These Paths We Tread (Autobot x OC)

LXX. Good Occasions

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“Hey, Catherine, did you hear about this yet?” Leo Spitz inquired as he turned his laptop around. The redhead looked and at once leaned forward after reading the headline. Her young assistant let her steal the device away to get a closer look and scroll through the article that had just recently been published to a Russian website. On it were the grim details of a body found burned so badly it had been almost impossible to recognize. Of course, there were accounts of accidents or murders around the world every day, so normally that wouldn’t have been so surprising to read. What was surprising, though, was the victim: Alexi Voskhod, NEST’s guide in their previous mission.

“…Why didn’t we know about this until just now?” she asked through ground teeth.

“Russians must have been hiding it,” he suggested with a shrug. While that was indeed possible, Catherine had a feeling that wasn’t it.

“Leo, I want you and your boys to do your thing and find out more about this. Get me as much information on Voskhod as you can. Find out if he had any enemies or who he was working with. He was too important of a man not to have them.”

“You think someone wanted him gone?”

She looked at him, “I’m really hoping it’s ‘someone’ and not something.”

“Oh,” he replied, his eyes widening a bit, and then nodded as he took back his laptop and hurried off to get started. As soon as the door closed behind him, Catherine interlaced her fingers, propped her elbows onto her desk, set her mouth into the side of her hands, and began to think.

She hadn’t been lying when she said she hoped the culprit was someone—as in, human. The man was rather high up in the business ranks, and his position was one that provided a very comfortable life style and even some political influence. It was an enticing prize for anyone wanting a lot of power, so it was feasible that one of his competitors had simply gotten tired of waiting for him to retire or die.

However, she had a deep, dark, sinking feeling that the source of the man’s demise was not of human nature. And if that was the case, then she feared for her comrades. If he had been a traitor then what did that mean for their mission? Was finding the fuel rod meant to be a trap? Certainly, Shockwave and the Driller had easily taken out a small number of their troops, and it was only thanks to Optimus’ intervention they were forced back, but what if they had retreated on purpose? She clearly remembered being wary of the beast back in Mission City and that the Autobots had struggled to make it leave then. The beast’s master was even more fearsome, so why had they been fended off so easily? Was it just a ruse? Or were they still just weak from their earlier wounds? And how did Alexi’s death work into that? Was it because the Decepticon attack failed? Was it because he had attempted to betray the Decepticons?

Or was she simply thinking too much on it?

Catherine sighed, running a hand through her hair. There was just too much she didn’t know right now. She couldn’t bother to bring it up without knowing if he had some suspicious activity they had attributed to traitors. At the moment it was just an unfortunate choice of fate for the man, but with both Leo and Blaster’s help, she could figure it out.

“Blaster, are you busy?” she called out as she pressed the button attached to the back of her ear.

It crackled briefly before he answered, “Nothing too much beyond scoping for ‘Cons. What you need, girl?”

“I want you to do some research of Alexi Voshkod. I need to know if there’s anything… suspicious about him. You’re going to have to go through some top-notch security, so it’d be best if no one really knew about it… if you catch my drift.”