Chapter Text
Jazz is running before he hits the ground, the greasy fireball of a coolant explosion buoying up behind him and sending licks of bright green light darting through the dark. It’s night on Elom, thirty hours into what will be a full three days of pitch blackness and orange halogen emergency lights, and the darkness is as much trusted friend as enemy at this point - hiding him, keeping him safe, but also making it virtually impossible to navigate the labyrinthine corridors of the Highridge Base.
Two hours into the Decepticon attack, enough of the base is burnt or burning that even his best maps are almost useless. The tunnels are weaving, most of the doors damaged enough to need to be manually pulled open against protesting tracks, and there’s a vague sense of going downward into nauseating pressure as his altimeter needle slips ever so slightly lower.
At this point, the base is lost, even if the Decepticons won’t be claiming it. Easier to rebuild than to repair - cleaning up even the coolant spills will be more effort than the distant outpost is worth, once they’re sure the rubble is cleared of survivors.
He breaks down another level, the air thinning and cooling as he leaves the worst of the fires behind, and grins - his goal, the security room, just around the corner from the brig.
Downloading the security feeds from the computers is easy, his overrides taking flawlessly to the compatible system. One set of files sticks, demanding further authorizations, and he offers it Prime’s codes - when they’re rebuked, however, he leans back, allowing concern to flicker over his features, and then presses into the code.
Dismantling the protections on the files is surprisingly easy - despite the clearance issues, their firewalls are weak and the encryption shoddy. The base commander, Starweave,’s tags are everywhere, and Jazz can’t help but tap his foot and whisper “Naughty, naughty,” into the silent hum of the empty floor.
The sobbed gasp that answers back is enough to keep the files zipped - for the moment. Jazz looks up, eyes flicking around for the source of the noise, and flinches back when it’s followed by a scream.
Training tells him to leave. His job is done, the base is burning, and he should go - quickly and quietly and seen by no one. Pity - and knowledge of his Prime’s soft spark - tell him that he should at least investigate. This deep, even if he reports an injured mech, it will take days to get to him again, and mercy dictates that he should at least find the mech and stabilize him in stasis, or end his suffering with a fast termination. This low, the wounded will be a fellow Autobot - the ‘Cons made no real effort to penetrate the base before the first of their bombing runs. It’s the decent thing to do.
With a huff of vents, Jazz follows the sound of cries - now dissolved into staticky, broken sobbing, down the hall.
The door between him and the noise has lost power, and after a moment of shoving, he realizes that it’s no ordinary door - heavy, solid metal, and, more curiously, completely soundproofed, as long as it has energy to run the noise baffles. Not cheap, not at all, and a brutal flare of suspicion ignites in the infiltrator’s spark. Not the sort of thing often seen on a ‘Bot base.
He doesn’t waver, laying the thin strips of incendiary neatly around the lock with practiced ease before stepping back and shuttering his eyes. Magnesium-white light still flares across his auxiliary photoreceptors, but it’s not enough to blind him against the less-precise sensors, and as the last heat fades away, he pushes through the unlocked door.
The sight of a broken, chained body pinned against the far wall confirms all his worst suspicions, and a tight, terse comm to Prowl and Prime is outbound before he even finishes crossing the rubble-strewn floor. “Prowl, I want Starweave in custody NOW, and whoever’s right below him. Don’t be gentle. Prime, get in touch with Ratchet, get a crew together for an extraction and be ready to come to my location on my order - I’ve got a badly injured mech here, but we’re real deep. I’ll comm if it looks like he’s gonna live.”
Prowl pings confirmation, but it’s only seconds later that the tactician’s opened a proper channel. “Sorry, Jazz. Command staff’s dead - got taken out by one of the bombers. Highest ranking officers on base right now are the squad leaders, not including our own mechen.”
“Slag. Hold on, then - I’ll fill you in when I’ve finished here.” Jazz sets his own commlink to do-not-disturb, overlaying it with glyphs of medical emergency and first aid in progress to ward off any distractions.
Pulling the mech down is brutal, slow work. He’s got chains on his wrists, on his ankles, but the challenge is the thick rebar driven through his frame - through joints, through plating, even through his neck cabling. It takes a moment, in the dark and damaged room, to realize that it’s not shrapnel from an explosion, but only a moment - Jazz, after all, is a torturer, too, when need calls for it, and recognizing the precise skill with which the mech has been impaled is easy to a mech of similar talents.
The rebar pulls free slowly, and it’s a testament to the skill of the mech who put it there that his victim doesn’t immediately bleed out from a thousand savage wounds. One by one, Jazz pulls the bars free, until the mech is hanging only from his wrists.
When the mech speaks, optics still dark, Jazz freezes.
“Don’t…” his voice is staticky, almost too cracked to understand. “Them… please don’t…”
Glancing up worriedly, Jazz meets the mech’s optics and realizes his mistake - they aren’t dark because the mech is unconcious. The scraped-out holes where glass and lense should be are terrifying in the inky dark, and Jazz feels his vents catch - and he isn’t a mech familiar with fear.
It takes a moment to catch himself, but no longer. Shaking fingers unspool a cable, pressing it into a port with the cover brutally twisted away - and that isn’t something he can think about now. Panicking, here, will win him nothing - and with that thought firm in his mind, he sends a databurst down the cable, shooting one of the most aggressive viruses he’s written into the processor of the other mech. He feels the struggle as firewalls trigger one by one, desperately fighting the invader - not him, but the virus itself - and ultimately failing as it tears through the mech’s processor, felling protections and passing failsafes with brutal efficiency even as the mech grows more and more terrified.
Finally, the mech defeated even in his own mind, the virus finds its goal and triggers. Less than three seconds after first connection, the mech slumps a little more, unconscious, in the chains.
Jazz feels a little pity. Being placed in stasis with such a brutal processor attack is cruel, a torture in itself - were he in any better condition, a slam on the back of the helm would be the more merciful option. But leaving the mech fully-conscious as he attempts field repairs would be no better, and the risk of him thrashing and harming himself further unacceptably high.
The infiltrator is careful as he lets the tortured mech down, gently lowering him to the ground. It takes a moment to recognize the frametype, a carrier, ravaged as it is by abuse - plating torn and blackened, carved away from protoform and cauterized with brutal efficacy, the tiny scorchmarks of an electrowhip tracing thin white lines across delicate wires. One leg lies twisted as the mech is settled on the ground, and it takes Jazz a moment to realize that it’s been twisted free of its bearing, wires and worn cables all that’s keeping it attached to the other mech’s frame.
Even as he works, Jazz can see the skill that went into the torture, far beyond anything he’d allow of his own mechs. Months of effort, the oldest damage overlaid with new scars, mottled welds where the mech had been taken apart and stitched together again, cracked sensors where heat and cold were used to torture the mech until the sensors themselves could no longer bear the strain, and it makes the interrogator’s tank churn - the Decepticons flinch and falter at the mere mention of his name, scream and run from shadows at the simplest suggestion that he might be present in their base, and he has never, ever done this much damage to a mech.
The work is carefully done, however. As much pain as he may be in, as bad as the damage may seem, as extensive as the repairs will need to be, the mech isn’t dying, isn’t even that close, and Jazz nearly trembles with relief that he chose to investigate. The mech…
The mech almost certainly would have still been alive when they got down here again. Online, even, if he didn’t manage to slam himself into stasis against the wall.
Still, with no immediate repairs left to do, he opens comms. Ratchet pings him first, layering his demands with insistence/information requested/damage report and the powerful command coding of a medical officer. Jazz complies, even as he feels Ratchet reel back in horror, and then pings the same report to Prowl and Optimus.
Both are very, very quiet, acknowledging the reports with a soft pong before falling silent to review them. Prowl is the first to reply.
“I am going to go investigate this further amongst the surviving team leaders. If any know of this, I will have them brought before you for justice, Prime.” His comm flickers without waiting for a response, tone unusually guarded for even the typically private mech, and blacks out, warning and do not interrupt and Prime’s business flickering across his own do-not-disturb.
Prime doesn’t speak for another moment, and Jazz feels his spark twist uneasily. “You’ve done well, Jazz. Thank you.” The commander’s words set him a little more at ease, and he feels the edge of terror that’s been brushing at his systems back off - the subtle fear of rejection over this, his function too, a purpose and a skill that Prime has always loathed. “This is beyond you, beyond anything you’ve done, Jazz. I don’t hate you.” Optimus’ comm is gentle, approving, and Jazz feels the last of his fear melt away.
“I should sweep the room, sweep the hall - there may be more victims, if he was hidden. The rooms are soundproofed, shielded - I won’t be able to tell unless I open them all.” Jazz hesitates, sending a ping to Prime that is just as readily ponged back. “Stay on comms with me? I don’t want to be out of touch if I find any surprises.”
Optimus sends approval down the comm, and Jazz can feel the low hum of a resetting commline as it switches from a fast-and-dirty command line to one of the more permanent commlinks. He moves down the hall wordlessly, prying open doors as he goes, but there’s nothing in any of them. Not until he reaches the last one, more a storage locker than a cell.
It’s instinct, unnerving and canny, that has him burning open that door, too. The sight of the mechen dismantled on the table in the middle of the room has his tanks heaving, and he sends a desperate burst comm down the line to Prime, whose sudden, steadying presence in his ear is all that keeps him from purging like a sparkling all over the floor.
Four mechs, tiny - and after a moment, he realizes that they’re cassettes. No, five, he realizes after a moment - two mechkin, a quad of some kind, designed for stealth over Steeljaw and Ramhorn’s brute strength, and not one but two avians, one, easily overlooked, small enough to perch in his hand.
All of them are damaged, and badly - not with the careful, agonizing precision and creativity of the larger mech, but with simple, brutal injuries, crushed plating and torn limbs and shredded armor over bruised, scarred protometal. He pings the data to Prime and Ratchet, helpless to do anything to repair such tiny, tiny mechs even if he knew where to begin - they’re too small, too fragile, and his field training is woefully insufficient for damage like this.
Ratchet merely confirms, but Prime speaks, keeping his tone as steady as possible. “Good job, Jazz. Thank you - thank you for finding them. We will be with you in under twenty minutes - we’ve diverted to pick up Wheeljack, to help handle the additional casualties, and he’s promised a more… direct route to your location. Just… remain calm. Talk through it, if you need to - I am here to listen. I won’t leave you.”
Jazz is silent for a long moment, allowing himself to slump against the wall of the storage room as he shoves away distress, forces himself deeper into mission mode, forces back panic and rage. Optimus waits for him to speak, a warm pressure through the commlink, but when nothing comes, he begins speaking again, soft, low voice offering reassurances and thanks that push the chaos back farther.
By the time he hears the rumble, Jazz has collected himself - Head of Intelligence, Autobot Third-in-Command Jazz has gathered himself and can stride confidently towards the hole currently slowly burning through the wall of the security room. It takes another minute, but eventually, the wall simply dissolves away worryingly, and Wheeljack steps through, a boxful of powder in hand and already sprinkling it across the edges of the hole, which are a sickly pink.
“Don’t get any of it on you, no, hold on Primus damn it Ratchet, it’ll eat right through you if you get it on your plating -” He breaks off as Ratchet forces past him, past Jazz, already heading for the carrier.
“He’s stable, the symbionts are worse -” Jazz tries to interrupt, but Wheeljack grabs his shoulder as Ironhide and Optimus step into the small room, heads ducking low.
“I’ve got them - I’ve got more experience with microrepairs, even if we’re dealing with mecha rather than my inventions at the moment. He doesn’t have the tools on him - no need, when Blaster didn’t come with us, and there were no carriers among the base staff.” The inventor strides down the hall, Ironhide beside him, and even Jazz flinches at the frontliner’s curses when the red mech enters the storage room.
Optimus lays a hand on Jazz’s shoulder, warm and comforting, and opens his mouth to speak, but the infiltrator cuts him off. “I’m fine, Prime. Just had to get a little further into the code, that’s all - thanks for grounding me.” The larger mech hesitates, but backs off at the smile Jazz offers him, and turns towards the hall himself.
“Ratchet will need us - can you lend a hand?”
Jazz nods, slipping into the hallway, and does his best to ignore the agonized hiss that Optimus lets out upon seeing the damaged mecha lying in the torture chamber. Ratchet is deep in his work, reclamping smaller leaks, hoses already busily transferring processed energon from the medic’s lines into the carrier’s, but he glances up to greet them.
“Really nothing I can do down here. He’s not dying, Jazz was right about that - this wasn’t meant to kill him. It’s going to take a lot of work, real, med-bay repairs, but he’ll be ready to move as soon as I’ve got his energon levels above twenty percent.” He fixes Jazz with a glare. “And don’t think I can’t tell what you did. All of his firewalls, Jazz? Really? You can spend the time putting those back together before I bring him back online, and do a damn good job of it - I’m not having a processor-wounded mech panicking in my medbay because you couldn’t knock him offline without ripping through half his processor.”
“He had already been online through me pulling two dozen sticks of rebar out of his chassis, Ratchet. I wanted him offline, I wanted it painless, and I wanted it fast.”
“He was online for… Primus.” The medic looks shaken even further at that, optics bright. “Primus.” He stares down at his patient, field teeking distress, for a moment as energon slowly drains into the mech. His gaze only flicks up when Ironhide enters the room.
“Ratch, Wheeljack says the little guys are as good as they’re gonna get. He’s strapping them to the table, and I’m gonna carry them out - you got this guy, Prime?”
Optimus nods, transforming, and Ratchet is careful as he straps the injured mech to the Autobot commander’s bed. The trip back up the tunnel is slow, the two frontliners careful not to jostle their precious cargo, and a bulky shuttle meets them at the top. It’s a long, silent trip back to base, and Jazz lets himself drift on the edge of recharge, listening to Wheeljack and Ratchet argue over some aspect or another of cassette medical care. Optimus, besides him, is warm, Ironhide a comforting presence at the minibot’s other side, and between them, he allows himself to come down from the mission high, spark slowing to pulse at a calmer, steady rate.