The video feed abruptly blipped off.

In the eight monitor, a small number had appeared at the bottom corner of the screen: 8:12.

8:11

8:10

8.09

8:08

[Deleted]

There was a long silence over the commline.

In that time, Mirage would be able to get a better look at -

- the body.

MECH had taken care to fix it securely to the back wall in a rig of cables and elaborate scaffolding. It stood over the rest of the room, a colossal metal effigy partially lit by a weak handful of battery-powered torches. Much of its armour was gone, cut away. Bundles of tagged wires seethed from the holes.

Its orange paintwork was mostly gone, eaten by grinders and dissolved by harsh chemicals, but the shape of the frame was familiar: stocky and utilitarian, but feminine. Rotor blades hung from its back. Three of them were missing. The worn hands beneath the shackles were graceful, those of a surgeon.

She stood in repose, her arms restrained at her sides. Her shoulders curved up to a ragged stump of a neck. Connectors and capped fuel lines protruded from the yawning hole. Her head lay beside her on a hydraulic elevating platform, just beyond the reach of her fingertips. A trolley of laptop computers sat beside it, wires fed back and forth through the mouth, and through holes drilled through the cranial case. The empty optical sockets stared across the room at Mirage.

The top of her head was gone, sliced away with microscopic precision.

There was no brain module inside. Her head was an empty grail, scoured clean by chemicals.

The commline crackled.

“Acknowledged.”

Maximus’ voice was hoarse, but clear and free of static. “I’ll be there in two kliks. Stand by.”

The warden was as good as his word. In less than a minute Mirage would hear the distressed roar of metal shrieking as something big simply tore its way through the hallway. An instant later the glass doors erupted and there Maximus stood, draped in dust and glass and shredded tiles, debris littered at his feet. He took two steps into the room and stopped dead in his tracks, his gaze fixed upon the body at the end of the machine line.