CYPHER

Just a little child's play

Dean and Jade stopped their chattering .

They both turned to May who was sporting a beautifully forced smile while gritting her teeth .

" Don't you guys want to explain what you're on about ? That would be the nice thing to do, no ?"

" Then we could all talk about nitro and gly- whatever together ".

Dean and Jade nodded their heads , It was best to leave May unprovoked .

" Okay , everyone gather around ".

Dean went back and took the seat he had been using to read .

He dragged it closer to the bed where May and Jade where already seated and Blade sat too , looking a little bleary-eyed .

" So , yesterday I found chloroform in our emergency regeneration kits and it got me thinking ..."

Dean stopped talking when he noticed May's raised hand , he took a deep sigh .

" Yes , May ? "

She looked around at the others .

" Some of us don't know what chloroform is ".

That was plausible .

" In movies , that chemical that is usually sprinkled into clothes and then used to cover people's nose to render them unconscious , that's chloroform ".

May's eyes widened , Jade inched further away from Jade and Blade's eyes cleared as he shouted .

" You are talking about kidnap juice ?!! "

Oh goodness, Kidnap what now ?

May raised her hand again .

" Why would we have that here ? Wouldn't it encourage the players attacking each other once they knew what it was ?"

Jade finally looked interested as he added to the conversation .

" When I went through your emergency kits , I saw syringes too . I'm worried that people might pump each other full of chloroform ".

Dean had not even thought that far ahead , they could only hope that no one decided to do that .

" Chloroform is pretty much banned in hospitals and pharmaceutical companies don't produce as much because of its adverse effects , so if they put a bottle on each of us , they intended for us to cause as much damage to others ".

" Which is why I thought of how best to utilize it , it's not flammable so it's useless over the golems but if we found a way to compress it and add a lot of pressure , we could use it's gaseous state better , Jade offered to help find a way to do that ".

They all turned to face Jade who cleared his throat awkwardly before telling them what he had decided .

" I actually first thought of reactions with chloroform that could give us some flames but that would be too hard.

But , I do have a solution for making our chloroform into gas ".

" We will need those nitrogen tanks or helium tanks that they use to pump balloons.

The stoppers and tanks are designed to apply pressure on the liquid chloroform till it becomes gas and gets released ".

Jade nodded at Dean when he finished talking and they both turned to see the other people's reactions .

May had her whole face scrunched as she thought furiously while Blade was stroking his chin with a vague smile .

May suddenly jumped off the bed and began to walk around the room .

" I get what you're saying about this Chloroform . You are trying to make it into something like teargas to give us an advantage over the other players ".

She had figured the perfect translation to what Dean and Jade had been trying to say .

Dean smiled at her , she acted crass and reckless but she was a great addition .

Blade stood up too.

" I would like to volunteer my services as the one in charge of spraying the gases ".

May scoffed , her face twisting into an expression he had seen his sister make several times .

" There's no need to volunteer , we were going to leave that to you in the first place . That's work for brawn like you , Blade dearie ".

Dean had again judged her too fast .

Jade cleared his throat again and they all looked at him .

" Uhmmm... that's not all . When Dean gave me the chloroform , he wanted me to find a way to make it flammable and since I couldn't do that , I began to think of other means , an alternative ".

May clapped , remembering something .

" The HMEs and the other thing that sounds like LED ".

Jade grinned ,his whole bluish face lighting up as he did .

" Yes , HMEs and IEDs . I thought of some things but Dean already had a simpler plan with materials that would be easier to get , Brake fluid and swimming pool bleach ".

" We just need to check the houses till we find them .When we do succeed with this , we could bring down any of the autobots in less than two minutes ".

That caught their attention. May and Blade began to talk at once .

" We could take down steels in two minutes??? "

" If we can do that , we could gather all of them together and burn them at once ".

Dean shook his head , that would not be possible .

He stood up and picked one of the papers he had drawn on and passed it around .

They all looked at it and passed it back to him .

" When I was asked to join this , I was told we would be playing a game over seven days . My initial thought was that it would be a new game each day but it was different when I got here . The steels were the only ones hunting people and no one was announcing any games ".

" My Patron also mentioned that this was not the first time this had been held and it was a different game each year which means there had to be a theme to it all ".

Jade gasped softly and they all turned to look at him .

" I know it now , the game we are playing . It's hide and seek . That's why we have houses and the freakishly normal simulation of hide and seek games ".

Dean rubbed his eyes .

" Jade's right ,We are playing hide and seek and if my assumption is right,then this is just the beginning of the game ".

May walked towards him and grabbed his shirt .

" What do you mean by if your assumption is right ? "

Dean unwound her hands from his clothes .

" The game will get more intense , the steels will get more accurate in their seeking because they aren't just average steels , you were spot on when you called them golems ".

May began to blink rapidly , her face settling into a neutral expression .

Blade got off the bed and wrapped his hands around her , pulling her back to the bed .

When he had sat her down , he turned to Dean .

" Why do you say they are golems ? "

Dean held the paper that he had passed around up .

" Remember when we first met and these three steels attacked us ? After we killed one , the second one just left and it got me thinking but it wasn't till I got these drawings that I was able to figure out what bothered me so much about them ".

Dean picked up another of the drawing , the eye sockets .

" Their eyes were too human ".

He watched them maul over it .

" What are you trying to say , Dean ? "

" I'm saying that the steels are our Patrons ".

They were all quiet .

Dean lifted up the drawing of the core again .

" This is a remote access system , an autobot with something like this has to be controlled by someone in another location . That's why that autobot didn't attack us , it was one of our Patrons ".

" And that's why our pictures are added to pictures of our Patrons because they might not be here risking their lives but they are also players ".

Jade scoffed while May suddenly laughed .

" Those f*****g bastards made us into pawns that they ran around killing off ".

Blade's head was in his hands .

" So , it's not the steels we are running from but from the people that recruited us into the game".

Yes , they had recruited them to hide while they seek.

They were seeking them for fun.