Chapter Text
“This...is not an admission of guilt.”
You squint at the screen, through the smoke, the soot in your eyes, and the cocktail of alien fluids the explosion that took your primary work table, distillation apparatus and half your laboratory had sprayed your face with. If the smoke inhalation or fire doesn’t kill you, you’re sure whatever you’ve absorbed from the rainbow of extraterrestrial chemicals now painting your clothes and exposed skin would ensure your days were numbered. The asshole that set this up had their bases covered, you’d give them that much.
Careful not to interrupt the recording function, you place a hand against the screen, and the keyboard beneath it. The human sized model they’d installed when they’d set aside the storeroom turned makeshift lab for you, after several failed attempts to use the cybertronian-sized equivalent (Playing keyboard hopscotch had been fun, but lost it’s novelty after the first five words of a 1000 word minimum report).
You’re not sure why you hesitate, why this minute detail stands out like a bastillion of sanity in the chaos around you, but it conjures memories that swim behind your blurring vision. Memories of Soundwave looming behind you as he ran scan after scan to ensure the hybrid between their technology and a late 2000’s macbook would function as intended. (It had not, and after several hours of unsuccessfully trying to send ASCII art of a middle finger to the bridge terminal, he’d given up, forgone the OS altogether and installed Unbuntu.) Of using it to fill a datastick with a poorly dubbed copy of Bible Black to give to a sheepish Knockout (Breakdown had yet to forgive you) Arachnid piercing the monitor with one of her eight appendages to get your attention. Shockwave replacing the monitor afterwards with the screen of a datapad he no longer used. Dreadwing using video calls to request progress reports instead of sending text based inquiries like a normal villain robot. Megaton caustically critiquing the music you chose to calm your nerves and drown out the second thoughts as you completed your first real synthesis of an alien compound. Sharp-toothed bastard had stayed the entire 14 hours, leaning perfectly still against the wall like an evil jacked gargoyle. You’d never forget how that felt, having every move studied, scrutinized, sanctioned. Those stupid crimson optics burning stupid holes into your stupid back, stupidly.
The last one leaves a ball in your throat you refuse to acknowledge long enough to swallow, so you choke on it instead. You also choke more on the smoke growing thicker and more oppressive by the second. With the ventilation system and all available exits sealed, it pools in the middle of the room, a sickly black cloud swelling to ever more leviathan proportions. It would reach your little corner in less than a minute. You’d better hurry.
“To my family, and friends. . . and everyone in my hometown, I didn’t intend to drug the entire city’s water supply.” you croak finally, summoning dry words from an even dryer throat. “I mean, I did do it intentionally, but not for the reasons you’d think. So, to those f you that are still alive...and sane...and able to hear this, I'm sorry. I honestly thought I was doing the right thing. For the right reasons. At least most of the time. I was trying to protect you guys with the shit hand I was dealt, so forgive me for not being on my best behavior all of the god damn time-”
Considering you’d spent the last year and a half actively advocating for your own execution, you’d think your “to whom it may concern” would come more easily. You slam your head against the keyboard, cursing your final words for betraying you. They refuse the form of poignant deathbed poetry you sorely wished for and instead paint a portrait of the disheveled, rambling, morally ambiguous mad scientist you’d become.
But at least I die a scientist. As if on cue a beaker filled with a noxious purple liquid explodes behind you, shattering the attached vacuum tube and sending the glass shards into the CO2 bath beneath it. A small smile twists over your lips despite yourself. Your college dropout ass hadn’t even laid eyes on half of this stuff before(Alien technology notwithstanding) and now, you knew it like the back of your hand. It’s a cold comfort, but you’ll take it. Because you fought for it. You earned it, finding the limits of your body and mind becoming hurdles to be jumped, walls to be scaled instead of insurmountable mountains. Motivation had been forced on you in ways your old life could never have offered. Despite the circumstances, despite the struggle, despite waking up every day both fearing and longing for your own demise, there was no denying part of you enjoyed having the embers burning under your ass stoked into a wildfire.
Though the chemical fumes, the heat from the flames now licking at the sides of your console, and the blood seeping from the skin peeling off your face beg the question wither or not it was worth it.
“Right, I got like thirty seconds left.” you sigh, having given up all notions of a eloquent epitaph and making peace with whatever slurry your oxygen-deprived brain cares to throw your way. “Soundwave, I know this is a lot to ask, but please take care of Avogadro. She doesn’t need a lot, she’s house-trained, her lifespan is the equivalent of a sneeze to you guys, and she likes you. “Knockout, I leave you the rest of my hentai collection. Breakdown, I’m leave you my apologies for leaving Knockout the rest of my hentai collection. Starscream-” the name leaves your lips with malice as you raise a shaking middle finger to the screen. “I leave you with my heartfelt wish that you get absolutely fucked.”
You lower your hand, needing both of them to brace yourself against the bottom of the console as your knees give out. Your mind races through calculations, adding the weight of your feelings to the time remaining and dividing it by the willpower to broach a subject more volatile then the acid eating a hole through the chair under your desk.
“And to the giant metal shark asshole that got me started on this shit-” you grit your teeth, voice low and thick with the phlegm and blood welling up in your throat. Your eyes sting with tears you tell yourself are from the ammonia spilling out on the floor behind you. You squeeze them shut and turn your head, feeling naked in front of the screen. There’s no way to condense everything into the last few seconds of consciousness you have, so you leave them hanging in the air with the smoke above your head. “-I’m sorry.” you whisper through the blood bubbling up over your lips. “ I tried.”