Silas (Transformers)

"We are M.E.C.H.! And I am Silas"

- Silas revealing himself "I am no ordinary human, and this is no ordinary weapon!"

- Silas

Silas is a villain from the animated TV series Transformers Prime. He is the main human antagonist in the entire franchise, serving as the quaternary antagonist in Series 1, the quinary antagonist in Series 2 and the minor antagonist in Series 3 (Where he serves as the true main antagonist in the episode, which he only appeared in, from that season only).

Leland Bishop, also known as Silas or C.Y.L.A.S., was a stone-faced leader of MECH, who had a lethal obsession with Cybertronian biology and technology. Proclaiming a desire of a new world order, Silas and his supporters systematically usurp Decepticon and Autobot agendas alike in the name of research and experimentation to further Project Chimera, the product of their horrific campaign.

History
Colonel Leland Bishop was a member of Special Tactics with the US army with ambitious weapons idea which included Project: Damocles a space operated satellite. However the project was mothballed and Bishop was discharged as a result. Still bent on his weapons ideas, Bishop went rouge and funding the terrorist organisation MECH recruiting other Special Tactics soldiers to assist him and adopted the name of Silas.

Silas's first known action to obtain more powerful weapons was an attempt to acquire a highly volatile nuclear weapon from Agent Fowler. However the attempt was foiled by the Autobots. Silas however took a scan of Optimus Prime's body and fled. Later Silas abducted Breakdown and took a further look into his body only to loose him to Bulkhead. Silas also attempted to gain Cybertronian bio tech by teaming up with Airachnid but it failed when Fowler showed up with an army of attack helicopters. Silas did however get a look at Airachnid scanning Fowler's copper to which he was impressed.

Much later Silas stuck again and stole Bumblebee's T-cog to install it into their own robot but failed. Teaming up with Starscream to get Energon supplies they almost succeeded but Bumblebee showed up to reclaim his T-cog. Upon doing so, Silas betrayed Starscream and stole his.

Later with Starscream's T-cog Silas created Nemesis Prime, a mindless robot to control at will. He used the robot to frame Optimus Prime but the real Optimus Prime and Agent Fowler teamed up to stop both Nemesis and Silas and crushed Silas body under it.

After being heavily injured, he was infused with Breakdown's body in order to save his life. Redubbing himself as C.Y.L.A.S., or CYbernetic Life Augmented by Symbiosis, the first thing he did was to kill his own men by Breakdown's shoulder plasma cannon and proceeded to join the Decepticons with a little bargaining chip. But when it failed, Megatron allowed Knock Out to dissect him as long as he wants, which the latter commented that his old friend would be "tickled".

His fate was later revealed as Knockout was using him to test a Synthetic Energon formula. However, under the advice of Starscream, he was infused with Dark Energon, in order to create the perfect warrior. This experiment badly backfired, transforming C.Y.L.A.S. into an Energon-hungry Terrorcon. C.Y.L.A.S. would meet his end when he freed Airachnid in his attempt to take away her Energon and was killed by her. In his dying words, he thanked her for putting him out of misery, though the latter scoffed it with "Whatever".