Everything went wrong that could go wrong. Even the great mythical heroes of old could encounter a moment that caught them unprepared. Something impossible or unexpected. Either a momentary weakness or just a simple accident, and then death rushes up to see what the noise was all about.

Jack was just a man. At the mercy of his own luck and the salvaged gear he had to work with. His boots were ten feet off the table when the rope twisted up inside his repel armature and with a soft little bounce he stopped in mid air. He fought to get a better look, his mind racing.

"Shit!" he hissed, resisting the urge to kick his feet like a kid stuck on a swing set. Discarding half a dozen frantic ideas, he went for his knife, but when he shifted his weight on the rope, the knot worked loose just as smoothly as it had happened. His weakened grip fed out way to much slack, and his repel brake slipped out of his hand, with Jack's full weight still on the line. Normally he would have fallen to the table below, but unfortunately he had taken hold of the rope above him with his free hand as he struggled to become unstuck, and when the repel armature slipped out of his fist, it slammed up into his other hand, breaking two fingers and mangling them in the mechanism.

For one horrible second Jack swung by his hand alone. He let out a pathetic little warble of strangled pain, his mouth open and his eyes squinting at the unbearable pressure, but then everything came undone and down he went anyway, hitting the table below him with a terrific crash.

The backpack he was carrying mashed his ribs and Jack groaned, rolling off the table slowly and down to the floor, dragging it over with him and adding one crash on top of the other. Having landed on his side, he lay there for a moment, biting his lip so hard it was wonder that it didn't start bleeding too. He hurt so much he could barely breathe.

Oh no!

Dragging air into his bruised lungs, he struggled to sit up, doing what he had to quickly before he had time to think about it, and with a wet squelch of flesh, he yanked the repel mechanism off his crushed fingers. He almost passed out, screaming wordlessly and thumping his head off the table behind him. He hugged his fingers to his chest with his good hand, the heavy backpack sliding off his back and almost pulling him over.

"Oh, fuck. Oh, fuck me." he groaned weakly as he let himself slump over on his elbow.

Get up, Jack!

His head was ringing but there was no mistaking the heavy tread of armored boots coming this way. Any second, and they would be right inside the room. If he was well and truly caught, he didn't mean to go quietly. When the Vehicon rumbled into the room, Jack reared up drunkenly, and with a burst of adrenaline, he ripped his one and only grenade free from his belt and armed it with a click. He drew back and threw it hard, the pain making him feel like he wanted to vomit, and Jack half collapsed, half dove back behind the table.

The Vehicon saw him, saw him throw, and he was caught off guard. "Halt!" he roared. The grenade blew in the air when it was a yard away from him, taking him the left side and slamming him back against the wall. It thoroughly perforated him and he bled energon from two dozen wounds where the shrapnel had torn through him. He groaned just as Jack did, already slumping over, with his visor going dead. Cautiously, Jack raised his head, his vision swimming and his ears ringing.

"Jesus." he moaned.

Move, Jack!

Klaxons began to wail. Sprinklers burst and soaked him instantly. Jack was near to passing out and the shock of the icy water helped, and with his jacket a bloody mess where he pressed his torn up hand against it, he frantically shrugged the backpack higher on his back and started looking for a way out of here. All he could hear was his pulse pounding in his ears, along with the hitch pitched whine brought on by the explosion. Stumbling, he made for the opposite door, every motion making his injured hand burn like fire all the way to his elbow.

He felt like a wild animal trapped in a pit. The only difference was, this animal knew he was going to be shot when the hunters came back. Fear gave him wings. Jack even jogged a few paces towards the door, blinking the water out of his eyes, and he paused a moment to get his bearings.

Blink, blink, blink.

That way.

With a nod of his head, he headed down the hallway, taking a sharp turn to the left and then another to the right. This place was going to lock down any second, but at least he was where he needed to be. This was the focal point of all his planning, and according to the schematics he studied, not that far up ahead he would be inside the deep interior. To his surprise though, up ahead, in this last stretch of hallway, he saw a thick blast door slowly coming down, sealing off this section of the complex.

He was almost there. This was the only way in. The one place the air ducts wouldn't take him.

Run, Jack. Run!

"See Jack run." he croaked weakly, thumping ahead doggedly and throwing himself under the door as it irresistibly slid lower towards the floor. It wasn't much of a dive, and Jack had to pull his legs over the threshold, lest it crush his feet. After that, the door thumped into place softly, the magnetic rings sealing it to the floor without a sound. In fact, it cut off the wail of sound behind him so completely, it was surreal to suddenly hear such abundant silence. And it was oddly familiar, like a shopping mall after hours, and based on the carpeted section he found himself laying on, along with the paneled walls and soft lighting, Jack knew he was finally inside Knock-Out's inner sanctum.

He lowered his head to the carpet, feeling the short fibers tickle his forehead, his blood spreading out from around his clenched fist, still clutched to his chest. Jack swallowed a few times, determined not to throw up, but he did so anyway, once he had fished out a roll of electrician's tape from his jacket and wrapped his two mangled fingers up together. He went right over the deeper cuts, finally settling on taping the injured fingers down, like half a fist, and that would just have to do. After that, he threw up, and then, wiping his mouth with a bloody sleeve, he climbed back to his feet once more and headed farther down the hallway.

Smaller labs and storerooms branched off to the sides but Jack forged ahead, praying there were no Vehicons in here. His studies had shown this inner sanctum as off limits where it ended and began deep inside the building proper. If fate had any luck left for him, the regular troopers were outside the blast-doors, handling the emergency, again never thinking to look for a lone human. But what would explain an explosion and a dead trooper? Along with a rope hanging out of that duct?

Jack stumbled sharply, his knees buckling. No matter what was behind him, he needed a moment. Just a moment. And nearly collapsing against a wall, he sagged back down to his knees, propped up on one elbow against the wall. He felt heavy with water. And cold. He had half hoped the cold water would keep him going, but it too was doing it's part to zap his strength. He didn't dare look at his hand again, and blinking a few times, he shook the wet hair out of his eyes and looked around, finally lurching back to his feet and leaving a bloody hand print on the wall.

This place was the start of Knock-Out's private labs, deepest secrets and throne room. The whole nexus and hub of the entire complex. The heart of The Splicer. The home of the genius. The despot. The mad man. The Red Devil.

I'm in. I did it. I made it.

Gotta keep moving.

Okay.

The place grew more lavish and gaudy the further he went and Jack felt like he was on his own private tour, like an overlooked guest locked inside a museum after dark. Indeed, locked inside he was, and looking back on it, it had almost been simple, setting aside how he mangled his hand, of course. One good grenade was all it took. He just had to get in, get close, trigger the alarms, and lock himself inside. That had been a neat, little unplanned trick. Unorthodox, but it had worked. Jack imagined it would have made Ratchet sputter like an old engine, but didn't someone famous say something about the simplest answers? Well, whoever they were, they neglected to mention all the work it took to get to that point.

At least now he had a chance, and in his pain filled state, his dreamily looked back on a memory to a time when he had raced through the Decepticon flagship, trailing Miko and Rafael behind him. Or how about when he strode along inside Atlas? His long lost battle mech? Whole armies had overlooked him once, so why couldn't he be overlooked now? He could still make it. And if he was really lucky, maybe he had locked everyone out, as he had locked himself in.

He was pretty busted up though. In fact, he was fading fast and he had to do something. The pain in his back was growing from where he had landed on his heavy backpack, and it was like he felt kidney punched. The blood soaking his shirt from both hand and nose made him queasy, and his legs felt too rubbery, not to mention whatever his blood pressure must be doing. One glance at the monitor on his wrist showed him that he had broken it at some point.

Maybe that was for the best.

In the next room, Jack looked around until he found a more or less smaller display stand, set against the wall, and one that could serve as a table. He stopped next to it and eased out his medical kit. As he went through his meager supplies, he found himself staring at some kind of masterpiece piece sculpture sitting there, put here as just another opulent trophy when Knock-Out went through his phase of stealing the world's most valuable paintings and artwork. He didn't do it for any other reason except to humble and shame mankind, and this thing being displayed here served that purpose. Nothing else.

Jack shoved it aside, but when he made to shift his heavy backpack around again, he gasped suddenly as his back flared with a deep, stabbing pain. The precious payload he had landed on when he fell on that table had did more damage than he had imagined. A rib, maybe. Had to be. Maybe more than one, and he felt feverish all of a sudden. So soon? His adrenaline was wearing off, leaving him drained. Was he going into shock?

He fumbled for the lone hypodermic in his poor first aid kit. It was a stimulant, plain and simple, and it might hold him together and keep him awake long enough to see this whole thing through. The downside was, it didn't exactly enjoy being mixed up with nitroglycerin pills and a bad heart, since one type of treatment did not really favor the other, and it burned like fire going in. For the most part, that fire seemed to soothe over the greater aches and pains as it spread throughout Jack's body, and he felt himself recovering a little, slipping the needle free and dropping it in his kit.

His heart didn't like it though, and it pounded harder in his chest. That was a change. Usually it just kind of limped along and palpitated a couple times a day, but the stimulant was making it slap in his chest in a way that should have alarmed him. Jack wondered if he hadn't just given himself the makings of his first stroke to add to this fine day's work. Well, he had to keep moving. Maybe his luck still held and confusion would reign supreme a little longer. Long enough to get him down into the heart of this place. Would he have enough time then before they really came looking for him? Once the alarm was canceled and they started to figure it out?

Let them stay stupid. Just a little longer. Please.

He started coughing as he started back up and that sure was no help. It made his head pound and his nose run a little with blood. Jack just rubbed it away with the back of his good hand and kept going.

Next step, the elevator. Where was it? Elevator, elevator, elevator. Going down. That's what he needed. Stay awake. Stay focused. His eyes were blurry again suddenly and he shook his head to clear them.

"I can do this. I can do this." he repeated, clearing his throat a little.

Yes, you can.

Jack limped into a spacious room now between two heavy velvet curtains, knowing where to go, but he pulled up sharply. The nature of the pieces lining the walls in here had changed. They no longer had anything to do with human art, but more to do with what passed for art to the mad mind of Knock-Out. A mind that had taken the broken remains of his former enemies and had turned them into gruesome displays of conquest, either hanging from the walls or displayed in lit cases through the room along the floor. Jack knew what it was he saw. He could even identify some of them, and to show even further madness, some of the pieces were mixed and mismatched, like some careless curator had knocked down a fossil display of dinosaurs and had reassembled them at his whimsy.

He limped along a little more slowly now, still clutching his bad hand to his side, and he stopped in front of a particular display that outright gave him chills, despite how it almost seemed fitting.

"Resting comfortably, Starscream?" Jack mumbled. He turned his head to spit a little blood and that's what saved his life. There was a blur of blood red in the air and something struck Jack so forcefully, he felt something else give inside him with a dull burst of pain. As it was, he was barely grazed by the blow, though it did launch him through the air, slamming him into the wall, and he slid to the floor with a whimper, in so much pain again he couldn't even find the breath to scream.

Knock-Out shuffled out from among the display cases filling the room, his punch failing to pulverize the human who had plagued him for all these many mega-cycles.

"I knew it! You! You dirty little rat!" he snarled.

Jack blinked as he looked up at him. Long gone was the posturing medical officer of the Decepticon flagship. Long gone was the wise cracking, preening street racer. Here stood something living a wretched, depraved existence, isolated from reality and drunk with power, power that had long twisted and corrupted him in body as readily as it had in spirit. As surely as a disease.

Knock-Out was a corroded, garish parody of himself. A patchwork of parts, rust and self-inflicted mutilation. His body reeked of foul chemicals and grease and he was arrayed with all manner of rusty tools and grisly trophies both human and Transformer. What was left of his old red paint scheme made him look like he was covered in dried blood

In fact, he was.

"You stinking little maggot! You dare come here?!" he snarled as he limped forward on one working leg, the other a deformed ruin dragging behind him. He supported himself on a twisted steel cane decorated in horrible little fetishes. Like a mad witch-doctor. He glared down at Jack with one, single solitary blood red eye.

With a groan Jack pushed himself up to his hands and knees, revolted by Knock-Out's appearance more than anything else he had seen so far. The twisted Decepticon raved on.

"I always knew you would try it. I always knew the files were out there somewhere Stolen! Ratchet's defiant little last act, sticking in my thoughts like a rusty nail. So I knew the moment this attack began we could count on seeing Jack Darby and his bag-o'-bones dream!"

"You don't know shit." Jack swallowed, his lips split and bleeding.

Knock-Out drew closer to Jack, seemingly intent on grinding him into paste. Deformed and crippled or not, Jack was hardly in any shape to stop him. He didn't even think he could stand up. He just knelt there as Knock-Out drew up to him.

"Filthy worm! You're not even worthy to become one of my children! You're dying on your feet!" Knock-Out cackled, stopping just a step away from Jack and peering at him. "I can tell." he added with a sneer.

He leaned over to leer at Jack, his foulness almost a physical thing.

"Was that your plan? Hmm? To sneak in and try and save yourself? Hmm? You fool. You shouldn't have come here. There are worse things than death." Knock-Out cackled. His face was lit with feverish madness and Jack wondered, not for the first time, what had taken him down this path he had chosen.

"What happened to you, man?" he spoke softly, but evenly. "Do you see yourself?"

Knock-Out paused, his smile drooping a little, but then he laughed, a real blood red cackle.

"You want to know why I did it? You want to know how she helped?"

"Well, now that I think about it, no. Because it sure won't change the fact it happened and I can't stand monologuing.." Jack answered, spitting some blood onto the floor. Knock-Out had had enough and he reached out with one gore encrusted hand, intent on snapping Jacks' neck. Jack straightened up and shot him, just as Knock-Out bent towards him. The MagnumX7 roared, blasting one of it's precious shells straight into Knock-Out's midsection, blowing him wide open. The mad Decepticon screamed as he hugged his body, doubling over and dropping his cane, his mind unable to comprehend that Jack had just shot away most of his stomach. He would have fallen right there, if Jack hadn't shot him again, right through his hands where he clung to his shattered belly, the shell blowing them apart and nearly vivisecting him as it went clean out the other side of his back.

Knock-Out wailed as he pitched around and crashed to the floor, dragging down a display case with him. He lay there, writhing in agony and clawing at the floor with the stumps of his wrists. Jack just shook his head and doubled over for a moment, catching his breath, and then painfully he got back to his feet yet again, keeping a wary distance, and staying back to Knock-Out's left.

"You parasite! You worm! What have you done!" Knock-Out screamed, lurching around to suddenly glare at him with his one mad eye.

Jack blinked the haze out of his own eyes again, saying nothing and steadying his aim. Knock-Out stared down the dark hole of that massive barrel, as his face twisted with disgust and terror in equal measures.

"Funny how easy this ended up." Jack said calmly. When Knock-Out opened his mouth to reply, Jack shot in him in the eye, finishing a job he had started a long time ago. The round went in clean, snuffing out that mad, red light with a sharp snap, and it had enough force to blow the back of Knock-Out's head clean off. Knock-Out's head snapped back from the concussion, righted itself, eyeless and lifeless, and then his body slumped back on the floor without even a twitch.

For a moment, Jack just stood there, looking down at the pooling energon leaking out of this miserable monster. It was blue. Pure, healthy, unadulterated blue. He shook his head.

"Might have been worth asking you why you did it after all." he sighed. Then he let the empty weapon drop to the floor. Shooting it free hand without engaging the exo-frame he wore had nearly broken his arm, but Jack's body was growing numb with all the shock and abuse. A moment more and he was in possession of the key-cards, clutched in numb fingers, and without a sound he limped off further into the mad Decepticons sanctuary, leaving his corpse behind. He could keep himself locked in now, giving himself more time.

Yeah, sure. Plenty of time.

If he didn't just keel over and die first.

ooo

Jack paused and looked around the area where he was working for about the fifth time, his mind wandering as his body weakened. It was unreal being in here. It was anti-climatic. After so many years and so many hardships, to have it all wrapping up so nicely left him feeling vague and off balance and for minutes at a time he would daydream.

He supposed it was because the death of an enemy could affect you as much as the death of a loved one. They had never been able to get close to Knock-Out after that first fateful year, and now Jack had just walked on in and blew his head off.

Did he really just do that?

Couldn't that have been possible years ago? Like when Ratchet stormed the complex? Or the great battle where Prime disappeared? Jack knew the answer. As the years whittled the Autobots down to what they now were, Knock-Out only grew all the more over-confident which each resistance cell he crushed. That's why, in his arrogance, he had finally emptied the complex to crush the Autobots once and for all with what Bio-Terrors he kept here at The Splicer, and that's why Jack was here now, in this all or nothing gambit.

For stopping Knock-Out would not have stopped the Bio-Terrors. That would take something else. Something else entirely that they had worked so hard for and suffered so much. Jack grinned as he came out of it, going right back to work, his teeth pink with blood. Oh, yeah, he was ready. He was ready to do this. All his bypasses were complete and he blinked rapidly to leaf through the schematics only he could see.

Ratchets precious files. Bought with his life. Plans Jack had lived with every since they had been downloaded directly into his cerebral cortex. A fine, delicate enhancement made them a crystal clear over-lay in his vision accessed by a series of blinks, so Jack could work directly from them if and when he ever made it this far. A whole working blue print of the building and what was even more, the program Knock-Out used to create a Bio-Terror. Not the actual matrix itself, no, but how to use the machine Jack was working on.

Down here in the deepest lab, Jack knelt at the base of a control console that sat at the foot of one of the huge, blackened steel machines called a Bio-forge. Splayed out at six points like a star, the base of the thing rose up from the floor in steps, going a full story high, topped of with a lone Bio-tube at the very top. There were twenty in this room alone, and the wide tubes were filled with a milky, amniotic fluid, the machine housing crisscrossed with numerous black hoses and feeds hanging down from the ceiling, coiling around the base like a nest of snakes. They all hummed with unworldly power. They all had a sense of unnatural evil. All but this one. Jack shook his head. He was wandering again.

Come on, Jackie Boy. No more daydreaming.

He kept at it, wincing, forcing his damaged hands to work. Cotton wadding and more electrical tape did for most of the damage but he was still leaving blood on everything he touched. That was ok. His pain had reached almost a strange absolute now, and his body was just one big wound. One constant ache. The good thing was that it kept him awake, but his mind kept wandering, threatening to lapse into some kind of senselessness.

Jack couldn't recognize half of what he saw in here, and it worried him he could no longer name the tools he was using, but one thing he did recognize was the long green tubes of synthetic energon feeding into the side of every Bio-forge in here. He stared at the tube for a moment, his memories pushing to the front and making him forget himself again. When he reached out a hand, like he meant to caress the glass twenty feet above his head, he blinked in surprise and dropped his tool. Chagrined, Jack looked around for it and took it back up to get back to work. He didn't want to look at the Synth-En anymore, and surely somewhere within the forges, those horrifying human components were held in stasis until needed.

But for just this once, they would serve a different purpose, and Jack kept at it, even with his vision snapping in and out of focus. His teeth felt numb. Was that normal?

Wiping his hands on his knees, almost reverently Jack turned and finally brought up his backpack, setting it in front of him and folding back the old, travel stained flaps to reveal the crumpled metal lump within. It was rather nondescript, looking like nothing more than a chunk of burnt metal pulled from a scrap heap, but the steady blue pulse of a life support unit gave it away. Gave it a warm glow that caressed Jack's face like silk. Here it was. Another long lost wonder of the ancients that was as much a curse as it was a miracle, just like the Synth-en itself. This was the last relic ever recovered by the Autobots, and it really had nothing to do with the twisted lump of metal at all. The relic was the fancy mechanism on the side that made this whole thing possible. Still, Jack only had eyes for the steady blue glow in front of him, this being all that was left of a certain spark chamber. A precious spark chamber.

Jack's heart and soul.

"Hi, Arcee." he smiled.

ooo

Jack kept smiling then, all through the pain, as he ran his ruined hands over the withered hunk of metal that incredibly housed Arcee's living spark. All that was left of her. Taken right from her chest. Indeed it was her spark chamber and Jack had carried it for better than ten years.

It was Ratchet who had done it. Done it out of necessity, for Arcee had been one of the last ones to fall. He had done it then with Jack's approval, and ever since that fateful day, Jack had clung to this backpack and his desperate plan like he had clung to life. To keep her like this had been difficult, but he told himself daily that it was for a purpose. His only purpose. To wait for the day when they would have their chance to get her inside this terrible place and capture the means to bring her out of stasis. To bring her back to life.

To bring the house down.

Jack was just moments from that, struggling up off his knees and setting the backpack with it's precious cargo on the control console so he could tie it directly into the forge and feed Arcee's spark into the matrix. It was almost simple. He didn't even really feel that much pain anymore. But blood dribbled down his chin unnoticed again and his legs went weak. His chest felt like it was being suddenly being crushed by an awful weight on one side, and Jack's face twisted slightly on the right side, almost comically.

Uh oh.

Blackness gathered at the edges of his vision as Jack tried to stay upright. He didn't know how long the process would take, but he knew he was rapidly running out of time. He had to hurry. He clipped Arcee's life support unit into the console and fired up phase one.

Hurry, Jack.

He felt her more than he heard her. All these years he had carried her like this, he let himself believe that somewhere deep in his sub-conscious Arcee could speak to him. That he could hear her. He liked to think it was from when he had touched her spark. When he had faced another time of incredible odds and had brought her back to the light. He could do it again. His only sorrow was that all those times he had tried to talk to her, sealed inside the relic, she had never answered him. She slumbered, locked deep inside her spark, but sometimes, something, somewhere, reached out to him. He liked to think it was her.

In his mind, it felt like he could see those two beautiful blue eyes and how anxiously they stared at him.

"It's okay." he smiled softly, traces of that long lost boy in his battered, weather beaten face. He patted the battered lump of metal with one bloody hand.

"I'm okay." he said, coughing lightly and sprinkling blood on the console keys that blurred under his vision. The great machine before him rumbled now with more power at every button he pushed. Phase two was next, the read-out showing how the matrix was now coalescing and starting to shape the change reaction within.

Good. Now phase three.

Finally, a stream of light rippled up from the floor and all throughout the machine, centering in the glowing bio-tube like a captured star. The hoses leading into it went rigid, and with a deep gurgle, the tube of synthetic energon began to empty into the mix, flowing into the base fluid that filled the tube in waves of neon blue-green.

The ground was rattling Jack's teeth in his head, shaking him to the core as the power around him built in intensity within the tube. His bypasses and reprogramming held. Ratchet's careful and precise fine tuning work. Streaks of glowing light swirled around in the liquid like racing bolts of lightning now, with a glow so bright, Jack couldn't look at it.

Something within began to take shape, and when the tube of synthetic energon finished emptying, the machine rumbled with such power it pitched the rapidly weakening Jack right off his feet before he could engage the final sequence.

Timing was everything, he had to do it now.

Jack so weak. And so tired. So much so, he couldn't even summon the energy to panic. There was no final rush of adrenaline. Everything was going silver and serene around him. His hearing was cutting out and he stared in numb fascination at the section of steel grating near his face, where he lay crumpled on the floor. His heart beat didn't sound right. It never did.

Get up Jack! Get up! You have to get up!

He knew that voice. With a supreme groan of misery, he obeyed. He found himself moving again, lurching back up to a sitting position, and then to his feet with one last, final thrust of will power. He clawed weakly at the computer console to pull himself up, shielding his eyes now, and feeling the air being sucked in from around him.

Phase four. The machine was pulsing now like it had it's own wild heartbeat. Like it was eager to give life to something unparalleled in this galaxy. Jack had to do it now. Something incredible was building up and about to take place that was beyond the specs of the forge's tolerance. He could smell rich ozone in the air. And cotton candy. He wanted to watch but he was dying. He knew that now and he shook his head sadly. He was all busted up and his body was giving it up. Cashing out.

Didn't seem fair, really. He had waited eight years for this moment but now he wouldn't get to see. He wouldn't get to see her. All he could do was focus everything that was left in him to reach over and twist the dials. To finish what he started. Almost apologetically, Jack did just that, and the glowing, living presence within Arcee's life support system faded away as he fed it out through the relic and into the machine.

"Fuck yeah. I got this." he grinned.

An then he died. His body went limp where he lay on the console, his head dropping and thumping lightly off the warm steel as his vision swam away in a swirl of silver and white liquid. Warm steel. He remembered warm steel.

It felt like like a kiss.

The machine rumbled on for a full minute more. Panels burst. Hoses bulged. The ceiling groaned and relays blew out, and then in a moment, all grew still as stone. Only the patter of liquid and the hiss of over-pressure bleeding away could be heard. The tube at the top of the machine swirled and rippled with reflected blue-green light and waves of heat and energy from within. It seemed to be slowing down, condensing. For one pregnant moment, nothing happened.

Then the Bio-tube exploded.

Viscous liquid and shattered glass rained down onto the steel grating, some of soaking Jack's jacket where he lay. Never before had a Bio-Terror matrix used the living spark of a Transformer in place of the cortex-grafted flesh mechanisms that Knock-Out prepared from his human victims. All those years ago, when the idea had come to them, Ratchet had been uncertain what would happen if they tried this.

Jack had had faith.

The massive steel cap of the tube rang like a bell as it landed on the floor and slowly, something straightened up from within the shattered tube.

Arcee stepped out onto the floor in all her Bio-Terror glory. The liquid sloshed over the broken edges of the glass and trailed down the steps around her feet like a waterfall. She slowly looked around herself for a moment, then she came padding down the steps on bare feet, trailing long cables behind her from key points on her spine, all of it part of the induction process. She was now a towering human female, twelve feet in height and perfectly formed, naked and bare breasted with her sleek muscled body smooth and flawless. Yet every joint in her body, from her ankles to her knuckles, were sheathes of powerful bio-mechanical cables glowing with a soft blue light. With her pale, milky complexion, this light made her seem ethereal and surreal in the dim light of the forges, and she hummed with inner power at the same time her chest rose and fell with her breathing. Real breathing. Real physical life. Flesh and blood.

She looked feral and stunning, lethal and exotic. Half human and half machine, and superior to both.

A truly living machine, truly reborn.

Long, dark blue hair dripped wetly down her back to her waist, corded like fine fiber-optic dreadlocks, with one colored a rich pink. A haunting reminder of her former color scheme. She tilted her head back and ran her hands back up over her head, stretching reflexively and letting the liquid from the vat run off her skin.

Her nostrils flared as she lowered her chin and turned her startling eyes towards Jack where he lay slumped over the controls. Those eyes gleamed a deep, rich blue, just as they had years before, harkening back to a time when a different Arcee used to look out at the world. But she didn't recognize Jack. She was a blank slate. Moving on reflex. Bio-Terror Arcee tilted her head as she stared at Jack Darby, something inside her making her pause, making her feel somehow on an instinctive level like she should know the significance of what it was she was looking at.

Then the machine behind her sparkled with light. Slowly at first and softly building to brilliant. blue. Then white. Almost gentle compared to the violence of her birth, but it seemed so very much more alive. Behind Arcee, the bundles of cable running to the base of her spine, neck and key points throughout her body suddenly burst with this light as the final protocol engaged. It wasn't over yet. So deadly was her new form, unlike anything forged here before, that the tube hadn't been able to contain the exchanges of power and now Arcee's life-spark itself flowed out and down through the cables, to imbue her new body with her living essence.

This proto-Arcee screamed, stiffening with shock as light burst from her eyes and mouth and the glowing corded joints of her body. The machine behind her hummed with power once more, the crescendo deafening, before with a blast of sparks it blew out panels all around it's construct. Knock-Out's mad design finally succumbed to the damage, it's insulation failing, and the machine began to burn with several electrical fires, but not before Arcee felt her spark racing through bright lines of light and settling into a form seething with power in a manner she had never felt before.

In the physical world, the cables all popped free from her body, releasing her from her paralysis and she grunted heavily as she pitched forward on to her hands and knees.

Now, it was over.

Sprinklers burst then, along with the hiss of steam and shorting out electronics, all of this making up the chaos that assailed her senses for the first time. She didn't look up or even raise her head. She just knelt there a moment in the pooling fluids, breathing hard, for she knew now what she had seen. When she raised her head, it would only become a reality, and right then she didn't want to believe it. In some vague sense, all these years, connected to Jack as she was, she knew he had succeeded in his desperate plan and she didn't want to see him dead. She didn't want to see how her new life had cost him his own. For an eternity of thirty seconds she stayed there, vulnerable, filled with sorrow...and all too human.

Her first human emotions were pain. The pain of loss, and this being Arcee, the heartache of her loss was immediately followed by rage. She opened her eyes for a second time and she raised her head, straightening up stiffly to her full height, her Cybertronian soul already adjusting smoothly to the feel of her new form.

She straightened her shoulders and stepped forward, stepping down next to Jack where his smallish body lay on the console. He was older and more beaten down, though his face looked like he was sleeping. She took him up gently in her long arms, staring at him for a long moment, before she looked around this Decepticon laboratory, her inner system ingesting the files Ratchet had prepared for her in this moment as part of the process. In moment, hyper rapidly, she was brought up to speed about where she stood in the world and everything that had happened after she fell as an Autobot.

She knew who she had been and what she had been. She knew who she was and where she was now. She knew what Jack had done for her, even more clearly than before, and with her new eyes stinging her, she looked down at him and raised up his fragile little human body, hugging him softly to her, burying her face in his chest and feeling the utter lack of life in his small little limbs.

She thought of everything that had brought her to Earth and her long years of life before this. How it all paled in comparison to this one little remarkable Jack Darby. She remembered his love. She was his love. She was his legacy.

She sniffled and pulled back, looking down at him lovingly, bending to one knee and gently laying him on the cold decking, but out of the pooling liquids and away from the guttering, burnt out machine. She brushed the hair out of his face, remembering how he used to rub the back of his neck self consciously when they were intimate together.

"How do I look now?" she asked him softly. He didn't answer.

Then two first generation Bio-Terrors came stalking slowly into the laboratory, their bodies viscous and grotesque compared to hers. Their master had called. They had felt it in their minds and they had answered. Fresh from the battlefield and from the slaughter of the last human and Autobot warriors, they had come back and scattered the Vehicons to finally tear their way inside here. Once within these walls, they had found their master and followed the scent of his killer. Now they had him. Or her. And when they saw Arcee, they hissed at her. Male and female fanning out to stalk her on each side like hyenas.

But things would be different this time. Jack Darby had seen to that. With the advent of the terrible Synth-En, and the fact her Transformer's soul had been the key element in the gene splicing process, Arcee knew she outclassed these Bio-Terrors immeasurably. She knew was the purer life form, for in twenty five years, Ratchet had worked painstakingly at the procedure that would give Arcee life without any of the dreaded side effects that had so long ago brought great tragedy. And, at the last, it had been Jack who had saw to it, giving rise to a new kind of power. A new Arcee.

Arcee Ascendant.

She was Bio-Terror Prime, now. And a terrible fire burned in those cobalt blue human eyes as her fingers curled into fists, her lips drawing into a tight line of fury. So like the Arcee of old, and yet something so much more. Later, she told herself, later there would be time to think of Jack. And everyone else. Later she would remember who they were and what they fought for, and mourn their passing as she had so many other friends and family. And she would think long on her dear, sweet Jack for years to come, raising a memorial to him one two worlds the likes of which the galaxy had never seen, so would she see to it that his memory lived forever. As long as she herself lived. And finally, she would lead the Autobots to lasting peace and go on to reclaim all of Cybertron, though she knew she would always belong to Jack Darby of Earth.

All that and more awaited Arcee, Bio-Terror Prime...just as soon as she was done destroying everything that was Decepticon on this planet.

Go get em' baby.

"You better believe it." she replied.

THE END