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The thing about nightmares is one never gets used to them.
You can convince yourself it’s fine. That the monsters prowling around your mind and the horrifying, vivid imagery accosting your processor will fade away as you wake. Or if you’re attempting to be truly optimistic, maybe you believe the nightmares will one day just stop.
Pharma fell under the first category. He rode out the nightmares of corpses clasping at his legs, begging to be saved. The visions of purple and black, looming over him with a hideous stare from behind a mask. Dreams of First Aid, Ambulon, or Ratchet --staring at him with cold, lifeless eyes, mouths opening slowly to speak in a ghastly tone--
“ You’re wicked.”
And then they would scream.
—-
Pharma’s optics flew open involuntarily--all his systems whirring and sputtering to life simultaneously. His spark thumped frantically as he reset his optics once, twice, trying to get the image of the spectrals out of his mind. But the voice echoed in his cranium and the images felt burnt into his optics. With a heavy sigh, he pulled himself up from his recharge slab, wings twitching as they adjusted themselves.
Flicking on the light did nothing to chase away the nightmare--nothing in Delphi ever worked properly, and that included the light fixtures. They were dim and a pale blue, the same color as the operating room, and left Pharma desperately wishing he wasn’t trapped in such a desolate place, and were instead somewhere he could easily fly, feel the sun on his wings.
Or at least have lights that didn’t make him feel like he was about to undergo an operation himself.
Restless, he tucked his plating close to keep himself as warm as possible, then left his room—the chilled halls of Delphi greeting him with the cool breeze sweeping down the corridor. Most of the smaller rooms were well insulated, but the years had done a number on the main area of the building and it wasn’t uncommon for snow to seep through cracks, or for small icicles to gather on the hallway ceiling.
Pharma wandered until he chose a door at random to walk into, where he was greeted by piles of assorted clutter. With nothing else he felt like doing, he mindlessly began to return the vials to their correct position, tired optics flickering as his mind began to wander. Trying to escape both his dreams and current reality with a memory...
“I’m not mocking you, Ratchet.” Pharma said, smug as one could be as he deposited three vials into their marked containers. “I’m truly wishing you the best.”
Ratchet snorted, a gruff but familiar noise. “Uh huh. Like I don’t know you, and the fact that you take every opportunity to prove who's better.”
Pharma frowned slightly at Ratchet, tutting in his general direction before turning to his datapad full of notes, picking up a holopen and scribbling something down. “Ratchet, you really do make me sound positively awful. I just enjoy a good ga….”
He trailed off, glossa suddenly heavy as he felt the warm, sturdy shape of Ratchet’s chassis pressed against his back. A servo snaked around his waist, the other reaching to cover Pharma’s own servo. The pen clattered to the table as Pharma vented in, trying to stay in control and failing miserably. His wings twitched as Ratchet leaned in, slightly worn lips pressing against his audials.
“There’s better games to play, don’t you think?” Ratchet murmured, his rough tone dipping to something low and husky, a telltale sign of arousal. A shiver ran up Pharma’s spinal strut, and he twisted his fingers between Ratchet’s.
“My presentation is in twenty minutes.” Pharma protested, forcing levelness in his tone. Ratchet chuckled deeply and tightened his grip almost possessively. Pharma wanted to scream. Wanted to whip around and kiss him so hard his roommate’s optics would cross.
But he resisted, instead letting Ratchet kiss down the side of his helm to his jaw, pulling him closer, chasing his lips.
“Twenty minutes...now that’s a challenge I like.” Ratchet chuckled again, and Pharma loathed himself for how he melted—how he lost control and twisted, pressing painted lips to Ratchet’s and feeling the other medic immediately deepen the kiss, pulling him closer with skilled hands.
Skilled hands that were currently digging into his hip seams. Pharma sighed happily into the other’s mouth.
“Nineteen minutes…” He purred against Ratchet, and he was met with a laugh and those wonderful hands pushing him up onto the table as their frames pressed flush together….
BEEP.
The simple noise from his commlink broke through the pleasant haze of the memory, causing Pharma’s frame to lurch and lock up with the all-too-familiar surge of misery the noise brought him.
Chewing on the tip of a finger, he set a vial down before he dropped it. As always, he briefly entertained the fantasy of ignoring the message. And as always, he squeezed his optics shut and shuddered out a humorless chuckle, because the idea was preposterous.
He forwarded the message to his optical feed and scrolled through it. He’d read the message dozens of times. It is almost always the same thing—a blunt command lazily disguised as a “request.” The one and only time it was ever largely different was at the very beginning, when Tarn had at least the creativity to make it sound like proper blackmail.
He was almost positive that Kaon wrote these, anyway.
This is your reminder that the current deca-cycle is coming to an end. Leave the components in the usual spot.
Components required: Twenty.
Upon receiving them, your cooperation will be noted and our agreement upheld.
Pharma had been numbly reading through the message until his processor computed what he’d just read.
Twenty?
Usually he was lucky if he managed to get them a dozen. Emphasis on the lucky. The fact Ambulon and First Aid hadn’t noticed the increased amount of fatalities that happened under his hand was frankly shocking. Perhaps he was doing a better job covering it up then he thought…
But twenty cogs. He would have to forge new excuses and stories, make up symptoms that weren’t there. The nightmares would keep coming back, claiming rightfully he was wicked, and eventually, his own subconscious would reach the conclusion that he was nothing more than a murderer .
He had buried his inhibitions deep inside, for those moments when a patient’s life support was unplugged just long enough for them to fade, or a surgery mysteriously didn’t work. And how could one ever forget the feeling of slowly pushing in a needle of invasive nanobytes into a fuel cell, watching a patient silently writhe with no way to scream as they rapidly snuffed out his spark, then devoured themselves as to not leave a trace?
Such a horrible way to die. Such a deliberate path to the Allspark, administered by a medic who had once sworn to do no harm.
And then his staff…
How much had they begun to notice? Running a servo over his helm, it occurred to him that the days blended more and more together, and so focused was he on providing the DJD their precious cogs, he had begun to lose track of Aid and Ambulon’s general presence around the complex.
When was the last time he did anything with them that wasn’t clipped conversations or outright snapping at them? Sure, they had always constantly been at each other’s throats, being three mechs of varying styles of stubbornness, but there used to be at least some conversation, poking fun at each other.
Sitting in the small room meant for refueling, boiled engex warming up the cables beneath their servos as they gazed out onto the cold expanse of Delphi.
The memory was a simple and sweet one, but all Pharma felt was a sour taste on his glossa, as if he had licked a wall covered in rust. He swore he smelled it, that metallic rot, as his spark began to pulse and whirl frantically in his spark casing.
Claustrophobia was common for flight-frames; but he had never experienced it as strongly as he was now, and he clutched at the table for support as he struggled to convince himself that the walls were not closing in on him. Through it all, the bitter taste of rust continued to linger on his glossa. The taste of death and decay...
His labored vents suddenly halted and his fingers dug tight into the worn table.
Death and decay.
Perhaps the idea shouldn’t have come as easily as it did. Maybe it was a product of his slow fall into what was beginning to feel like madness, or even worse, subconsciously he had been thinking of it all along.
Mechs were dying every day in order to feed the insatiable appetite of the DJD leader’s addiction, and there were no favorable outcomes to where this all was heading. Eventually he would either run out of patients or be found out. Or maybe both, alongside the DJD deciding his inability the perfect excuse to destroy Delphi.
He could almost feel everything click into place, his tanks churning so heavily with his sudden revelation that he felt as if he would purge.
Delphi’s destruction. Rust.
He looked at his servos, and in the dim light of the room, he swore he saw splatters of faded pink on them.
He would never forget this moment. Standing there alone in the room, the nightmares of his rest still clinging to his heels and the real life horrors circling around him like a suffocating smog, he knew what he had to do. And he knew he would never forgive himself for it. Yet despite the macabre realization, he let out a small laugh.
It would forever taint his spark, but at this moment, he realized the selfish, disgusting thing deep down in him--that he was willing to go through with this plan in order to save himself. Ambulon and First Aid as well--he could get them out of here. It wouldn’t even begin to make up for what he was to do, but he saw no other way out. He was no martyr.
No, he was wicked.
He squeezed his servos tight--taking in several deep breaths--before spinning on his heels and strutting out of the room with a sense of dark purpose. If he was going to pull this off, he had to do it now. Before he changed his mind, before the guilt tore away at him or the DJD showed up…
It was time for Delphi to rot.