Stolen Messages

Rating: T

Summary: Dylan Gould wasn't the only human in league with the cons. One family has decided they've had enough and have stopped giving information, but the cons don't know it. After all, the daughter still wants to live. Good thing her father leaves the computer unlocked.

~o~ Dakota ~o~

For the past few weeks dinner time had not occurred without a thick fog of tension rolling in. The house was holding its breath, waiting for the next explosion to happen.

Much like it was now. The only sounds coming from our kitchen were the clinks of silverware against the china plates and the occasional mutter of 'pass the breadbasket…please'. Admittedly, even I was waiting for the emotions to give way for the yelling.

"I'm done living like this Richard." My mom lit the fuse.

'Oh please don't do this now,' I begged silently.

"Helen, let's not start this now." My father said calmly.

"How can you be so calm about this?" She seethed.

'And in 3…'

"This is ridiculous."

'2…'

"Helen please calm down."

'1…'

"THEY ARE OUT THERE WATCHING US! THEY'RE MAKING SURE WE CAN'T TURN AND GET THE HELP WE NEED!" My mother exploded.

"Boom…" I muttered under my breath.

Before the argument could get too heated I stood and cleared my throat. "May I be excused?" I asked.

My father simply gave me a look and I quickly cleared out of the room. I put my plate in the sink and dashed past my parents and up the stairs. Upstairs, I was greeted with the sight of an open office door…my father's door was open and unlocked!

A spark of adrenaline was released and I instinctively reached for the alien looking hard drive in my sweatshirt pocket. I cast a wary glance at the stairwell behind me before silently darting into his office. The screensaver on his laptop was dim but still running. I all but dove to wiggle the mouse and turned down the sound, taking note of where the dial was so I could replace it later. I plugged in the hard drive and made a mad dash to copy all the disk drives onto it. It was nerve-wracking. I was stealing from my dad…

But I needed to if I wanted to stay alive and keep my family that way too.

Dylan was dead. People took notice of his declaration in the center of the battle. Police never stood a chance. When all the commotion died a little it seemed not even an act of god could save Dylan from the rioting crowd of people who sought his blood for having a hand in the deaths of their loved ones.

By the time the police got through there wasn't much left of Dylan. It hadn't ended pretty, but in all the commotion no one bothered to take names as the once ravenous crowd took off in all directions. Now the carefully woven web of information Dylan had held together was falling apart, leaving the Decepticons to try and hold it together. Their methods made Dylan's look like a cakewalk.

Finally the download was complete and I quickly deleted the memory, returned the sound to its original place, and got the hell out of there. I sprinted to my room, the first door on the opposite wall, and tried to quietly slam the door shut.

My heart pounded in my chest. That was going to give me a heart-attack one of these days…

My father was a minor, but important, source of Dylan's. We were still handing out information, well kind of. My mother and father agreed they were done but didn't know how to say it without getting killed by the cons. So, my father simply stopped dropping off information to Barricade in the old lot under the city freeway.

I had met the cons. I was scared shitless by them. Frenzy wasn't as bad as his masters and neither was Ravage. If you got past Frenzy's glitches and Ravage's evil looks there were both pretty…mellow I guessed. But for all I knew it was just a guise.

I had convinced the Decepticons that people were starting to get suspicious of my father and he was having me deliver the information instead. They believed it, thank god. But I couldn't keep this up for forever…

Ravage and Frenzy were okay with me, Lazerbeak…not so much. He hates everyone, and found it amusing to shoot at my feet and watch me stumble around. If Soundwave was going to kill us, he'd deploy Lazerbeak and we'd all die.

I clutched the flash drive tighter.

"We're in too deep…" I whispered.