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"I don't know why we're here, nobody told me why I'm here. I don't see why we have to stay!" "He told us to stay here, he did. I told you that, you heard him say it. If you go I'll tell him!" Useless gritted his mandenta and tried once more to deactivate his audio sensors, or at least turn them down. The running argument - well, whinge - going on between Whineswift and Tattletale, with interjections from Scapegoat, was about as pacifying as someone using peen-hammers to play marches on his ailerons. Pariah's mouth had compressed into a dead straight line again and even Gloryhog looked ruffled. At his elbow Sunbeam sighed. "I don't see why I have to stay here!" Whineswift protested futilely, again. "Oh, shut up!" Pariah snapped at him, spurring a fresh outbreak of complaint. "Eeeh! I can't stand these idiots! Let's get out of here before they drive me crazy!" "Shouldn't we wait for Brickhouse?" Useless asked, fearing a beating or worse. "Oh, like you've never disobeyed an order before?" Pariah asked. "The worst he can do is beat us a bit -" "He can kill you," Deadjet interjected solemnly. "If he wants." "I don't believe you," Gloryhog said, looking up at Deadjet with that perfectly smooth expression of total self-confidence that Useless was divided between hating and envying. Useless noticed then that Gloryhog's colours were fading. Gone was the almost iridescent royal blue, turning into a dowdy dark bluish-grey. His green and yellow highlights had paled to dim remnants. His armour was beginning to peel around the joints. Deadjet didn't reply. "Well, it doesn't matter if he can or he can't if we can't get out anyway," Useless said. "The door's locked." "There must be another way out. Since when did anyone build a base with only one way out?" Pariah said, scowling at him. "This used to be an Autobot base," Useless reminded her. "All the escape routes'll be for runts." "Well, big Autobots have to escape somehow," Pariah said, shrugging. "Big Autobots don't escape, they fight to the death. Then the runts run away." Useless picked at the seal on his cheek again, and it leaked. Smelt it! "And when did you ever see that happen?" Useless couldn't answer that. "I killed an Autobot once," he murmured. "I really did." "Yeah, so what? I've killed three," Pariah said sulkily, folding her arms again. Useless scowled at her, reset his optics in a blink, and looked again. Her armour had been grey when he'd met her earlier. Now it seemed to have pinkish tints creeping into it, like the faded remains of a deep reddish tone. He looked down at his own hands again, quite grey, quite faded. "Deadjet, is there another way out of here?" Gloryhog asked. Deadjet didn't reply. "Deadjet! I asked you a question!" Still no response. "Blast you, Deadjet, I'm in charge here -" "No you're not!" Pariah and Useless shouted at the same time. "I am!" Gloryhog shouted in return. "Back door," Deadjet said. "Well, show us then," Pariah said impatiently. "No." "Why not?" Useless asked. "Why should I?" "Because ... because we told you to." It was the best answer he could think of, but Deadjet didn't reply. "Because we'll make you." "He's bigger than us," Faintheart pointed out timidly. "Not you, he isn't," Pariah said bitterly, looking up at her pallid follower. "He's starving, weak ... I bet you could take him, Faintheart." That got a whimper. "I could take him one-handed," Gloryhog smirked, gesturing expansively. "I know seven kinds of martial arts, including Metallikato - hey, what are you all laughing at?" "'hog, if you knew seven kinds of martial arts, you wouldn't be here," Useless managed through his chuckling. "The back door?" Sunbeam asked quietly. "Where is it?" "Three doors left, two right -" "No, show us," Useless insisted. "You're coming with us." Deadjet rumbled a bit. "Do I have to?" "Yes. Look, we're going to get out of here, no matter what Misdemeanour or Brickhouse do. We need to get outside and make a plan -" "We need energon," Gloryhog interrupted. "Yes, well, that's part of the plan," Useless managed. "I'm going to find the energon dispenser and crack it, fuel myself until it's running out of my intakes and be out of here in a breem," Gloryhog boasted, sneering at Useless. "Do you know where it is? Do you have any idea how to break into it?" Useless asked hotly, irate of the liar. Gloryhog looked away sullenly. "I thought not. Now, Deadjet, show us the way out."
From where she stood, Misdemeanour could see the main corridor, three junctions down from the control room door. It looked unusually dim. Dauntless of darkness, she set a fast pace towards the junction. The pools of light passed over her like stations of an underground railway, passing by smoothly and unheeded. The main corridor junction to the control room was dark. The light had either been broken or just blown out. Misdemeanour added it to her mental list of Things Gone Wrong Today, down at the bottom, as she turned right and jogged up the main corridor. She could hear crying, and it curdled her fueltank. Why do they have to cry? Why don't they realise how weak it makes them sound? Another station of the light passed over her as she moved upwards towards the third junction below the barrack-room, where the crying was and the broad-winged silhouette of Brickhouse filled the corridor. Before the second junction between her and them, she felt warmth and wetness underfoot. The floor of the next junction glowed dimly purple, even though the light was blue. "Brick!" she called. "Is that Clodpole bleeding up there?" "Yes," the Hunter replied, turning only his head to speak to her. His wingtips nearly touched the sides of the corridor and his nosecone was scraping the ceiling. She was small enough to duck under his wing, but he still had to make an awkward half-turn to let her pass. She saw he had Hystericon, one char-black hand clamped around a pale forearm. The reject was crying quite freely, squirming back and forth on the spot, trying to get out of Brickhouse's grip. He didn't notice her. He was too preoccupied by what was on the floor. A dead-grey standard-build Seeker lay there, staring at the ceiling with wide optics and a gentle smile. His throat was slit from intake to intake, his head lolling backwards on stress-fracturing armour. Energon pooled on the floor around him, trickling down the main corridor, down towards the repair bay. She looked for footprints but Hystericon's shifting and Brickhouse's huge pedes had obliterated any traces. She leapt over the body and ducked into the darkness up-corridor. There were no energon-bright footprints there, nor in either of the branching corridors. Whoever it was, he'd gone downwards ... [Overhaul! Overhaul, respond!] There was nothing on the radio but static. "You, Hystericon, stop bawling and act like a Decepticon for once," she ordered, pointed her baton at the reject. The sobbing stopped with a hiccup and a whine. "Pick him up and follow me, quickly." Brickhouse let go of Hystericon and grabbed Clodpole's arms. Hystericon, withering under her gaze, gingerly lifted the dead body's legs. They took the corridor as fast as they could, pedes slippery with the energon. Misdemeanour racked her wings back hard and forged on ahead, baton firmly in hand. There are only three places he could go and cause trouble - the control room is locked, the barrack-room is locked ... and the repair bay ... She quickened her step again although her pedes slithered wetly. Past the darkened junction the corridor tilted downwards, one more station of light before the four-junction plunge into darkness and the green-lit spot beside the repair bay door. The door barely opened in time for her. She skidded to a stop, feet escaping from under her as she raked the room with her arc light. Nothing there, nobody moved. "Overhaul? Overhaul!" She looked the room over again, but there was nothing - Trippin's body on its plinth, the cable hangers, energon puddling out from behind the equipment banks ... Words of denial flocked to her brain module, even as the door closed behind Hystericon, and she ran around the equipment bank. Overhaul sat with his back to his console, legs stretched out in front of him. His head was tipped back, staring at the ceiling with that same look of pleasant surprise, almost a smile, and his throat smiling also in that same black openness. His energon, still fresh, ran down his chest in a broad purple swathe. It spilled over his hands as they rested limply on the floor, fingers slightly curled as if he had held out his hands in welcome greeting and then dropped them to his sides. Misdemeanour sat down heavily. Her wings were shaking. Her knees were shaking. Her insides were shaking. Not you too, 'Haul, not you as well. He was their third, the other corner of their Wing. She felt Brickhouse rest an energon-wet hand on her shoulder, almost pressing her down with the simple weight of it. "Now what?" Brickhouse asked quietly. Misdemeanour had to wait, to let the shivering sensations stop. She heard Hystericon sobbing again. "Shut him up. Turn the lights on." The words clotted in her vocaliser. Brickhouse left her side and, as the lights came up, she managed to get on her feet again. She looked over her shoulder at one of her wings. It still trembled slightly. Weak, she thought. Too weak for battle, too weak to train, now too weak to even look at a dead comrade? Weak ... She looked back at Overhaul and shook her head. Where are we going to find another technician now? Blast it ... the rejects are one thing, but Overhaul... Hystericon lingered in the space between the plinths and the door, gaze shifting nervously from corpses to entrance and back again. Misdemeanour fixed him with a look. "Stay there until I give you another order," she said with the utmost firmness she could muster. "Not him," Brickhouse grumbled. "He'll fill the gap until we find a proper replacement." "He's a reject." Brickhouse had left the console and was now examining the memory monitor attached to Trippin's head. "'Weak shall join with weak and bring forth strength'," she reminded him. "Autobot saying. I'm not weak," Brickhouse objected, but Misdemeanour knew him well enough to detect the lack of conviction in his level tone. Overhaul wasn't the only one who'd first come to her as a reject. "Never mind that now. Can you get anything useful out of that head?" she asked. "Retrieval's complete." He tapped a few commands into the monitor. "Last memories are mostly scrambled. System shock. It managed to compile an image." Another few key-taps and the image appeared. Misdemeanour elbowed him aside to take a closer look. Who is this who has come? It was a standard-build Seeker, standard head and standard armaments. He had no Decepticon blazon in his wings and was all coloured in ambers and ivories. He glowed like gentle light on ceramic armour, like the pale golden domes of Helex in the first rays of a white dawn, and his smile was as soft as a sunbeam. "By Great Megatron's cannon!" Misdemeanour exclaimed. "It's Honeycream!"
The barrack-room didn't just lead into a set of dead-end chambers as Useless had thought. The dead-end chambers turned out to have doors in them, doors that lead into more chambers and more chambers after that. All of them were the same - empty, dimly lit, barely large enough for the six of them to stand in together. Useless knew from the fourth chamber he was pretty well lost. Sunbeam clung to his elbow dependently. "How long have you been here?" he asked Deadjet. No reply. "He said four diuns," Pariah told him. "Yeah, but that's four diuns of lying on the floor. When did you explore this place?" "I uploaded the map. Idiot," Deadjet said flatly. Useless couldn't argue with that. He hadn't even thought of doing a simple data-synch with the base computer. At least nobody else had thought to do that either. Gloryhog had that frowning, bitter expression again, and Pariah looked like she was kicking herself internally for not thinking of it herself. "Down there." There was a big octagonal plate the floor, clearly covering some sort of shaft or other. Solemn symbols were embossed onto it and four sets of double-handed grips rose from its surface. "Anyone read Autobot?" Pariah asked, leaning over it. "'This is the place for those who have passed beyond all care and pain. Rest, brother, and sleep in light 'til all are one,'" Sunbeam read. "Who taught you to read Autobot?" Useless asked, surprised. "They had me prisoner for a while," Sunbeam replied. "They wanted to 'rehabilitate' me." "You escaped? " Pariah apparently couldn't believe that either. "It was kind of an accident," Sunbeam said sheepishly, twining his fingers together. "I was being transferred, and one of them made a joke, and, well, it was quite funny, so I laughed, and ... and I smiled ... and ... it happened." He looked a little sad. "It was all rather embarrassing. I was so surprised I didn't even think of escaping, but one of the others I was with decided it was the chance he'd been waiting for, and, well, they were about to take my brain out and put it in a box, so the next thing I knew I was back in Zendralbron." "Well, that's not going to get the lid up," Pariah said, interrupting Sunbeam's rambling. "It looks like it'll take two of us to lift it at least. Deadjet, Faintheart, get it up." "Too weak," Deadjet said, actually shaking his head a fraction. Faintheart squatted at the edge of the cover, hooked his fingers into one of the grips and looked up, waiting for someone else to join him. Useless locked gazes with Gloryhog. "I'll do it," he said. "That's quite all right, Useless," Gloryhog replied, spreading his wings out more fully. "You needn't waste our time pretending you can." "No, I said I'll do it. Don't shake your ugly wings at me," Useless said through gritted mandenta. "No, I'll do it. You step back and let your commander do it, Useless." "I'm commander here!" "Idiots!" Pariah cried, throwing her hands in the air. Before they could do more than look at her in surprise, she strode forwards, squatted opposite Faintheart, grabbed the grips and heaved. Faintheart creaked in the back of his aspiration conduit, Pariah grimaced, and the cover shifted up a fraction. Sunbeam grabbed the third set of grips and heaved along with them. Useless lunged for the fourth set at the same time Gloryhog did. They both got a single hand on and jostled, trying to shoulder one another aside in a struggle to be the one to make the final difference. Gloryhog bared his mandenta at Useless; they were facetted and sharp. "Fancy face," Useless growled, rumbling his engines. "Only the weak have teeth." "Stop squabbling and lift, you idiots!" Pariah ordered. Useless heaved. He saw Sunbeam straining on the other side of the cover, wings shaking with the effort, and heard Faintheart groan again. With a scrape, the great lid came over the edge. Faintheart leant backwards, pulling the cover towards him, Pariah pushed, Sunbeam dragging the thing sideways. Useless let go and threw himself at Gloryhog, pushing him over. Clonking and banging, the liar landed on his back, one wing bending and springing back with a thrummm. Useless scrabbled for Gloryhog's throat, dragging up sparks with his fingertips, forgetful of everything except the fierce urge to dominate his rival, to conquer and destroy. The liar punched him under the costa, denting him with a clong, then dug his fingers into Useless' vents with a shriek of alloy-friction and pulling sideways. Useless hissed, tensors groaned under the strain, movement-motors whining as he pulled against Gloryhog's arm. With his other hand the liar clawed at Useless' face, the metal buckling and springing back under his fingers. Useless twisted his head, trying to bite Gloryhog's hand, mandenta snapping loudly, and tried to grab his neck, but the liar had his chin pulled down against his chest and he couldn't get a grip. Someone grabbed him by the intakes and hauled him back. Useless elbowed futilely, then Pariah hit him firmly on the top of the head, scrambling his sensor-crests and stunning him for a moment. "Idiots! Stop wasting time and energon," was all she said. Useless turned around in time to see her jump feet-first into the shaft.
The door to the command chamber was open. Misdemeanour quickened her pace and heard Brickhouse lengthen his stride behind her, dragging Hystericon whimpering along behind him. Only she, Overhaul and Brickhouse had the code to get in, and the door was on an automatic lock. It shouldn't be able to stay open. At the last junction before the command chamber Brickhouse pushed Hystericon into an offshoot corridor, motioning him to stay still. The reject cowered in the deeper shadows. Before they were three hister from the door they could see the flicker of the dim light within. Misdemeanour held still, watching the shadows, looking for any hint of a Seeker-shape, and saw none. [Honeycream doesn't sabotage, does he?] Brickhouse asked dubiously. [He'll stick a knife in anything, from Seekers to door-locks to radios,] Misdemeanour replied. Still the light flickered, still there was no sign of a Seeker-shadow. [Bomb the room?] [Negative, we might be able to salvage something.] She had to admit to herself it was rather unlikely. Waving Brickhouse up behind her she edged up to the door, baton in hand and arm-turrets activated. Silently as she could she slipped across the doorway, scanning the room as she did. She saw no Seeker, and was certain she made no sound. There was no response from within, no movement other than the crackle of sparks from the slashed controls. Still, he could be up against the ceiling ... Taking the risk, Misdemeanour raised her arm-turrets and flew into the control chamber, turning in the air to sweep the room for any sign of a Seeker. Nothing. She took a second, closer look, seeking for any sign of a distortion field or shimmer of a photon displaced, anything. Still no sign of Honeycream. Sinking down to a standing position, she called Brickhouse in. With him blocking up the door the room felt almost claustrophobic. They looked around, now taking stock of the state of the controls. The main terminal had been slashed across the keyboard, main monitor and master control box, deep grooves oozing coolant gel over the charred evidence of brief fires. Sparks sputtered from every angle, crisping and crackling. The radio station had been neatly sliced around and pulled out, the innards severed with the same blade that had cut three throats that day already. It was not devastation. It was neat, clean, controlled sabotage. "Slag-sucking sharkticon-shaped star-spawn!" Misdemeanour swore. "He's only cut the wires," Brickhouse frowned. "He's cut the circuits, too - look at the radio." She unlocked the master control box and looked inside. "He's pierced all six of the master circuits. Everything's gone. Slag-eater!" "Now what?" "We go for the emergency cache." "What if the doors are locked?" "We unlock them." "With what?" Brickhouse looked to the punctured master controls dubiously. "With brute force and violence," Misdemeanour replied. "Or the manual release system, if he missed that."
Pariah didn't have time to activate her momentum thrusters before her feet hit the ground, sending a painful jolt up her frame and an echo out into the darkness. She winced, and then scowled. What in Sigma's name were those two idiots playing at? What the ... oh, they're idiots. She stood at the crossing of two aisles in the middle of a low dark place. The path to her left and right was lined with junctions as far as the light would show, parallel aisles leading fore and aft, out of dark and into dark again. The only illumination came from the hole in the ceiling above her, and that was dim. She could hardly see a dozen paces in any direction. Great, more darkness and junctions. There aren't even any lights down here. Useless' thrusters appeared, dangling over the edge of the hole, feeling with his pedes for a ladder that didn't exist. Pariah grabbed his exhaust-nozzles and yanked, pulling him down. He landed on his fundament with a loud clonk, then sat there and glared at her. She felt something approaching a smile edge onto her face at his sullen discomfit. There was a scrabbling sound above them. "Slag-spawned smelthead!" Gloryhog jumped down the hole, landing on Useless with a loud crash. "Get off me, you junk-scraping grease-heap!" Useless was raking Gloryhog's sides with his fingers, armour screaming as dermaplating shredded, and trying to kick him off, thrusters ringing, whilst Gloryhog appeared to be trying to twist Useless' head off. She could hear their tensors creaking and their motion-motors shrilling under the clanks and bongs and scraping. "Idiots! " she yelled at them over the noise that seemed to echo out and come back again. "Stop that! Now! I order you both to stop!" They both paused and stared at her. "You're not in command!" Useless yelled. "I don't take orders from you!" Gloryhog shouted at the same moment. Then Useless hit him in the cockpit, adding the crash of fracturing ceramics to the din, and they went over sideways, clonk-bong-thud, scuffling and snarling on the floor. Pariah cursed and kicked Gloryhog in the back, then kicked Useless for good measure. He was too busy cursing and trying to pry Gloryhog's fingers off his head to notice. The light from above was blocked. Pariah looked up to see Sunbeam peered down at her. "Get down here, and bring the others with you," she snapped. He withdrew his head. Moments later, two yellow legs appeared, dangled for a moment, then the whole of him came down. Sunbeam stepped away from the hole and looked down at the wrestling pair. Pariah could hear their edges scraping on the floor, their wings flexing and bending like shaken sheet metal, and gasped curses in the middle of it all. "Perhaps we should stop them?" Sunbeam asked, twining his fingers again, although he didn't seem about to jump to Useless' rescue. Behind him, Deadjet dropped through the hole, landed loudly - Pariah saw fractures appear in his shins - and took a single, measured sidestep. Faintheart followed a moment later, already whimpering at being left alone. The ceiling was so low neither Hunter could stand fully upright. "Why bother?" Pariah replied. "If we pry them apart, they'll just start again. Idiots, both of them, complete idiots." At which point Faintheart looked around, opened his optics to their fullest, and screamed.
By the time they left the control room, Hystericon had already fled. Misdemeanour wasn't surprised, nor did she expect to see him alive again. Without a word she and Brickhouse returned to the main corridor. She kept her arm-turrets activated, the baton on ready charge and the arc light ready for a blinding flash-burst. Brickhouse, without the room to move freely, kept his guns lowered and walked solidly along behind her. Both knew that if Honeycream came up behind him ... but that wasn't how Honeycream worked. The slag-eater likes to be seen, Misdemeanour thought. He likes that happy little smile before they die. As they passed the barrack-room she cocked a wing, listening. All she could hear from inside was the standard-issue whining and plainting. No screams, no unusual whimpering. "Unlock them?" Brickhouse asked quietly. "No. Not now. If they see us leave, they'll follow. Leave them. If they can't get out of this, they're no use to anyone." "Tell them?" "When we get out. I don't want to be trampled to death by a stampede of panicking rejects." They continued up the main corridor, leaving the rejects locked in the barrack-room. After the first junction above the barrack-room, the corridor turned dark. Honeycream had apparently been sabotaging the lights here too. Why the lights? Why the darkness? she wondered. He wants to be seen, the little creep ... Perhaps he didn't want to be seen too soon. When did he get here? Did he follow the Mayhems? Has he been here for longer? The thought of Honeycream wandering around the base whilst she, Brickhouse and poor Overhaul passed the time waiting for new rejects chilled her. Surely we would have noticed. Surely he would have attacked sooner. He must have followed the Mayhems up, or drifted out of Lantern City ... The main door was shut and the locks wouldn't respond without the main computer, but Honeycream had either overlooked or ignored the big manual release levers. Misdemeanour stood watchfully, staring into the darkness of the corridors to their left and right and back down into the base as Brickhouse worked the lever, span by span heaving the blast doors back on their runners. Midday light flooded in, first a thin beam like a sheet of white metal, then a thick wall between her and Brickhouse. Then the door came fully open and a great blast of sunlight lit the base walls into orange light, then poured on down into the depths to fade into the shadows like a reject Seeker. The two of them slipped as unobtrusively as they could around the edges of the door, not wanting to be outlined against the light should someone be watching down in the corridor, down in the darkness. Honeycream doesn't shoot. He's Honeycream, Honey the Knife, Honey the Smile. Still, there was no point taking a risk. Out in the sunlight, she allowed herself a momentary visor-blink to look around, just to breathe in the light and space of being above ground. It was always a powerful release after the deep and the dark and the unnatural buriedness of the ex-Autobot base to rise up into the open air, to see the iridescent clouds drifting across the golden sky and feel the soft breezes on her wings. In that moment nobody shot at her and Misdemeanour's ancient instinct told her she was safe. Honeycream was still underground, probably - hopefully - lost in the maze of dark tunnels and dim pools of light, half-blind and half-stupid with claustrophobia. With a nod and a synching of battle computers she and Brickhouse transformed and took off, rising up and westward into the golden sky.
Useless startled when Faintheart screamed, letting go of Gloryhog's arm and turning to look at the Hunter. Tangled up underneath him Gloryhog squeaked faintly in surprise. Useless stopped looking at Faintheart and actually looked around. Alarmed, he and Gloryhog quickly separated and stood apart, not wanting to come too close to one another but certainly not wanting to touch what was around them. The dim aisles were lined with drawers, and on each drawer was a plaque, and on each plaque was a name. The aisles lead off into the darkness in all directions, hundreds of drawers in every stack, hundreds of stacks in every aisle, aisles all around ... hundreds of thousands of names, all buried in the darkness, forgotten underground. "This ... this is a tomb," Useless gasped. Faintheart tried to muffle a sob. "These are all dead Autobots." "No they're not," Gloryhog disagreed, shaky-voiced. Useless was about to argue, then saw his face. It was the other face, the frightened one, and he was pointing to the plaques. Beside each name was a tiny blazon. "They're all Decepticons like us." "Yes ... like us," Pariah repeated. "This where they bury the rejects when they die." Hundreds upon hundreds of rejects, dead in the dark ... thousands upon thousands of forgotten, hopeless, useless Seekers. "They came here and starved. And died. And they're still here, down in the dark." "Look at these names ... " Useless tried not to run his finger along the narrow plates as he read them. "Halfwit ... Knockoff ... Bootlicker ... Milksop ... Crybaby..." "I don't want to be remembered like this!" Pariah said, optics alarm-wide. "Nobody will remember them," Deadjet intoned, gloomy as ever. "How do you think you're going to look down here?" Useless replied with a snap. "Your plaque's going to read 'dead jet'! Well, I'm not going to end up down here! I won't be forgotten in a drawer labelled "Useless"!" He looked around at the five of them, feeling a strange flare of determination flashing up in his core, a feeling so strong it frightened him. He wasn't used to this at all, to determination and leading, or trying to lead, and under the determination he felt as weak and shaky as Faintheart looked. "I am going to leave, and live. Are you with me?" "Yes," said Sunbeam, edging up towards him. "I'm not dying down here," Pariah said firmly, crossing her arms - not closing herself off this time, but setting firm against what might be to come. "I'm damned if I'll die in the darkness." "Hey, I told you from the start, I'm not staying here," Gloryhog replied airily, waving a hand dismissively. Useless looked at Deadjet and Faintheart, the former still and impassive as a corpse, the later shivering at Pariah's elbow. "Gloryhog, tell us we're all going to get out of here," he said. Gloryhog looked at him, baffled. "Say it. Say it like you mean it. Tell us we're all going to live." "You're all going to live," Gloryhog said uncertainly. "No!" Useless snapped. "Like you mean it. Like you ... oh, never mind. Which way, Deadjet?" The corpselike Seeker started forwards with his slow, deliberate tread, pushing Useless and Gloryhog against the tomb-plaques as he passed and went into the aisle ahead. The Hunter had to fold his broad wings back as he entered, head bowed to avoid hitting the dark ceiling. Useless set off after him, glancing back once to check that Sunbeam was following and once again to see what the others were doing. He could see Pariah behind Sunbeam, and Faintheart's pointy head behind her, but Gloryhog, if he followed, was invisible to his sight.
Faintheart's shadow fell on her from behind. Pariah could barely see Sunbeam ahead of her, only making out his sallow wings as he moved against the bluer dimness. "You would've thought they could have some more lights here," she grumbled. "Yeah," Useless agreed ahead. "Deadjet, why is it so dark here?" "We don't deserve light," the Hunter rumbled, dark body invisible to Pariah in the gloam. "We don't deserve sky. We failed. Here to die." A crossway opened on either side, visible to Pariah only as sudden darkness. Behind her, Faintheart made a sighing sound and shook out his wings for a moment. "You can do it," she muttered to him. "Can't be that far." She felt timid fingers rest on her intake. "It's so narrow in here," Faintheart whispered. "I can't stand up. I can't stretch out, I can't turn round, I can't see, I can't hear -" He sounded like he was about to panic. "Ssh! Don't think about it!" Pariah hushed him. "Don't think about it. Don't think ... just..." She racked her brain for something to distract the Hunter. "Is 'hog behind you?" There was a pause and an uncertainty of steps as Faintheart tried to look between his vents whilst walking. "Yes. He keeps looking over his shoulder." The darkness was getting deeper. Pariah could only make Sunbeam out as a paler shape now, and Useless was an even dimmer blur ahead. "Sigma's Key, does anyone have a lamp?" she hissed as loudly as she dared. The thick darkness between the names of the dead banned loudness, damped and compressed sound, clotted words in the vocaliser. "I-I sometimes make light," Sunbeam quavered. "Don't you dare!" Useless snapped. "Don't even try it." Pariah had to wonder what brought that on, but didn't inquire. This didn't seem the place or the time. "Faintheart? You got a lamp?" "No," he whispered. He was practically on top of her. They had to keep in step to prevent him from kicking her in the exhaust-nozzles. "Back off," she said. "I'm scared," he whined. She felt him reach out and touch her air-vent again. "Stop that!" she snapped, and he whimpered. "Oh, for..." They crossed another crossway, and Faintheart gasped behind her again. "How much further?" She tried to raise her voice loud enough for Deadjet to hear, but he didn't respond. She could just make out the sound of Useless whispering it to him. "This far again," came the bodiless voice in the darkness. "See, Faintheart?" Pariah whispered between her vents. "Not so far now." "It's getting darker," he whined. "Oh, shut up." It was true. She couldn't see the ground in her own shadow, couldn't see Useless at all. Looking back, Faintheart was a dark shape against a far, dim light. She couldn't see Gloryhog, but she could hear him walking behind them. It sounded like he was falling behind. The ceiling seemed to be getting lower, making Faintheart crouch until he was walking stooped over. "How many drawers in a stack?" she asked him in a low hiss. There was a pause of several stacks as he counted. "Two hundred and fifty, I think." "How many stacks in an aisle?" "I counted a hundred in the first aisle." Two and a half thousand rejects in every aisle, she thought, spirits sinking. Four aisles to the next wall, four more behind ... ten thousand rejects from wall to wall. "How wide do you think this place is?" "Don't know." Could be ... what ... fifty aisles wide? She whistled. Five hundred thousand rejects or more. "How old is this place?" she exclaimed without thinking. Probably guessed wrong. Must be less. Could be more. How many Seekers came here? Is it just Seekers? How many got out alive? Tentatively, she touched a drawer as she passed it, afraid it might spring open and spill out its sad old contents. It remained still and cold, the plaque smooth underfinger, the engraved name legible to the touch. Dimwit ... Slobhull ... Dunderhead ... Groundcrawler ... Leadbrain ... The list went on. Trinket ... Slagpile ... Hollowhead ... Footrest ... Grovellor. They crossed the third crossway. This time Faintheart didn't react. Pariah wondered if his claustrophobia was getting the better of him. The light was almost gone now, Sunbeam just a sense of movement ahead. The sound of six pairs of pedes trying to walk quietly was more guide than optics now. She touched the plaques again. Here the names were so old she couldn't read the script by touch, but the blazons were still Decepticon. "This place is so old," she murmured. "I think Misdemeanour is very old," Sunbeam whispered to her. "I've never seen a build like that before," Pariah agreed, although she had to acknowledge, if only to herself, that she was no expert on variant build-types. "Old," Faintheart agreed in a voice that barely registered on her wings. "Her design is very old." Pariah touched the plaques again and found she couldn't tell what language they were in. "Are these even Seekers here?" she wondered aloud, fiddling nervously with her hair. Strands came away around her fingers where she worried at it. She felt Faintheart's hand on her vent, and was surprised to realise he hadn't whimpered since he screamed earlier. [Seekers are old,] he told her thought field-contact, though their auras were so weak it was quieter than whispering. [Seekers go back forever.] "Here," Deadjet said leadenly ahead. Pariah almost bumped into Sunbeam as he stopped abruptly. Faintheart's cockpit went tink against her back. "Get the door open!" she hissed. "What are you waiting for?" "Orders," Deadjet replied. Pariah frowned; he sounded even slower than usual. Then she heard the door open, and they were moving again. There was the widening darkness of the crossway, the narrow Autobot-built doorway, and then she walked into pitchy gloom. Faintheart walked into her as she stopped suddenly, pushing her into someone who might or might not be Sunbeam. Gloryhog protested as he bumped into Faintheart, and the door shut behind him. Then there were was no light at all.
A few short breems' flight west of the base, Misdemeanour and Brickhouse landed atop a steep escarpment. There the ground was broken up by time and weather, and they sheltered from the biting north wind in the lee of a ruined tower, hiding from the bitter frost-littered blast that blew down the borderlands of Hermeun and Praxis, bringing glowing mist from the Sea of Light. It came so fast that it was still rich and harsh with the smell of hydrocarbon fuel processing from Valvolux. They scrabbled amongst the rubble from the fallen towers and the broken buildings until they uncovered the emergency cache, a container twice as big as Misdemeanour. It had taken the full strength of her long-dead sergeant to haul the thing up the escarpment when they'd first come here, and it took her and Brickhouse together to drag it out of its hole and up onto clear ground. Cables still trailed from it into the hole. Opening it unfolded the thing in half, revealing it as an antiquated all-purpose scanner and radio transceiver. "I told you it was worth the maintenance," Misdemeanour said, aura flicking a smile. The thing was almost as old as she was, yet it still functioned. "We built things to last when I was new." "No use if nobody can hear the signal," Brickhouse replied, which was his idea of a joke. Misdemeanour waved him away and turned the emergency transceiver on. The power-cell lit up on the first try, which was a good sign, and after a little twiddling with the controls she got a signal. "It works? " "Don't be rude, Brick," Misdemeanour said, flicking a wing at him. "This is Base Station Mede calling Outpost Isnegnox. Base Station Mede to Outpost Isnegnox, do you receive?" She repeated the signal seven times before the receiver caught a response. "Base Station Mede, this is Outpost Kngaikra," came an unexpected voice. "Outpost Isnegnox was destroyed eighteen vorns ago. Who are you and what do you want?" "Outpost Kngaikra, this is Commander Misdemeanour. We are the remittal training station in quadrant V-13, sub-sector 9-O. We have a rogue in our area and request Mayhem team." "Commander Misdemeanour, we acknowledge. Which rogue have you sighted?" "Outpost Kngaikra, we have identified the presence of the rogue Honeycream in our territory and we are not equipped to contain him." "Commander Misdemeanour, please confirm - you saw Honeycream? " "Outpost Kngaikra, yes, we saw the stab-happy slag-eater. He's had the base technician and is working his way through our rejects. Get that Mayhem team who're supposed to be hunting him off their afts and over here." There was a long, ominous pause. "Commander Misdemeanour, I'm getting no response from hunting party seven-three. Are you certain it was Honeycream?" "Yes! " The silence came again, longer this time. Misdemeanour felt her fuel-meter sinking with every breem of silence. "Commander Misdemeanour," rumbled a rich new voice on the same channel. "Yes?" she said impatiently. "This is the Outpost Captain Stormforce of Kngaikra. We're unable to contact hunting party leader Facesnapper or any of his team. We're sending a team to their last position to ... find them." "You mean they're dead." Great Megatron, Honeycream killed the hunting party before he even got here! "We mean we aren't getting radio or transponder response." "By which you mean they're dead." "That is a ... possibility." The oil-and-wing-brush voice stopped for a thoughtful moment. "I will send notification to High Command via my superiors, but in the meantime, I recommend you vacate your base." "You mean you're sending nobody? " "For a bunch of rejects? Why bother?" Misdemeanour's aura flared jaggedly, unseen and unheard by distant, faceless Stormforce. "Message received and understood. All out." "All out." The channel dwindled into static. "Slag-eaters! " Misdemeanour screamed. "The entire chain of command between here and the Lord High Commander is nothing but slag-eaters! Argh!" She shook her fists at the golden skies. "Now what?" Brickhouse asked, still staring down into the rubble-clogged valley and the black gap of the base's main entrance. Misdemeanour checked the emergency transceiver. "I still have the hardwired connectors. Honeycream may have killed the idiot box, but headless old cache-pack here's too dumb to notice." It took three key-presses to access the base's systems and two more to unlock all the doors. "Just going to let them all out?" "It's all the doors or nothing, Brick. Like I said, this thing's headless, needs upgrading even more than I do. It doesn't know what I'm making it do. At least this way they have about as much chance as they deserve. They can get energon and run or get lost and die. Honeycream can do our job for us." "Batch five isn't filtered." "Batch five is already dead, remember?" "Oh yeah." She patched into the cranky base-wide intercom, finger hovering over the key to activate it. "No," she said to herself, and disconnected the system. "If they're going to get out of there, they do it on their own, the way they should do it." "Look," Brickhouse said, pointing down at the base. Below, a Seeker was emerging into the sunlight and the open air.
In the utter darkness Pariah reached out for Faintheart, Sunbeam, someone, and felt a hand - cold, brittle, auraless - a dead hand reaching out in the darkness. "Oh Sigma," she gasped, stepping backwards. A body pressed against her, quite dead, creaking as she touched it. She heard the neck-tensors groan as the head moved, and jumped aside. She hit something that shrieked and realised it was Faintheart. He clung to her and she could hear his wings quivering. "What's going on?" Useless asked. Pariah heard two steps, a scream, a stumble, a bump, and another scream. "It's only me," Sunbeam said from near Useless' second scream. "Where the smelt are we? Where's the door?" Useless asked, sounding rattled. "Ossuary," Deadjet sounded, a bodiless voice. Corpse-house, Pariah thought. "Great Vector Sigma! This - this is where they keep the dead bodies." That caused silence, apart from Faintheart's shivering wings. It was so black even the glow of their optics was faint to the edge of invisible. Pariah realised she was fuel-famished. "Are you saying," Useless began in a deliberate and frightened voice, "that we are in a room full of dead rejects?" "Dead someones," Pariah muttered, prying her arm out of Faintheart's grip the best she could without touching anything else in the dark. Feeling around on the floor with her pede, she felt the edge of a wing, and an arm, and then a hand, all quite dead. "Where's Deadjet?" "Deadjet's turned his optics off," Useless replied. "I've got Sunbeam here. Where's Gloryhog?" "I'm here," Gloryhog said, very quiet. "I'm ... I'm standing against the wall. I - something moved between me and Faintheart." "Pariah? Where are you?" Useless said. "If we can hold onto each other, we can find the door." "How's that going to help? We'll just be going back the way we came," Pariah protested, reaching out blindly for his hand. "Not that door, the other door," he replied. Fingertips brushed. Pariah grabbed and missed. "You mean we've got to walk through th-this? " Faintheart mewled. "You want to go back and starve?" Pariah hissed. She felt around with her wings and found only Faintheart. "Don't stand so close," she whispered to him, but he clung tight anyway. She reached out again and felt a living hand. "Got you. I think." "That's me," Useless replied. "Got a free hand?" "No, Faintheart's got the other one. Faintheart, get 'hog." "But-but there are dead things -" he wailed. "'hog! Grab Faintheart or we'll never get out!" Pariah said as loudly as she dared. "I'm not taking ord - oh, blast it." There was clinking in the dark. Faintheart shrieked and jumped. "It's me, you oversized glider." Faintheart subsided into mumbles. "Right," Useless said ahead. "Sunbeam, grab Deadjet." "Oh happy day," Sunbeam murmured. "Just get him, or we'll be groping in the dark until Homestar turns cold!" Pariah hissed. There were quiet patting-clinking sounds. "I can't find him," Sunbeam said fearfully. "All ... all I can feel is dead things." "Deadjet, where the smelt are you?" Useless seethed, voice crackling with strain. "Deadjet?" "You don't think he is, do you?" Pariah asked. "Probably," Gloryhog said at the back. "I know I can find the door from here." "Fine, go back and starve," Useless snapped. "We don't need you anyway." "Hey, it was me that got us out here!" Gloryhog snarled, although it sounded strange since he was trying to keep his voice down. "Idiots!" Pariah groaned. "Don't start fighting in here of all places." "I've got a dead Hunter," Sunbeam said, both voice and wings audibly shaking. "He's standing up. I think it's Deadjet." Deadjet groaned. His voice came from nowhere near Sunbeam. "Oh dear," Sunbeam said. "Who am I holding?" "Never mind who you're holding," Useless said, and Pariah heard a clink that must've been him tugging on Sunbeam. "You've got a free hand, get Deadjet." "Do I have to?" Sunbeam pleaded. "Yes!" Useless hissed. "We're stuck in here until you do!" Clinking and patting and Sunbeam's whimpers were the only sounds. Pariah's aura shrank in concentration as she listened. The total blackness of the room pressed close. It seemed terribly warm, and the air was foul with dust and age. "Say something, Deadjet," she whispered. "Tell him where you are." "Here," came the voice. "I can't reach him!" Sunbeam quavered. "He's too far away." "Well, everyone move up," Useless said in a voice that suggested he might one day be able to give an order. Pariah moved towards him in the dark, Faintheart sticking close behind. "I can't feel the wall anymore!" Gloryhog protested. "Doesn't matter," Pariah told him. "We're not going back that way." "That's me," said Deadjet. "Oh, good." Sunbeam was audibly shaking, wings almost rattling. "I - I felt faces and they were dead but they weren't yours." At her elbow, Faintheart suppressed a squeaky noise. His hand tightened around her wrist, squeezing. She was surprised at how strong he was. "Never mind the dead, they can't hurt us. Let's get out of here." Useless sounded shaken now. "Deadjet, the door! " She heard Deadjet moving, his big feet sliding across the floor, shoving dead things out of the way, and then more footsteps. Useless moved away and pulled on her arm. She tugged on Faintheart and heard Gloryhog move behind him. Dead hands brushed her. Dead wings touched hers. Her pedes bumped against legs and bodies that gave less response than the living ground. One step at a time they felt their way amongst the corpses, sliding and scraping and tugging and clinging. Pariah felt a dead hand brush her shin. A dead head turned under her pede when she stepped over it. A wing pushed out and rubbed her thigh, and she bit her glossa in revulsion. Faintheart made a shaky sound behind her. He too had felt that dead face under his thrusters. She could hear someone gasping in fear, and was surprised to realise it wasn't Faintheart but Gloryhog behind him, dangling at the back of the line in the darkness. "What is it, 'hog?" she asked, whispering under the pressure of the lightlessness. "I-I felt a dead face, and it smiled," was the shaky reply. "It's dead," she seethed, voice so quiet she wasn't sure he'd hear. "Sometimes the dead walk," Gloryhog whispered. "I heard -" "Smelt!" Useless hissed. "Dead things do not move!" Pariah felt his hand tighten on her forearm. "The dead do not walk. Zombies only exist in movies and stories and only a neophyte would believe in them." "Yes," said Deadjet. Somewhere in the dark, something shifted and creaked. Someone whimpered, she wasn't sure who. There was a scrabbling sound at the back of the line, and Gloryhog jumped forwards against Faintheart. "Something's grabbing at me!" he whimpered. "Find the door! " A hiss sounded in the darkness, like gas releasing from a punctured canister, or perhaps a low and malice-ridden sound from a dead thing woken. Useless yanked on her arm, almost pulling her off her feet. "On, on, on!" he hissed. She could hear Deadjet practically marching on, crushing parts of dead bodies under his feet. The whimpering was behind her and she didn't know who it was or even if it was one of them or something else in the darkness. A dead hand reached out of the blackness and grabbed at her shoulder, hooked around her chest, and a whole forearm tumbled between her arm and side, fingers plucking at her leg as it fell. A head, kicked up under Useless' pedes, tumbled between her shins and was crushed under Faintheart's feet. Then there was a white light shining ahead, and it widened and brightened until she was almost blind, and she realised it was the door.
Author's Notes & Addenda: This story is an entry for Wayward's "Choose Your Own" Competition [under Mystery and Non-Show Characters]. Ailerons: A hinged flap on the trailing edge of an aircraft wing, used to control banking or rolling movements.
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