Transformers: A Matter of Fate

QUESTIONING AND FAMILY

CHAPTER 27

Questioning and Family

Mark sighed quietly as he watched the base's movement that morning. Without school, he had to admit, things seemed somewhat slow. Usually, the weekends were a little more lively, but now that he was there on the weekdays, even though only two days had passed, it seemed boring. Most of the time over the past two days he'd spent drawing on account of the fact that a lot of Hound's recovery did involve recharge. What time he didn't spend with that, he spent running messages back and forth and at least trying to make himself useful. Most of the base found it useful, and were actually thankful to have someone around that didn't mind being an extra hand around there. Lennox had even spotted him five bucks for helping him out with some inventory, though that seemed to be a one time occurrence.

That day however, Mark didn't really have anything to do, and thus simply walked along the halls in his boredom. So when he finally heard someone call his name, he nearly jumped and spun around to find Lennox approaching in a hurry. "Hey, Lennox, what's up? You look kinda in a rush..." Mark replied as the man gave him a "look" "What? I didn't pull anything today, I swear. If something happened it was all Sideswipe."

"Nothing like that." Lennox replied, his eyes locking with Mark "Can you take a walk with me?"

The way the man said it almost surprised him, as it sounded unnaturally tense for the normally laid back colonel. Yet he only nodded and followed Lennox towards the human side of the base, feeling a little intimidated at the moment. Was he in trouble? Had Coulton tried something again? "Lennox, you're kind of freaking me out, will you tell me what's going on?" He asked.

There was a frustrated sigh from Lennox, but finally he stopped, and turned to face Mark. "I've been looking for a good time to talk to you about Coulton. But things have been so crazy the last few days... It took me a while to find a good moment that we weren't working or anything..." Mark chewed his lip a little, unsure of where he was going with this "Mark, the way he acted towards you the other day, does he always talk to you and the 'Bots like that?"

"Prowl hasn't told you?" Mark asked in surprise.

"None of them will, they think it'd be a bad idea to talk against an official since the peace is so... Fragile right now and all." Lennox shook his head, he leaned against the wall "But he's supposed to be keeping the peace between them and the government. And if he's like that normally, well... I don't like it. I don't like someone like that as a liason. We had one like him, Galloway, but he died." He shook his head "I thought we were done with this crap."

Mark shifted uncomfortably, was it his place to tell Lennox? Would the Autobots be angry if their human member did so? He bit his lip and mulled over the different outcomes in his head. "I haven't seen him interact with the Autobots that much." Mark finally spoke "But in that meeting Epps had me go to, he talked really poorly of them..." He paused a moment "And he's confronted me about my dad, a lot."

Lennox gave a slight grimace in response to that, and straightened a bit. "He hasn't threatened or hurt you, has he?"

"No! Nothing like that." Mark shook his head "If anything, I kinda almost punched him in the face once."

That time, Lennox also seemed to give a proud smirk. But he quickly hid it, finally nodding his head in response as he let out a heavy sigh. "Good... Well, not the punching bit. You can't do that, the last thing we need is you getting in trouble with the government." Mark nodded in agreement "But I want you to understand something, Mark. Help us keep an eye on him, I'm having everyone do it, but I want your help too. If he's as much of a snake as I have a feeling he is, we could get him fired."