The comlink’s chirp cut through the cavern like a dropped bolt.
The sound was small and ordinary—an electronic ping—yet in that hollow, it landed like a gunshot. Long Haul’s crate paused mid-slide, the metal edge of it squealing a thin complaint. Bonecrusher’s shoulder froze over a pile of slag, vents hitching in the silence. Mixmaster’s hand hovered above a sealed canister, the little vial in his fingers trembling with half-measured impatience. Scavenger’s hands clenched on a length of hinge as if to stop them from clicking. Hook’s optics flicked instantly toward the sound, the medic’s posture tightening though he stayed where he stood, one reflexive hand already poised to move if required.
Scrapper’s fingers tightened on the rusted panel he had been using as a makeshift board.
He felt the buzz inside his belt as a small, insistent vibration—an instruction arriving like summoned authority—and the lines he had been sketching blurred for a heartbeat. His processor pulsed, the mental map rearranging with a speed that made his chest plating hum. He reached for the comlink with the same automatic motion he used to flip a welding torch, fingers closing around the device with a metallic click that echoed in the chamber.
The glow from the comlink threw stark light across each face, painting lime and purple in harsh contrast against the rusted walls. Dust motes hung in the beam, moving slow as if time had been given permission to hesitate.
For a breath, the six stood exactly like that—tools half-lifted, plans half-drawn, waiting on whatever the small screen would say next—each keyed to the same tight, electric expectation that had followed them down into the sublevels.
The message hit them like a blow and a promise at once.
The comlink’s light flared cold across the rusted walls, the bracketed lines stark and official against the gloom.
[Central labs.]
[War room.]
[Boarding rooms: six minimum.]
[Training space.]
[Storage.]
[Funds allocated: 1,000,000 shanix.]
[Title: Equipment Purchase.]
For a beat, the cavern held its breath.
Dust hung in the air like ash, and the faint drip of old piping sounded unusually loud. Optics snapped from the screen to one another and back again, each of them trying to compute the scale of what those digits meant.
Scavenger’s hands clicked so fast they blurred. The grin that followed was something sly and feral.
“One million?” he breathed, voice half-laugh, half-reverent. “I’ve never even seen that many digits outside a caste bank.”
He was already picturing crates, hidden pockets of parts, vendors who could be tipped—or blackmailed—into selling. His fingers itched to inventory possibilities.
Mixmaster whistled low, more sound than sentence, and his datapad was up in an instant. He scrolled with quick, hungry movements, optics darting across tags and model numbers, chemical mixers, forge rigs.
“That’s enough to buy half a forge,” he murmured, not boasting so much as calculating. “High-grade alloys. Precision welders. Heat-stable sealants. Real containment equipment.”
His optics gleamed with the image of controlled fires and measured reactions.
Bonecrusher’s expression went blunt and businesslike. He rubbed a hand across his palm, feeling old calluses and the ache that came with heavy labor.
“We’ll need transport for that much gear,” he said, voice low. “Loading. Staging. It’s a different job if we’re shifting whole rigs.”
The sentence hung practical and certain.
Long Haul’s bulk settled as his processor began moving long before his frame did. He was already tallying in the silence—drop points, lift capacities, crate manifests, turn radius through the lower corridors.
“Staging areas,” he rumbled. “Routes I can clear. If we get those labs, we don’t just build—we set the yard up so no one walks in and takes it back.”
His tone carried the steady logistics of someone used to moving weight.
Hook’s hand hovered near the subspace pocket where his repair kit rested, not from greed, but from consequence.
Boarding rooms—six minimum—caught his medic’s processor first. He pictured berths, quarantine seals, triage stations; the word war room made his jaw clamp harder.
“We’ll need med supplies, containment for volatile work, backup energon,” he said, listlike, each item a check in a ledger only he could see. “If we’re installing labs, we don’t just buy benchtops. We buy safety.”
Scrapper looked up from the wall where he had been sketching, fingers leaving new quick lines in the rust. His optics sharpened with a designer’s hunger.
The extra credits changed constraints into variables: thicker girders where they had planned light braces, precision mounts in place of brute welds, a layout that hid critical systems and left decoys facing the caste’s predictable lines. He traced traffic flows and access shafts in the air with a fingertip, turning the message into angles and load paths.
He didn’t let the shock sit.
His optics narrowed until the world was reduced to lines and angles; his processor had already redrawn half the plan in the split second between message and reply.
“We aren’t starting over,” he said, voice hard and exact, finger striking the wall sketch so the metal rang. “The labs stay here. The war room stays here. But we need more space.”
He turned on them like a director, voice sharp and economical, handing each a piece of the blueprint and a task that fit like a glove.
“Bonecrusher. Scavenger. East-side corridor first.”
Bonecrusher’s shoulders squared as if shrugging the weight of a new job onto his back. Scavenger’s fingers twitched with hungry precision.
Scrapper pointed down the corridor and marked the line in the air where tunnels would be cleared. “Bones, you break through in deliberate arcs. Lever and pry first. Saw and jack after. I don’t want brute collapse unless I call for it.”
Bonecrusher’s mouth curled. “You make demolition boring.”
“I make it useful.”
“That too.”
Scrapper’s optics flicked to Scavenger. “You thread through the sub-tunnels. Catalog chokepoints. Mark caches. Anything useful, you tag it before Bonecrusher turns it into dust.”
Scavenger’s grin sharpened. “I can do that.”
“I know.”
That landed harder than Scrapper seemed to realize. Scavenger’s hands stilled for half a beat before the clicking started again, quicker and brighter.
Scrapper turned to Long Haul next.
“Supply reroute. We need loading lanes, balanced stacks, staging nodes. Staggered loads, labeled sides, weight limits with enough margin that the seams don’t start complaining after the third delivery.”
Long Haul nodded once, slow and firm. “Drop zones?”
“Three. One near labs, one near storage, one outside the war room. No direct line between outside access and command center.”
“Good.”
“Add a quick-assembly staging grid,” Scrapper continued. “If the footprint expands, I want it expanding clean. Not like a scrap heap.”
Long Haul’s visor gleamed faintly. “Understood.”
Mixmaster was already working. His datapad flickered as he compiled and prioritized: fume hoods and containment rig models, high-tensile braces, precision welders, isolation seals, voltage-stable energon pumps, temperature-controlled mixers. He annotated each with vendor names, lead times, and the percentage of the million credits it would chew.
“No cheap solvents,” he said before anyone asked. “Not in sealed labs. They’ll outgas and poison the air before we finish the second corridor.”
Hook’s optics cut toward him.
Mixmaster waved a hand without looking up. “Yes, yes, I’m writing in safe ventilation. Don’t glare at me.”
“I wasn’t glaring.”
“You were thinking about glaring.”
“I am always thinking about glaring at you when you say solvent near living quarters.”
“Fair.”
Mixmaster marked another line. “Fast-cure resins, but not arena grade. Better. Less volatile. Holds under feedback and pressure. More expensive.”
Scrapper’s answer came immediate. “Buy what holds.”
Mixmaster’s grin flashed. “Finally.”
Hook stepped forward when Scrapper tapped the schematic where the labs met the living quarters. His hand dipped into subspace and retrieved his slate with a clean, practiced motion. The stylus clicked into place beneath his fingers like a metronome.
He scanned the room as he began to map requirements—berth spacing, energon feed redundancies, vented decon chambers—each item landing in his slate with the same clinical certainty he used on a patient. The slate’s glow picked out the fine lines of his palms as he wrote.
His voice, when it came, was flat and sure, carrying the weight of experience forged in triage bays and battlefield carts.
“You get more than beds,” Hook said. “You get livable quarters. Vented. Warm. Safe. Not cages.”
The word cages sat in the cavern longer than the rest.
Bonecrusher’s expression darkened.
Long Haul went still.
Scavenger’s hands stopped clicking.
Hook did not look up from the slate. “Boarding rooms need enough berth spacing that six occupants can recharge without fouling the med station. Decontamination antechambers large enough for a quick purge. Redundant energon lines routed away from volatile chemical stations. Triage bay positioned so a wounded mech can be moved without crossing sterile zones.”
He marked another point. “Insulation. Quick-access surgical trays. Medical clamps here and here. Not interfering with structural mounts.”
Scrapper watched him absorb the order and stitched Hook’s requirements back into the sketch—east-side boarding rooms sunk into cleared tunnels, access halls aligned with Long Haul’s staging grid, Mixmaster’s fume stacks tucked behind blast doors, a discrete intake routed toward Hook’s med station.
He keyed chokepoints and hidden caches into the layout, places to stash hardware out of sight and routes that could be sealed if prying caste engineers tried to map the footprint. He thought in terms of efficiency and deniability at once.
Build fast.
Build strong.
Leave nothing obvious to follow.
The comlink on his belt hummed low and steady beneath their words as each assigned themselves the first small tasks—maps to mark, tools to fetch, tunnels to clear. They moved with the same machine-like economy they had shown building and taking down the arena: no wasted motion, no wasted credits, every action already measured against the clock and the need for secrecy.
The air in the cavern thickened with purpose.
Dust stirred with the promise of work.
Bonecrusher smirked faintly, a grin that had always been half grin and half threat. He flexed his arms, feeling the old joy of impact echo through worn plating, remembering the satisfying give when a beam finally surrendered. It was a different kind of hunger than a builder’s—wilder, more elemental—but it fit here too.
Clearing space.
Honest noise.
Breaking what had to be broken so something stronger could stand.
Scavenger practically bounced where he stood, hands scraping the rusted wall with restless delight. His optics glittered at the thought of what might be hidden in the sublevels: forgotten panels with usable bolts, near-pristine seals tucked behind collapsed ductwork, a cache of fittings the caste had missed or deemed worthless.
Every abandoned corridor had taught him the same lesson.
There was treasure where others saw ruin.
Scrapper drew the comlink up to his chest and felt the hum of one million shanix resonate through his plating like a promise turned physical. The number shifted something inside him—constraints loosening, choices widening.
He had not simply received funding.
He had been handed variables.
Designs that had been compromises on rations now tasted like real specifications in his processor: thicker mounts, precision pivots, concealed runways for conduits. Pride and named responsibility settled over him.
The million had not bought them a job.
It had supplied them with the means to make the work permanent.
Around them, the cavern hummed with the residue of labor—the grit of dust in vents, the soft scrape of metal against metal where tools leaned, the faint glow of paint still flashing at edges where lime and purple caught the light. Each of them registered the details through his own specialist lens: Hook with med-tech diagrams, Bonecrusher with load paths and impact arcs, Scavenger with caches and blind alleys, Mixmaster with volatile inventories at the ready, Long Haul thinking of lift points and staging, Scrapper folding all of it into structural truth.
This wasn’t another job.
Not even another test.
Megatron was not asking them to prove themselves anymore.
He was giving them the future to build.
And for a long moment, they let that land—heavy and sharp and bright—in the hollow of the sublevel around them.
Then Mixmaster made the first purchase.
His fingers moved fast over the datapad, scrolling past cheap listings, rejecting anything with weak seals or uncertain origin. His optics narrowed at a supplier tag, then widened with hunger.
“Found it,” he said. “Temperature-controlled mixer. Industrial grade. Real one, not a refurbished slagbox with a forged serial.”
Scavenger leaned in immediately. “Let me see.”
Mixmaster angled the datapad. “You know mixers?”
“I know fake serials.”
That earned him the screen without argument.
Scavenger studied it, fingers tapping once, twice, then dragging the image wider. “Real casing. Real manufacturer stamp. Vendor’s hiding the storage location, though.”
“Because?”
“Because it’s probably sitting in a warehouse it’s not supposed to be in.”
Bonecrusher rumbled, “So stolen?”
Scavenger’s grin went sly. “Misplaced.”
Hook gave him a flat look.
Scavenger corrected, “Legally inconvenient.”
Scrapper leaned over the listing, processor already fitting the unit into the lab floor plan. “Will it fit through the sublevel access?”
Long Haul answered before Mixmaster could. “Not assembled.”
Mixmaster’s face fell. “Don’t you dare suggest taking it apart.”
Long Haul’s visor gleamed. “Then find one that folds.”
Mixmaster looked offended for half a second.
Then his optics brightened.
“They make those.”
His fingers flew again. More listings flashed past. Smaller. Modular. Collapsible frame. Higher cost.
Much higher.
Mixmaster went still, then slowly looked at Scrapper. “It is… expensive.”
Scrapper glanced at the fund total, then at the equipment list, then at the half-built future around them.
“Will it do the job?”
Mixmaster’s answer came without hesitation. “Better than anything I’ve touched in my life.”
“Order it.”
For a beat, no one moved.
Then Mixmaster pressed the purchase confirmation.
The datapad chirped.
[Purchase confirmed.]
[Industrial modular temperature-controlled mixer.]
[Delivery routing pending.]
The sound echoed through the cavern like the first rivet driven into a structure.
Scavenger let out a breathy laugh. “We just spent more than my old boss thought I was worth.”
Bonecrusher’s mouth curls. “Good.”
Hook marked the equipment into the lab safety plan. “Delivery has to route through a staging point. Not straight here.”
Long Haul nodded. “I’ll set one.”
Scrapper’s fingers moved across his own slate, the first official purchase locking into the design. “That’s one.”
Mixmaster stared at the confirmation like it might vanish if he looked away too long. His grin spread, sharp and bright.
“One,” he agreed. “And it’s mine.”
Hook’s optics narrowed.
“For the lab,” Mixmaster corrected quickly.
Scrapper looked around the cavern, at the waiting rooms, the rust, the sealed doors, the empty war room beyond the glass.
The first order had been placed.
The fund had become action.
Megatron’s base was no longer an idea, a coordinate, or a line of text.
It had begun.