Author's notes: Thank you to Owlix for beta'ing away my extra commas and letting me ramble about mecha-physiology. Thank you also to my software architect buddy for explaining how computer memory works. :)

I will update this story as frequently as life allows. Current estimate: monthly.

Chapter 1 – Symmetry Breaking

Rung rode the elevator down in silence, watching the floor numbers flash by in glowing glyphs. There were a dozen decks between medibay and his office. He shifted his weight, consciously aware of some slight anxiety rising in his processor. That was expected. He examined the feeling as the lift descended, patiently, watching the rhythmic flick of lights on his folded hands.

His right thumb had a glossy newness to the finish, smooth and subtly unsettling. Rung flexed his fingers. He thought he saw a microsecond of lag between the command to spread his fingers and the action. Frowning, he repeated the motion. His fingers responded smoothly. He must be imagining it.

The lift slowed.

Although his diagnostics assured him that he was entirely whole again, entirely functional, Rung felt a lingering disconnection. Sometimes he would glimpse his hand or his knee and for a moment, he would wonder who it belonged to. Then he would stare, forcing his processor to recognize that this hand was his, connected to his wrist, his arm, his shoulder. He found himself avoiding mirrored surfaces. And though he looked, by all technical measures, exactly the same as he had before, Rung saw himself differently somehow. Himself, but not himself. A mask, or an imposter. A ghost.

First Aid assured him it would pass. He'd seen it before, he said, in bots who underwent extensive rebuilds of any kind. It was normal.

Rung reassured himself. He too had seen numerous patients through the disorientation, anger, denial, and recovery following a traumatic processor injury.

He wriggled his fingers again. Too shiny. His thumb didn't match.

The elevator halted and the outer doors struggled open. Rung paused before stepping into the hall. One of the light panels in the ceiling was out, a by-product of the Sparkeater incident, still not repaired, and it left a patch of shadow outside the door to his office. He reset his optics twice before he successfully interpreted it as a shadow, not as a hole in the floor. He paused and made a note of the difficulty for First Aid.

He was still recalibrating his optic feed as he stepped into the patch of shadow and palmed the lock. The door opened soundlessly and Rung faced a formless grayscale landscape within. The anxiety surged. His gaze flicked from place to place, not settling on any one shape. He hesitated. Through the bank of windows across the room, the black of deep space, salted with stars, seemed more defined, more real and welcoming, than the area in front of him. Rung felt a sudden rush of dizziness. An error code stuttered on his visual display.

"Lights," he ordered.

Someone had cleaned and repaired the room. There were no scorch marks on the walls, no over-turned furniture. His scattered model collection had been set on his desk, missing only the Ark that Swerve had brought to him in medibay. Damaged surfaces had been patched. But there was still a faint blush of purple on the floor plating and, behind his desk, his chair was askew at the wrong angle, replaced too carefully, not pushed in naturally, and Rung remained motionless on the threshold.

He recalled only a little after putting his arms around Fortress Maximus. He remembered speaking gently to the warden and then a little hiss of sound. There was a moment of surprise, but no pain. Rung glanced toward the window. It too was fixed but he knew- tracing the trajectory with his optics- he knew that he had almost died in this room. Twice, now. Once, if it hadn't been for Skids' timely intervention; a second time if not for Ratchet's surgical skill.

Long experience told Rung that he was hardly immune to the same issues his patients brought to him. Sometimes he would not immediately recognize or diagnose a problem with his own behaviour, but this time it was simple. Two near-fatal incidents in the same room was reason enough to make anyone avoid a place. He needed to go in now, examine the disturbing events he had experienced there, and integrate them into his memory rather than burying them. It was the same plan he had laid out for Fortress Maximus: address it, deal with it, move on.

Still, he lingered on the threshold.

Rung wasn't ready to see Fort Max yet. First Aid told him that the warden had been treated for a non-fatal wound and shut in the brig until Ultra Magnus and Rodimus came to a consensus on his fate. Rung had relayed a plea for leniency to the commanders, citing Max's still-untreated post-traumatic stress, and submitting a formal recommendation. But he wasn't personally prepared to to visit Maximus; he needed to come to terms with the whole event in steps, and visiting his office was the first.

And he stayed in the doorway, hands twining, unable to step forward. The sensor mechanism in the door whirred, trying to close and finding its path obstructed. Rung didn't notice. He needed to move but couldn't find a reason to enter and it would be worse still to step back and leave, to admit- to concede-

He set his jaw and strode across the threshold towards his desk. There. He stopped and settled his fingertips on the surface, remembering how the incident had started. He moved around behind the desk and pulled out the chair. He had been seated here, turned just so, watching Whirl meander around the office with a characteristic avoidance he paralleled in his words, seeking to distract Rung from their topic of conversation.

Rung sat down behind his desk. He remembered the flash of irritation at being interrupted; he had felt he was making progress with Whirl, felt he was close to achieving a rapport with the helicopter that would open the way to real therapeutic progress. Then, before Max had started shouting, Rung remembered a surge of fear that something somewhere must be terribly wrong and Max had only burst in to warn them.

He stood up and walked around his desk to look at the place where Whirl had finally come to rest after Maximus had battered him into submission. When the warden had failed to dismember Whirl to keep him from interfering, Max had ripped a section of cooling pipe from the ceiling and jammed it through Whirl's abdomen, pinning him to the floor.

The violence had progressed too quickly for Rung to form any coherent memory of it. The fight was a flurry of sound and colours: Maximus bellowing threats that made Whirl shriek when he carried them out, several shades of blue all jumbled together, the bright fuchsia splatter of energon, and the clatter of Whirl's heels scrabbling vainly against the deck when he found himself pinned.

When Maximus came after Rung, Whirl unleashed a barrage of mockery on the former warden; it had quickly turned vicious and he hadn't stopped until Rung's memory went black.

Rung moved to the window and laid his meticulously rebuilt hand against the transparent material. He looked through the image of his office reflected in the thick triple panes and into the distance. He felt very small for a moment. So much effort and material had been expended on his resuscitation and repair. If he had died in this room, what sort of legacy would he leave? Would Rodimus or Ultra Magnus know how to eulogize him? Did it matter how he was remembered?

Abruptly, he checked his internal chronometer. Seventeen minutes remaining before First Aid made good on his threat to send Swerve after Rung if he didn't return in a timely fashion.

Rung turned back to his desk and the model collection laid out for him. He busied himself redistributing the model ships to their original locations around the room, and he felt better for the slight return to normalcy. Spirits buoyed, Rung did another circuit of the space, pausing to familiarize himself with a few new nicks and dents, growing bolder as he remembered.

"Enough for today," he murmured to himself.

Then he turned out the lights and headed back up to medibay.

"So, how was it?" asked First Aid. He was consulting a live image of Rung's reconstructed processor, watching a steady series of glyphs scroll down one side of the display.

"The light is still out in front of the door," Rung began. "Someone has been in to clean and straighten up." He struggled after details. "My collection of ships... I put them back on the shelves." He paused. "I knew they were all there, except this one-" he clutched the Ark in his lap, "-but I couldn't name a single one of them. I can't tell them apart."

First Aid glanced at him. "And you're still having trouble differentiating people's faces?"

"Yes. No. Sort of. It's different now. I can tell when I'm looking at a person rather than an object- except for Whirl- but I can't say who anyone is with certainty until they speak." Rung shook his head. "It's humiliating," he muttered.

He was finding shortcuts, new ways of identifying people, but to look at someone he had known for months or years and not recognize the collection of colours and proportions and details that made their face unique was a frightening experience.

"Not to worry," First Aid replied. "That sounds about right. The good news is: you're improving. See here?" He pointed to the schematic display. "Two of your cerebral quadrants are now at 99% functionality. Are you experiencing any issues with hand-eye coordination? Impaired spatial orientation? Identifying colours?"

"I thought my right hand was functioning a bit sluggishly, but it may have been my imagination. No, I haven't experienced any of the other problems." First Aid noted his responses and considered the display for a moment.

"There's still damage to your medial teneotic unit. That's responsible for the gaps and errors in your short-term memory. And here, your auto-repair is reconstructing the dorsolateral management relay responsible for synchronizing neural functions. That has priority right now; once the repairs are complete, the prospagnosia will disappear, and it'll mitigate the motor deficits you're experiencing." He tapped the display and for a moment, they watched Rung's auto-repair perform neurosynthesis in real-time.

"My auto-repair is... building over the surgical repair."

First Aid nodded. "The repairs we did did allowed you to regain processor functionality at a basic level, but they were always meant to be temporary. They acted as a catalyst for your own repair system to begin rebuilding you as you were. Our repairs kept you online. It's up to your own systems to repair the damage completely and faithfully."

Rung opened and closed his right hand. "How faithfully?"

"Well, at your age, there's bound to be complications," said First Aid. "Small-scale, you'll probably need to defragment more frequently. And you'll be missing some micro-codes, which your CPU will re-write but it'll mean some of your memory operations are slower at first." He paused. "Bigger issues are going to be eidetic decay- what some people call 'bit rot'. There's always the possibility of fetch errors while your memory is re-indexing, and the loss of specialized self-correcting algorithms. Your memory stores are still being rebuilt and re-indexed. With the amount of physical damage your neural architecture suffered- I mean, that was total destruction- there's a high probability that there'll be pathways your auto-repair will 'forget' existed and won't rebuild."

Rung was silent for a moment. "How much of that will be permanent?"

First Aid shook his head. "It's hard to say. You're resilient- and lucky. We'll have to wait and see for most of it. You've been keeping up with the cognitive training?"

"Yes." Rung shifted. "It's fascinating. Using learning to attenuate physical deficits? Quite brilliant."

"Thanks," said First Aid, genuinely pleased. "I've been working on it for a while but I wasn't able to put it into effect during the war. They said the therapy took too long. Thanks for letting me try it on you."

Rung paused again before speaking and he could tell that First Aid was anticipating his question. "When will you clear me to re-open my practice?"

"When I'm sure that your injuries won't affect your performance. You would do no less." He sounded a bit testy.

"Yes, but a general time-frame-"

"Rung, you're restricted to light duties until further notice. No long hours of clinical work. No emotionally exhausting sessions with persons who may or may not be occupying the brig. Please don't make me send a memo to Ultra Magnus."

"I won't," Rung promised. "But-"

"When I clear you for duty, that's when."

Rung could hear Ratchet snickering in his office.

"Yes, of course. I'm sorry," he said. Then he looked up at First Aid and smiled. "Thank you. Sincerely. For everything you've done."

First Aid glanced away from the schematic display. "It's nice to hear that once in a while. You're welcome." He returned his attention to the screen. "Anyway, you're showing significant improvement- and I mean that quantitatively, not just a figure of speech- so I'm optimistic that you can be back down in your office sorting people out in a few weeks time. Until then, I want you to continue checking in daily for physical scans and cognitive training. And remember you're forbidden from watching movies, reading, or any other sort of sustained concentration."

"There are only so many miles of corridor that I can wander before my boredom catches up with me," Rung warned.

"Go to Swerve's and people watch. Try not to get involved in any serious conversations. And no engex."

"Is that your recommendation as my physician?"

"Yes. Go to the bar and mingle."

Rung must have made a face.

"Seriously. And- as much as I hate to recommend this- try to spend some time with Whirl. You need to re-teach your processor to recognize him as a person rather than an object."

Rung nodded. "I do have some things I need to say to him."

"Nothing too serious or emotional," First Aid warned.

"I'll do my best," Rung promised, and knew he was lying.

Finding Whirl was simple, so long as Whirl wanted to be found. He wore a locator beacon in his badge and kept his comm open like the other military bots under Ultra Magnus' command. As far as Rung knew, Whirl had not gone dark at any time aboard the Lost Light. He had, however, found that the shielding apparatus in the engine room reduced radio signals to blurry mush, that there was a dead section in the internal sensor array near the belly of the ship, and that stomping around like he was in a foul mood deterred most people from approaching him.

Rung enquired with the ship's internal sensors and found Whirl in the maintenance room attached to the quill reactor. The fuel quills drove the sub-light thrusters, though exactly how they worked eluded Rung as much as the workings of the Lost Light's quantum propulsion system. He knew that the quills were an unusual, rather obtuse technology, one that no one aboard had any real expertise maintaining. Drift recognized them from his time in Crystal City and Highbrow had a hobby fascination with them, and together they drew up a workable technical manual.

Since no one fully understood the fuel quills, Ultra Magnus had decided that the best way to deal with them was through rigorous, constant vigilance. Temperature, vibrational frequency, isotope ratios, and more than two dozen other variables were to be noted and recorded daily. Highbrow analyzed the collected data on a weekly basis, looking for trends. Since Whirl's armour was rated to deflect the radiation thrown off by the quills, he was put into the data collection roster.

At present, Whirl had been in the maintenance room for almost two hours. Data collection usually took one hour. This told Rung that Whirl was either avoiding social contact, or he had actually found something anomalous. Rung guessed the former.

Truth be told, Rung wasn't any more ready to face Whirl than he was Fortress Maximus. The relationship he thought he had been building with the helicopter during their therapy sessions had been revealed as a fiction, based on incomplete information and assumptions. Much of what Rung thought he understood about Whirl had changed and while an inaccurate analysis wasn't constructive for any patient, Rung believed it could be downright dangerous for Whirl. And for himself, in relation to Whirl.

That was part of the problem. Whirl was his patient- had been and would be again when First Aid cleared him to return to duty. Rung could fathom a Whirl who saw a social benefit in preserving Rung's life at a cost to his own, but he had not anticipated the helicopter intervening when Fort Max threatened Rung because he claimed to see Rung as a friend. Yet he had done just that, and at some point, Rung would have to explain the boundaries of the doctor-patient relationship to him.

There had been no meaningful communication between them yet, but Whirl appeared regularly in medibay with Skids and Swerve, and that was enough to strum Rung's nerves. In fact, Whirl's constancy was part of the reason that Rung had decided it was time to face and digest his feelings about the incident.

Now, knowing that Whirl was sequestered halfway across the ship from him, Rung took half of First Aid's advice and headed in the opposite direction, towards the bar.

Swerve's was sparsely populated at this hour. A handful of bots occupied a single large table in the centre of the establishment and one or two looked up when Rung entered. Swerve saw him and waved him up to the bar.

"On the house," said the metallurgist-cum-bartender immediately. "What'll you have?"

"I can't have engex yet. First Aid said it will impede my auto-repair."

Swerve made a little grimace. "Well, uh, I-"

"Actually, I was hoping you could help me. First Aid is developing a cognitive therapy regime to rehabilitate people after traumatic processor injuries and he's been using me as a study subject. I was hoping you could teach me how to mix a drink."

Swerve's visor flickered. "I don't follow, but all right. Sure!"

Rung moved around behind the bar. "Part of the therapy involves learning cognitive tasks with a spatial or skilled motor component. Something that engages your mind and your hands, basically."

"Is it working?"

"So far."

"All right. Great! Let's see..." Swerve flashed him a grin, then bent to retrieve a glass, a long spoon, a strainer, and a shaker from beneath the counter.

"What are we making?" asked Rung.

"I've been calling it the 'Morning After' but it's just a tweak on an old carbonated engex recipe." Swerve went to the refrigerated storage and beckoned to Rung. "It's traditionally big but I've been making them small. Small in the classy way, not the cheap way. Don't believe what Ratchet tells you. It's classy. Anyway, either I'm going to have to cave and make it bigger or make the price smaller if I want people to buy it regularly." He pulled a container of crushed ice from the storage. "The only reason people order it is because of the ice, anyway. Frozen water is a popular ingredient right now. Have you tried it? Water solidifies at a higher temperature than engex, so it gives the drink a great texture, but it also dilutes the engex so you have options for making a drink stronger or milder, depending on taste."

Swerve carried the ice over to the counter and gestured to the glass.

"Okay. Fill it about 3/4 with ice. It doesn't have to be perfect. Here's a little scoop."

Rung did as he was instructed. Swerve watched him.

"So, what do you figure they're gonna do with Fort Max? I wouldn't feel safe with him just, you know, loose."

Rung added another half-scoop of crushed ice to the glass. "I think the last thing Fortress Maximus needs is prolonged incarceration."

"He told me it gives him time to think."

Rung looked up. "You've been to speak with him?"

"Well... yeah." Swerve returned to the refrigerator and retrieved a container of gelatinous enriched energon supplements. "I kind of figured I owed him an apology too. I shot you right in front of him. And I was aiming for him in the first place." Swerve shrugged. "He's a different guy when he's not yelling and waving a massive gun around. I mean, we all have demons. You know better than anyone. I guess he just let his get to him. Still. Massive gun."

Rung contemplated the glass full of ice.

"He's sorry for what he did," Swerve continued, "to you, you know? He still wants to tear Prowl's head off. Not that I blame him. But it's still, you know, assault and..." Swerve's voice trailed off and he shrugged. "Anyway. Back to the drink! This is the part that's actually good for you." He held up the container of energon supplements. "This is a trade secret. Don't tell anyone."

Rung raised his right hand. "You have my word. Those supplements are disgusting. How do you mask the flavour?"

"Acidic flavouring and carbonated engex. The ice helps too."

Swerve instructed him to pour a quantity of double-distilled engex into the shaker, then add a dash of flavouring, sugar, and one of the supplements.

"Shake it up for about fifteen seconds, then pour it through the strainer into the glass."

"It's not all going to fit in that glass."

"Well, no, it makes five servings. Just cover the bottom quarter of the glass."

"You could serve it in a larger glass," Rung suggested. He took care straining the mixture into the dainty vessel Swerve had provided.

"Yeah. I'm still thinking about that. Now pour the carbonated engex over it to fill the rest of the glass. Ta da!"

Rung contemplated the finished product.

"It's-"

"Classy," Swerve interrupted. "It's classy."

"I bow to your expertise."

"Hey! What's this?" They looked up to find Skids striding through the bar towards them, optics wide, door-wings perked, oblivious to greetings from the one populated table. He halted directly across from Swerve and Rung, and folded his arms over his chest.

"What's what?" said Swerve, just as Rung replied, "Classy, apparently."

"Swerve won't let me behind the bar," Skids huffed, leaning forward to rest his elbows on the furniture in question. He eyed the tiny bubbling drink on the surface. "You should make these bigger."

"Yeah, cause if I let you back here, you'd just make drinks for yourself til you passed out on the mats. Anyway, Rung's doing cognitive- uh- something therapy."

Skids made a face. "Come on. I'm not Trailbreaker."

"Rehabilitative cognitive therapy with a motor component," said Rung. "I need to use my hands to perform and learn unfamiliar tasks."

Skids carefully picked up the glass. "Looks pretty good, Eyebrows." Rung smiled. "Definitely drinkable." He tossed the drink back in one gulp.

"That's not free," said Swerve. Skids produced a handful of shanix.

"So is it helping? The cognitive motor therapy?" he asked.

Rung measured ice into a second glass. "It appears to be, yes."

"Think it'd work for Skids amnesia?" Swerve suggested abruptly. Both Skids and Rung glanced at him.

"I don't know," said Rung carefully. "We don't know the cause of Skids' amnesia." He met Skids' gaze. "Do we?"

Skids shrugged. "I asked Chromedome to have a look and see what he could see."

"Skids..." Rung began.

"Chromedome?" Swerve stuck out his tongue. "You asked the mnemosurgeon? He's had his needles in a dead guy's eye socket and you let him stick them in your neck?"

Skids frowned. "Come on, what else could I do, Rung? Everybody keeps telling me they thought I was dead, I can't remember a thing before crashing that- that shuttle, and nothing's coming back to me. I didn't know where else to start."

Rung was silent. The group at the table beckoned Swerve away and he went, somewhat reluctantly. Rung watched Skids chew his lip for a moment, then he picked up the ice scoop and began to concoct another drink.

"I understand why you did it. Did you learn anything from Chromedome?"

"No," Skids replied, still frowning. He claimed Rung's second cocktail but didn't drink, just held it cupped in his fingers. "He said my recent memories were gone- destroyed. And somehow, that allowed me to forget a chunk of my past that was apparently quite traumatic. All he said was that I wouldn't want to remember."

"Those past memories- they're not gone too, are they?"

Skids shook his head. "Just... buried." He settled his lips on the edge of the tiny glass. "That's not his judgement to make though, Eyebrows. I do want to remember."

The light in the corridor was still out.

Rung noted it in his log with mild annoyance. He opened the door to his office and crossed the threshold, noting too his ability to be irritated by a minor detail like a broken light fixture. He wasn't concentrating on the room; he wasn't dreading it. That was good.

In an almost conciliatory action, he turned and looked over his shoulder. The patch of shadow was a blank space from this angle, not an exit or an entrance. It was impenetrable and pock-marked with stress fractures and impact points-

No, no it wasn't. Rung scrutinized the rectangle of black. It was just a shadow.

But no, it wasn't...

It was the outer wall of the Kimia space-station, bludgeoned into the crust of Cybertron after it fell, outer hull warped and melted from the heat of atmospheric re-entry, a stress it was never meant to withstand. And here was Rung, walking carefully along that outer wall, searching for a shadow, a shadow that was a crack, a crack that was an entrance.

He skirted the shattered hulk, pausing to look up now and then. He traced his fingertips over the blackened insulation panels and the gaps between them, and turned to gaze out fixedly across the vast wilderness he no longer recognized. Cybertron did not feel like home.

The cargo docking bay was too damaged to be re-used for its intended purpose, though some of the equipment was salvageable. The big pieces had already been removed under Bumblebee's direction; the rest had been thoroughly scavenged. Someone had begun tearing down the north walls for scrap building materials.

Rung walked until he found what he was seeking- the gap in the outer panelling, a slice of shadow. He paused, peering hesitantly at the darkness. It seemed flat, not an entrance- but he knew it was. It had been- would be- is. Was. Something flickered across his visual field. An error message, likely some small damage remaining from injuries sustained aboard the doomed space-station as Cyclonus tore through it...

Rung rebooted his optics. He ignored the error message. He projected indecision. Then, slowly, he stepped into the shadow, which became a gap, and paused, listening, optics turning this way and that in the gloom.

It was silent. The insulated walls muffled the sounds of materials reclamation and the space in which Rung now found himself was dusty, claustrophobic, little more than an air pocket amidst the rubble. But it was the right place. Rung switched his vision to infrared.

"Greetings," said a voice.

Rung turned and his spark pulsed hard in dread and excitement. The shape of the speaker swam and contorted in his visual feed.

"Greetings," he replied in a whisper.

"What is a psychiatrist doing at the edge of the waste?"

"I do not see waste," Rung replied carefully, "I see opportunity."

"Then," said the speaker, "I can help you."

Part of Rung's processor was insisting that this was not really happening. It had happened, said the diagnostic code, it was not happening. Rung's visual cortex disagreed; this was today, now, all sensory input packets stamped with the correct date and time.

The speaker advanced a single step toward him. Rung guessed that they wore an optical identity interference cloak. The voice, too, was masked with static and shifting harmonics, and nothing in Rung's admittedly underwhelming sensor array could make sense of the speaker's near-field identification. Nevertheless, Rung recorded the conversation faithfully with his in-built microphone.

"How may I be of service, Control?" Rung asked. One thing he could say with certainty was that Control towered over him; the physical cloaking effects dared only do so much variation in appearance lest the energy signatures become detectable to curious observers. It was a subtle balance between protection and discovery.

"You have a new task."

"In addition to my current work, or instead of it?"

"In addition. You will accompany Rodimus on his mission to find the Knights of Cybertron."

Rung hesitated before replying. "Rodimus?" Rodimus had never been placed within the purview of their operation.

Control understood his confusion. "Rodimus is important."

Again, Rung hesitated.

"You disagree?" said Control.

"I agree that Rodimus is important, but he isn't- Does he know about the network?"

"No. Rodimus knows nothing. He suspects nothing. This mission will be best served by your discretion."

Rung hesitated before responding again. He felt Control's unwavering attention on him like an open furnace.

"I feel that Rodimus should be dealt with directly."

"I do not. Rodimus is erratic, charismatic, and prone to manipulation. You, better than anyone, recognize what detrimental effect these traits might have on the network were he made aware of it's existence."

Here Control paused and waited. Rung's processor blared, at war with itself, and he wondered why it had chosen now to act up. He would need a full scan before he left Cybertron...

"Report your progress on your regular frequency every thirty-six standard hours. The nature of the mission is long-term and potentially dangerous. Employ field agents as per the normal agreement."

"Am I to maintain my traditional cover persona?"

"You are. Do you accept the mission?"

Rung nodded once. "I accept the mission," he said. "I am at your command."

Control's shape shimmered around the edges. "Your service is appreciated by all Cybertronians, Rung. Your work is important."

The encounter did not end there, but Rung's memory did, abruptly jarred back to the present by a physical proximity warning that suspended all other functions. Suddenly he was in his office aboard the Lost Light, a shadow standing between himself and the light, and his processor was screaming warning on top of warning: neural patterning malfunction, imminent structural failure, weapons lock, and one damning report of a fetch error.

Distantly, he realized what had happened. That square of shadow had triggered the retrieval of a memory, but instead of opening the relevant file for review, Rung's recently-repaired neural circuits had interpreted the information in the present tense. He had relived the moment as it unfolded, speaking aloud as he had spoken to Control, and judging by the grip crushing his throat and the rapidly warming gun pressed to his chest, he had done so in full view of someone who took it entirely the wrong way.

"I'm gonna ask you one last time, and then I'm gonna put a hole through you: who are you talking to and what is 'the network'?"

Rung found himself staring into Whirl's one sulphurous optic. Distantly, he felt a rush of triumph at recognizing Whirl as Whirl, not as some malevolent collection of pieces.

"Whirl! Please- don't-"

"Then you talk!" Whirl roared and shook him, hard enough to bring up another flurry of warnings. "Twenty seconds, doctor- if that's even what you are."

"I- Whirl, please- please, I am-! I- yes, I'll tell you! I'll tell you."

Whirl didn't drop him, so much as throw him down. Rung landed on his aft, every joint and circuit rattled by the impact. Whirl put his foot on Rung's chest and stomped him flat against the floor, huge and angry and terrifying. The gun in his grip was shaking.

"Talk," he snarled.

It was useless to lie; Rung could not remember exactly what he had said aloud, what his part in the conversation had been, and he didn't think it would be wise to access the memory again, given his accidental immersion the first time.

"I was talking to Control," he said.

Whirl leaned over, chest guns hot and primed now, and aimed right at Rung. "You're a spy." His voice turned frigid.

"No, I'm- that's not it, I'm not a spy," Rung replied quickly. "I'm a- I'm a-" Rung struggled to define exactly what he was with the promise of imminent death looming over him. "I'm a mobile listening post and pattern analyst."

Whirl didn't shift. "An informant? You're a spy."

"No! I- I collect information, information about individuals or places or- and I find connections within that information-"

"Enough! You're a fragging spy!"

"No- please- Whirl, I'm not-"

"What's the information for, then? Who is it for?"

Rung hesitated. It was the wrong response. Whirl leaned his considerable weight onto the foot pinning Rung to the floor. His abdominal armour bent under Whirl's heel; a crack leaped across the transparent plate over his spark casing.

"I work for the Institute!" Rung gasped. "Whirl, please!"

Whirl didn't let him up. "Doesn't exist anymore." But he didn't fire or step down any harder.

"Not like it once did," said Rung, "and you must understand- the Institute I work for is not the one our society came to know. Skids- Skids knew the organization I worked for- he was part of it as well." Whirl stepped off him but the gun was still pressed against his chest. Rung didn't dare move. "Senator Shockwave's group of so-called 'outliers'- that's who I started out with. I'm not- not one of them, but that's the point. They needed someone utterly normal and uninteresting to gather information for them. There were dozens of us originally, all perfectly uninteresting, all easily over-looked, and all with jobs that allowed us to absorb information across the social spectrum."

"Go on."

"Shop clerks, bartenders, accountants, technicians, couriers- people who hear things during the course of their work. And me. We knew- Shockwave knew- something was happening to our society, it needed-"

"Get to the point. What were you doing with the information?"

"Supporting the outliers. They needed resources. Information. Opportunities. Individuals and organizations that they could trust, people who could help them maximize the potential of their specific skills. We gathered as much information as we could so that we could find the right connections, put the right people in the right place at the right time. No one becomes extraordinary on their own. We helped them. That's what I did. What I do. I gather information, I make connections. That's the network. I'm not a spy."

Whirl shifted, optic narrowing. "And you're in contact with them now? How?"

"No," said Rung, and although he very much wanted to push himself up onto his elbows and assume a less vulnerable position, he didn't. "I haven't been able to contact Control since the first jump to the Outer Rim. Just now- just now I suffered a neural malfunction. I was re-living a memory, a conversation I had before I joined the crew, when Control ordered me to accompany the Lost Light. That's what you saw."

Whirl's integrated cannons cooled but the muzzle of his gun still burned against Rung's chest, and he stared down, motionless and unreadable. "Guess I could ask Skids for verification but- wait, he's lost his memory. Convenient, that."

"I know," said Rung, "I can't offer you any more proof than my word, Whirl. Nothing has gone the way it was supposed to, right from the start."

Whirl was quiet for a moment, staring and unreadable. "How was it supposed to go?" he asked at last.

"I was supposed to provide Rodimus with information pertinent to each situation the Lost Light encountered. Much of that would be sourced through Control, but-"

"You got any other contact with your network except Control?"

Rung shook his head. "No. There are others like me but-"

"Keep each operative separate so that if one gets compromised it doesn't bring down the whole operation, yeah, I kind of know how this stuff works." Finally, Whirl withdrew the gun and powered it down. He crouched beside Rung on the floor, still staring at him, optic shuttered to a pin-point. Finally, he said, "I should take you to Ultra Magnus." Rung nodded once, hesitant. "You're probably lying. Dunno what you really are. Not my problem." He stood up and glanced at Rung. "Cuz of the Matrix, right?"

"You mean Rodimus?"

"Yeah. He's not an outlier. So you're here because he's got half of the Matrix, aren't you?"

"I don't know why I was ordered here," said Rung. "I've never heard of the network serving someone who wasn't an outlier. I honestly don't know why Control is interested in Rodimus."

Whirl slung the gun across his shoulders. "Guess it doesn't matter. Get up."

Rung climbed slowly to his feet. The malfunction and the physical violence left him weak and shaky. Whirl gestured for him to hurry up. He made his way to the door, through that damn patch of shadow, and down the corridor to the lift. Whirl said nothing as the elevator began to climb.

"Thank you," Rung said softly. Whirl glanced at him. "For not shooting. And for letting me explain."

Whirl looked away. "You're not my problem. If Ultra Magnus decides you're a spy, I'm going to kill you." He hefted the gun with one claw.

"You don't need to do that, Whirl. I'm-"

"Shut up."

Rung fell silent and folded his hands in front of him, watching his fingers effortlessly interlace.