Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The ship was dark, its corridors empty. Not a spark went without being stolen, nor a life left untouched. Disaster had struck, and in its wake, death lingered on. Chaos had erupted, and after the chaos destruction, and after the destruction death. There were no survivors amidst the panic… yet something still clung to the shadows, lingering like the stinking stench of death left behind, and yearned for more to take. 

It was a paradox of existence, something born to save turned into something made to ruin. A beacon of light was left to stalk the halls and feast on the remains, its hunger insatiable and its body a husk of the past. It craved more after taking everything, and it wanted more even after nothing had been left. 

The Lost Light—a sign of hope, of new beginnings, and of bright futures—had crumbled under the weight of dark and unnatural conditions. It was left to turn into something empty, and to rot in its silent tragedy. The dust had settled, and the damage was done. 

Alas, in the ship’s emptiness was a creature poised to strike, a monster waiting for more opportunities to come. The start of something worse had begun, even after the destruction had ended. It craved something more, and it craved something deep. A husk of a mech drawn to its owner’s past was as unexpected as it was unfortunate, but hope still remained. The creature was quick to learn, and its resources were extensive. 

When the comms lit up, it was there to listen. When that familiar voice rang out over the connection, he was there to answer. 

Chapter Text

There was a blank slate of time Vortex’s processor couldn’t account for after the chop-chop-chopping sensation of his rotors against the air had faded to black, only to be temporarily erased from his memory’s database. It happened a majority of the time after a bad fall, especially if he hadn’t anticipated the impact. This time around, it had come as a bit of a surprise—not the fall, but the time he was left out of commission and unconscious. 

He was far too curious for his own good. It was what set him apart from most. It was probably what got him into so much trouble all the time, too, and what got him into the mess he was in now, but in the grand scheme of things, a little bit of trouble meant nothing for his longterm goals… and his most recent goal? Infiltrating the fragging death machine that had been floating through the air since Primus knew when. The desperate desire to be up there and inside made all his troubles worthwhile, if you asked him.

It had to have been months ago in human terms. Cybertronian language made the time between then—cuddling up in berth with a sleepy medic’s voice chattering away in his audials—and now—testing faulty comms and hoping for an answer—feel insufficient, insurmountable. A few months’ worth of time let things sit and grow as heavy as they were supposed to feel. It let the paranoia build up, too, and the concern. 

Silence for that long couldn’t have been a good thing. Hell, silence from him of all mechs was never a good thing, no matter how long. 

Vortex was an interrogator. He considered himself a fairly skilled jack of all trades, too, though he did still boast pretty exceptional skills here and there. He was not, however, anything near educated enough to know just what was going on aboard his little lover’s ship, nor was he sure exactly why the comms had gone so deathly silent for so long. It worried him. It made him curious, too. More importantly, though, it made him nervous, and nothing ever made him nervous anymore. 

Nobody took out a massive aircraft’s communications just like that, no matter how skilled they were, no matter how hard they tried. Not even a moron on board could have done that much damage, let alone someone outside of the ship’s radius. Vortex didn’t believe any of the dangers that Aid had sounded so worried about could do it either, really, but now… now he wasn’t so sure.

First Aid hadn’t seemed all too worried in the beginning, and Vortex was more than happy to calm the medic’s fears with petty banter and gentle jabs as he lounged in the safety of his quarters and listened to his companion work the evening hours in the ship’s medibay. It always boiled down to the same strange concerns and the same weird stuff. It was the same old same old every night, and as things progressed, Vortex found their communications to be lacking.

They had stuck fast to their shared promise of calling each other every night right around the time things started getting serious. It was their new favorite ritual, given the fact that the near-constant need for First Aid’s presence aboard the ship kept him from sneaking off like he used to. Lockdown protocols and an active quarantine being implemented meant First Aid couldn’t leave even if he wanted to, so the two of them learned to make it work.

Truth be told, Vortex hadn’t minded it much. Contact was still contact, and nothing beat curling up in his berth for the night while he listened to First Aid rant and complain about the new wave of safety regulations and the silly rumors that always followed. He got to listen in on the latest juicy gossip making its way through the ship’s corridors, First Aid got to unload some of the weight on his shoulders by talking through top-secret stuff with his evil little lover on the other end, and the two easily fell into recharge with the background sounds of faint snores and groaning machinery to lull them. 

It was fine in the beginning. It had been fine—at least for a while. Vortex always had plenty of questions and lots of theories to entertain them both as First Aid worked around observing the latest damages to the medibay and tending to sick, injured patients who came in complaining about sparkaches. It kept Vortex busy, and it kept First Aid comforted. It was a win-win as far as he was concerned, especially in the beginning stages of whatever mess they were about to find themselves in. 

Nothing was ever for certain by that point, and no solid explanations were granted. It was always “something has probably just gone awry in the labs” this and “something’s probably stalking us in the vents” that. There were rumors, hypotheses, and paranoia galore, but answers? Psh. He knew better than to expect that, and so did First Aid. 

After some time, however… things got complicated. They got messy. Dangerous. Calls went unanswered, and First Aid’s workload was tripled. Vortex tried to soothe him, but his words were falling on deaf ears. 

“Things are getting messy,” First Aid would say as he rummaged around the medibay and scurried from patient to patient. “Things are getting complicated. I don’t know what to do—I-I don’t know what to say, but… it’s not a good time up here right now. Things are starting to look a little bleak.”

Vortex never knew what else to do in those moments. He didn’t what to say. It helped, at least, to hear First Aid explain it all in vague words and rapid bursts. To some degree, it helped. It wasn’t answers, but it was reassurance. It wasn’t even reassurance, really, but by that point, vague assumptions and ridiculous explanations were all they could muster. 

Vortex still wished there would have been some real answers. He wished there would have been something more, something better, something to clue him in and piece together the unspeakable and the unknown. 

He knew better than anyone what a real scared mech sounded like, and the last time he had managed to get ahold of his medic, First Aid had sounded terrified. It wasn’t just the typical fear that came with living in uncertain doom or being left in the dark. It was a fear that left his own voice shaking and the comms scratchy in Vortex’s audials as First Aid shuddered through his words and hissed out short, breathless answers. It was the kind of fear that left Vortex feeling worried—literal, genuine worry, too. It was the kind of fear that left a heavy, dreadful feeling in the pit of his tanks when the connection finally dropped, and it was the kind of fear that kept him attempting to call and connect, desperate for answers and desperately waiting for another response. 

He was supposed to have been let in on the madness going on, and he was expecting to be granted a hefty scoop of the drama once his favorite piece of intel finally got some answers for himself. That, of course, never happened. He was coming up on three months of silence from First Aid and the Lost Light now, and for Vortex, that was far, far too long. 

He needed answers, and he needed them now. 

The Lost Light was just a few thousand feet above him, hanging stationary amongst the clouded sky. Vortex wasn’t sure when it had come out of orbit, let alone why, but nonetheless, there it sat. 

It was an ominous sight. Up until that day, he hadn’t dared to do anything more than circle beneath it as he made his reconnaissance rounds and carried out his daily agendas. Attempting to board that thing was like a death wish, and it looked a hell of a lot less hospitable knowing there was likely nobody left inside to greet him—unless, of course, you counted the despicable, the unnamed, and the uncertain dangers lurking within its walls. 

He wanted inside. He had waited long enough. He had circled it one too many times. Vortex hadn’t made an attempt at infiltrating it just yet, but slag, he was going to do it today. 

Onslaught hadn’t dared to grant him the clearance for what he was so lovingly committed to referring to as a “suicide mission.” He never would, especially not after the small bits and pieces Vortex had babbled to him about over lapses in meetings, refueling sessions, and the occasional free time in their evenings. 

He knew Blast Off wouldn’t dare to cover his aft either, the fragger. He was too caught up in everything Onslaught to even care about lending a fellow flight mode a helping servo. 

He knew better than to ask around the lesser of the Combaticons for assistance either, especially not when his options were so limited. Brawl wouldn’t know the first thing about stealth and anonymity, and Swindle was hardly around long enough to matter anymore. 

Vortex wasn’t stupid, but right now, he was desperate. His small chain of command would do nothing to help him, and that was a given. He needed to help, though, and he needed answers. He needed to do something, and when he needed something to be done… who else was better to do it than he? 

If he wanted something done, he apparently had to do it himself. Thus, he did. At least, he tried to, because apparently forgoing the uselessness of his team had also been the wrong choice to make.

From afar, the ship looked like any other ordinary ship may look. It was a little out of place hanging so low in the sky, but it was a challenge for Vortex to rise to that level of altitude all the same. He had settled for observing from a safe distance for so long, but now that he had his chance to get close, he was a little too nervous to do it. 

The comms were dead and silent. Not a string of static came through, let alone any live lines that might indicate a lingering presence of life. Vortex was as persistent as he was stubborn, and despite his discomfort, he slowly moved closer and closer in hopes of receiving even the slightest audial connection. 

Things looked normal from a distance, but up close, Vortex could start to see the signs of a struggle. The ship was dark, its windows shuttered. Natural light wasn’t all that natural on Cybertron, nor was it very common, which meant a dark ship was very much just that—dark, like an unwelcome omen. Dark like a sign, maybe. He hovered in place, his rotors chopping the air louder than his spark pulsed in the underbelly of his alt-mode. 

There were no obvious weaknesses, no emergency exits or easily accessed chutes. It was the kind of ship you had to board when it hit the ground and decompressed upon itself, and even then, Vortex wasn’t quite sure where the entrance was supposed to be. Ever so slowly, he moved in closer, chancing the pulse of danger that pounded in him like the chop of his rotors in the air. 

It was dead silent up there, save for the thrum thrum thrum sound and his own energon rushing through his fuel lines. Hell, he probably could’ve heard the passengers onboard if one of them had spotted him, but he heard nothing as he flew towards the ship. 

Vortex’s fear was starting to get the best of him, and for a moment, he worried this brave adventure of his would simply turn into another recon mission. He’d never gotten this close to the ship in the past, and even that was still progress made. It just felt a little wrong waiting another few cycles or more until a fresh opportunity came for him to sneak off and test the waters. He had to take the chance while it was still fresh, otherwise he might not get another opportunity for a very long time—and time was already of the essence.

The ship was still silent and unmoving, and it left him feeling unnerved more than anything ever had. He was practically ready to bite his tongue, call it quits, and kick himself in the aft later on for being such a coward when the unexpected occurred, catching him off-guard and drawing him in closer still.

Vortex nearly fell right out of the sky at the sound of crackling static and a strained whisper on the other end. He didn’t have to wait for the other bot to speak. He knew right away who it was. 

“Aid?” Vortex shouted, his frame vibrating with excitement. “That you?”

It was definitely First Aid. He knew the mech’s comm link by spark. He also knew that the only bot who’d be able to reach him and only produce fuzzy static sounds near a suspiciously silent ship hanging in the air would be his medic. 

Speaking of silence… from First Aid’s end of the link, there came an eerie length of it. Vortex had to make sure he was still connected just in case. 

“Aid?” he echoed, his excitement dwindling. “Hey, sweetspark. You there? Speak up so I can hear ya over the noise. It’s loud out here—you know I can’t hear well when the rotors are on.”

Still nothing. A moment later, the connection failed. All too fast and all too soon, the little spark of hope fizzled out. 

“Frag, lost the signal again,” Vortex spat, his rotors beating harder as he lifted himself up and moved in closer. “Hold on mech, I’m coming in.”

He was stuck talking to himself again, but Vortex’s hope had been rekindled. First Aid had been there on the other line, silent or not. He was there, which meant he was some form of alive, which hopefully meant that Vortex could get inside and rescue him. He just had to figure out how.

He couldn’t see any signs of movement through the windows, and he couldn’t feel the presence of a living Autobot behind the ship’s walls. Still, he moved in closer. He knew First Aid was in there, somewhere. 

Vortex was close enough to reach out and touch the ship now. His vents stalled, his spark racing. He caught another hint of the static fizzling in his audials again, and he could finally see a way in, just at the top of the ship. 

His newest discovery coincided perfectly with a blast to his underbelly and a sudden rush of blinding pain. Slag, Vortex never even saw the shot coming. It was only when the blip of a dark silhouette was growing rapidly smaller and smaller and the fried pain inhibitors in his HUD caught up to speed did he finally register that he was falling—or spiraling, more accurately—right back down to the earth. 

The shot had gotten him good, right where it hurt. It grazed his tail rotors, too, leaving his descent all the more chaotic. Vortex couldn’t account for anything that occurred between the seconds before hitting the ground and waking up some stretch of time later, but he could still see the Lost Light floating amongst the clouds as he fell, and he could still catch glimpses of the small Decepticon base hundreds of feet below as he fell faster, and faster, and faster…

He braced himself for impact, all the while begrudgingly thinking about how damn good a shot Blast Off was when it came to that orbital sniper. Whatever had grazed him had been a warning shot this time, and he knew that next time he managed to make another attempt at reaching the danger zone up there, he’d have to be much, much more careful. 

— — — 

It had to be said that coming back to his senses and finding his entire gestalt staring down at him with unanimously angry looks as disgruntled fear made its way through their shared bond definitely wasn’t the sweetest thing he’d been met with after jolting out of a forced stasis lock. Slag, he’d had one-night-stands with nastier berthmates that looked at him with friendlier stares come morning and much less hostility in their fields once he’d stayed past his welcome. He hadn’t expected anything else, but really, it was a little disappointing. 

He should’ve known they’d have been the ones standing behind the trigger—metaphorically at best and physically at worst, of course. Maybe even both, but regardless. He didn’t have to ask what had happened in order to get a straight answer, but he asked anyway. It made the tension seem a little less palpable. Plus, it made that ridiculously stern expression Onslaught tried to wear crumble in seconds, and that was always pretty funny. 

The boss hadn’t even seemed all that disappointed to begin with. It was like he had grown to expect this from Vortex, which wasn’t all that good of a sign. Unpredictability was his strong suit, after all. Regardless, his battle mask still retracted, and behind it appeared the familiar face of anger Vortex had gotten used to seeing. 

“You stupid mech,” Onslaught hissed, his visor narrowing as he loomed in and hovered above before Vortex could so much as get a single word in edgewise. “You stupid, stupid mech. What were you thinking? Dammit, tell me you were thinking.”

Well, he had obviously been thinking a rescue mission was in order, and he had been thinking that for much longer than Onslaught or his team had been aware of the situation at hand. The rest of his gestalt had already made it abundantly clear that they were having no part in the whole saving bots from certain doom thing, and as much as he wanted to point that out to his commander, Vortex held his tongue.

Petty words could always come later. He was the one currently at a disadvantage, after all.

“Trying to board First Aid’s ship,” Vortex said with a shrug, “what else would I have been doing? Flying off to Vos?” 

…oops. 

The words were out of his mouth before he could stop them, but Vortex at least had the decency to look guilty. Ahh, well. At least he’d tried. 

Onslaught raised a brow. “After strict instructions not to go flying up into that danger zone, you still went?” 

“And without clearance, might I add,” Blast Off scoffed from the other side of the berth. The shuttle crossed his arms over his chest and gave another unpleasant huff. “Violating flight regulations is a highly punished offense, Vortex… though I’m sure you‘ve already been made aware.”  

“Yeah,” Vortex scoffed back, “says the one who shot me with a high-powered weapon from surface level.” He nodded to Blast Off’s pedes, all the while relishing the way the shuttle’s smug demeanor fell. “Ain’t those toe cannons of yours under “strict regulations”—or whatever the slag it is you uppities call it—too? And how about that gun, huh? Didja get special permission from the old boss himself before shooting me outta the fraggin’ sky?”

Blast Off’s dramatic helm toss and scuffing pedes made him smile, but Vortex still had to admit defeat to the arrogant aft. It had been a good shot, really. He still felt the brunt of it throughout his entire frame upon entering out of stasis. Vortex hissed and groaned his way through sitting upright, taking things slow. 

He was left in one piece, at least. That was always a plus. 

Brawl stood at the far end of the room, keeping plenty of distance between him and the growing tension between his two leaders and the cranky copter. He couldn’t help but add his own two shanix to the conversation though, because… well, because he was Brawl. 

“Damn,” the tank said, his voice booming across the room as he scratched at his chin. “He got ya good, ‘Tex.” 

“Tell me about it,” Vortex groaned back as he raised one arm, then the other, and winced at the tug on sore wires inside . “And I bet he ain’t even a little bit sorry, either…”

“It was a mild blast,” Blast Off cut in with a stomp of his pede. “There won’t be any lasting effects, unfortunately. It actually could’ve been much worse. Given aerial guidelines—“

“Which you of all mechs follow, I assume?” Vortex said through snickers. 

“—which I most certainly follow,” the shuttle growled back. “Unlike some of us here, I was well within my range of safety, so I acted accordingly.” He sniffed, his arms crossed and his helmet upturned. “You’ll be just fine, Vortex. It’s hardly any more lethal than the shots I use for stunning seekers and warding off enemy lines.”

“Or in this case,” Onslaught said, his visor narrowing ever so further, leaving Vortex to squirm in place against the berth, “stopping foolish helicopters from making foolish decisions.”

The Combaticon leader gave a curt nod to his second, and Blast Off quickly fell silent. His attention was back on Vortex, but not before Vortex managed one last nasty gesture thrown Blast Off’s way with only a smidge of discomfort and pain as a consequence.

“Avoiding any rash decision making is why we make plans,” Onslaught continued. “Your lack of planning is why I gave Blast Off the clearance he needed to stop you from doing something you would later regret.” 

Vortex’s sneaky attempts at flipping off his fellow Combaticon immediately fell null, and as he turned back to Onslaught, his shoulders shrugged and his face twisted in as dramatic a show of confusion as he could muster. 

“What is there to regret?” he said, his mouth agape behind his mask and his servos splayed out in a questioning manner. “I go up to the ship, I save Aid’s aft, I come back down. Seems pretty planned out and risk-free to me, don’t you think?”

Silence followed, and Vortex knew he had stepped past too many invisible lines when he saw Onslaught’s helm tilt ever so slightly to the side. Pushing his luck never got him where he wanted to go, especially not when Onslaught was already testy. He didn’t dare take it back, though. This was a different matter, and one that demanded his attention. This mattered more than any scolding he could receive, and that was something Vortex refused to budge on. 

Eventually, Onslaught caved. He sighed and rubbed his face, a telltale sign that he was quickly losing his patience with Vortex’s antics. 

“How long has it been since you’ve made contact with him?” Onslaught asked. Before Vortex could respond, he added, “and I don’t mean radio static. I want to hear a clear and concise response from you detailing every single thing the two of you have shared over the comms. So, how long has it been? Days? Weeks? Months?”

Vortex didn’t respond. He held his leader’s gaze for all of a few seconds before turning away with a sigh of his own.

“Does it really matter—“ he began, but froze in his tracks when Onslaught took an alarming step forward. 

“Yes!” Onslaught snapped, “yes, Vortex, it does matter. I am not about to approve you for another one of your own little suicide missions, nor am I going to be sending any of our gestalt to aid you in something that will only end in disaster.” 

He paused, his frame faintly shaking, his intakes rasping, and Vortex flinched atop the berth. It took another deep breath and a servo rubbing his chin before Onslaught continued, but his voice wavered with the same underlying anger that Vortex had long since learned not to toy with. 

“I have personally spoken with Swindle over the past few cycles. Unlike you, he has been in contact with several other crew members aboard the Lost Light between the start of this disaster and now.” He made a vague gestured with a servo, then continued. “If you must move forward with rescuing your little plaything, your best options would be to go to Swindle for advice. I can’t promise that he’ll be of any use, but—“

“Swindle has been in on this?” Vortex said, his visor wide. “Swindle. Him of all mechs… and he never thought to tell me?”

Onslaught gave a curt nod. “You know it was for good reason that he kept things private until now. Right now, you leave me with little other choice than suggesting you seek out whatever knowledge he may have.”

Vortex had half a mind to snark back and demand a proper explanation, but Onslaught beat him to it. He was forced to cower back against the berth as his leader moved in and glowered down at him, his arms crossed over his chest and his gaze fixated on his target. He meant business, his posture said, which meant Vortex would have no more luck with testing the waters and pushing buttons. 

He hated being a suck-up, but such was life. Being a pain in mechs’ tailpipes wasn’t always guaranteed to get him where he wanted to be no matter how much he enjoyed the process.

“Swindle hasn’t shared much of what he knows about the situation,” Onslaught said, his helm bent low as he watched Vortex squirm, “and I highly doubt that will change anytime soon. Until we know more about what we’re dealing with, you are not to go anywhere near that ship again. Understood?”

He couldn’t make that deal in good conscience. He wanted on that ship. He needed on that ship. 

“Vortex,” Onslaught pressed, his voice booming, “do you understand?” 

With slumped shoulders and an averted gaze, Vortex eventually gave a nod. 

“Yeah, yeah,” he muttered, crossing his arms in a similar fashion as he glared down at the floor. “I hear ya.” 

It was a good enough response to appease his leader, judging by the curt nod and gentle humph under breath. 

“Good,” Onslaught said, the final comment putting an end to the uncomfortable discussion. 

At the far end of the room, Brawl was the first to leave. He gave an awkward salute to the defeated copter before turning and bumbling his way out the door, bumping into the wall frame and knocking over stacks of datapds in his wake. Blast Off followed suit, albeit much more carefully, and offered nothing more than a scoff and a nasty side-optic as he left Vortex alone with their leader’s company. 

Vortex waited for Onslaught to do the same. He was already feeling anxious for a bit of time and space to plot and plan. There was a lot more to do now and a lot more to plan, but to his great disappointment, Onslaught lingered by his berthside.  

“I am… aware,” his leader began, a servo extended as he took a seat on the edge of Vortex’s berth, “of your attachment to the little Autobot. I am also equally as aware of your intentions to fly back up to that ship the very moment another opportunity presents itself.” 

Vortex tried to respond, but Onslaught was faster. He lifted a finger in an attempt to placate the mech into silence for a little while longer, then continued. 

“Under any other circumstances I would have allowed it,” he said, his gaze softening, “but it isn’t worth it. With the variables, the uncertainties… it’s simply not a risk I’m willing to facilitate.” 

“He’s still up there, boss,” Vortex said. He inched a little closer, his plating scraping against the berth. “I heard him. Over the comms.” 

It was static, of course, but it was still First Aid. Static was still a connection, and a connection was still a bot—a living bot at that. 

There was no changing Onslaught’s mind. He’d at least gotten to a point where the mech didn’t seem inclined towards tearing off his rotors and grounding him permanently, so Vortex took that for the small win it was. 

“All I ask is that you be patient with me,” Onslaught said after a time. “We’ll act soon enough, but not yet—not right now. Let me work, Vortex. Let me plan.”

Patience wasn’t going to be enough in the long run. Three months had already passed, and Vortex knew three more months would come and go by the time the rest of his gestalt were anywhere near ready to help him tackle the problem. Still, he offered a soft smile and a sweet nod, just to put the discussion to rest. They were at an impasse already, and just like Onslaught, he had already made up his mind.  

“‘Kay,” he said with a shrug, “I’ll let you do your little leader thing, but I ain’t making any promises.”

Onslaught sighed again, but he didn’t fight back. Instead, he simply stood and turned for the door. 

“I would expect nothing less,” he said, speaking the words over his shoulder as he crossed the room in quick strides, “but at the very least I’d ask that you try to make an attempt at keeping yourself out of danger. This is uncertain territory we’re dealing with here, Vortex, and the last thing I need is to lose part of this team to something so avoidable.”

Again, he thought to himself, he could make no promises. He at least didn’t have to say it for Onslaught to know he was thinking exactly that.

“Ah,” Onslaught added, stopping in the doorway to glance back at the copter. “You’re free from your responsibilities for three days. You won’t have flight clearance between now and then, but you’ll have time for repairs and support if needed.”

“Three days?” Vortex’s optics went wide behind his visor. “You serious? How’d you do that?” 

Despite the heavy tension still lingering in the air, Onslaught gave an amused huff. Vortex could almost see the wry smile hiding behind the battle mask that had clicked back into place.

“Three days, Vortex,” he repeated, his amusement fleeting. “If I catch you in the flight terminals before that time is up, I’ll be instructing Blast Off to inflict a hell of a lot more damage than what you suffered today.” 

“Okay, tough guy,” Vortex snickered back. “Whatever you say.”

Three days was a lot. He could work with three days off. Assuming…

“Hey, wait a sec,” he added, scooting himself to the edge of the berth and perking up before Onslaught could disappear behind the door. “If I’m off duty, does that mean—“

Onslaught crossed his arms with a shake of his helm. “Mm… not quite,” he said. “I’ll still be expecting you at tomorrow’s debriefing. You’re off-duty, Vortex, not off the clock.” 

Damn. 

“Tough luck,” he said with a shrug. “Was worth a shot.”

The tongue-lashings and wrist slaps were over with for the time being, at least, and once Onslaught had finally turned and walked out of the room, Vortex could get back to thinking. He eased himself away from the edge of the berth with a groan, his stretches slow and his frame aching. 

The shot had hurt, sure, but the fall was what had gotten him good. He could still move, at least. He could walk, too, even if he did so with jerky steps and a full-frame shake to dust off the lingering grogginess. 

The cogs in his processor were already turning as he twisted and stretched and pushed his frame’s limits until he felt better than before. If he could still walk, he could probably still fly. And if he could still fly… 

He moved to settle back down and rest, but a small offering sat atop the end corner of his berth caught his attention, and Vortex was quick to determine the cube of high grade had come from Blast Off. There was no note, of course, but a peace offering was still a peace offering, no matter how begrudging. He drained it in one go and tossed the cube aside, and after deciding he’d had his fill of pushing his poor, aching frame around the room for a while, went back to curling up on the berth for a bit more thinking—or recharging, perhaps. Whichever came first. 

Three days off was a death sentence under normal circumstances, especially when he was forced to suffer through it without the entertainment of someone else enjoying the time away from their responsibilities. He would never willingly take a beating from Blast Off under normal circumstances, either, but this wasn’t exactly normal circumstances. 

It was three days of freedom after the daily debriefings and routine activities were over with, which left him plenty of wiggle room. He had worked with a hell of a lot less before. It was like hitting the jackpot, and he knew just the bot to sucker into his bucket of winnings. 

Three days could work. Three days would work. Vortex’s rotors wiggled with uncontainable excitement as he began to drift back into a reconstructive recharge, his processor already muddled with thoughts and excuses to use come morning. 

Three days to get back up in the air and board that fragging ship… three whole days. 

Hah. He only needed one. 

Chapter Text

It had been over twenty minutes since the Combaticons all gathered into the meeting room for another boring debriefing, and Vortex was getting tired of Swindle’s lack of cooperation. More specifically, he was getting tired of the way the shifty conmech refused to meet his gaze from across the room, let alone across the table. So far, he had done everything short of cornering his gestaltmate and demanding the answers he was looking for (though that was soon to be his next move if things didn’t go where he wanted them to), and Swindle still just wasn’t budging. None of his usual non-invasive tactics were working either, and the commander had already glared at him once. 

The key to getting the information he needed on First Aid and the desolate old ship floating in the sky was sitting right there, twiddling his thumbs and staring at the floor, at the ceiling, at Onslaught, and at everything else but Vortex. Swindle wasn’t being very good about keeping himself cool and contained, and with every rhythmic tap of the copter’s claws atop the table, he could tell Swindle grew more and more uncomfortable with the pointed stares and indiscreet sounds Vortex made in the back of his throat.

It was obvious he was being ignored, and that was what bothered Vortex most. 

He needed answers. He needed Swindle’s support with this. He really needed Swindle to get his fragging act together and make eye contact with him already so they could skip past the awkward stuff and get down to business. 

Private comms were discouraged in the meeting room—Blast Off’s rule, not his own. It had come up after Vortex was caught one too many times with his fingers in places they shouldn’t be out in public (again, all according to that pompous aft of a shuttle), and according to Onslaught, who was never one to fail at covering his second’s back, the quiet snickering and whispered innuendos while he “chatted up his Autobot boy-toy” weren’t appreciated, either. 

No private chats, no open interrogation tactics either, and certainly no interruptions when their morning debriefing was about to start. Onslaught never did like when things got messy in their shared spaces, and he especially didn’t like veering off of the specific schedule he and Blast Off had pored over the night before. He would have to just make do with what he had available, he supposed. He almost had to, because right now, he didn’t have many other options. 

Out of the corner of his visor, he caught Swindle’s eye before the sleazy little conmech when back to ignoring him and sitting upright and attentive like a good little soldier. It was hard not to roll his optics and sigh at the dramatics—a part of him wanted to say “frag it” and link up for a quick and private little chat. 

Vortex leaned his chair back with a yawn, his claws digging grooves into the table to hold him steady as he balanced his weight on the chair’s back legs. He could use this time to think, at least. Maybe he could even use Onslaught’s long-winded and boring old commander talk as a way for Swindle to stop ignoring him from the seat just across the table. It’s not like anyone ever cared to listen anyway—not unless their name was Blast Off.

Swindle wasn’t perfect, and hell, neither was he. Nobody could sit through a debriefing from the boss for very long without starting to fidget—again, not unless their name started with Blast Off and ended with professional aft kisser. 

From the front of the table, Onslaught cleared his vocalizer and fixed his gaze on each individual gestalt member in a silent head count before settling in and adjusting the datapad in his servo. It was the typical morning routine, and it happened the same way every fragging time. Five minutes in, give or take, and Vortex knew almost everyone’s attention would be elsewhere.

It made for the perfect opportunity for him to coerce Swindle into a private comm chat. He sure as slag wasn’t going to wait until the end of the debriefing. 

“Alright,” Onslaught said, his helm held high and his shoulders straight as he scrolled through his datapad. “There isn’t much for us to discuss this morning, but since all five of us are finally here and in one place again…”

Onslaught’s words fell into a droning background noise that buzzed in Vortex’s audials as he listened in for any key words that might interest him. Chances were the whole Lost Light ordeal wouldn’t be brought up in a setting like this, but he could never be too sure. Still, it was unlikely. Everyone who knew anything about it was up to speed already, and aside from him and Swindle, nobody cared to revisit it. 

Vortex settled back into his seat and propped his helm in his servo as he snuck another look at the fidgety conmech. Just by looking at the increasingly uncomfortable expression on Swindle’s face as he struggled to school his outward appearance, he, too, had caught up on the latest news… and that meant he would likely know some things that Vortex didn’t. 

He probably knew about Vortex’s attempt to infiltrate the ship the other day, too. Onslaught would have told him about it by now. He always kept everyone up to speed on the events they might’ve missed and things that happened while they were away. That just meant that Swindle likely knew Vortex was going to be grilling him for important details, and as the suck-up that he was—or the suck-up he could be, given the right circumstances—the bastard was most certainly going to be taking Onslaught‘s side. 

Now that made things hard, but hard meant interesting, and interesting meant messy. Vortex liked getting messy, and he liked getting answers even more. 

His gaze was locked onto the poor conmech from the start of Onslaught’s speech, and he didn’t waver for a second. Swindle had taken well enough to it at first. He hardly even seemed to notice at the start of the meeting, save for a few fleeting glances in Vortex’s direction. Now, though, he had begun to squirm. 

Another nervous look shot at him from across the table told Vortex that Swindle had acknowledged the threat for what it was, but his dismissive body language didn’t give much further hope. It was like being forced to read two different bots, and Vortex hated the mixed signals Swindle was giving him. 

His own attention had been directed back to to listening to Onslaught for the time being. He sat twisted around in his chair to face their commander as Onslaught chattered on about rapport, upcoming battle strategies, and other obnoxious things Vortex didn’t want to even bother listening to. No mention of the ship in the sky yet. No mention of First Aid, either.

Vortex was sure he must have looked just as ridiculous sitting there as Blast Off did. The shuttle was sitting up straight and nodding along the whole fragging time. He could still make out the minute details, at least, even as his mind wandered again, and those were the details that mattered most. No mention so far of anything he actually cared about hearing was also important, and that gave Vortex the chance to go back to nagging his unwilling gestaltmate. 

Swindle’s shoulders were tense, and his legs bounced beneath the table. His fingers were interlocked, and he was sure to be wringing his servos in his lap—Vortex could tell by the twist of his joints and that anxious, faraway look he wore whenever he was caught in the crossfire of a mech on a mission and the distracting and important task at hand. Frag, he was wearing it right now. 

He still glanced at Vortex out of the corner of his optics, and he still squirmed under Vortex’s scrutiny. He just wouldn’t meet Vortex’s gaze head-on, and he wouldn’t stop being so bold about ignoring the obvious attempts being made to catch his attention. 

For a fleeting moment, they would make optic contact. Then, Swindle was back to squirming, his attention fixated on Onslaught in a way that would rival Blast Off’s own infatuated stares. Vortex got close, only to lose it a moment later. It was annoying as slag, but hey, this was Swindle he was dealing with. His stubbornly coward self came with the territory. 

Come on, Swin, Vortex thought as he stretched out in his chair and folded his servos behind his helm with another long, drawn out yawn.  Look at me.

He needed answers, but more importantly, he needed Swindle’s attention. His intentions had been made clear enough already. His determination was probably even clearer. He just needed to catch him in the right position at the right time. There was no room to run off the very minute Onslaught dismissed them, and there certainly wasn’t going to be an opportunity to escape Vortex, either. It was up to Swindle if he wanted to play it the easy way or the hard way, because Vortex was going to get the information he needed, even if he—

“Vortex,” Blast Off hissed with a kick at his leg under the table, “are you even listening?”

Of course he wasn’t listening. When had he ever bothered to listen during a debriefing? When had anyone ever cared to listen during a debriefing? 

“Yeah,” he said, covering his disinterest with a yawn muffled by his servo and an even longer, more dramatic, stretch. “Just gettin’ comfy. You know how awful these seats are on my back.”

Vortex disregarded the dramatic optic roll Blast Off gave him before turning back to ogling their leader and listening to him drone on. He was being far too obvious about nagging his poor gestaltmate, apparently, and though every mech with a good bit of knowledge about Blast Off knew better than to disregard rules during an active meeting with the boss, he was willing to test his luck—if only out of desperation. 

Vortex shifted in his seat and leaned forward with his arms crossed and his helm resting atop them. The servo he lifted to connect his comms was covered by the side of his face, thankfully, and while Blast Off and the rest of the group were busying themselves with appearing attentive and sitting pretty, he took the opportunity to start a live conversation.

“Hey,” he called to Swindle through the silent comms.

Swindle’s startled jump and icy glare shot his way from over the shoulder wasn’t exactly the response he had been banking on, but Vortex supposed he shouldn’t have been expecting much to begin with. He curled in on himself as Swindle mouthed an angry “what?!” and tried not to snicker into his servos. That would certainly give them away, and he really couldn’t afford that right now. 

“Over the comms, Swin,” he shot back, staring steadily back at Swindle’s nervous and fleeting glances. “I’m trying not to get caught here.”

Swindle shifted in his seat and turned his attention back to Onslaught as he pointedly ignored Vortex’s stare, and for a moment Vortex feared he might have taken a step too far. Then, a moment later, Swindle finally responded.

“You’re gonna get us caught if you don’t sit still and listen,” he grumbled back.

Vortex knew better than to let the conversation fall silent. He could still hear the little waver of fear in Swindle’s voice as he pretended not to notice Vortex watching him.

“We never listen anyway. What’s the big deal now?”

Swindle started fidgeting again. He glanced at Vortex out of the corner of his optics before staring back at Onslaught again. If he kept it up, Vortex was sure he’d get them both caught. 

“Well?” Swindle said over the comms. “Are you gonna keep me agonizing over whatever crazy idea you’ve got brewing, or are you gonna tell me what you want?”

Vortex drummed his claws against the table. “Not time to talk yet. Need you to promise me you aren’t gonna scurry off and leave for another week before we have our little discussion, though.”

“As if I could ever outrun you,” Swindle all but scoffed out loud.

“Mm. You might. Wanna find out?”

Blast Off was watching him again, too. He could feel the cold stare creeping over his plating like a bad case of rust infection. Vortex ignored it as he pressed on. No confirmation meant Swindle was still going to try to slip free, and he really couldn’t have that right now.

“Tell me you’re not gonna run off without me talking to you first and I’ll spare you all the nitty gritty, Swin. I need your promise before I share anything—I know how you are.”

Vortex frowned as Swindle’s shoulders twitched. The conmech was still staring at Onslaught, but his attention was clearly elsewhere.

“What are you gonna do to me if I say yes? Do I even wanna find out?”

“Probably not.” Vortex tried not to shrug. “Might be worth your while, though.”

“Not if you don’t tell me what it is, it’s not,” Swindle quickly said. “No deal, Vortex.”

Vortex’s shoulders slumped as he sighed into his arms. That wasn’t going to work with him. He needed to switch gears. 

“You don’t have a choice,” he said, watching carefully as Swindle sat up straight and glanced back his way. “I’m getting what I want out of you one way or another. Might as well give in now, right?”

“Is that a threat—?”

Vortex didn’t get to even hear Swindle finish before a big, cold servo was grabbing him by the shoulder and jerking him back. Blast Off looked more mad than he ever did after catching onto the copter’s petty little schemes. His face mask retracted as he scowled at Vortex and hissed under his breath. 

“What the hell are you doing?” he snarled through whispers. “I thought I already told you off before for having your comms active during meeting time.”

“Told me off once already during this one,” Vortex spat back, his voice just barely lower than Blast Off’s own. “Isn’t that enough for the star pupil?“

Blast Off’s visor narrowed as he leaned in close. 

“Sit down,” he whispered, “stop chatting, and—“

“Combaticons!” Onslaught cut in with a growl. “That’s enough. I demand your attention when I am speaking, and I will not have petty infighting interrupt me when there’s already so little time left in the day for us to meet.”

Both Blast Off and Vortex froze in place at the sudden command. Across the table, Vortex caught Swindle’s shuddering sigh as he brushed himself off. Blast Off was the first to respond, and he let go of Vortex’s shoulder with a shove before readjusting himself in his seat and clearing his throat. 

“Ahem—sorry for the interruption, sir,” Blast Off said with a wave of his servo. “Please, go on.”

Onslaught was silent for a moment, his optics scanning the room and his frown deep. Before he began again, he took a deep breath and sighed, shaking his helm. 

“As I was saying,” he muttered, his voice rising again with every word, “tomorrow will be a very important day for us. It’s the start of the new cycle, which means more work—“

“And more fuel, right?” Brawl asked from the far end of the room. He muffled a yawn like Vortex had, but his was unmistakably natural. The mech had always slept through debriefings like a pro. Vortex was almost jealous. “What’d you say before that? Think I missed it…”

Onslaught sighed, Vortex snickered, and Blast Off buried his face in his servos. Across from the copter, Swindle made to stand. 

“So…” Swindle said, flashing his teeth in a painfully forced smile that Vortex couldn’t help but smile himself at. “Are we done here? Cause I, ah…”

Onslaught made a great show of sighing again and scrolling through the datapad, but even he seemed to know that the majority of his audience had lost interest in whatever else he had to say.

“Fine,” he said with a servo still rubbing his face as he stared down at the dejected datapad. “There was still plenty more to address, but I suppose this will suffice for the morning’s debriefing. You are all dismissed.” 

There. That was his cue. 

It was go-time. 

Getting through the debriefing had been the easy part. Trying to crack Swindle without getting caught was where he had struggled. Now the  real challenge was on, and it started with another lazy stretch of his arms over his helm and trembling rotor blades as he sighed and groaned his thanks at being released before finally standing up and pushing his chair in. Swindle was already onto him, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t downplay the severity of his desire for the mech’s help. He wanted Swindle’s cooperation, and he was fair enough to try to earn it as easily as possible first.

As always, Onslaught was held back by Blast Off for a little one-on-one conversing, and Brawl was quick to untangle himself from his chair to avoid accidentally becoming a third wheel to the touchy-feely time between their commander and his clingy second.

Vortex looked around. Onslaught and Blast Off still stood close by the table, and Brawl was slowly making his way through the door, but Swindle…

Slag. He had already lost track of Swindle, the sneaky little fragger. 

Vortex wasted no more time on drawing out the inevitable. If the conmech wanted to play dirty, fine. Vortex could play dirty. He shoved his way between Blast Off and Onslaught with a halfhearted apology and slipped in front of Brawl to dart for the hall. He scanned the panel of windows lining the walls as he moved across the room and stepped outside, searching hungrily like a predator tracking down its prey.

He didn’t see Swindle anywhere outside. He poked his helm out of the room before Brawl shoved him out, then stopped in the center of the floor with his arms crossed over his chest and craned his neck to stare down one hallway, then the other. 

No Swindle that way. No Swindle here, either, and surely no Swindle outside. Vortex turned left and began walking, grumbling under his breath all the way, until he stopped at the sight of something bright yellow and flashy sneaking out of one of the rooms ahead and creeping back into the hall. 

“Gotcha,” he whispered under his breath with a grin. 

The conmech was clutching his datapad to his chest like a dorky little sparkling and speed-walking down the hall, all while tossing brief glances over his shoulders in assumed search of the big, mean copter trailing his heels. Vortex grinned as he tore off his mask and headed after Swindle with his own fast-paced approach. 

He wasn’t getting away that easily. No one did. 

It didn’t take long for Swindle to realize he wasn’t the only one walking the halls anymore, and Vortex’s satisfaction grew with the sight of that mech’s startled expression turning back to the strained smile he gave whenever a business deal had started going south. The boss was still in the meeting room with Blast Off, and he would be for a while yet. Brawl knew better than to get involved in Vortex’s petty affairs and would have gotten far, far away, and him?

Well, wasn’t he just the last mech Swindle ever wanted to see right about now. Too bad for Swindle, because he was the only one who would bother to be following so closely. 

Further down the hall, Swindle stopped in his tracks and turned back to smile at Vortex. It was clearly a pathetic attempt at getting out of some expected danger, but Vortex, feeling far too indulgent to let the opportunity slide, did the same. 

“Heh-hey, buddy!” Swindle stammered, his signature wave accompanying the cheap smile he wore. “Long time no see, eh?” 

“Oh yeah,” Vortex said. He leaned against the wall, his arm braced above his helm. The lights above shone just right, and the reflection flashed across his claws. “Been a while since you and I got to catch up. Actually, it’s been a really, really long time.”

He nodded at Swindle, who tensed up at the gesture. 

“Where are you off to in such a big hurry?” Vortex asked. “Don’t you wanna stick around and chat for a bit?”

Swindle shot straight up at the question, his optics blown wide.

“Ahah, good question!” he said. “Uh, you see, since I’ve got so many things to deal with on the side, I just… I can’t stick around forever. You know how it is. Gotta stay busy, am I right?” 

For such a successful con artist, Swindle had always been a terrible liar. Vortex would have found it funny if it weren’t for how dire the situation was already. 

“Huh,” he said, eyeing his fingers with a frown before glancing back down at Swindle. The mech had made it an extra few steps closer to the door by then. “That’s a shame. I was gonna ask if you’d have some time spare for an old friend like me. Lend a helping servo, give me a listening audial… you know the drill.” 

Vortex held Swindle’s gaze until the conmech dared to drop it. He watched with further satisfaction as his target faltered under the scrutiny, and in a moment of fear, took yet another step back towards the door. It was a bad move when your opponent was once the best interrogator amongst the Decepticon ranks—and he still was, ex-Con or not. 

“If I were you,” he continued, his claws raking across the wall as he stalked the distance between them and came to a stop looming over Swindle’s fearful face, “I’d give those other buddies of yours a warning and tell ‘em you’re gonna be a while. I’ll even give you a minute to make the call. How’s that sound, hm?” 

At first, Swindle didn’t dare move. He didn’t even blink. Then, it was the works—the begging, the pleading, and everything else in his power that could have ever gotten him out of any other sticky situation. 

Vortex rolled his optics. Poor mech. Had he really forgotten who he was dealing with here? 

“Okay, okay! You got me!” Swindle cried, his datapad clattering to the floor as he held up his servos in surrender. “I’m going off to Vos for an up-and-coming deal, and at first I wasn’t going to invite you because I know you don’t like Vos, but then I thought “hey, maybe he’d like the scenery! After all, who doesn’t like Vos?” And then Onslaught came into the picture and told me you were grounded and—“

“Woah, woah, woah. Hold it there,” Vortex cut in with a shake of his helm. “Vos? How did we… I don’t—what the frag does any of this have to do with Vos?”

“I—… wh—wait, what?” Swindle stammered, looking equally as confused as Vortex felt. “What do you mean “what does it have to do with Vos?” Aren’t you coming over here to be a pain in my aft and demand I take off and take you with me? I mean, I know Onslaught said—“

“All right, I’m gonna stop you right there,” Vortex said, lifting a claw to plant right against Swindle’s lips. By Primus, the conmech was still trying to talk. “First of all, I don’t give a flying frag what Onslaught said about anything. I do whatever I want regardless of what he says, and you know that. Second of all—“

“—this isn’t about Vos,” Swindle said. He pushed Vortex’s servo aside and brushed himself down with a huff. “Geez, ‘Tex! You coulda told me so! I wouldn’t have been so flighty if you’d stopped staring me down in the meeting room and just came out about what you wanted when you commed me.”

“What?” Vortex spat. “I could have told you so?” 

Oh, hell no. Who the hell did Swindle think was doing the interrogating here? 

Vortex moved in quick, pinning Swindle to the wall with one servo splayed out across the conmech’s chest and his other braced against the wall. He bared his teeth in the nastiest snarl he could muster, which really wasn’t all that hard when his patience was already being tested so thoroughly. 

“Alright, shut up for one fragging second and listen to me, ‘kay?” Vortex hissed, jabbing a clawed digit repeatedly into Swindle’s chest before going back to pinning him against the wall. “This ain’t about some stupid business trip, and it ain’t about the boss, either. It’s about the ship in the sky. Remember that one? Big ole’ ship with no communication going in or out? You’ve had to see it floating around before. There’s no way you could’ve missed it.”

“The ship?” Swindle echoed, his optical ridges furrowed. 

“Yes, dumbaft, the ship!” Vortex snapped, leaning in close as Swindle tried to flinch away. “The ship that First Aid’s on. The ship where some stupid slag went down and left me unable to contact him. The ship that’s been hovering in the sky for months now. That ship. Remember now?” 

He better have. The ship was important, and if Swindle knew anything close to the amount of information Onslaught claimed he knew, then he was also important. 

Vortex didn’t have time to play interrogator for very long. He could already hear the sound of two mechs getting far too involved in their affairs from the meeting room, and knowing those two, it never lasted long. They were still in public, after all. 

“Tell me what you know about that ship, or Primus help me, Swindle…” Vortex began. 

Luckily for him, the conmech was already feeling threatened enough to spill. 

“I really don’t know much,” Swindle said. His servos shot right back up after a threatening growl from Vortex, and he continued. “I mean, I know some, but… I—I don’t think I’ll know enough to help you get what you’re looking for.”

“Well?” Vortex pressed, his grip tightening. “Out with it then! Tell me what you do know.”

“Okay! Okay!” Swindle cried. “Just relax!” 

Vortex’s grip went slack enough for Swindle to tap his chin as he stared up at the sky in thought. Any mishaps and Vortex would choke him out again, but he was willing to give the mech a chance. 

“There was something about a lab specimen, or a lab experiment, or… something like that,” Swindle said, his brow furrowed. “I’ve made a few arrangements with the mechs aboard and delivered some goods before, so, y’know, I sorta got the inside scoop on what’s going on up there.” 

“I already know it was a lab experiment gone to slag,” Vortex said. “Aid kept going on and on about it before things got bad. What kinda experiment it was is what I’m trying to get at.”

“Well…” Swindle gave a shrug and a nervous smile. “I’m afraid I can’t help you much there, pal. I don’t know all the nitty gritty details like that.” 

“Right.” Vortex drawled out, his visor narrowed, “but what do you know? I need details here, Swin.”

What kind of disaster was he dealing with and what were the repercussions? Who was involved and who was there to blame? He knew far too little and still had far too many questions, and right now, it seemed like his only lead was drawing a blank, too. 

Again, Swindle shrugged. Vortex’s claws were digging deep into his chest again, and it was really starting to hurt. 

“Look, I don’t know what to tell you,” he said with another irritating shrug. The panic was returning, and that was enough to placate Vortex for the time being. “All I know is that some weird lab project was in the works, those idiots aboard the ship got in over their helms again, and now all the lines are cut and everyone still around is probably—“ he drew a digit across his throat in a morbid gesture— “out of commission, so to speak.” 

Vortex wasn’t sure whether Swindle was just plain stupid or bluffing. Maybe both. 

“You’re telling me,” he said, his helm cocked to the side, “a whole lot of bots aboard a time-jumping ship got taken out all at once by some… lab experiment?”

“Hey now, don’t shoot the messenger!” Swindle said. His display of surrender had turned into both servos gripping the palm pressed against his chest, but Vortex dug in all the deeper. “Oww… seriously, ‘Tex, if you don’t believe me—“

“I don’t believe you because you’re wrong,” Vortex snarled. “I got someone over the comms last cycle, right before Blast Off shot my aft out of the sky. I know there’s someone still alive up there on that ship.”

He knew it was First Aid, too, and if First Aid was still alive, there were sure to be others. He wouldn’t have left the entire ship to rot and decay all alone—not if he was still alive and kicking. Vortex stepped back and released his grip on Swindle, allowing for just enough time to let the mech catch his breath and gather up his composure again. 

The clock was ticking, and Swindle was proving to be far less helpful that Vortex had originally hoped. Still, the conmech had his uses. He wasn’t going to get out of this that easily. 

“Enough with the back and forth,” he said, swooping down to snatch up the dropped datapad before shoving it back into Swindle’s arms. “Just do me a little favor, will ya?”

“A favor?” Swindle scrunched up his face into a pout. “Why a favor? I’m already going to be late for that meeting in Vos, ‘Tex. I can’t just blow them off for some side gig—“

“You’re gonna do me a favor,” Vortex said, his voice low as he pressed a digit back against the center of Swindle’s chest, “and you’re gonna do it before running off to whatever stupid and unimportant side gig you got going on in the background. This is important, all right? This is the important stuff right here. I got a life at risk here, Swin, and I know you might not give a flying frag about that, but I do.” 

He knew First Aid could handle himself. He trusted him to. The medic hadn’t climbed the ranks of his career for nothing, and he sure as hell didn’t put up with Vortex’s antics for any less. He was built for the stress, and the stress had built him. He would be okay—he had to be. In the long run, he would be just fine, and Vortex knew that, but dammit, Vortex also knew needed to get up there, and he needed to be up there yesterday.

Primus only knew what was going on behind the Lost Light’s walls, because he sure didn’t, and neither did Swindle, apparently. It made their situation all the more dire, and it made Vortex all the less inclined to having patience in his tact. He wasn’t just gonna sit around and wait for the opportunity to come crawling into his lap any longer if he didn’t have to. He wasn’t Onslaught.

For the first time since realizing Vortex’s whole ambush deal wasn’t, in fact, about whatever mess Swindle was off to get himself involved in, the conmech genuinely looked a little more fearful. It was nice, Vortex thought. It showed he was listening, and it showed that he cared—in his own roundabout way, of course. Caring about keeping all four limbs attached and your vocalizer intact was still caring at the end of the day, and Vortex would happily take what he could get. It was Swindle he was dealing with, and when you were dealing with Swindle, the payout was usually low. 

“Fine, fine!” Swindle cried as he shoved back against Vortex’s servos, which were back to crowding him against the wall. “I won’t pretend like I get why you’re so hellbent on getting up to that ship, but if it’s what you want…”

“It is what I want,” Vortex said. “You don’t gotta know the details. You just gotta cover my aft long enough for me to get the frag out of here without getting shot out of the sky again.”

It was simple enough, really. Even Brawl could have done it. Or… okay, maybe not Brawl, but Swindle was plenty capable of making it happen.

It was what Swindle was good for, essentially. He made a terrible liar, but slag, he could stall better than anyone. 

The conmech finally succeeded in pushing Vortex off—only because Vortex let him go to begin with—and huffed as he crossed his arms and hid his datapad from view. 

“If you’re willing to help me out when Ons gets on my aft for covering yours—“

“Ah ah ah! Not so fast, big-shot.” Vortex grinned, his own servos propped on his hips. “I’ve earned this favor, remember? Actually, I’ve earned about four favors from you. Maybe even five if we’re counting that one time I covered for you when the seekers showed up—“

“That hardly counts!” Swindle scoffed. “You got a free orgy out of that one!”

“Anyway,” Vortex quickly cut in. “You’re game then, right? ‘Cause I’m gonna need you to take over right about…”

Now. 

The boss and unofficial boss-in-training were finally finished with their little play session, judging by the sound of the meeting door swinging open and their chatter ringing out from inside. Vortex didn’t dare give Swindle a chance to protest before shoving him forward to take the brunt of the questioning. The exit wasn’t far, and Swindle was a master at blabbering up a storm. Vortex’s only issue now was—

“Where do you think you’re going?” Onslaught called down the hall with all the authority of Megatron reining in his most stubborn of soldiers. 

Thus began phase two of his impromptu plan: trusting Swindle to deal with Onslaught—and by default, Blast Off—long enough for him to sneak away without immediate repercussions. So far, his hopes were slightly dashed. 

“Hey, boss!” Swindle said in his trademark cheery voice as he barred the walkway and blocked Onslaught’s path. “Long time no see, eh? Just wanted to clear up a few things with ya before I leave and I figured, hey! Why not do that right now in the middle of the hall, which is totally not suspicious in the slightest, right? Right?”

Primus above, he was doomed. Vortex twisted on his pede and turned back to join the struggling conmech. He even added in a painfully tight servo-on-the-shoulder hold, just like old chums did with their good friends and definitely not with mechs they’d hired as bait or covers for devious plans. 

“This fragger told me he was off on a trip to Vos, and he hadn’t even asked if I wanted to go,” Vortex scoffed out in laughter. His claws dug in tighter as he leaned over Swindle’s shoulder with a showy smile. “Ain’t that right, pal? I really had to coax that info outta ya.”

Onslaught crossed his arms. Right next to him, Blast Off did the same—all with a slimmed visor hiding narrowed optics as he stared Vortex down. Poor mech never did like using his high-quality tech for ground missions. It made him all squeamish, or whatever the frag he called it. Luckily for him, Vortex wouldn’t be needing to get shot out of the sky anytime soon. He was going to be out of here far too quickly for that to happen. 

Swindle’s poor excuse for a smile passed as a grimace more than anything, but Vortex’s grip didn’t loosen. 

“Heh heh… right! Ow.” 

Things were looking slim, and for a moment, Vortex almost considered going back on his demand for Swindle’s assistance. It was why it came as a surprise to them all when Blast Off of all mechs uncrossed his arms, propped his servos on his hips, and cocked his helm to the side with a curious expression Vortex had never seen the shuttle wear in his entire fragging life. 

Blast Off was broody. He was rude. He was standoffish and imposing and haughty as all slag. He was not curious—not outwardly, not in the slightest. 

“Vos?” he said, drawing Onslaught’s attention away from Vortex and back onto the conmech in question, who trembled more and more beneath the copter’s servo. “Why Vos?”

Bingo. It wasn’t the escape he wanted, but it did the trick. And oh, boy, was he cashing in that little favor of his later on. This counted towards nothing at all. 

“Vos!” Swindle said, his face beaming as he clapped his servos together. “Right, Vos. Oh, where do I start? Well, it’s… ah, it’s a good city. A great city, really. The population is a bit… er, hard to reach, but really, they’ve done wonders with their architecture and businesses…”

As Swindle chattered his way through an unnecessary but oh-so helpful explanation, Vortex turned right back around and headed for the door. 

The skies were growing dark with impending storms, and with a bit of luck, he would be up in the air and out of danger’s way in no time. It was an unfortunate outcome to have learned nothing more about what he was getting himself into, but the uncertainty stood no chance of stopping him. He’d worked with more dangerous situations before, and he’d worked with much less. This? This was nothing more than a sweet piece of rich, chocolatey oil cake to go with the relief of finally reuniting with the one mech he had ever considered worth saving. 

Vortex wasted no more time in transforming and taking to the skies. Beneath him, the ground was still empty, and the stairs remained clear. His little alibis proved useful for once, especially since there wasn’t any sign of something big and purple (or blue, green, and angry, for that matter) chasing him down and painting the sky with warning shots and his flailing frame.

The higher he flew, the harder it was for anyone over the comms to reach him, but a familiar frequency crackled over the connection in Vortex’s cockpit long before he’d even reached the surface of the clouds. It was the same stony voice with the same worried undertones he’d grown used to, and it filled him with a similarly familiar sense of satisfaction to hear Blast Off’s words crackling over the static of the radio. 

“Still can’t believe you stuck us here listening to the most uninformed mech around rattle on about the flier capital of Cybertron.”

Even over the comms, Vortex could sense Blast Off’s wry amusement. 

“Hey, it wasn’t my choice. You were the one who brought it up.”

“You’d backed him into a corner, you aft. What other options were there?”

Vortex fell silent for a moment, as did Blast Off. The only sound to remain was the rhythmic chop of his rotors in the air and the strong gusts of wind blowing him this way and that. 

He was nearing the Lost Light’s altitude. He could almost see the shadow of its underbelly in the distance. 

“Y’know, I—“

“Don’t start, Vortex. I’m aware.” 

A sense of guilt settled in the pit of his tanks, right in the middle of his alt-mode’s underbelly. It took Vortex a moment before he realized that it wasn’t his own guilt, but Blast Off’s. 

Huh. Combiner bonds were strange things. A guilty Blast Off was even stranger.

“You better not be wrong about this,” his gestaltmate continued, the steady cadence of his tone wavering in a way only the Combaticons had learned to pick up on. “I’m going out on a limb with this stunt of yours, and I’d hate to be wrong.”

“Ons ain’t gonna punish you if it all goes to slag, Blasters,” Vortex laughed over the connection, his frame vibrating with the waves of amusement. “’Sides… when have I ever steered you wrong?”

“Many times,” Blast Off quickly said in return. “Just don’t add to that tally and you and I will be just fine.”

The flat tone and begrudging amusement was back, but Vortex still saw the underlying uncertainty for what it was. Blast Off wasn’t about to risk his own life and limb on what he openly described as Vortex’s personal “suicide mission,” but that sure as slag didn’t mean he wasn’t going to go and support Vortex in those endeavors. Onslaught’s reluctance to shame either of his subordinates for their decisions remained something of a comfort to him, too. 

His gestalt may not ever become directly involved in his wilder plans, but that didn’t mean they would stop him if he was persistent and serious about his work.

The first shot has been a warning blast, and the verbal lecture itself was a second strike. The third strike? That was up to him, and it was up to him to decide for himself whether or not this was a worthy enough endeavor to pursue. 

Blast Off was never actually going to stop him. On that same note, neither was Onslaught. 

“Don’t you worry your pretty little helm, Blast Off,” Vortex called back over the comms. The connection was faltering. He knew the shuttle wouldn’t be able to respond. “I’ll bring us both back in one piece.”

The higher he flew, the stronger the winds blew, and the thicker the clouds became. Vortex was fighting against the building storm by the time he’d made it half as close to where he had gotten the day before, and the ship was still far off in the horizon. It was nothing for a mech with his skill set, but with the changing atmosphere and the churning winds, he feared acid rains were coming in, and fast.  

Stormy weather meant turbulent conditions, but Vortex was no stranger to wild rides. By the time he’d surfaced above the worst of the cloud coverage, the Lost Light was in sight, and his comms were crackling back to life with the radio static of a (hopefully) live feed. There was no danger of being stopped this time, and no risk of having his rescue mission cut short, so he got close… and closer yet, and closer….

It was a miracle of sorts, but halfway through the air, the static sound was replaced with heavy vents, shuddering breaths, and the raspy, yet familiar, voice of his companion. 

“Aid?” Vortex called over the comms, his voices raised high to drown out the sound of the wind and his rotors chopping away at the sky. “You there?” 

There was sharp static feedback at first—or maybe the rustle of the medic huddling behind whatever barricade he’d managed to make, Vortex couldn’t tell—but a moment later, First Aid spoke. It was the first he’d heard from his medic in months, and Primus, Vortex hoped the distance between himself and his gestalt was enough to cover up the rush of relief that came from hearing the mech croak back in affirmative.

“I’m here,” First Aid said, his voice low and his words hushed. “I’m here, Vortex. I… I’m sorry, I’m just so happy to finally—“

“I know, I know,” Vortex cut in. “I’m right outside, ‘kay? Send me your location or something, whatever still works. I’m coming in.”

Another burst of feedback came over the connection, and by then, Vortex had summed it up to the silence that stretched between himself and his medic. The connection was poor at best; he was lucky the comm links hadn’t dropped off already. 

“What?” First Aid almost sounded scared. There was more static, and the sound of the medic shifting against something, then, “you don’t mean—“

“You know it, baby,” Vortex giggled back as he lifted himself up with the air current and hovered close. Beneath him, the Lost Light loomed, and he could see the perfect copter-sized vent on its top just waiting to be opened. “I’ll be there soon, all right? You just sit tight.”

Static was his response. He took the silence as his answer and transformed into his root mode before landing on the ship’s roof. 

“Oh—and Aid?” he shouted over the comms, his fingers lifted to his face to mask his voice and block out the deafening sound of wind whipping around him. “You better get ready to tell me all about what the hell has been happening in there these past few months.” 

Chapter Text

Giant mech-sized vents left unmanned and easily accessible at the top of the ship weren’t the best design choice for keeping out intruders like him, and Vortex briefly wondered if that was why First Aid and his band of voyagers ran into as big of problems as they constantly seemed to. 

It had its benefits, he supposed. In a situation like this, he imagined entry sites hidden in plain sight would have proven to be the best chance anyone had at escaping from inside where all the danger and madness had begun to roam free. It was just a shame that everyone aboard had failed to make use of the opportunities. The security latches were still installed by the time Vortex had gotten to it, and judging by the vacuum sealed rims around its edges, he was the first to have pried it open since the ship first left its dock for the voyage. 

The ship had looked dark from the outside, and from the inside, Vortex found it was no better. Its walls creaked with the eerie groans of flexing metal, and Vortex was forced to crouch low under collapsed ceilings and dented walls in order to make it even a few feet forward. He couldn’t see a fragging thing past his servos besides bright blue stains splattered across various surfaces, and even then, the bioluminescent glow did little to light his path. 

His visor shone bright in the hall, its red gleam reflecting off of the ground and bouncing across the walls. The glow mingled into a sickly dark shade as it shone over the streaks of energon staining the metal panels.  He enabled his night vision after the first few awkward steps as he crawled forward, but even then, the ship was still dark and gloomy, and the route forward remained difficult to navigate. 

What great luck he was having, Vortex thought bitterly. Not even five seconds into his rescue mission and he was already running into problems. Maybe next time—though he hoped and prayed that there wouldn’t ever be a next time—Blast Off would be willing to shoot him out of the sky a second time, just to rub a little more salt into the wound. Maybe then he wouldn’t be so inclined to get himself into such a sticky situation with such a low risk of success as the outcome.

“All right, Aid,” Vortex said, his voice echoing against the walls as he dropped from the upper rafters and into a hallway below. His comm line still crackled with the faint sound of fizzling static as he connected to First Aid’s frequency again, but the comms were successfully connected on the other end. “You still there?”

His built-in sensors registered no other life present aboard the ship, which was strange. It was especially strange that First Aid’s own spark signature didn’t come up within the first moments of him dropping out of the vent, let alone while he was atop the ship’s roof. First Aid’s voice came through loud and clear, and with the added static warping his voice and assisting in the eeriness of the situation, Vortex simply chalked up the odd glitch in his systems as another perk of infiltrating a dead zone. 

The Lost Light had been sitting without a proper captain at its wheel for months. There wasn’t a single living spark left in sight, save for First Aid, so it was really no surprise his sensors didn’t work right inside the ship. The warped signals thrown out by the corpses he imagined were piled up left and right behind closed doors probably didn’t help, either. 

“I’m here,” First Aid’s warbled voice spoke back over the connection. “You’re on board?”

“Yeah,” Vortex said as he looked around, “and it’s a whole fragging mess in here. You’re gonna have to walk me through this, ‘kay?”

At first, there was only static on the other line. Vortex knocked his helm with the heel of his servo a few times, thinking it was him. If his sensors were fragged inside the ship, what else was? 

“Aid?” he said again. 

“Sorry,” First Aid quickly said. “I was thinking. Okay… let’s start off with figuring out how you got in. That’ll give me an idea of where you are now.”

“I came in through roof,” Vortex said, his gaze trained on the hallway ahead of him. It was dark and empty, but the faint streaks of energon painting the walls and staining the floors still caught his eye. “There was a vent—“

“A vent?” He could practically hear the medic’s optical ridges raise. “You went through a vent?”

“Yeah,” Vortex said. “Why, would you have preferred I break a window and flown through the walls to find the medibay?”

He half expected a chuckle for that one. Maybe a giggle, if anything. A snort even. Instead, he got silence. 

“Anyway,” he said, feeling far too awkward to let the silence hang, “I came through a vent. It was at the very top of the ship, sitting right in the middle.”

“Okay,” First Aid sighed. “I guess that works. Where are you now? I mean, where do you think you are?”

Vortex looked around. Aside from the minimal signs of damage to the walls—claw marks, energon spatters and the like—there was nothing significant. No doors to rooms, no open spaces to access. It was just another hall, and one of many, if his hunch was right.

“Think I’m somewhere in the middle of the ship here,” he said, scratching the back of his helm as he tapped a pede. “Top level. I just jumped down from the rafters a minute ago. Not much around except walls, walls, and more walls.”

He was likely far too high up for there to be anything of value. He wasn’t in the ship’s upper deck anymore as far as he could tell, but he certainly wasn’t in the guts of the ship, either. A few levels down and he would likely find the sweet spot. His only problem was that he’d have to climb to reach the bottom, and climbing meant putting himself at risk of attack. It didn’t sit right, especially not when his upgrades and modifications did little to warn him of anything (or anyone) getting too close inside the dark, empty deathtrap. 

A creeping sense of danger was already settling beneath his plating and making his protoform crawl with uneasiness, but he had to keep moving one way or another. If the danger was going to strike, he’d deal with it. No biggie.

“Standby,” he said to First Aid, who had gone silent on the other end. “I’m gonna try to get a little deeper into this thing. Once I start seeing stuff that interests me I’ll let you know, how about that?” 

It would have to do. Vortex couldn’t be guided through the ship when the only notable thing around him was the same wall features repeated over and over again in every corner of the interior, and First Aid was already at a disadvantage with the copter’s unfamiliarity of his surroundings. It sucked like a glitch, but it would have to do. Besides, he was plenty capable on his own. He’d figure it out.

First Aid’s silent presence on the comms was the perfect companion to him as he crept his way through the ship’s upper chambers and searched around corners for a way down. It was a big vessel, which meant plenty of places to get lost. Hell, he’d only just started exploring and he was starting to feel lost. By the time he’d managed to find the opening to a ladder, he was sure he’d walked the same circle around stained walls and crumbling ceiling tiles at least three times or more. 

From high up, things weren’t so bad. No one would have been hanging out in the upper levels when there was so much going on down below, anyway.  The lower he got, though, the more gruesome his surroundings became. Whatever came through and wreaked havoc clearly hadn’t had any interest about leaving its prey in any sort of contained state, and Vortex was covered from the knee joints down in innards and grime before long as he walked, crawled, and climbed his way through the ship. Each quiet step ended with a crunch, and each swing of his helm to peer around the broadened halls gave him the same disappointing sights. 

Death, destruction, and disaster was all that was left of the ship. Limbs were strewn around the floor and frames were mangled beyond anything even a medic could repair. Vortex had seen plenty during his time spent behind steel walls and lurking in closed-off spaces, but this? This was a first, and he hoped to Primus it would be a last.

It wasn’t conscious destruction, that was for sure. It was animalistic and ghastly. It put his own work to shame. It even put Brawl’s work to shame, and that was saying something. 

“Ewww,” he hissed through his teeth, his face twisted in a grimace as he lifted his pede and watched the goop clinging to its underside dribble onto the floor. “Nasty.” 

The hunt was clearly over. There wasn’t much of anything left to devour, let alone salvage. The further Vortex went, the harder it was to discern who was who amidst the crumpled up faces crushed into the ground and the pools of dried energon circling their frames. One thing was for certain, and he found it as he knelt down next to the still fairly intact corpse of some poor bot split right down the middle. 

It was going for the spark, whatever it was, and that realization wasn’t a pretty one.

The mech’s face was twisted into a gruesome expression of pure horror, its greyed optics wide and its mouth agape. Within the open cavity of its chest (and boy, Vortex hoped that was a quick death), the remnants of its spark housing were torn to shreds. The spark itself was long gone—not fizzled out, not broken or crushed under the weight of whatever had ripped open its chest compartments like the top of a bag of rust crisps… just gone. 

Devoured, eaten, and destroyed. It was the same fate for everyone, it seemed. 

Vortex shivered as he stood. From the darkness, he could feel something lurking. 

He could do gory. Gory was sort of his thing, after all, but being hunted by some unseen beast lurking in the shadows and stealing sparks? Hell no. He had to draw a line somewhere, and he wasn’t looking to become another one of the dead frames littering the Lost Light’s floors anytime soon. 

There was a strange sound that caught his attention—something sharp skittering across the ground and something heavy crashing through the wall and out of sight. He caught a shadow of the thing’s trailing tendrils flickering across the walls and heard them snapping their way around the corner before it entirely disappeared out of sight, but just a glimpse was plenty to leave him feeling rattled.

“What the hell?” he muttered to himself, then called out, “hello? Someone there?”

Maybe he was seeing things. Maybe he was imagining them. He rubbed a servo over his face and groaned before jumping with a wide visor and a startled gasp as the same strange sound of tiny pieces scattering across the floor one by one. 

It wasn’t trying to be discreet, whatever it was, but it had yet to come out of hiding. Vortex hoped that was a good thing—he didn’t want to be on the wrong end of an ambush when his back was turned.

He stood there near the dead mech’s corpse for a while, torn between trying to follow after it and sticking back to where it was safe. Clearly it was out there, somewhere. It was smart enough to lurk without giving itself away, and while Vortex wanted a closer look, he was a little bit afraid of what might be waiting for him around the corner. 

It wouldn’t hurt, he supposed. He’d at least know what to expect if it was trying to lure him in for a fresh feast. Vortex stepped over the corpse beneath him and turned on his heel, his attention fixed on the shadows shrouding the hall. It would only take him a second. 

Something loud crackled in the air as he took his next step, and Vortex flinched, expecting the thing to attack. It wasn’t the sound of the creature charging out towards him, he realized after failing to be thrown back or torn to shreds, but his comms struggling to connect. First Aid was calling him again, and with a grumpy sound, Vortex answered.

“The frag, mech?” he said through shouted whispers. “You scared me! What’s going on now?”

He could have sworn he heard the faint echo of First Aid’s voice coming from around the bend, but Vortex knew that had to be his mind playing tricks on him. He needed to calm down. He needed to relax. 

“I’ve got the doors working again,” First Aid said. “When you make it to the medibay, I’ll override the auto-lock mechanics and let you in.”

Vortex could hear him playing with a pinpad in the background. The obnoxious stream of beep beep beeping sounds coming through the comms were more of a relief than an annoyance anymore—at least those were sounds he could trust. 

“You sure that won’t let this thing inside, too?” he asked. “Seems a little risky.”

“Positive,” First Aid said. “The way it’s made to work after the lockdown is in place means we can only open the doors from the inside—and even then, it takes a special code to get them to open.”

Vortex shrugged to himself. Well, that was fair enough. It didn’t reassure him that whatever thing was running around the ship and hunting him down wouldn’t find a way in anyway, but some confidence was better than none. 

Speaking of the creature…

“Say,” he said, his voice hushed as he returned to studying the shadows. The inner comms didn’t work for Primus knew what reason, which meant he was forced to speak aloud and testing his luck. “You wouldn’t happen to know about what was responsible for this whole mess, would ya?”

The familiar crackle of static came first before First Aid’s voice followed. Vortex shot straight up and stared into the dark hallway ahead of him as he listened—now he was sure he heard something similar coming from around the corner, just around the bend.

Slag, he was losing it here. He needed to focus. 

“The details are hazy,” First Aid said. “It… I think it was bioengineered, or…”

“What, like, taken from another planet?” Vortex asked as he nudged the corpse below him with a pede. One side of its split frame seemed to move independent of the other, and the empty spark casing made a horrible crunching sound as it shifted inside of the mech. “Is that even possible?”

“The team’s done a lot while we’ve been on board,” First Aid said. “Time travel, clones, making peace with Megatron and such. I wouldn’t be too surprised. I just…” 

There was a sigh on the other end. 

“Dammit, Vortex, I just can’t remember. There was something in the lab, and then the medibay went on lockdown, and—“

“All right, all right,” Vortex cut in. “Let’s focus on keeping me from dying first, alright? So long as I make it that far, I’ll be happy to help pick your processor for a while after that.”

Silence would be best for a little while anyway, he thought. He was really starting to feel bothered by that creeping sensation crawling up his back struts. It left him feeling jumpy and jittery, and Vortex did not like feeling either. 

He had never been aboard the Lost Light before, but from what First Aid had told him, the layout seemed simple. Sure enough, once he had made it out of the winding halls and around the curving walls, he found himself inside what he could only assume was the belly of the ship. It was eerily empty, even with the few bits and pieces of what used to be functioning bots scattered across its floor. Vortex crept in a little further, his optics narrowed behind the visor and his frame tensed in anticipation. 

The repeat of static crackling in his audials startled him at first, but First Aid’s voice was quick to follow. Before Vortex could snap at him for interrupting the silence without warning, First Aid spoke.

“I think I hear something… are you close?” His voice was lowered to a whisper on the other end. “Can you see anything? Anything familiar? Anything that would look like the medibay?”

“Well, I can see something,” Vortex hissed back. “I’m somewhere in the center of the ship again—got through the maze and right back to where I started, but lower. There’s a whole bunch of stuff lying around the halls again, so I oughta be getting close.” 

“You won’t have much luck near the living quarters,” First Aid said, “so try to avoid that area. If you start seeing berths in rooms, you’ll know you’ve gone too low.”

Vortex paused. He couldn’t have gone down that far, surely. “How low is too low?” 

“They’re on the lowest levels, just beneath the medibay and Swerve’s old bar.”

Vortex didn’t even bother to remind First Aid that he wouldn’t know what the old bar was going to look like, let alone where it would be, but judging by his surroundings, he knew he was at least close to being on the right level. There were plenty more ladders to go when he had ventured back into the dark halls of the ship, and that was an even better sign.

“Think I’m closer than I originally thought,” he said as he looked at the opening and peered down into the darkness below. “Stick to your comms if you can.”

It was a risk to leave his back exposed as he climbed down another level, but Vortex made quick work of scaling the ladder and dropping down to the floor below. He crouched against the wall and checked his surroundings in search of anything that might be familiar, but nothing stood out to him. It was another dead end.

“Dammit,” he muttered under his breath as he rose to his pedes, a servo still clutching the ladder’s rungs.

It was hard to tell when everything was shrouded in darkness. It was even harder to tell when the walls looked the same and the horrified faces littering the floor began blending together. His fear was starting overriding his navigation skills, but he held strong. 

“Vortex?” First Aid’s voice came crackling through. “Have you found it yet?”

“Uh… hard to say,” he said. “I kinda doubt it. I went down another level, but I’m not seeing anything.”

Everything looked the same. Nothing stood out to him anymore, and he was getting frustrated. He scratched his helm and looked back up the ladder, briefly debating going up another level and starting again up there. 

“You know,” he said as he turned to climb, “I think I’d be better off—“

He paused, his voice caught in his throat as something out of the corner of his vision caught his attention. 

There was something down the hall. A silhouette, a shadow… something standing, something slouching forward. His systems still registered nothing in the near vicinity as living, let alone existing, but First Aid was still here, was he not?  

Vortex crouched low and began creeping forward, his optics fixed on the hunched curve of a frame in front of him. It wasn’t First Aid, that was for sure, and it definitely wasn’t the creature he had seen… or so he thought. The creature was small, but it couldn’t be that small.

He moved in slowly, each step bringing a clearer picture as he processed what he was seeing. It wasn’t First Aid, but it was someone else—someone long gone by the looks of it. There was no way they could have survived from the way they were dripping energon all over the floor, and with that creature still roaming around, it would only be a matter of time before it had found them, too.

From a distance, the mech had looked to be alive. They were still standing, after all, and slumped over against the wall. Vortex crept in closer and closer until the dark shadows were illuminated enough by the glow of his visor to paint a clearer picture of what went down. 

“Slag…” he said aloud as he looked them over. His fingers brushed against peeling paint and hollow metal when he reached out to touch them, and underfoot was a pool of energon soaked and dried and sticking to the bottoms of his pedes. “What the hell happened to you, huh?”

It was a nasty accident from the looks of it. Only half of their frame was visible from this side of the door. On the other side, Vortex assumed, lay their servos, shoulders, and helm… if they were lucky. 

By the looks of it, the automatic lockdown protocol had all but cut their frame in half when they decided to make the foolish decision to run for the nearest exit. The iron doors didn’t have sensors that worked, clearly—either that or they just didn’t work when a full-blown quarantine was in order. Vortex wasn’t sure. 

The gaping wounds splitting him in two and holding his severed frame wedged between the doors were pretty gruesome even after months of him standing idle. It was almost too much for Vortex to handle, and he was used to this kind of stuff.

He could almost imagined them stuck here, bleeding out and crying for help as the doors sealed shut around them and sealed their fate with it. He almost wondered what had done them in first—losing their energon all over the floor or having their chest torn open and their spark devoured. A closer look told him that their spark was gone, too, just like the rest of the bots he’d discovered before.

Vortex hovered above them for a little while longer before shaking his helm and stepping back, having gotten his fill of getting his servos dirty for the time being. Until he knew exactly what he was dealing with, he needed to hold off a little more. 

Even from a distance, something nagged at the back of his processor. There was something about this particular mech that stood out to him, he thought, and he hated not knowing what it was. It was hard to tell from the damage of exposed wires and torn internals split between the room he was in and the room on the other side of the door, and it was even harder to play the guessing game of assigning names to bodies without the helm intact. Most of the mech’s frame was still here on his end of the wall, at least, and that helped. 

Ah, screw keeping his servos clean. He’d never dealt with something this bad before, but he’d certainly dealt with similar. He reached out a tentative servo, his claws curling around the skeleton of an arm closest to him, and twisted it around until the remnants of a rusty Autobot insignia were visible between the seams of the door. 

The paint had all but peeled away by that point, and Vortex assumed whatever was left of the mech’s energon that hadn’t been siphoned out or spilled through the cracks on the other side of the door was staining the floor beneath him. It was a sickening sensation, his fingers digging into the crumpling metal and fleshy bits that were still left on the mech’s frame. It stunk worse than the pits near their old base, and Vortex wrinkled his nose with a grimace. 

He braced himself, then he tugged, and with a gruesome squelch and a noisy clatter of metal on metal as the remaining bits of the mech’s body all but fell apart and tumbled to the floor, the unfortunate victim fell at his feet in a heap of greyed plating and frayed, bloody innards. 

The head was still gone, and so were most of the shoulders. He still had the torso, though, and the chest… if only to a degree. The gaping hole he’d found before was clearer now, and the damage was easier to study. 

The glass window on his chest was shattered, and the mech’s innards were exposed. It looked like the hollowed out shell of a bullet casing with the way the metal framing warped and splintered, and as Vortex let the rest of the body drop to the the floor, he heard the same sound of metal bits and scraps rattling inside the empty spark casing.

“Yeesh,” he muttered to himself, his optics trained on the old, festering wounds that started where the dismembered half of the body ended. “This thing really got you mechs good, whatever it is.”

There were no other outward signs of injury, save for the severed limbs and the missing helm. Vortex liked to assume that if the mech had been any faster, they would have made it through that door and safely on the other side just fine. It wouldn’t have saved them much time, what with the way this creature seemed to know every inch of the ship, but it was a nice thought.

That was the joy of emergency protocols—no one was getting in, but no one was getting out, either. He imagined there were probably more bots out there somewhere, severed and shredded and torn to bits by the consequences of running blindly in their fear.

He knelt to the ground next to the dead mech’s frame, his fingers tracing the outline of a chest split open right down the center. There was no exit wound, just like there was no other severe damage. It had gone straight for the spark, whatever it was, and that seemed to be the main goal from the start. The rest of the casualties he could chalk up as an every mech for themselves kind of deal, assuming they didn’t have the same gaping hole in their chests. It was either that or assuming the beast he was dealing with liked to play with its prey for a while—assuming it could even be called a beast—and Vortex hated to even consider it. Still, whether he liked it or not, he had to admit to himself that this was the work of something dedicated at worst and someone intentional at best. 

Maybe it wasn’t a monster. Maybe it was just an ordinary mech. He could hope and speculate, but he had to come to a conclusion eventually.

Vortex knelt down onto the floor again a moment later and pushed the rotting corpse over onto its back, his curiosity still piqued. It was hard to I.D. a guy when there was nothing to I.D. him with, but the fading paint and dark streaks of red dulling on his grey frame gave Vortex enough to go off of. The build was familiar, and the shape of his frame. Vortex fiddled with the dirt and grime built up along his chest and the seams of his crumbling frame before sitting back and propping his servos up on his hips before admiring his work.

“Good old CMO, trying to save everyone from danger I bet,” he said as he reached out again to brush the dried up flecks of paint aside. “Bet you made First Aid hide out in the medibay, too, huh?”

Poor, poor Ratchet. He couldn’t say he wasn’t a little disappointed. The doctor was a pain in the ass, but he was First Aid’s pain in the ass. Vortex could almost imagine the scene as it played out in his head—Ratchet rushing people through the door before himself, only to follow behind just after it had become too late. The doors had sealed, and his frame was caught. 

Ouch. 

“Rest easy, old man,” Vortex said with a fleeting pat against a hollow shoulder before pushing himself up to his pedes and moving on.

Something was just around the corner. He could see it now that he was closer, and as he moved further down the hall’s next corner, he found himself stumbling in what he could only assume to be the bar First Aid had mentioned before.

Inside the bar, things looked even worse than they had from the brief glimpses of chaos he’d seen walking through the ship. Tables were upended and glass littered the floor, bots lay strewn across the room and their chests were split open, their sparks gone. It was worse than chaos—it was a disaster and a feeding frenzy all in one. 

There were no working doors in here, Vortex realized. The company drinking and chattering around tables must have been too intoxicated to hear the alarms going off. Maybe they hadn’t even cared in the first place, being too busy downing their drinks to worry about heading to safety in the meantime. 

“Damn,” Vortex said as he crept deeper into the room, taking care not to trip over the bodies or step in any suspicious puddles staining the floor. “Buncha suckers in here.”

The disaster they’d left in their wake made it look like they’d at least tried to fend off the monster, and Vortex had to admire the bravery (or maybe the desperation; there wasn’t really much of a choice, to be fair). Bots stopped in a pitiful crawl to the door were left lying on their sides with their innards scattered and their sparks stolen, and Vortex wasn’t comforted to find that the more bodies he examined, the more cases of missing sparks he found.

He knelt down near a bot half-hidden beneath a fort of tables and broken chairs and pushed the protection aside as he leaned in close. This one wasn’t just missing a spark, but their entire spark’s housing. Nothing had been left behind, and his tentative answers were wiped in favor of further confusion.

“What is up with you and sparks?” he said to himself. Then, to Aid, he said, “You wouldn’t know anything about this thing and its obsession with tearing the sparks outta mechs’ chests either, would you?” 

He held one servo to his audials while the other remained knuckle-deep in the chest cavity of his most recent discovery, his processor spinning. There was nothing—no bits, no scraps, nothing. 

“I’d ask whoever’s left of the science team, but… something tells me they ain’t gonna be coming to the phone anytime soon.”

He had a feeling he already knew what was going on here, but in a situation like this, plain facts were always valued over silly superstitions. 

It was a childhood fairytale, his foolish hypothesis. It was nothing more than a story shared around to keep the worst of his kind in line, and it was one he was sure every mech built in his age had heard at least once in their lifetime. That didn’t make it any less imaginary, of course, and Vortex tried to remind himself of that fact as he studied the shell of a mech closer.

He never liked putting his trust in silly superstitions, but sometimes, under the right circumstances, silly superstitions were made to be believed. It didn’t help that First Aid had yet to answer, let alone activate his comms.

“Aid,” he said again, hesitant and wary as his attention drifted from fondling the corpse to getting another response out of First Aid. “I think I—“

The still air was disturbed, and Vortex went back on high alert. 

Something was watching him again. He could sense it stalking him in the shadows and watching him kneel on the bar’s floor. 

Fear wasn’t a good tactic when you were knee-deep in dangerous territory. It got you into danger more often than not. When Vortex heard something creeping behind him, though, he immediately started to get nervous. 

The body was forgotten as he stood up and turned back to stare down the hall from where he had come, his attention fixed on searching the shadows for whatever was moving just beyond his range of vision. Tensions were high now, and his sense of danger had gone way up. 

Vortex wasn’t scared before. It had been a simple rescue mission to him before, and he’d dealt with scarier. Now, as he watched the shadows move and the floor crunch beneath the hidden monster’s weight, he was starting to get a little nervous. 

“Aid,” he whispered loudly, his optics never moving from the dark hall ahead as he tried his comms again. “Please tell me you’re still on the other line.”

His hushed voice echoed around the room and down the hall, filling the silence with the eerie sound of his whispered words spoken back to him. His comms had gone silent—no quiet breaths, no familiar static, nothing. 

“Slag,” Vortex said, his servo dropping back down to his side. “Guess I’m on my own now.”

He could sense the danger lurking just beyond his reach. Having been on the predator’s side of the chase plenty of times before, he knew exactly when he was being stalked like a juicy piece of prey. He could feel it. It was present in the creeping prickle of fear under his plating and the ever-present tingle in the back of his helm from beady eyes watching his every move. 

He couldn’t see it, but it could see him. Those were the types of odds Vortex did not like in the slightest. 

Slowly, he pushed himself up from the floor and stepped away from the dead mech’s frame. His mask clicked back into place as he scanned the darkness and waited for the danger to reveal itself. Panic was starting to set in, and when mechs were panicked, they made mistakes. 

It was a strange feeling. Vortex never panicked. He hardly ever got scared anymore, either, but right now, he was scared. He was panicking, too, and the combo wasn’t a good one.

There wasn’t room for guessing games anymore. It was either make a run for it and hope he found his way to the medibay or sit tight and wait until death came for him, and he knew he wouldn’t have to wait long. Three months locked away on a ship left plenty of time to make a few trips around the block to feast on what remained, and judging by the sight of things, the creature—or monster, thing, whatever the slag he wanted to call it—had already had its fill of what it had left behind.

He was the only living thing in the near vicinity aside from First Aid, and something told him that the medic would have been long gone by now if that thing wanted anything to do with him. He, too, should have been taken out the very second it caught onto him, and yet here he was, still standing by a corpse, his frame painted and sticky with the mess the monster had left behind, his visor bright and his optics shining with fear. 

He would have been dead by now if that was what that thing wanted. At best, it meant he had a little bit of time left to attempt an escape. At worst… well, he could still try, couldn’t he? 

The creak of metal beneath the creature’s weight from somewhere within the shadows was what drove him to flee. He still couldn’t see the thing, and he had no clue where it was lurking. He just ran with the hope that it wouldn’t catch up.

Twists and turns aboard a ship shrouded in darkness weren’t so difficult to navigate once the striking sight of various limbs and mechs reaching certain stages of decay became more and more prevalent. Vortex had only made the mistake of turning the same corner twice this time around, and it only took one look at the same figure sprawled out on the floor with the same familiar hole bored into his chest for him to make the connection that that particular hall was, in fact, another dead end. 

There were lots of dead ends on the Lost Light, apparently. There were plenty of them. It made navigation much easier, but it made staying out of danger much more difficult. 

Vortex gave up stealth in favor of speed, and he stumbled and staggered down the next hall faster than any drunken mech stumbling out of the bar scene had ever managed before. The darkness was disorienting, and the turns were all the same, but the thing that kept him coherent was the ever-present threat lurking behind him—then in front of him—then beside him.

It was like his own twisted games being played on him. He wasn’t the one chasing anymore, but the one being chased. He could imagine the thrill of the hunt was an immeasurable high for whatever thing remained hidden from his line of sight, and the show he put on as he panted and wheezed and stumbled over one greying frame after another and clomped through slick puddles of energon and ooze was sure to be making quite a delicious sight. 

It was as if the thing was corralling him, luring him in and trapping him in place. He could run and he could hide, but he couldn’t stop coming across dead ends, and he couldn’t seem to find his way. 

After the third time crossing the same corpse lying across the floor that had tripped him every time before, Vortex whipped around and braced himself in place as he readied for a fight. He was done running now—he needed to see it. He had to stop it.

There was a fleeting glimpse of it in the corner of his optics as it turned around a corner, then the sound of it breathing from behind him. It was like it was all around, trapping him in from every angle and forcing him to his knees. He stood tall, his teeth bared behind his mask and his helm whipping this way and that way as he chased the shimmering shadows and the faint streaks of white flashing by.

“Come on now,” he shouted into the shadows, staggering back one step at a time. “Stop toying with me and show yourself!”

He heard it again as it skittered past his vision and out of sight just as he turned his helm. His chest heaved with frantic intakes as he stumbled back a few more steps and struggled to focus. 

It was here, then there, then above him, then behind. He couldn’t see it, and he didn’t know where it would land. He could feel it lurking just beyond his reach, and he could smell its sickly sweet stench, so rich with energon and nauseating as it hung in the air. 

Something brushed against his shoulder, and Vortex turned with a snarl to approach it head-on. It was behind him again, tickling his back and breathing down his neck. He swung back around with claws raking the air. He got it just as it fled—he felt the scrape of his fingertips scratching its plating, and he heard the faint hiss of the beast as it ducked out of sight.  

“I’m done playing here,” Vortex shouted. “Come out and fight me! Take my spark like you took all of the others!”

The sudden flash of white in front of him left barely enough time for him to register beast’s movements, and the sharp, searing pain in his back caught him off-guard. Vortex cried out before staggering sideways and crashing against the wall. A moment later, the thing was gone again, its prize left lying bloodied and discarded on the floor.

“Dammit,” he hissed as he fell to his knees and reached for the broken half of his rotor lying on the floor. “Urgh… you fragger…”

It was on him again as he knelt there, its attacks quick and painful. First a blow to his side, then a shove that sent him tumbling to the ground. Vortex tossed the broken piece in favor of scrambling to his pedes and running, though he knew it was another dead end up ahead. He was just so tired, and the beast was closing in. 

Exhausted, aching, and bleeding, he cowered against the corner of the wall and hid himself from view, his frame curled in on itself as he panted for breath and searched the shadows for any movement. 

The ground was sticky with spilt energon, and at that point, Vortex was no longer sure whether it was his or someone else’s. He held a servo to his chest and struggled to steady his vents, his frame shuddering and his systems faltering as he fought to cool himself down. 

He was backed into a corner yet again, just as he had been the countless other times that creature had chased him down dead ends and into empty corridors. This time, unlike the other chances he’d gotten to escape with just the scathing burn of tendrils clawing at his frame, Vortex didn’t have the energy left to fight. 

He was tired. He was scared, and Primus, he’d finally met his match.

“Aid,” he wheezed as he lifted a shaky servo to activate his comms. “Come on, mech. Answer me.”

The hall had gone quiet again, and the only sound left was the whirring of his fans. Vortex panted freely, his gaze scanning the darkness for the sight of that thing coming to finish him off. 

It was coming… it had to be. He knew it was coming. He was backed into a corner and trapped like prey. It was the textbook approach to defeating your enemies. Hell, it was something he did on the regular… so where was the finishing blow? Where was his monster? 

He couldn’t see it, but he knew it was there, watching him, waiting. He didn’t dare move, and he didn’t dare speak.

“Aid…” he whispered again, his helm falling back against the wall. 

Suddenly, the wall was opening, and Vortex couldn’t process anything that was happening until after he was being snatched up by a servo that appeared beside him and dragged off into the room on the other side. He fought and kicked and shouted the whole way, but the servo holding him was firm. It had him by the rotors and didn’t let go, and he was dragged further and further in until finally—

“Holy scrap,” Vortex said after First Aid had stopped dragging his aft across the medibay floor. “Holy fragging scrap! Aid! Did you—did you see that thing? Did you see it?”

The doors were on an automatic lockdown protocol no matter what First Aid had done to pry them open and save him from certain doom, which meant a moment later between his babbling, they sealed shut again—and likely would remain so for a while, if they were lucky. 

Frag, he was lucky. He’d just gotten his aft saved from near doom, and all he could think of was whether or not their temporary safe haven would last long enough for them to escape.  

As Vortex caught his breath and calmed himself down, First Aid did the same. He stood behind the copter on shaky legs and panted all with his frame bent in half and his servos on his knees. It had rattled him too, whatever it was. It made Vortex feel a little more validated, albeit more embarrassed. 

“You guys weren’t kidding,” he eventually said once he’d regulated his intakes and soothed his racing spark. “You really weren’t kidding. That thing—that—that thing out there, it—“

Something was out there on the ship, that was for sure—something with them, something trapped inside. It would’ve made him feel all the more hopeless if First Aid hadn’t managed to survive this long.

“Yeah,” First Aid said, still frozen to the spot behind Vortex. His mask was intact, though bloodied, as was his visor, but Vortex could hear the fear in his voice just fine. “Are you…?”

“I’m fine,” Vortex nodded. He rolled his shoulders and wiggled his fingers, leaving his torn and tattered rotors be for the moment. “Just a few surface wounds. Nothing we can’t fix.”

As the adrenaline began to subside, the aches and exhaustion set in. He’d spent the better half of his day running from death itself after a speedy recovery from falling out of the sky, and now he felt tired and drained.

First Aid was gentle as he knelt down next to Vortex’s side. This time, Vortex allowed the support.

“You’re bleeding,” he said, the nervous undertones turning into something more worried. “It looks bad, ‘Tex.”

Vortex snorted. First Aid almost sounded guilty as he reached out to trace his fingertips over the jagged edge of Vortex’s rotor nub. Typical doctor attitude, always worrying about him over anything else.

“Nothing a little TLC from you won’t fix,” Vortex said as he shrugged off the touch. “Maybe while you’re patching me up you could fill me in on why the comms went dead back there? That’d be kinda nice.”

First Aid drew his servo back, his visor narrowing. 

“It’s complicated,” First Aid said, sounding hesitant. “I could try, but—like everything else, it’s just…” he trailed off with a shrug. “I don’t know. Stuff’s been happening left and right up here. I can hardly keep track of it all.”

“We got the time,” Vortex said with a tentative smirk. “Might as well figure it all out, right? You get your servos dirty, I get an audial-full…” He gave First Aid’s legs a nudge, just to test the waters. “‘Sides, I wanna hear all about how you managed to survive an entire micro-apocalypse without me.”

That was all it took. The tension ebbed away from First Aid’s frame as he propped his servos on his hips and scoffed, his helm tilted to the side in that same “I hate to be amused right now, but I am” fashion. Crude humor worked every time, especially when you were bleeding out on the floor with a certain medic to patch your wounds, and especially if your name was Vortex.

Vortex’s smirk widened into an all-out grin. What could he say? He was something of a masochist when it came to pretty Autobots in the medical field. 

“Fine,” First Aid said. The smile was audible in his voice. “But first things first. I need to get you cleaned up before these scratches of yours get infected by whatever monster madness you got yourself into.” 

“Help me to a table and you got a deal, doc,” Vortex teased back as he moved to stand. “I’m all yours.”

First Aid didn’t need to be asked twice. The tensions were still high, even after the slight reprieve. They still needed to get out of that hellhole, and now he needed himself fixed up to do so. It was a small setback, but it was nothing they couldn’t handle together.

They had plenty of time… and First Aid had plenty of information to share.