The Devil's Advocate

Chapter 3

It was only by her third thorough scan of the command center that Arcee finally admitted defeat in trying to find an easy escape route and let her taut limbs go limp. Though she was grateful for the soft backing against her spinal strut, she couldn't make herself relax. Not with the philosophical murderer right next door.

If her peds didn't clank like weights whenever they hit the floor she might have tried just sneaking past him, since his lab occupied so much of his attention. The chain was gone from her cuffs, and she couldn't see anything else heavy lying around to club his helm in with. The shackles themselves might knock him out, but she doubted she'd even manage to reach her wrists up to his helm without him noticing.

Maybe that was on purpose. A tiny, mostly hidden part of her was actually looking forward to the prospect of offlining Megatron, no matter how impossible it seemed with only two bots against a flying fortress. And as much as the thought of Starscream taking the warlord's place should have made her spark flare with fury, she couldn't help remembering that Megatron's disappearance three years ago was all that allowed the hesitant peace between Autobots and Decepticons to exist. Starscream might have just been holding his might back out of fear of punishment on Megatron's return... or maybe he just didn't see purpose in hunting them down. Arcee could hardly remember the last time she could drive down an empty road without having her scanners on standby, or when the only thing that worried her was stones popping her tires. Back then as long as the 'Bots didn't cause trouble at energon mines, they were more or less left alone.

Cliffjumper knew the risk of going near the mine, especially with the Nemesis and drone reinforcements so close by. So... wasn't his death as much his own fault as it was Starscream's?

She would have slapped herself if the bulky cuff encasing her wrist didn't stop her. Instead she settled with throwing herself back in her seat, biting at her torn lip again with a stubborn glare at Starscream's back and the lazily waving wings hanging from it. He seemed to think staring at the energon rig would make it process faster.

"So how does it work?" she called, forcing him to spin around on his heels.

"How does what work?" he asked, claws almost digging into his hips.

"Red energon," she said with a nod at the crimson crystals being fed into the refinery. "I know it makes you fast, but... there must be more to it than that." She never thought she'd be so bored as to ask after industrial chemistry, but desperate times called for desperate measures.

Starscream, on the other servo, seemed only too eager to dispense with all his useless knowledge. "Indeed there is. It's more dense than regular energon, so when ingested it ends up on the bottom of the tanks and is prioritised by the fuel pump. And when the pump circulates it through the fuel lines, it... well, the details are complicated, but essentially it sends the body into an 'overdrive' mode. Movements become so quick that the normal optic cannot perceive them, and in turn everything seems to slow down to a crawl."

From what Arcee heard, it seemed that the energon would be the key to getting herself back to the Autobots alive. But just as she was calculating how quickly she could swipe the canister and down the contents before Starscream could stop her, the Seeker activated some kind of shield around the equipment that cut it off from all interference, even stopping Starscream himself from incessantly tapping it.

"Though I'm afraid if you're homesick already, you'll have to try harder than just stealing from me, Arcee," he said pointedly, the spires of his denta glinting like poison as he smirked. As often as Arcee damned him as a moron, it seemed he'd thought of just about everything she might use to escape.

"But if you're still hungry for fuel..." She kept her vanquished scowl hidden from his view, so the energon cube skidding just below her peds was a surprise. She looked up, watching Starscream lingering in the doorway just as he watched her, then hesitantly leaned forward to pluck the cube from the floor.