(Many thanks to GigaBomb121 for reminding me that this fic existed, and I should really get off my aft and write more of it.)
There were footsteps coming up the corridor again. Depth Charge glanced up and nodded to Rampage wordlessly as the crab walked onto the bridge. Rampage absently nodded back, most of his attention on the datapad in his hand, and the sight inspired a bit of tired humor in the ray. This was the fifth time today he'd seen Rampage on the bridge, and he could predict how far the crab had read through the repair manuals by it. Rampage would come in and find the console each specific manual focused on, look it over, ask a question or two, and then leave again.
And if this was the fifth time, then he'd be looking at the Astronomy section. Depth Charge kept sorting through the spare wires he'd piled on a chair to give the crab a chance to examine the console closely before he started working on it again. His thoughts were on other things, however: if Rampage kept up this pace of learning, their energon supply was just barely going to stretch. Well, that depended on where the closest planet or space station was. Right now the Astronomy systems were so scrambled he had no idea where they were, but if worse came to worst they could always set a course towards a known trade route, activate the emergency beacon, and go offline to save energy. The only reason the emergency beacon wasn't on right now was just in case the Center would be the ones to find them. At least near a trade route, it was more likely a merchant ship would be the one to track them down.
Depth Charge hoped so, anyway. If it came to that, they weren't really going to have a choice who picked them up. They wouldn't even have a chance at doing that if they couldn't repair the crippled Cutting Edge before they ran out of energon, and THAT depended on whether or not Rampage could learn enough from the repair manuals to help him.
It was scary how fast the crab was going through them for someone who wasn't that good at reading, and the implications of that were staggering. Depth Charge knew how fast HE would have been able to learn by just reading through the repair manuals, and the rate Rampage was apparently reading at was about three times what the ray estimated he himself could do. Even that wouldn't have been frightening except that Rampage had made it obvious he could comprehend what he was reading; the questions he asked Depth Charge each time he came to the bridge were almost beyond the ray's own understanding of the computer systems. Questions of curiosity and definitions he could deal with easily, but he'd been dumbfounded when the crab had asked him about the particular set of the quantum math theory that made Transwarp drives possible. There had only been a vague outline of it in the navigations manual…
What scared Depth Charge wasn't that the crab was learning so fast. It was that Rampage was applying the knowledge immediately and to a degree that was far beyond his own abilities. He had known that the scientists had designed Protoform X to be intelligent, but he hadn't actually known HOW brilliant a robot they had ended up with. And here he was, helping a genius learn. It would have been humbling if the idea of a helping a psychopath wasn't so horrifying.
"Where's Rarmet?"
The question interrupted his absent-minded sorting, and Depth Charge looked over at his ally of an enemy. The crab was sitting in front of the damaged Astronomy console, looking through multiplanar star maps. Each plane had a single star on it, and resulting morass of intersecting planes created a complex map that allowed space travel. Precise mathematical calculations could be made using the coordinates of the intersections that allowed a ship to navigate the empty vastness of space and arrive exactly where it was supposed to. Unfortunately, only someone with a firm grasp of the mathematics involved or undamaged Astronomy section of a ship could calculate coordinates that precisely. Lacking either of those, Depth Charge had been hoping to simply get as close as possible to where he wanted to go.
Of course, he hadn't realized how intelligent Rampage was at that point. If he explained what he knew of the theories, it was likely that the crab could get them closer to their destination than he could by himself. "Sector 341-B6-2, Plane 78-C," the ray answered, abandoning the wires to walk across the bridge and stand a careful arm's length behind Rampage.
The crab barely noticed, caught up in examining the star charts. He had seen them before, but never before had he been able to understand them. The knowledge was like a breath of freedom he'd never been able to taste, and he wanted to push the limits.
Because the ship had been hit right before its Transwarp drive had engaged, its location was unknown. But if he could just figure out how each of the stars' planes intersected, he should be able to pinpoint where on the maps they were. There hadn't been much in the manuals about how the maps worked, but he knew that there had to be a method to how they were used. Well, okay, so if the basic idea was to get from point A to point B across a three dimensional chart, the same theories should apply whether or not the chart had a star on it or not. If point A was known (the Center) and point B was not (their present location), then he'd have to reconstruct the path they'd taken between points.
Calling up a viewscreen of the stars surrounding them right now, Rampage compared it to what the star chart of the Center's coordinates looked like. His first problem was that he only had a picture of the stars around point B. He'd have to try and construct a 3D map out of the two dimensional picture in order to use it in calculating the path from point A to here. The question was, how could he do that? There was no way to tell with a computer this damaged how distant each star was from him, so any map he'd come up with would be only a vague idea. Unless he attempted to measure the distance using lightwaves, but even that would be hypothetical at best since he didn't know what ages the stars were. It would give him a 3D map to use, but it would be unreliable…
"How long would it take you to do all that?" Rampage whirled around in his seat, green optics wide in complete surprise at the question spoken into his audio. Depth Charge straightened up from where he'd been leaning over the crab's shoulder and gave him an expectant look. "Well?"
He hadn't even realized he'd said anything out loud. "Uh…a day or two," Rampage guessed, looking between the ray and the star charts he'd been studying. "Why?"
Depth Charge folded his arms across his chest and did his best to look neutral. "Could you get us from here to Rarmet?"
Rampage's brow furrowed, and he swiveled to look at the maps again. Point B to point C would be easy, assuming that he could figure out where point B was. Once he did that, finding a route to point C would just be repeating the math. "Yeah."
"Are you sure?" When all the crab gave him was an annoyed look for questioning him, Depth Charge nodded. "Then do it."
He had been working on the math for the sake of solving a puzzle a moment ago, but getting ordered around by his old playmate made him balk. "Fish Face, it'd be easier just to repair the console and let it do all the math."
The raybot gave him an odd look, dropping the neutral mask. "It'll take close to a week to repair that section, and even then I wouldn't trust any coordinates it gave me. If you can really figure out where we are and how to get to Rarmet from here, it'll give us that much more time to spend patching up everything else." He almost added something else, but he turned and walked away before he did.
He wasn't about to reveal how much more Rampage had done in a few minutes than he'd done since their escape. The crab was lacking in experience and still painfully ignorant, but improving at a terrifying pace. It'd be best if Depth Charge just got out of his way and watched him closely.
Very, very closely.
"Hey, Fish Face!"
"NOW what?"
"What's a huckleberry?"
Depth Charge peered out from underneath the navigation console. "A type of Earth fruit."
"Oh." Rampage gave the datapad beside him a baffled look while he automatically installed, tested, and filed away the programs on the newly-repaired section of the weaponry console. By now he could do it while recharging, but it was something that had to be done by one of the two 'bots, and Depth Charge was still faster at repairing than he was. So Rampage practiced reading and ran program tests. Apparently he still needed the practice, too, because he didn't understand much of this so-called 'classic' literature. Since he didn't understand, he asked lots of questions and had discovered something to distract himself from his growing frustration with his own confusion: even when he was constrained from not attacking the raybot, it was still fun to irritate him. "I don't get it. Why is this book about a piece of fruit?" he asked in his most innocent voice. It was a legitimate question, but it was also the fifteenth question he'd asked within the last three minutes.
Depth Charge's voice had a noticeable edge to it. "It's about a human child."
That's what he'd thought, but then why was he called Huckleberry Finn? "So the human had fruit on him?"
"No."
"Then why is he named after a piece of fruit? For that matter, why does a human have fins?" The crab punched a key viciously and snorted. "I've never seen a human with fins before."
Depth Charge looked out from under the console suspiciously, but that only confirmed that Rampage was being serious. Disbelief fought with curiosity, and disbelief won out. "That's his NAME." That earned him an exasperated look from the crab, and he had to stop and think out what he was trying to say. It was something that was obvious to him, but to a 'bot who'd never been in a social situation with humans, it probably WAS a new concept. "Humans don't name themselves like Transformers do."
Rampage tilted his head, the question obvious.
"Look, our names mean something, right? Waspinator was a wasp, just like Scorpinok was a scorpion and Rhinox was a rhinoceros. Quickstrike had his speed in the draw, and Silverbolt had that whole 'fast and pure' thing." The crab made a face, and Depth Charge gave him a stern glare before he could say anything snide. "The point is that our names describe a function or aspect of ourselves. Right?"
The crab shrugged, thinking wryly that Megatron's name could have only referred to his ego. "Okay. So what?"
"Humans don't name themselves like that. They just call themselves whatever they feel like, and it doesn't necessarily describe anything about them."
Green optics lit up with understanding. "So this Huckleberry Finn human…"
"Is just a human."
"Slagging humans. Even their names don't make any sense," Rampage grumbled.
Depth Charge stifled a chuckle before it could escape him, ducking back under the console to hide his amusement at the crab's irritated comment. Some lifeforms really were universally frustrating. "When did you see any humans, anyway?"
"Seventh planet in the Beryl solar system had a nice little isolationist community on it. The fleshbags set themselves up and declared it a human-only zone. The arrogant bunch of organics even tried to evict ME." The crab chased a broken line of code down and corrected it, then reinstalled the program. "Now it's a corpse-only zone," he added with a chuckle.
Silence met that comment. Rampage didn't notice. He was intent on trying to puzzle out the story about a human without fruit and fins. The language was some kind of local slang that required looking up in his dictionary every other word, and even then he couldn't seem to grasp what was going on. It didn't help that his knowledge of human culture was limited to a few brief, bloody encounters and what he'd found out from Megatron. "What's makes a piece of literature classic? That story from the Kieta star system was pretty good, but the one before it was almost as bad as this one. Either I'm worse with grammar than I thought, or this translation is faulty. It couldn't possibly have been this bad in its original language." He paused and thought that over. "No, wait, this is humanity…"
When Depth Charge didn't say anything, he shot a glance toward him only to find the ray staring at him strangely. "What?"
"When were you in the Beryl system?" Depth Charge asked slowly.
Why was the ray asking that? Hmmm, and with such a serious look on his face, too. "What does it matter?" he asked back with casual indifference that he didn't feel in the least. Something felt odd about the question, full of the ray's uneasiness. It set him on edge, and he immediately squashed the rage always itching at his fingertips. Now was not the time to free the hatred smoldering in his hollowed spark and harvest pain in return. He deliberately turned his optics back to the weaponry panel. "I'm almost done with this," he said as if he hadn't noticed the tension surging through the raybot. "I don't think the cannons are going to ever fire at full-power, anyway. Three of them are missing completely, and the others took collateral damage." Like it mattered, considering how much punishment the ship's reactor had taken. He'd be surprised if there was any power left over from running the engines and life support.
"Rampage." Depth Charge's voice had gone steely with tightly contained anger. "When?"
One huge red hand curled inward into a fist, the joints crackling with the urge to swing it at metal of blue and silver. He never shifted his gaze from the screen with its scrolling lines of code, but he wondered idly if the Maximal was angry at himself for not knowing about another massacre or at him for being the killer. Sometimes Depth Charge's mood swings really were a mystery to him. What was the point of getting angry about something he hadn't known about until now? It didn't change HIM any. He had killed them all. He was still who he had been a few minutes ago. Did a corpse or three hundred more really make any difference?
Apparently it did, because across the room he could feel the ray's anger snap at him like a living creature. And like a living thing, it worried at him, teasing the monster until his fragile hold on his own nature began to fray. It would be so easy, so very easy, to let go.
Rampage stood abruptly, and across the room a hand tented over the spark-box sitting at Depth Charge's side. A silver palm rested against the flat metal of its top, and the spark core inside it felt the shift in weight. The hand didn't press down…yet. But the weight was there, and inside Rampage's chest he felt the ray's touch more intimately than he ever wanted to. The crab refused to freeze up at the threat, forcing himself to cover the jerk at contact by straightening his shoulders.
Emerald optics narrowed in visible fury, both at the raybot's warning and with his ever-present anger, he turned to look sidelong at where the Maximal now stood beside one of the computer banks. His body vibrated, clenched fists at his sides, but he didn't turn to meet Depth Charge head on. It would have been too tempting, and his self-control was growing ragged. He had had a hard enough time stopping at just getting up from his seat. "I'm going to go work on star maps," he rasped in a voice made gravelly by building hate. "I've managed not to attack you for three days, five hours, twelve minutes, and forty-three seconds, but you're not helping any."
His sudden abandonment left the battlefield empty and Depth Charge gaping at the crab's back as he stormed from the bridge. The move was unexpected and deflated the ray's tension as quickly as a punctured balloon. He was at a loss, staring after Rampage like an idiot until he finally shook himself loose of the shock.
The Maximal looked down and regarded the spark-box under his hand thoughtfully for a moment before carefully picking it up and placing it on the floor next to where he had been working. Before settling down to slide under the console again, he gave the door of the bridge an automatic glance. It stood open, the circuitry that had once slid it closed pirated for more important usage. Depth Charge wished that he could close and lock the entrance. It would make him feel more secure, lying vulnerable on the floor with his hands buried in wiring and his mind lost in confusing thoughts. It would be the perfect time for Rampage to sneak up on him…
He found his hand resting on the spark-box again, fingers nervously sliding back and forth on its top, and he stilled them with an effort. He'd seen the tiny jerk in Rampage when his hand had come down before, had seen it before, and he wondered what it was the immortal felt in that nano-second before there was crushing pressure. Was the sensation pain, or-he looked down at his hand and removed it hastily --was it more of a caress? His own spark shivered at the idea of someone's hand so close, and he couldn't imagine what it was like for Rampage either way.
Yet for every time he picked up the spark-box while working, the crab didn't complain. And for all the hate he saw in those green optics every time he inflicted pain on the crab, Rampage didn't protest his imprisonment, however unorthodox it was. For three days, five hours, and…fifteen minutes, Rampage hadn't even made a hostile gesture besides those directed at the author of that particularly maddening book. Not a single one had been directed at him. Depth Charge actually had to pause and think back on it, a stripped wire held delicately between his thumb and forefinger as he reviewed the crab's actions. The closest he could say the Predacon had gotten would be the annoying multitude of questions asked at every opportunity, and even then Rampage had only been trying to provoke a response.
So why the near-violence now? He'd seen the clenched fists and the eagerness to attack. True, the crab could have abandoned the idea the moment he felt a hand on his spark core, but somehow that didn't quite make sense to the Maximal. He knew Rampage's mind as well as any could claim, but he was beginning to think that his knowledge didn't amount to much at all. The only motives he could assign to the crab's actions lately didn't fit with his words, and Depth Charge didn't understand in the least.
He twisted the wire together with its mate and pushed out from under the console, a feeling of determination replacing his puzzlement. Okay, so he didn't understand. Fine. Time for a little turnabout in the crab's question game.
A query to his internal computer informed him that Rampage was half the ship and a few levels down from where he stood, so he strode off toward him, shoving the spark-box into a subspace pocket on the way. Despite his paranoia, Depth Charge knew that the crab couldn't sneak up on him any more than he could sneak up on Rampage. Without the energon interference they'd encountered on Earth, they both knew exactly where the other was within a certain distance. Depth Charge's computer locator had long ago been fine-tuned to a specific spark's frequency, and despite its scrambled response to being so close to the core of the spark in question, he'd found it worked well on the ship. However, he regarded it as a mixed blessing. Relying on it would be folly, since the crab had bypassed his sensors in the past, but it was too important to ignore. Depth Charge had gotten the specific equipment and programs installed after Omicron, but Rampage just naturally seemed to always know where his old playmate was. They had never spoken of it, but the ray suspected it had to do with some sort of spark sensitivity. He had no real idea of its limits outside of the ship, which made him slightly uncomfortable.
Well, it made finding each other on the ship easy, if nothing else, and the Maximal didn't even bother knocking on the door he ended up in front of. Why bother? The crab knew he was there. Hence the reason he stood in the shelter of the doorjamb to let his optics adjust to the darkness inside instead of simply stepping inside and exposing himself to whoever might be waiting to clobber him.
But Rampage was obviously not even going to look up from working to acknowledge him. Back to the door, he ignored its opening. As always, Depth Charge could only stare for an instant at what the crab had done to what had been the crew's recreation room: monitors relocated from all over the ship had been arranged in a sprawling chaos that only made sense from the center of the room. There stood the dim silhouette of the Predacon who had created the pattern, laboriously linking each viewscreen to a visual feed from the Cutting Edge's outer hull until he was surrounded by a million stars. Rampage took the place of the starship here in this room, hanging in the middle of space in an unknown location, gradually mapping out the faint light of the void onto planes he could use in plotting a course. It was tedious work that the crab had temporarily escaped by finding something he could do on the bridge.
Until, Depth Charge realized, something had driven him away.
"You're letting in too much light," Rampage rumbled when it was clear that the ray was going to stand in the door until he said something. "Either get in or stay out."
Depth Charge hesitated. Previously, the Predacon had always come out into the hall when he was here. Stepping into the dark room seemed more like walking into enemy territory than he liked, but the crab didn't even turn around as the door slid closed and returned the room to spangled black. The ray leaned back against the door, a statue of blue-silver metal and magenta glass glittering with starlight.
In the center of the room, Rampage's body seemed much less reflective. His arms and crab claws glowed dully, as if the reds and purples gave up their color sullenly to the light. He moved, however; constantly shifting to bring all his attention onto a new star, his hands busy as he recorded the measurement of lightwaves, his mind split by mathematical formulas, plans, the relevance of Huckleberry Finn, and the invader in his starry night.
"How," the invader said, his words slow and laden with thought, "am I not helping you?" It was more of a demand than a question, but the question wasn't what he had originally set out to ask. Borne of vague insight and a sudden desire to turn the crab's words back on him, it hung in the air between them. He could practically feel the other 'bot considering them, turning them over and over as if looking for a hidden meaning before deciding they weren't worth replying to.
The silent dismissal brought suppressed anger to the surface. "Helping you with what? Not attacking me? If you're trying to blame me for what you are, you're wasting your breath and my time. I'm not going to fall for whatever mind game you're playing. I know there's no one to blame but you, X, for each life you destroyed. You were an experiment, but that's no excuse." The sound of metal on metal echoed as he took a step forward, optics narrowed. His right hand tensed, drawing upward to point accusingly at Rampage's back. What he wanted more than anything at that second was for his gun to be in that hand, but responsibility kept him from retrieving it. He couldn't risk damaging the monitors. "You could have chosen to stop the slaughter at any time, so don't give me some slag about not helping you! What do you want me to do?" His voice took on a mocking note, "Lay down and die? Pull the trigger for you? I'm not going to step aside and let you go free, but I THOUGHT we had a common goal. There's no cause for attacking me right now beyond the twisted reasoning of your murderous spark. What did I do, remind you of past massacres? Is that why I was so unhelpful?" Depth Charge laughed bitterly, thinking about the humans he hadn't known had died at this murderer's hands. "Oh, I'm SO sorry that you find it hard to contain yourself at the memory! By all means, don't hold yourself back on my account!" His face twisted into a furious sneer. "It wouldn't hurt ME a bit."
His wrist twisted, flicking into his subspace compartment and emerging with the sparkbox in hand. All he needed was an excuse, any excuse to use it. The dim silhouette hadn't moved during his tirade, but now it twitched in response. A sliver of green like a mutant star came into view against the black backdrop, and Rampage glared at him over one massive shoulder.
"Do you WANT me to attack you?" he rasped softly, the words savage for how calm they sounded. "I was under the impression that it would be best for me not to, but if you wish it, old friend," emerald fire studied the way Depth Charge stiffened at that term, "I could oblige you."
His fist tightened, just a bit. "I told you not to call me that."
"You didn't answer my question."
The nearest stars' white light shifted, influenced by comparison to the burning optic that seemed to belong in space with them. Depth Charge blinked but couldn't eliminate the illusion that a green tint was spreading through the stars. He made himself think, fingers tense around the metal box in their grip and ready for any move by the crab. Why had Rampage chosen right then to call him 'friend'? The edgy feeling that he didn't understand all the Predacon's motives was stronger now, as if he was missing something obvious. Mind games again; a staple of the Protoform X hunt. The crab always forced him to play, unsatisfied with a mere physical chase. Depth Charge didn't have to participate in the mental puzzles, but the challenge was plain and he wasn't about to back down from it. A few seconds of review made him shake his head a bit, struck by the thought that he hadn't even registered when the challenge had been issued. It wasn't even immediately evident to him what the game WAS, but when he thought about it that wasn't unusual. The trophy hadn't always been obvious when he'd taken on previous challenges, either; he'd often ended up uncovering things about himself. He hadn't wanted to know those things at the time, but he hadn't backed down from finding out when the subtle dare had been given in the midst of their fighting. He wasn't about to begin losing the game now.
The problem was, he was uncertain as to what he was supposed to discover about himself in this particular twist of play.
Metal scraped across metal, and he resumed his previous pose leaning against the closed door with a deliberate slowness that couldn't be mistaken for a retreat. It was thought, not fear, that made his optics evade that glaring emerald fire. There was something, a subtle theme…the crab had left the bridge, but he treated it like it had been a necessary thing done under duress. It didn't make sense to Depth Charge. Opponents came to a battle, and unless one pursued the other, either could walk away from the fight. Always before he had chased the Protoform and been met in return, but now he left. And he left as if he tore himself away from something much more compelling than mere physical battle. With each aggressive stand the ray made, he had always met it, but now he was acting as if he was struggling against-
Magenta optics briefly stared into green, the beginning of understanding flaring at the patient anger found there.
--against what? Why a struggle?
Maybe it wasn't something about himself that he was supposed to find this turn of the game.
Rampage blinked a nod, feeling the shift between them, confusion seeping into the fury. This time he didn't wait for the inevitable questions. The raybot would only work himself back into his blind obsession with justice, and that would hardly serve his purpose. This moment had been days in the planning, after all. He turned back to the star charts as if he felt as casual as he sounded, his voice quiet and serious. "It's like a whirlpool, you know. I'm never very stable to begin with, emotion-wise, like a buoy on a choppy sea. Whatever peace I find is only surface-deep, and it doesn't take much of a wind to bring the maelstrom to light. Emotions are the catalyst of that break of the surface, and once it begins I'm sucked into the resulting vortex. If the winds calm, I'll bob to the surface. If I'm caught up, I'm carried to the bottom with the force of the wind and water. I can feel it happening, but time and again I can only follow the ocean's currents. Sometimes the only way I get back out again is when the source of the wind is dead." He chuckled dryly. "Of course, that's not to say that I don't enjoy the ride or I can't stir things up myself, but it does tend to make thinking difficult. I react more often than I like, at times."
The emerald star flashed at the Maximal again. "I've been trying, Fish Face. But it's harder than you want to think."
Depth Charge did not want to think that. He didn't want to suddenly know this. He drew in a shallow breath and let it out in a rush. "You can feel my emotions." Rampage didn't deign that worthy of reply. That had long been obvious, what with the fact that he sought his victim's fear and had toyed with the manta ray's hatred. That wasn't what was seeping into Depth Charge's comprehension. "You can feel them, and what you feel from me…influences you."
Again, Rampage said nothing. Depth Charge had only restated what he'd just said, and his patience for the conversation was limited. This was something he hadn't been sure about revealing. It was best that he remain silent until the ray completed the thought he'd laid out before him.
Which the Maximal did, slowly and reluctantly, things shifting inside his head in new and disturbing ways. "You're vulnerable." It had struck him earlier how hard it had appeared for the crab to tear himself away from the brewing fight on the bridge, but in retrospect he had to wonder why he'd never seen it. Even in a massively unequal fight, it took a huge amount of damage to make the crab retreat. Why would such an obviously brilliant 'bot walk into situations he clearly couldn't win? Was it because he was eager for his opponents' fear, or because he was helpless to stop? Even the mistake that had resulted in the Protoform's original capture now came under new light. For someone who he KNEW to be brilliant, there had been some exceedingly stupid mistakes, but if some of it had been involuntary…it made sense of so many things, and as he thought of it, something else began to make sense as well. His grasp on the box in his hand tightened fractionally without him realizing it. "The pain stops you, doesn't it."
He concealed a flinch by looking forward again. "Yes." He HATED being weak. Even more, he hated anyone else knowing of his weakness. No, that wasn't quite right. That wasn't why he winced to give away such knowledge here and now. To be specific, he hated Depth Charge to know of his weakness. With others it was merely the emotionless tide of advantage in battle, but with the ray it took on meaning of its own. This feeling, shame, was a foreign entity intruding into him, burying an insidious head into his normal state of being. Only with reluctance had he let himself give before it, and he was beginning to question whether or not he'd be able to dislodge it when it was no longer useful.
But he didn't have time to worry about that. The swirling mass of confusion, anger, and interest from behind him made him want to turn to see how the ray was taking this new revelation, but he stared fixedly at the console in front of him. It all came down to careful calculations, to travel in space and to travel with someone. In both cases, there existed a failure rate. Depth Charge had judged the risk worth taking, calculating that hatred of Kilju and Jirex would keep him from deliberately screwing up the coordinates. That decision was matched by the risk Rampage had just taken. To expose a flaw was foolishness, but that was the point. It went against the mental image the hunter had of the killer, and that could be strong enough to crumble the ray's beliefs. Not all at once, of course, because the Maximal was as stubborn as the rest of his brethren. However, it was a start, like a frayed thread, and it gave him something to ravel at.
If, that is, he had calculated correctly.
A small sound, the scrape of a metal foot against metal flooring, and Depth Charge took one cautious step forward. The dim silhouette didn't turn to face him. "Pain stops the…" he floundered for a word to describe what he was putting together, and settled for the metaphor Rampage had used, "the whirlpool. It stops you from feeling others' emotions?"
He answered the question with his voice pitched low, but not because he meant to sound threatening. The grip on his spark was so tense if his voice was higher the words would end in a gasp. "In a way. I really don't think you know what they did to me, Megatron and Kilju. They tore out the core of my spark. Personalities can be programmed, but have you ever seen someone who's been reprogrammed? Megatron did it to Rhinox before my stasis pod crashed, and he was arrogant enough to believe that reprogramming had gotten rid of the 'bot. From what I hear, Primal actually understood the situation better than him. What's worse is what that stupid saurian tried with Dinobot. He tried to turn my spark core into a drone with vestiges of Dinobot somehow mixed in. Frankly, the thing was a schizophrenic mess when it wasn't in combat." Possibly because bloodlust was one thing programming, body, and spark could agree on, although programming had kept the rest in check by a bare margin. Megatron should have counted himself lucky the Maximals had gotten rid of the thing before it snapped. He twitched, partially at the annoyance the memory of Dinobot brought up and mostly because he could make out exactly how much pressure each finger was bringing to bear on his spark. It seemed he wasn't the only one with unpleasant memories of the Beast Wars. "Programming sets a basic perimeter for a spark, but the spark is what controls who you are. You can't turn a person into someone else, no matter what you try. Even if I were to rip your circuits apart and wipe your programming, no matter what they reconstructed your central functions as, there would still be something recognizable in you. It's very likely that you would end up with the same kind of friends, the same kind of hobbies, the same hopes and despairs. No matter the programming, everyone is defined by their spark. To destroy someone fully, you have to kill the spark."
Ice entered the raybot's voice. "Is that advice for how to deal with YOU?"
He couldn't help but smirk, knowing the Maximal would hear it in the low rasp of his words without needing to see it. "Perhaps. Why do you think no one's ever tried to just reprogram me?"
Silence. Oh, that had hit hard, a verbal sucker punch, and he savored the shock at his back. Why, indeed? Why had the scientists sealed him into a stasis pod instead of physically tearing him apart and shoving his spark in another body to continue the Protoform X project? There had probably, even then, been some consideration in the Maximal High Council about his supposed immortality, but he thought that most of their interest had come later, after Dr. Kilju had time to work on them. Depth Charge, he knew, had lobbied for executing him outright. It hadn't just been the convenience of banishing him that made putting him stasis the best idea. Sure, if he was exiled on a sterile world he could always be retrieved later if he became useful, but on a more practical level, if they pulled his spark out of his body, then they'd only have to find another body to put it in. There wasn't the technology available yet to contain a spark indefinitely outside a body. Although, it would have been interesting had he ended up another Starscream, an immortal spark wandering through space.
Finally, the rusty sound of a clearing throat signaled that Depth Charge had reached the end of that line of reasoning. "You…said that your spark had been in three previous…test subjects." The words were almost dragged out of him, like he was balancing a wide bowl filled to the brim with acid that would be spill if he didn't feel his way carefully. "What were they like?"
Rampage's optics squinted with building pain in his chest, his voice a muted rumble. "The doctors never told me directly. From what I overheard, though, they were supposed to be body shells with little or no sentience. That's why they programmed me to be so intelligent." He said it matter-of-factly, without pride. It was fact, not vanity. "They already knew what I would be like before they put together my circuitry."
Depth Charge dimmed magenta optics, something too heavy to be disappointment settling on his broad shoulders. "The others were insane, weren't they? They knew before they brought you online that your spark was that of a murderer." How long had they known? Before the immigration limit was lifted? Omicron had been a tiny colony until then, the Protoform X project the focus of the settlement until more immigrants were allowed onto the planet. He had arrived in the first wave of people in order to help set up colonial Security. He'd decided to stay instead of return to Starbase Rugby because the place had grown on him, and he'd ended up being promoted to Security Chief for working well with the colonists and scientists alike. The same colonists who'd died; the same scientists who'd set him up for failure. "Primus."
He didn't realize he'd whispered it out loud until Rampage chuckled in response. "Yes, you could say they were playing god, if that's what you meant."
Magenta optics lit, and he started to say something, but it felt like the acid was dripping down his front and burning its way into his head. Depth Charge closed his optics again. An entire colony gone, and it could have been prevented so easily if he had only KNOWN. But he had known what the scientists had told him, and it wasn't until the secret was loose to slaughter that he'd even known there was something hidden in Omicron.
"I don't think they managed to kill anyone. They were only supposed to be body shells, after all, and if they didn't equip me with a slagging voice box, why would they have bothered supplying a temporary test subject with anything potentially lethal?" Rampage breathed in deeply for the first time in what felt like forever, the hand holding his spark having gone limp with desolation. Ah, it was wonderful to taste. Poor Depth Charge just couldn't seem to wrap his mind around the concept of purposefully endangering a colony for the sake of a convincing cover-up. A foolish accident would have been bad enough, but the Maximal High Council had known exactly what it was doing…and had known the risk. To be perfectly fair, the doctors HAD tried to get rid of the bugs in the experiment. "They had my spark and the base emotions that provided, but no logic circuitry to guide it, and that produced psychopaths. With me they intentionally tried to create a sociopath." He laughed shortly. "They programmed me, to the best of their ability to be such a genius that I'd be free of any emotion. They hoped too much emotion and too much logic would balance out. Too bad for them that I'm so far out of the perimeters of 'normal' I fall off both sides of the scale." He shrugged. "Other people approach and I get sucked in. I become a psychopath because of their emotions. On the other hand, if I'm left to myself I turn into a sociopath. Then Megatron comes along and cuts the core out of my spark, and suddenly I'm barely holding on to control because it's with someone ALL THE TIME."
He turned and faced the starlit silver and blue form of the Maximal staring at him. "It's hard," he said directly to the startled optics of his old playmate, "to think when I'm constantly being pushed over the edge." He nodded to the incandescent globe in the frozen raybot's hand. From here, it looked like a particularly brilliant star. "Enough physical pain can sometimes pull me away, but squeezing my spark is different. It's the center of my emotions, and every time it's disrupted…there's pain, but also the complete lack of passion. I don't FEEL anything." Head tilted, he said with a touch of dry humor for the continuing metaphor, "The whirlpool's still there when the pressure's gone, but I'm back on top of the water."
Depth Charge blinked. Slowly, wearily, he nodded his understanding. "And right now I'm your 'whirlpool.'"
"Yes." He inclined his own head, a shadow of dull red and purple. "I'm trying, Fish Face. Just keep in mind that no matter what you happen to think, I'm not completely in control of what I do sometimes."
"I will." He had to think this over. He had expected an argument, a fight, not this systematic dissembling of what he'd thought he knew. What was worse than hating a monster? Pitying him. What was worse than pitying a monster? Understanding him. Because the hatred was still there, and they clashed in his mind to cause confusion he couldn't afford. He had to retreat to think.
The Maximal abruptly turned to leave, but a sudden thought made him pause. "Have you ever felt anything? On your own, I mean."
Had suspicion or puzzlement made that question come out so harshly? Rampage briefly considered not answering, but he couldn't think of any reason why not to. "No." A finned shape was outlined against the light in the hallways for a second before the doors swished closed again, and he finished the sentence softly in the privacy of his starry night, "but then, I have rarely been alone."
Humming softly to himself, he returned his attention to the star mapping. Measuring light waves was simple mathematics, and his fingers did the work with quick, automatic motions. His mind wandered between numbers, reviewing the conversation. He hadn't lied. He had never outright lied to Depth Charge. He frequently told only part of the truth and let assumptions mislead, but he respected the Maximal too much to baldly lie to him. He was a sociopath, and he was a psychopath, and it wasn't easy to control the urge to kill. Emotions were very slippery things to handle, and having the core of his spark in another's hands made it worse. Outside emotions did influence him. It was all true.
However, he had neglected to mention his reaction to all of it. Perhaps it was Depth Charge's fault for not asking, but he suspected that the raybot's ingrained hatred would supply what he hadn't brought up. He had deliberately explained his vulnerability from the perspective of a victim, and the Maximal would probably dismiss it as a ploy to lure him offguard. However, the only one who really knew was him. He doubted that Depth Charge would bring it up. The Maximal thought he knew the crab's mind, but it was Rampage who knew Depth Charge's mind. The raybot was simply unaware of that fact as of yet.
There had been times he'd been alone, usually on the passage from place to place in a starship, and he'd found himself a blank. The first time had been right after Omicron, during his first time in space. Before then, he had never been alone. It had taken him a while to figure out what was wrong, and that he didn't like the sensation. Lacking emotion, he knew logically that it was a hindrance, but he had the memories of fiercely relishing each feeling wrenched from another living creature. What he hadn't told Depth Charge was that he would have to kill everyone who felt anything on an entire planet before he'd be completely free of outside influence. It had taken until Comotria for him to figure out why he'd felt anything at all those last hours on Omicron when he'd thought everyone was dead; there had been one 'bot left alive. One robot, probably unconscious by then, had rippled the waters enough to allow him emotions. He had mistaken that robot's emotions for his own only to find out that on his own he didn't have any. After that he'd begun looking for a method of control.
It wasn't, like he had implied to Depth Charge, that others directed his emotions, or that he couldn't ignore them if he had to. Well, sometimes he really couldn't, but that had more to do with who was influencing him than what. The full truth was that other life forces, sparks or whatever, pulled enough on his that it tipped the balance from logic to emotion, sociopath to psychopath. He could get caught up in the process, but not everyone could break his control. Every emotion was a whirlpool, but getting pulled down into one wasn't necessarily a bad thing when he could stay near the surface. .He just wanted Depth Charge to think that he went under easily.
The careful deception had a purpose. This plan had been going on for a long time, and he was merely adapting it for the situation. This instability of his, after all, was a vulnerable point, and he hated being weak. But there was a way to limit the problem, if he stayed out of the A.L.H Research Center's reach and finished what had started on Omicron. There was a way…
His humming stopped, lost in the artificially created universe of the room, and he gazed blankly down at his hands. They had stilled on the console. The soft notes continued in his head. Had he been alone on the ship, he would have been unable to feel anything at the memory of the tune.
Emotions were a hindrance.
Yet still he wanted them.
They tried to tell him monsters didn't exist. Horror stories were just that: stories. Nothing like that existed in real life, or so he was told. It was paranoia that made each distant clank harmless, each haunting groan just changes in air pressure, and there was nothing behind him. Whatever fear he'd felt when he hesitated to open a door was laughable because monsters weren't real.
So what was he supposed to do when one day he found himself fighting something that didn't exist? He found himself a bad actor in a worse holovid, shock slowing his reflexes because IT CAN'T BE REAL. But it was killing his friends and coworkers, coming for him and the colonists he protected, and what was he supposed to do? Common sense told him it was a nightmare because common sense knew that this wasn't normal. Stuff like this didn't happen in real life. This was so far away from the idea of normal that common sense went catatonic and he was left on his own. He used to think people in horror stories were stupid, but he'd realized that they were just like him. They were people who'd been told all their lives that monsters weren't real and suddenly had to face the ugly truth:
Their nightmares were based on reality.
He'd done his best with everyone dying around him, their optics wide in utter disbelief that they hadn't woken up, and he'd felt like he was an actor in some cosmic horror story all his own. The star of the show turned toward him, covered in mechfluid like it'd been birthed from the depths of every buried paranoia inspired by dismissed tales, and all he could feel was terror even as his gun raised. The 'bots at his side faltered and failed, and they died as they tried to run away. He stood his ground because fear held him paralyzed, but he kept firing because duty filled the place common sense abandoned. They called his panic courage later, but he'd learned by then not to listen to what they told him.
Only he'd found that he hadn't learned anything, after all. He'd trusted the Center, hadn't he? He should have known better, should have seen that they were telling him another story. He should have seen that the ones who told him to trust them with the monster were the same ones who'd told him the monster didn't exist.
Depth Charge finally admitted that he'd been working on the same panel of wiring without really seeing it for a ridiculous amount of time. He'd been afraid of this happening, but he straightened up and leaned against the wall next to the computer bank with nothing more than a resigned sigh. Cybertronians could exist on energon for long periods of time, but eventually they needed to recharge. Without an offline period, their systems lost efficiency. It didn't matter how much energy they were supplied with; continuous activity wore them out, and they needed regular rest to power down in. Some routine maintenance couldn't be done while a 'bot was active, and all systems needed to cycle through to check for problems or renew parts. For someone with a beast mode, the need for sleep was instinctual. While energon could substitute for long periods of time, Depth Charge had apparently reached the limit. He hadn't taken a break since Rampage had woken up.
Now his head swam with conflicting urges, his systems insisting that they needed to shut down but his mind insisting that he didn't have the time. His body felt like it was dragging, responding sluggishly to what he told it to do. It seemed that he wouldn't have much of a choice in this. He had felt more tired, of course, but he hadn't realized it had gotten this bad until he trudged across the bridge to sit down in front of a console. He wasn't sure he could get back up again.
No wonder he had fallen into depression so easily. A clinical part of his mind analyzed his thoughts since talking to Rampage earlier, and it recognized the downward spiral. Something like this had happened after Omicron, when he'd first realized what the scientists in the Protoform X project had done. He'd labored for days, researching every scrap of information about X and trying to predict where he'd go next. Confusion, shock, and hatred had filled his mind, and after too long without rest, he went numb. His body became so worn out it walled him off from feeling anything but a detached sense of despair. Soon afterward he'd slipped into an exhausted recharge cycle.
But he couldn't take the time to do that now. He had to rewire the weapon's console because the engines needed the power, and then he had to test the Transwarp drive because part of it had taken collateral damage, there was something wrong in the programming in the communication console, somewhere in the mess there was a useable console board he had to replace this one with, and Rampage was definitely lying. There was no way the crab would spontaneously decide to reveal something like that. Although…the situation was different than any they'd encountered before, so it was just barely possible that he'd been telling the truth. Primus, but how could the Maximal High Council have ALLOWED it? What could justify experimenting on a spark? What could justify making a spark they couldn't keep contained, knowing that it was insane?
He put his head in his hands, trying to organize his thoughts. He'd sit here for a while, just a little while, and get rid of this hovering cloud of depression. It wasn't hopeless, and he knew better than to believe what they tried to tell him. It was the fatigue, not him, that was making it so hard to think right now. He'd be okay in a bit.
His internal computer sent an alert, and he acknowledged it tiredly. It took more than he thought it would to sit up straight and pretend to be working at the console as footsteps entered the bridge. They headed for the Astronomy section, passing behind him. His fins vibrated finely, the strain telling, but he held on to grim composure. He'd lock himself into a room until at least his joints stopped burning. He'd MAKE the time for that. As worn as he was physically, the mental lag was more dangerous.
Rampage evidently finished whatever he was doing, and his footsteps retraced the route back to the door. They paused there for the briefest second, but the Predacon left as quietly as he'd come in. Depth Charge slumped again as soon as his locator placed the crab far enough away. He should have known better than to let himself get this depleted. If it came down to a fight right now, his best effort would still only be pathetic. Fortunately, the threat of the spark-box kept his enemy-ally in check. His hand moved reflexively.
And found nothing at his side.
Optics wide, his head snapped around to look, to make sure. It was an involuntary motion, and meanwhile his computer scrambled together a list of what was in his subspace compartment. Both attempts came up blank.
The chair he was sitting in hadn't originally been meant to swivel, but it had also been taller before the explosion had thrown it into the computer bank across the bridge. Depth Charge had welded it to a flimsy base so it would stand upright in front of its console. That base now scraped against the floor as he inched himself around to face the opposite direction. He had been trying to repair the same computer bank he'd untangled this chair from, and he hadn't put anything away yet. He had intended on getting back up again. He had only meant to sit for a short while.
He ended up sitting there for a very long time. Reflected in his optics was a tiny star.