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It had looked like any other datapad, stark only in its worn-out streaks and tarnish specks, misleading and terribly intriguing. Orion Pax had picked it up with a steady reach and pull of his hand, rows after rows unfolding as the screen had booted up. He hadn’t expected anything in particular, the only incentive to take a look having been built on nothing but a mere hunch.
No sooner had he started reading that he’d been irrevocably drawn in, caught inside the well-woven fabric of that voice that had spoken so beautifully of free will, not as a merit or acquisition, but as a fully integrated trait, an intrinsic morpheme of any Cybertronian, cold-constructed or forged. And at every turn of phrase had stood the refutation of violence, the voice immutable in its argument and asking for peace, because a revolution should be both political and poetical, or not at all.
Mechs had been swarming inside the precinct, a clamor of dozens of lives going about their ways – it had all siphoned through his audials as white noise. The world might as well have stopped altogether, he wouldn’t have noticed. Each glyph had been engrafting into his mind and spark, a filigree of truths that had painted their society in colors he’d thus far ignored and which had to be urgently addressed.
And so Pax had been, avidly devouring one page after another as both questions and possible remedies kept cramming over the brim of others, when Springarm had brought the author before him, right across the counter separating them. Though Orion had personally requested for him and had been well prepared to meet the mech, seeing him in person had made his spark jump in soft elation and, soon, he’d been sharing his appreciation and encouraging the passionate miner to keep writing.
The words had been every bit intended and not. They had threaded their way out from some unlisted depths of his being, as if some kind of speckle had kindled within, so very similar to the one that had always sent him head-on to grasp for justice. Only then, the crest of that feeling had seemed to have given a name to the scope sequestering his determination.
Megatron, ‘Megatron with an R’.
The miner’s wrists had still been cuffed, stasis gauntlets replaced with a regular pair, but his gaze and spine had been held high, not a hint of the arch and bow the weight of either manacles or shame brought upon people. After all, there hadn’t been a reason; his suspicions had proven Megatron of his innocence and the mech had been released. If anything, Orion thought, it was him who had ended up simmering with rage and guilt as he had learned of his subordinate’s misconduct. And the rest…
It had been sudden, and no less concerning – the day he’d stormed The Senate. He could clearly remember. No blast fire or open wound could have ever equalled to that torrent of adrenaline and resolve pouring through his lines as he’d been breaking through one block of guards after another. He had known his emotions could sometimes force beyond his wits, but never that much.
On that fateful day, he had challenged the world with three questions and had called Megatron his friend; by pure somatic impulse or because he’d truly meant it, he hadn’t been sure. What had been acknowledged as simple curiosity, however, had since coalesced into a primary recycled data log, one that stirred to the fore of his mind from the barest signs and mentions. Most of the times it came unbidden, other times he conjured it, wanting to have something else to think of besides the recurrent waves of rot that marred as much the streets as their own ranks.
He would hold onto that name in a neural sub-path, its presence a warm reminder of what the world could be. He held onto it like a loose lifeline, again and again, after a notably turbulent arrest, in the long hours of a convoluted case, and now, in the still nights of Alyon when sleep eluded him.
Orion was lying on his slab, the hushed darkness of his room heavy, contrasting the ruckus in his processor. It had been a long day. Another set of Sentinel’s elite goons had breached into their territory in hopes of reaping the hot spot. Evidently, Pax and Co hadn’t let them. Although it had been a bigger dispatch, they had managed to send it running back to relay its failure to The Senate. After hours of fighting, rebuilding the ensued damage and wading through debriefings, Orion had gone to his quarters more than willing to rest, but recharge had failed to take him. Despite the thick exhaustion settled in his struts, his optics were lit, brighter than usual, and his fuel pump was racing in gulping feats.
So, as if picking at the chord of an old and dear instrument only to hear its soothing note, Orion thought about Megatron.
Many cycles had passed since he’d let go of that datapad, returning it to its rightful owner with nothing but a soft slide as it had been lifted from his hand, and the empty lightness that had ensued, their fingers just one touch apart in the second the delivery had happened. He often found himself stroking his thumb over the tips of his digits as if trying to find a texture that wasn’t there.
Gears hummed as Orion turned over on one side, arm folded beneath his helm. There were many things he didn’t know about this mech. As such, it had only recently occurred to him that he hadn’t got the chance to hear Megatron speak. The very mech that had overturned his life and they hadn’t even had a proper conversation. While his essays said a lot about his spirit and acumen, they couldn’t replicate a live exchange of ideas.
What did he sound like? Was his voice a low baritone, stern but suave like his firm pacifist beliefs? Had the harsh perils of his treadmill life roughened all of him, leaving only sharp edges, stark and coarse as the words he wrote?
Vents gave a wry scoff, disturbing the stale air of his room. He felt like a newbuild, wakeful this late and wondering about a mech he’d barely met. Though, really, it wasn’t the lack of answers eating away at him as it was the thought that he could’ve had them if only he’d reached out to him.
Then what? What would he have said? What did Orion want from him?
Blue optics roamed over the plain surface of the wall, as if willing to rake it clean with his gaze alone, one slab at a time, and see what laid beyond it. Disquiet crested and began pooling at the rims of his chest, around the ridges of the hollow chamber governing inside and eclipsing his spark.
One hand rose to stroke at the overlapped seams in his chassis, dipping here and there beneath the armor until a dull ache prickled and he retreated. Though there was nothing inside, he would sometimes halt as a phantom sensation filled that cavernous shape, an intangible weight settling and pushing down on him with the unforgiving pressure of an ocean. It always lasted no more than a few seconds, and he always dismissed it as a sign that he was yet to get used to this modified part of his frame; even though it was long past the normal period of sensorial calibration.
A weary sigh trundled its way out of his body. It had already been that many cycles? That many since he’d risked his life for a stranger, that many since he’d been saved by one too. Shockwave was no less cornering him in his own mind with the guilt of not having honored the senator with a proper farewell. That was why, until he could fulfill this promise, it was easier to content himself by likening that muted pain in his chest to whatever vestiges his friend had left behind. A way to remember.
It seemed so far away and though time was said to heal, loss was what remained when everything else didn’t.
His fingers flexed and resumed their rubbing against each other, calloused but still too smooth to his liking. And Megatron? Digits scraped harder. Was he alive? Was he still writing? A single spark came off as the plating clipped on his thumb, spark hammering, faster, faster. Had he managed to publish his works? Would The Senate even allow for such scathingly revealing words to proliferate?
Blurring lines of fear and anger slashed over his core and he abruptly shot up from his berth, fists swinging at his sides as he paced around the room. The echoing tempo of his steps only served to sharpen the incessant ferment of his nerves because no. The answer was no, and there was no way to find where Megatron was from here. He wasn’t sure whether his fury was aimed at their corrupt system or at his own self for not being able to do something about it. Not because entering the city meant he would be cold lead in the hot crosshairs of the law, but because this mission was too important to neglect. Any mech in minus would render Alyon and its hot spot more vulnerable.
A look at his internal chronometer told him of many hours gone. It wasn’t long before the first split ray of sun would peek over the horizon. With most of his recharge lost and any chances of falling asleep abated, he decided to go for a drive.
Recharge lapses could end up being very dangerous but Orion had pushed himself often enough to know his limits with three-decimal accuracy, from fuel diffusion to hydraulic tolerance. A trip around their base could hardly affect his condition. He set about the great stretches of wilderness and focused on the gravel and grit beneath his wheels, the sensation warding off the anguish of the night until it got trodden within the tire tracks left behind.
The light of a new day shone over the field of sparks and under that light Orion swore, no matter how challenging or illicit, that he would find Megatron. He would save the hot spot, return to the city, and he would find him. How exactly he would do it eluded him, but The Senate had taken too much from him.
He would not lose anyone to their hands again.
***
How’s it come to this?
Notice of Sentinel’s death had reached Alyon as unexpectedly as rain after the clap of thunder. With the city having fallen into perpetual skepticism and unrest, fraught with parallel surges in crime and feats from the Functionists to reinstall belief, Orion had been more than ready for society to push past its breaking point and enter a new stage. Something had been bound to happen, but no educated guess could ever have prepared him for this reality.
At first he hadn’t believed it, stacks of datapads and recordings viewed and reviewed and he hadn’t believed it. About sixteen volumes of video assets, they all had passed through his hands, the chits harshly installed, ripped out and reinstalled, over and over, because it couldn’t have been- it couldn’t.
And yet there he stood, hunched over the console, shoulders taut and coiled. Three adjacent holoscreens were casting a deep shadow over his downturned helm. Their display had been paused, frozen on a familiar face.
His conveniently small office was beginning to feel unbearably cramped, as if the very holos looming over him were pressing into his body, crumpling his armor beneath their accusatory light.
What have they done to you?
The Council had been razed, Kaon was bleeding in fumes and debris as its twisted conversion peaked, one sole symbol governing its streets as it did the chest of the mech on his screens.
Megatron was staring down at him, on his left, right and before him, visage twisted in a jarring snarl that glinted pink and silver. He could barely recognize him, not for the slashes or the smears spoiling his features, but for his optics. Red. Such a ruthless red that Orion could clearly see its afterimage in searing streaks across his mind.
Knuckles creaked as his hands curled tight. He wanted to scream, he wanted to tear into the console, thrash its projectors, swipe it clean of all those cursed video chits, do anything but look at him-
Fists came slamming down on the console, sending a short tremor and fritz through its screens as the array of commands flicked off and on. His struts were shaking all the way up to his shoulders, the brisk rattles of his plating and the quiet hiss of his flaring fans mingling with the deep dread of the room.
What have you done?
Orion slumped into his chair, retracted his mask and dragged one heavy servo over his faceplates, palm resting over his mouth. He wondered wearily whether those optics had always been like that, or if, at some point during his repetitive remembrance, he’d given them a glint that had never been there. One wasn’t better than the other, they just hurt differently.
The small LED at the rim of the console blinked away, red-black-red-black, mocking him. A type of powerlessness he’d never thought he would feel again crept into his spark, the hollow space above it pulsating with the memories it contained.
Once the distant ache subsided enough for him to stand, he slowly raised his helm, meeting the frozen image one last time to try and gauge the barest trace of the miner he’d held so close to his core. When it was nowhere to be found, he unplugged the chit and snapped back his mask, walking up to the exit. Neon slipped inside briefly as the blast doors parted and closed, leaving the office in darkness.
At the other end of the room, the light blinked on, red-black-red-black.