Chapter Text
When he was reassigned to Petrex, Prowl took advantage of the housing provided by Law Enforcement of the City-State of Praxus, who had informed him of his new address. Prowl's new home was an older detached house in a cul-de-sac tucked behind Petrex's downtown. It was surprisingly quiet, and Prowl's neighbours were mostly older mecha. The house was partly furnished, and while it was not all to Prowl's taste, it would do for now.
One piece Prowl did like was a large mirror that hung in the entryway. It took up perhaps three-quarters of the wall's height and was broad enough that Prowl could stand a pace in front of it and see nearly all of his doors. If he stood at the top of the ramp leading to the second storey, he could also use the mirror to see anyone coming through the door, though it would be difficult for them to see him. While he couldn't immediately think of a reason that would be useful, it was good to know that he could.
Prowl had been in the house for just under a deca-cycle and hadn't spent much time there. He'd been assigned to investigate a high-profile robbery and had been extremely busy. He had spent some nights at the station, gone without recharge some days, and caught a few joors at home during the day. But his diligence had paid off, and the criminal caught, and Prowl planned to celebrate with some good ener-wine and an early night to get caught up on his rest. He didn't regularly do this upon solving a case, but he felt the successful resolution of his first case in Petrex warranted a small celebration.
Prowl was on his second glass, about to finish the mystery novel he'd been reading and confirm who the murderer was, when an odd sound caught his attention. He looked up, frowning, for a moment, but the noise didn't repeat. It was night, and the house was beginning to cool; it had likely just been the heat coming on. Prowl hadn't spent enough time in the house yet to be familiar with all its sounds. He dismissed it and returned to his novel.
The sound occurred again a breem later, and he looked up again. Had it been the heat turning off again, perhaps? He noted no significant temperature change, so he accessed the house's systems and checked the HVAC readings.
The heat had been running steadily since before he'd heard the first sound. Prowl's kitchen was simple, little more than a storage unit and an energon dispenser, and his personal terminal was off. So what had made the noise?
Prowl set aside his fictional mystery to investigate the real-life one. He searched the house for anything else that might possibly have made noise. The only other likely candidate was the cleanser heating tank, which was on a timer and not set to turn on anytime soon. Prowl only needed cleanser warmed when he took his evening shower before bed, several joors away. Besides, Prowl was sure the noise had not come from that direction. He didn't think it had come from upstairs but headed up to check anyway, just to be sure. The upstairs was even quieter than the downstairs had been. Prowl paused for a long moment to listen and be sure, but there was nothing.
Prowl didn't like not finding an answer, but he didn't see what more he could do. He would just have to wait for the sound to repeat itself and try to triangulate it better next time. There was an answer, even if Prowl didn't know what it was.
Heading back down the ramp, he thought he caught a flicker of movement in the mirror. That was less of a mystery – there was a window in the ramp, and it could easily have been a reflection, not from the street but perhaps from the house next door. There was nothing there now, but it could have been someone briefly turning on a light to see their way. Most Cybertronians had night vision, but regular light was sometimes comforting.
Still, Prowl had difficulty concentrating on his novel after that, though he did. At least that presented a resolution. The murderer had been who he thought, and he finished his wine and went to bed. He might have had a successful day, but he was still tired.
Prowl absently checked the potential angles for light reflection in the mirror to see if he could determine where it had come from. But he saw nothing in the mirror and did not hear the sound.
Prowl's work life kept edging into his personal life, and his time at his house was often sporadic. He occasionally heard the noise but could not determine what it was. It was close to the front of the house, and he had to conclude it was possibly from outside. But checking the front step when he heard it didn't provide any more answers. It was a touch frustrating, he had to admit.
There were other things, too. Whispers, the sound of footsteps late at night and Prowl's neighbours were not the kind to be out late. By and large, they seemed to have early nights, which might have been why Prowl didn't see much of them, for the most part.
One mech did intercept him on his way home one evening. Prowl had spent much of the day driving from place to place. He wanted to stretch his legs, so he walked from the end of the street. One of his neighbours, an ancient blue mech, waved at him from their front step, where they were trimming the crystals in a box on the railing.
"Hey there," they said in a gravelly voice. "You're the new mech, right? The cop?"
Prowl stopped, pleased to have encountered a neighbour willing to hold a conversation. "Yes, I am. My designation is Prowl."
"I'm Kup," the mech said, pinging Prowl his RFID. "Good to have a new face around. That house has been empty for a while."
Prowl nodded, having been aware of this. "So I was advised when I was assigned there. The property was in good repair when I took it over."
"Oh yeah," Kup said cheerfully. "Enforcers keep it up pretty well, and it's a quiet street. Not a lot of people coming around who don't live here. Been that way for a while."
"Have you lived here long?" Prowl enquired.
"Oh, few vorns, on and off," Kup said with a wave of his hand that seemed to dismiss time. "Sometimes I get bored, take off, travel around a bit. You know how it goes."
Prowl wasn't quite old enough to know how it went, but the life Kup described wasn't uncommon for older Cybertronians. Prowl was still working and saving to build up sufficient funds to do the same thing. It would likely take several vorns.
"I'm afraid I don't know yet personally," Prowl said politely. "But I certainly hope to at some point."
Kup nodded understandingly. "Yup, you should definitely go for it. But that's enough jawing on the front step — why don't you come out back with me, grab some visco, and I'll tell you about the old neighbourhood?"
Prowl had no plans that evening and could see no reason to decline his neighbour's offer. Kup was friendly enough, and Prowl was interested in what Kup had to say. He'd always liked history.
Kup had plenty of history to relate.
"I even remember before this street was built up as residential," Kup said in the second joor of Prowl's visit. "Used to be some kind of experimental place. I never knew exactly what, but the rumour is it was some way-out stuff. Temporal, dimensional…. I never heard any real proof, though. The place was demolished ages ago when the funding ran out. Don't worry, though: there was nothing toxic and I never heard about any accidents or anything."
Prowl knew that didn't mean there hadn't been any, simply that it hadn't been released to the public. If it hadn't, that didn't indicate a conspiracy or cover-up, simply that the accident wasn't severe enough to alert the public over. He wondered what other information he could find about the industrial complex that had been here before the area had been re-zoned as residential. It certainly must have been a long time ago, given the age of the area.
It was late when Kup had to break off their conversation because a comm call had come in from an old friend he hadn't talked to in ages. Prowl politely thanked his host and found his way back to the street. The evening had been enjoyable, and someone approaching him in a friendly manner was easier than the other way around. It had also been interesting to hear the history of his house and new neighbourhood.
The exterior lights came on when Prowl started up the short path to his front door. Prowl paid little attention to the mirror as he passed it in the hallway; it was just a part of the furnishings. He still occasionally caught flickers of light in it from the outside late at night, and when he was alone and deep into a mystery, they were a comforting reminder that he was not the only one around.
The one that was there now, though, was unusual, out of place. It was late in the evening, but still light enough out that the mirror shouldn't have reflected light from the neighbours. The flicker should not have been there.
Frowning, Prowl stepped back and then forward again to see if the hallway light had somehow reflected off him to create the effect. It hadn't; the only light was the hall light, which burned steadily and should have provided a steady reflection.
Used to be some kind of experimental place. Temporal, dimensional, way out stuff like that.
Firmly, Prowl told himself that was nonsense. If the experiments had been successful in any way, the technology would have been developed further and put to use. Besides, the facility had been demolished tens of vorns ago. Nothing was left, and any side effects would be long gone, assuming there had been any. Prowl was simply on edge from a mind full of mysteries and old stories. He was tired and had indulged in high-grade. His imagination was running away with him.
The flicker had been there, though. Would it come back? Prowl sat on the ramp for a while, watching the mirror, but nothing happened. Still, if odd things happened when Prowl was there, did they happen when he wasn't? It could simply be some flaw in his own sensors or perception or something else he hadn't been able to pin down yet. One disadvantage to the odd hours he sometimes worked was being unable to determine a pattern. But that was easily solvable.
The interior surveillance equipment arrived within two cycles. Prowl ensured it was secure and confined to his household LAN, then ran a system check, walking through areas covered by motion sensors and answering the alert on his HUD. The video clip showed him walking through his entryway, ending when he moved out of range. Provided he was monitoring, Prowl would be able to see any activity immediately and respond or request a response.
Nothing happened for the first few cycles, which Prowl felt he should be relieved by. But this lack of evidence prevented him from solving a mystery and so was mildly annoying instead. Perhaps he had been imagining it, overreacting to being alone in a new home in a new city. It seemed unlike him, but people did react in unusual ways at times.
The other possibility, of course, was that whatever was happening, it did only occur when Prowl was present.
That was a disquieting thought and Prowl tried to think of a way to test it. Two deca-cycles after he'd set up the security system, Prowl got his opportunity. Bluestreak, a former colleague of Prowl's who had left the Enforcers to become an engineer, was planning to be in town for a conference. Prowl had a spare room and invited his friend to stay with him, saving the mech the cost of a hotel room and giving Prowl a week's worth of company.
They spent the first evening of Bluestreak's visit talking and reminiscing, and finally, Prowl told Bluestreak about the odd sound and flickers he'd been noticing. He also told Bluestreak about the history of the house and neighbourhood.
"Oh, wow," Bluestreak said when Prowl had finished. "I know a little bit about temporal and dimensional engineering – you need it to build and repair space bridges – did you want me to check the literature for anything about the old facility?"
Prowl hadn't even thought to ask Bluestreak about the old facility, but perhaps his old friend would find something Prowl hadn't even known to look for.
"If you have the time, I'd appreciate it," Prowl said, meaning it as Bluestreak's time was primarily spoken for by the conference. "Do you think that whatever they did or was here could still affect the area after all this time?"
"It would depend on what they were doing," Bluestreak said seriously. "Maybe. It would also depend on whether or not any of the old equipment or even any of its components was still around. But you said your neighbour said it was all torn down vorn, so there's probably not. Unless they just razed what was on top and built over the rest." He looked thoughtful. "Do you have a basement?"
Prowl did have a basement, though he didn't think it contained any secrets. Still, Bluestreak would probably know better than he what to look for, so they went into the cellar. Bluestreak paced the length and breadth of the room, took measurements, made scans, muttered obliquely to himself, and finally turned to Prowl and shrugged.
"There might be something underneath here from the old facility, but I can't be sure with just my scanners. There's equipment that can do it, but it's not the kind of thing you can access fast, especially outside of a build." Bluestreak looked thoughtful. "Unless…oh, have you checked the records of the Undergrid?"
"I did," Prowl confirmed. "It didn't show anything. But you know how those records are."
Cybertron's Undergrid was a hodgepodge of building foundations, built-over streets and occasionally entire buildings, old mining tunnels and places where the old walls had collapsed. It was dangerous and poorly mapped, and anyone who tried to map it swore it changed constantly.
"Yeah," Bluestreak said, looking deflated, but only momentarily. "But I can probably dig up some of the older maps. It might help if we can see if something was there. The Undergrid being unpredictable means it might still be, or at least not have moved too far."
"Thank you, Bluestreak."
The basement having failed to surrender any secrets, they went back upstairs. There didn't seem to be anything else to be done about the strange events right now, and the conversation eventually drifted back to more mundane topics.
Prowl accompanied Bluestreak up the ramp as they went to bed, hoping to see the flicker in the mirror again. But that night, there was nothing.
Jazz was usually good with locks. Really good. Scarily good, some people said, and he was glad those people weren't here to see him fail entirely to bypass this one. It was some fragging complex thing with a keypad and a mechanical component, and the code kept scrambling randomly. He couldn't quite get a pattern down of why and when it did it, either. He'd have been impressed if he hadn't also been trapped.
"It's not working, is it?" Stampede asked. The mech was slumped in a corner, energon leaking out around the fingers clamped over his wound. Jazz had done his best, but there was no patching that with a field kit. Mech needed a real medic, and Jazz knew a lot about internal mechanisms, but not as much as he needed to.
"Ain't got it yet,' Jazz said through gritted teeth. "But — frag!" He pushed back from the wall and took a few seconds to centre himself. Needed to get outta here, but he wasn't going to do anyone any good if he made mistakes. "Just keep talking, mech. Keep talking so I know you're okay."
"Jazz — " Stampede's voice dissolved into static. " — know I — "
"Yeah, Stampede, I know. Keep telling me about it."
"I…" Stampede's words cut off in static, and then there was silence, the kind that had nothing, and it went on. Jazz resisted the urge to turn and look or to say the mech's name again. He knew what colour gray that silence meant.
Jazz gave up on the lock and took a klik to lay Stampede out properly, possibly the last thing he'd ever do for the mech. Then he started a meticulous search of the room, looking for another way, any way, out of there. He could still hear the battle above, meaning there was still time to carry out his mission if he could just free himself.
There was a mirror on the wall that Jazz was pretty sure was the one-way kind used to observe experiments or interrogations, spiderwebbed over with cracks. Jazz had ignored it earlier since he hadn't wanted to try hauling himself and an injured mech through a broken window. Now, he smashed a corner out to check out the other side. It didn't help. The ceiling had collapsed at some point, Primus only knew when or from what, blocking the door. No way out there.
Another rumble sounded from above, and shortly after that, the lights flickered out, leaving Jazz in the dark. Somehow, that made the sounds of the battle going on above seem even louder. Jazz had lost track of how long it had been going on since he and his team had slipped into the facility, looking for ways to sabotage the automated artillery. It should've been easy. This was just a building the Cons had commandeered and fortified, not a purpose-built fortress or base. But just like everything else about this battle that had gone south, gotten Jazz trapped and Stampede killed.
A vent was in the wall near the floor, but it wasn't big enough for a mech to fit through, so that wasn't a way out. Jazz still cut the grating loose and sent a probe snaking down as far as he could just to see if he could get an idea of what was nearby — maybe it would be worth going through the floor? — but no luck. No vents were near the ceiling, so there was no way out there, either. He'd used his explosives earlier to get in here — the first of many things that had gone slagwise — so he was stuck for now. Someone would show up eventually, right?
Yeah. Maybe. Jazz just hoped it would be someone he wanted to see.
Bluestreak's research revealed that Prowl's section of his neighbourhood had been most likely built over the section of the labs that held a dimensional rift generator. The temporal labs had been further east: a park was there now.
"So all of the equipment was stripped out when the facility was demolished," Bluestreak explained over dinner one night. "There shouldn't be anything left of it, and there shouldn't be anything causing effects now."
"But?" Prowl prompted, hearing it in his friend's voice.
"But, there have been recorded instances of dimensional engineering having ripple effects even after the equipment's been decommissioned," Bluestreak went on. "See, even if you're not explicitly studying temporal engineering, it and dimensional engineering go hand-in-hand, so there can be temporal side effects. You might be catching flickers of what was here a long time ago."
"Is it dangerous?" Prowl asked.
Bluestreak shook his head. "No. You'd need some kind of power to open the rift any further, and we didn't find any evidence of anything big enough to power it up.
"If I am seeing ripples from another dimension, that's an unknown," Prowl pointed out. "We don't know what could be happening over there. Or if they can perceive anything of us."
"Well, no," Bluestreak admitted. "And I suppose we can't even really say that if anything was going to happen it would have happened already since time is involved and everything." Prowl raised an optic ridge at him. "Oh, but I'm sure it will be fine," Bluestreak added quickly. "They weren't working on anything dangerous, after all."
Prowl hoped not but supposed there was nothing to be done if they had been. He could have moved, but he liked his neighbourhood and preferred to save for a retirement phase by not spending on housing. He certainly had no idea how he would explain a request for a transfer to a new residence, even if one could be found. 'I think my house may be affected by the residual temporal energy of experiments run on the site vorn ago, and I'd like to move because of it' was slightly better than 'I think my house is haunted,' but not by much.
They kept trying various things and finally caught the flicker on video one night when Bluestreak went up the ramp first, and Prowl waited for a few kliks before following him. Out of the corner of his optic, there it was. Once again, he wasn't quick enough to catch it when looking directly at it, but at least now there was video.
"Oh, it's so strange!" Bluestreak breathed when they studied the footage. "That definitely isn't caused by anything outside. There wasn't anything, I know, because I was watching through the window just in case. Can we slow it down and watch it again?"
They did, though it didn't help much. Bluestreak found an open-source program on the datanet that allowed them to enhance the image. It didn't provide as high-quality an enhancement as the software available to Enforcers would have, but it did well enough.
"Y'know," Bluestreak said, staring at it once they got an acceptable image and slowed it down to a crawl, "maybe you should tell your bosses that your house is haunted after all."
The image was still blurry; they couldn't make out features, but it was clearly an image of a mech pacing. They couldn't make out the background: it seemed like the mech was using a headlamp at low power to give himself some light.
"I don't think so," Prowl said, frowning. "I can't make out much of the background, but what I can see doesn't look like my house."
"No," Bluestreak said slowly. "it doesn't, but even though I can't see much, I don't think that looks like a lab in the background."
"I don't think so either," Prowl said. "But I – "
"Is that a body?" Bluestreak interrupted incredulously as the light swept across a corner of the room when he turned.
"Yes," Prowl said. The colour quality in the footage was poor, but there was a distinct difference between a mech in stasis and a dead mech. The mech laid out in the corner had clearly grayed, though the quality was too poor for Prowl to determine a cause of death.
"Do you think the living mech killed him?" Bluestreak asked.
"I'm not sure," Prowl said. He watched the footage again, gauging the mech's posture and body language. The mech seemed to be experiencing stress and either did not want to leave or expected not to be able to because he never tried the door. At one point, the mech's shoulders seemed to drop regretfully when he looked over at the dead mech, but again, the footage was too poor to be sure.
"You know, this is a lot of time passing versus what we recorded," Bluestreak said thoughtfully. "There must be a temporal differential at work. No wonder you see a blur and not a mech."
"So there's no way to communicate with him?" Prowl asked, his thoughts a cascade of none-too-pleasant conclusions and ideas. There was only one way to get real answers and that was from the source, the mech on the video, as impossible as that seemed.
Bluestreak looked at him curiously. "No? I mean, probably not. Not without the right equipment, anyway. Why?"
"I just – I've been seeing this since I moved in. Primus only knows how long he's been doing this. I think he's trapped."
"Or imprisoned," Bluestreak pointed out. "It's another dimension. Even if it looks like ours, for all we know, he's a murderer imprisoned with the frame of his victim."
"It would seem odd to have such a punishment for murder without also wanting to inter or smelt the victim," Prowl said. "Although, I suppose it is, as you said, another dimension."
"I suppose." Bluestreak paused, thinking. "I suppose it would be an interesting experiment to see if we can make contact. How do you feel about a houseful of engineers checking this out?"
Bluestreak had been exaggerating when he'd said 'a houseful' of engineers as only three more showed up, but it felt like they were filling the space. Bluestreak had mentioned Wheeljack before, but Socket and Boulder were new names. The equipment they brought added to the crowded feeling, and Prowl wound up retreating back up the ramp of his own home to give them space. There was a lot of technical jargon Prowl didn't quite follow, but from what he got out of it, they were taking temporal and dimensional readings and attempting to compensate for the time differential. If they succceeded, they would be able to view the other dimension in relatively real time.
"What about communication?" Prowl asked once they paused their discussion and non-engineers could get a word in.
"Communicate?" Boulder asked in surprise. "With the mech on the other side?"
"Are you sure you want to do that, Prowl?" Bluestreak asked. "We don't know why he's there."
"Exactly," Prowl said. "He could be imprisoned, as you said, but he could also be trapped. We won't know unless we ask — if he'll talk to us. I imagine this will be a very strange experience for him."
"It might not work," Boulder warned.
"Perhaps not," Prowl admitted, then explained the sounds he'd been hearing. "I could never pinpoint their location, but perhaps, the mirror…? Though I've not heard them recently."
"Maybe?" Bluestreak hedged. "It probably wasn't communication, though. It was more likely a-an effect of dimensions intersecting."
"That wouldn't be a true noise," Boulder pointed out. "Just how we perceive it. But…it could show we can get more than just images through."
"Even if it works, he might not respond," Socket cautioned. "Or he might not be someone we want to talk to."
All of that was very probable, Prowl knew. But the image of the mech pacing a dark room with only a corpse for company wouldn't leave him. "I know. But surely it's worthwhile to try."
The three engineers exchanged glances, and then Boulder shrugged. "It would make for a heck of a paper, no matter what, right?" he suggested, sounding as if he were half-joking.
"Alright," Bluestreak said and turned back to his equipment. "Let's see what we can do."