Chapter Five
Idea

"Now I'm on your track and I'm in your mind
And I'm on your back but don't look behind
I'm your meanest thought I'm your darkest fear
But I'll never get caught you can't shake me shake me dear"
—Queen, “The Invisible Man”

Days later found Dusk still slogging through her notes. She tried to bury her uncertainty in her work, and for the most part, it proved fruitful. It was only when she stopped and settled in for a good night’s recharge that the seed of doubt that Switchblade had knowingly planted wormed its way around her spark. Deep inside, her logic reprimanded her for even believing the elite for a nanosecond; guilt soon replaced doubt and she fell into a sort of mechanical pattern: online, energize, write, offline, repeat.

“Dusk?”

It took two more prompts and a gentle shake on her left strut to bring Dusk out of her self-imposed trance. Drowsily, Dusk lifted her head, her optic shutters fluttering in a moment’s confusion. A pale rose femme with silver trim was standing behind her, anxiously awaiting a response. “Yes?”

“Are you all right?” the other queried. “You’ve not come down in days. We’ve missed you at the seminars.”

Dusk sighed and cast a rueful glance over her piles of data disks. “I’ve been busy.”

Stormstrike pursed her lips, the concern slipping from her facial plates only to be replaced by a maternal mien. “Busy? With what? That traders’ project? It’s just a simple assignment, Dusk; it shouldn’t be overdone.”

Wearily, Dusk pushed one of the disks around her table with a forefinger. “I want it to be perfect.”

Unfortunately for Dusk, Stormstrike was one of the more astute femmes at Beta’s institute. Her specialty was observation, and she’d been pegged to intern with one of the older femmes situated at the Iacon Council. “Of all the assignments you’ve been given, you’ve not worked this hard,” she began, bending at the waist. “What are you avoiding?”

Dusk bit her lip and turned away. “Nothing.”

Not to be deterred, Stormstrike wandered over to the other side of her desk, planting one silver hand on her pile of disks. “Word has it that one of the Tower elites stopped on by a few days ago. He had your kit.”

“He did.”

Stormstrike’s blue optics bore down upon the other femme thoughtfully. Then, realizing that this was not the best time to be discussing things, she merely shrugged. “Mother Beta wishes to see you in her office.”

Dusk’s head jerked upright, pulling a servo or two in the process. Wincing, she turned to see Stormstrike give a friendly wave before disappearing out the door. What now? she lamented. Could Primus please stop Cybertron? She wanted to get off – now. It seemed that the moment she’d disembarked from the trader ship, everything started rolling downhill. Yet, as much as she wanted to ignore the summons and bury herself in her work, it was from Beta. And that you did not ignore.

What now?

Loathe as Beta was to rush anything, certain recent events had prompted accelerated action. Of course, at her age, she shouldn’t worry about it, but more than anyone else, Beta knew that she didn’t have that much longer. Soon, perhaps very soon, her spark would utterly fail and she would finally look Primus in the optic, joining her valiant rebels at last.

This would be a private meeting. As much as Beta valued Twilight’s input, her prejudice against Switchblade and additionally, now, towards Dusk, would only serve to hinder what she was about to suggest. Thoughtfully, Beta pulled the datapad Dusk had given her a few days ago: the sky-colored femme’s complete thesis on the behavior and societal patterns of a trading planet. Since then, she’d seen no sign of the sparkling.

A polite beep sounded at her wrist; Beta looked down and slipped the disk into her forearm.

“Enter.”

Dusk came in as hesitantly as she had before, trepidation highlighting her optics. Beta spun her chair to face her and powered a grounded one across the floor to park itself before her. “Sit, please, Dusk.”

Gnawing on her lower lip and looking as if she were haunted, Dusk complied. Beta folded her hands in her lap and smiled genially, hoping to spark some reaction from the obviously troubled young one. “You look worried, my dear. Is there something wrong?”

Startled, Dusk glanced up, her optics having wandered across the floor. “N-no.”

Of course there was. Time enough to press the matter further – later. “I just finished reading your thesis, Dusk, and I’m severely impressed.” She watched the younger femme’s cheek plates shift upwards slightly at the praise. “However –” and down they dipped in preparation for a chastising that would never come, “I am concerned about one thing.” Dusk merely continued to stare, her fingers scrabbling furtively at the ends of the chair arms. “There’s nothing wrong!” Beta crowed gently, reaching out at patting one nervous appendage. “I’m just saying that I found something deeper in your thesis. I don’t know if you planned to integrate this or it just came out, but I noticed that you often focused on the trader families.” She tilted her head in query; Dusk was compelled to reply now.

“I –” She cleared her vocal passage, gummy with lubricant. “Yes. It was intentional. I know I was su-supposed to focus solely on the c-customs, but I discerned that family played an integral r-role.”

Beta leaned back, content. It was there after all, just as she’d hoped. The program had taken. “Your theory was correct. Family does play an important role among trader societies. It is, as you noted, a way of life and that way is often perpetuated through bloodlines. I am more impressed, however, that you managed to grasp concepts of an organic nature that few of us can ever hope to understand. Their lives are fleeting, but I think we have much to learn from them.” Beta paused, noting every movement, every tic that passed across Dusk’s facial planes. “Which brings me to the crux of this meeting. I have a suggestion for you, Dusk, if you are willing to take it.”

Beta refolded her hands and shifted her ailing shoulders forward. She watched the emotions parade across the younger femme’s optics. “After Switchblade, I was loathe to undertake the construction of another mech. I admit, we went wrong in our handling of him; we treated him as what he was – an experiment.” She bit off the last word as Dusk’s rounded struts jumped in a knee-jerk reaction to “experiment”. Shrewdly, Beta ran the possibilities over in her vast cortex. Had she unwittingly jeopardized the plan by using the wrong word? Primus, she was getting old!

Dusk shifted uncomfortably in her chair, beginning to look for a way out. Hurriedly, Beta reached out and grabbed her by the hand, groaning under the pressure it put on her old joints. “Dusk, Dusk. Listen. I admit, we were wrong. But this is not what I am asking of you.”

Dusk’s optics shifted to lock with her creator’s. “Then what?” she whispered, her first words in several astrominutes.

Beta slowly relaxed her grip and slid her fingers from Dusk’s wrist. She pulled Dusk’s disk from her forearm and lifted it to her nasal ridge. “This – this wonderful thesis. You have it in you, Dusk, something I unfortunately do not. What I have wanted from Cybertron for a long time, ever since we began to rebuild after the War of Autonomy. I want you to create a mech, but not an ordinary mech. I want this mech to be raised in the way of organics – in a loving home, to experience life as an organic child would. I cannot do this for the reasons I explained to you, but you can. You can do what I cannot. Will you accept this task, Dusk?”

Across the floor, Dusk shifted uncomfortably. “I – can’t,” she offered up, refusing to meet Beta’s optics.

It’s now or never, Beta thought. She must be convinced; time is running out. “You can, Dusk. It’s in you. The proof is in this thesis.”

Dusk looked up. In her optics was a different emotion – defiance? Anger? Rebellion? “ ‘In me’? How? Did you put it there?” Her words whispered forth, a slight hiss underlying them dangerously.

Beta jerked her hand back, as startled and stricken as if Dusk had suddenly slapped her open-handedly. “Where did you get such a notion?” she asked innocently, wracking her cortex for excuses.

Coldly, “Switchblade. He told me you programmed him to be something he shouldn’t have been. And now you want me to perpetuate that?”

Deep inside, Beta cursed that elitist mech and his wayward cortex. How dare he poison her young sparkling so! She had to think fast to curb Dusk’s refusal. “Switchblade is bitter, Dusk. I told you, we went wrong with him. But here is where you have the chance to fix it. You wouldn’t be programming anyone – Vector Sigma has the power to create any personality in any number of ways. If you ask It to bestow a shell with a malleable personality, exactly like that of an organic, It will. There will be no inherent program. Your mech will learn on his own, with you to guide him as a mother would. You would be a mother, as I have tried to be, but I am only your creator and your guide. I have it not in me to be that sort of person.”

Dusk struggled, struggled hard against the education she’d received and her infatuation with the rogue mech. She gnawed her lip with such fervor that the malleable metal began to split. Half-processed fuel leaked from the cut and trickled in a tiny, pink-tinged stream down Dusk’s chin. Aghast, the sky-colored femme lifted her wrist and fervently scrubbed it away, her internal healing mechanisms working to knit the slice back together.

Slowly, she shook her head back and forth, washer fluid oozing from the corners of her optics. “I c-can’t,” she gasped. “N-no.” With a blubbering excuse, she pushed herself from the chair and dashed out of the room, head low.

Quietly, Beta swore. “Slag you, Switchblade, you and your influence. Curse you to the Pit and curse the impetuousness that brought you to take that sparkling’s kit. You’ve just ruined everything.”

Irate, she punched a code into the arm of her chair. A grainy image floated above the plating. “Mistress Beta?”

Beta leaned over. “Hedge. I need you to track one femme: Dusk. I think she might have run away.”

Hedge’s black and white brow ridges pushed together. “Dusk, Mistress?”

“Sending her schematics over immediately. Under code.”

“Understood. Hedge, out.”

Not usually given to hysterics, Dusk pushed her way through the foyer and outdoors. She had no idea where she was going, only that she needed to get away. Instinct pushed her towards the gleaming gold towers of Iacon and the hub where the Council met. Was she really running away? Logic told her that as one of Beta’s femmes, employment would be no problem, but for a novice? What if they contact Beta and she told them of her errant ways?

Right now, her cortex was too twisted up to process cleanly. And so she pushed on, trudging past emporiums and various other little shops set up in this area to appeal to the elites who passed through. Past screens running the latest news from the Council, how Sentinel Prime had given his vote in the closure of the Iacon arenas. Invisibly, Dusk walked by a group of nondescript dockmechs in-city for the day, all discussing the pronouncement.

“Hey –”

With a cry, Dusk backpedaled, only to find her wrist in the grasp of a dockmech. At her shout, he let her go, hands raised in appeal. “Hey, I’m sorry! Didn’t mean to scare you. You’re one of Beta’s femmes, aren’t you?”

Skittish, Dusk swung her shoulders low, looking for a way out. The mech continued, “We just wanna know what she thinks about this – the closure?”

“I know nothing!” she exclaimed, turning and running in the opposite direction, shoving through the mid-day shoppers.

Thirty astrominutes later, her body craving fuel, she slowed to a halt outside a chic café. Not the same one she had passed the time with Twilight, but a very fancy affair. Blindly, she glanced around, looking for familiar landmarks and found none. She had traveled so far into Iacon that she had no idea where she was. Panic set in, her young Energon pump heaving in distress.

“Well, well, if it isn’t one of Beta’s playthings. She looks familiar. Hey, baby, come on over.”

Dusk whirled, alert as a turbofox being hunted. If she had any external aural mechanisms, they would have been pricked so far over her head. Laughter rang out over the group of Tower elite who sat around a full table. Some metacat-called, others whistled to get her attention.

Then: “This one’s mine, Booster.”

The laughter died as suddenly as it had bobbed up. Dusk could hardly believe her optics: rising from his seat like Primus from the Void was Switchblade in all his black and silver glory. The one called Booster cocked a cynical brow ridge. “Since when have you taken up with straight-wired bookfiles?” he accused with a sneer. “Getting back to your roots?”

The tall, lean mech bent over and brought his nasal ridge close to the other’s. “Since when have you questioned my choices, hm?” Switchblade countered urbanely. “I haven’t said a word about your latest conquests …” Before Dusk’s optics, the others promptly forgot about her; instead, they swiveled to catch this newest slab of gossip. Booster grew visibly uncomfortable and turned away in his chair. Switchblade snorted, proud as a technoquine. Pointedly, he crossed his arms, smiling at this one-up.

Dusk decided that this was a good time to start back. Fear had trumped her disgust and she would slink back to Beta’s and do what she requested.

Once more, a hand closed around her upper arm. Spinning around, she saw Switchblade holding onto her from over the short fence. “I said,” he began slowly, deliberately; “you’re mine. Now, let’s go.”

If she were organic, Dusk would have pale beyond comparison. “I –”

Switchblade leaned in close, so close that the hot air from his intakes washed over her face. “Be quiet!” he snapped, rotating his head slightly to the right as if gauging his friends’ reactions. Hauling her upright, he began dragging her off to a chorus of hoots and hollers from the rest.

Realization dawned on her then, his intentions crystal clear. Desperately, Dusk twisted and turned in his steel grasp. “No! No!”

Pain bit harsh and deep into her upper arm, lancing straight to her cortex. Switchblade’s other hand came around and clasped over her mouth, silencing her. “It’s not what you think,” he hissed low into her aural tract. “Now, shut up and play along!”

Dumbly, she nodded, placing all her trust in this rogue elitist. Switchblade effectively wove them through the crowds and away from the Tower territory. Once out of range, he dropped his hold and spun her to face him. “What on this flaming golden ball of hell did you think you were doing!”

Free, all Dusk could do was drop her arms. This time, she’d have to go in for repairs; her servos weren’t liking all this abuse.

Switchblade was apparently low on patience. He snapped his digits inches away from her right optic, commanding her attention. “Primus on a pogo stick. Answer me! I know you’ve got it in you. Open up and vocalize.”

“I ran,” she replied low.

Switchblade crossed his arms. “Really. Ol’ Beta finally get to you?”

Dusk tilted her head, judging him from one optic. Could she trust him? She’d already decided that she had been in error. Why give him more fuel to furnace his overlarge hatred? “Just – ran.”

“Slag you,” he retorted. “You’re too much of a pansy to run for the slag of it.”

She bristled at the implication. “No.”

The elite cocked a sardonic eye ridge. “Really. That’s a load of molten slag.”

“Do you really care?” Somehow, his presence emboldened her vocalizer.

He smirked. “Not really. But it is interesting.”

Flustered, she blew a jet of air up into the sky. “Fine.” And she told him what Beta expected of her. As she spoke, Switchblade’s face took on this otherworldly air; he was not disgusted, as she thought he would have been, having detested being an experiment himself. Rather, he looked interested.

“You could make a lot of credits with that approach,” he mused. “Charge more for the material. Of course, most people prefer pre-programmed sparklings, ones done to their tastes. It would take a lot of time and effort for them to see it otherwise.”

“It’s not about credits,” she argued, only to be interrupted – by his hand.

“Oh, of course not,” he overrode her imperiously. “Love and fluff and happy petro-rabbits. All that gunk.”

“He’d be an experiment,” she reminded him. “You were one.”

Switchblade’s optic shutters drew low. “I don’t care to be reminded of that,” he whispered dangerously, enough for her to step back. “Still … the profits outweigh whatever ethics I have left over.”

She blinked. “What are you talking about?”

The black and silver mech drew an arm around her shoulders; Dusk shuddered, half from revulsion, half from thrill. “Twiddle on back to Beta and tell her that you’ve rethought everything. I’ll help you with whatever you need. This mech will want for nothing.”

“B-but –!”

“Go!” He gave her a firm shove in between her shoulder plates that sent her stumbling forward. As quick as she could regain her balance and turn around, he was gone. Gnawing her half-repaired lip, Dusk obeyed, fleeing into the crowd.

Switchblade watched her go with a smirk of satisfaction. She was easily led in whatever direction. Not really his type, the brainy and shy ones, but she was a welcome reprieve from the Tower femmes. He’d have fun with her while he could.