Ruby - Transformers: Order and Chaos

Between a Rock and a Hard Place

Major Lennox put down the phone. He rubbed his forehead. He punched his bedroom wall. And then he took a car to go and find Tom at the lab, and more pressingly, the bracelet.

*

Tom wore a white lab coat over his simple plain suit. His black hair looked messy, and Lennox quietly thought to himself that the man could do with a shower. He stood with his hands clasped behind his back, watching the experiment within the glass box. 

The bracelet floated within, suspended in an odd sort of clear jelly whilst it was probed with small, red lasers. They buzzed like worker bees. Two technicians tapped away at keypads on either side.

"How is it going in here?" Lennox asked.

"Quite well, actually," Tom replied without taking his eyes off of the bracelet, "We're finding out the power channels of the bracelet, so we can work out how it balances power between its self and Ruby, and how we might reverse it."

"Could that work?"

"Yes, for now, my idea is to get the cybertanium that is poisoning Ruby out of her system and sever the connection between herself and the bracelet. The bulk of the work has already been done back when..."

He trailed off. His father's company, KSI, had held Ruby captive for several years to do exactly this sort of work, studying her and her relationship with the bracelet with the aim of replicating her strength for soldiers without the need of the alien relic. Tom still felt great shame at the memory, and could barely manage a civil conversation with his father once a business quarter. She'd been treated like a machine, rather than a person. 

"Anyway, we're close to being able to create a device to reverse everything the bracelet has done to her body," he gestured to the screen on the right, which was running theories through custom software to create a working model; "The hard part will then be treating her cancer."

"It still sounds kinda risky," Lennox bounced on the balls of his feet, "She's accumulated a lot of power. Where is it all going to go?"

"Hopefully, safely back into the bracelet." Tom's shoulders slumped and he looked at the lino floor before meeting Lennox's gaze. "Everything about this is new. Everything about this is risky. But we owe it to her to try. If we don't, when we get her back, it won't even matter."

"She'll die even with the bracelet?" Lennox frowned, as if he hadn't been part of these conversations before.

Tom pointed to the opposite glass window, which looked into the lab next door. It was lined with laminar flow cabinets and cell incubators. 

"The best minds in the world are working in there with samples of Ruby's cells, working on a cure, but..."

Tom's brows knitted together, "Reuniting her with the bracelet will likely relieve her pain and return her strength. But only for a short while, perhaps not even a week. Then she'll, then..."

Lennox put a hand on his shoulder, "It'll work. Hell, maybe sucking the cybertanium out of her body will suck out the cancer too."

Lennox stayed in the lab for the rest of the day. He needed the distraction, or the thought of what he had to do would tear him apart. He watched the lab work and listened to the scientists, assuring himself that his actions wouldn't matter, that what he was about to do wouldn't cause any pain. He waited until he felt he'd burst under the pressure.

"Come on," Lennox said to Tom when the clock on the wall ticked towards midnight, "You should get some rest. And maybe take a shower,"

The scientists had switched over, and Dr Goodall arrived hours ago to take over from Tom.