Chapter Text
It wasn't quite the usual night for Cetax. Ferrying low-priority supplies to and from the guards at Trypticon’s gates was normally quite the boring job, but today a seemingly endless chain of accidents had forced the hulking submarine-bot to take a longer route to his destination. Not that carrying a fresh load of stasis cuffs wasn’t enough work, no, he was also nearly an hour late! Grumbling, he approached the outmost gate and stood still in front of the scanner affixed to the guardhouse. After five kliks, he hear an affirming beep and a ping reached his comm-line: “C’mon in. Be quick about it.”
Stepping through the gate, Cetax gave a curt nod to the two Autotroopers guarding it and smiled at the security-mech approaching him from the second gate. “Evening, Cloudcutter! Got the shipment.”
Cloudcutter didn’t answer, he just motioned towards the prison. “Inside. Now.” From up close, Cetax could see his tense expression and wondered just what as going on with his guard friend. Nontheless, he followed the black car-alt inside, through the three gates and into the prison, where they went into a security station after being critically surveyed by multiple minicons. Cloudcutter gestured towards the spare supply crates stacked in the corner. Cetax shot him a look. “No more room in the storage areas? How many detainment devices did High Command even order?”
“Don’t ask me,” muttered Cloudcutter before sitting down and sighing loudly into his hands. “Just put ‘em there for the time being. Sen-- the acting Magnus is on edge. He’s been tight on security for the last few months, but that’s nothing compared to now.”
“Sentinel is a paranoiac lugnut, if you care for my opinion”, Cetax snorted as he unloaded the crates of stasis cuffs from his subspace and tried his best to balance them on the dangerously wobbly stack in the corner.
“That’s just it, Cetax”, Cloudcutter continued, now staring at the wall of security camera screens. “That’s just it! Last week I’d have agreed with you but -- to be quite honest, either he’s right or the constant changing orders and demands of total vigilance are frying my synapses.”
Alarmed, Cetax made his way to his friend. “Right? Clouds -- not that I don’t get the tightened security, the ‘cons could try and break out the old slagmaker any second, but you, endorsing Sentinel’s alarmist hogwash?”
“Worse than right,” Cloudcutter corrected himself and turned to Cetax. “I know you can keep a secret, and that’s the only reason I’ll tell you this.”
Then, he sent an encrypted ping to Cetax, whose face gradually fell as he decoded it and processed the contents.
[We’ve been getting encrypted probing signals into the sky spy cams for months now - usually that’d be Autobot Command snooping around, we’re under order to not act on that, but --don’t laugh!-- I had a bad feeling about those. The frequency of incoming pings was unusual too, increasing massively last week. But that’s just when we got orders to double down on our security protocols. Again. The minicons noticed nothing unusual, which is why we assumed...oh, well. You know how it is. No doubt gets out.]
[Hate to say it, but that makes sense, Clouds. With all the things Sentinel imposed on us...curfew, closing down entire areas...I’d expect nothing less than High Command not being able to keep their fingers away from the security feeds of the whole planet.]
Cloudcutter looked conflicted as he answered.
[Well, it’s back to normal now.]
“Wouldn’t that be good thing?”, Cetax asked out loud, puzzled.
[ARE Y-- are you out of your mind?!], Cloudcutter shot back. [We get supposedly harmless signals interfering with the camera data transfer of the prison that holds Megatron! First it’s nothing out of the ordinary, then they increase just as orders to “keep an eye open for suspicious activity” arrive, and then, right after orders to double down again yesterday, suddenly -- nothing! All back to normal!]
The security-mech sank into his chair, as if to melt into the dark of the room, and locked eyes with his friend.
“I saw something”, he confessed, out loud. “Just a few hours ago - I swear, one of the sky-spies caught a shadow outside the first gate. Only a small flicker of a wing in the edge of the screen.” He turned towards the cameras again, almost as if speaking to himself. “I alerted everyone, of course. Had every corner checked, every camera feed rewound and rewound, every field scanner looked at. Nothing. Head of Security’s sent out troopers, interrogating every single civilian seen in a one-mile radius. Hell, we’re in the process of interrogating the guards.”
“And you got nothing?”
“Not a glimpse. No tampering with the cameras, either. Inquiries about the probing signals are going to Intelligence, and now…”
“Now you sit and wait, locked into the same premises as maybe-a-’con, maybe-the-manifestation-of-Sentinel’s-paranoia.”, Cetax completed the sentence. He laid a hand on Cloudcutter’s shoulder in what he hoped was a reassuring gesture. “Hey, if anything’s happening, you’ll catch it. You’re not stationed at Cybertron’s most secure prison for nothing.”
Cloudcutter relaxed a little. “Right. Thanks for listening.” He started fiddling with a cable coming out of his right arm. “Just let me plug back into the camera feed, then you should be free to--”
An absolute cacophony descended upon the two robots as the wobbly pile of crates in the corner finally destabilized and crashed down on them.
There was a momentary pause as the they freed themselves from the pile, and the ruckus and noise until they were back on their feet and had gotten the supply crates stacked back up lasted just long enough for them to not notice the clattering of small feet against a crawlspace in the ceiling.