Chapter Text
It feels too surreal to be true. Even though an Earth week has passed since the battle, he is still inclined to believe it is all an elaborate trick conjured up by his recharge-deprived mind or even a corrupted memory purge brought about by spoiled energon. He simply cannot fathom how a nearly six million stellar-cycle old war had been lost in the span of less than a solar-cycle. In a mere handful of human hours, the Decepticon army and everything they ever stood for had been reduced to rubble by less than a dozen Autobots and their human companions. The very idea is laughable as it is pathetic.
Soundwave supposes his own current predicament does little to detract from the sense of false reality. He is on the Nemesis, but not entirely. The warship seems to fade and twist around him, warping what used to be familiar and even comforting surroundings into something foreign and almost hostile. The atmosphere also feels heavy somehow, as if the very air is denser and weighs down his armor. Everything is faded and monochrome. Sound echoes as much as it is swallowed up. This world operates with rules Soundwave is not privy to, and the TIC tries his best to ignore the distracting tinge of anxiety in his tanks as he works to figure out a way to escape the mess the Autobots’ pets got him into. After he initially phased through the irritating pink-haired female when attempting to strike at her, he had been too dumbfounded to do anything other than stare as the two humans hurriedly tried to figure out how to operate the Nemesis’s controls. It wasn’t like he could stop them either; this reality, this “Shadowzone” he was trapped within kept the mech from even laying a servo upon them. He had been forced to stand idly by and watch as everything he and the other Decepticons struggled to accomplish was taken from them.
Soundwave vents in frustration, the normally barely discernible noise seeming to echo for miles in his sensitive audials. He is the chief Communications Officer and Third in Command of the Decepticons – how could he have fallen for a trap, and a simple one devised by human children no less? It’s humiliating.
Realizing his mind has started to wander for the third time since being trapped, Soundwave shakes his helm and forces himself to refocus upon his current task. Multiple previous attempts to recreate the double groundbridges that exiled him here have already failed; if he wants to have enough power left in his systems to evade Autobot capture after escaping from the Shadowzone, he will need to rework the algorithms for his inner groundbridge as accurately and efficiently as possible. Even with Laserbeak in stasis and his own non-vitals set to their lowest rate of energy consumption, Soundwave has to conserve what energon he can. Consecutive uses of the groundbridge eat up sizable amounts of power and the spymaster is not certain if energon even exists within the Shadowzone. With luck, he will escape before he is forced to find out. Then again, when has luck ever been on his side?
Huffing in irritation once more, the Decepticon returns to writing out equations.
Whatever Shockwave did to cloak his and Starscream’s life signals is working. …A little too well. Not even the surveillance chief can locate them, which is embarrassing. Granted, it’s only because the amount of power he can afford to dedicate to the search is limited…and then there’s the whole being trapped in an alternate fragging dimension…but Soundwave is annoyed nonetheless. Under different circumstances, he might have embraced the challenge, but time is slowly running out. Besides that, the TIC is uncertain if the Autobots ever intend to come retrieve him. He knows it’s unlikely, but weren’t Autobots supposed to be in favor of the old Senate’s trial by jury and all that slag? He is the overall third highest ranking Decepticon and the highest ranked officer they currently have in their clutches with Starscream missing and Lord Megatron-
Soundwave shoves the sudden wave of grief he feels aside. He’s always prided himself on the degree of control he possesses over his emotions; now is not the time to lose that control. Anyway, unless the Prime had decided to skip straight to the execution (though leaving an enemy to slowly starve to death hardly seems to be Autobot-like behavior), Soundwave finds it somewhat odd he hasn’t been hunted down and put on some sort of mock trial yet. Whatever is going on, he will not surrender. If the treatment he received during his last capture was any indication, the Autobots are hardly the most accepting of outsiders, and Soundwave refuses to risk his last surviving symbiont falling into their servos. Laserbeak is all he has now; as the little mech’s Core, it is Soundwave’s duty to ensure his safety and survival. Which means the TIC must escape.
…Somehow.
Loud clanging resounds through the warship’s corridors from the brig whenever Knockout and the other Decepticons kept captive there want to get their Autobot captors’ attention. It doesn’t appear to be working quickly, which is unfortunate. It’s also unfortunate that it irritates Soundwave’s sensitive audials and wears his legendary patience dangerously thin. He briefly considers following Lord Megatron’s or Starscream’s example and going down there in order to personally throttle each and every one of the slaggers until they quit making noise, but then remembers he can’t and instead settles upon burying himself deeper in his work. Algorithm after algorithm, trial after trial fails. The lack of proper recharge is catching up with him and makes his processor hazy. Once the banging finally ceases and makes way for much appreciated silence, the TIC allows himself to slump (very slightly, only barely noticeable to regular mechs) in exhaustion.
According to his biological readings, his tanks are approximately seventy-two percent full (thank Primus for Laserbeak reminding him to take his rations the morning before that final battle). Given his current rate of power usage, he should last about half a meta-cycle before forcibly entering emergency stasis lock. Paired with the rate of success he’s had with his current escape attempt, this sounds…less than promising. Better to move on to Plan B – leaving the Nemesis and searching for Starscream and Shockwave in person. Surely the Communications Chief can find a way to alert the other two officers of his predicament once he locates them. Shockwave had countless laboratories scattered all over Cybertron during the war; there has to be a functioning groundbridge in at least one of them. If Soundwave cannot bridge himself out, perhaps someone outside the Shadowzone will be able to free him.
There is one slight catch – Soundwave has an unimaginable amount of information stored within his internal databanks, enough to impress even the likes of Shockwave. However, the location of every single one of the aforementioned scientist’s labs is not among that information. The Decepticon has to wait for someone outside the Shadowzone to access the top secret files containing the lab network and pull it up long enough for him to snap a picture. Thankfully, Soundwave is confident the Autobots will do exactly that very soon; they are still looking to capture the remaining fugitive Decepticons, and Knockout has never been the type to keep information to himself if sharing it was in his better interests (namely, a nice oil bath).
In the meantime, the spymaster requires rest. Though mechanical life forms can go significantly longer without recharge than organics (and Soundwave can function longer without it than most Cybertronians), nearly four deca-cycles have passed by now and he is at his limit. Despite this, Soundwave still hesitates before finally attempting to relax against a wall and initiate the defrag process. The sooner he begins, the faster he gets it over with.