The Monster of Kaon (Transformers Si): Chapter 20

Deep within the ancient starship that the Star Seekers used as their base, a bot with most of his body heavily damaged and deconstructed barely held onto his consciousness while his brain module and Energon systems were used to compensate for the damaged computing units of the ship by his captors.

If it were any other bot in his place, they would have long since given up and let Primus take their spark due to the sheer agony involved in this process.

However, Silverbolt, the ancient Beastformer from Eukaris and one of the original crew of this ship, Unitex-1, or as it was later known on Cybertron after its tragic disappearance, the Lost Light, was the most stubborn bot in existence.

It was through this stubbornness that he withstood the incomprehensible agony that he is in right now and still managed to retain his rationality.

Sadly, his captors also knew this fact. That is why, they made sure to torture him further every day by forcing his brain module to compensate for their damaged computers through the heavy and unnecessary use of the ship’s navigation systems, always keeping it on the move even though no one in a radius of a few hundred lightyears dared to cross their path.

And then, as if things were not bad enough, the main leader of this group, the bot known as Fortress, would occasionally visit him personally, forcefully slow down Silverbolt’s self-recovery nanites by either draining them out of his body or by further mutilating his body, making it so that Silverbolt couldn’t even hope to move, much less plan an escape.

But still, despite having his processing power toned down heavily due to being slaved to the Lost Light, his repair functions and the entire body crippled, and his T-Cog severely damaged, Silverbolt would still not give up.

That is why, he was using the meager processing resources available to him to keep the distress call that the young Junkion had broadcasted from being spotted by the Star Seekers.

“Wake up, beast, it's time for your meal, Hehehe!”

The irritating voice of one of his captors woke up the poor bot from his semi-stasis, making him use his only functional optic to look at the sadistic expressions on Famine’s faceplate.

Out of the remaining three of the original Star Seekers, Famine was the one that Silverbolt hated the most as he was the one always whispering strange and deranged ideas into his boss, Fortress’s audio receptors.

Unfortunately, the Beastformer did not even have a faceplate left to express his disgust towards the pirate as it was one of the first parts of his body to have been ripped out.

The Star Seeker spy did not even wait for Silverbolt to respond in any way, knowing that the Beastformer could not even reply in any way to his taunts, and directly injected contaminated Energon into his exposed brain module.

The contaminated Energon, mixed in with Toxic Energon and Red Energon was designed to boost Silverbolt’s brain module functions so that the ship could continue moving while also severely degrading his personality and memory modules, keeping him in check.

A horrific form of torture that made Silverbolt feel like his brain module was being melted into a slag and forcefully being remolded every time this Energon was injected into him.

Worse yet is the fact that they needed to do this direct Energon infusion more than a dozen times a single day because of how much Energon is required to keep his deteriorating brain module and dying spark from leaving his mortal coil and returning to Primus.

However, once again, the ancient Beastformer showed his resilience and still managed to maintain his rationality through the pain that he had gradually adapted to, making sure not to expose the repeating distress signal that the Junkion known as Crankfist had sent through a functioning Quantum Communicator that he found by some miracle.

“Spark fluctuations returning to normal, brain module activity rising, pain receptor setting set to max, personality module is relatively intact, memory module is fully intact with a very small amount of degradation. Got to hand it to you, you are one tough bot, for a beast.”

Silverbolt watched the sneer on Famine’s face and could not even bring himself to hate this monster for he was just tired of his current existence. However, no matter what he felt, his personality and moral compass would never allow him to bow to this evil bot no matter how much Famine and the rest of his cohort tried to break him.

Such is his way of life, a way that he will maintain until he becomes one with Primus.

Slowly, Famine grew bored with the silence on the main deck of the ship and decided to entertain himself.

The sickening grin on his face was noticed by Silverbolt and immediately knew that this day was going to get even worse for him thanks to his past experiences.

“Since you are so determined to not allow yourself to let go, how about a little test of your endurance? I’ll start pulling your damaged T-cog without any tools. If you can maintain your sanity until I am done, which should take a few hours at most, then I’ll help you reinstall it into your body, again, without any tools. But, if you can’t maintain your sanity, well-“

“Enough, Famine. I need Captain Silverbolt alive. Besides, we have hundreds of Cybertronians and Organics onboard, entertain yourself with them.”

The sudden eruption of the deep voice spooked Famine but he immediately recognized the speaker and directly knelt in front of the holographic projection that appeared in the middle of the deck.

“Of course, Lord Fortress.”

“Good. Now, where are Sandstorm and Thundertron?”

“Sandstorm is in the cargo hold, logging our latest batch of tribute, while Thundertron has left for Velocitron. He said that he picked up a strange Energon reading over there and wants to make sure that those lesser bots don’t try anything funny.”

Silverbolt’s lone optic focused on the projection in the middle of the room and could not help but feel deep fear like he always does.

How could he not? When this strange bot has a striking resemblance to the Monster of Kaon? And as Silverbolt knew him, the Leader of the Programming Caste during the Golden Age?

Not to mention the fact that this bot, while not on the same level as Armorbite, was still a formidable opponent, evident by how he killed all of Silverbolt’s crew, which consisted of some of the strongest bots across Cybertron and its colonies.

Suddenly, the bot known as Fortress turned to stare at Silverbolt’s body as foreign code suddenly flooded the crippled Beastformer’s body.

Silverbolt once feared that Fortress was none other than Armorbite who somehow went evil and became like this, solely due to this strange power that Fortress had that felt extremely similar to the outlier powers that Armorbite used.

But after the many years he spent as the prisoner of his own ship, he realized that whatever Fortress used was not an outlier power, but some form of advanced hacking suite.

And yet, even if it was not an outlier power, it still worked in a similar way and forcefully activated Silverbolt’s nanite reserves drain system along with forcefully rebooting all of his systems, ensuring that he would not be able to escape his imprisonment.

With the combination of his pain and this forced entry into his systems, Silverbolt could not hold on any longer and went back into his partial stasis, hoping that Fortress would not discover the distress signal.