Murder by Digits

This story is set in a G1 Transformers continuity, that at the moment could be in continuity with the IDW series. Please let me know about any spelling/grammar mistakes, or if things just don't make sense.

If you have any stories you'd like to have posted here, let me know as well.

Nightbeat – A Detective

Getaway – His Assistant

Thunderclash – His Boss

Rest-Q – The coroner/medic

Fangry – A Suspect

Zoom-Out – A Surveillance Expert

Clouder was the third victim.

At least that's my theory, my name is Nightbeat, I'm a detective on the mean streets of Iacon. Well I say “mean streets” but really it's quiet most of the time, however when there are problems they tend to be bad. Anyway, I'm digressing, I say “theory” because I'm the only one who seems to have noticed the pattern so far, despite how glaringly obvious it is to me. Now of course is the most difficult part of the investigative process – convincing my boss that there is something to investigate.

“I don't see it” said Thunderclash blankly, having heard my crazy theories many, many times before

“It's quite simple really sir, as I've outlined in my notes” I replied

“Yes, but what you haven't mentioned is the 15 other murders in Iacon in the last month alone!”

“That's because none of those deaths fit the M.O. Of my killer!”

“Uh huh....” Began Thunderclash “...but according to your own notes here, the only commonality between the 3 deaths you've chosen to look into is that they all happened in a security blind spot”

“Well that's not the only connection, but that is one of the main ones sir”

“I don't see what you mean” He said earnestly

“And that's why you're not the one investigating this crime”

Now, if any other detective or officer had said this to Thunderclash, head of Iacon security, he'd have probably been smelted within the hour, but because of my long record of success, I'm granted some level of privilege.

“Fine, if you want to waste your time, do so” said Thunderclash, almost whispering with anger, noticing this, I started for the door, then turned back

“Oh and I'll need an assistant to help me out” I added, pushing my luck a bit.

“Take who you need, just go away” Thunderclash whispered before busying himself with some datapads on his desk.

The next thing I did was search though the security database, and found exactly who I needed – Getaway. He seemed extremely happy to join my little team, despite a few attempts to escape the locked room I asked him to join me inside, apparently he'd heard some horror stories from Hosehead and Siren about me abusing them in their time under my care. All lies of course!

The next port of call in our investigation was a trip to the morgue to visit our new friend, Clouder.

“So this is Clouder then?” I ask

“Yeah, fascinating isn't he?” replied a sarcastic Rest-Q, who had allowed us to see the body

“Actually he is” I pointed out, as I noticed a smaller head inside his chest “why does he have a second head?”

“I dunno, alt mode?” Suggested Rest-Q

“Do you mind if I activate his T-Cog?” I ask, already reaching for it, he'd clearly already run all the tests he was going to

As I touch the internal organ, the corpse on the table began to transform, not into the tank he was recorded as turning into, but into a avian species of some sort, most notably with a Decepticon insignia on it's head.

“Huh” remarked Rest-Q “wasn't expecting that”

“I thought Clouder was an Autobot?” Enquired Getaway

“He is, but if my memory's not totally fragged, I seem to remember there's a Decepticon called Doubleclouder...I never really put the two facts together since they were never seen near each other, and never mentioned in the same report together.” I scratch my chin “Well that's one mystery solved, pity it doesn't affect this one” I turn to Rest-Q “Please don't report this finding for one more day, it might alter the course of events”

“Uh...okay, so long as you don't tell old Clashie that I missed a third mode on this guy before letting you play with his internal organs!” Rest-Q bartered, looking more interested now, and we left the morgue.

“So...what was that all about?” Asked Getaway

“Clouder was a double agent, who it seems most people round here didn't know about, I'm hoping our killer didn't know this either, but this does mean we need to wait before we can make the next move” I explained to my assistant.

“Okay, so what do we do now then?” he asked

“I get you more familiar with the case” I said, smiling

I showed Getaway a couple of files, the first two victims, Abacus (and Autobot) and Bitstorm (a Decepticon) were catalogued, but not thoroughly looked into, just thought to be random deaths in this slowly starting war of ours, but with the third victim, Clouder, who identified as an Autobot, despite having a Decepticon form as well, I saw a glaring pattern.

“Well their names are alphabetical” Getaway stated “Sorry, that's too obvious”

“Actually, that's what I wanted you to notice” I confirmed “Even Thunderclash missed that fact! Did you notice anything else though?”

“Oh...well they seem to be switching between Autobot and Decepticon, except Clouder, who was both” Getaway added

“Again, well done!” I said, clapping my hands together briefly “Especially about the Clouder part, as this will be vital in my investigation”

“How so?” My assistant asked

“Clouder's situation is unique, but also intriguing” I added, smiling a bit “Can you work out why?”

“Hmm...well his Decepticon name was...” he checked the notes “...Doubleclouder, which would be the next letter in the alphabet....”

“Good, which is also why I'm interested in it” I added

“Why?” Getaway asked

“Not yet, I want to see what happens first before I add this theory to the pile”

“Oh...okay” Getaway said, a little disappointed, but understanding.

The next morning Nightbeat checked the incident reports in Iacon, and found what he was looking for: the Autobot Eagle Eye was killed off-camera, and unseen by winesses.

“Guess that answers my question then” I muttered to Getaway

“So the killer counted Clouder and Doubleclouder as separate kills then, despite being the same guy?” Getaway asked

“Yes, which tells me two things new about the killer, neither of which I wish to mention right now” I said, noticing Getaway's expression of sadness at being left out again, so I threw him a bone “Getaway can you get in contact with Iacon Surveillance, and ask for a meet-up with their main monitor please. I think we need to talk to them”

Getaway managed to get us a meeting with Zoom-Out, the head monitor at the Surveillance facility, whose job it was to watch the camera feeds all across Iacon, and weirdly he seemed fine with that job!

“So, you actually like sitting here and watching all these feeds then?” Getaway summarised

“Well it's not really just watching all the feeds, I link my mind into the system, and download it in real time, if I see something weird, then I report it” Zoom-Out explained

“Can you explain why there's so many blind zones, that allows the killer to murder so easily and witness-free?” I asked

“Just a design flaw, there's always going to be some blind spot, like behind a building, in an entrance hall, something like that. When we hear about these spots however we do work out how to make sure we get footage of it” Zoom-Out replied

“Creepy” Getaway added

“We need full coverage of the city, officer, otherwise all these crimes will just continue!” Zoom-out responded

“That's enough” I said, putting my hand up, before Getaway started his arguments, I know his concerns, Getaway hates being confined, and being watched, so it makes sense that he'd hate a full-coverage city like this. “I think that's all we need to know at the moment, except one thing. I checked your employee database, and I couldn't find the name 'Zoom-Out' on it, can you explain that?”

“Oh, that's simple, I changed my name last month, I used to be called 'X-Gunner', but that didn't make much sense considering I'm a surveillance officer now” Zoom-Out explained glancing at his active monitors.

“Thank you, and thank you for the recordings from the areas around the killings at the times of death I specified as well” I added, tapping a datapad as I said so “We'll be in touch if we need anything else”

Later, back at my personal office, we had just finished watching the footage of the areas near the victims for the ninth time when Getaway pointed out the obvious again

“So far all we've seen is a bunch of mostly empty streets with some random guys walking around”

“Yes, in itself that means nothing, but can you answer me this...where is the killer?” I asked

“Eh?” Answered Getaway, in his eloquent way

“Even if the killer knows where the blind spots are, in order to kill his intended victims, how could he possibly know how to hide from them to escape the scene?” I put forward

“Maybe he's invisible?” Getaway suggested

“Possible, but then why bother killing in the blind spots then? It wouldn't matter if they die on camera if there's no way they can be seen”

“He could have flown away?”

“Possible, but most witnesses, especially when there's so few around, would notice a flier fleeing a scene of a crime”

“I have no idea then” admitted Getaway

“Fair enough, but my next question is more important, do you notice anything in common with all of these scenes?” I asked, whilst directing him back to watching the footage

“Okay...for the tenth time!” Getaway said, clearly exasperated, but soon started softening his look “That's the same guy again!” he shouted “That same guy is in all the pieces of footage!”

“That's Fangry, a Decepticon” I explained, having noticed him earlier and looked him up “quite violent from the feel of his records”

“That's him then! He's the killer!” Getaway screamed

“It looks that way doesn't it?” I said smiling “Let's go see him!”

A quick call to some friends helped me find out that Fangry was at the Nova Prime memorial statue in Iacon at the moment, most likely dealing in something, or beating down someone. That didn't matter to me though, what mattered to me though is that right near the statue was a blind spot, meaning that the next victim is sure to be killed soon, and if I don't solve this now, then there will be a lot of trouble soon.

We arrived at the statue's site and transformed out of our car modes, and started looking for Fangry, I made sure to keep Getaway in my eye-line, just in case of trouble, and then we saw him, Fangry, sitting down on the base of the statue (a big no-no, but that's not important) the place was crowded, but as I've discovered over the years, sometimes being in a crowd can be a better disguise than being in an empty street, especially to hide a murder.

Fangry soon noticed us, and began to panic, he ran for it, right into the blind spot, but Getaway was a lot quicker, and grabbed him, thrusting him to the floor with a massive thud.

“Whatchoo want coppa?” Fangry yelled

“You're under arrest for murder, dirtbag!” Getaway shouted

“I aint Dirtbag, ya numpty!” Fangry shouted back, misunderstanding the situation

“Getaway, stand up and let him go, he's played his part” I said from the shadows of the statue

“What?” The two tangled Transformers said, looking towards me, where they see me with a smaller robot in handcuffs – Zoom-Out.

“How?” asked Zoom-Out, handcuffed to a chair in the police department a short time later “How did you know I was the killer?”

“Yeah, I'd like to know too, I thought it was Fangry” Getaway asked, confused as well

“Actually it was simple, as I'm sure Zoom-Out here will confirm, Fangry was the intended next victim, he follows the patern perfectly” I explained

“But there's plenty of Decepticons who have names beginning with 'F' why him?” Getaway asked

“Because he was a potential witness, just like Bitstream and Eagle Eye were in the footage as well, before their deaths, you only noticed Fangry because he was in all the footage”

“But how was Fangry ALWAYS there?”

“Because Zoom-Out kept sending him messages to be in the area, as he's a Decepticon sympathizer” I explained

“You know about that too?!” Zoom-Out shouted

“Well I do now, that was just a guess” I said smiling to the devastated Zoom-Out

“I don't get how you guessed it was Zoom-Out though” Getaway stated “There's millions of Decepticons out there, so why him?”

“It was because of 2 main reasons, the blind spots and Clouder” I explained “firstly, there are so few blind spots in our paranoid world, that it would be impossible to avoid, unless you knew them all perfectly, however, as I stated before it would be impossible to avoid the cameras when escaping? The answer is quite simple really”

“He didn't...” Getaway added, mouth open “...he just walked back to work calmly, then edited any footage of himself away, no-one cared about these killings except you, so no-one would notice”

“Exactly!” I congratulated Getaway “Now, Clouder was more of a clincher, you counted him as 2 separate kills due to his double agent status, this was clever of you, but was also stupid. If anyone had of figured out the alphabet theme, then Clouder's death would have stumped them, as no-one knew he was also Doubleclouder, so they would have been thrown off the scent by Eagle Eye dying next. HOWEVER, this was also a mistake, as no-one should have known about Clouder's alter-ego, except for maybe a few bots.”

“So how did he know then?” Asked Getaway

“He saw him change modes on the security footage” I explained, “that's why I asked Rest-Q not to report his death until after a day, that way if the killer did just choose him randomly, then he'd have gone for a Decepticon with a 'D' name instead”

“You're correct, all of it” Zoom-out admitted “But none of this makes sense, I'm not the only monitor on duty all the time, how did you know it was me?”

“It's because you changed your name, you changed it to make yourself the last letter of the alphabet, and thus the last victim. You planned to kill yourself and make it look like another one of the killings, and thus be an unsolveable case. You don't seem to be that interested in the Decepticon cause, and you REALLY seem too happy with your job, which frankly is just boring, you've been unhappy for a while, but wanted some fun before your self-inflicted death” I surmised “I'm sorry, but you'll have to deal with prison instead” and I tapped his shoulder for comfort, and I truly meant it.

Outside the interrogation room, Getaway and I were celebrating quietly, when he asked me one last question

“So tell me, why did you choose me for this case? You have more experience with Siren and Hosehead, why me?”

“Oh that's simple, you're an Autobot with a name that begins with “G”, if I messed up the first few deaths, and you were seen with a detective investigating the case, you were likely to be the next victim, that's all.” I explained, and looked up to a clock “Oh, I need to report this to Thunderclash and rub it in his faceplate, let's work together again some time!” I said, waving at the still wide-open mouthed Getaway, slowly waving in shock.