The Good, the Bad and Starscream

Chapter 16: New Recruit

The city was farther away than it first seemed. By the time Swindle reached the city borders, it was already nightfall, even though he had only left the MECH base at dusk. The city streets were lit up by the street lamps, though barely any humans walked around. They were all tucked up in their homes, driving to or from work, some working night shifts. The tall buildings were lit up, though as Swindle progressed further into the city, several lights began turning off, indicating the humans were going to sleep.

Some ten minutes after reaching the city borders, Swindle found the hospital. He parked in the back and scanned his surroundings before deactivating James, his holographic driver, and turned his car lights off. Now he just had to wait until the hospital staff was heading home.

He ended up waiting well over three hours before the city was covered in darkness, save for the street lamps. No humans or vehicles other than the ambulances seemed to be present in the hospital grounds. Just to be certain, Swindle set his scanner to carbon-based life-forms to check if there were any night guards patrolling around him. The scanner came up with nothing, and Swindle decided it was good enough for him.

As slowly and quietly as his biology allowed, Swindle assumed bot mode and rose slowly to his pedes. His car lights were still off, and there were no lamps in the area he was in, but thanks to his Cybertronian biology, he had great night vision, and the little light from the half moon and stars on the sky reflected in his optics and was cast back, giving him a sort of flashlight vision.

Transformed and with the moon on his side, Swindle walked calmly over to the large back doors of the hospital. They were a bit shorter than him, but he could easily crawl through them, and the hallways in the dark hospital were just large enough that he could walk upright through them. He made sure to tiptoe as quietly as possible to avoid alerting the humans. While it was dark and mostly empty, Swindle knew that there were guards patrolling the hospital during nighttime, as well as looking after the patients to make sure they survived the night.

Fortunately this hospital seemed to be of low funds, as he encountered almost no guards, aside from a single one close to the lobby. Swindle sought cover in another hallway and took out the list of tools given to him by the MECH surgeon. It wasn't a lot, and it could all probably be found in a lab. Swindle got up and went further down the hallway he had hidden in. By the end of it was a pair of big doors with a small window at the top to look through.

Swindle peeked through the windows and confirmed it was indeed a lab. He did a quick scan of the room to make sure no one was inside, before slowly opening the doors and stepping inside. The ceiling in the lab was a bit shorter than in the hallways, and Swindle had to lower his head to fit. It was uncomfortable, but he could handle it for a little while. He just needed to get three things.

Swindle checked the list again. A defibrillator, a spinal prostethis and... blood. O-negative.

Swindle pursed his lip and looked around. He found a defibrillator in a drawer and a spinal prostethis in a closet, but there didn't seem to be any O-neg. blood in the room. Where did humans keep blood? The same place Cybertronians kept Energon in medical centers, perhaps?

Swindle tucked the two items into his subspace and left the lab, relieved to be able to stand up straight again. He went searching the hallways for something that could contain blood.

He ended up in a secondary lobby, albeit unoccupied, where he found a cart with bags of red stuff inside. That must be blood. He walked over and read the labels. Most of it seemed to be O-negative. Perhaps that was the kind of blood most acceptable by the human body. Energon wasn't nearly as complicated. All Transformers used the same kind of Energon, although some had Natural Blue while others had Artifical Pink, though both worked the same way and were accepted by all Cybertronian bodies. Artificial Pink Energon was only available if one had a special kind of Energon cube called Absorption Cubes, however. These were scarce and practically non-existing at this time of the war, meaning both Autobots and Decepticons had to rely on finding Natural Blue Energon as crystals, which were scarce on any world, as they have a very long solidification time.