Archive of Our Own

Since they'd signed on with the Autobots, Sideswipe and Sunstreaker had taken on a lot of less-than-clean assignments. They weren't attached to Spec Ops, not really, but when that department needed a heavy or two, Prowl sent them out. They never asked 'why.' It wasn't their place. They were there to fight and remove obstacles. That was it, usually, and really: they didn't need to know about stuff to take it out.

Usually. This assignment would have made anyone ask questions, though. Sideswipe peered out the porthole at the abandoned research station that their ship was approaching and frowned.

"We're running a mission on this wreck?" he exclaimed. "What could this old hunk of junk have that would interest anyone?"

"Sorry, Sideswipe," Jazz, their mission commander, said. "That's classified."

"Yeah?" Sunstreaker put in. "What could be on this thing that's worth me risking my finish?"

"Cree-eepy experiments," teased Sideswipe, wriggling his fingers at his brother. "To create monsters. With claws made to scratch your finish!"

Sunstreaker scowled and batted his sibling's hand away. "I'll just put you in front of them."

"Children," Trailbreaker drawled teasingly from the seat he'd wedged in the corner. It wasn't that big a ship: with Trailbreaker and the twins crowded in here, there wasn't much space in the small briefing room. "Play nice."

"Yeah, cool it for a minute," Jazz said without heat. "Still some info I gotta give you, okay?"

"Fine." Sunstreaker sat back, and the briefing proceeded as normal.

Their destination was the wreck of an old, abandoned research station in orbit around a tiny, rocky moon of Numedides. Before the war, the Senate had been running a project aboard it, one designed to build some kind of specialized guard before abandoning the whole thing. Their job was to search it for anything useful left behind before another ship came to destroy it. Supposedly, it was empty, uninhabited. The word 'supposedly' didn't reassure Sideswipe. Neither did his first close-up view of the station. He knew it was a visual trick because up and down and stuff only mattered in a gravitational field, but it looked like the station was listing eerily to one side. It was partly in the shadow of the moon it was orbiting and partly in the unfiltered sunlight of the nearest star. This far out, the light was faint, but the lack of atmosphere made everything stand out sharply in what light there was. The lines between light and dark were as clean as if they'd been drawn with a ruler. It was stark and forbidding, and Sideswipe didn't like it.

"Think you could send us somewhere creepier, Jazz?" Sunstreaker asked, mirroring Sideswipe's thoughts as he often did.

"Probably," Jazz said, thoughtfully. "I mean, I can't think of anything offhand, but if you really want me to, I'm sure I can find you an abandoned 'Con interrogation facility or something."

"Yeah, thanks, but no thanks, Jazz."

The station was no less creepy inside. It was pitch black, and the gravity was off. They should've brought Windcharger, Sideswipe thought, pulling himself along the wall to the nearest engineering access terminal. Someone with magnets would be really handy right now. Maybe he should look at getting some mods or something.

Sideswipe fiddled with the controls and got the lights on almost right away. He brought up gravity slowly so that any unfortunate floating mech didn't go 'crash.' Sideswipe could hear small objects tapping gently against surfaces. Soft as they were, the sounds still put him on edge after the complete silence of just nano-kliks ago. Sideswipe kind of preferred the quiet if he were honest. Now, with the distant tapping and the hum of environmental systems coming back online but no sounds of other mecha, it was somehow even eerier.

"Let's get this done and get out of here," Sunstreaker said, brushing imaginary dust from his pauldron. "I don't like this place."

"Me neither," Sideswipe agreed and commed the others. 'Jazz? Trailbreaker? We're up and running.'

'Acknowledged, Sideswipe,' Jazz came back. 'Sunstreaker, you're on guard at the airlock. Sideswipe, you're guarding Trailbreaker while he brings back the asset. No timer, but make it quick, alright?'

'Yeah, I'm not sticking around here any longer than I have to,' Sideswipe said. 'C'mon, 'Breaker.'

Sideswipe took point again, following the location marker blinking on the mission overlay on his HUD. 

"You think this'll take long, Trailbreaker?" he asked as they descended into yet another level of laboratories. There were surgical bays and recovery rooms down here too.

Sideswipe was just as glad the doors were solid with no windows. He'd seen enough slag in his time; he didn't need to add to the nightmare folder, thanks. Besides, he wasn't sure which would be worse, seeing left-behind experiments or not seeing them. His nit had had to hole up in an abandoned hospital once. It hadn't even looked like it had been evac-ed. It just seemed like everyone – doctors, nurses, patients – had just suddenly gotten up and walked away. There'd even been cubes of energon left, something unheard of this far into the war. There hadn't been any signs of violence, nothing to indicate an evacuation order, just…nothing. That was another night Sideswipe didn't particularly care to think about.

"I hate hospitals," Sideswipe muttered.

"I'm not too fond of them either," Trailbreaker said. "Let's retrieve the package and get out of here. Tell me when you see Laboratory Epsilon, okay? That's our target location."

"Yeah, okay." Wanting to get out fast, Sideswipe made a point of scanning the signs they passed. So far, he didn't see anything like what Trailbreaker had said. He just saw the place getting creepier. These levels had been abandoned in a less organized way than the ones above them. Chairs weren't as neatly pushed in. A datapad or stylus had been left here and there. In one of the ramp-wells, a single light flickered. A dropped tool nearby suggested a maintenance bot had been about to repair or replace it. Somehow, the tool with no user and the only indication of someone having used that ramp was creepier than just the dropped tool alone. Sideswipe fanned his sensor radius as wide as he could and didn't pick up anything.

The level they finally found signs for Laboratory Epsilon on looked like it had been abandoned longer than the rest of the facility. The door was unsealed from the outside but not barricaded. They had been welded shut, with a thick line of solder running down the centre seam of the doors. It was pretty solidly done but gave way after a few blows from Sideswipe's piledrivers. The doors creaked halfway open, and Sideswipe shoved them far enough apart that he and Trailbreaker could fit through. The emergency lights in the corridor came on, but not the regular ones.

"Main power's out to this section," Trailbreaker observed.

"Yeah. Any thoughts on why?"

"Energy conservation?" Trailbreaker suggested, sounding uneasy. "I mean, if they weren't being used, might as well cut power to them, right?"

"I guess…" It did make sense, but Sideswipe still moved cautiously through the halls. Even with just emergency lights, the hallway was bright enough. The harsh white light, meant to give short-term visibility but not be easy on the optics, cast sharp shadows like those on the outside of the station. Sideswipe didn't like it any more in here than he had out there.

This area had clearly been shut down longer than the rest of the station. The cleaning drones hadn't been down here either; a fine layer of dust lay over everything. The dust, mostly microscopic paint chips and dead chromanites as Sideswipe understood it, was fine and swirled up in little clouds when they walked past it. There was no sign anyone had been down here in stellar cycles.

"'Breaker, let's hurry up and get out of here," Sideswipe urged. "Cause I am here to tell you, I do not like this place."

"Yeah, don't blame you." Trailbreaker paused, probably checking their map. Sideswipe wondered if the operative had a different viewpoint on his HUD than Sideswipe did. Definitely had other info, that was for sure.

'Sitrep, please,' Jazz said suddenly over comms, startling Sideswipe. He'd almost forgotten they had an open comm line running.

'We're proceeding to the target,' Trailbreaker reported. 'Extraction to begin shortly.'

Extraction? That was a term usually used for retrieving a person. Sideswipe had thought they were here for data or equipment or something. A weapon, maybe. Sure, he was just a grunt and not let in on the details, but he felt like he should have been told if this would be an escort mission. Trailbreaker was good in a fight, especially with the force field, but the field drained a lot of power and was best for short-term defensive use. If Sideswipe had to worry about an escortee as well, that changed things. He knew better than to complain over the line mid-mission, though he'd definitely have something to say in the debrief.

Sunstreaker didn't have any such reservations, though.

'If we're going to have to watch over some civvie, we should know about it ahead of time,' Sunstreaker bitched. 'I should've gone with them.'

'Sunstreaker, please keep the line clear of non-mission chatter,' Jazz said sharply. 'Sideswipe, Trailbreaker, continue on-mission.'

Sideswipe didn't have to see his twin to know that he was grumbling. He would have sent a teasing ping on a separate channel if they hadn't been on-mission. As it was, he stored it up to bug him about later.

 Sideswipe turned right down a hallway and stopped. It wasn't like all the other halls, empty and full of dust. Something had gone down here: one of the doors, to a lab or something, had equipment and chairs stacked in haphazard piles on either side of another pair of welded-shut doors. The weld down the centre of this one was thick and sloppy. It looked as if it had been done in a hurry.

"Any idea what happened here?" Sideswipe asked Trailbreaker, puzzled.

Trailbreaker shook his head. "Nope. This wasn't in the mission briefing."

"Okay…'cause it looks like they wanted to keep something from getting out." Sideswipe considered the door again. He could get through it with his piledrivers like he had the last one, but… "We sure we wanna do this?" he asked.

Trailbreaker shrugged his big shoulders. "Orders are orders. Whatever they sealed up, it probably isn't in any state to hurt us, right? Everything that happened here happened a long time ago."

Sideswipe had his doubts about that, but 'Breaker was right about orders. "Yeah, I guess. Here goes…"

There must have been some kind of loss of atmosphere in the facility at some point. There was a faint hiss of equalizing pressure as the door slid open, and swirls of dust were stirred up around their feet. Sideswipe had half-expected the room to be dark, but the lights came on immediately, stark and clinical, without even a flicker.

It didn't change Sideswipe's impression that something was horribly, horrifically wrong. He'd never been accused of being the most sensitive mech, but even he could pick up that something didn't feel right here. It wasn't just that the room had been wrecked, either. Sideswipe had seen lots of places that had been trashed, either by temper, fights, parties, or war. Trashed rooms didn't bother him. Frag, even the smears of what looked like dried energon on the wall didn't really bug him. The handprint shape of it, though, and the way it looked like someone had been using the wall for support trying to get out and slipped – or been stopped…yeah. That gave him a little brr of dislike.

'What're we looking for?' Sideswipe asked Trailbreaker again. 'C'mon. I'm gonna see it in a nano-klik anyway.'

'Just hang back for a klik,' Trailbreaker cautioned.

'Supposed to be guarding you,' Sideswipe protested, but 'Breaker was his CO right now, he guessed, and he didn't want to hear about it from Blacklight later if he didn't listen. Trailbreaker wasn't a retro-rat, but he did make in-depth reports. Even if he fudged stuff, Blacklight was really good at reading between the lines. No surprises there, given what he did.

'I won't mention it to Blacklight,' Trailbreaker promised, sounding amused. Fine, well, it wasn't him who had to worry about his scary boss coming after him, was it?

'Better not,' Sideswipe grumbled.

Trailbreaker brought his forcefield generator to 'ready' status and slowly approached the back of the room. It was dark, and Sideswipe found himself moving forward, following Trailbreaker regardless of orders.

'Mech, are you sure about this?' Sideswipe asked, scanners on full. ''Cause I am here to tell you, I do not like this place.'

'I think we're close,' Trailbreaker replied. 'I think…yes! I see it.'

'Great. Grab it, and let's get out of here!'

'It needs a bit of a delicate touch, but – got it!'

Trailbreaker had bent down to get something, and when he straightened up and turned around, he had a data cylinder in his hands.

"That's it?" Sideswipe frowned at the data cylinder; it hadn't been what he was expecting. "I thought there'd be someone here."

Trailbreaker shrugged. "Guess they're gone. Anyway, d'you really want to stick around to find out?"

Sideswipe did not. Trailbreaker contacted Jazz again.

'Data cylinder retrieved,' Trailbreaker reported. 'No sign of another package.'

'None?' Jazz asked sharply. 'Sideswipe, confirm.'

Puzzled, Sideswipe answered, 'yeah, what 'Breaker said. There's just a data cylinder, I don't see anything else that might be useful, and there's no one here.'

'No one? Nothing moving?'

Sideswipe's frown deepened. 'Well, just a lot of dust swirling around.'

'Damn. Continue to search the area and then report back. Keep a sensor out for movement or heat or anything weird, alright?'

'Alright.'

Sideswipe would've been perfectly happy to just take the data cylinder and go, leaving the station to keep decaying in peace. He was still on a mission, though, so he followed orders and searched through the rest of the lab. Something had gone deeply wrong here before this section was sealed off, and Sideswipe was guessing at least one of the experimental subjects hadn't been too happy about being experimented on. Sideswipe wondered if the subjects had been voluntary recruits, cold-constructed for the purpose, criminals given this as an option over another punishment, or something worse. The answers, if they existed, probably weren't accessible to a grunt like him, though.

'We've searched the whole sector,' Trailbreaker reported once they'd done just that. 'No signs of anyone here.'

'Gotcha, 'Breaker. C'mon back, you two.'

Sideswipe was still confused about what or who they'd been looking for in the first place, but that was one order he wasn't about to protest. 'Don't have to tell me twice. Let's go.'

The corridor was no less creepy on the way out than it had been on the way in. It was worse, actually, since Sideswipe had the nagging feeling he'd turned his back on something he really shouldn't have turned his back on. He kept looking over his shoulder, just in case, but whenever he did, all he saw was dust floating and then settling on the floor again. It had just been stirred up by them walking, but it seemed like it stayed up longer than it should have.

"Maybe opening the sealed room affected the air pressure?" Trailbreaker suggested when Sideswipe commented on this. "Or the station's leaking atmo? It's not like it's been maintained in a couple of vorn."

"Yeah…maybe." Still, Sideswipe didn't feel better until the door to that level had ground shut behind them again. He still couldn't shake the creeped-out feeling, but at least they were leaving now.

The station seemed louder on the way back out. Sideswipe tried to tell himself it was just his imagination. It didn't help that some of the lights, probably reaching the end of their lifespan, had started to flicker unnervingly. He knew they were just malfunctioning. Like Trailbreaker had said, no one had maintained this place for ages. It didn't make it any less creepy, though.

"Finally," Sunstreaker groused when they got back to the airlock. "Is that it? Doesn't seem worth all this."

Trailbreaker didn't respond to that, and it hadn't been over comms, so Sideswipe didn't know if Jazz had heard it or not. Anyway, Sunstreaker didn't seem like he wanted an answer.

"Let's get out of here," Sunstreaker continued. "This place gives me the creeps."

"You said it," Sideswipe muttered, following Trailbreaker back on board the ship and feeling immensely relieved when the hatch closed behind them all.

Trailbreaker disappeared to secure the package and take the first debrief with Jazz. In the ship's small rec area-slash-mess hall, Sideswipe picked up a game he'd brought and tried to settle into it. Sunstreaker sat in a corner with a tablet with a drawing program. Sideswipe knew better than to bother him when he was like that, so he was on his own with his restlessness. He got up and wandered around the ship, trying to figure out what was bugging him. The ship was too small to have a dedicated sparring area, so it wasn't like he could just take it out on a drone. Sunstreaker wasn't going to be in the mood to help him work it out either, not if he was busy drawing. Sideswipe kind of didn't want to distract him anyway since he'd been drawing less and less. It seemed like the more combat upgrades they got, the less art Sunstreaker produced. Sideswipe didn't think it was the code. Plenty of mecha had combat upgrades they hadn't been sparked with and still had hobbies: Jazz played electro-bass, Prowl liked tadek, Brawn punched things into abstract sculptures. Sideswipe didn't feel notably different post-upgrades, but it wasn't like he and Sunstreaker shared a single CPU, even if they were pretty similar infrastructure-wise. Sideswipe thought his twin might just be depressed, but neither of them was big on the idea of therapy. The intake sessions with that Froid guy had been enough. Red Alert might have even gotten more paranoid after that.

Sideswipe was poking around the little engineering section of the ship, just for something to do, when he had the sudden, pressing feeling that he wasn't alone. Maybe he was still just on edge from Creepy Station, but… Frowning, Sideswipe did a quick visual scan of the area. Nothing. Sideswipe went stock still and extended all his sensors; he didn't see anyone, but plenty of stealth mods were meant to confuse visual sensors. Sure, this close, he should have seen something like a haze, but improvements were being made all the time. He wasn't as paranoid as Red Alert tended to be, but he knew when to be cautious – well, outside of combat, anyway. Ratchet would definitely argue with him if he tried to claim otherwise.

Sensors didn't pick anything up, but Sideswipe – Sideswipe just knew he wasn't alone there.

'Sideswipe to Jazz,' he sent, knowing he was interrupting a debrief and not caring. If he was right, then Jazz needed to know right away, and if he was wrong, then Jazz wouldn't be pissed about Sideswipe bringing up a legit concern.

'Jazz here. What's up, Sideswipe?'

'I'm pretty sure someone's here with me in the engine room, but my sensors aren't picking anything up. Can you check with the ship's internal sensors?'

The fact that Jazz didn't ask any more questions made Sideswipe wonder again what exactly they'd been supposed to be looking for on that station.

'I'm running a thorough scan,' Jazz told him, bringing Sunstreaker and Trailbreaker in on the comm as well. 'It'll take about a breem or so. Everyone stay put so I can eliminate you from the results.'

Sideswipe did as he was told, waiting impatiently for the scan to finish. The ship's onboard sensors were far more powerful than his own and should pick someone up even if he couldn't. But while he stood in the engine room, maybe and maybe not alone, he kept thinking back on the lab they'd found the cylinder in. How Jazz had seemed so convinced that Sideswipe and Trailbreaker would find someone there. The only thing Sideswipe could think was that, despite how careful they'd been, someone had managed to get on board the ship with them. It was hard to believe anyone could have gotten past Sunstreaker, but someone must have.

Or something.

Great, Sideswipe, he thought to himself. Don't freak yourself out making up ghost stories or anything. He'd seen enough horrible stuff in his life, and the last thing he needed was to make up more. He tried to think about anything else for the rest of the breem, replaying part of a comedy show he liked that had managed to air all the way into the second vorn of the war. He wondered what had happened to the actors: none of them looked familiar as either Autobots or Decepticons. That left either Neutrals, the dead, or Empties, and he really hoped it wasn't that last one.

At least he could be sure that if something had followed them onto the ship from the station, it wasn't any kind of Empty. They weren't exactly known for stealth, just mindless hunger. If an Empty had been trapped in there, they would have jumped any nearby source of fuel. Like two well-fuelled Autobots stumbling into their nest.

Finally, the scan finished, and Jazz came back on the comm.

'Scans don't report any other life forms on board, Cybertronic or not,' he said grimly. 'Sideswipe, report to the briefing room immediately.'

'What? But – uh, I mean, yes, sir.'

Sideswipe made his way to the bridge, sealing the engine room behind him. It might be something like closing the garage door after the zap-ponies had zoomed off, but you never knew.

Sideswipe passed Trailbreaker in the hallway, and the mech didn't look at him like Sideswipe was about to get a lecture. Which made sense because Jazz wasn't the lecturing type, and anyway, he had to know Sideswipe wouldn't have sounded the alarm if he didn't really believe what he was saying, right?

Sure thing, the first thing Jazz said when Sideswipe reported to the briefing room was, "relax, you're not in trouble. Go on and sit down."

If an officer told you to sit down, it almost definitely meant you weren't in trouble. Any time a CO had decided to grind Sideswipe's gears – and there had been a few - they'd kept him on his feet.

"So what'd you feel down in the engine room, 'Sides?" Jazz asked. "I mean exactly."

"I just had this feeling like I wasn't alone," Sideswipe said. "Like, you know when there's someone else in the room? Except I didn't see anyone in there. I just felt, uh, I mean…." Wow, this sounded dumb when he said it out loud.

"Like you were being watched?" Jazz finished for him, like he wasn't saying something that was completely out there.

"Yeah. Kind of felt that way in the lab onboard the station, too, but I thought it was just that the place was super creepy."

"Yeah, bet it was." Jazz tapped a finger on the table. "So, just feeling watched. You didn't see anything, feel anything, and I know you didn't pick anything up on sensors. No sign anyone was there at all."

"No, sir."

Jazz glanced at him, then made a dismissive gesture. "You don't gotta 'sir' me, Sideswipe. I believe you. You're not in any kind of trouble. I need a report from you anyway, and I've already got Trailbreaker's, so go ahead and tell me what you saw."

"Yeah, sure."

Sideswipe was weirded out by, well, basically the whole day, but at least giving a report was something normal, even if it wasn't anything he liked doing. No one liked giving rep – well, actually, he could think of a couple mecha. But he told Jazz about everything he'd seen, including the weird dust movements and how the lab had been locked up longer than the rest of the place.

"Did you hear anything?" Jazz asked. "See anything in the dust?"

"What, like footprints? No, just – it took a lot longer to settle than I would have expected." Sideswipe shrugged. "Trailbreaker said there might be an atmo leak somewhere, or we disturbed stuff when we opened the door, and I guess that makes sense. I mean, I didn't see any energon down there or any stasis tubes or anything, so I don't get how there could have been someone living down there."

Which, of course, immediately brought ghosts back to mind. Sideswipe didn't believe in ghosts, not exactly, but, well, he'd been a soldier for a long time, and anyone past their first tour had a story about something. Something weird and not quite right or even downright inexplicable: accidents that shouldn't have happened that either helped you and blocked the enemy or vice versa; an extra soldier that wasn't there at the beginning or end of the mission but who made all the difference.  The sudden impulse to go one way and not the other and the other turned out to be booby-trapped. Sideswipe had done a solo patrol on the edge of a crater-pocked no-mech's-land once. He swore there'd been someone whistling in this one empty foxhole, just faintly. He'd only heard it when he was approaching it or walking away, never when he was right next to it, no matter how long he stood there. One of the science mechs could probably have explained it for him, but he'd never asked. Y'know, just in case they couldn't.

"Yeah, guess not," Jazz said. "Alright, thanks, Sideswipe. You can go but try to stick around the others, okay? Just in case."

"Uh, yeah," Sideswipe said, getting up. "Sure, Jazz." Of course, that meant Jazz wouldn't be following his own advice. "What about you? Are you going to be okay on your own?"

Jazz flashed him a smile, but his visor was unreadable. "You don't gotta worry about me, 'Sides. Besides, I've got Sunstreaker coming to give his report. Go on and hang out with 'Breaker for a bit, alright?"

"Sure, Jazz."

Sideswipe passed Sunstreaker in the narrow hallway, and his twin didn't look happy. He didn't say anything but Sideswipe could easily imagine him grumping about having to give a report when all he'd been doing was standing guard. Sideswipe gave him a sympathetic smile.

Trailbreaker was in the mess hall, building one of those weird 3-D puzzles Wheeljack made out of scrap in his spare time. Wheeljack had claimed that there was a fourth-dimensional component if you solved them just right, but Sideswipe had never gotten that far. He didn't have the patience. He'd heard that Prowl had managed it a few times, though, and that wasn't surprising. Trailbreaker looked like he was concentrating pretty hard, so Sideswipe didn't disturb him. There was a small collection of hand-held games, and he picked one of those instead, casting the sound directly into his own audials so he wouldn't disturb anyone. He'd beaten this game plenty of times, but it was still good, and there were a couple of achievements he hadn't gotten yet.

He didn't turn the sound up so far he couldn't hear anything else happening in the room. He was nowhere near that relaxed. It was hard to get into the game because he kept expecting something to go down. But nothing did, besides Sunstreaker coming back and complaining about how giving a report had been a waste of time. He'd been guarding an airlock and an empty hallway, for Primus' sake!

"What about you two?" Sunstreaker asked, dropping into a chair and taking out his drawing tablet again. He turned it on, but he didn't start to draw, just swiped through screens, probably stuff he'd already drawn. "Did you actually see anything, or was it just a whole lot of nothing in that scrapyard?"

"No, not really," Trailbreaker said. "It sure was creepy, though."

"Yeah," Sideswipe added absently, busy with a boss fight. "Just some dust moving all weird, but like 'Breaker said, it was probably just an atmo leak or something 'cause the place was a wreck."

Sunstreaker looked up from his tablet. "No, it wasn't. I was checking the internal sensors while I was on guard duty. The place was a wreck, yeah, but the seals were good. No atmo leak registered."

Sideswipe looked up, distracted: his avatar got smashed into the ground by the boss and the stage reset. "None?"

"Nope." Seeing the look on Sideswipe and Trailbreaker's faceplates, he added, "but, like you said, the place was a wreck. The sensors were probably just malfunctioning."

Sideswipe and Trailbreaker stared at him for a few nano-kliks, and then at least Sideswipe forced himself to relax.

"Yeah," he said as his avatar got slammed into a wall before he forced his attention back to the game. "Yeah, that's gotta be it." Malfunctioning sensors and an air leak, that was all.

So why was Jazz so on edge, and what had Sideswipe felt in the engine room?

The bad feeling Sideswipe had about whatever had happened on the station didn't go away. It didn't help that a few things he probably wouldn't have thought about in any other circumstances happened. Trailbreaker left some puzzle pieces sitting out on the table during his work and recharge shifts, and a couple of times, they were shifted, just slightly, from where they had been. No one had touched them, though. Sunstreaker was the first mech into the mess hall the cycle before they reached Cybertron and said there was a spill at the dispenser like someone had tried to get energon and not quite managed it. The sensors hadn't recorded anything, and the crew wasn't careless with fuel. They definitely would have used a cube, and none of those had been disturbed. It might have just been a leak, the dispenser briefly malfunctioning during the night, but it didn't happen again, and no one mentioned having repaired it. Sideswipe occasionally had that feeling of being watched again, though it was never any of his companions that could have been doing it.

Whatever was going on, Sideswipe was going to be glad to get home and shake off the feelings the station had left him with by going for a race or standing Sunstreaker for a  few bouts of sparring. Still, seeing Cybertron approaching on the viewscreen during his piloting shift didn't relax him any. Before they could land, though, they had to go through the orbital scanners that checked for intruders, contaminants, or damage. These were even more powerful than the ship's onboard scanners, and Sideswipe told himself that they'd probably come back with nothing and prove they were all just being paranoid. Right?

Wrong: even before the scan had finished, the ship's internal alarm went off, blaring a red alert and warning of an intruder.

Then it switched off.

Then it switched on again.

"Huh?" Sunstreaker, sitting in the navigator's seat, said and frowned. "Come on! Either there's an intruder, or there isn't!"

"Let's go with, 'there is.'" Sideswipe said, locking out the controls so no one could take off with their ship while they were searching for an intruder.

"Great," Sunstreaker muttered. "Just when I was looking forward to getting off this boat."

Jazz and Trailbreaker arrived on the bridge shortly after that, and Sideswipe waited for Jazz to give instructions for them to pair off and search. But he didn't.

"We're all staying together for this one," Jazz announced. "I don't want anyone out of sight. Let's go, bow to stern, c'mon."

There wasn't much ship to search, so even without splitting up, it didn't take long to cover the whole thing, closing and locking the hatches separating sections behind them as they were cleared. Soon enough, they wound up in the ship's tiny cargo hold, even empty barely big enough to hold the four of them. If there was anyone on board, they should have been here unless they could walk through walls. But Sideswipe didn't see anyone.

"What, are the orbital scanners malfunctioning now?" Sunstreaker complained. "There's no one here!"

"Not so sure," Jazz muttered and took something out of his subspace. "Must've been driving them ahead of us, but…stay put."

Jazz threw a small round object out into the middle of the room, and Sideswipe recognized it as a smoke grenade. It went off, but not with a bang that filled the room. Jazz must have rigged it somehow because it gave off a dense smoke slowly, gradually covering the floor and showing the faint shape of a mech's boots, legs – and then the image was gone.

"What the frag," Sideswipe hissed, scanners running on full. Data was pouring over his HUD, and none of it was helpful; none of it gave him a target. But there was someone here, he just knew that there was! They had all been together in each incident, except Jazz, But Sideswipe didn't think for a pico-klik that Jazz was playing a prank on them. He wouldn't be sneaking energon on the sly, either. Something had moved those puzzle pieces. Someone had tried to get into the energon supply.

'Quiet,' Jazz ordered over comms. 'Nobody move, everybody put their systems on stealth. I need to listen.'

Sideswipe obeyed, but he couldn't bring himself down off the edge, couldn't stop anticipating a fight. The sheer weirdness of everything that was going on kept his combat systems up and running. Jazz must be running his audial sensors at full, listening for even the slightest noise. Sure, he wasn't Blaster or Soundwave, but he definitely had better audials than Sideswipe did. Everything seemed to hang for a moment, and then one of Trailbreaker's force fields flashed into existence, and only long vorns of training and experience kept Sideswipe from firing.

"Good work, Trailbreaker," Jazz said. "Keep it up. Alright, everyone else, you can move but stay back, okay?"

"Jazz, what's going on?" Sideswipe wanted to know as Jazz slowly approached the force field. "What is that?"

"Ain't a what," Jazz replied easily, still approaching the force field with his posture kept neutral. "A 'who.' Might even know which 'who' it is, just gotta get 'em to a place we can be sure." Jazz addressed the forcefield bubble, which also contained smoke and faintly showed parts of a mech. "Been a while since you've seen anyone else, right? Bet you're wondering if you can trust us or not, and I don't blame you if you don't. Don't know when you last downloaded a newsfeed, but if you ever heard about the war, well, we're the good guys."

There wasn't any reply, but whoever it was didn't try to make a break for it either, so – that was good? Maybe? Jazz kept going.

"Dunno what they did to you in there, but I'm hoping you at least remember your designation. Do you?" There wasn't an answer, but Jazz just nodded like that was reasonable. "Kay, yeah, I wouldn't wanna give too much away neither if I were you. How about I guess a few designations, and if I get it right, you show yourself." Without waiting for an agreement that probably wouldn't have come anyway, Jazz continued. "Highwire of Uraya? Waverunner of Prysmos?" There wasn't any response, and Jazz went through a half-dozen more designations before getting to "Mirage of Crystal City?"

Something flickered, shimmered, where Sideswipe had seen the outline of the mech before. Slowly, someone shimmered into existence. They looked, well, expensive. Sideswipe hadn't seen armour that light in a while, even if it was a little dull. Lack of fuel or a long time in stasis would do that to you, and at least one of those and probably both applied to Mirage here. But even with that, Mirage looked expensive. Lightweight, race frame, a structure that someone had obviously poured a lot of shanix into at some point.

Sideswipe wondered if any of Mirage's family was still alive. He wondered if they had any idea what had happened to him.

Mirage didn't say anything, just watched them, optics flicking nervously between each mech in the room but mainly focusing on Jazz. Yeah, Sideswipe knew that look. That was the look of a mech who'd been through some deep slag. He'd seen it on plenty of others, and he was pretty sure he'd worn it a time or ten himself. Well, at least Mirage would be in good company seeing as everyone on Cybertron was pretty fragged up from something or another these cycles.

"Hey, there, Mirage," Jazz said as if he were talking to someone he'd just met on the street. "Not gonna ask you how you're doing 'cause I know it's gotta be bad, and I'm not gonna get mad 'cause you helped yourself to some energon. It must've been nice to get some fuel after a while. In stasis for a while down there, huh?"

Mirage gave Jazz a thousand-yard stare for several long nano-kliks before whispering, almost inaudibly, "yes."

Jazz just nodded, like he was carrying on a totally normal conversation and not one with a mech who'd been tortured by Senate lackeys for whatever reason. "I bet. Can't say I'm sorry we woke you up, seeing as this whole place is due to go boom in a little while."

Mirage's attention focused a little more back to reality when Jazz said that. His expression didn't change much apart from that, but Sideswipe was pretty sure he wanted to watch the station blow.

"Don't have much space on board," Jazz continued, "but we can find a spot for you. Gotta be better than wherever you've been bunking down until now."

Sideswipe exchanged glances with Sunstreaker, who just shrugged in response, which was as good as a 'yes.'

"Sunstreaker and I can share a bunk on the trip back," Sideswipe volunteered. "I guess the rest of you can figure out who sleeps where apart from that." Mirage might want to be on his own, might not, but he probably didn't want to be sharing a room with two bigger strangers who were obviously built to fight.

"Thanks, Sideswipe. Trailbreaker, you mind moving in with the twins for the trip back?"

"No problem, Jazz."

So, the three biggest mecha on the ship would be in one room. Great. It couldn't be helped, though. If they had to have a mech who could go invisible on board, Sideswipe would rather know where he was and making him feel safe would help that. Safe as he could, anyway. Whatever else happened, Mirage was gonna be on edge for a while, not that Sideswipe could blame him.

Jazz coaxed Mirage out of the hold and back into the mess, got some energon into him. When Sideswipe saw how Mirage's hands shook when he picked up the cube, he got why there had been energon spilled at the dispenser before. On the table next to it, the puzzle pieces could have been disturbed if the mech stumbled and caught himself. Trailbreaker, acting as their unofficial medic, scanned Mirage from as close as the mech would let him, just to confirm he'd be okay until they got him back to Ratchet. Seemed like he would.

Jazz showed Mirage to his bunk and left the mech alone to get what was probably the first bit of decent rest he'd had in a while. Stasis was usually as good as recharge, physically, but not necessarily mentally, and Sideswipe wouldn't be surprised if Mirage had gone in and out of stasis so he could check for rescue every so often. Well, rescue or whoever was going to show up.

"He say what happened?" Sideswipe asked when Jazz came back to the mess. Jazz had been gone a little longer than it took to tuck someone into bed, so Sideswipe figured he'd taken the opportunity to do some careful interrogation. "I mean, that lab…."

"Not much," Jazz reported. "Sounds like the other subject in the lab had enough, got loose, took out as many of the researchers as they could, and the rest ran for it."

"Yeah? What happened to the other mech?" Sunstreaker wanted to know.

Jazz's mouth twisted downward. "He wouldn't say much, just that we don't have to worry about them anymore. Let me put it this way, though: I don't think mech's messed up just from being experimented on. Think he had to do some stuff to stay safe and survive."

Right, and a mech who'd spent his whole life living in the Towers would've been pretty badly shaken up by having to take someone else out. Sure, having slag happen to you – done to you against your will especially – would frag anyone up but having to kill someone was a whole different thing.

"Surprised he's not more banged up if he had to fight someone who chased a bunch of other mecha out of their lab," Sunstreaker said skeptically. "What'd he do? Take 'em out in their sleep?"

"He didn't go into a lot of details," Jazz said, "not that I blame him. But it sounds like, yeah. I didn't push. He'll talk about it when he's ready, either to one of the psych guys or someone else. So, see if one of you can't make friends with him, alright?"

"Probably going to be a while," Sideswipe pointed out. "And, uh, should we really be talking about the guy who can turn invisible if we're not sure where he is?"

"I know where he is," Jazz said. "Don't think I'm going to leave an unknown civvie alone with an escape route, do you? Future asset or not."

So, Jazz was going to try and recruit the mech. No surprise there. If Sideswipe had been in charge of Spec Ops – Primus forbid 'cause that was not a job he wanted – he'd have done the same thing. Sideswipe just hoped if the mech woke up locked in a stranger's quarters, it wouldn't freak him out too badly.

"Think there are any other experimental subjects left on the station?"

Jazz shrugged. "Not sure. Prowl's got the specs from the data cylinder, and Wheeljack adjusted the Mirror-Manifold's sensors. It'll be here to do a deep scan as of tomorrow, and if there's nothing found, we do one last recon, plant explosives, and blow the joint."

Sounded good to Sideswipe. He was just sorry they had to wait to do it.

Sideswipe wasn't sure if Mirage knew Jazz had locked him in the cabin, had slept through the whole thing, or had been just as happy to have them locked out as he was locked in. Either way, he didn't seem to be extra skittish during morning fuel time, just regularly skittish. Everyone pretended not to notice and talked to him like he wasn't horrifically traumatized by the past few – Primus, it had to be vorns of his life. Mech was quiet, guarding his energon like he was worried someone might take it away from him if he didn't behave just right. Rationing wasn't too strict right now, at least, so the mech could have more if he wanted it, and Jazz made sure to keep him supplied, making it look casual while he did. Mirage didn't take many rust sticks and other nibbles, but he kept them close. Sideswipe had seen it before: he'd want fuel around just to reassure himself it was there. Either he'd start feeling comfortable enough not to do it, eventually, or he wouldn't. It wasn't like he'd be alone in doing it, either.

"So, Mirage," Jazz said once Mirage had refuelled, "this other mech – he still in the lab somewhere? My people didn't see him."

Jazz didn't refer to the dead mech as a corpse, which Sideswipe got. The first time you killed someone, even if it'd been you versus them and you hadn't had a choice, did a number on you. Probably be worse for someone like Mirage, who wouldn't have been prepared in any way to do it.

"Some of the-the workers came back a stellar cycle later and took him away," Mirage said, not quite meeting Jazz's optics. "They looked for me, but not for long. I-I hid. I think perhaps they thought he'd killed me and not – " Mirage made an odd noise, something between a laugh and a hiccup. "I don't know why they didn't look for me more thoroughly. They had…scanners, some way to find us. Maybe they thought I'd offlined. Maybe they hadn't been ordered to find me. Maybe they didn't want to take any longer than they had to. That lab was never comfortable for anyone, even…before. Not just for us. It was always – some of the assistants would talk about how uncomfortable it is. Was."

Sounded like the place had a  long tradition of creeping people out. Sideswipe tried to imagine what it would have been like to be a prisoner there, with no way out. Even if you escaped, even invisible, where would you go? Mirage might be able to turn invisible, but he'd never been trained for stealth. He'd gotten caught here by looking for energon, by pausing so long that Sideswipe became aware he was being watched.

"Yeah, I bet," Jazz said, a little more gently than Sideswipe was used to hearing from him. "So, when the Mirror-Manifold gets here, are you gonna be okay to be checked out by their medic?"

"I don't know what they did to me, and I'm not going to be experimented on again," Mirage said flatly, tensing like he was about to run.

Jazz held up his hands. "Nope, not gonna ask you anything, not gonna run any kind of experiments. Just want to have you checked out, see if anything needs fixing or a top-up. You'll probably feel better when you meet First Aid."

"But I can't say 'no,' can I?"

"Sure you can. Better for you to get a checkup, but so far as I can see, there's no reason you're not capable of refusing medical care."

Sideswipe could tell just from looking at him that Mirage didn't believe what Jazz was saying. He'd probably test it by refusing, but since the medic on the Mirror -Manifold was First Aid, Mirage would probably come around. Sideswipe honestly had trouble seeing how anyone could find First Aid threatening.

Jazz pushed another rust stick across the table, and Mirage took it a little less hesitantly than he had before. "Anyway," Jazz continued, "I couldn't give you orders even if I wanted to: you're a civilian, not an enlisted mech."

Mirage gave Jazz a suspicious look. "Are there options other than enlisting available on Cybertron these days? What little I could access from your ship's databanks suggest otherwise."

"You can try," Sunstreaker put in. "There's still some mecha around who haven't picked a side. Some of them even have energon. Not much, though."

"I see." Mirage was silent for a moment, then asked, "do you – know what happened to my family?"

Jazz glanced over at the others. "You, uh, wanna talk about this private-like?"

Mirage's expression went flat, and his optics dimmed. Yeah, Sideswipe could tell he knew what Jazz was going to say. "They're dead, aren't they?"

"Crystal City was one of the first places the 'Cons hit," Jazz said gently. "Shade was off-world, and info on the colonies is spotty at best, so I wasn't able to find out what happened to him. But your creators and your Tower's employees, chaplain – I'm sorry. They're in the Well."

Mirage's optics flickered, and he looked away. It was a long klik before he spoke again, in a tiny voice. "I – was trying to keep them safe. That's what…all this…."

"You did your best," Jazz said, instinctively reaching out for Mirage's hand before drawing back. Instinct or not, everyone knew you didn't touch someone traumatized, for whatever reason, without their okay. "I really am sorry, Mirage."

"How long ago?"

"Twenty vorn," Jazz said. "Right around the beginning of the war. From what we know of how fast things went down – well, it was quick. I dunno If that helps."

"No," Mirage whispered, staring into the distance. "It doesn't."

The Mirror-Manifold arrived not long after everyone had finished their morning fuel, and First Aid came aboard to talk to Mirage while Wheeljack's scanners did their thing. First Aid politely but firmly shooed everyone away from Jazz and Mirage's quarters, so Sideswipe didn't know how he did it, but it looked like Mirage had gotten his medical checkup. He'd been patched in a couple of places, and some of his armour had the distinct oily sheen of medical gel. Sunstreaker hated that stuff, claimed it messed up his finish for cycles. Mirage also seemed a lot calmer, which wasn't really surprising. Ratchet had made all his physicians undergo secondary training as therapists, seeing as many regular therapists were either dead or had disappeared off-world at some point. Turns out, being built light and non-threatening was an asset if you were performing that function, not so much if your planet got dumped into unending civil war. Sure, Sideswipe knew one session wasn't going to fix everything, but it wouldn't make anything worse. Probably.

Sideswipe wasn't sure if Mirage would be up to talking to anyone – he was sitting in a corner of the mess nursing a cube of energon – but when Sideswipe got word the other ship was done their scans, he tried.

"Hey," Sideswipe said, keeping a non-threatening distance. "Word just came through. They're done with their scans, didn't find anything. Thought, maybe, you'd want to see the place blow?"

A sort of…vicious glee flashed across Mirage's face, and Sideswipe almost took a step back. "Yes," Mirage bit out. "I would."

They watched on the viewscreen, but there was no countdown or eulogy of any kind. The Mirror-Manifold launched torpedoes that punched easily through the station's armour, never meant for defence. Detonations bloomed silently throughout the station, debris already beginning to spin out into space until the whole thing gave way and shattered apart.

"Alright, then," Jazz said when the fires were out. "Time to go home."

"It's a shame we can't destroy it all over again," Mirage said bitterly, still staring at the wreckage. "Down to the atoms."

Standing at the front of their little grouping, Jazz glanced over his shoulder, one that Sideswipe recognized but Mirage might not have. Jazz was calculating something, that was for sure.

"Got some other places just like this you can help us blow up if you're interested," Jazz offered. "I know the Senate's gone, but we're still cleaning up their messes in a lot of places."

Mirage might not be familiar with Jazz, but he wasn't stupid. "You want me to enlist."

"Yup," Jazz answered unabashedly. "Got a place for a mech can go invisible if you want it."

"And more secret experimental facilities to destroy?"

"Put you on every mission for them if you want."

Mirage nodded slowly, a mech coming to a decision if Sideswipe had ever seen one. "I would like that," Mirage said. "But if anything happens that I don't like, I had best be able to walk away."

"Teach you the ways out and how to find boltholes myself," Jazz promised. He held out a hand. "You in?"

Mirage hesitated for just a couple of nano-kliks, just long enough to make Sideswipe wonder, then reached out and clasped Jazz's hand. "I am."