Shadows without Light 3

[niyazi-a.livejournal.com]

NC-17
Bayverse: Interrogation AU
Flatline, Sunstreaker, Barricade, Vortex
Torture/disturbing content.

“You’ll never get away with this!” Sunstreaker yelled, struggling against his restraints.

Flatline cocked his head to one side, studying a handheld monitor. “Out of curiosity: is everything about you a cliché?”

“I’ll show you a fraggin’ cliché!” Sunstreaker winced as, in his struggle, the binding slipped under the armor of his shoulder and into the cabling. Flatline looked up, sighed, looked back down. Autobots really had no idea how irritating these histrionics truly were. When one was helpless, bravado rang more like folly. More than that, when you were helpless at the hands of an enemy who could cause you physical pain at the push of a button, wisdom dictated that a wise course would be…not to antagonize him. 

“My only regret,” Flatline said, “is that Vortex wants you to be able to speak. Otherwise I would simply offline your vocalizer.” He reached over and clipped the last two leads onto information relays in Sunstreaker’s neck. Now, it was ready. 

But not before, apparently, more pointless postured bravado from the flashy Autobot. Flatline supposed anyone that gaudy had an overinflated sense of self-importance. He was beginning to hope Vortex would let him remain through the interrogation, just to watch that narcissism get whittled away. “Vortex won’t get anything out of me,” the Autobot boasted.

“I suspect even I will get something out of you,” Flatline retorted. He set his handheld monitor to record, and reached for the other device, a stim tuner, twirling the rheo knob to…about midrange, he decided, for the first one. He flicked the toggle. 

Sunstreaker howled, his body arching off the Autobot-style repair cradle Flatline preferred to use. Partly from irony, partly from the fact that it was easier to immobilize a mech against a flat surface. 

“On a scale of one to ten,” Flatline said, “Let us say that that is a five.” He flicked it off.

Sunstreaker swore, his optics pinpricks of hate. “You’re sick.” 

“I rather think you are sick,” Flatline said. “Cursed with idealism. Your type is blinded by shadows.”

“We don’t torture other mechs.” Sunstreaker was still gasping air, trying to cool his systems overheated from processing the sudden influx of pain signals. 

“Torture? That would imply that I am enjoying this.” Flatline grinned. “This is research.”

“Research,” Sunstreaker spat. 

“Yes. Now, that was a five. What would you call…this?” he kept the rheo the same, flicking the switch. Sunstreaker snapped rigid again, hissing through his teeth. “Well…?” Flatline prompted, shutting it off.

“Go frag yourself,” Sunstreaker said.

“Again,” Flatline said, “That would imply that I am enjoying myself.” He gave another burst of the stimulus tuner. “What number?” This time he kept the tuner on. 

“Eight!” Sunstreaker gasped. “Frag it, you happy now! Gave you a number!”

Flatline cut the signal. “Yes, but it was the wrong number. That was also a five.”

“This is pointless!”

“Not at all. We need you calibrated against a measurable standard.”

“Standard? Why?” Sunstreaker’s optics narrowed. For the first time, the Autobot’s face showed genuine distress.

“So you may more reliably record data,” Flatline explained, impatiently. It was as though these Autobots didn’t understand even the rudiments of science. “As I said, research.”

“Like I’d help you. With your insane research.”

“You will. You already are.” Flatline tapped his handheld monitor. He had counted on the Autobot being…uncooperative. He’d rigged signal captures at various points in Sunstreaker’s relays. It was just Vortex’s idea to have the Autobot try to give verbal feedback—a doomed enterprise, but Flatline presumed there was some psychological reason Vortex had put that in his mission request. The applications of his work were beyond Flatline’s concern. He was a researcher. And Vortex always provided him with such fascinating challenges.

“This is…,” Sunstreaker struggled for a word, “depraved!”

Flatline shrugged. “Science is above petty morality.” Limitations, these pitiful notions of right and wrong. There was no transgression beyond ignorance.

“Science is supposed to help, improve things!”

“And it will. The results of this will directly impact any number of mechs in the future. Many, I presume, would be grateful if they knew whom to thank.” 

“Narcissist,” Sunstreaker spat. 

“Me?” Flatline was genuinely surprised. “I was referring to you. And your twin.”

“Sideswipe? You have him, too? Where?” 

“He is being held separately. The requirements for his set-up differ from yours.” Vortex’s orders for Sideswipe involved online-monitoring. Apparently whatever Vortex had planned for Sideswipe, he intended the mech to hover close to offline. Flatline appreciated the challenge.

“You keep your filthy hands off him!” Sunstreaker jerked hard enough against the bonding wires that enamel scraped off. 

Flatline set the rheo up a few notches. “You forgot the threat.”

“What?”

“The threat. Normally the line goes ‘you keep your hands off him or…else some kind of penalty.’ Logically, how else would you persuade me? Not through the goodness of my depraved heart, definitely.” He set his monitor for another data capture.   Honestly, these Autobots could not even perform the cliché adequately. They really were good for nothing but experimentation.

And he hoped there was enough left of them when Vortex was done for him to pursue his own research on twin sparks. Find out where he had gone wrong with Arcee. Find out how he might utilize the spark twinning to increase their dwindling numbers. He flicked the toggle again. “Now, for your calibration purposes,” he said, blandly. “THIS is an eight.” 

*****

“So, what Flatline’s set up for us will prove this nicely.” Vortex looked happy—a mood Barricade had learned to respond to with…anxiety. “We’ve got twins!” Vortex waited for Barricade to give some response. It was expected. And he’d trained Barricade even in this.

“Prove what?” Barricade said, dully, playing his part.

“Prove to you the use of torture and physical compulsion.”

“Thought it didn’t work.”

“You,” Vortex said, playfully poking a finger into Barricade’s grille, “thought wrong. That is an argument used by moralizing sparklings and Autobots  so they can feel superior. The truth is that physical pain sometimes is,” his grin grew wider, “remarkably effective.”   He tapped his fingers along the top of Barricade’s grille. He’d discovered—not that it was a terrifically well-guarded secret—that Barricade hated being touched. So…he touched him as much as possible. Boundary violation, he’d told Barricade time and again, was an art form. “And you are going to learn how and when and why.”

“Lucky me.”

Vortex frowned. “You are lucky, Barricade,” he said, his voice dark. “I could be demonstrating this on you.” 

Barricade stiffened, chastened. Vortex didn’t do idle threats.

Vortex grinned at Barricade’s reaction, slapping him heartily on his white upper arm. “Buck up. Let’s go learn.”

**

Sideswipe lay on a flat Autobot-style repair frame. Barricade remembered on just like it from his own…training. Not terrifically fondly. A series of leads and wires ran from his strapped-down body to a bank of monitors. Flatline, the new ‘medic’, sat by the monitors, arms folded over his chest, as if Vortex was making him late for something he’d much rather be doing. 

They ignored each other—Vortex and Flatline. Not in the contemptuous ‘you are not a threat and I shall show you’ way, but simply…as if the other’s presence was already recognized. Flatline ran his optics over Barricade, curious, and Barricade became suddenly self conscious of his posture, of the way he followed Vortex. Obedient. Pitifully obedient. Broken down. He straightened up, taking a step away from Vortex. 

Vortex stepped closer to Sideswipe. The silver mech glared at him. “How are we feeling?” Vortex asked, in his most unctuous, patronizing voice. 

“Go frag yourself.” 

Flatline snorted, rolling his optics, cocking one of his supraorbital ridges when he caught Barricade looking at him.

Vortex turned to a table piled with tools, sorting through them casually. Holding one up, considering, laying it back down before lifting another. “Glad to hear you’re feeling well enough to be cocky, Autobot. I hate it when my job bores me. Seems so much more like…work.” He selected a small shock rod, and gestured for Barricade to come forward. Barricade knew what was coming, knew it showed on his face, but he stepped forward anyway. If he complied, it would only happen once. If not, Vortex would shock him again and again until he lay squealing on the floor. And then…he didn’t want to remember last time’s humiliations. He could handle one shock. Obey. 

He stepped forward. Vortex placed the shock rod against his interior elbow joint and pressed the button, an instant after Barricade cut his vocalizer. Barricade would not give them the spectacle of him screaming. The sudden burst of pain, the way his body shot rigid, the white alarm on his face, was enough. 

Vortex cut the current. Barricade re-set his vocalizer. “Hurt?” Vortex asked, sympathetically.

“Yes.” Short answer. Give him what he wants now. Worse later, worse to resist. He hated how obedient he’d become. 

Vortex grinned. “Good. Now watch.” He approached Sideswipe. “You saw that, right?”

“Whatever,” Sideswipe said. “I’m tougher than he is.”

“Perhaps. But we’re working on that.” Vortex brought the shock rod closer. Despite himself, Sideswipe pulled away. “Barricade,” Vortex said, “What lesson am I invoking here?”

“Anticipation of pain,” Barricade muttered, rubbing at his elbow. Some of the wiring had melted. Flatline’s optics were on him…almost hungrily.

Vortex nodded. “Very good. See that it still works, right?” He turned his gaze back to Sideswipe. “See, even on you, hot shot Autobot.”

Sideswipe couldn’t help his optics from following the shock rod as Vortex hovered it over his frame, trying to decide where to apply it. 

“Oh,” Vortex said, “Frag subtlety.” He applied the rod to Sideswipe’s inner thigh, where the armor plating was thin. The current carried through the plating to the control cables below. Unlike Barricade, Sideswipe didn’t, apparently, have the foresight to cut his vocalizer. He howled, in spite of himself, his body arching upward off the berth, excess current sparking from his fingertips. Vortex held the shockrod in contact, counting. He released. 

Sideswipe sagged against the berth. His cooling system roared on, trying to deal with the massive overcharge itself as well as the series of alarms it had set off. 

“Mission objectives,” Vortex said, blandly.

Sideswipe spat. “Like I’d tell you.” 

Vortex grinned. “I love defiance.” He turned his head. “Don’t I, Barricade?”

Barricade glared at his back, acutely aware of Flatline’s amused gaze. “Yes,” he muttered. 

“Now.” Vortex said again, “Mission objectives, Autobot?”

“Frag yourself.”

Vortex shook his head. “Already said that one.”

“Limit of their abilities, it seems,” Flatline said. “Don’t expect much eloquence from either of them.”

Vortex acknowledged the medic’s comment with a nod. “Never do, from Autobots.” He turned back. “Right. So.” Another application of the shock rod, this time to the elbow. Barricade’s servo’s fired in sympathetic response. Acrid smoke threaded up from the melted wiring.

Vortex pulled the rod away. “Objectives?” 

Sideswipe said nothing, his blue optics wells of hatred. Vortex sighed. “Barricade, what lesson?”

“Give in early. It gets worse.”

Vortex chuckled. “Not quite the right words, but…you have the spirit of it.” He put the shock rod down, and picked up a small machining tool. “What do you think, Barricade? Where would this hurt the most?” 

“Elbow. Already damaged.”

Vortex shook his head. “Common misapprehension. “We have already lit up that part of the grid, Barricade. Most effective to light another. When the two system alarms overlap—pure response.” He turned to Sideswipe. “You’re in for a treat.”

The machining sander whirred to life. The flat disc would sand, the edges cut. He applied the flat side to part of Sideswipe’s axle. “Abrasion,” he commented. “Not that damaging. Remember: early stages, you want to inflict no life-threatening injuries.” Sideswipe gritted his denta, hissing through the pain. On one level, so much less than the shock rod. But on another, the slow eating of the disc through his enamel, into the metal, was…barely endurable. He certainly couldn’t hold a thought together, beyond a string of disconnected curse words, which he threw at Vortex.

Vortex pulled away. “Objectives.”

Sideswipe’s vents gusted through his intakes, like an enraged animal. “Not…telling…you.”

“SO hoped you’d say that, Autobot.” Vortex grinned. Part, Barricade had learned, of Vortex’s approach. Whatever the opponent does—it’s precisely what you wanted him to do. The best way to make sure that there was no right answer, no way to truly defy the interrogator’s will.

Vortex leaned in closer, considering. Noting, Barricade saw, Sideswipe pull away. Yeah, he’d made the same mistake. And for that, he’d had every inch of his frame pawed and prodded and stroked, whenever Vortex wanted. To ‘break him’ of his dislike. A good interrogator, Vortex said, had no issues. Not in the game. “Let’s see,” Vortex said. Sure enough, he ran his free hand down Sideswipe’s body, grinning as Sideswipe’s optics tracked the movement, his face a mask of disgust. “This might hurt!” Vortex said, brightly. He applied the disc’s cutting edge to where one of the Autobot’s fingers joined the palm. Sideswipe screamed, trying desperately to jerk his hand away. 

Next to Barricade, Flatline tilted back in his chair, optics on the monitors that were capturing frantically spiking readouts. One of the monitors displayed what must have been the Autobot’s HUD. It blared with redline alarms. 

Holding the sander against the Autobot’s hand, Vortex repeated, over the screech of the cutting edge against metal. “Objectives. And it stops.”

Sideswipe tugged at his hand, his optics widening in realization that Vortex would hold the sander there even if it meant severing the finger. “Infiltration and intelligence capture!” he gasped. 

Vortex shut the tool off. “Barricade, how do I know he’s lying?”

Barricade considered. “After-response. By now he should be feeling guilty.” Sideswipe looked like he was simply processing pain, looking down worriedly at his injured hand. But if that had been the truth, once the pain had stopped, guilt would have taken over--what price have I paid for relief?

Vortex looked over his shoulder, his optics framed by two of his rotorblades. “I’m impressed, Barricade. Almost sounds like you’ve been paying attention.” Sideswipe looked up, startled. “Oh, don’t worry, Autobot. One thing Barricade recognizes now is guilt.” Barricade snarled, inwardly. Why must he ego-down him in front of the prisoner?  If he asked, he knew what the answer would be—which did you remember, the compliment or the insult? Why? 

Barricade wasn’t in the mood to be dissected in front of the Autobot, nor the medic.

“So. Pain brings out a statement. That is a lie. Why did he say anything?”

“Get you to stop.”

“Right.” Vortex kicked the tool back on, applying it, this time, to the elbow. The HUD on Flatline’s monitor went crazy with alarms. Sideswipe yelled until his vocalizer ran low on charge. Vortex cut the tool’s power. “Mission objectives.”

“P-patrol! It was just a patrol! Primus!” Sideswipe tried desperately to crane his neck to survey the damage. He flexed his fingers, his face dismayed at the sluggish control.

“Truth, Barricade?”

“No. Same reason.” 

Vortex grunted. “And what else?”

Barricade froze. Flatline raised his optics from the monitor, curious. 

“What else, Barricade?”

Barricade’s optics darted nervously up and down Sideswipe, looking for a clue. Vortex spun the tool up, and turned to Barricade. Barricade’s optics kept racing nervously toward the spinning disc. Vortex ran one hand down his arm. 

The copter’s voice was gentle. “Barricade: he doesn’t learn. That’s what else. He’s not even trying to act guilty to fake you out.”   Vortex ran one thumb down one of Barricade’s chromed facial plates. “Even you tried harder than that.” Barricade forced himself not to flinch away. Vortex shut off the tool, turning back to the Autobot. 

“So, not patrol. Not intelligence and infiltration. What’s your next lie? Because, you know, I am totally into that, Autobot. I could pull lies out of you all day.” He tossed the tool back on the table. “Fuck it,” he said. “Drill time.”

**

Several cycles later, everyone’s enthusiasm was waning—except for Vortex. He stepped around the mess on the repair frame with the eye of an artist, spinning the drill idly in his hand. Flatline had set his monitors to record and to signal him when Sideswipe’s vital signs hovered too close to shutdown and had buried himself in his datapad. Flatline had had to get up, twice, looking mildly aggrieved, once to run a transfusion of power-core energon into the mech, mumbling something about it being just as worthwhile as throwing the pouch of energon on the floor; the second time to shock-revive Sideswipe’s failed capacitor. Each time he’d gone back, picked up a datapad and gone back to reading, somehow entirely unfazed by the grating sound of the drill biting through the metal, Sideswipe’s harrowing screams, or Vortex’s icy laughter. 

Barricade didn’t have his composure. He’d gone from queasy to downright ill, clutching into the console behind him with one hand, his other, injured, held in front of him. That had apparently been the highlight of the day for Flatline: Vortex had demanded Barricade hold the writhing Sideswipe still, positioning the drill over one blue optic. He’d paused to wipe away droplets of energon and other spattered body fluids from the lens. Spinning the bit in front of the mech’s face for a handful of kliks, he gauged Sideswipe’s defiance and grinned. He pushed in. Sideswipe had shrieked so loudly that the vocalizer shot sparks, the lens whiningly resisting before shattering. Barricade had looked away, disgusted. And for that lapse, Vortex had drilled through one of his wrist tires. 

Flatline had patched him up without a word, but a strange small smile quirked the corners of his mouth.

Barricade, deemed useless, had been banished merely to watch. He hadn’t minded—he was more afraid that Vortex would have made him, in time, wield the drill himself. 

Sideswipe…was a wreck. A few of his armor plates had been torn off, discarded. His tires were flaccid, their pneumatic fluid leaking green slick puddles on the floor. Vortex had leered, licking some of it off one finger. He had one functioning optic, but his hands were mangled—one dangled limply from the shoulder socket, held by a few small relay wires. In the interim he had given every possible reason for why his team was in that sector—ambush, raiding, search and destroy, espionage, infiltration, sabotage. At one point, Vortex had stopped the drill, the sudden silence shocking them all.

“Tell me,” he said, “you were there to defect to our side, weren’t you?”

“Yes!” Sideswipe had gasped. “Yes—to defect!”

“Hrm.” Vortex spun up the drill, searching for a spot he hasn’t already hit before, or at least recently. They were getting harder to find. “I remain unconvinced.” He drove the drill into one of Sideswipe’s audio receptors. 

The Autobot screamed, begging, sobbing, yelping as lens lubricant dripped into his shattered optic, sparking against the still live current, “Defecting! I swear it! Please!” 

Vortex stopped the drill again, threw it on the table, watching idly as energon arced off it in the toss. 

“Barricade?”

That was his cue: Vortex expected to catch him flatfooted. “Impossible to tell,” he said, bluntly.

Vortex’s fluid-spattered face split into a grin, “Excellent.”

“The last is a lie, though.”

“Yes. Why did he agree to it, though?”

“What he thought you wanted to hear.” 

“Right. You think he told us the truth?” 

“Had to have. Somewhere. In all that mess. Possibly one he didn’t insist on too hard.” 

“We can’t work on ‘possiblies’ though, Barricade,” Vortex said. He reached behind Flatline, picking up a cleansing rag to wipe down his face. “Not how this gig goes.”

“I know,” Barricade breathed, waiting, edgily. Flatline lay his datapad down, shifting his optics between the two of them. 

“So, he tells us a truth, and we can’t tell it apart from his lies, because…he’ll say anything to stop the pain. So…what do we do?”

“Told you: prove it doesn’t work.”  

“Right. Why not? Why can’t you tell when he’s lying any more? You used to be so good at it.” Vortex moued. Implying Barricade’s inability to read Sideswipe was somehow his failing.

Barricade frowned, a thin thread of anger in his systems. “Fear overrides other emotions absolutely.” How many times had he learned that?  Can’t show guilty or rage or any of the base emotions when primal fear took over. Impossible to read. Even Vortex admitted it. “And pain overrides morality. Hard to show guilt if you’ve gone beyond the ability to recognize it.”

"Hmmmm, but he was in pain...before.  With the shock rod."

"Pain went away.  Probably not any more." Judging by the alarms on Flatline's HUD monitor Sideswipe was in a fairly high level of pain. "Never comes out of it enough to get back to secondary emotions."

Vortex frowned. Barricade had given more information than he’d asked for. Barricade shut up, abruptly.  “So nice to hear you’ve been paying attention. But it’s a matter of degree. Next, though, I get to show you how it does work.” 

“Why not just show me that?” Spare me…this disgusting spectacle of the ruined Autobot frame; the smell of burned metal, bitten through by the drill; the smell of friction-scalded oil.   “Show me what works.” His mouth twisted, bitterly. Not waste my time, he added mentally.

“You have to be able to spot when it goes too far,” he said, patiently, as though Barricade were somewhat stupid. “And besides,” he tossed the soiled cloth onto the repair frame with the gloopy, twisted mass of the Autobot, which moaned softly, even still, “more fun this way.”