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He did not take time from his lab often, but Shockwave did have other duties he could not always delegate for the sake of convenience. Megatron had expectations of his research and Shockwave was loyal to that if nothing else.
Loyal to science, that is.
As long as Megatron continued to provide him what he needed to achieve his goals and complete his research and experiments, he would remain loyal to him as well. Their ideals aligned with what was best for the growth and prosperity of Cybertron, and that is all Shockwave could expect of someone of lesser...virtues. Yes, he could acknowledge that Megatron had great physical prowess and the social charisma in which to emotionally sway many people to his side, but he was not, in fact, a titan of intellect.
That was why he needed Shockwave, and their cause was all the better for it. Without Shockwave, he may have been left with only Starscream of all people to take lead on the scientific expansions of the Decepticon Empire, and how flawed and doomed would that be?
Thus, as part of his duties as the head of the Decepticons Science and Research Division, he did in fact have to leave his lab periodically and report to Megatron his more critical and nuanced findings directly. It was more efficient to do so himself, than expect any of his lower aides to do so with any measure of quality. Extra servos for his needs, they could be, but trusting them with properly expressing and detailing the nature of his reports? None of them were so capable, unfortunately.
If only more of the former Academia caste had not been so blinded by their weak constitutions or corrupted by their desires for power over the betterment of Science and thus had to be culled from Cybertron altogether – or given into their illogical emotions to lower themselves by joining the Autobots. More’s the pity.
Still, it did afford him even more control for his own purposes, which he would be both a fool and a simpleton to not take full advantage of.
If only he did not have to give reports and Soundwave was knowledgeable enough to relate his research and progress in his stead. At least, he knew the meaning of competence, despite his less than logical devout loyalty to Megatron.
He felt a vibration travel through his arm and looked down to see the HUD built into his forearm was flashing, indicating that something unexpected had occurred in his lab. Two quick taps showed nothing visibly out of place on any of his security cameras – ones that he refused to allow Soundwave unfettered access to – but clearly one of his more hidden alarms had been triggered.
“Excuse me, I still have work to continue.” Shockwave stood up, which did attract some eyes, but not many. It was not unusual for him to leave one of these meetings shortly after his own debriefing, even if Megatron was less than pleased about it. As long as he did not command Shockwave to remain, he had no intention of doing so. Starscream was the one who gave the more demonstrative reaction, rolling his optics and clicking his claws against the table in impatient offense. Not that Shockwave cared, he had far more important things to concern himself with.
Megatron said nothing, a dismissive hand as he continued to look down and pour over reports from some of their distant resource outposts. It rankled Shockwave mildly to be excused in such a lackluster manner, but it would be irrational to take pique, and thus he did not and left the room.
It was an inconveniently long trek to his labs, secluded as they were for both security and containment, but Shockwave managed his time wisely by going over his alarms, viewing all of the video footage, and analyzing it for potential anomalies. There was nothing to be seen, which in and of itself was the anomaly. There was no reason for his hidden alarms to go off if nothing had been there to trigger them. Something was not right with the security feeds.
It was only when he entered his lab that he noticed something distinctly off. The room temperature of his labs was tightly regulated to a specific chilled temperature to avoid the potential warming and reactions of chemicals within the lab. Others had often complained that it unsettled their internal temperature systems to spend extended periods of time within his lab. Said others being Starscream, of course.
Shockwave did not mind the chill. One might even say he preferred it.
His lab was too warm.
He focused on his primary console, noticing that nothing seemed out of place and that the graphs on the screen were monitoring the energon reactive chamber as they had been when he left.
There was a smudge on the keyboard.
His keyboard was the latest and most advanced, capable of expanding three times its own size and auto-recalibration into various configurations that most suited whatever he was using it for.
The smudge was not one one of the keys themselves, but off to the side, right along the edge, the seam of where it lifted from the console to expand itself. A left handed servo would have caused such a smudge.
Shockwave did not have a left hand.
He looked back at the HUD on his arm. One of the alarms triggered was not in fact the console’s encryption locking system. Instead it was…Hm.
He moved away from the console, around the energon extraction machine, to the left of the chemical fission reactor, and passed the spark modulator to the furthest depths of his lab, the areas where much of his older, less pertinent experiments and research was set aside – not discarded, he rarely discarded anything that could still prove useful – for further development at a later date. Even further back until he arrived at his archives.
Nothing looked amiss even here. Which made it all the more likely that something was.
That is when Shockwave felt the pressure of something at the back of neck and his optical feed cut out just as he offlined.
__________________________________________________
His sensory receptors onlined at the feeling of pressure on his optic lens and he could then hear the clinking sound. He turned on his feed just in time to see black servos playfully tapping against his optic before pulling away. Before him was a smaller mechanoid, a racing frame, of grey and black color scheme that was obviously a stealth mod as it fluctuated and rippled, distorting his ability to take a full scan of the mech in question. Even the Autobot badge on their chest was greyed and blurred in his vision.
“Oh look at that,” the mech said, a little quirk of his lips. “I didn’t expect the frame lock mod to go so hard on ya, but I guess that’s what happens when you divert most of ya processor and frame functions away from mobility, huh? Makes it work that much easier.”
Shockwave stared at the mech, with his distinctively Polyhexian audial horns – of all 25 various audial receptor configurations this one was 77.9% recorded from the Polyhexian region – and the visor that was dimmed to the point one might think it was not even activated. Effective for avoiding detection but less effective for sensory data unless he had modifications to his frame to adjust for the weaker visual feed.
“Hope I didn’t fry your circuits that much, mech, or neither of us are going to enjoy the next part.”
Shockwave found himself propped against the wall – which meant someone had taken the time to reposition him – immobilized by a frame-lock device magnetized to his chest, which he should have been able to discard easily, with an anti-magnetic feedback loop he installed on himself and yet he could not. All of his autonomous and remote defense features were inaccessible. Someone had put thought into this device for him specifically.
There was a soft laugh. “If you’re wondering why all your own fancy little mods don’t work, you can send a thank you card to Wheeljack.”
“What have you come to steal from my lab?” he asked.
“Straight to the point, huh?” the Autobot drawled. He kneeled down again, straddling Shockwave’s lap, arms propped on his chestplate. His doorwings moved up and down in a manner that typically denoted a casually unconcerned nature.
“Well, my mentor did teach me some manners,” he went on, “so how’s about I say ‘Nice to me ya,’ first? Mighty rude to intrude into a mech’s space without a by-your-leave, but needs must, don’t they? Now, it took me a lot to get in here and trigger that alarm to get your attention, so I hope you understand just how important your cooperation is for me. First time gettin’ to meet Shockwave of Tetrahex, heard a lot about ya.”
Why did he talk so much? Why was he obfuscating his intentions with mindless chatter when he could simply not speak at all?
“Cease your prattle and get on with it,” he said, unamused. “Steal what you came for and hope you can make it from this lab or this base before I decode this device and string you up to dissect myself.”
“Now that sounds like it would be cycles of fun,” the mech tapped his servos on Shockwave’s chestplate, “but really I just plumb don’t have the time for it. Maybe next time we can schedule it in. Right now, I just need you to point me in the direction of model PR53X. You know which that one is, don’t ya?”
Of course he did, Shockwave knew every experiment or device within his lab and exactly where it happened to be. The fact they were outside the archive was proof enough of where this mech assumed it might be, only to have found himself mistaken. Likely the reason why he had created the false lead and triggered the alarm to lure Shockwave back into the labs and extract its actual location himself.
“Why do you think I would give that to you after all of the resources I expended to get it? Megatron–”
“Now, now, we both know Megatron don’t know you have it, yet,” the Autobot said. “All these cycles and he’s still out of the loop. Because if he did, it definitely wouldn’t be in this lab. Megatron would think it too valuable a resource for you to potentially destroy while trying to reverse engineer it. Bit funny when you think about how he might react to knowing ya kept it from him for so long.”
Shockwave was silent then, because there was little use in lying by diversion when this mech had figured that out.
“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” he chuckled, the dim blue of his visor growing brighter for a moment. “So you’ll give it back, I’ll be on my way, and Megatron will never have to know how you betrayed him by omission. Works out well for everybody, don’t ya think?”
He sat back then, still in Shockwave’s lap, but hands now trailing down from his chestplate to his left arm. His servos tapped along the screen of his HUD in a way that Shockwave took seconds to realize were actually a tune. Some kind of musical rhythm he was following. A rhythm that reacted to the sensors in his arm with each tap, but had no pattern to it. He tried to redirect his attention, as he could not physically stop him.
“You think I’ll return the PR53X to you that easily?”
“I think if ya don’t, when your systems crash and take all your research with them in the next five breems, I’ll figure out where it is anyway. And you’ll still have to explain everything to Megatron.”
For some reason Shockwave felt a more visceral reaction to that statement, to the threat to all of his work and the insult to his own skills at the same time. “You shouldn’t make such grand claims, as if you had the capabilities to hack my systems–”
“I don’t,” the Autobot smiled. “Me, being able to hack into your network without anyone noticing? Who you think I am, Soundwave? Nah, mech, I know I ain’t got that kind of skill in getting through systems. But...I do know a lot about breakin’ 'em.”
Just as he said that, the screen of his HUD pinged and slid open, exposing the circuitry and wires and ports beneath. Somehow, he had managed to find the internal code to open his panel.
Magnets. There were magnets in the mech’s servos causing the reaction to his systems.
How had he used magnets to send a sonic wave into his arm and activate the code? Nothing this bot was doing made sense and yet somehow he continued talking as he went on slowly dismantling Shockwave’s internal defenses.
“And that port under the third panel on your console’s keyboard isn’t as secure as you think it is, if a mech knows what they’re doing. Too bad Megatron never approved the funding to expand those backup servers you’ve been wanting. That’s why ya wanted the PR53X to ya’self, isn’t it? Use its nano-space and extra processing power to divert your systems without needing to add a whole 50 kilospecs of space to your lab for an external server. It’s a real fine, precise processor ya decided to rip out of my friend. And he would like it back.”
The temporary capture of the Autobots’ lead tactical officer had been unexpected. The unit that had taken him in hadn't even been enlisted long enough to know who Autobot Prowl was. Shockwave had taken advantage and commanded them to remove the PR53X tactical-network processing unit from him immediately. They had been imprecise in their methods, but effective and the drive had been brought to him with minimal damage. He knew the Autobots had raided the base, reclaiming their captured troops, but he had assumed that Autobot Prowl would have deactivated weeks ago, without the tactical-net's processing power managing all of his systems.
“You won’t find it wherever you may be looking. It is not there.”
“Hm... Because it’s right here, ain’t it?”
Flares of sensation burned across Shockwave’s circuits from his arm to his chestplate in a way he did not expect. It was like a fire, but not painful. Like a circuit crash, more directed, an unexpected stimulation of his sensory receptors setting off responses across his neural network. Shockwave could not look down with his frame immobilized as it was, but he could feel as whatever this mech did to the circuits he hacked into through his HUD suddenly came alive everywhere at once. He could not stop his ventilations as his systems tried to cool themselves, trying to combat the rise in temperature and…arousal.
“Oh yeah, did I forget to warn ya about that? Sometimes those circuits have a mind of their own. Might make ya feel a bit tingly.” And then laughed at his own understatement.
The mech did not stop whatever he was doing until there was a pinging on his HUD connected to his optical feed. His subspace was seeking clearance. He tried to deny it. Only the request happened again. And again. And each time he denied there was a flare of sensation across his sensory network. It gained in pressure and insistence, demanding compliance, demanding he give access.
And it was just as the pressure peaked, sending warnings across his processing HUD, that his subspace protocols activated, granting access to the servos digging into the hidden compartments within his chestplate where he’d kept the drive on his person.
“There it is. Thanks for ya cooperation, Shocky. I owe ya. Maybe next time we can have more of a chat. Share a bit of energon over a stolen schematic or two.”
Then his entire system went into involuntary stasis.
__________________________________________________
Shockwave came online to find Soundwave in his lab without authorization – he knew this meant the host did have access to his security cameras although he would not admit it – and the systems crashing in cascades around them. Half of his database had been wiped – not hacked, there had been no external access – and he’d lost orns of research. He salvaged what he could and had to debrief Megatron on the saboteur who had managed to not only infiltrate their base and reach one of the most secure locations within it, but also left no trace of his presence in his escape besides the chaos intentionally wrought upon Shockwave’s lab.
And one brief motion capture on an outer security feed of a bright blue visor flickering as if to wink at the camera while he made his escape.
Skilled, clever, and unorthodox to the point of being illogical in his methods. Soundwave knew him. His reaction belied knowing more than he stated in his simple description of one of the Autobots’ top Special Operations Agent.
As he stood before Megatron, enduring his verbal lashing and the criticisms of what his failure to prepare had cost the Decepticons, Shockwave could still feel the phantoms of those sensations across his circuits. Feel those servos as they tapped along his arms, the rhythm echoing down to his struts.
And it continued. For cycles after he would find himself touching the HUD on his arm, sliding his servos across the screen, digging in as if he could rip it off himself and rip out the circuits that had been corrupted.
The psychosomatic reactions made no sense. They were completely illogical. A distortion of his own processor that needed to be purged along with all of the thoughts of the mech that came with them. It seemed Autobot Jazz knew how to leave an impression on those he came across. A deep impression.
And Shockwave had full intentions of learning how.
(So he could return the favor.)