Chapter Text
Chapter 3: Charlatan
Kaon’s smog was worse than ever.
The ever-present thick cloud had pushed its ceiling further up the highest buildings, to where mechs with penthouse views could make the mistake of thinking that they were on a much lower floor, that the ground was a nebulous, brownish flow, and any level underneath it was the underground. At the street level, neon-colored advertisements struggled to gleam through the ever-present haze, and not even the light of a mid-day sun would ever be any brighter than as if it were late after-noon. Not that many mechs traveled by day anymore, when they were more likely to be recognized by Sentinel Prime’s “fugitive search” teams.
The private transport that zoomed towards the Prime’s tower was the only one of its kind on the roadway. The rest on the streets were droned vehicles, barely bigger than a mech themselves, carrying all sorts of goods around the city but too small for anyone bigger than a minibot. When times were better, the noblemech recalled occasionally seeing brave minibots who would try to hitch a ride to beat the traffic, amongst jeers and cackling from other city dwellers who were either on foot or taking a public bus. Now, everything was eerily quiet, muffled even further by the noxious, brown cloud.
Every so often, a pair of glowing red, blue, or yellow optics from an alley or a window would remind Mirage that he wasn’t the only mech left in Kaon anymore.
Sunstreaker had once told him about organizing a team to hang strings of lights between buildings to fight off the darkness of the lower city, especially during the season of the Festival of the All-Spark. He would have been spark-broken by what Kaon was now. Some apartment blocks were now completely dark, their occupants long-since gone or did not want to be found. Even the Academy was only partially lit. The barracks, once meant for mechs who had passed their final upgrade and were now taking advanced-education courses, had long since closed.
There were rumors that they weren’t even waiting for final upgrades anymore before sending young mechs and femmes to the Pits for “mandatory wartime training.”
The shocks between the hover-sleds and the cabin of the vehicle were good enough that Mirage only felt a slight bump as it passed over a piece of broken roadway, left after an explosion from the last time Kaon had tried to protest against their Prime’s emergency regulations.
He re-crossed his legs and tried not to stare out the window of the private transport while he was preparing himself for the meeting.
Mirage didn’t know why Sentinel had called for him. Other noblemechs had done more to curry favor with their city’s Prime. Mirage hadn’t been one of the elite who was trying to save their frames by funding the “fugitive searches,” or penning his new laws, or attempting to negotiate with the other cities.
He should have tried to be a negotiator. A diplomatic mission would have given him a reason to leave Kaon, although he wasn’t certain anymore that would have helped his situation. But maybe it would have given him an opportunity to discover Sideswipe and Sunstreaker’s fates. They hadn’t been taken by Decepticons; there was a slim chance that they were still alive but enslaved to whichever wildland tribe had actually captured Sideswipe. If nothing else, being told of where their frames had ended up would have given him better closure than his nightmares of what Sunstreaker was capable of doing when he thought his twin was in danger.
But no, Mirage had tried to keep his head down as Cybertron spiralled out of control, and now he was paying the price for his cowardice. The twins would be forever lost to the winds of chaos, and Mirage needed to keep pretending that normalcy would soon return, that he hadn’t used his Tarnish-made electro-disruptor more times in the past vorn to save himself from danger than he ever had in his life, that he didn’t know that Sentinel had campaigned lies about the whereabouts of Sideswipe and Sunstreaker, that he was still one of the Prime’s loyal mechs, that he was unimportant enough to be satisfied with the odd task of researching Cybertron’s history for Sentinel.
The Omega Keys were just ceremonial pieces that he was supposed to find. No more important than a metaphorical “key to the city” that was bestowed upon mechs who were recognized for deeds of valor. Yet Sentinel was adamant that Mirage find them.
It was an attempt to stall Mirage in Kaon for as long as possible, he was certain of it. But whenever Mirage had found some measure of success, Sentinel had seemed sincerely eager to receive new intelligence. But that didn’t explain why he needed to see Mirage in person, when the mech was best utilized checking other noblemechs’ private libraries.
The transport turned a corner. To their right, “RATIONS” had been hastily scrawled across the side of a building in red paint, just over a doorway to a business that had once been a bar. A line of mechs stood outside, waiting their turn to be let in, and all of them whipped their heads around in alarm to stare at the passing transport, their plating slicked down until Mirage had passed them.
Sunstreaker had once pointed it out to Mirage as Sideswipe’s favorite place to drink. Now, it was unlikely that they would ever know him as more than a drunk who had been lucky enough to die before the war started. And Sunstreaker? The poor, spark-broken brother who ran out into the wildlands to find him, never to be seen again.
…He couldn’t bring the twins home. But he'd be damned if he was going to let go of their memories as easily as Kaon had.
Mirage touched the side of his helm and activated his comm-link. The connection picked up in one ring.
“Sir?”
“I have a storage unit being rented close to the north gate.” He told the mech the lot number. “It’s not in my name. Make sure you use a false ID too when you sign in.”
“Yes, sir. Did you want me to check the manifest?”
“Twice. Then calculate how much space is left, then add as many of my own things to it as you can.”
“Your own things?”
The vehicle was slowing down as it approached the turn-around in front of the Prime’s tower, the top of which cut through the smog cloud and out of sight.
“Anything you think I would need if my home were suddenly somewhere else. I have a feeling that my research is about to send me afar.”
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Mirage smiled politely and bowed his head towards Sentinel’s desk. “My Prime.”
“Mirage, a delight to see you again!”
The bigger mech quickly stood up, and the new, golden wings on his back glowed in the amber evening light streaming through the window that was taking up the entirety of the left wall. Mirage focused on keeping the surprise off of his faceplates as he met Sentinel Prime at the halfway point of the expansive office, both of their feet clicking along the tiled floor.
Mirage didn’t miss that the two guards posted on either side of the inside of the office’s door had their weapons held in their hands instead of strapped to their backs. He made sure not to look back at them as he shook Sentinel’s hand, then allowed the bigger mech to guide him to a pair of couches circling a table close to the giant window. A tiered plate of multicolored, jellied energon sat in its center, the treats stacked daintily.
The ceiling of the smog cloud was only a few stories below them, reflecting more of the orange sunset into the room. Mirage seated himself on one couch while Sentinel made himself comfortable on the other.
“Certainly there must be a symbolism to your new wings. The glorious leader who will guide us from the sky?”
Sentinel chuckled and helped himself to one of the jellied energon cubes. “You’re mistaking me with the old Vosnian legend about Icara.” He lounged back in on the couch and chewed on a bite before speaking again. “That’s not what I had you trying to find for me. Unless somehow old Vosnian legends are relevant.”
There was no point in trying to lie about his research. Whatever Mirage claimed, Sentinel would have one of his cronies check his work.
He folded his hands in his lap.
“There’s no evidence that an Omega Key ever existed in Kaon. Several of the Primes in this city’s history have announced that they possessed one, but it’s always a bluff to claim legitimacy. Granted, much of our history before Luna-1 fell and Cybertron was thrown into a cataclysm has been forever lost, and there were likely many more Omega Keys than the ones we know about today, but if one ever did exist in Kaon, the Cataclysm either shattered it or buried it.”
Mirage did keep one piece of information to himself. He’d found the name of a site where Kaon’s Omega Key might be buried. But he wanted to look further into what this ‘Unicron’s Core’ was before he let Sentinel try to find it first.
Sentinel grimaced as he swallowed the energon in his mouth.
“But there are others.”
“Yes. I can confirm with confidence that Praxus’s Prime, Nominus, has one. Each time a new Prime is elected in Praxus, the passing of the Omega Key is part of the ceremony, and it has been seen by the general public, although where it is stored is not known by any of Kaon’s databases. Kalis had one too, but they have been without a Prime for generations and instead have their merchant lords run the city, so there’s a good chance that sometime during the eons an ignorant merchant lord had it sold. Again, Kaon has no records of this, and I would need to go to Kalis to look at their manifests. Another is supposed to be under Tarn, and worryingly, we have intelligence that some sort of mining operation is occurring in Tarn right now.”
“And there are more?”
“Likely. However, if you are looking to find one of the Omega Keys as soon as possible, I’d advise that you focus on these three leads. Praxus’s is the one most likely to be immediately found, but considering its importance to their elections, I doubt they would easily hand it over to a Prime without one. Begging your pardon, My Prime.”
Sentinel waved his hand flippantly. “As you say, Kaon has never had one. None of us have Matrixes either, and yet no one doubts our statuses as Primes.”
Mirage quietly smiled.
“Kalis’s and Tarn’s will be more difficult to uncover, but since they clearly don’t understand what they have, or what they had, once their location is revealed it is possible to slip them back to Kaon without anyone missing them. I still recommend we start in Praxus though.”
“We?”
“Well, I assumed that you would want to send me. I’ve become your expert for Omega Keys, as you told me to be. I may be of noble construction, but I’m not tactless to those of the lower classes. All of your diplomats are excellent, and they thrive in the courts and justice halls and estates, but can you say that they would ever express a want to hunt for a pre-Cataclysm artifact that may be hidden away and under guard? Then you have me, who wants to see this through, who doesn’t mind mingling with the lower classes, and who can–”
“Yes, you do like mingling with the lower classes, don’t you?”
Mirage paused. “My Prime? Sir?”
Sentinel picked up another jellied energon. “Do you recall, last vorn, when a mercenary was captured by the Decepticon tribe?”
Oh no.
Mirage pretended to be searching his memory banks. “...Yes, and then his brother, Sunstreaker, went after him and was never heard from again. Have you ever seen the mural in my condominium? I commissioned him to paint it, and he had just finished and was returning home. Then later that same orn, we all were horrified to learn that his brother had been captured. Sunstreaker called me, babbling that it was all a conspiracy. We argued, and the next morning, he was gone.”
“...Why are you lying about your involvement, Mirage?”
The jellied energon was pressed up to Sentinel’s lips. He nursed at it, savoring it, but never taking his glowing blue optics off of Mirage’s.
The longer it took Mirage to gather himself, the longer the pause between them, and the more assured Sentinel must have felt that he had him trapped.
“I haven’t lied to you.” Mirage raised his chin. “Have I been incorrect somehow? If I have, please, My Prime, correct me. But do not accuse me of lying to you. As far as I know, the orn that Sunstreaker returned home was when the minibots who escaped the Decepticons found their way back to Kaon with the news that his brother…what was his name…”
“Sideswipe.” His optics stayed on him, watching Mirage’s performance, and Mirage had no idea if he was closer to fooling him or if Sentinel was taking some perverse glee in watching him squirm.
“That Sideswipe had been taken alive by the Decepticon tribe, though likely he wasn’t online for much longer. Sunstreaker then called me, once, hysterical and desperate to believe that Sideswipe was still alive.” He pretended to relent and slightly bowed his head. “I did have one of my employees go to his home and make sure that his projects would be safe in a storage unit under his name, in case he managed to return. But it’s been over a vorn. Surely the facility would have sold the belongings of a mech that no one thinks is still online. Is that why you feel I’ve been untrue, My Prime? Did I move something of Sunstreaker’s that you needed?”
Sentinel’s engine rumbled through a chuckle.
Mirage raised his optics in time to see the Prime suckle down the rest of jellied energon, then spend a breem licking his fingers.
Unbothered. Amused.
“Please, you must eat something, Mirage.”
He straightened, and tried to keep the air of noblemech who was tactfully trying to hide his offense, not one who was afraid. “I’m not hungry right now.”
“What would wet your appetite, then? I think I know. Have you visited the Pits recently, Mirage?”
“No. I don’t enjoy bloodsports.”
“Now, that’s another lie. All the noblemechs enjoy the gladiators. In…one form or another.”
Mirage’s spark twisted hard in its chamber as his pump beat faster. He hid a panicked twitch as a laugh as he re-crossed his legs.
“True enough. But why dig at ancient history, my Prime? Do you truly believe that I am somehow involved in the machinations of a couple of your mercenaries? I can count on my hands the number of times I’ve met with Sideswipe face-to-face, and Sunstreaker and I held shared interests from outside of the Pits. He struck me as a lost spark, destined to follow the adventures and mischief that his twin chased but wanting something quieter, elegant. I appreciated him as an artist, not as a gladiator. Whatever violence Sideswipe pulled him into at the end of their lives, I had nothing to do with it.”
“Nothing at all? Mirage, you’ve gone from barely remembering Sunstreaker, to him being the last one to speak to you before he vanished, to finding a kindred spirit with a gladiator. Come now. Can’t we be honest with one another?”
If Mirage wasn’t certain that Sentinel had tried to kill the twins, maybe he would have relented. But hadn’t he been successful, or at least thought that he had?
“Yes, we should be honest. Can we start with what exactly you are looking for from me?”
Sentinel’s wings flexed as he straightened his back.
“You were not the only mech to show an interest in Sideswipe and Sunstreaker before their disappearance. Or rather, an interest only in Sunstreaker,” he raised a finger as Mirage started to protest. “But it’s more than an appreciative optic for the mech’s frame, or for his skills. I think that the only one who understood him better than you was his twin.”
“We were friends, yes, but I think you’re greatly exaggerating me having an understanding of a mech from an entirely different class and–”
“If you won’t eat, then you must drink.”
Blue and gold fingers vanished, then reappeared from Sentinel’s subspace pocket. A glass drinking flute was placed in front of Mirage.
The hand disappeared again, and returned with what Mirage thought was a decanter of high-grade. It was uncorked, poured into the flute, and immediately Mirage realized that he was wrong.
It was…some sort of energon. But it was too dark, and thick, like it had been mixed with oil, but Mirage didn’t smell any oil. In the light of the orange sunset, the dark, purple hues seemed to change to–
He was a noblemech, but he was no stranger to violence. It reminded him of once coming across the grayed-out frame of a friend of his, assassinated, his dead and coagulating energon across the floor the same color as what had just been poured.
Something primal in him, illogical but instinctive, wanted to smack the glass aside and run out the door.
Sentinel gestured to the glass. “Drink it.”
Mirage’s warped reflection in the flute grimaced back at him. “I think not.”
“I insist.”
“As do I. I don’t know what that is.”
The Prime leaned forward, his elbows on his knees. His voice lowered to a near-whisper.
“It is how you, just like every other mech currently in the Pit, expresses their loyalty to me. It will sate your appetite better than that chained gladiator ever could.”
Mirage’s optics flashed up to Sentinel, and this time he wasn’t sure if he had hidden the growing terror behind them.
When Mirage didn’t answer him, Sentinel continued.
“You don’t yet understand the lengths I’ve gone to keep you hidden. The Pits keep notes on everything their gladiators do when they’re under contract, especially if a special request is made of them to leave the arena and be brought up to a visitor’s room for entertainment. They saw right through your shell accounts. They were aware of every one of the dozens of times you paid for him. Mirage…he was much more to you than an interfacing preference. Especially when you used one of the shells to pay for the entirety of his stay at an emergency clinic, following–”
He knew.
Mirage raised a palm. “Stop. The matter was…it was devastating to Sunstreaker. It is not up for discussion.”
“Then let’s discuss something else. Tell me what about the twins would draw the attention of the Decepticons. How did they know of them? What did they want with them?”
Sentinel wasn’t clear on his own reasons for betraying Sideswipe and Sunstreaker?! Who was pulling a Prime’s strings?!
“I’m telling you, the first time I had heard of them even being remotely involved with the wildlands was when Sideswipe was captured and Sunstreaker went after him!”
“Drink up, Mirage. And then try to lie to me again.”
He was trapped. It didn’t matter now that Mirage truthfully knew nothing else. Sentinel thought he did.
The Prime had never intended to let Mirage go free again the moment that he’d walked into his tower. Whatever that drink was, it was the offer for Mirage to cooperate and tie the collar around his own neck.
He sighed, and uncrossed his legs to stretch out the tension in his frame. “...It’s a shame. I honestly was fascinated with all that I had found about the Omega Keys.”
Sentinel’s optics tightened. “Are you trying to defy me?”
Mirage stood up, careful not to accidentally bump the table and knock over the glass flute. He didn’t want the disgusting thing splashing on him.
“I think after all the harm I did to Sunstreaker, the least I can do is make sure that you’ll never find him.”
He nodded his head politely, excusing himself, then started towards the door, his feet clicking across the tile.
Sentinel’s engine hissed.
“...Take him.”
Mirage had no idea what had become of Blurr during this war, but vorns before it had begun, he’d had the opportunity to dine with him after one of his races. After a night of delicacies and drink, Blurr had tried to drunkenly train Mirage about the best running techniques on his condominium’s rooftop. Obviously he’d been more appreciative of Blurr’s legs once they’d gone to bed, but Mirage had actually trained after that, wanting to keep the racer’s attention the next time he was in Kaon.
At the same time that the guards were reacting to Sentinel Prime’s signal, Mirage was lowering his upper body as if he were trying to find something within the seams of the tiled floor. He took another step, and as he activated his Tarnish electro-disrupter, he shoved the front of his foot into the floor and took off.
A familiar tingle ebbed around his frame, and he knew he’d vanished.
They could easily catch him by firing wildly if he ran straight at the door. Instead, as the guards realized that he wasn’t registering in visual or thermal light, Mirage dodged to the left, aiming to swing around behind one of the guards as soon as he stepped forward and away from the wall.
“Where’d he go?!”
“He’s still in the room, you fools!”
Gunfire burned into the tiled floor where Mirage would have been if he’d gone straight at the door. The guard further from him swore, and the one who was closer looked down his rifle’s sight, trying to spot him through it. A sniper, though it wasn’t helping him in this situation.
The sniper took one step away from the wall as he searched for him. Mirage dashed for the space he’d created.
He’d need to come up with a further plan once he got out the door, but first he needed to get out the door–
There was a roar of an engine, unlike anything Mirage had ever heard before. He glanced over his shoulder.
Sentinel was no longer on the floor. His wings were spread, and he hovered in the air as jets roared from under and just behind his feet. A blue battle mask had slipped over his faceplates, and his optics swept left and right, searching for him.
The mech was…flying?!
How?!
“Zap him!”
The shock of seeing Sentinel hovering had distracted Mirage too long. He didn’t see that the guards had moved to stand on specific tiles close to the wall, and one of them had smacked his palm against a hidden button.
Lightning erupted from the floor everywhere around him.
Mirage’s HUD went crazy as pain lanced through his entire frame. He might have screamed. He wasn’t sure. When he fell, his vents momentarily stopped working, and his jaw stayed slack.
The lightning stopped, but voluntary control of Mirage’s frame didn’t return right away. He saw his own arm phasing in and out, appearing and disappearing and reappearing again as his electro-disrupter failed to counter the surge. He twitched, groaning, desperately trying to clear his HUD of the warnings and errors as hands clapped down on him and yanked his arms behind his back. A pair of stasis cuffs were locked around his wrists, overriding his control of the electro-disrupter and bringing him completely back into view in visual light.
As he was dragged up to stand between the two guards holding him, the floor seemed to shake as Sentinel Prime landed. The jets on his back cut off, and as he stalked forward, a seam appeared in the middle of his battle mask, and then it disappeared on either side of his grinning faceplates.
“As you said, it’s a shame. You could have been an ally.”
Mirage’s voice was overlaid with static as his vocalizer tried to reset. “Who’s really in charge of Kaon, My Prime?” he hissed. “Clearly you lost that mantle long before you lost the twins.”
The smile faded. “I rule Kaon.”
Mirage chuckled weakly. “You fear him so much that you won’t even say his name.” He gasped as one of the guards yanked hard on the stasis cuffs, forcing his back straight.
“Sir, would you like me to put him in a cell in the Pits until he learns to speak respectfully to his Prime?”
Sentinel laughed.
“A cell?! Oh no, dear boy. His rank deserves more than a cell. No, no. Make sure you give him one of the field-view rooms above the Pits. Perhaps the same one he stayed in whenever he paid for extra entertainment from a certain gladiator.”
Sentinel closed the distance between them, and as Mirage tried again to squirm free, he lowered himself to put his optics inches from the noblemech’s. Sentinel quieted his voice to a purr.
“You and I both know that neither he nor his brother will ever return. And I can’t have Megatron finding out that someone like you exists. He’ll dismantle you to learn what secrets you’re hiding about the twins. Sunstreaker isn’t going to save you, Mirage, but I will.”
Megatron. His name had come up while Mirage had been frantically researching why Sunstreaker had thought that his brother being taken was part of a conspiracy. But he was the one leading the Decepticon tribe, not whichever group had actually taken Sideswipe.
…Sunstreaker was right. Sentinel had conspired with the Decepticons. And Megatron was still trying to get to the twins, for whatever reason he’d wanted them in the first place.
Neither Sentinel nor Megatron really thought that the twins were dead.
Sunstreaker was still alive.
Mirage painted a sneer on his face, even as his spark felt like it was going to burst from its chamber in joy and relief.
Sunstreaker was still alive!
“You’re never going to find them.”
Mirage’s chin was gripped between a golden forefinger and thumb. “Oh, of course not. What use do I have for their dead frames, when I have you?”
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
“Mirage is a traitor. Arrest anyone in his household or employ for conspiring against their Prime.”
“Yes, sir.”
The lieutenant's voice was abrupt but clear. Just as Sentinel preferred from his fugitive team. The Prime kept two fingers on his comm unit as he paced back and forth in his darkening office, the sun dipping below the new horizon caused by the smog cloud.
“Don’t kill them yet. And don’t let them talk to anyone, without tearing out their vocalizers. I want them to keep the ability to scream.”
“Yes, sir.”
There was no goodbye. Sentinel clicked off the comm, then sighed out a swear under his vent.
It would be impossible for a high-ranking prisoner to not attract attention. Eventually someone would slip and spread a rumor or gossip about a noblemech who was being held in the Pits, albeit in comparably lavish conditions up in a field-view room, and the moment Megatron found out he’d demand to know what Sentinel was up to. But a more persuasive interrogation was equally dangerous. The last thing he needed was for his nobles and diplomats to have a martyr to rally behind. They knew Mirage hadn’t made any plays for control since the war started, and for Sentinel to torture a quiet but seemingly loyal noble meant that the rest of them who did plot behind his back were in danger.
No, this had to play as if Sentinel had grown tired of Mirage’s cowardice and was simply taking an unreliable pawn off the field.
In truth, he either needed to break Mirage quickly, or convince him that he had no future unless he reconsidered his loyalty to a mercenary who wasn’t coming back for him. The constant reminder of the room where he’d interfaced with the mech who had been only a contracted gladiator at the time was the first step. The next would be the execution of his staff, one by one, right in the center of the Pits. Sentinel planned to make sure he was right next to Mirage for each one.
He’d know that Mirage was breaking when he finally told him a truth about the Omega Keys that Sentinel knew he had. If Mirage had really dove into the history of Kaon’s Omega Key, he would have found something about Unicron’s Core.
Megatron had done the unthinkable and returned to Kaon, lead on by one of his minions, and risked everything Sentinel had built by exposing himself as he let the minion lead them underground, deeper than the energon mines, deeper than what had once been an old Kaon before the Cataclysm, and to the Core. The civilians would already be talking about this too. Rebellions might spring up again, knowing that whatever interested Megatron boded for them all.
Sentinel was tired of Megatron not telling him what exactly he needed from the Core, and he'd be damned if this wealthy noblemech was going to keep the secret from him too.
There was a soft, musical chime.
“Enter,” Sentinel muttered.
The door opened, and one of the Tower’s attendants nervously glanced left and right at the two new guards posted at the door before speaking up.
“My Prime. Megatron is summoning–”
“Damus, no one summons Sentinel Prime!” Sentinel roared at him. One of his hands swept across his desk, knocking over several trinkets and sending them crashing to the floor.
His voice echoed through the expansive room until it faded away into silence.
Damus, now quivering, gulped to clear his vocalizer.
“H-he said I should tell you that specifically, my Prime. I w-was to say that you were not requested, you were summoned, to Unicron’s Core."
Sentinel’s engine growled as his lips curled.
“...Tell him I’m on my way.”
Damus quickly bowed and fled the room. Sentinel paused, giving himself a moment to vent, then recollected himself as he strided towards the door too.
The only thing worse than being treated like a lieutenant to a barbarian mech was having to meet with the one who had led them to the Core. Soundwave. Sentinel especially didn’t want to be anywhere near the visored mech Megatron kept by his side. Something about the mech felt…dead.
For not the first time since Swindle had introduced himself to the Prime with an offer of salvation for a starving city, Sentinel considered the mech’s words: How many sparks was he willing to pay to make sure he survived?
It should have only been a single split-spark.