For all of the plans and strategies he had written over the countless vorns with the Autobots, this was the one he was most loath to implement. But time was no longer on his side, and if his last session with Shockwave had been any indication, he needed to act quickly or else the Decepticons would finally be victorious.

Since his capture almost a full earth year ago, Prowl had survived all sorts of torture, mind games, and attempted deactivation. His plan was to out think and out wait his captors. Eventually they would become sloppy and he would seize the opportunity to escape. Or perhaps even a rescue by his own faction would be attempted. The latter was a much smaller probability, as even he would admit it would be a petty waste of mechs and resources to save a single bot. So he worked to stay one step ahead of the Cons, struggling to remain as sharp as his chronically damaged systems could manage.

But he was losing this battle too. Without proper repairs, even his most redundant processes were shutting down. His engine stalled briefly, drawing him from his musings before catching and continuing its sluggish, sickly reving. As his physical form deteriorated, his internal firewalls and layers of security protocols weakened as well. Soon he would be so diminished those precious firewalls, all that stood between his deepest Autobot secrets and the Decepticons, would be breached. If Shockewave data mined his processors after such a breach, the outcome of the whole war could take a very nasty turn.  

He hoped Red Alert had already changed the security codes. On second thought, knowing the security director as he did, those codes were probably redone the very day of his capture, which provided a bit of comfort. But his memories would be laid bare, and his battle plans still in use by his comrades would be exposed and vulnerable. Smokescreen was good and Prime had probably pressed him into full tactical duty during Prowl’s absence. But Prowl had been the best at what he did, and his training was ingrained in each of his friend’s sparks.

He had been the best. It saddened him to think of himself in the past tense, but that was his new reality. He briefly wondered how Jazz had coped with his unexpected but necessary promotion. He almost smiled at the thought of Jazz working to escape all of the desk work the role of SIC inevitably entailed. Jazz probably joked Prowl stayed in the Con brig to avoid the boring monotony of his prior life buried under data pads and endless reports.

Thoughts of his former friend and comrade provided escape from the cloud of pain surrounding and smothering him. Would Jazz even recognize him now, he mused? Most of his prior monochromatic paint had been stripped down to bare metal and exposed wiring. He’d long since lost count of the leaks and damage to his frame. His self repair systems had been deactivated or countermanded, which left him more often than not wishing for the not so tender mercies of Ratchet, or First Aid, or even Swoop!

The Cons occasionally ‘repaired’ their guest, if large pieces of temp plating hastily slapped and welded in great patches of his frame could be called repairs. But they served their purpose and purchased him one more day he wouldn’t offline from his injuries.

The lack of energon may have been the worst part as it caused systemwide failures. He hadn’t been refueled by his captors in several days, and more importantly, he was having a hard time keeping his thoughts moving forward in a linear fashion. He felt sure they were weakening him for one last barrage, which meant his time for fulfilling his last duty as an officer in Optimus Prime’s army was drawing near. His Prime would frown if he heard Prowl thinking along those lines, as the Prime valued every bot in his ranks and would never approve of the drastic measures Prowl was preparing to set into motion.

Ironically, it had been Jazz himself who created the deceptively simple code for the processor corruption program they had codenamed “CHECKMATE”. The special ops mech had understood why Prowl insisted on the creation of the program, and why he had offered it to all the upper level officers without notifying the Prime of its existence. Realistically, his processor contained the most dangerous information to their cause. Prowl knew the Cons would deactivate him instantly once they discovered all of his data corrupted by the self inflicted virus. He would die honorably with the assurance none of his friends had lost their lives from intel extracted from his systems. The others would mourn his passing, but he was truly exhausted and wished for nothing more than eternal rest. He desired nothing more than to lay his head down, offline his optics one last time, and slip peacefully into the Matrix.

Soon…not quiet yet…he felt himself slipping toward the inevitable outcome. He knew he was a sorry sight had any of his comrades been present to see him now. He lay where he’d been discarded after his last round of torture, shifted slightly onto his side to relieve a bit of the firey agony he felt as the raw mangled remains of his once proud doorwings scraped the stone floor. All of his remaining sensors screamed in unending loops of hot pain and icy numbness. His chevron had been an early casualty, sent back to his Prime to prove he was in fact a prisoner of the Decepticons. The open wound on his forehead still leaked energon, when his systems had enough energon in them to actually leak.

Soon…it wouldn’t take more than a few mental commands to activate CHECKMATE, but he needed to be sure he would have enough time to complete it before it was discovered by his captors. Incomplete, it would leave the remaining data open for easy retrieval. He knew the Con’s didn’t normally leave him alone longer than five days running. So if they stayed true to past behavior, they would be back in a day or so. Unless they had finally tired of playing with him and had just left him to deactivate in the bowels of their base. But he knew that Shockwave wasn’t the sort to give up nor get bored with captives, so Prowl offlined his optics for a few more orns of recharge before facing the implementation of his hardest plan yet.

A few short orns later, Prowl felt his engine begin to seize. His energon had run dry, and slowly his systems were beginning to fail. He knew he had to act now before he was incapacitated to the point of vulnerability. A wry smile touched his lips as he thought of the last bookfile he had shared with Jazz all those long months before. He would miss all of the Ark Autobots, but none more than Jazz. And perhaps only Jazz would truly understand what he did next.

Propping himself up slightly onto the side of his cell, Prowl soundlessly recited those spark wrenching words from that old bookfile. “It is a far, far better thing I do now that I have ever done…Be in peace, Commander. Farewell Jazz.” And with those last sentiments on his lips, he sent the execute command and set loose that little innocently named program dubbed CHECKMATE by Jazz- it was more than poetic justice, that name, he thought.

He felt the effects almost instantly. Memory files were accessed and purged, bits of his past life floated by as they were turn apart, disconnected from their larger context, and wiped from existence. He marveled at the painless nature of the whole system purge. It felt like a healing balm on all of his screaming sensors. The great weight of his rank and responsibilities felt less and less heavy on his shoulders. He felt proud of who he had been. This was his final sacrifice to keep the rest safe. But he was quickly forgetting them all, forgetting even himself. He watched in morbid amazement as one by one the bots in his memories became strangers to him, even in his own mind. Ratchet, Ironhide, Bee, Smokescreen, Optimus, even Jazz. Jazz, that other bot who took up so much of his waking thoughts – games of chess, quiet moments sharing music, sometimes just sitting together, reveling in the other’s silent strength.

As he lost his last memory of his Jazz, he couldn’t help but think “He will know what to do to fix this.” And Prowl knew no more…

Moments later, soft, stealthy peds made their way up to the cell containing a very familiar formerly black and white bot who had been missing way too long. Jazz whistled low at his friend’s condition, and held back a sob at what his scanners told him. “Just couldn’t wait for meh, huh Prowler! And here ah always thought ya was the patient mech of us all…Prowler, can ya hear me?” Jazz became more concerned that he couldn’t raise his friend, either with his voice or his comms.

Finally, the mostly dead bot cracked open an optic to see what the ruckus was all about. “That’s better Prowler! Ah was startin’ to get all worried about ya!” Jazz’s excitement practically bubbled and bounced in patters of sound and light off the walls.

But the bot in the cell only glared at him weakly, and that dimly lit eye didn’t contain one shred of recognition Jazz had been praying to Primus he would see. He tried again, more quietly this time. “Prowl, it’s meh, Jazz…Ah’m here to save ya, if that’s ok with you?”

But the other bot remained completely still. Eventually he opened his mouth and a quiet word slipped though, but too softly for even Jazz’s specialized audios. He did hear the pain behind that word, and he longed to reach out and sooth Prowl, to help ease the pain his friend and comrade had undoubtedly suffered at the hands of their enemies.

“Prowl, ah can’t hear ya…can ya say it again for meh?”

This time the word was clearer.

“Checkmate.”

Jazz felt his energon run cold. He was too late to save Prowl. He knew he never should have written that Primus forsaken program in the first place. But now he had to face the music. Jazz was getting hysterical and fast. “No Prowler, ya didn’t! Ah was coming for ya…did ya forget ah always said ah would come for ya! Prowl!! There had to have been some other way!” But the other bot simply stared, unblinking and unaware. Jazz sat down, stunned and lost.

Here he had staged a completely unauthorized single bot mission to finally rescue Prowl, and he had failed. The truth hit him like a slap across the faceplates. He hadn’t rescued anyone. In fact, he’d done what he thought only Megatron or Shockwave ever could.

He had destroyed Prowl.