eugenesis-text

‘Yes and no. The Anti-Inhibitor should reverse neural decay and unlock paralysis, but we have no
idea what the side effects will be.’
‘Irrelevant,’ said Soundwave. ‘They either deal with it or they don’t. Do you have anything else to
report’
Fulcrum gestured across the ward, where Pounce was sealing up Scourge’s chest plate. ‘Scourge is just
about to come back on line. The rest of High Command will soon be operational again.’
Scourge sat up on his circuit slab, rubbed his head and looked around. ‘What date is it’
‘Date’ Soundwave looked at his chronometer. ‘3 January 2013.’
Scourge visibly relaxed. ‘We made it, then.’
‘Correction, Scourge: you made it. Welcome back on-line.’
‘I mean the Quintessons. The invasion’s over. The wormhole’s been sealed.’
‘How did you—’ But Soundwave doubled up in pain before he could finish. He dropped to one
knee and cradled his stomach.
‘Commander!’ cried Fulcrum. ‘Are you alright’
Energy was leaking out of Soundwave’s eyes and building up behind his visor. He batted away
Fulcrum’s hand and collapsed onto the floor, whimpering to himself. He’d never felt such pain before. His
oilstream started to boil and his fuel pump struggled to re-divert energon to a web of porous circuitry that
was scabbing over his chest plate. His hands began to glow red as he clawed at his chest.
Something inside was trying to get out.
‘He’s going into morph spasm!’ yelled Pounce, pulling Scourge out of harm’s way: it was dangerous
to interfere with morphbirth; even placing a hand on the host’s shoulder could interfere with the
Channelling and lead to deformities in the protoform. All they could do was watch.
Soundwave sprang to his feet as if animated by puppeteer’s string. Oil was dribbling from his joints,
from his wrists and waist and knees. He was an old robot, only a few full-cycles away from circuitburn, and
his ageing shell was too fragile to withstand the scathing rigours of liquid labour.
The first bubbles appeared on his chest, ripe and rosy, and he screamed – in terror more than pain.
He’d never given birth before (and hadn’t expected to – you were usually identified as a Lifer early on); it
felt as if two people were sharing his body-space; as if twice the mass had been crammed into one neuranet,
one CPU. His chest began to bulge as the pressure became too much. A thousand micro-pumps forced a
mercurial cocktail of steel and sentio metallico from sub-surface reservoirs into the open air. The silvery liquid
curled and congealed as it hit the floor.
‘Something’s wrong,’ said Fulcrum. ‘It’s not stopping!’
Something important had burst inside Soundwave’s chest; some inner tear or rupture had unleashed a
flood. The sentio metallico that spilt from gaping pores had a life of its own – literally. As it gushed onto the
floor it assumed pre-determined qualities, its unique Vorcode having been dictated subconsciously by the
host, who in turn had been influenced by subtle fluctuations in the sparkline. Once enough liquid had
escaped Soundwave’s chest – enough to make six sets of morph-triplets – the tide was stemmed and the
circuitry re-sealed.
Fulcrum swung partitions into place around Soundwave and bathed the area in ultraviolet light. At
this dangerous, post-natal stage, before the Encoding, the protoform could still be influenced by external
factors. Before the Primal template was etched and formatted it was still vulnerable to such birth defects as
premature cooling and joint-freeze.
The pool of liquid began to take shape, gathering itself in at the hem and spiralling upwards into a
broad column.
Scourge, Fulcrum and Pounce stared, open-mouthed, at the sight of spontaneous biomorphic
creation. Soundwave just curled into a ball and watched through his oil-smeared visor. What had he created
that was so large, so ungainly Another multi-moder like Sixshot or Quickswitch An entire combining
team
The protoform smoothed itself into a large sphere and hovered in mid-air as the Encoding began. A
bright yellow ring of pure Matrix energy sprung up from the ground and swept across its surface, scraping
details onto the soft putty.
The Decepticons stared at the newborn, aghast at its deformities. It wasn’t like other Transformers.
Instead of legs and arms and shoulders, it had an ovoid bodyshell, biomechanical tentacles, and five dark,
frowning faces.