eugenesis-text

Rev-Tone grabbed Quark’s arm and broke into the best run his damaged legs would allow. ‘You’re
coming with me, Quark. You think Sideswipe wants someone like you on the front line’
Galvatron let the numbness spread. He was strung up and shared between four puckered sockets: one
for each hand, each foot. He was pretty sure that this wasn’t a regular body-harness – he could feel warmlipped
suction cups drinking energy in urgent gulps while his body, splayed like the Star of David, was
pulled towards an impossible tautness. His head rolled back and his optic bulbs lolled in their craters.
His particle cannon, broken on arrival, lay in the corner of the torture chamber and glimmered like
barley sugar.
A door hissed open (everything on Aquaria hissed, even the light bulbs, even the cell bars, even the
footfalls on wet walkways; the whole base was sponged and rubberised, seething with trapped air) and
Haxian stepped inside, a scanner in his hand.
Galvatron did his best to scream obscenities, but his voice was slurred and wordless.
He did not know why he had been moved from his tawdry backwater cell to this executive torture
suite, with its subdued mood lighting and tastefully dark surfaces, its granular sheen and fibreglass finish. (He
wondered, fleetingly, why torture chambers were always painted black, why people strove to muddy the
mix of gore and grout. What’s the point in slapping lassoes of lubricant against muddy surfaces Why not
highlight the contrast Forget mood-hues and tonal textures, forget wipe-clean surfaces: imagine the look
on an Autobot’s face when he stumbles into a cream-coated Deathpit and sees the tapestry of dross and
discharge woven across a buttermilk surface.)
Galvatron tried to focus, something he was never very good at. He was having trouble concentrating,
in fact he could barely remember how he’d got here. He did recall some Quintesson guards returning
Thunderclash’s body to the cell. The Autobot had looked like a cardboard cut out, crimped with mildew
and folded in all the wrong places. An embarrassing way to die, he had thought, before Sharkticons had
strapped him to a metal tray and brought him here.
Xenon’s voice filtered through a speaker in the wall. ‘Finish the body check, Haxian. Just scan him: this
isn’t an autopsy.’
Haxian looked at the viewing gallery (a ribbon of bulletproof plexi that ran underneath the ceiling),
holstered his scanner and headed upstairs. Soon, he was standing alongside his commander and watching
two Sharkticons wheel a platform into the chamber below.
‘You’re looking at a very complex robot,’ he said, addressing Xenon’s reflection. ‘I mean, the
physiological complexity alone is enough to—’
‘Haxian, there are times when I value your diligence, your slavish attention to detail. This is not one
of those times. Feed your data into the system and leave me alone. I want to see this.’
Down below, a nervous guard slipped a halo of energy around Galvatron’s neck while Ferrax climbed
the scaffold. The surgeon made an incision from scalp to shoulder blade, loaded an injector gun and fired an
Inhibitor Chip into folds of cerebral tissue.
Galvatron experienced an odd new sensation; damp and heaving and ice-hot, it rippled through his
morphcore, scorching every circuit. The backs of his eyes throbbed and crackled, braving the open-lipped
kiss of a billion electrodes. The foreign object between his throat and his brain threw its web wide,
touching every corner of his body. What little strength he had slipped away, unnoticed.
‘You see, Haxian The Inhibitor Chip finds a home in any Cybertronian, Autobot or Decepticon.’
Xenon picked up a test tube filled with colourless liquid. ‘And now for the best part.’
‘I’m reversing the energy drain, commander. He should be returning to full operational strength as we
speak.’
Galvatron hungrily accepted each sumptuous surge of energy, allowing each honeyed ripple of power
to pollinate his CPU. As the sweet waves of nausea broke inside his skull and Xenon walked through the
door, he wondered why they were reviving him.
‘Well’ said the Majestrix. ‘How does it feel to share body-space with a new host How does it feel
when your limbs give in to the whim of something so small, so innocent’
‘…king about.’
‘What’
‘I said I don’t know what you’re talking about.’