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Antilla is blisteringly cold after the winter equinox, most of the year, really, if not spent in the valleys of its sprawling mountain ranges—not that D-16 would know. From the moment he stepped foot onto the now-forgotten promised land of ancestors from a time so stripped away from his own it may very well be a separate species, D-16 was whisked away to work where he belonged: the mines.
He wouldn’t agree, of course. D-16 was in the growing habit of thinking mining was not for him. It was a convenience, a job given to him for the sole purport of being cold contracted to be a miner. None of it was his choice, so how could it be home? He’d been a witness to dozens, if not hundreds, lay waste to themselves as they accepted their fate, their wasted potential clung on his unpainted armor thicker than the smog of coal.
It would be torn from him soon when the blistering reminder of the outside world calls for attention.
Another sharp crackle of cold air whizzes past the mine shafts opening, and as much as D-16 wishes to depart back into the warm—perhaps even too warm—depths within the mountain they are excavating, he steps forward. In that single step, rudimentary and habitual, snow crunches under his weight like a splitting strut. In his grasp is a minecart pushed along the shorty craftsmanship of a sparingly put-together rail. The structure rattles uncomfortably with the strain imparted onto it by D-16, and the mech has to let out a sharp ex-vent to usher it along.
Shifts are as long as they are laborious for the crew working on Antilla’s Alnitak Mountains, for the nearing hundred vorns since they arrived, it is only now that D-16 has found himself leaving the cramped shafts for his first turn on the return-report shift. Awkwardly lodged beneath his shoulder joint and chest, is a too-small datapad with the cycle’s reports—a collection of self-generated data that is taken directly from the miner’s monitoring device, which is not to say it is a willing attachment—that he shifts back into place with a shrug.
A final bid for warmth leaves D-16 shuddering as he makes for the first break into the frigid air. Leave it to Impactor to convince D-16 into swapping shifts.
The bright white world that greets D-16 is all but welcoming, he grits his dente and deactivates his optics for a short stall between the first step and the fifth to ensure he doesn’t overload his somatosensory units. It fails, ultimately, when he inevitably has to open his optics and face the blanket of white that drapes ruefully across the landscape.
He flinches when a strong gust of sharp snow, a touch of acceleration away from becoming shards of ice, runs across his face. Instinctively, D-16 raises a servo to shield himself from the bombardment of blister, but it only saves regions of his face rather than the rest of his frame where the ice has found itself in his struts, seams, and every other nook and cranny that isn’t fortified by steel.
Even so, the cold, wind, and endless beyond is not enough to drown out the voice of an embittered foreman—it is a tone that D-16 knows all too well. Unfortunately, D-16 still stands at such a distance that the voice is sparsely understood, if not only recognizable as a voice. It’s a beacon, however, helpful in guiding D-16 in the right direction when the snow has covered the railing he follows fruitlessly.
Every new step brought the voice a little louder, and D-16 continued on a little closer.
“What—you—think?! How——you!!”
D-16 can fill in the gaps of what’s being said, it’s familiar, almost forgettable. He hopes he will not have to face the wrath himself, but he also knows that’s a worthless wish. So, instead, he wishes he were warm instead. Not neglected by another mech on their dying vent in the heat of the mines—sparsely cooled by the drippings of water that comes from the endless snow. He wants a real warmth, one that comes from a hearth, a hot broth, or a gentle frame.
Another crunch from the snow, he realizes this too is a worthless wish.
Finally, just beyond the horizon, D-16 sees his foreman. Fortunately the mech is a color other than white (a dull green, to be exact) and stands out. The foreman represents a quicker report, and thus, a steadier retreat back into the mines—the lesser evil of environments.
Unfortunately, the foreman doesn’t see D-16 approach. Instead he is essentially screaming his helm off at…something.
D-16 tries to focus his gaze on this ‘something,’ perhaps a minicon or misbehaving whatchamacallit mechanical that the company took to using when they arrived at Antilla.
When D-16 reaches the foreman’s side, letting go of his minecart in favor of his too-small datapad he manages to snag one of the unrefined crystals off the top in case he need physical evidence to back up the report, he sees what the foreman is in a frenzy over. It’s a mech. Small, unassuming, and white.
Unassumingly white. Plain white. White as death, white as an A5 main sequence star.
White as the snow.
D-16 blinks, and the mech is almost lost as his optics recycles. They blur back into focus from proximity, the small touch of color clutched within their frame guiding the outline of a living thing into his processor. Harsh, jagged lines jut uncomfortably uncomfortably against their chest. Energon, unrefined and fresh off the cart.
A snow-white thief.
The screaming makes more sense now, but D-16 still finds it unnecessary.
“Worthless trap!” The foreman screams. “Irredeemable savage!”
D-16 snaps back to attention at the foreman, then to the mech. The foreman could simply take the energon back if he wanted to, there didn’t seem to be many others around—oh, no, there were. D-16 finds the scattered patches of color sprinkled throughout the uneven gusts of wind, bringing less or more snow depending on the size and power.
“Let go of Zeta Corp property this instant! You are trespassing on private territory, and stealing the hard earned goods of the Cybertronian populace!”
The foreman seemed to be causing a scene for their favor, or something of the sort.
D-16 tries to overlook it, as he always had. Well, he tried to. There was a point in his life where he wouldn’t let this abuse of power slide; when he was younger, perhaps. Were he stationed at Antilla a handful of deca-vorns ago he would try to stand up for the other mech, to a resound or failure, of course—what good was a single miner against a foreman?—but it didn’t mean he wouldn’t have tried. But he’d been down that road before, and all it got him was a federal prison sentence before they realized he was more useful back in the mines than rotting in prison.
Miners like him were disposable, D-16 was disposable, it was in his very designation. He didn’t like it, but he didn’t have to like it. He simply had to do it, and if doing it meant he could get a few days off the stellar-cycle, well, so be it. He had a sentence to pay; and he wouldn’t let Terminus or anyone else pay for his crime.
As a matter of fact, the situation unfolding before him was unfolding to an eerily similar manner that had gotten him sent to Antilla.
So he stood, still and patient, waiting for his turn to get yelled at. Another handful of expletives, a rush of bitter air, and a second layer to the ice building on his joints proved that the waiting game would likely not work.
Still as the trees that stand at a farther point—their brethren long cut down to make room for the excavation site—D-16 grows increasingly annoyed, he looks at his internal chronometer and finds the day slipping into evening, even if the sky is white regardless. He’d rather go back into the mines now, he has his deca-cyclical call with Terminus tonight.
The foreman is shaking now, though he isn’t sure if it’s from the cold or his anger. The white mech, meanwhile, is not shaking at all, not even from fear; the cold may as well be nonexistent. All they do is clutch harder and harder onto the raw energon crystals with every new verbalization to relinquish them. D-16 tries to study the amount of crystals they have, which is scant number, he could turn around and waltz back into the mines for half a joor and walk out with triple. From that note, he decides to act if not for the reason to just go back into mines and save himself a helmache.
A hearty crunch into the accumulating snow, and D-16 speaks.
“Excuse me—”
The foreman snaps at D-16 direction, suddenly aware of his existence. “What—who are you?”
Another strong crackle of ice makes everyone but the local mech lock up in defense. It appears that yelling is the only method of verbal communication, outside of chastisement.
“D-16.” He states plainly with an obvious raised voice with the intention to be heard as he reaches for the datapad to hand it to the foreman. “I’m here to bring you the cycle’s report.”
The foreman looks D-16 up and down with a sneer. “I’m busy right now.” They yell in return.
D-16 doesn’t turn to the white mech directly, merely offering them a side-glance and is uncomfortably met with the fact that the white mech is staring at him with wide optics.
He ignores it.
“I’m only here to provide the report, and—” D-16 begins and bares his other servo. “This.”
The foreman’s optic light lit up with a soft flicker, creating a soft beacon of yellow beyond the brutal rush of snow. But they catch themselves when white mech tries to step away, betrayed by the snow crunching underneath their weight. In response, D-16 stepped closer.
“With all due respect, sir,” he begins, reverting attention back to him. “The amount of…’stolen property’ isn’t worth it.”
The white mech seems to catch some of what D-16 intended to do by speaking out, and their optics glisten with something akin to hope. D-16 chooses not to let it flourish by justifying their presumption with further action, he was doing this for himself, nothing more.
The foreman scoffs, the hot air condensed into fog and obscures their face for a moment. “Don’t start giving me orders, mech.”
D-16 rolls his shoulders back to make the distance, and his failure, apparent. That was as good of a reaction he was ever going to get. “Of course, sir.”
The foreman suddenly leans back and grabs the white mech by one of the arms, forcing them to drop their precious cargo with a gasp as they begin to struggle against the force of the foreman’s grip. The dull green mech, who stands only a head shorter than D-16, dwarfs the white mech utterly; the force the foreman uses is hardly worthwhile to them, but to the white mech it is an impossible grip to escape from, they let out a scream and begin to pull away harder.
The foreman tsks and yanks the white mech to stay still. “Pathetic glitch.” He growls and gestures at D-16, “you, get me the other’s, this pitspawn is goin’ into the clink.”
D-16 wavers for a moment, the white mech gasps pathetically and looks at him with a look that is a voice away from a plea for aid. It almost tugs at his spark. Almost.
D-16 nods and begins to make way towards the group that’s only barely veiled by the snow and ice. He thinks about sparing a look back to the foreman and the white mech; who he can still hear struggling from afar. The noise is enough to dissuade D-16 from looking back, he knows he’ll feel more pity for the white mech if he does.
He pities the thing, he really does, but he had long given up the hand that strives to help. He’s been down that road, suffered for it, and now lives with the consequences of that attempt with every step that freezes between the spaces of his treads. He despises it, the youthful version of him that was so naively swayed by kindness as a first choice rather than a last resort. If he had not listened to Terminus, he would still be in Tarn, toiling away as he is now, but at least he had friends there, a home, hope for a future. Now, that hope has frozen over just like Antilla. Let the white mech freeze, and let whatever come to them as a result of their actions; fate had not favored D-16, and he will not play a hand in favoring it upon another, not anymore.
“Hey!” D-16 calls out with a profound boom to his voice, using his servos to amplify the volume. He manages to catch the attention of most when he takes to hold one servo by his intake while the other points back. “We got a thief over here! Bring an enforcer, it looks like—”
D-16 is abruptly cut off by the sound of the foreman behind him screaming in agony. Whirring back to look for the foreman, the tall silhouette is robbed from its place. They’re gone. They were an obvious figure, tall, dark, broad, like most of the other’s stationed in Antilla. Their disappearance was swift, and sudden. A strange pit develops at the bottom of D-16’s tanks, he almost panics when the sound of the other mechs stir behind him, so he decides to stay still for a moment.
The winds rush past his frame numbly, their whirring wisps violently tearing through the shape of his armor.
Another scream tears through the howling wind. It’s jagged, anguished—much weaker, farther away, from the left.
D-16 snaps toward the direction. Not even a breem had passed. Either the wind had started to play tricks, or the foreman had managed to run. Or perhaps it was the white mech?
No. Too small, too unassuming, too—
Something darts from the left. D-16 tries to find its shape amongst the snow, but it’s gone before he can determine its origin. He thinks, for a fraction of a klik, that it’s merely a mechanimal; quick and lithe as they are. Small and frail, easily snapped with a wayward step.
Just like the white mech.
D-16 hears another mech from behind him.
“Y’all hear that?”
There’s a murmur of agreement, the volume is humbled by the winds once again. D-16 thinks to voice his own agreement, but he knows it’s a lost cause, they all heard it. They had to.
D-16 steps forward, only once, he lets his weight fall into the snow, shifting forward until his weight is finally caught by the packed snow under his pede. He wants to stop, but if he is not forwarded by his own will, it will come in the form of another’s order.
He manages another step, the cold is blistering, he feels the shards slashing into his armor, but he doesn’t feel it on his protoform. He’s beginning to go numb—not a good sign, his systems are starting to stall, flickering away like the light of day.
Fast. He has to act fast, the faster he can fix the disaster of his formans making, the faster he can retreat into the heat of the mines.
D-16 presses his plating flat against himself to trap whatever existing warmth remains and steps forward, aimless of whether or not the wind would push him off course or not. What mattered was that he thought he was going straight, the lights of the mining site would guide him back so he refrained from straying too far.
D-16’s steps crunch into the thin layer of ice that had begun to build over the much softer snow, it made each step slightly off balance, it took an active effort to steady each attempt to cross the growing billows of snow. In the end, the snow on the ground and the snow that fell rendered each attempt to find the foreman useless—it didn’t help that the screaming stopped.
So, D-16 began to look down, watching his own steps. He made sure to be more careful when he actually studied his steps, one by one they passed easily enough. Slowly, he plowed through more and more snow, only sparing a handful of glances back to ensure he hadn’t gone too far. He hadn’t, luckily, and he almost considered turning back until the latest step he took made him stumble.
Shuffling forward, and catching himself enough to straighten back, D-16 is met with a dent in the snow. It’s large, definitely from the foreman.
It was a hopeful sight, until D-16 noted the splatter of energon that lathered itself into the crevasses of the footprint.
D-16 vented profoundly and took a step back.
He looks around quickly, servo coming up to obscure the view in favor of guarding his optics.
The vast whiteness continues headless of the events, growing stronger and colder by the klik. D-16 stirs, he cannot see the lights of the mining site anymore, only a sea of white that is bright as is glaring.
“Any sight of ‘em?!” A random voice calls out.
D-16 whips back to see the vague silhouette of another figure, it was somewhat reassuring. He casts another weary glance to the footprint, another inch beginning to pile.
“Ye—“ he stops.
Tilting his helm up a quarter of an inch and D-16 sees it, the white mech from before, standing over the footprint with a lax body at their back; how could D-16 miss something so obvious? Their optics are still, intently staring at D-16. There is no malice in the look, but it is exceedingly unsettling—they’re unfocused, nearly glazed over with the pale sheen of unawareness. Nothing about their stance betrayed a thought, there is no cohesion in their look. And D-16 cannot undo the dread that covers him when he catches the bright blue that stains their intake, dribbles down to their torso. D-16’s wordlessly thankful for the blood, if it didn’t stain them so obviously, he never would’ve seen them.
Pale gray—almost platinum in color—derma part, releasing with it a deep gust of hot air. Fang lazily peel through their awkward opening.
D-16 anticipates a shriek to follow. It’s made worse when there isn’t a sound that escapes the mech, they simply stare at him. Round optics with the fog of disillusionment, intake open in a quiet pant.
They lung forward.
D-16’s vents hitch, survival instincts shoot through him like a beam of clarity and he braces for an attack.
But it never comes.
Instead, the white mech makes a turn and sprints away from D-16 and the foreman’s body in the departing direction, deeper into the forest without so much as a sound, their influence only indicated by the soft crunch of snow that has started to form an icy top layer. They disappear into the distance. D-16 feels another death-defying drop of his internals as he manages a breath as the slight sound of air being split flees with the white mech. He stands still and his spark is rotating at an unreal pace, it reverberates through his frame in a tremor as it manifests in the clenching of his fists, they shake.
More yelling can be heard and D-16 tenses up, he’s almost embarrassed for the fear that coursed through him, but how can you blame him when he stands not so far from the corpse of his foreman? A sturdy, cold constructed mech who was foiled by a bot no bigger than his leg?
Nevertheless, D-16 is prompted into action by panic, the realization of what would occur if he remained frozen in place. He had saved mechs from worse injury before. He runs over to the foreman who is letting out gurgles of energon as their voice is muddled by pools of energon collecting over the hole in their neck. The flow of energon sputters as they try to speak, but none of it is comprehensible.
“Stay still.” D-16 says sternly, his voice box threatens to betray him as his back stays turned away from the direction of the fleeting native.
D-16 looks up and around, there is no one nearby and the foreman is in no position to move. He grits his dente and turns back to the foreman who is clutching desperately to the reins of life.
Strong black servos come down to press the wound, another sputter of energon coats D-16’s servos as the foreman writhes in shock and pain ath D-16’s acts.
“Wa–”
“I say stay still.” D-16 growls. “I will comm for a medic, I just need you to—”
“You!” Another voice bellows from beyond. “What are you doing?!”
D-16’s helm spins towards the voice, it’s an enforcer, and suddenly D-16 is aware of what he is doing.
The foreman struggles under his grasp, their fighting spirit giving way to the coating of sticky energon that covers D-16’s servos as he tightens his grip ever so slightly in panic.
He is about to become their scapegoat.
But before D-16 can explain himself there is a blaster being shot. The blaze narrowly misses his helm as D-16 is forced to let go of the foreman’s neck to raise his servo’s up in a silent white flag.
“Wait!” D-16 starts. “I can explain—”
Another shot and D-16 is stumbling back, there is a socarched patch on his armor now, another narrowly avoided injury. But their aim is getting better.
D-16 can either wait to explain or wait to be killed, and neither are an option at the time a third blast comes. Scrambling away from the body that has begun to pale, he turns away from the enforcer to make his escape. In doing so, a series of shouts are commanding for his death.
“All of you!” They bellow. “Get that bastard miner! He attacked a foreman!”
Echoes of agreement, then a series of blasts are on D-16’s heels, and for a second time, he feels fear.
Sprinting out and away, D-16 hears the hot pursuit behind him, but he cannot spare a glance towards them. He focuses on the expanse of snow that is untouched by life, decisions flare through his HUD as he plows through their probability of success. His only choice is to avoid capture, he knows what will happen if he is caught.
The most appealing probability is one that D-16 takes with no hesitation, he raises his servos up as he flings traces of the foreman’s energon from his servos into the snow and veers a hard left. At least then he can say he spared himself a few more kliks.
But the chance is wasted and the collection of enforces—their numbers unknown and unwilling to be revealed to D-16—continue their chase, the resounding sound of shots fired tear through the icy winds.
D-16 spots a larger bundle of trees and chases after their potential guard, he runs into their thick, dark embrace. Not even a shadow exists to guide him. D-16 begins to feel his treads shake, it’s getting too cold, the night is coming.
The winds are getting stronger and the snow is getting thicker, D-16 has no choice but to run blindly as he makes a short reprieve of his optical circuits when white snow blinds him and blistering winds draw his back. But it is a fatal mistake.
A final, rupturing blast tears into D-16’s side and his optics shoot open as he stumbles down into the snow, it is crushed by D-16’s weight and so deep it comes to his forearm. Shaking, D-16 clutches his side and breathes heavily, he is bleeding, he can feel his energon drip out from his body as circuits hiss from the sudden cooling of internals from the cruel weather.
Footsteps are getting closer, he is bleeding out, it is cold, and his vision is faltering.
D-16 coughs and a small splatter of blue energon paints the snow a morbid color.
He is going to die.
Coolant cannot find itself on D-16’s optics, he wishes for some sort of mercy for his miserable existence, but there are no signs of kindness from their creator on Cybertron. Perhaps D-16 is too far from home to be heard.
Instead, irony is set before him, he had failed to notice it sooner, but D-16 had run to the base of another mountain. Even if he wanted to, he would be cornered sooner rather than later. D-16’s face darkens, and just beyond the squint of his gaze he sees a cave. The darkness within it a beckoning safe haven. D-16’s wipes the energon from his intake and begins to crawl with what little energy awaits him.
As black servo’s drag his frame pathetically across the snow, the sounds of enforcer’s drift throughout the air and he can’t pinpoint where they are. Not that it mattered, anyways. D-16 continued to toil against the snow, optics locked upon the possibility of refuge.
Little by little, slowly, and in absolute agony, D-16 gets closer to the cave. The energon that once pooled out his size had begun to freeze over in a mockery of soldering. At least then the threat of bleeding out dwindled.
Dare he say he had now used up whatever luck he was narrowly blessed with when he managed to enter the cave with more coughing.
Collapsing onto the floor, dragging the rest of his weight into the cave, D-16 bundles himself into a fetal position—shivering against the cold as exhaustion finally catches him.
Blinking open his optics for a final check beyond the opening of the cave, there is only the howling winds that run past the opening and he sends a silent prayer of thanks to whatever had favored him in that moment.
But he was not safe from silence, there was another sound within the cave, something was dripping behind D-16. He attributes the sound to water condensing and falling, until he passes another glance to the outside world, and then his senses come to him. There is warmth behind him.
Turning his helm to whatever lay behind there is a small flicker of light that catches his optic. A small blue flame dances at his front, and behind it another, his gaze painstakingly follows the dimly lit path along the floor of the cave until his optics find four pedes—two large, two small—and his spark stills and another shiver falls along his spinal strut, not from the cold. D-16’s optic pan up and he is first met with the wide, bright optics of a mech with an intake stained blue. He cannot begin to comprehend the fact it is the native mech that brought D-16 to this point, clutching an open wound protected by shards of ice and frozen energon. He is too weak to muster whatever rage his spark manifests. The wound begins to melt from the heat of D-16’s servo, slowly dripping onto the floor. His frame is running on high alert. So high that his vision begins to glitch, his frame has gone through far too mech stress in those kliks that it only stacks upon vorns of exhaustion and cycles of tireless work within the mines. He has no strength to move, no strength to protect himself, no strength to cry at the injustice of his life.
A delicate black servo cradles the native mech’s face and pulls them closer into an embrace. D-16 can only barely see the glistening reflection of the small white mech’s face mirror onto the shiny glass of another mech’s chest. D-16 directs energy to his optical circuits so he can get a better look. The glass is blue, unmarred by harsh winds or labor, the frame surrounding it is, oddly enough, also white. There is a moment of hesitation as D-16 takes the final effort to face the other mech.
They are tall, if not only a head shorter than D-16, but they are ethereal. The gasp that catches in the back of D-16’s throat gurgles with pain and energon as he barely studies the face of the mech; their eyes are the deep blue of fresh energon, the truly refined sort, the kind that D-16 would never taste in his lifetime, their helm is shapely with two fins at each side and a crest in the middle, there were scant traces of yellow within the crest of the bots helm, although most of their face was hidden by a grey mask that gave them an air of mystique. However, above all else, there was an empathetic aura that encapsulated them. They looked upon D-16 kindly, no pity, only mercy.
Truly, D-16 believed he was a dead mech at the feet of Primus’ harbinger, but he could not look away from their neat and refined paint, even as his vision corrupted into patches of static. They were another snow-white mech, but they were clean, pristine as a snowflake rather than the expanse of an arctic tundra.
Shifting only their helm, the tall, white bot’s optics slide into mirthful slits, barely indicative of a smile as they lean their helm to the side with a small laugh.
Perfect Cybertronian dialect, straight from Iacon tears through D-16's audial units.
“You don’t belong here.”
Darkness consumes D-16.