A/N: Look, an update! LOL. I've been away a while and I wanted to apologize for that. Seems that I got myself into a large amount of trouble with my health lately. Apparently I have developed allergies to certain foods all of sudden and ended up in the hospital. I'm all better now, though I have to admit the trip to the ER and the subsequent stay has given me a wealth of information from which to draw from the next time I need to write a med bay/hospital stay. :P I suppose that's called turning a negative into a positive, right? Missing work on account of that stay has left me little time to write. But now that I am all caught up, I have found the time to write. Yay!

I wanted to thank everyone that has made this story a favorite, who has read, and who has taken the time to review. You all keep me going. I promise you that I read them all, and I take all the information into consideration when I write my chapters. I started writing this story for me, but it has become something more than just amusement for one person. I want to thank you all for making that possible. :)

I also want to take the moment to thank Razorgaze for her help in beta work. She is an amazing person to put up with my sporatic and crazy writing. She is also an amazing author, too. Check out her story "Our Debt." It's totally woth it.

As I promised, here are the next five chapters of music. Almost all caught up! :D

Chapter 31: Answers
Conflict – The Azoic
Absconding – Daughter Darling
Dark Angel – VNV Nation

Chapter 32: Death
I stand alone – Godsmack
Love is a battlefield – Pat Benatar
Sparrows and Nightingales – Wolfsheim
Perfect Time of Day – Howie Day

Chapter 33: Shock
Another world – Beborn Beton
Breath – Breaking Benjamin
Sinking Satellite – Tasmin Archer

Chapter 34: Anger
Time of Dying – Three Days Grace
Bend the Bracket – Chevelle
Seasons - Sevendust

Chapter 35: Impressions
Waiting for Love – Pink
Paranoid – Garbage
Skeleton Song - Sevendust

Disclaimer: I own nothing, not the songs or the characters listed in this fic, save for my OCs. Please do not sue. This is purely for fun.

It seemed like the tears would go on forever. Ratchet hovered near his mate, his worry and agitation beating against her mental defenses like the unrelenting waves of the sea. She had no words for him to explain the pain, the wretched sorrow that had overwhelmed her being upon opening her eyes. Only tears, the silent fat spark-wrenching tears that flowed over her cheek was the only clarification she could offer.

She had reached for him silently, arms outward and imploring, and the mechs supporting him had to either let go or be drug along for the ride as he answered that request for comfort. His hands closed around her tiny mortal form, lifting her smoothly to that part of his chest armor that she had come to call her own. His spark burned beneath it, a steady reminder that the sorrow would pass, that love would exist to outshine the sadness. She had only to reach for him, reach through the bond they shared, to understand that.

His optics sought out those of his colleagues, and no other words were needed. One by one, they nodded and left – all except two. Wheeljack, who could not leave without his escort by orders of their Prime, and Jolt, who adamantly refused to leave his mentor's side in the face of what had just occurred. Red Alert grabbed the mech by the back of his neck plating, optics hard as he sent whatever private message to the obstinate apprentice he chose. In the end, whatever Red Alert had said, it worked. Under protest, but still agreeing to be moved, Jolt allowed himself to be escorted to another section of med bay.

Wheeljack followed his lead. He quietly collected his data pads and made his way to one of the other rooms in the labyrinth-like medical facility. But not before he shot one last, lingering look of worry over his shoulder at Ratchet and his human mate. He hesitated only a moment longer, words on the tip of his vocal processor. The image before him, of his human friend held gingerly against the spark of the mech he considered the closest thing to family he had left, was enough to still those words.

They needed to be alone. Yet like Jolt, he would be nearby, a medical scan going constantly in that room to make sure nothing else out of the ordinary occurred.

Too much had happened already, and none of it seemed to be going anywhere good. First Lydia had dropped off to sleep in record time, and not a moment later Ratchet's optics had dimmed, the Chief Medical Officer slipping into recharge right where he stood. There had been no explanation for either event, and certainly no logical reason why the sparks of both had frozen in unison for those long, frightening few moments.

Venting air in a sigh, he let the door seal behind him and took his place at a science station. The amount of information gathered in those few nano-kliks between where Lydia fell asleep to where Ratchet had nearly offlined, to where they both came to, had been more than surprising. For a moment, they had feared that they had lost them both.

For a moment, both of their sparks had ceased to function. And no one had one fragging good reason as to why.

That was what troubled him the most. Only the electrical charge from a fast-thinking Jolt had pulled Ratchet from his critical state, and the effect had apparently pulled Lydia from the brink of offlining as well. If there had been any question as to if their sparks had fully merged, there was none left after that little demonstration.

It was frustrating to say the least, all these little curveballs – as the humans would call them – being hurled at their processors at subspace speed. So much so that he found himself grinding his lip plates behind his mask. No matter what they seemed to do, they could not stay a step ahead of whatever this spark was doing to Lydia's systems. And Ratchet's existence now hung in that fragile balance, too.

It was no longer one life they were fighting to understand and save, but two. As it should be, he mused with more than a little touch of foreboding, between a truly mated pair. Because Ratchet was not the type to let go of anything, not until each and every option had been explored. He would not let go of Lydia's spark, not until it was extinguished, and even then he might choose to hold it still. That was beyond dangerous, as any mech knew. Holding onto half a bond was like… like nothing he could put into words. But, in the face of all the calamity and loss they had faced as a race in this abhorred war, it was not unheard of.

Wheeljack did not want to think of the consequences of that. And so he glanced at the door one last time, as if he could see his friends beyond the steel casements, and turned back to his work. There was a mystery before him, and the key to the happiness of two of his closest friends lay in the unraveling of it.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Ratchet held her in his palms, her body pressed against the armor above his spark. His optic guards closed, the blue within blue orbs dimming softly as he poured all his energy, all his being, into the emotions he pushed through their bond. Her sorrow dragged at his spark, aching and sapping the strength from his frame. The soul-deep agony of old emotional wounds tearing open and new ones forming at the same time was almost enough to drop him to his knees.

She was still too new to the bonding process, to having her own spark, to be able to shield what she felt, especially when the grief was all too raw and way too deep. Every bit of it lashed through him, tossing in snippets of memory like razor sharp shards of glass to cut him further. He saw a child-sized Lydia, holding onto the hands of her grandparents, staring at dual mahogany boxes. She had been too tiny to look inside on her own, to see the impassive and waxy faces of her parents.

Killed by a drunk driver, leaving behind a six year old Lydia and a thirteen year old David, her older brother. The first abandonment.

The memory flashed again, and now Lydia was fifteen years old, staring once more at twin mahogany coffins. Within lay her grandparents, dead within days of one another. Her grandfather had died of cancer, and her grandmother from the grief of loosing him. Beside her sat David, twenty-two years old and already married with a child on the way. Sorrow tainted his eyes, eyes that refused to look at his little sister.

Because he could barely take care of himself and his wife Corrine. There was simply no way he could care for his sister, too. A second and third abandonment.

The woman seated on the other side of Lydia was one Mrs. Alexandra Collins, the court appointed foster mother for his little sister. Her face had been impassive, too, cold and looking almost bored as the funeral continued. A look, he learned through her later memories, that never really faded from Mrs. Collins face. A cold woman, but not unkind. She had cared for Lydia's material needs, supplemented from the government checks as a foster mother. But there had been no connection, no warmth. A forth abandonment.

It was little surprise that Lydia had joined the Air Force the moment she had turned eighteen. It was even less surprise that the woman had gone into accounting in college. Everything had always been about a paycheck after her parents had died. Everything had been about money. Her parents life insurance money, the money to bury her grandparents, the lack of money from her brother to care for her, and finally the money paid by the government for her care. Money, and lack thereof, had been the guiding force in her young life.

The last straw had been when her brother had taken his own life after being laid off of his job. Leaving his wife and son, Trent, to fend for themselves. Corrine DeMarco had remarried less than a year after David's death, to a man with more money than sense.

A man in every way David's opposite. A fifth and sixth abandonment.

He stopped counting after that, stopped trying to understand the pain that lay hidden within his mate. He did not want to see the deaths of her wing-mates, Spiral and Eclipse, see the betrayal of Joshua Eddard in his denouncement of anything not human. He stopped trying to know, and instead transmitted everything he knew. The strength in her kindness, the way her lips made that sassy lopsided smile each time she was secretly amused. The endless depths of her love and courage.

"I will never abandon you, light of my spark," he whispered both aloud and through their bond. "Feel the pulse of my spark and know I speak truth. I will never abandon you. I love you."

"It's not fair," she sniffled, clinging to his chest plates as if they were the only thing that kept her from flying away into oblivion.

"It seldom is," he soothed. "We have all lost loved ones in the past."

She shook her head so hard she nearly lost her balance. "No, not that. Not the past. Well, yes, in the past, but also in my present. It's just not fair."

He tried not to frown. "I don't follow you."

"Jazz," she said, startling him with the intensity of her declaration. "Jazz should not have died like that. I lost him before I ever knew him, Ratchet. He's my brother and I never knew him. It's… it's worse than not fair. It's…"

She trailed off as the sobs took control once again. He sat in stunned silence, lost in the impact of her words. Jazz as her brother? It wasn't possible, and yet some part of his spark let it him know that it was. Something more had happened during that brief moment when both their sparks has ceased to pulse, something that he was not privy to.

Memory files unlocked and unfolded before his optics, replaying everything he could both before and after the unintentional spark-freeze. He had experienced a brief loss of system function and the vague impression of a dream. There had not been pain, but to the contrary there had been pleasure. The joy of holding his mate as if she were of his race, and the utter completeness of a spark merge. Even his spark told him that yes, they had merged again, but apparently something else had happened as well.

It had been a moment of unbelievable joy. But there had also been the tiniest sense of loss before he had come to. Looking back on it, he could acknowledge that that feeling was in connection to both his mate and to Jazz, yet… there was something more.

"Your… brother," he repeated carefully, not entirely sure if that was a question or a statement. "How do you know this?"

Lydia took a deep breath, letting it out slowly as she sat back and tried to get a handle on her tears. "I talked to him in the Matrix."

This time it was he that lost his balance. He stumbled backward a step, sitting down hard on the opposite medical berth. "You… what?"

"This wasn't the first time," Lydia continued, wiped at her tears with the back of her hand. "I spoke with him when I was dead at the plane crash. I also spoke with Nova Prime and Prima and—"

She cut off as the medical scan hit her full force. She yelped, arms wrapping around herself instinctively, eyes slamming shut. He wasn't bothering to be nice this time around. That much was obvious by the way her skin felt as if it suddenly had a light sunburn. The scan was deep and thorough, the energy of it more than prickling across her body. She had to clamp her teeth down on her lips to keep from crying out.

"Impossible," he muttered. "Your scan reports that your systems are functioning within designated perimeters. There must be something wrong with the calibration of my sensors."

"No, you're fine," she managed out, taking several deep breaths to push the nausea away. To try and keep her grief from transforming into sudden anger. That had really hurt. "And next time you do that, I better be out due to some powerful drugs. That hurt. A lot."

"It was necessary," he replied, eyes dimming and voice soft as he ran internal scans upon himself. "I needed to know what part of you was malfunctioning, or if fragments of a memory routine had somehow transferred into you from my parts."

"What did your scans just tell you?"

He pinned her with a level look. "That both you and I are fine. Which means one of us isn't."

"Or it means that both you and I are fine," she stated firmly. "And that the problem might be a grumpy medic that refuses to accept the Occam's Razor."

He narrowed his optic guards at her. "Occam's Razor?"

She fought not to sigh. At least when fighting with him, she wasn't so horribly sad anymore. Improvement much? "Occam's Razor," She repeated. "It's a human principle meaning 'the simplest explanation is most likely the correct one."

It took him less than a second to find the principle online. One should not increase, beyond what is necessary, the number of entities required to explain anything. He had to agree with the logic behind it, even if he did not like where he thought his mate was taking this conversation. "And what would be the simplest explanation?" he asked carefully.

"That I'm telling you the truth," she said exasperatedly. "I was in the matrix with Jazz, and Nova and Prima." She thought she saw him wince when she said those last two names. "What, what's wrong with Nova Prime and Prima? Aside from the fact that I think they cheat at poker, that is."

He stared at his mate as if she had suddenly grown a second head. "Accusing those two of cheating at anything is tantamount to treason," he warned. "And it is not possible that you have spoken with either of them. Occam's razor aside, I do not think this principle includes ideas that are outside of the realm of possibility—for either of our races."

The anger rose in her before she could stop it, an overbearing sense of outrage and… and hurt. Hurt that he did not believe her, that he thought she was either mistaken or pulling somehow from memories within him that she shouldn't be able to access.

"Hello, do you even remember who you are talking to?" she snapped, jabbing a finger at his chest plates. "Human with a spark. Human that died and came back. Human that is MATED to you. I'm the freaking poster child for making the impossible into reality. And I'm not broken or lying to you, mate of my spark. I DID speak with Jazz in the Matrix. He ISmy sparkbrother. And whether you like it or not, I'm part of his clan by the will of the All-spark and the Matrix."

She could see the logical, reasonable mech that she knew and loved battling with the stack of illogical and impossible things she'd just slapped him upside the processor with. Deep inside, the spark that made him wasn't trying to be harsh, she knew. It was trying desperately to fuel the many processors assigned to the task of wrapping themselves around her statements.

After what seemed like forever, his optics brightened to their normal amazingly beautiful blue. "I am willing to entertain the notion that you believe what you are saying," he began carefully. "Understand Lydia—"

"My name is not Lydia," she practically growled out, crossing her arms over her chest to keep from reaching for whatever part of his armor she could grab and shaking him for all she was worth. "My name is Phoenix, and I'm aligned with the Autobots. My mate is Ratchet, and my clan before mating was Omega Lykaon. The same as Jazz. And we were both shard sparks at birth, destined to be servants of the All-spark and the race as a whole. Jazz is fulfilling that destiny right now. In the matrix. So don't you dare look at me like I'm crazy or like I'm accessing your memory cores. Because I bet you did not know that bit of information about him."

His optics spun, his processors accessing every bit of memory he had ever possessed… and found, unbelievably, that she was right. He had known about the Omega Lykaon clan. Indeed, Starflare had had many associations with that clan, though bots of such high station like Ratchet and Starflare had to be careful in acknowledging those connections at that time. Omega Lykaon was known to allow the most adoptees to their ranks, including Seekers no less, leading the clan to have a reputation for wild spontaneity and reckless abandon.

Some had even said that Starflare's femme creator had been of Omega Lykaon before she had mated, and passed along traits of that unusual clan to her offspring. It had certainly explained her odd coloring and outlandish ideas. Ideas that Ratchet had come to adore in their too-short courtship. Still, one could not deny that some of the greatest heroes in Cybertronian history hailed from Omega Lykaon.

Heroes like Jazz, himself. What he hadn't known about his fallen friend was the fact that he had been a shard sparkling.

The pain had not dulled in the millennia that had passed since Starflare had offlined, stabbing him anew and unexpectedly with a blast of memory. He had locked the thoughts of her away so long ago, the bit of memory allocated to her buried and unused… until Lydia's plane crashed and he found himself in a revelation of the spark that had nearly crippled him.

He had learned that day, that horribly tragic day, that he had finally fallen in love. It should not have surprised him in the slightest that he had fallen hard for a member of Omega Lykaon. Some part of him must have recognized that Lydia would end up of that clan. It was the only explanation as to why he had thought of Starflare the entire time he was rescuing Lydia.

Rescuing a femme that was wild and free and unbelievably beautiful… just as Starflare had been. Just as Jazz had been.

His processors navigated away from that sea of pain, pulling him forward to the present. Optics refocused, looking at the femme held in his hand, noting the crystalline trail of tears that fell across her right cheek from her human eye. Her optic only misted, and a detached part of himself—the part still in a state of shock from her revelations—latched onto that medical fact like a rock in the center of a maelstrom. This was something logical, something real… something that wasn't based on faith. It grounded in him in a sense, made reality seem all that more stable beneath his foot pads.

She would never cry tears from her optic, he remembered. He had had to rework the organic tear ducts to apply moisture to the optic core else the implant remain dry and chaff the surrounding tissue constantly. Her spark, itself, had seen to the rewiring of her neural net to divert such a waste of lubricant as tears to other necessary functions. Ratchet stared at those human tears, forcing his processors out of the stasis they had put themselves into.

"I never knew," Lydia was saying, both hands placed above his spark gently. "Her name was Starflare, and she meant so much to you. I… I can understand why you never talk of her. Feeling that pain, seeing what you saw happen to her…"

Her voice trailed off, choked by the sob that lodged in her throat, from the memories that flowed freely between them. Her head came forward, resting against her hands, and he felt her shoulders shaking in silent grief. That same grief flooded down the stream of their bond, slapping at his spark with wave after wave of fresh loss. Feeling that grief, that raw tearing sensation when Starflare had been forced offline was one thing, witnessing the desecration of her corpse was another. Both memories had been buried beneath layer after layer of duty, hidden behind the necessity of what he had to do to protect those he had left in this accursed war.

But feeling it, utterly feeling Starflare's loss as it was reflected back at him from the bond, and feeling the losses from his mate as well… it was too much.

Both hands wrapped around her, sheltering her against his chest, holding to her as if she were the only thing in the universe that kept him grounded to reality. And for the first time since the war began, he let himself truly grieve for Starflare…

And together they grieved anew for Jazz.

~*~*~*~*~*~

The rage would not leave him.

It circled his processors like a buzzing organic insect, just out of his visual range and always one second ahead of him when he tried to take a mental swipe at it. The conversation with that despicable Ratbat interrupted his concentration when he had tried to organize his precious reports, chased him down the hallways when he tried to escape even that. And always, like an unwanted companion, the image of Elayna Feugo fighting for her life against Barricade danced along in tandem with it.

It had left him only one place to go.

Prowl straightened to his full height, pulling the last of the grenade fragments from his leg plating. They were fake, of course, nothing more than bits of plastic with an industrial adhesive slathered across them to mimic the impact and damage of a real high velocity scatter grenade. His systems had dutifully shut down that portion of his frame after the device struck him, rendering that limb useless and his transform sequence equally as inoperable.

Still, he had battled his way through the obstacle course simulations, ignoring the warning signals flying across his vision as the program Wheeljack had designed overtook his normal protocols. He was wounded, it had told him, severely disabled from multiple blasts that penetrated his armor, his systems unable to take the strain much longer. Those were pushed to the back of his processors, and, snarling, he defeated his final opponent before his spark gave out at last.

His simulated spark, at any rate.

The humans monitoring his progress stared at the second-in-command with a kind of muted horror. Never before had they witnessed such outright abandon from the normally reserved and cautious bot. It was not to say that they hadn't witnessed equally as amazing acts from other Autobots like Ironhide for instance. But never from Prowl. And they certainly had not seen that level of destructive firepower from the logical bot before.

No one questioned him as his systems came back online not a nano-klik after he had fallen, the simulation program in his processors deactivating and tucking itself into the holding queue for later use. Most of them watched in a shocked kind of state as Prowl wordlessly knelt to remove the combat debris from his armor.

Most of them… but not all.

Maggie strode across the mock-battlefield, though the word "strode" was more of an understatement. She more stomped than strode, the look in her eyes enough to have most of the soldiers present moving quickly out of her way. Only one bothered to stop her, but even then it was only for a moment as he confirmed that the simulation was shut down and no active weapons were present on the field. Top Military clearance as an attaché to Director Keller or not, no one was about to let her walk into an area where armor—for both Autobots and humans—was necessary.

The wait somewhat destroyed her grand and annoyed entrance as Prowl flicked a glance in her direction as he continued to clean his armor. Still, she managed to build up to a rather impressive rage by the time she stomped over to him.

"You want to tell me what that was all about?"

He lifted his optic guards slightly, regarding her a moment before he turned back to his work. "I was scheduled for simulation practice."

"Practice for what? Scaring the hell out of everyone around you and then blowing yourself up? If that was the case, then bravo. You accomplished that rather well."

The look he gave her wasn't entire friendly. "While I appreciate the feelings of those around me, this is a war. It is not always polite and civilized, and unlike your race, there are no 'rules of engagement' between Autobot and Decepticon. When we fight, it is to extinguish the other's spark. There is no other way."

"That wasn't what you were doing out there, and you know it," she replied levelly, her hands balled into fists and those fists planted on her slender hips. "And if you think you can just ignore me—which I know is what's going through those processors of yours right this instant—you're wrong. You are my friend, Prowl, and friends watch out for each other. Especially when they are doing something really stupid."

He picked the last of the debris from his armor, straightening to his full height. "Please see my previous comment on scheduled practice," he replied, stepping over her. "If you require further discourse with me, it will have to wait. I need the attentions of the wash racks before this adhesive destroys my paint."

"You can't ignore me, Prowl."

"I was not planning to," he tossed back, without bothering to turn around. "Again, after I see to the wash racks—"

"Then we can take the record of your run through the simulation to Ironhide and Optimus together," she finished with mock-cheer, taking a small measure of satisfaction at the way his wing doors stiffened sharply. "I'm certain they both would love to discuss your brand new 'simulation techniques' at great length."

He was trapped and he knew it. The need to spin out a thousand different scenarios on how to escape this situation was useless. Somehow he should have known that, while he had disabled the recording devices himself when entering the simulation—a trick he had learned from Skids and Mudflap after their last attempt to replace the adhesive in the grenades with a substance the humans called confetti—someone would have managed to record at least a portion of it. As he glanced back at his human friend, he realized she had not only recorded a portion of it, but most likely ALL of it.

He was trapped. And that fact did nothing for his rising temper.

"The alternative?" he growled, turning to face her, eyes flickering with a touch of crimson.

"Go wash up," Maggie replied, waving a hand in the direction of the wash racks. Still, her voice softened slightly. "And meet me on the northern beach. We'll talk about it then."

The nod he gave was curt and barely visible. Yet he knew he had no choice but to swallow his rage and agree to her terms. Once he stepped off that course, however, the buzzing anger returned, bringing with it the images of the human woman and all the hell she must have endured at the hands of her Decepticon captors.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Just five more steps, he told himself as the world spun hellishly out of control. Five more tiny, insignificant steps and he could rest.

Nausea twisted his gut, wrapping his body in wave after wave of agony. Not that he could feel much of it anymore, he noted with a sick sense of amusement. Already his flesh was becoming cold, numb, the sensations of his feet beneath his legs almost nonexistent. He was more than likely bleeding to death and he knew it. But there was nothing for him to do about it now, not when he had this one last important mission to complete.

His left leg gave out for a moment, and he slammed against the far wall, spitting blood as he clawed at the smooth texture, trying to keep his balance. He knew that if he let himself fall, he would never get up again. He had to keep moving. He had to complete his mission.

Or others were going to die.

The pain was incredible, eating at his consciousness and dragging his mind further and further into darkness. He soldiered on, putting one foot in front of the other. He'd lost his way twice already, the keen intellect that he had so prided himself on slipping away drop by drop as his blood continued to flow. Still, he pushed forward, seeking anyone that would help.

The hallways were deserted, empty as the night shift had taken over. No one would bother checking the brig for a while now, he thought bitterly. After the last changing of the guards, why would anyone stop in to check on things? After all, they were used to Prowl making his unannounced visits at least twice during the night. The extra manpower was diverted elsewhere, the extra money likewise tossed to another pile for budget concerns.

He made a promise to himself that, should he survive this, he would put in for the right to be the next budget liaison to this freaking base. He had more than paid for the right in his past service to his country, and now with the very blood of his body.

Just four more steps. Four more steps and he could rest.

Whimpers left him, his shattered jaw competing with his broken nose for which part of his head hurt the most. It prevented him from calling out, from reaching for a comm. switch and getting the help he needed. But then again, that was why they did it. They needed the extra time to escape. And the moment they realized that he would not help them, that he would not betray his own kind or his country, they had turned on him in the most brutal way possible.

Though he should have seen it coming, the way the little Decepticon had seductively spoken to them, the little hints dropped when it argued with Prowl. It was up to something, and that something was going to be very bad. He had learned the hard way over many years that nothing connected with the All-Spark or the Decepticons had a way of coming out good. Hence his utter objections to the Autobots as well. They were connected whether or not they liked to admit it.

It was only a matter of time before they turned on the human race as well. But now was not the time for that bit of political debate. Now… now he needed to warn them.

Just three more steps. Three more and then rest.

The wound in his chest made a horrible sucking, gurgling sound with each breath he took. Though it was a relatively light wound compared to what the others had sustained. The medic called Jolt had taken the first blast, innocently coming to repair the prisoner per a request that had been filed. He never saw the injection needle until it had pierced his outstretched hand.

And, oh god, the screaming. He had never heard screaming like that in his entire life. Not in the war, and certainly not when interrogating any life form that had come across Sector Seven. He had clapped his hands over his ears to blot it out, and even his fellow human prisoner had gone white-faced at what they had seen. It felt like forever that the mech screamed and twitched… and finally lay still.

Jolt's optics were still flickering off and on as the putrid little creature leapt on him, sucking energon from his lines and ripping off bits of metal here and there to repair itself. At that point, he had leaned forward and vomited. The reek in the air let him know that his fellow human prisoner had done the same. But that didn't stop the other man from jumping on to the Decepticon's offer.

Which was why he had to get to Prime right away. He had to know. So many lives were now in danger.

Just two more steps. Two and then rest.

They had finally finished beating him nearly to death when the other mech walked into the room. Kup was his name, if memory served, and Kup had tried to do the smart thing. He had tried to signal others to help, but the jamming device within the little Con had activated again. And by the time he had gotten his wits about him, it was too late. The human accomplice had angled himself in such a way that Kup could not move without harming him. The Autobot had no way of knowing that the human in question—the one he was trying to protect—was in league with the Con.

Captain Joshua Eddard, former hero in the war against the Decepticons, had joined up with the enemy… all for the promise of having Lydia back in his arms.

Just one more step. One more and …

The doors to Optimus Prime's office parted, and the occupants of the room turned in unison to watch Tom Banachek tumble to the floor. But not before he managed to get out three hardly understandable words:

"Ratbat. Escape. Help."

And the world went black.