Chapter Text
Whatever Shockwave is doing to them in that Quintesson lab, there are immediate side effects.
The mechs in the cells across the hall complain of numbness, but to Prowl, everything feels overly sensitive. There is no recharge slab. When he wakes up each morning, the ground feels sticky, somehow. When he sits up and runs a hand over it, there's no adhesive to be found.
It's stickier each day.
The first night he tries to sleep on his side, he wakes and finds missing chunks of paint everywhere he was touching the floor, but no traces of it anywhere on the ground around him. He then realizes the paint is missing from his back, too; he simply had no means to see it. He starts alternating what side of his body he sleeps on.
He observes that some of the gestures of the mechs across the hall are growing clumsy. Most of the guards in the hall are Sharkticons. Occasionally, a Quintesson slithers by and leers.
More experiments. More intrusive claws, inside, where they do not belong. He returns to his cell and buckles, holding his chassis. He can't afford to stay on his knees long. Not when contact with solid surfaces is doing something strange to his dermal layer. He stuffs away feelings of violation as quickly and efficiently as he is able, so he can once again stand.
The soles of Cybertronian feet are thick.
The symptoms worsen day by day. Now, if he lingers too long in one space, even his peds begin to feel sticky, like there is a spilt, sugary drink all over the floor. The rubber, polymer, and metal starts to show signs of maceration.
The paint vanishes from any place he leaves in contact to long with any surface, still without explanation. He develops a program to supervise his own recharging frame, to partially wake him and induce him to roll once per hour.
Jazz is free earlier than expected, given how many different pieces Prowl had seen him in last. The mech flashes a bloodied smile that seems uneven somehow, even if his motions are graceful. Prowl grips his elbow as he's picking the lock. Jazz shoots the touch a brief glance.
"Symptoms?" demands Prowl.
"I'm an immortal, unstoppable, agent of Chaos," chirps the saboteur.
"Symptoms." Prowl is not in the mood.
Jazz pauses, gives him a glance up and down, and tilts his head. For this to be Prowl's primary concern tells Jazz something is wrong: Something is aberrant that warrants attention. "You ain't got the same?"
"Negative."
Jazz resumes delicately feeling out the complex lock's internal tumblers. Prowl listens to the lockpick as it tests each tooth and groove. He realizes by the tilt of his head that Jazz is doing the same - that he is feeling out the lock using his sense of hearing to compensate for numb fingers. "Tell me what's up with ya, then," the spy prompts.
"An abnormal reaction occurs between my frame and whatever I touch," Prowl says. "I have to keep pacing. I cannot sit down."
Jazz is typically good at multitasking, when multitasking involves talking. "Saw a mech on the way here. Was trapped on the ground up against his cell wall."
"The possibility of that happening was among my concerns," muses Prowl.
"Cell wall looked like it was growing over him."
That had not been among Prowl's concerns. It was now.
"N' your touch feels weird."
"In what way?"
"Like it's reigniting circuits, but in a wrong way."
"Describe."
"Making my arm feel like it ain't mine."
Prowl releases him, but Jazz shakes his head and gestures with his chin. "Reach around the bars. Put your hands on top of my hands."
As they stealthily escape the cell block, Prowl sees what has happened to Beachcomber. He pauses and stares, because Jazz had not given the scene due description.
The parts of Beachcomber touching the ground have melted, like marble left out in the rain over centuries. The rubber, silicone, polymer and metal are breaking up and dissolving out, as if trying to embrace the ground. The concrete and rebar have grown up over him, intertwining with his body.
He is trying to remain calm, and because he is Beachcomber he is doing an excellent job, but the wall has melted down over his optics and he cannot see. Much more of this, and it will consume his face.
This cannot be the fault of the wall or floor. The only variable to blame is Shockwave's experiments. But how? How could Shockwave have done anything to them which would have caused this interaction? It is unclear whether Prowl and Beachcomber are affected identically, differently, or at two points along a shared spectrum. In planning for the worst, it is only wise to assume the 'sticky' sensation of being glued to the floor is a precursor to somehow fusing with it.
"I need to get an actual key," Jazz tells Prowl after he's killed the Sharkticon in security, toggled a monitor, and waved for Prowl to follow him in. "You need to spot for me." And to stay some place comparatively safe, went unspoken.
"Understood." Prowl is already learning the monitors. "Do you have a read on Red Alert?"
"Nope, or I'd have sprung him before you."
"Touching."
Jazz flashes a grin and is gone.
Prowl dumps the dead Sharkticon out of the seat, sweeps his gaze across the chair, and considers. He sets an internal chronometer. Fifteen minutes. He sits and deliberately pulls his peds off the floor and out of contact with any surface. He does not have to look to know all the paint from the soles is gone. There is a dull ache in his heels he had been erroneously attributing to constant pacing and exhaustion. He rubs one absently and notes the rubber is hotter than it should be. As if the energon is closer to the surface.
In fifteen minutes he will rotate to kneeling. Then standing. Then back to sitting. If possible, he will stand on one foot at a time. He begins to iterate rapidly through every monitor of every camera on the installation. He needs more data.
It takes him over an hour to notice the spilled energon on the chair is slowly oozing towards him.