Chapter Text
Fortunately for June, Miko did what she was told, and June’s phone rang within minutes.
“Mrs. Darby.” Ratchet sounded vaguely annoyed at being interrupted in whatever he’d been doing, and June had never been so glad to hear his voice. “Miko said you wanted me to call you.”
“Yes, thank you, Ratchet, it’s…” June hesitated, then sighed. “It’s just easier to put you on speaker and let him tell you.”
“…let who tell me what?” Ratchet asked, voice fading as she took the phone away from her ear and tapped the ‘speakerphone’ icon. She could hear him at normal volume again on the last word.
“Knock Out needs your help,” she said quickly.
“What?” Any annoyance fled Ratchet’s voice, replaced instantly with concern. “June, are you hurt? In danger?”
“Your pet human is fine,” Knock Out said, sounding put out that he wasn’t someone’s first concern.
“Knock Out, I don’t know what you want but if you – “
“Oh, can the dramatics, Autobot. I saved her from some mutual friends of ours – they like dark cars, matching uniforms, experimenting on Cybertronians – and I haven’t done anything.” An unspoken ‘yet’ hung in the air. “MECH did something to me, and I’m stuck in car form. If you want your human back, you’ll meet me at these coordinates,” weird characters scrolled across the suddenly black screen of the phone then vanished, “and bring your medical kit.”
“Are you bringing any other Decepticons with you?”
“Noooo, not that I expect you to believe me, just like I don’t believe that you would show up all by your lonesome either.”
“I – “
“Look, bring whoever you want, just fix this.” Knock Out was clearly annoyed and June hoped it didn’t mean things were about to go badly for her. “You fix me, I give you the human, and we all go our separate ways like two happy mechanisms, and one happy little squishy.”
“I’ll meet you at the coordinates shortly. June,” Ratchet addressed her in the calm, reassuring voice she’d used and heard used a thousand and more times at the hospital, “everything will be alright. We’ll have you out of there shortly.”
“I know you will Ratchet,” June said, trying to be equally reassuring. “Thank you.”
June ended the call and, not knowing what else to do with it, put it away in her purse. She didn’t particularly want to talk to Knock Out, even if she could think of anything to say, and the feeling was probably mutual. She wrapped her arms around herself and tried to distract herself by looking out the window at the scenery whipping by.
They’d used to go on drives when Jack was small. She’d sung songs to him and played travel games while his father drove, making the occasional dad joke and even more rarely chiming in on a song. They hadn’t made a road trip together in – it had to be ten years. June promised herself that if – when she got out of this she and Jack would load up the car with terrible food and sodas and take a trip somewhere together. A family trip, just the two of them. They were long overdue.
“Uh oh.” Knock Out finally broke the tense and awkward silence. “Looks like our friends are back.”
June looked up and into Knock Out’s rear-view mirror, seeing two dark Humvees trailing them. “How much further to where you’re meeting Ratchet?”
“Too far,” Knock Out said grimly. “I can try to lose them, but if I were going to attach a control device of any kind to someone, and I’m not saying I have, I’d include a tracker. I’ll do my best. Hang on!”
June didn’t quite catch a small, startled noise when Knock Out suddenly accelerated, changing rapidly between lanes, weaving in and out of traffic, even driving on the shoulder when he had to. She wrapped her hands around the seat belt and tried to think calm thoughts. Horns blared all around them, from drivers who were furious at being cut off. Looking in the rear-view again June saw that the cars behind them were pulling in tight together, helping to block the Humvees from getting any closer. If she could only get rid of the device and its tracker somehow, she –
“Vince,” she said aloud, suddenly remembering something Jack had told her. “Of course!”
“Whatever you’re babbling about had better be useful.”
“Ah – you captured a human during a drag race,” June said quickly, looking over Knock Out’s dashboard for any hint of where the device she was thinking of could be. “Remember?”
“Of course I remember. My memory specs would make one of your so-called ‘supercomputers’ weep with envy. What’s that got to do with anything?” Knock Out snapped.
“You shocked him with something,” June said rapidly. “If you shock the device maybe it’d short it somehow.”
“Well, anything’s worth a shot,” he admitted grudgingly. “If I can access – there!” Something June wouldn’t have wanted to see in any other situation unfolded from what looked like the passenger-side glove compartment. “Hold out your arm and try not to twitch too much.”
“Like I’ve got a choice,” June muttered but obeyed. The claw-like device Knock Out had just transformed out snapped closed around her wrist and it hurt, electricity shooting up her arm, and –
“Ohhh,” June moaned, coming to. She raised a hand to her face. “What…? How…?”
She’d been hoping it was a dream, but that idea was demolished when Knock Out answered her.
“Shorting out the device shorted you out as well. But it might have done the trick. I haven’t seen so much as a headlight glint from our would-be welcoming committee since.” He sounded as smug as if it had been his idea. June let it go. “Don’t go getting ideas about me letting you out, though. I still can’t transform, so you’re my insurance until Ratchet fixes me. And I’m certainly not showing up without you.”
June rubbed at her wrist, soothing it even though it didn’t really feel numb or tingly. The device might be inactive, but it hadn’t unlocked yet. It felt looser, or maybe that was just her imagination, but she couldn’t get it over her hand. Dammit. Not that she had any way out of Knock Out, but she would have felt better with it off, at least. She wondered if Knock Out still being unable to transform was caused by the device she was wearing or by whatever MECH had done to him. Either way, she hoped Ratchet would be able to undo it soon.
“How – “
“I swear to Primus if what you’re about to say is any variation on ‘are we there yet’ I will shock you into reboot again and keep shocking you till we’re at the rendezvous.”
Alright, then. June chose the better part of valour and folded her hands in her lap, watching the scenery again and trying not to think about the machine holding her hostage – either of them.
***
The spot Knock Out had chosen for a rendezvous was one of the old ghost towns that dotted rural Nevada. The road to it wasn’t paved, had probably never been, and Knock Out complained about the damage being done to his finish the whole way. June bit the inside of her lower lip, worrying at it, an old nervous tic she thought she’d ditched in college. What if Ratchet had been held up? What if they hadn’t really ditched MECH? What if Decepticons found them before Ratchet could fix Knock Out? What if, what if, what if…?
Just calm down, June, she told herself. Focus on the positive. Ratchet will be there. He’ll fix this. You can go home and hug Jack and do something to relax. A bubble bath, maybe, and an Audrey Hepburn movie. Breakfast at Tiffany’s? No…Roman Holiday. That’s the one. A fun road trip movie. Maybe open that bottle of wine Alice gave you at Christmas. If ever you deserved a drink after a long day…
Run-down buildings slowly came into view on the horizon. The ground in front of one of them looked like it had been recently disturbed. It was a large, barn-like building that would be a logical place for two Cybertronians to meet if they didn’t want to be seen. Knock Out seemed to agree because he rolled toward it, eased himself inside.
June could have wept with gratitude to see Ratchet’s bulky red-and-white form waiting inside.
“I came alone,” Ratchet said, looking at June through Knock Out’s windshield. “I’m willing to repair you, but first let the human go.”
“Of course,” Knock Out said smoothly. “That was our agreement, wasn’t it?” He released June’s seatbelt and opened the driver’s side door. June got out, fast, and went quickly over to Ratchet.
“June,” Ratchet said, dropping to one knee and placing one huge hand between her and Knock Out. He wasn’t touching her, but it made her feel much safer. “Are you alright? Have you been harmed?”
June managed a smile, wrapping one arm across her torso and gripping the opposite elbow. “I’m fine. Just a little stressed.”
Ratchet frowned slightly, looking her over. “I’m reading excess electrical activity on your right arm. Are you certain you’re alright?”
“Yes,” she assured him. “Knock Out did shock me but it was at my request,” she added hastily, seeing Ratchet’s frown begin to deepen. “MECH was following us, and we had to disrupt the tracker in,” she showed him the device, “this.”
Ratchet, very carefully, lifted her arm a little higher using the smallest finger on the hand that wasn’t shielding her to better examine the device. Behind them, Knock Out made a noise remarkably like someone clearing their throat for attention that both Ratchet and June ignored.
“Yes, interesting,” Ratchet said slowly. “Clever, in its own way.”
“Yes, yes, very clever of the little monkeys, I’m sure,” Knock Out said impatiently. “Can you fix whatever it did to me?”
“Hmm? Oh, yes, yes, it shouldn’t be a problem.”
June followed Ratchet over to Knock Out, absently fiddling with the device on her arm as Ratchet did something that looked a lot more like mechanics than medicine to June’s eye. Not that there was much of a difference with this patient, she supposed. She only knew when he was finished when Knock Out abruptly transformed. June took a hasty step back, and Ratchet scooped her up protectively. It was the first time he’d so much as touched her, and June was distantly surprised to find he was warm. She supposed she shouldn’t be. Metal or not, he was alive after all.
“Finally,” the Decepticon groaned, stretching. “Well, it’s been a slice, but I must be going.”
“Hyep, ep ep!” Ratchet interrupted. “Not just yet. I still need to disconnect you from the device attached to June. It’s separate from the transformation lock.”
“Ugh, fine! Just hurry up!”
Ratchet set June down, gently, in the hayloft. “I’ll just be a minute. Try to relax, you’ve had a stressful day.”
June managed a small smile. “No kidding. Not the road trip I had planned.”
Ratchet didn’t smile back; she got the feeling he was scanning her again. “I imagine not. Wait there.”
*
Ratchet fortified his firewalls, making sure that the connection between himself and Knock Out only worked one way, and cabled up to Knock Out at data transfer level to scan the Decepticon’s systems. Unfortunately, as basic as it was, it still permitted a level of communication.
‘Don’t you Autobots have something about medical privacy?’
Ratchet narrowed his linguistic response protocols, ensuring he would transmit only the most necessary glyphs back to Knock Out. He didn’t need to include any kind of emotional glyph or glyph marker for this.
‘She can’t see what I’m doing, nor would she understand it if she could. Stay quiet while I scan you.’
Knock Out didn’t bother limiting his own linguistic protocols. Ratchet could feel a sly interest in the other doctor’s response. ‘Keeping secrets? Doesn’t seem very Autobot of you. Or don’t you trust your human allies?’
Ratchet pointedly didn’t respond, chasing down the malicious code infecting Knock Out. He tracked it back to a cluster of human-made nanomachines infecting the lower levels of Knock Out’s communications suite. They were a level of sophistication above what Ratchet had thought to be possible for humanity, suggesting they were pale copies of nanomachines sourced from a Cybertronian. Breakdown, most likely. Once he realized that, it was easy enough to transmit a standard kill code to them, shutting them down.
‘I’ve turned off the infectious nanomachines MECH injected into you,’ he informed Knock Out. ‘Your internal maintenance systems will recycle them within the next day or so. Here,’ he transmitted data, ‘are their schematics so you can work on an inoculation.’
‘Helping the enemy, doctor? Would Optimus approve?’
‘Optimus would approve of preventing suffering, which is what I assume would happen to any Cybertronian unfortunate enough to fall into MECH’s clutches.’
Knock Out flinched: just barely, but it was there, and Ratchet filed the reaction away for future use. ‘Indeed, but if you’re quite done…’
‘I just want – ‘
Behind them, June cried out in surprise and pain.
*
June paced while Ratchet worked, stretching out the kinks of sitting so long and getting rid of some of her nervous energy. Whatever the two Cybertronians were doing, they were doing it silently. Ratchet’s body blocked her view of his hands, and she didn’t pace a wide enough area she might see, respecting his desire for privacy. It made for a small, tight circle but she was okay with that.
It’s almost done, she reminded herself. Remember, bubble bath, Roman Holiday, wine. Or – I still have the hotel room booked, if Ratchet would ground bridge me back to my car I’ll still be able to attend the reunion. Might have to watch a different movie but I’m still good on the other two…and it’d be a shame to lose the deposit on the room. MECH doesn’t know to find me there, either. I need to replace some of my clothes and shoes, Carson City has more shops than Jasper… And I could definitely use the vacation!
To distract herself, June started a list in her head of things she needed to replace. Ratchet hadn’t told her what he was doing, but he hadn’t really moved since he’d started it. Maybe something to do with software? June knew as little about Cybertronian medicine as Ratchet had known about human medicine when they met. She didn’t know that much about computers or software either so that probably put her at more of a disadvantage. Heck, Raf must know more about what Ratchet did as the Autobot’s medic than she did!
Although – she rubbed at her wrist again – maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad idea to learn.
The device on her wrist felt tighter than it had before, and she frowned down at it. Surely it was her imagination?
Ratchet shifted his weight, ever so slightly. June thought he must be almost done with Knock Out. Good, that meant that getting this thing off her would be the next –
The device clamped down tight on her wrist, too tight, and she cried out. Ratchet whipped around, with the speed that always surprised her when she thought about how big the Autobots were.
“June! What is it?” Ratchet demanded, reaching out to her and then hesitating because he apparently didn’t know what to do.
“I-it’s getting tight!” June gasped, prying at it. “Too tight. Ratchet, I – “
“Let me see,” he ordered, and June held out her arm, even though her instincts screamed at her to hug it to her instead.
“Oh, for…” she heard Knock Out say in the distance, and then there was the sound of – what was that?
Something red and quick, something whirring and loud, flashed in front of her and the pressure released from her arm, the device falling, bouncing off the edge of the hayloft and plunging unheeded to the floor. June stumbled backward, staring wide-eyed at the giant freaking chainsaw the Decepticon was wielding, just before Ratchet’s shoulder filled her vision, blocking her view of Knock Out, chainsaw and all.
“Are you insane?” Ratchet barked. “Do you have any idea what that could do to a human?”
Knock Out huffed, and there was the sound of something transforming. “Please, the human is fine! I have excellent control. You can probably still even get something out of that thing if you want.”
Ratchet spluttered. June tried to bring her heart rate down by forcing herself to take deep breaths.
“You helped get me free of MECH, I helped you get free of MECH,” Knock Out continued blithely. “We’re even now, human. Let’s not do this again, hmm?”
Ratchet blocked Knock Out from June’s view – and vice versa – as Knock Out transformed and sped off. Ratchet stayed put until well past the point the sound of Knock Out’s engine had faded, then turned around. Ratchet muttered something June didn’t quite catch, and which might not even have been in English.
“Are you alright, June?” he asked with concern, peering down at her.
June managed a smile. “I-I’m fine.” She gestured at her newly-freed wrist. “Not even a scratch. I…guess Knock Out really does have excellent control.”
“Well. So long as you’re not injured.” Ratchet bent down and picked up the MECH device, then straightened back up and held out a hand for her to climb into. “Let’s go back to the base, and I’ll bridge you home.”
“Um, actually, if you can bridge me back to my car I’ll have time to make it to my high school reunion. Probably. If that’s alright?” June asked.
Ratchet kept her cupped carefully in his hand as he called for a ground bridge. “Oh, I think we can do better than ‘probably!’”
June managed a shaky smile and leaned against his thumb. “Thanks, Ratchet.”
“Yes, well,” he huffed, not making eye contact, as he stepped through the ground bridge. “You have had a long day.”
“No kidding.” June let her shoulders slump. “I’ve never looked forward to an evening relaxing with Audrey Hepburn so much.”
“Who?”