Yellow Ribbon - Chapter 3 of 11
Chapter 1 -- Chapter 2
Prowl - No One Cares
The Ark would be tense by now, their capture having effects both obvious and subtle on their fellow Autobots.
Nearly a month after he left the Ark, the schedules Prowl prepared must be running down. The crew would be losing the stable routines that kept them grounded, and try as he might Optimus had never mastered the fine art of putting every mech where he could best serve, outside of the heat of battle. The whole Ark would be too quiet, but it would be more obvious in some places than others. The Rec Room would be getting jumpy, minor irritations between mechs growing into full-blown arguments without Jazz there to smooth them over, and to let the officer corps know what needed dealing with and what to leave well alone.
Assuming the officers were doing any better. Ironhide would be decimating the target range, or working his squads from waking to recharge, telling himself he needed to be ready, but in truth merely trying to distract himself from why. Red Alert was no doubt close to fritzing, working on a rescue plan even as he feverishly reprogrammed the Ark’s defences, unless Ratchet had already stepped in to spare himself a future processor ache. The medic would have enough on his hands dealing with a worried Bluestreak and trying to keep Optimus on an even keel. Optimus… Optimus would be worried too, deeply so, and not even the wisdom in his ancient optics could hide that from those who knew him well.
And few people knew him better than Prowl.
The tactician tensed, feeling something… something like the distant echo of a question, pressing him to follow that thought. He resisted, fighting as he’d been fighting for so long now, the days fading into one another. He forced his mental wanderings to leave the Ark, his door-wings twitching in frustration when the image of it, embedded in the side of Mount Hillary, kept drifting back into the centre of his thoughts like a daydream from which there was no awakening.
Taking a deep vent, he nodded, accepting the image. Instead of trying to banish it, he pictured himself bending down, collecting a boulder from the dusty ground by his feet, and hauling it up to rest against his chest. With all the intense concentration his years of tactical training offered, he focused on the sensation of it in his hands, the weight of it and the streaks of yellow dirt it left across his chest-plates. Taking control of the daydream, Prowl carried the boulder a few steps, dropping it dead centre in the entrance to the Ark before turning back for another.
Slowly, laboriously, ignoring the surges of an anger that wasn’t his own, he literally built a wall in his thoughts. It took an effort that strained his systems, leaving him panting through his vents. He could feel the pressure growing. Each rock seemed heavier than the last, and he had to will each one into existence, layering his firm grasp of the boulder-strewn reality surrounding his home over the oddly barren desert that replaced it every time he relaxed. He wouldn’t surrender. Arm cables straining, he visualised himself pushing the final stone into place and leaned against it, the Ark and everything inside her blocked off, both from himself and from anyone looking over his shoulder.
He rebooted his optics with an effort, a little surprised to realise they’d been offline. A dark red visor met his gaze with a look of well-controlled fury before turning away.
Another few days, Prowl knew, and he’d break that control. The dark blue mech in front of him had already made it clear that his patience was thinning, the physical punishments for Prowl’s resistance growing more emphatic with each session. Just another few days… but it had already been too long.
After nearly two weeks, both Prowl and Jazz were physical wrecks, steadily accumulating damage, and though they tried to hide it from one another, increasingly demoralised. Prowl was far from sure either of them would survive Soundwave’s fury when the mech finally realised he was beaten, or whether it would be the inevitable sessions with Starscream and then Megatron that would finally end them. He’d spit in the faces of both Decepticon commanders, but it would be too much to hope that would end the interrogation and taunts from either one. Megatron was a brutal dictator, demanding submission with violence where the force of his personality failed. Starscream… Starscream was almost as skilled at twisting a mech’s thoughts as Soundwave, and he knew exactly how to hurt Prowl as no one else could. Quite honestly, Prowl admitted in the most secret and firewalled depths of his processor, he wasn’t sure which encounter he most feared.
He pushed the thought away, wanting to blame it on Soundwave’s interference, but knowing that this one had come from within and not from his tormentor. Soundwave had already turned to prepare his equipment for the next phase of their session. His visor was dim, less so than Prowl’s blue optics, but still telling of the energy the Decepticon had wasted on him. Soundwave’s unusual gift was weaker when he was tired, Prowl knew. From now until he was dragged back to the cell-block, he just had to concentrate on resisting physical pain, rather than the more insidious mental intrusion, and even with his strength waning day by day he was getting good at that.
Experience was a fine teacher.
Prowl cycled his vents and then his optics, bracing himself. Only when he refocused his optics did he realise that the nature of the game had changed. Soundwave sipped an energon cube, his visor glowing brighter as each mouthful reenergised him. Prowl’s fuel tank cramped, his depleted systems stuttering with need. He felt his vents increase in frequency, becoming ragged pants. His door-wings perked and then they cramped too, sending a shaft of agony through his back as they fought the restraints that limited their motion.
Instructing his optics to cycle down, he forced his battle computer to boot, using its cold reason to suppress his body’s need. The Decepticons were feeding him and Jazz enough to keep them alive, not prepared to let high-ranking prisoners die before giving up their secrets. Craving more energon had a certain logic, since many of his systems - not least of them his battle computer - were under constant strain or shutting down entirely. On the other hand, letting physical cravings weaken his resistance would invalidate his efforts to date, and leave him at a significant tactical disadvantage. It wasn’t to be tolerated.
His battle computer stuttered its way offline but its conclusions lingered. He held onto them, using them to calm himself as Soundwave turned back to him, optics bright and energy renewed. As Jazz would say, it was time for round two.
He vented hard, optics on the tools in Soundwave’s hands. Bracing himself both physically and mentally, Prowl nodded an acknowledgement and silently dared the telepath to do his worse.
Prowl’s door-wings were ablaze with agony. He screamed, not even trying to resist the shriek as Soundwave allowed another drop of acid to join the thin streams working their way down Prowl’s left sensory panel.
Somewhere above him, the tall, dark blue mech grunted with satisfaction. Prowl didn’t let it trouble him. Letting himself cry out gave Soundwave no power over him; it was merely a physical response. It would be illogical to suppress the outburst, the effort adding to the strain on his systems. Screaming for the Decepticons might satisfy their baser instincts, but brought them no closer to breaking him. Not while he resisted in all the ways that mattered.
“Resistance: illogical.” Soundwave’s droning voice held a note of irritation, and Prowl knew his surface thoughts had been read.
Again, that didn’t matter. As long as Prowl’s mental walls held firm, and his tactical and deeply personal data files remained private beyond them, the telepath could gain small advantage in hearing the ramblings of a pain-flooded processor. In fact, Prowl concentrated on rolling that pain to the front of his mind, bundled in a tight package, before pushing it outwards. He screamed again at the effort, but was rewarded when his hyper-sensitised door-wings reported a faltering in Soundwave’s vent cycle and a strangled grunt from the telepath.
“Resistance: illogical,” Soundwave repeated, and this time the anger was less well hidden, despite the monotone. “Projections report 100% probability of failure. Eventual capitulation: inevitable.”
This time, Prowl made an effort to keep his reactions private. He pushed the unwelcome flicker of uncertainty down behind his own anger, flicking his door-wings with an instinctive reaction and then forced to wait for the processor-fritzing pain to subside.
“Nothing you can say will break me,” he grated out, vocalisor harsh with static and optics bright. Putting voice to the assertion was a mistake. His battle computer, intermittent in function now that his energon levels had dropped so low, burst into life and helpfully provided him with a dozen scenarios in which he would indeed falter, regardless of his best efforts.
Above the frantic rattle of his overstressed systems he heard Soundwave hum thoughtfully. The Decepticon telepath would not have seen the projections, hidden as they were behind Prowl’s battle-ready firewalls, but he couldn’t have missed the way Prowl’s spark fell as he read them.
“Autobot Prowl will yield.” The way Soundwave said the words made them a certainty, Primus-ordained writ. Another flare of acid on Prowl’s door-wings was accompanied by an electric charge that passed from his wrists to his ankles, making his engine stutter and his spark-chamber pulse with agony. “Autobot Jazz will also be broken. Security information and tactical projections will be surrendered before deactivation.”
“It’ll take you a lot more than an orn to break me.” Prowl grated between clenched denta, when his harsh vents had subsided and his vocalisor cleared of static. “Or Jazz.”
Soundwave gave a non-committal hum, not needing to comment when Prowl’s processor was already working to undermine his words. True, he was working on breaking the telepath himself, and getting closer by the session, but a quiet internal voice - one impossible to ignore at the height of these sessions, when pain wracked every inch of him - knew the reverse was also true.
Twelve days, very nearly a full orn in Decepticon hands, and Prowl was finding it harder and harder to resist the pain, or to hide his reaction when Jazz was tossed - damaged and drained - back into the cell-block after his own sessions. He was starting to hate the sight of purple walls, and, truthfully, he was starting to hate himself every time he woke up to see them. He wanted to have the courage to end this rather than stretch it out, adding to the risk for all his friends and increasing the probability of both Soundwave’s projections and his own coming true.
Only two things stopped him: Jazz, always first and foremost, and the expectation that, sooner or later, they would both be rescued.
“Rescue: unlikely.” This time Soundwave picked up on Prowl’s faltering flare of hope, guessing its origin, and was merciless in quashing it. The Decepticon paused, an unusual gravity and grim satisfaction in his monotonous voice as he echoed his words with a mental projection, making them impossible for his captive to ignore. “Autobots: unaware of your capture. Unaware of your existence. Autobots subject to virus: all memories and records of Prowl and Jazz deleted. Time remaining for interrogation: indefinite.”
Prowl forced his optics to cycle, only now realising they’d dimmed. His processor shrieked a protest, fighting a sensory overload as images of the too-bright room competed against the stream of agonised data from his door-wings. Even so, Prowl stared at Soundwave, shocked beyond his ability to mask the emotion.
His fellow Autobots - his friends - weren’t coming? Worse, they didn’t even know there was anyone to come for? Prowl’s vents stuttered badly, his optics flickering.
“Conclusion: no one cares about the fate of Jazz and Prowl.”
He wanted to laugh in Soundwave’s face, but his battle processor was relentless, assigning the scenario a high probability despite his wishes. Starscream and Hook were both more than competent scientists, easily capable of designing a virus to their specifications. Soundwave was an expert in analysing a mech’s processors, knowing precisely where to strike - both physically and emotionally - for maximum effectiveness. And there’d been that last report from the Ark…
Prowl felt his emotions tumbling through his firewalls, his processor jumping from public thoughts to shielded ones rapidly enough to provide Soundwave with a conduit to follow. He was losing control. He could feel Soundwave probing the weakened walls, could dimly see the bright glow of a red visor above him.
Ruthlessly, he overrode his operating protocols, triggering his own medical stasis and leaving Soundwave staring in frustration at his inert, utterly locked down processor.
“Prowl? Prowl!”
Jazz’s voice held more than a little worry. Rebooting his optics, Prowl stared blindly at the ceiling of the cell-block. His body still vibrated from the combination of magnetic pulses and sonics his companion had used to break his stasis lock. His processor still rang with Soundwave’s cruel words. His optics flared, lighting the darkened cells for a few moments before they faded.
“C’mon, Prowler. Work with me here! Ya alright?”
Jazz’s appeal roused him as little else would. He cycled his optics again, and pushed himself up, unable to suppress a moan as his door-wings made their presence - and their agony - known.
For a few seconds, he could do nothing but sort through the rush of sensory data, doing what he could to suppress the nerve impulses from his damaged wings. He came back to himself venting hard, to find Jazz had shuffled to the bars between their cells, and was pressed up against them, hand stretched out helplessly in an attempt to reach his mate.
The Nemesis had been designed as a transport. Its brig was an afterthought, nothing more than a series of cramped metal cages welded to the floor of a large storeroom. There was a six-foot gap between the bars of Jazz’s cell wall and those of Prowl’s, wide enough for a guard to stalk between them and to make any attempt at contact too obvious to hide. Jazz’s arm fell across the gap, finger-servos extended but falling short of the contact both mechs hungered for.
Prowl keened softly, looking up at his mate with naked longing in his optics. Jazz’s visor brightened with concern, his vents mirroring Prowl’s. It was more emotion than either had allowed themselves to show for one another since their capture. Prowl found he couldn’t fault it, craved more of it, in fact.
If they truly were alone… forgotten… Prowl needed Jazz’s support and comfort more than ever. He shuffled forward a little, reaching through the bars and winding his white servos gently around Jazz’s cruelly-damaged black ones. The contact gave him something solid to focus on, a physical reality other than the agony of his doorwings.
“I’m… I shall be fine,” he murmured with as much conviction as he could muster. “Jazz, please calm down.”
Jazz gave a shaky laugh, making no move to free his hand, but regulating his vents and letting his helm fall forward against the cold iron bars with a thud.
“Kinda scared me there, mech.”
Prowl managed a slight smile. “For which I apologise. It was… necessary.”
Jazz’s head lifted. He fixed Prowl with a gaze that looked straight through him, either reading the turmoil in his posture or merely sensing it.
“Gotta keep our spirits up. The others will be here soon, ‘ssuming we don’t find a way outta here ourselves first.”
Jazz’s confident assurance fell flat in the mire of Prowl’s doubts. His mate hesitated, looking up at him earnestly and striving to make his tone encouraging. The servos entwined with Prowl’s gave a gentle squeeze, despite the pain that must cause.
“And soon as Prime comes crashin’ through that door, we’ll get Ratch t’ take a look at those poor door-wings of yours, right, Prowler?” A little uncertainty was creeping into the other mech’s tone now. “Man, I don’t know what that slagger Soundwave said t’ ya, Prowl, but everything’s goin’ to be okay. You’ve gotta keep believin’ that.”
“Jazz…” Prowl’s voice trailed off. He glanced out into the dark shadows beyond their cages and then met Jazz’s visored optics, needing to talk this out. “What did Ratchet tell us on our last check in?”
Jazz hesitated. He glanced up through the top of his cage, toward the ceiling far above and the camera mounted all around. The Decepticons might not be able to afford the power for energon bars on their cells, making do with mere metal alloy, but they didn’t lack for manpower. Neither Jazz nor Prowl had any doubt that they were being monitored twenty-four hours a day, their words and actions recorded. Already they’d gone further towards revealing their true closeness in the last ten minutes than they had in the last orn. Now Prowl was touching on something potentially more dangerous still: the operational status of the Ark itself.
Jazz studied his mate for a long moment, seeing the need in his gaze, before making a decision and nodding abruptly.
“Ratch said Blue and a few of the others were down wi’ some sorta mech-flu, but we shouldn’t worry and shouldn’t hurry home.”
Jazz had worried nonetheless, and Prowl had felt like a traitor to himself insisting they wait the full forty-eight hours before their next scheduled check-in. It wouldn’t do to let the Ark crew know their officers were concerned, and it was illogical to trouble Ratchet when he was no doubt busy.
The Decepticon attack had come after forty-seven.
“Is there any way the Decepticons could have known that?”
Now Jazz shrugged, not letting go of Prowl’s hand, but settling back more comfortably. Moving was difficult for the mech, his balance centres affected by the damage to his sensory horns and his legs not responding to instruction, unable to take his weight even if there was room to stand properly in the cramped cages. “Sure, if one o’ the cassettes got into th’ vents again, or tapp’d our coms. Why not? What’d Soundwave tell ya, Prowler? That everyone got sick while we weren’t lookin’? That they were all knockin’ on the gates of th’ Matrix? Ratch is too good for that.”
There was a slight hint of concern in Jazz’s gaze despite his words, and it deepened as Prowl looked away, refusing to meet his optics. He truly didn’t want to tell Jazz this, to shatter his mate’s hopes of rescue, but better it come from him than from Soundwave. This was information Jazz needed to know.
“When the Decepticons attacked…” Soundwave had been there, dampening their coms, but they’d seen the humans scurrying for cover. They knew from experience that at least some of the inevitable frantic phone calls would get through, the technology too primitive for Cybertronians to effectively counter. “We held out as long as we could.”
“Sure,” Jazz agreed, frowning in earnest now.
Prowl dimmed his optics, summoning up the memory. They’d not expected a quick response from the Ark. There was the time required for the human calls to pass from local police to national authorities, and from there to the Ark, and then the time the Autobots needed to muster a battle squad. They’d both been ready to resist for a fair while, mentally counting down the time their friends would need. Sickness in the Ark crew might have stretched that a little, but Jazz and Prowl would have been informed of any significant impairment in Ark functions, routine check-in or not.
“I expected support to arrive several breems before our capture,” Prowl noted aloud.
“Anything could’ve slowed them down, Prowler. Ya know that. Skyfire fritzin’ a circuit, Red Alert runnin’ just a few dozen more checks on th’ reports before decidin’ it wasn’t a trap, th’ Twins wrappin’ half th’ Ark up in one of their mega-pranks… anything.”
Prowl tried to smile at the thought of a Sideswipe and Sunstreaker-inspired ‘Major Incident’ but couldn’t. As reluctant as he was to concede defeat and amusement at the twins’ occasional entertaining victories, he genuinely enjoyed the intellectual challenge of locking processors with the two masters of sneaky pranks. This time, even the possibilities for mayhem that his aching battle computer presented couldn’t divert him.
“Soundwave believes that the infection in the Ark mechs affected their memory processors,” Prowl said sombrely. Jazz jerked upright, his hand falling out of Prowl’s as his servos slackened with shock. “Specifically, that it removed any reference to you and me, Jazz.”
“That’s a load of slag!” The assertion burst out of Jazz based on nothing more than pure emotion. His optics dimmed though, and Prowl could see distress following hard on the heels of the shock and anger. The best comfort any Autobot could take when facing death in this interminable war was the knowledge that his companions would hold his memory close. The strongest oath they could make to a fallen comrade was “We shall remember”, keeping alive the memories in song and in stories told during the long evenings. One of the few things neither Jazz nor Prowl had doubted was that help would come for them, as soon as their shipmates could find a way, and that if, in the last extreme, it came too late, their friends would grieve them deeply and avenge their loss.
“We don’t know that it’s true,” he comforted, as well as he could. “But, Jazz, if there’s even a possibility that it is, we cannot rely on the Ark for rescue.”
Jazz cycled his vents. For a few second he rested his helm back against the bars, offlining his optics and letting Prowl read his distress. Then he straightened, a new determination glowing behind his visor.
“Then we’ll jus’ hafta get ourselves outta here.”
Prowl didn’t trouble himself to point out that they were weak, damaged and energy-depleted. Or that any plan Jazz hadn’t already been willing to attempt after an orn in captivity most likely had a probability of success too low for his battle computer to calculate.
He met his mate’s visored optics through the bars and nodded, hissing in pain as his door-wings tried to rise into a more assertive position. They’d have to try to escape, or die in the attempt. At this point, there were no other options.
The door to the brig swung open with an audio-grating shriek of rusted hinges. Pulling their arms back through the bars and to their sides, both mechs turned, as best they could, fixing the dark blue Decepticon on the threshold with identical angry glares.
Soundwave had waited just long enough for Prowl to pass on the bad news, now he stepped towards Jazz’s cell before moving aside. Two of the Constructicons moved past him, not sparing Prowl a glance as they opened the cage and hauled Jazz out. The saboteur kicked out with uncoordinated jerks of his legs, his fists pounding on his captors as they dragged him away, projecting a false bravado and hiding his new uncertainty from everyone but his mate.
Prowl could only call out to Soundwave, reminding him that torturing Jazz further would not aide his cause, and trying to mask the anxiety he felt deep in his spark.
The cell-block door swung closed. Silence descended. Prowl knew he should make an effort to recharge while he had the chance. Instead, he lay curled in a corner of his cold metal cage, awake and alone, and tried to convince himself he was imagining his mate’s screams.
Prowl - No One Cares
The Ark would be tense by now, their capture having effects both obvious and subtle on their fellow Autobots.
Nearly a month after he left the Ark, the schedules Prowl prepared must be running down. The crew would be losing the stable routines that kept them grounded, and try as he might Optimus had never mastered the fine art of putting every mech where he could best serve, outside of the heat of battle. The whole Ark would be too quiet, but it would be more obvious in some places than others. The Rec Room would be getting jumpy, minor irritations between mechs growing into full-blown arguments without Jazz there to smooth them over, and to let the officer corps know what needed dealing with and what to leave well alone.
Assuming the officers were doing any better. Ironhide would be decimating the target range, or working his squads from waking to recharge, telling himself he needed to be ready, but in truth merely trying to distract himself from why. Red Alert was no doubt close to fritzing, working on a rescue plan even as he feverishly reprogrammed the Ark’s defences, unless Ratchet had already stepped in to spare himself a future processor ache. The medic would have enough on his hands dealing with a worried Bluestreak and trying to keep Optimus on an even keel. Optimus… Optimus would be worried too, deeply so, and not even the wisdom in his ancient optics could hide that from those who knew him well.
And few people knew him better than Prowl.
The tactician tensed, feeling something… something like the distant echo of a question, pressing him to follow that thought. He resisted, fighting as he’d been fighting for so long now, the days fading into one another. He forced his mental wanderings to leave the Ark, his door-wings twitching in frustration when the image of it, embedded in the side of Mount Hillary, kept drifting back into the centre of his thoughts like a daydream from which there was no awakening.
Taking a deep vent, he nodded, accepting the image. Instead of trying to banish it, he pictured himself bending down, collecting a boulder from the dusty ground by his feet, and hauling it up to rest against his chest. With all the intense concentration his years of tactical training offered, he focused on the sensation of it in his hands, the weight of it and the streaks of yellow dirt it left across his chest-plates. Taking control of the daydream, Prowl carried the boulder a few steps, dropping it dead centre in the entrance to the Ark before turning back for another.
Slowly, laboriously, ignoring the surges of an anger that wasn’t his own, he literally built a wall in his thoughts. It took an effort that strained his systems, leaving him panting through his vents. He could feel the pressure growing. Each rock seemed heavier than the last, and he had to will each one into existence, layering his firm grasp of the boulder-strewn reality surrounding his home over the oddly barren desert that replaced it every time he relaxed. He wouldn’t surrender. Arm cables straining, he visualised himself pushing the final stone into place and leaned against it, the Ark and everything inside her blocked off, both from himself and from anyone looking over his shoulder.
He rebooted his optics with an effort, a little surprised to realise they’d been offline. A dark red visor met his gaze with a look of well-controlled fury before turning away.
Another few days, Prowl knew, and he’d break that control. The dark blue mech in front of him had already made it clear that his patience was thinning, the physical punishments for Prowl’s resistance growing more emphatic with each session. Just another few days… but it had already been too long.
After nearly two weeks, both Prowl and Jazz were physical wrecks, steadily accumulating damage, and though they tried to hide it from one another, increasingly demoralised. Prowl was far from sure either of them would survive Soundwave’s fury when the mech finally realised he was beaten, or whether it would be the inevitable sessions with Starscream and then Megatron that would finally end them. He’d spit in the faces of both Decepticon commanders, but it would be too much to hope that would end the interrogation and taunts from either one. Megatron was a brutal dictator, demanding submission with violence where the force of his personality failed. Starscream… Starscream was almost as skilled at twisting a mech’s thoughts as Soundwave, and he knew exactly how to hurt Prowl as no one else could. Quite honestly, Prowl admitted in the most secret and firewalled depths of his processor, he wasn’t sure which encounter he most feared.
He pushed the thought away, wanting to blame it on Soundwave’s interference, but knowing that this one had come from within and not from his tormentor. Soundwave had already turned to prepare his equipment for the next phase of their session. His visor was dim, less so than Prowl’s blue optics, but still telling of the energy the Decepticon had wasted on him. Soundwave’s unusual gift was weaker when he was tired, Prowl knew. From now until he was dragged back to the cell-block, he just had to concentrate on resisting physical pain, rather than the more insidious mental intrusion, and even with his strength waning day by day he was getting good at that.
Experience was a fine teacher.
Prowl cycled his vents and then his optics, bracing himself. Only when he refocused his optics did he realise that the nature of the game had changed. Soundwave sipped an energon cube, his visor glowing brighter as each mouthful reenergised him. Prowl’s fuel tank cramped, his depleted systems stuttering with need. He felt his vents increase in frequency, becoming ragged pants. His door-wings perked and then they cramped too, sending a shaft of agony through his back as they fought the restraints that limited their motion.
Instructing his optics to cycle down, he forced his battle computer to boot, using its cold reason to suppress his body’s need. The Decepticons were feeding him and Jazz enough to keep them alive, not prepared to let high-ranking prisoners die before giving up their secrets. Craving more energon had a certain logic, since many of his systems - not least of them his battle computer - were under constant strain or shutting down entirely. On the other hand, letting physical cravings weaken his resistance would invalidate his efforts to date, and leave him at a significant tactical disadvantage. It wasn’t to be tolerated.
His battle computer stuttered its way offline but its conclusions lingered. He held onto them, using them to calm himself as Soundwave turned back to him, optics bright and energy renewed. As Jazz would say, it was time for round two.
He vented hard, optics on the tools in Soundwave’s hands. Bracing himself both physically and mentally, Prowl nodded an acknowledgement and silently dared the telepath to do his worse.
Prowl’s door-wings were ablaze with agony. He screamed, not even trying to resist the shriek as Soundwave allowed another drop of acid to join the thin streams working their way down Prowl’s left sensory panel.
Somewhere above him, the tall, dark blue mech grunted with satisfaction. Prowl didn’t let it trouble him. Letting himself cry out gave Soundwave no power over him; it was merely a physical response. It would be illogical to suppress the outburst, the effort adding to the strain on his systems. Screaming for the Decepticons might satisfy their baser instincts, but brought them no closer to breaking him. Not while he resisted in all the ways that mattered.
“Resistance: illogical.” Soundwave’s droning voice held a note of irritation, and Prowl knew his surface thoughts had been read.
Again, that didn’t matter. As long as Prowl’s mental walls held firm, and his tactical and deeply personal data files remained private beyond them, the telepath could gain small advantage in hearing the ramblings of a pain-flooded processor. In fact, Prowl concentrated on rolling that pain to the front of his mind, bundled in a tight package, before pushing it outwards. He screamed again at the effort, but was rewarded when his hyper-sensitised door-wings reported a faltering in Soundwave’s vent cycle and a strangled grunt from the telepath.
“Resistance: illogical,” Soundwave repeated, and this time the anger was less well hidden, despite the monotone. “Projections report 100% probability of failure. Eventual capitulation: inevitable.”
This time, Prowl made an effort to keep his reactions private. He pushed the unwelcome flicker of uncertainty down behind his own anger, flicking his door-wings with an instinctive reaction and then forced to wait for the processor-fritzing pain to subside.
“Nothing you can say will break me,” he grated out, vocalisor harsh with static and optics bright. Putting voice to the assertion was a mistake. His battle computer, intermittent in function now that his energon levels had dropped so low, burst into life and helpfully provided him with a dozen scenarios in which he would indeed falter, regardless of his best efforts.
Above the frantic rattle of his overstressed systems he heard Soundwave hum thoughtfully. The Decepticon telepath would not have seen the projections, hidden as they were behind Prowl’s battle-ready firewalls, but he couldn’t have missed the way Prowl’s spark fell as he read them.
“Autobot Prowl will yield.” The way Soundwave said the words made them a certainty, Primus-ordained writ. Another flare of acid on Prowl’s door-wings was accompanied by an electric charge that passed from his wrists to his ankles, making his engine stutter and his spark-chamber pulse with agony. “Autobot Jazz will also be broken. Security information and tactical projections will be surrendered before deactivation.”
“It’ll take you a lot more than an orn to break me.” Prowl grated between clenched denta, when his harsh vents had subsided and his vocalisor cleared of static. “Or Jazz.”
Soundwave gave a non-committal hum, not needing to comment when Prowl’s processor was already working to undermine his words. True, he was working on breaking the telepath himself, and getting closer by the session, but a quiet internal voice - one impossible to ignore at the height of these sessions, when pain wracked every inch of him - knew the reverse was also true.
Twelve days, very nearly a full orn in Decepticon hands, and Prowl was finding it harder and harder to resist the pain, or to hide his reaction when Jazz was tossed - damaged and drained - back into the cell-block after his own sessions. He was starting to hate the sight of purple walls, and, truthfully, he was starting to hate himself every time he woke up to see them. He wanted to have the courage to end this rather than stretch it out, adding to the risk for all his friends and increasing the probability of both Soundwave’s projections and his own coming true.
Only two things stopped him: Jazz, always first and foremost, and the expectation that, sooner or later, they would both be rescued.
“Rescue: unlikely.” This time Soundwave picked up on Prowl’s faltering flare of hope, guessing its origin, and was merciless in quashing it. The Decepticon paused, an unusual gravity and grim satisfaction in his monotonous voice as he echoed his words with a mental projection, making them impossible for his captive to ignore. “Autobots: unaware of your capture. Unaware of your existence. Autobots subject to virus: all memories and records of Prowl and Jazz deleted. Time remaining for interrogation: indefinite.”
Prowl forced his optics to cycle, only now realising they’d dimmed. His processor shrieked a protest, fighting a sensory overload as images of the too-bright room competed against the stream of agonised data from his door-wings. Even so, Prowl stared at Soundwave, shocked beyond his ability to mask the emotion.
His fellow Autobots - his friends - weren’t coming? Worse, they didn’t even know there was anyone to come for? Prowl’s vents stuttered badly, his optics flickering.
“Conclusion: no one cares about the fate of Jazz and Prowl.”
He wanted to laugh in Soundwave’s face, but his battle processor was relentless, assigning the scenario a high probability despite his wishes. Starscream and Hook were both more than competent scientists, easily capable of designing a virus to their specifications. Soundwave was an expert in analysing a mech’s processors, knowing precisely where to strike - both physically and emotionally - for maximum effectiveness. And there’d been that last report from the Ark…
Prowl felt his emotions tumbling through his firewalls, his processor jumping from public thoughts to shielded ones rapidly enough to provide Soundwave with a conduit to follow. He was losing control. He could feel Soundwave probing the weakened walls, could dimly see the bright glow of a red visor above him.
Ruthlessly, he overrode his operating protocols, triggering his own medical stasis and leaving Soundwave staring in frustration at his inert, utterly locked down processor.
“Prowl? Prowl!”
Jazz’s voice held more than a little worry. Rebooting his optics, Prowl stared blindly at the ceiling of the cell-block. His body still vibrated from the combination of magnetic pulses and sonics his companion had used to break his stasis lock. His processor still rang with Soundwave’s cruel words. His optics flared, lighting the darkened cells for a few moments before they faded.
“C’mon, Prowler. Work with me here! Ya alright?”
Jazz’s appeal roused him as little else would. He cycled his optics again, and pushed himself up, unable to suppress a moan as his door-wings made their presence - and their agony - known.
For a few seconds, he could do nothing but sort through the rush of sensory data, doing what he could to suppress the nerve impulses from his damaged wings. He came back to himself venting hard, to find Jazz had shuffled to the bars between their cells, and was pressed up against them, hand stretched out helplessly in an attempt to reach his mate.
The Nemesis had been designed as a transport. Its brig was an afterthought, nothing more than a series of cramped metal cages welded to the floor of a large storeroom. There was a six-foot gap between the bars of Jazz’s cell wall and those of Prowl’s, wide enough for a guard to stalk between them and to make any attempt at contact too obvious to hide. Jazz’s arm fell across the gap, finger-servos extended but falling short of the contact both mechs hungered for.
Prowl keened softly, looking up at his mate with naked longing in his optics. Jazz’s visor brightened with concern, his vents mirroring Prowl’s. It was more emotion than either had allowed themselves to show for one another since their capture. Prowl found he couldn’t fault it, craved more of it, in fact.
If they truly were alone… forgotten… Prowl needed Jazz’s support and comfort more than ever. He shuffled forward a little, reaching through the bars and winding his white servos gently around Jazz’s cruelly-damaged black ones. The contact gave him something solid to focus on, a physical reality other than the agony of his doorwings.
“I’m… I shall be fine,” he murmured with as much conviction as he could muster. “Jazz, please calm down.”
Jazz gave a shaky laugh, making no move to free his hand, but regulating his vents and letting his helm fall forward against the cold iron bars with a thud.
“Kinda scared me there, mech.”
Prowl managed a slight smile. “For which I apologise. It was… necessary.”
Jazz’s head lifted. He fixed Prowl with a gaze that looked straight through him, either reading the turmoil in his posture or merely sensing it.
“Gotta keep our spirits up. The others will be here soon, ‘ssuming we don’t find a way outta here ourselves first.”
Jazz’s confident assurance fell flat in the mire of Prowl’s doubts. His mate hesitated, looking up at him earnestly and striving to make his tone encouraging. The servos entwined with Prowl’s gave a gentle squeeze, despite the pain that must cause.
“And soon as Prime comes crashin’ through that door, we’ll get Ratch t’ take a look at those poor door-wings of yours, right, Prowler?” A little uncertainty was creeping into the other mech’s tone now. “Man, I don’t know what that slagger Soundwave said t’ ya, Prowl, but everything’s goin’ to be okay. You’ve gotta keep believin’ that.”
“Jazz…” Prowl’s voice trailed off. He glanced out into the dark shadows beyond their cages and then met Jazz’s visored optics, needing to talk this out. “What did Ratchet tell us on our last check in?”
Jazz hesitated. He glanced up through the top of his cage, toward the ceiling far above and the camera mounted all around. The Decepticons might not be able to afford the power for energon bars on their cells, making do with mere metal alloy, but they didn’t lack for manpower. Neither Jazz nor Prowl had any doubt that they were being monitored twenty-four hours a day, their words and actions recorded. Already they’d gone further towards revealing their true closeness in the last ten minutes than they had in the last orn. Now Prowl was touching on something potentially more dangerous still: the operational status of the Ark itself.
Jazz studied his mate for a long moment, seeing the need in his gaze, before making a decision and nodding abruptly.
“Ratch said Blue and a few of the others were down wi’ some sorta mech-flu, but we shouldn’t worry and shouldn’t hurry home.”
Jazz had worried nonetheless, and Prowl had felt like a traitor to himself insisting they wait the full forty-eight hours before their next scheduled check-in. It wouldn’t do to let the Ark crew know their officers were concerned, and it was illogical to trouble Ratchet when he was no doubt busy.
The Decepticon attack had come after forty-seven.
“Is there any way the Decepticons could have known that?”
Now Jazz shrugged, not letting go of Prowl’s hand, but settling back more comfortably. Moving was difficult for the mech, his balance centres affected by the damage to his sensory horns and his legs not responding to instruction, unable to take his weight even if there was room to stand properly in the cramped cages. “Sure, if one o’ the cassettes got into th’ vents again, or tapp’d our coms. Why not? What’d Soundwave tell ya, Prowler? That everyone got sick while we weren’t lookin’? That they were all knockin’ on the gates of th’ Matrix? Ratch is too good for that.”
There was a slight hint of concern in Jazz’s gaze despite his words, and it deepened as Prowl looked away, refusing to meet his optics. He truly didn’t want to tell Jazz this, to shatter his mate’s hopes of rescue, but better it come from him than from Soundwave. This was information Jazz needed to know.
“When the Decepticons attacked…” Soundwave had been there, dampening their coms, but they’d seen the humans scurrying for cover. They knew from experience that at least some of the inevitable frantic phone calls would get through, the technology too primitive for Cybertronians to effectively counter. “We held out as long as we could.”
“Sure,” Jazz agreed, frowning in earnest now.
Prowl dimmed his optics, summoning up the memory. They’d not expected a quick response from the Ark. There was the time required for the human calls to pass from local police to national authorities, and from there to the Ark, and then the time the Autobots needed to muster a battle squad. They’d both been ready to resist for a fair while, mentally counting down the time their friends would need. Sickness in the Ark crew might have stretched that a little, but Jazz and Prowl would have been informed of any significant impairment in Ark functions, routine check-in or not.
“I expected support to arrive several breems before our capture,” Prowl noted aloud.
“Anything could’ve slowed them down, Prowler. Ya know that. Skyfire fritzin’ a circuit, Red Alert runnin’ just a few dozen more checks on th’ reports before decidin’ it wasn’t a trap, th’ Twins wrappin’ half th’ Ark up in one of their mega-pranks… anything.”
Prowl tried to smile at the thought of a Sideswipe and Sunstreaker-inspired ‘Major Incident’ but couldn’t. As reluctant as he was to concede defeat and amusement at the twins’ occasional entertaining victories, he genuinely enjoyed the intellectual challenge of locking processors with the two masters of sneaky pranks. This time, even the possibilities for mayhem that his aching battle computer presented couldn’t divert him.
“Soundwave believes that the infection in the Ark mechs affected their memory processors,” Prowl said sombrely. Jazz jerked upright, his hand falling out of Prowl’s as his servos slackened with shock. “Specifically, that it removed any reference to you and me, Jazz.”
“That’s a load of slag!” The assertion burst out of Jazz based on nothing more than pure emotion. His optics dimmed though, and Prowl could see distress following hard on the heels of the shock and anger. The best comfort any Autobot could take when facing death in this interminable war was the knowledge that his companions would hold his memory close. The strongest oath they could make to a fallen comrade was “We shall remember”, keeping alive the memories in song and in stories told during the long evenings. One of the few things neither Jazz nor Prowl had doubted was that help would come for them, as soon as their shipmates could find a way, and that if, in the last extreme, it came too late, their friends would grieve them deeply and avenge their loss.
“We don’t know that it’s true,” he comforted, as well as he could. “But, Jazz, if there’s even a possibility that it is, we cannot rely on the Ark for rescue.”
Jazz cycled his vents. For a few second he rested his helm back against the bars, offlining his optics and letting Prowl read his distress. Then he straightened, a new determination glowing behind his visor.
“Then we’ll jus’ hafta get ourselves outta here.”
Prowl didn’t trouble himself to point out that they were weak, damaged and energy-depleted. Or that any plan Jazz hadn’t already been willing to attempt after an orn in captivity most likely had a probability of success too low for his battle computer to calculate.
He met his mate’s visored optics through the bars and nodded, hissing in pain as his door-wings tried to rise into a more assertive position. They’d have to try to escape, or die in the attempt. At this point, there were no other options.
The door to the brig swung open with an audio-grating shriek of rusted hinges. Pulling their arms back through the bars and to their sides, both mechs turned, as best they could, fixing the dark blue Decepticon on the threshold with identical angry glares.
Soundwave had waited just long enough for Prowl to pass on the bad news, now he stepped towards Jazz’s cell before moving aside. Two of the Constructicons moved past him, not sparing Prowl a glance as they opened the cage and hauled Jazz out. The saboteur kicked out with uncoordinated jerks of his legs, his fists pounding on his captors as they dragged him away, projecting a false bravado and hiding his new uncertainty from everyone but his mate.
Prowl could only call out to Soundwave, reminding him that torturing Jazz further would not aide his cause, and trying to mask the anxiety he felt deep in his spark.
The cell-block door swung closed. Silence descended. Prowl knew he should make an effort to recharge while he had the chance. Instead, he lay curled in a corner of his cold metal cage, awake and alone, and tried to convince himself he was imagining his mate’s screams.