Plague

Plague-chapter 9

Dawn withered along the waves over the Base and painted the sea in sparkling gold. It was truly a beautiful sight to behold and Soundwave let it mesmerize him for a moment like it had done so many times in the past since they arrived on Earth. Just for a moment of peace before he told himself to concentrate again. He had woken early and got out to clear his processor a little. A new wave of excitement surged up in him as he recalled Blaster's agreement to help him and he kept his comm. open for everyone - especially the other dual-spark - if they wanted to reach him.

Even if he did not succeed, Soundwave was eternally grateful to Blaster for helping him. They both knew that it wasn't about them; Soundwave was sure if Blaster had called him to help with his creation - if he had one -, the Decepticon third would not have hesitated either. Long ago, back on Cybertron, in what seemed like another life, Blaster told him he thought being a dual-spark, being able to bring life to the world by their spark alone was a unique blessing. Soundwave remembered how much the other tape decker wanted creations of his own, but with the war coming into their lives, it devoured all their energies and Blaster's spark hadn't split ever since. Soundwave already had his cassettes when the first rebellions broke out, they grew up in the war, trained to be spies and soldiers.

It didn't matter now. All he could think of was how much time they had left before they stepped over the line where there was no return. He was just thankful he had all the information about the disease to hopefully convince the Autobot medics that they couldn't go on without them. It was fortunate that Starscream had provided him with everything he needed...

Starscream woke to less pain than he expected. He couldn't feel his leg, couldn't feel his wing; but his vocoder - or what remained of it - was blazing. The heat was all he felt for a long moment, it took longer for his systems to reboot than ever and at first, he didn't even know where he was, but it all came back to him slowly. Astrotrain.

He turned his head over to the left, but only saw the empty berth where Astrotrain used to lie beside him. The reality of this emptiness gripped the Seeker's spark - had Astrotrain made it through the night?

"Don't worry, he's still with us." it was Scavenger's voice from his other side and the Constructicon helped him sit. He must have seen the look on Starscream's face when he was starring at the triple-changer's berth.

Starscream nodded, he couldn't get his vocoder to work. It frightened him how horribly weak he felt; when Scavenger offered him a cube of energon, it took him a moment to will his hand to rise and grab it. There was a hole just above his wrist joint, he could see wires and bundles of micro-circuitry, mocking him about his failure to come up with any solution they could use. The only good thing he could arrange was the Insecticons' nanites that slowed the disease a little.

It was hard to swallow.

"Do your optics hurt?" he heard Hook ask at the other side, from Rumble's berth and soon the mini-mech's answer followed.

"No." he whispered. Starscream saw Hook nod to that and when he moved aside, he could see Rumble's face; the colour of his optics seemed to have gone even lighter than the previous day, which explained why the Constructicon was questioning him like that.

"Would you recognize me from this far?"

Rumble frowned, it seemed he was concentrating hard, but eventually shook his head, "No. It's all blurred."

Starscream sighed. Malfunctioning optics were easy to replace, under different circumstances, it would have been a ridiculously tiny problem. But these days the world seemed to have turned upside down, and the most insignificant things were gaining value. Starscream would have never thought he'd be so worried about his commrades, especially those he had never been the best of friends with. For example, this strong need to see how Astrotrain was doing.