What Once Was Lost

by J.M.Spellbound

Jynx was a lot of things; a murderer, a thief, a liar, a cheat, a mistake, a psychopath, but of all the things she was an Autobot was definitely not one of them. If these glitches actually thought this was a good idea then they were crazier then she was. No matter though, in the end they were just a way to get what she wanted, at least that was how it started out. SS/OC/SS

97. Random Segments of Code

Disclaimer: I do not own Transformers. Only the plot and OCs.

Happy belated Holidays and New Year everyone! I was planning to have this chapter up on New Years, but life got in the way. I did get it done though. *dances* Gambit decided to stop being an aft and let me write him. I hope you guys enjoy!

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Chapter 97

Random Segments of Code

Once, a long, long time ago, Jynx had called Gambit dramatic.

It had been a joke, at the time. Or well, it had been as close to a joke as she had known how to make back then.

They were free. Free, hungry, and confused. But free all the same. They had returned themselves to a world they hadn't seen since they were small. Lost out in the middle of no where in the aftermath of a war they hadn't known had even been fought.

To nothing but ruins and silence.

And he had laughed.

Oh, how the mech had laughed.

Deep in her spark, Jynx remembered being confused. For the concept of wondering if he had finally lost his marbles was too beyond her. Such blind faith she had had in him at the time. The possibility that Gambit might have finally snapped couldn't even begin to process.

So, she had just been confused.

She remembered being hunkered down there in the sand—because sand, how long had it been since she felt real free sand—running her claws over the proof of Cybertron and freedom beneath her peds. She remembered staring at the hulking black mech as he tossed his square helm to the sky and laughed like she had never seen him laugh before. Arsine had been at his side—as always—thin red optics rolling at his antics but looking a little concerned all the same.

She hadn't understood at the time.

It had taken much hurt and loneliness for vorns after for her to realize it.

She hadn't known he was laughing at the cold poetic irony of it all.

Free.

They were free.

Free to starve on a dead world that had been left to rust. The war they hadn't known they played a major part in tore it all apart. The Decepticons and Autobots had destroyed everything they fought over. Then, they chased each other into the stars.

What they left?

The NAILS. The Neutrals. The No-Ones.

They left them, and the wake of their war, to die in the ruins of their hate.

Gambit had freed them, brought them home, to a dead world.

So here they were, free to die.

He had found that extremely funny all those vorns ago. It had taken what felt like a lifetime after that for Jynx to understand why he did.

Now though, she wondered if he found this the same kind of funny.

She thought she might. If she allowed herself to drop her guard for a moment. She couldn't though. She wouldn't.

For as soon as the tiniest bit of warmth dripped along the frayed edges of a long cold bond, it shut down so fast it hurt. It took everything inside her not to flinch. To not to show the weakness. For he would exploit it. He would dig it out and wear it raw if she allowed it to show.

Dramatic as he was, he'd probably think it was funny. That is, if Gambit could find things funny anymore.

She wasn't sure.

She cared—deep down in a place that would never go quiet—but she couldn't let it show. Not with Jazz in an energon covered heap behind her legs and a hallway full of firepower around her. She wondered, for the shortest of moments, if Prowl was stupid enough to pull the trigger of the bead he had on the side of Gambit's helm.

She wondered if he thought it would work.

This close—just a step or two away—a rifle that size, it would hurt. It would burn. But it would do little more then that. Besides make him angry. The same way shooting Ironhide, Megatron, or Optimus with a little sniper rifle wasn't going to do much good. Their armor was too thick. Even in places like that.

She knew he must know it. Prowl was too smart not too. But knowing something was hopeless and wishing for it anyway . . . well . . . that was pretty much her whole life at this point.

Wasn't it?

The stalled tension that hovered between them after her quiet question was broken a moment later. Gambit having apparently reached the end of his figuring. Letting out a heavy snort, he shook out his massive shoulders. Letting the looming edge of a pounce he'd been in drop back to rest lazy on his heels. The energon dripping steadily down his back slid down his relaxing wings to drip, drip, drip onto the cracked floor behind him.

Between one moment and the next, that slightly wondering expression on his face closed off. The moment in which Jynx thought she might reach him blowing away between the next blink. It hurt, but she expected it. So, she managed to keep her chin up.

She would not let the challenge drop from her. Not yet.

He was still too focused. No matter that he might respect her stance and her choice. He was still here, angry, and bitter.

There was still a ghost standing between them.

But then, there always would be.

"Mech," He rumbled out the word in a soft tone, those fire red optics finally sliding way, but there was nothing like a request in it. It was a demand, and the bots around her would do well to follow it. Trouble was, those red optics landed on Prowl and the gun he had sighted to his helm. "I suggest you put that away before you get yourself hurt."

If her spark didn't feel like it was going to implode, she'd have laughed at that.

As it was, all she could do was slowly let the tension out of her crouch. Slowly, she let herself come fully upright. Not taking her optics off Gambit, she still recognized the peace offering that it was.

It was as much as the hulking mech would ever step off. Ever admit defeat.

It wasn't much, but she glowed a little inside with the pride of it all the same.

Trouble was, Prowl didn't appreciate it.

And she really didn't think she'd stand a chance of stopping Gambit twice in one orn.

Luckily, Soundwave saved them from the coming disaster. Much later, in a very different mindset, she'd wonder how much of his life the long-limbed silver mech had spent doing that very thing.

The soft clearing of a vocal processor brought them all up short. The low growls and rumbling engines of the mechs around her tripping up and trailing off as they all let their attention slide down the hall. Somehow, Jynx was not surprised to find Soundwave standing there easy as anything. All long-limbed grace and easy stance. He looked for all the world as if nothing in the universe was wrong. Long arms simply crossed over his thin chest and that oh so stoic face, calm. The only outward expression of anything was the slightest tilt of his helm. The slightest narrowing of his deep red optics.

Well, that, and the tri colored form of Wheeljack peaking out from behind his back.

Again, another time, Jynx would have found that funny. Right now? Not so much.

She still hadn't spent enough time with the inventor to learn what all the colors his helm-fins flashed meant. Somehow, she didn't think that pale, pasty orange was a good one though. Hunkered there behind the slim form of Soundwave the inventor flicked pale blue optics around the lot of them. Lingering on her and Gambit for perhaps too long to be polite, but it matter very little in the wake of Soundwave's quiet voice.

"You requested a lab space to work, correct?"

Gambit blinked.

She figured every other bot missed it. But she didn't.

Oh no.

She hooked it and held it in the narrowing behind her still darkened visor.

He was startled.

For the shortest of moments, Gambit was thrown off. The slightest twitch in audials. The slightest flicker of his wings. The slow blink of those fire red optics.

Then it was gone. As quickly as it had appeared. There one moment and gone the next.

Still, it had been there. Jynx was not soon going to forget that.

"Yes," Gambit drawled; voice low but as big as ever. He shifted his posture in a roll of his shoulders. Taking himself out of the staring contest he'd been in with Prowl. Seeming not at all bothered by the circle of hostility around him. He flexed his fist around the chain wrapped there. Helm tilting ever so slightly to the side while he regarded the thin mech.

"We have one prepared." Soundwave went on, after the lingering silence that showed Gambit would give no more. "It is not much. As you can see, we're in a bit of a state. But the Prime stated Jynx asked for myself and Wheeljack to assist you. We will do as much as we can."

"Any good at hacking deep code, are you?" Gambit curled his upper lip in just a hint of a sneer. She'd known when she told Optimus, Gambit wouldn't be happy to share space. He would not be happy to need help. He expected to throw down a corpse in front of her and have her figure out something that had haunted them for most their lives.

She knew she couldn't though.

She was having trouble even breathing around the possibility of the deep code hidden away in her mind. She shoved away the concept as soon as it rolled to the forefront of her mind.

If she didn't, she would likely find herself a trembling ball in Sideswipe's lap. Considering how very little time they had for that, it probably wasn't a good idea. So she would beg help, and hope.

She didn't know what else to do. Failure wasn't . . . well Gambit hadn't come here for her fail.

Soundwave regarded that slight sneer for a long few blinks, then he nodded. "Yes."

Surprising enough, Gambit nodded back. Those fire red optics slipping back down to regard Jynx once more.

"And you need their help?"

She jerked one hard dip of her chin.

He snorted hard. "Why?"

"You know why." She shot right back. Because if he didn't, he wouldn't have come here. He wouldn't have needed her. She was a better hacker then him, way better, but they both knew she wasn't perfect. She had learned brute force hacking. That was what she was good at.

Brute force was not going to help them now. If it would, they'd have solved that little problem vorns ago.

He seemed satisfied with her answer though. Shifting his hand around the chain in his grip for a moment, he nodded again.

"Fine."

She saw the only opening she was likely to get, and pressed. It was now or never. "Jazz too."

He swung back around to glare at her with his fangs bared.

She didn't give an inch. She couldn't allow herself too. Sensors pined, chin held high, claws flexed, she bared her fangs right back.

"Jazz too, or go and solve it all yourself."

He snarled.

The air around them heated, a slight creak echoing through the walls around them.

Jynx would not budge. She would work his weakness though. "I need help. You need help. This will help. Get it over with and be done with it."

Or go away.

It hung there between them.

Neither would say it, but they both knew it.

Jynx had found her fighting ground. She had found the ground—the bots—she would stand and fight for. She would not be threatened off of it. None of his growling or powers would move her from it.

And by the light in those burning red optics, he was slowly coming to realize it.

They needed each other. They both knew it. It was the only reason they weren't ripping in to each other. The only reason Gambit had bothered to come.

But Jynx had more than just him now.

She was no longer that half-grown youngling trailing through the sand after his and Arsine's shadows. She would no longer come when he called. She would no longer jump when he demanded it.

She had grown up and found a family of her own.

They . . . well they were not family anymore. Not when he slammed shut the slight drip of warmth that had wanted to grow back between them.

She loved him, would always love him, but she no longer thought he was capable of it.

She would not risk what she loved now because of him.

She would not dip her chin to please him.

She belonged to no mech, not anymore.

Not even him.

The light in those red optics knew it too.

Maybe that was why he bared his fangs at her, but turned away. Tightening his grip on the chain, he hauled the corpse up and started down the hall.

"So be it. If you trust them so. Let them see."

It was a taunt, one that hurt, but she kept her chin up.

She kept it up until Soundwave turned, Wheeljack hurrying off in front of him, and lead Gambit down the hall.

Then, she sagged.

Likely would have gone to her knees if she didn't refuse to. Still, she felt like a sparkling's puppet with its strings snapped. Drained but wired up. She felt like vibrating out of her armor while also wanting to curl in a ball and hide. Her processor hurt and her spark growled. So many emotions at war within her, but she didn't have time to wonder about or question.

There would be time for that later.

There would have to be, or she might go crazy, she thought. However, right now, she had a sire to pick up. A sire she . . . well she thought she could call that now.

Twisting, she paid no mind to the twins, to Nook, to Thundercracker or Bumblebee. She couldn't focus on Prowl either. All she could do was crouch down there before Jazz. Visor clearing, she darted her optics around his busted armor and leaking energon. She wanted to reach out, she wanted to wrap him up, she wanted to cruse at him for being stupid.

Instead, she let silver optics dart up to blue, and she whispered. "I'm sorry."

Then, he did something really crazy; he smiled.

It wasn't much of a smile. The energon on his lips made it hard to see. It was little more of a quirk of the corner of his lips really. But it was there.

It was . . . proud?

She thought that might be the word.

Shocked, awed, and grateful.

All that and more swam in his optics. In those bright blue optics he'd given her. That had damned her. That had looked at her and seen something other then a snarling wild, angry thing in a cage. That had challenged her, and softened for her, and offered comfort before they had any real reason too. That had sparked with anger, protectiveness, and compassion for her.

That had blown wide with regret and shock at her. That had chased her across half a planet and then let her beat the slag out of him. All without an inch of blame to her. They had simply begged her. Begged her to listen to him. To let him explain.

Then, they had accepted her. They had watched quietly and carefully from the background why she worked out for herself what she thought of them.

Now, she faced them head on.

And . . . she forgave them.

Crouched there staring into them, she wondered if she could ever convince them to forgive themselves.

Jazz coughed, the sound ragged in his bruised and busted throat. The sound yanking her from her thoughts as she darted her hands forward. Pulling at him as gently as she could while Prowl and Bumblebee appeared at her sides.

He was busted up more along the back then the front. Energon seeping up from torn wires and busted armor. Internally, he was likely in more danger then anything else. The energon bubbling down from his lips as he coughed spoke of that.

Her claws trembled against his chest as she watched his mate slide in beside him and try to lever him more up right. Bumblebee hoovered like his name sake at the other side. Anxious in a bubble of worry, but Jynx could pay him no mind. Not when Jazz coughed.

"Don't say that." He scolded her. He was sitting on the floor leaking because of her brute of a brother and he was scolding her about it.

She huffed at him, shaking her helm. "I am. I'm sorry. I didn't want him to hurt you."

"I kind of had that one coming, sweatspark." The word slipped out. He didn't mean for it to, but it did. The sucked in breath afterward that was about to be an apology for it turned into a rattling cough that made Prowl tighten his hands.

Jynx didn't hiss at him though.

Her claws ran nervously over his leaking armor and whispered. "No, you didn't."

Confused, and too wary to hope just yet, Jazz darted his optics up to hold hers again. "I kind of did."

"No." She glared at him then. In that stubborn little scrunched up face she made sometimes that made Jazz want to wrap her up and hide her in a blanket. She looked so damn young when she glared at him like that. So much like a youngling she had never been allowed to be. He wanted to hold her when she did that. He wanted to take her into his arms and hide her from the world. He wanted to call her sparkling and his sparkling and keep her safe like he had neglected to do for so long. Instead, he just smirked at her with energon on his lip.

He hurt like he'd been run over by a bison.

But his spark glowed inside.

"No, you didn't." She snapped at him, rocking on her toes so she could glare at him fully. "Not from him, you didn't."

He did though.

Jazz knew it too well.

He wouldn't argue with her about it though. Not right now. Not while she was looking at him like that. Not when her spark opened up a link it had closed not so long ago. Opened up and let him feel.

To let him in.

He coughed on a sudden sob, glad he could pretend it was pain. Prowl's flat expression was not impressed, but inside, his spark bounced as well. Picking up on the comet-tail of Jazz's throwing feeling down the bond link. In the warmth, and the happy, happy, happy, thank you little one, there you are, home, you are here, sparkling, my sparkling, home that his spark all but shouted between them.

Then the little femme flushed a happy grin. Her spark bouncing with it and swaying.

Primus, she was going to kill him.

Seriously.

He was going to die.

His sparkling was too sweet. Too forgiving. Too . . . much.

She let him in. She forgave him.

He didn't deserve it. Primus knew he didn't deserve it, but he latched hold and drew it in all the same. He was too selfish to let it go. He was too desperate to right all that he had wronged. He wanted too bad to show her what kind of family they could be.

He wanted, and so he took.

He was slag because of it, but he did it anyway. Mentally, Prowl scolded him for the thought, but he didn't care. Prowl's spark—drawn along by the mate-bond—slid in with his own along the bond link and she didn't mind. Her spark actually seemed, happy about it. Jazz was going to tease him about the please wiggle in his doorwings for that.

Later.

After he stopped grinning.

Jynx ducked her helm, suddenly overwhelmed by all of it, but unwilling to shut it out. Thankfully, she was saved from having to talk too much about it. Because suddenly, Ratchet appeared.

"What the ever-loving slag have you lot of idiots done now!?"

Rocking to her heels she brought herself up and out of the way while Bumblebee darted from the path of the grumbling medic as well. Only Prowl held his ground, there on his knees beside his mate, while Ratchet barreled his way to them. Dropping down before the pair of them, he yanked Jazz closer and went to checking him. All the while yelling at them.

"I can't leave you alone for ten klicks! Is the damn city falling down around our helms not enough for you!? You have to go and get crushed!? What the slag mech? Did you hide a bison in here or something? What the slag did you do?!"

"Gambit." Thundercracker supplied evenly.

The slightest of stall in those frantically flying hands, then Ratchet growled at him over his shoulder. "What?"

Jynx stepped back, finding herself in the shadow of the twins closing in around her before she knew it. She couldn't lie though. Not to Ratchet. Not about this. "Gambit recognized him."

Ratchet's hands stalled in the process of prying at Jazz's chest armor. Those rich blue optics flickering her way to hold for a long moment.

She wanted to hide from it.

If she was being honest with herself. For she was ashamed of him for it.

Surprised?

No.

She had known Gambit would do it.

But she regretted that he did. She regretted the way it might make all of them look at her. But then again, when had Ratchet ever looked at her the way she figured he was supposed to?

Between one blink and the next he wrinkled his nose, snorted, and looked back to the work before him.

"Knew he was Mister, did he? Well I'm not surprised. It was two mechlings seeing you that made you leave that place anyway, Jazz."

"Hey," The silver mech wheezed when Ratchet yanked at his arm and started spreading gel against his leaking sides. "I tried to find them, you know."

"We all try to do lots of things." Ratchet grumbled back at him. "Usually, we fail. Doesn't matter now. All that matters is what is. And what is, is you and her covered in energon again. I'm getting tired of it. Jynx!"

He barked her name, startling her in her slouch. She perked back up. Yanking her gaze to find the yellow and red mech glancing back at her once again.

"Yeah?"

"You're leaking." He muttered it, hands still flying over Jazz while his optics darted up and down her. "He hurt you to?"

At that, she looked down. Arms lifting, she let her gaze rake down her front in an assessment. She was, she found, leaking. As soon as she realized it, she recognized the annoyed pinging in her HUD of error alerts and notifications. Mentally, she scrubbed them away. She'd been ignoring them all her life; it was as easy as blinking now.

Instead, she visually assessed. Hairline fractures spread like glass-runs across her armor. Down her arms, across her legs, and a few places around her mid-section. All places that had borne the brunt of Gambit's temper.

She was not surprised to find them there. Not at all. They actually weren't anywhere near as bad as they could be. Little streams of energon slid sluggish and slow down her bright plating, but they were already starting to close up.

It was nothing.

Nothing at all compared to what he could do.

To others at least.

Suddenly, Jynx understood the look in Ratchet's optics. She understood the tension in the twins as they hovered around her. In the way Nook crossed his arms and glared at her a few paces away. In the way they had all circled up the moment she clashed with a mech that thoroughly outclassed her.

They had thought he would hurt her.

She had known that he wouldn't.

Deep down, in the oldest, bases places in her coding and spark; Jynx knew. She knew Gambit would never hurt her.

Not really. Not . . . physically at least. He simply wasn't capable of it. He never had been.

They didn't believe that though . . . and . . . how was she supposed to explain that?

"He . . . no . . . no he didn't. He won't."

Nook growled.

Jynx glanced at him, but figured Ratchet was the place to start.

"Yeah, that's why it looks like a bomb went off in here, I suppose." The medic rolled his optics, turned back to Jazz and kept snarking. "I'm sure he won't lay a claw on you. I'm sure this is all fine. He's not going to blow up the whole damn city or anything like that as soon as he feels like it. This whole thing with Megatron is going to go swimmingly if this is how he reacts to Meister."

"He's hated Meister as long as I've been alive." She hated the way it made Jazz flinch but it was the only way she knew how to explain it. "He's just angry at me. He's always been angry. That's not new. He won't hurt me. And . . . I won't let him hurt any of you. He'll have to go through me . . . so he won't. I . . . he . . . he just won't. He's gonna want to. But he won't."

Ratchet glanced over his shoulder at her one more time. She tried to pretend she couldn't feel all the other optics either.

"Uh-huh," He muttered. "That's why you're leaking."

Her sensors fluttered at that, another glance down at her plating. She . . . she didn't have an answer for that.

"Look, Youngling." It wasn't patronizing when he said it, but well, she didn't think he had the patience for her circles right now. "We've got too much else to worry about, if you say he's not going to kill anyone, then alright. But you mark my words, when I have to say I told you so later. I'm not gonna be happy about it, and I'm going to bust a welder over his helm for it."

Jynx actually really wanted to see that.

It would be glorious. If she won't have to save his aft afterward. Still, the absolute shock on Gambit's face would be priceless.

If only he won't kill a medic for so much as looking at him funny.

It would almost be worth it.

"For now though, why don't you go follow after the giant train wreck? The last thing we need is Wheeljack pissing him off. There is too much down there that will blow up if he decides to start mentally shattering stuff around him."

Oh.

Yeah.

That was a really good point. She was halfway though twisting to head down the hall when she skidded to a stop, slidding her gaze back to Jazz.

"Umm, Jazz . . . ?"

"I'll be along as soon as old Hatchet here lets me up, Sweetspark. Won't be long. Go on."

She caught those bright blue optics, nodded, and headed down the hall. Somehow, she wasn't surprised that only a bit of their self-imposed escort followed. Bee stayed with the others, and oddly enough TC did too. Sides, Sunny, and Nook followed her though.

They only made it around a few corners before Nook snapped as well.

"What the pit was that?"

She wasn't at all surprised by the growl in his voice. Nor in the way he fell into step beside her. His doorwings hiked high over his shoulders, tense, and rattling with his emotions. Long, elegant claws clenched and relaxed at his side while the brightly colored mech tried to rein himself in.

She knew it was taking a great deal for him to not shake her like a foolish pup. She understood he was upset, and there was a great deal more he was going to get upset about later, but Ratchet was right. They didn't have the time for all that right now. No matter how much they might need it.

All she could do was keep heading down the hall, glancing sidelong at him as she sighed. "That's Gambit."

"Yes," Nook drawled, that smooth richness to his voice drawing it out into a scold without even trying. If she wasn't so wired up about everything else, she'd have probably flinched at it. "I gathered that, Love. It was kind of hard to miss. You know with the giant-ness and the moving things with his mind. Which, thank you by the way, for leaving that out of all your stories!"

Jynx shrugged. "He actually moves stuff with his spark. Not his mind."

"JYNX!"

And at that, she did flinch. Drawing up short to turn and meet his gaze head on when he came to a stop there in the hall. Tension—fear, anger, shock, confusion—it pulsed around his filed like an open beacon. It flowed from his spark even more so. She was almost tempted to try and filter the link a little bit if only to get some of the intensity out of it. She'd never dare to do it though. Not to him.

At this point, she was afraid it might break him.

Heaving there in front of her she watched as those two-tone optics darted her up one side and down the other. Assessing, cataloging, and figuring. She wasn't sure what he was looking for; a reason maybe, but she knew he wasn't finding it. She knew in the way his doorwings were still quivering and his knuckles were tight.

She couldn't even dare make herself look up at the twins shadowed there just behind the two of them. All she could do was drop her gaze and shrug her shoulders.

"You'd have never believed me." She whispered it, because she knew it was an excuse. She knew, deep down, that it wasn't even true.

She hated how much the huff that left him for it sounded like it hurt too.

"When," Nook whispered right back at her. There was a hiss in it. More of the hurt she knew she was causing. She just didn't know how to stop it. She didn't know what to do. She didn't know how to explain. "When have I ever. Once. In the whole time you have known me. When have I ever not believed you?"

Her gaze dropped fully away, sensors pinning down in their grooves. She scuffed a clawed ped against the floor and tried not to feel like a caught-out youngling.

"I just . . . ." Swallowing hard, she forced herself to lift her chin and hold his gaze. "I just . . . didn't want to remember."

The hurt fell away from his stance then. His expression shifting into a resigned sort of frustration. He at least stopped dripping his hurt down their bond. Instead, he shifted his stance, crossed his arms, and regarded her with a tired confusion.

"I can respect that."

Yeah, she knew. Didn't make any of it easier though. "That's not what you were mad about in the first place though."

It was a bit of a dig, but he kind of deserved it.

The slightest twitch at the corner of his lips said he knew it too. "No. No, it wasn't."

She rolled her shoulders and dipped her chin.

"Well, go on then. All three of you. Let me have it."

Sideswipe all but exploded in a waving of limbs and whispered shout. "Are you out of your freaking helm! You attacked him!? He could have squished you!"

Sliding her gaze up, she caught the frantic look in the red mech's optics. One she wasn't sure he was aware he was making, let alone broadcasting in his field. She said nothing about it though. Instead, she simply stood there, watching.

Flailing his hands about like he was hoping they'd find an answer for him in their grasping. He didn't so much as glare as he did stare. It wasn't an angry one, not really. He just looked like he felt he needed to keep his optics on her. Like she might do something incredibly stupid if he didn't.

He probably wasn't too far off that guess if she was being honest.

Yet, it was Sunstreaker that drew the most of her focus. For he didn't even move. Standing there still as a statue, field pulled tight to his form, those dark blue optics gazed steadily back at her. He was deliberately trying to hide what he was thinking. She doubted he was even broadcasting much to Sideswipe in that moment.

The notion made her itch under her armor.

She didn't like that blankness he painted over his expression. She didn't care for the pinch between his optics while he stared down at her.

She wasn't surprised, but she still didn't like it.

There hadn't been much thought gone into leaping at Gambit. Only a strut deep realization that if she didn't stop him, he'd start with Jazz and wasn't likely to stop until half this home was dead. For they would try to stop him, and they would fail. Jynx was the only one here that stood a chance against his temper. It wasn't a very good chance, but it was a chance.

That didn't mean any mech around her now was going to like it though.

In fact, they hated it.

She knew why to, but that didn't mean she had to hand it to them.

Instead, she simply stood there. Watching Sunstreaker watch her while Sideswipe huffed, and Nook grumbled.

Then, quietly. "Why?"

It was a deeper question then it sounded like on the surface. Jynx didn't need to feel his field to know that. Though maybe she did need to have spent as much time around the big golden mech as she had. For she doubted she was meant to see the nervous glint in his optic. However, she did. She couldn't let herself ignore it either. No matter how much she wanted to shove it all down and rush after the walking chaos that was her eldest brother. Her spark wouldn't let her. For as confused as it was over the link suddenly near it again, it had far more pull toward that split life before her.

The question though, how was she supposed to answer it?

How did she explain?

How did she make them see what she couldn't fully grasp herself?

Jaw working for a moment, she tried to find a better string of words then what she had. Something that would sound better then what she knew deep down in her spark. What they were would not be good enough, but it was all she had.

"Because," Expression twisting in a frustrated crease she finally just sighed. "Because he won't hurt me."

She knew it wouldn't be good enough as soon as the words left her mouth. She'd known it when they were in her spark. It was just all she had.

Predictably, Nook was not satisfied with them.

"You see, Love." He muttered, doorwings twitching behind his back. "You've told me that before. You've said it after I picked you up leaking off the street. After I pieced you back together. After I picked glass out of your hide. After I held you when you cried. You've told me that repeatedly. No matter how much it wasn't true. No matter how many times the big bastard got slagged and beat the living pit out of you."

Her helm steadily lowered the more his fangs flashed with each word until she was gazing at her toes as he closed the distance between them. Standing just a few breaths away from her while he went on.

"I don't give a damn what you want to think, hope, or pray about him. The truth is I've dealt with one of your big brutes of a brother before. I know just what the last one was willing to do to you. He sold you out! So, don't you do it. Don't you dare do it to me again. Don't you tell me a mech you haven't seen in over eighty vorns is going to be anything. You don't know him, Jynx. Not anymore. The mechling you cling to is gone. You know it as well as I do. You can't pretend you have any idea what he's willing to do."

Gaze locked on her hands clenched before her, she flexed her claws. Staring at the dark blue stain of drying energon. Gambit's energon. Because she had gambled, and it had proven right.

All she had had to do was make him leak.

That hadn't worked with Arsine.

However, standing there thinking about it, she couldn't remember ever trying to fight back when it had come to Arsine. She'd just let him wail on her. It had seemed like the answer at the time. Her desperate hope that he'd wake up and see what he was doing. That maybe he would stop.

He never had.

Nook was very right about that.

The vorns had gone on and it had only gotten worse. The shouting had turned to hitting, the hitting had turned to beating, the beating had turned into nearly killing her, and that had turned into selling her out.

Nothing had ever been good enough when she had tried to reach him.

She had never been good enough.

Because it would never have been. She hadn't been what Arsine wanted, and he blamed her for that. She had understood that then, but she grasped it better now.

She hated it, but she understood it.

Which was why she understood just what Nook was thinking. Likely what the twins were thinking as well.

She had sat back once before and let a big mech beat the slag out of her because he was the closest thing to a family she had ever had.

Now though, that wasn't the case.

She couldn't beat Gambit. Not in a real knock down drag out. He could snap and snuff out her spark. It was simple as breathing for him. She knew that all too well. She had grown up in a sandy pit arena watching him destroy anything that ever got in his way.

The thing was though, she wasn't going to have to beat him.

Her energon covered claws flexed.

All she had to do was make him leak.

"I know." She told Nook softly, finally lifting her gaze to catch hold of those frustrated, worried pools of green and gold. "I do, I know you don't think I do. But I do. I . . . I don't think I know what he's after now. But I do know how he is. Eighty vorns or not, he's still Gambit. I know how he thinks. I know why he acts. And I knew what he'd do if I didn't stop him with Jazz. I proved my point; I was willing to leak for it. To make him leak for it. That's the only thing he's ever really respected."

She couldn't help the shrug of her shoulders at that, because she wasn't quite sure that was the way to word that, but it was the only thing she knew.

"If that's the right word for it. He'll back off the lot of you now, not because I can beat him, but because I'll fight him about it. And he needs me. Arsine didn't need me, Nook. He didn't want me. If I'd have left him all those vorns ago it wouldn't have been the way it was. I know that now. I didn't then, but I do now. But Gambit isn't Arsine. He never was, he never will be. Arsine was weak. Weak willed and easily swayed. He was so use to having Gambit there to be what he wanted, to do what he needed, to solve everything for us. He couldn't handle not having him there anymore."

It hurt to say it, but it was the truth. It had taken her vorns to be able to handle it. Vorns, and well, Sideswipe and Sunstreaker.

She wondered, standing there letting her gaze flicker back and forth between the three of them, if the brothers knew that. She resolved to make sure they did.

"Gambit is not weak. He's the most dangerous mech I ever knew. Probably on this whole planet. I told you all he never loses. Well, there you go. You have your reason. It's more than just what he can do though. It's because he will never give in. He will never quit. He will never let himself be bested. No matter how long he has to wait, how much he has to hurt, no matter what it takes. In the long run, at the end of it, he will win. One way or another. He will win. He doesn't care what it will cost. To him, or anybot else."

Nook hummed when she trialed off at that. His optics set hard on her own for a long few moments until softly he asked.

"And what if it costs you?"

That was the underlying question wasn't it? The problem was, she didn't know the answer.

"I won't let it cost anything here." She told him firmly, for it was the only thing she knew. She would not let Gambit sacrifice anybot here to get what he wanted. She just wouldn't.

"No, Love." He shook his helm slowly back and forth. Forcing her to meet that hard glint in his optics and the tension in his jaw. "I mean you. What if it cost you? What if you are what he's willing to sacrifice to get what he wants? Whatever that is. He's already lost Arsine, and you've said yourself, they always meant more to each other in the end then you did. Well, Arsine is gone. You're all that is left. And who's to say he doesn't blame you for it? What if he doesn't care what else he loses to settle that score?"

She didn't know.

Standing there staring back into those mismatched optics, she was forced to realize that she didn't know. She didn't know if he knew how Arsine died. She didn't know who he would blame for it. She didn't know if she was still something Gambit was willing to leak for. She didn't know if Nook was right.

If the mechling from the closest that had got the slag beaten out of him then trudged out into an acid storm to get a sparkling he should have never saved, was gone.

She ached with some old, scared, tired, sparkling bond inside her that he wasn't. She wanted so badly to reach out with that bond and find that bitter but protective youngling on the other side of it.

She missed him so bad she ached with it.

But she had ached with it for vorns.

She had grown to accept it long ago.

She had moved on once. So, she could move on again.

It was as she had growled at him back there. This was what she was willing to leak for. This was what she was willing to bare her fangs and dig her claws into him for.

This family.

She had chosen it, and now she would fight to keep it. Because she loved it.

She no longer knew if she could love him again. That sparkling bond inside of her might want to, but it was old and use to disappointment. It had hoped, for the barest of nanos, only to be shut down and shoved away from the other end. It hadn't surprised her. That didn't mean it didn't hurt though.

It hurt.

It hurt like rust in her soul. Slow, corrosive, and merciless. But numbing.

She was use to it.

"Then I guess he will have to be disappointed." She shrugged sharp shoulders, letting her grasping claws fall loose. "But I don't think that is what he is after."

"Why?" Sunstreaker was the one that said it, but it might as well have come from both the brothers that had shifted closer to her.

"Because he needs my help." Twisting enough to catch their optics she tried to show them she was not afraid. That she wasn't going anywhere. She had too much to be lost now. She was not willing to gamble it away.

Sideswipe huffed. "And why is that? What can you give him? If he is so angry, if he blames you for something that is completely his fault. Why come here to a bunch of bots he wants nothing to do with?"

That was the other question.

The one she didn't want to face. The one she wanted to bury down in her gut and never look at again.

Because if she didn't look at it, it couldn't be true.

Right?

She could just go on pretending she hadn't seen the signs. She could go right on not putting it together.

But she couldn't.

Not now.

The seed was there in her processor and the notion curled like a burr in her spark. He wouldn't have come for anything less. Just as nothing else could have drug him away back then. There was only one possibility. Only one answer.

For a moment, she squeezed her optics shut. Then, she let herself face it. Her spark shivered in her chest, but her processor knew there was no point anymore in denying it.

"Because there is only one mech I've ever heard of that played with the dead and made it work."

The two pair of mirror dark blue optics blinking back at her in confusion did not surprise her. Nor did the way Nook sucked in his breath. She knew he would understand, she knew they would not.

She just couldn't make herself say the name outload.

She needed him to do it for her.

"Rashact." Nook breathed the name she had only ever whispered to him a few times in the dead of night. After nightmares, or memories, or both had driven her to near madness. The memory of cruel purple optics, a sickly thin red frame, and a clinical detachment that hadn't even enjoyed the torture he caused. It had simply interested him. In a scientific and medical curiosity of wondering what would happen if he twisted that, or opened this, or cut that out without putting the poor spark to recharge.

The mech that twisted her and her brothers inside out. That made them into monsters on a leash.

The mech that was supposed to be dead in the ruins of a lab burned down on a moon.

A mech, that if Gambit was right, was far from dead.

There was a part of her that wanted to curl up and hide in Sideswipe's armor at the notion. There was another part that wanted to start at one end of this city and not stop tearing stuff to pieces until she felt better. The largest part of all knew in a resigned sort of exhaustion that there was only one thing she could do.

"Yes." She whispered into the tense air between the four of them. "Rashact."

And that, that was reason enough.

---

There was nothing clinical or clean about Wheeljack's workplaces.

Oh no.

Wheeljack was simply not capable of such a thing.

He was a cluttered, sort of manic, creativity. Somehow, that made it easier.

Jynx wasn't sure she could have handled standing there under bright lights staring down at dead frames sprawled out on lab tables if it reminded her of a different lab. Luckily, Wheeljack's remarkably still intact lab was a cluttered mess of shoved to the side boxes, broken and half completed projects, and a tiny black kitten with big green optics blinking from around the mech's neck.

The small white femme didn't have time to question how when the whole city was coming down around them, the disaster that was place didn't go up in flames. She supposed Wheeljack had to have some kind of insane luck to have survived himself all these vorns. What other explanation could there be?

Wheeljack's helm fins glowed a steady pale yellow while he nervously shifted things out of the way. Gambit paid—remarkably—very little attention to the kitten around the smaller mech's neck. He simply huffed, a hulking mass of black plating, glaring down at the corpses laid out on the tables. Jynx was surprised to see no bot leaking when the four of them finally caught up with the others.

Gambit seemed relatively calm standing there glaring at the dead. Wheeljack didn't look calm in anyway, but one hand petted Tech and the mech seemed to be dealing. Soundwave was a silent shadow near the far side of the row of corpses. Long limbs looped easily over his chest. He watched quietly while Jynx made her way forward.

Measuring her steps by the way those deep red optics watched her, she made her way around the lined-up tables of corpses. Different size, shapes, and frame types they all had the eerie similarity of the same gray with death color and helms laying next to their shoulders. The longer she looked the more faces she recognized. Names filtering through her processor that she hadn't thought of, let alone considered, in half a lifetime.

Roundabout, Brakelight, Twister, even Poles.

The later had been ripped to pieces before Jynx had lost herself under Rashact's coding. That was a Primus damn long time ago.

Even he lay there back from the dead and now dead again.

If that wasn't an answer, what more did she need?

Jaw tight, she shook her helm.

It was not enough for Gambit. At least, it wasn't enough of an answer. That was the only reason he was here.

Paying little mind to the twins bracketing themselves around the door, or Nook sliding in to hover near Wheeljack, Jynx finally twisted her attention up to the living shadow holding up the wall behind her. The rest of the corpses lay scattered around his peds. She wondered, briefly, if there was a reason he had picked out these four.

It was likely he didn't even remember their names. He had never seen much point in learning the names of the other poor sparks caged up along with them. He was only going to be pitted against them. He was only going to have to kill them later by the will of their master.

He might have had a point.

Even if Jynx very rarely won back in those orns she still had control of her own mind. She only survived because Rashact didn't let the others kill her. They had hated her for that. Well, no more then they hated the others he did it to, but still hated. Eventually it became very clear the tool used to control Arsine and Gambit would not be killed.

They all despised her for it then.

She still knew their names though.

She just had needed to. To this orn she did not know why. Standing there now remembering the last time she had rationally seen them, she wondered why she had bothered. And yet . . . .

"Poles," She offered the name in an off hand mumble as she hooked her claws around the edge of the lab table. Vaulting up to land in a kneeling crouch beside the large grounder frame, she reached out to poke at the gapping hole in the center of his chest. The ripped gore that was his severed helm made her tanks clench. So, she did her best to ignore it while it was an option. Choosing instead, to flick her gaze back up to Gambit's searing optics. "How long ago was that?"

Powerful flight engines gave a low rumble when he crossed his arms over his thick chest. "He was weak. Early."

Yes.

She flickered her gaze back down, this time taking in the frozen death scowl and the empty black optics. She did remember that now that she thought of it. She wasn't sure who it was that ended him, but she remembered the sounds echoing from the pit that orn. She remembered never seeing him limping back to his cell after a droid escort.

She remembered knowing he was dead.

That another had fallen to Rashact's strange game.

She remembered thinking at least he didn't die on the table. For there had been nothing any of them feared more then death on that lab table. Those screams echoing through the halls of the lab were always the worse.

However, the problem with all that still remained. This mech had been killed vorns ago. He should have long since been forgotten as one of the many nameless buried deep under Pritam's chaotic surface. Yet, here he was.

"Where did you find this one?" She muttered, leaning forward to get a better look at the corpse before her.

"Half a vorn ago, in the Pillar Mountains."

She glanced over her shoulder. "What were you doing way up there?"

Those deep red optics narrowed into thin slits. "Chasing ghosts."

Oh.

Well.

She should have figured that.

Shaking her helm she looked back at the lifeless helm next to her. "I guess by that time you had figured out how to kill them?"

"There was no spark in any of them." Rolling his shoulders back, the massive mech let his weight rest more on the wall behind him. The many stares tracing him seeming to matter very little as far as he was concerned. "Moving Death. Empties. Nothing stops them, not unless you rip the helm off. Tear off limbs, blast them full of holes, doesn't slow them down. I tore the legs and arms off one just to see what it would do. Damned thing still tried to come at me. I blew a few of them up, so that works, but . . . I still made sure I found the helm. If there was any of it left."

She nodded, unease and something that tasted very much like fear on the back of her tongue. "And this is all of them you found?"

He gave a sharp dip on his helm.

"And you didn't try to mess around in their processors?"

"Wouldn't have known what I was looking at if I did." It must have been a chore for him to admit such a thing in front of all these around him. Later, she told herself she was going to take some time and bask in that, but for now all she could do was nod at it.

For now, though, she simply nodded again, lifting a claw to poke at the empty optics.

She pretended she didn't see Wheeljack shift uneasily over across the room.

Gambit just bared his fangs at him, then flickered his attention back to her. "What about this one you saw?"

"Fallback." She answered. "Nearly got myself slagged before I figured out what he was."

He huffed at that.

She threw a glare over at him. "I wasn't exactly at my best, okay? Besides. He was supposed to be dead! He wasn't supposed to be able to stand there and taunt me! You said they were all dead."

His mouth opened.

She hissed. "Yeah, I know. You said a lot of things that weren't true. Well no matter what you said, he was there. I figured out how to stop him eventually. He got blown up along the way. Right, Jacky?"

Wheeljack nodded in a jerky kind of way. "Yeah, when my lab blew that time with the RED bomb."

That was what she thought. Well, she wouldn't have wanted to go digging around in that helm anyway. This was enough.

Gambit's helm tilted ever so slightly when the inventor spoke. Those fire red optics darting over to pin him enough that Wheeljack wilted just a little under the intensity of that stare.

"RED?" He growled.

Jynx turned to him. "Radioactive Energy Distribution. The Underground uses it to make their bots more complacent. It's a drug of sorts. They jab you full of it and then let it blow you up later when they chase you out."

Gambit hummed, expression twisting just the slightest bit in distaste. "Sounds awful familiar."

Yeah, now that Jynx was thinking about it from that standpoint, it did. But she didn't want to look at it too closely. Not yet. So she wasn't going to.

Letting her optics dart back down to the helm before her for a moment, she was saved having to come up with a way to start this when Jazz slipped through the door. She was not all that surprised to find Prowl just a half step behind him. Ratchet wasn't all that surprising either. What was surprising was the lack of Bumblebee and Thundercracker.

She doubted there wasn't a reason for that, but she had little time to think all that much about it. For the grumpy wall of frustrated annoyance that was Ratchet when he was in a mood took one look at the energon still sliding sluggishly down Gambit's back and puffed up like a stepped on robo-cat.

"Mech, you're leaking all over the damn place! Did all of your forget that was a bad thing or something!?"

Jynx was halfway up out of her crouch to try and leap in front of Ratchet in his stalk to the hulking mass of mech behind her when suddenly he came to stop all on his own.

Or, well, not all on his own.

For a flex on energy behind her told her well enough him skidding to a stop had nothing to do with him, and everything to do with Gambit.

Sideswipe and Sunstreaker shoved themselves off the wall with a wicked snarl shared between them when a choked sound left Ratchet's vents, but Jynx beat them to any action when she finished her jump. Landing with a plop in front of him she broke Gambit's line of sight and the medic doubled over behind her wheezing.

Baring her fangs, she hissed up at him. "Lay off! I told you not to touch them!"

Those glittering red optics had just the faintest flicker of purple in them once again. "I didn't touch him."

"Gambit," The snarl held every ounce of warning she could put into it. Doing her best to ignore Sideswipe hooking a hand around Ratchet's upper arm and carefully pulling back several steps. Sunstreaker planted himself between his twin and the medic he was hoovering over. A truly alarming growl echoed around in the golden mech's chest. Thankfully, a flicker in her field kept him back.

It let her focus on the sneer Gambit curled up his lips when looked behind her. "Tell the slaggin' medic not to touch me, and I won't take all his insides and put them on the outside of him."

Jynx snapped her fangs at him, frustrated but also suddenly understanding. She should have warned Ratchet. Should have told Gambit. There was no way he'd be alright with a medic coming toward him in the middle of a lab. They were lucky he hadn't just crushed his sparkcasing and been done with it.

So, maybe the big mech was at least trying to do as she told him.

"He wasn't going to hurt you!" She shouted at him. "Ratchet's a good medic. And he's mine right along with the rest of them."

"A good medic?" The word drawled out like oozing rust from a wound. "There is no such thing."

"Is to." She bit right back at him, fluffing up her plating with a dare in her optics.

"Oh yeah?" Shoving himself up off the wall, he took a step to close the distance between them.

She would not be cowed.

Yanking her helm up, she kept the awkward angle that was demanded in holding his gaze this close. His sheer hugeness was only amplified, but she was not afraid.

If Gambit was really going to hurt her, he wouldn't bother getting close to her. He didn't need to. If he was willing to posture, he was willing to listen. She had to hope he was at least.

"You trust a medic?" He hissed out the words, but the purple was gone from his optics.

"That one, yes. And his mate. And the ones he trained. None of them here are going to hurt you. So stop snapping before you even know the facts. You came here, mech. This is their home. You can't say what they do and don't do in it. He just wanted to help you. Get over yourself."

"He couldn't hurt me." He huffed, twisting his faceplate away. It was a retreat. Once, long ago, she wouldn't have recognized it as that, but now she did. She let him have it too, because it was easier then fighting about it. It at least got him to back off.

With a huff of her own she made a face at his still leaking back. Turning she caught sight of Ratchet shoving away Sides' hands while Sunstreaker stepped back. She caught the medic's deep blue optics in what she hoped he saw as an apology. The mech simply shrugged at her. Waving off the look in favor of watching the huge mech return to holding up the wall.

"Just let him leak." She told the yellow and red mech softly. "He's an aft."

Gambit scowled at her but changed the subject. "Are you going to get around to hacking these miserable fraggers sometime this orn or should I have just done it myself?"

"You wouldn't know how to properly hack something if somebot gave you a manual." She shot right back at him, trying to pretend it didn't feel like their old bickering from so long ago. Instead, she focused on what she knew he wanted. The quicker she gave him an answer the quicker he would at least partly calm down.

Proving him right wasn't going to calm either of them, but well . . . there was a sick kind of curiosity in Jynx that needed to know. She'd never be able to go back to life if she didn't.

Not now.

She needed to know. So there was only one thing for it.

Leaping back up to crouch beside the corpse of Poles once again. She shoved her chin in the direction of the table beside her when she caught Jazz's visor. "Take that one will you? Soundwave pick which ever other one you want. Shouldn't matter. Not really?"

The lean silver mech came forward to end up at the table on the other side of her while Jazz leap up to land much like she was on the other. Her sire draped himself in a hunter's crouch along the side of the corpse. Picking and prodding much like she had done earlier. That visor covered gaze flickering back and forth over the damage Gambit had wrought.

Soundwave did much the same, though he was tall enough he simply had to lean. It didn't take long for both mech's to realize what she already knew. Helm not attached meant this was going to be a very ugly kind of hacking. There was nothing clean or easy about hacking a long dead mind, but a severed mind was a whole other kind of messed up.

This was not going to be a task for the faint of spark. However, Jynx had demanded Soundwave and Jazz because all the time she had been here she had learned two things. The two of them were the best hackers in this whole city, and they were both as ruthless as she was when they had to be.

The shadow of the Autobots and the second in command of the Decepticons. There was no way either of them had never done this before. So there would be now queasy shying away from this. They would dive in right there next to her and do as she needed them to. They might even dig out the answers she needed before her.

The only problem was, she was going to have to explain to them what they were looking for. That was going to be the hard part.

"Just wondering, Sweetspark." Jazz started a few moments later when his gaze snapped up from the corpse. "What is it we're digging for here?"

"That would be helpful to know, yes." Soundwave pitched in.

Gambit rumbled behind the three of them. "You'll know it when you see it."

The two mechs shot him a bored glare.

It was almost scary how in sync that look was too.

"Yeah," Jazz drawled, with a twitch of his sensor horns. "We're gonna need a little more than that, mech."

"There isn't more." Jynx cut in, drawing both their gazes to her again. "I'm sorry, but he's not wrong. I don't really know how to explain it to you. It's a coding signature. To start with at least. I know the traces of him but I can't really describe it to you. It will just . . . look wrong. Tainted and twisted up."

"Him?" Soundwave pressed.

Her helm dipped ever so slightly. "Rashact."

Jazz claws creaked around their sudden grip of the table under him. "Well."

She shot a look over to him out of the corner of her visor. The twisted line of his mouth wasn't a pleasant expression, but he didn't look all that surprised. In fact, neither did Soundwave. It seemed the both of them had already started to figure something along those lines. Maybe they didn't know just who it was that was capable of making dead bots walk, but they did figure it had to be something Gambit and Jynx had dealt with before.

"Rashact." He went on. "The mech that bought you from Nebulous. The lab on the moon. That mech?"

She gave him a short, sharp nod. "It's . . . random. He never bothered hiding his signature when he was hacking us. Why would he need to? I doubt that changed if this is . . . really him."

"So we are looking for proof?" Soundwave guessed. "Random segments of code that do not belong. That are out of place?"

"They are not as random as they appear." Jynx flexed her claws, trying to think of the best way to make the two mechs understand. "That was why he was so dangerous. That was why it took so long to . . . counter hack him back then. I never really figured out how he did it back then. I only ever managed to break the coding loop. Then I broke it in them two." A shove of her helm toward Gambit which he snorted at. "But its random pieces that somehow build back together. Just . . . just start digging. If it is there you will notice eventually."

For a moment the two mechs stared at her, then they both nodded, and turned to the messy task at hand. Jynx paid them no further attention. She could put it off no longer, so what was the point of trying?

Taking a deep breath, she reached for the tucked away panel on the right side of her upper ribs, popped the seal, got a handful of delicate wiring and syncing cables, and ripped into the helm before her.

Everything else faded into the background.

Digging into dead minds was . . . an interesting experience.

One would think that after death there was nothing left. That was not the case. The life of a bot was held in the spark, not the mind. When the spark faded out it took life—and that bot—with it. What was left behind was a processor with no life source. Useless—unless you really wanted to get your hands dirty.

No sane bot would look at a lifeless processor and think there was use to be found there, but a desperate bot was not the case. In the same way a dead frame could offer unused energon to a truly desperately hungry bot, a dead processor had a lifetime of code memories and thoughts locked away inside of it.

The trouble was getting to them.

For the normal data pathways a medic or a hacker might use to get to a processor's deeper self when a bot breathed were gone in death. All that was left was a blank, empty, lifeless blackness that was all too easy to get tangled up in. It was all too easy to never find your way back out again.

Jynx had seen it happen to bots before.

She had seen the slow creep of mindless death that came after that. Loosing your conciseness in the wisp of an empty other was not a good way to go. It was why she did not ask this of any other bots in this place.

Jazz and Soundwave had done this before. They knew the risks and she had to believe they would find their way back out. She could not think of it at present though. To lose focus was to lose herself.

So now, there was only empty blackness.

It was a lot like being blind again. There was nothing to be found when she first dove in. Just a blank, blackness where once there had been life. Billions of static laced digital pathways leading to an innumerable amount of thoughts. Firewalls, fail safes, and natural defenses to intruders were now gone.

At first that would make it seem easier, but it wasn't. Those natural difference were a map in a maze of data in a living bot. Without them, there was nothing but the empty black. Stumbling upon information was the only course in the mental landscape. And that was as dangerous as stumbling through a minefield.

Jynx had done this many times without even her own mind in her grasp though. She knew how to wade, dash, and dig.

So off she went.

Trudging through the empty, finding coding, digging in and ripping apart.

She did not know how long she looked. All she knew was sooner or later she found the first trace mark. That first random seeming string of code buried in with something else. She attacked it with all the grace of a starving silver saber. From there, she tracked like a hound.

String after string, crashed firewall after crashed firewall. She shifted through corrupted memory files that no matter how much she yanked she couldn't open. That was the first hint. For that should not have been the case.

She yanked for a picture, even a still, of how this mech died. There was nothing. It was . . . Empty. Just as Gambit had called it all those vorns ago. Just as she had made herself forget.

There was nothing left.

Nothing but a few random flickers of segments that slowly pieced together a bigger picture. An instruction.

Jynx was just a breath from latching hold of it and having her answer too, when suddenly a gleam rose up through the blackness. At first, she wasn't even aware of it. To set on the task of digging at that last little bit of code. She didn't notice the eerie purple glow of what seemed like optics through the blackness.

However, there was no way she could miss the sudden surge of consciousness, the latch of mental claws into her, or the yank hard down into the suddenly burning darkness.

Mentally, she screamed. Scrambling suddenly for a hand hold, for a ped stop, for something to stop the pull through the purple flames licking all around her. In her chest, her spark skipped in terror, in her processor she froze. For deep in that burning purple yanking her down was a voice that had once been reduced to nightmares.

I see you.

It hissed into the crackling flames, and like nothing before in her life Jynx wanted loose.

Did you really think you were rid of me, Pet?

It seemed to laugh, and between one shuddering breath and the next, Jynx found herself yanked back into the conscious world.

It burned, suddenly get thrown back into her own helm. Her whole frame surged, then struggled, but while her syncing equipment was scalding it was nothing compared to the ache in her helm. She wasn't even aware that while her claws were wrapped tightly around the thin grey cable it was not her that had pulled them loose. It was also not her that had caught herself from tumbling back off the lab table.

Letting out a pained hiss, she bent double from her backward sprawl. Dropping the syncing cable to dangle against her armor in favor of latching hold of her helm with both hands. Letting out a pitiful whine at the ache she was hardly aware of the grip around her back that nearly took all of her up.

One hand, and all her back.

Gambit.

A part of her spark supplied that and after a few moments of rocking back and forth with her helm in her hands, she realized it. Realized the big mech was all but curled around her there on the lab table. Huge claws carefully touching at her smoking syncing equipment while the other stayed plastered up her back. If it wasn't for that hand she probably would have ended up sprawled out in the floor whimpered as she grasped at her helm.

As it was though, she couldn't pay that any attention.

She didn't know that just a few nanos before Gambit has surged off the wall like something bit him. She didn't know he had spent the last six joor they had been stuck down here watching the three bots dig, that he hadn't taken his optics off her. Watching like a saber watches a bison. Looking for a slip up, for a weakness.

She didn't know that he had surged forward not evening paying attention to Sides and Sunny leaping to try and stop him. He simply batted them away, latched hold of her, and rather gently yanked her out of the dead helm.

Then he caught her when she went sprawling.

Balancing her in her whimpered curl against his front while he snarled over at the medic and the other mechs.

"Get them out! Get them out of that sync now!"

It was right then that Prowl felt pain surge through Jazz, and he sprang for him. Wheeljack and Ratchet both managed to get a hold of Soundwave.

Jynx missed all that though.

She was too busy gasping, clutching at her helm, to try and stop the burning ache that took up position in the back of her processor. Klicks ticked by in which she just curled there panting. Taking comfort she wasn't even aware of in the grasp of his hand around her back and the plaster against his plating.

Some part of her was aware of his claws carefully winding back up her syncing cable once it stopped smoking. She was then aware of him tucked it back behind the plating it belonged behind.

As for how long she quivered there, or how long Prowl had a hold of Jazz, or Ratchet crouched on the floor in front of a knocked on his aft Soundwave, she didn't know.

It was like blinking but it was also like an eternity. Eventually she managed to shake her helm enough times for the burning to fade. The lingering ache fading slowly into the back ground, she came back to herself to realize Sideswipe and Sunstreaker were bracketed around her. Somehow she ended up on the floor with the brothers on their knees. Nook was there next to her as well, but it was Ratchet crouched down in front of her with a medical port pried open in her wrist that she found herself blinking at.

She blinked at him for several moments before she realized he had forced open one of her diagnostic hardlines in an outer port at her wrist. Considering how much her syncing equipment was burning she was silently thankful of that. That would have hurt.

It took her a moment longer to realize he was digging in her helm through a rerouted hardline. If her helm was spinning a little less that would have been impressive.

As it was, all she could do was stare at him as the medic finally unhooked from her and set her arm down limply in her lap. Only then did those deep blue optics refocus on her own confused optics staring at him.

"Back in there yet?" He asked her gruffly. She probably should have noticed the worried tilt in his voice, in the shadow of Gambit leaning over and looking at her there behind him. Or Prowl picking Jazz up to his peds just a few steps away. Or Wheeljack helping Soundwave up.

All she could seem to do though was blink at him some more before whispering. "What the pit?"

"Virus." Ratchet growled, somehow, she was aware it wasn't at her. "I managed to isolate it and purge it out though. The three of you should be fine."

Virus.

The word seemed so foreign to her.

It took an embarrassingly long time for her to make sense of it. To yank in a breath and give a hard nod.

"It was a hidden link." She muttered. "I was knee deep in it before I realized what it was."

Over to the side Jazz made a pained hum that might have been an agreement, but she could hardly think of it. Soundwave just swayed quietly on his peds gripping his helm.

"Yeah, well." Ratchet growled, deeper in his chest with a fist of his fingers. "Whatever the slag it was it was intense. It burned out data pathways. Took slaggin' forever to get the three of you back on a single databank link."

"It hurt." She muttered, but she wasn't sure why it mattered. He likely had already figured that out. All she could do was shake her helm to try and get rid of the ache.

That, and the fear at the back of her tongue.

She must not have done a very good job of it either, because beside her Sideswipe pressed up harder against her. His field open and trying to draw her in while Nook traced a claw over her knee. Sunstreaker sat still and stiff. She could feel anger, confusion, and fear rioting around him, but she didn't know what to do about it.

Any thought she might have had about it was stolen in the next breath for Gambit rumbled.

"Was it the same?"

Her gaze snapped up to fly over Ratchet's shoulder. The medic twisted, brought himself to his peds, and looked like he was about to lay into the huge mech to let scrambled processors be, but Gambit paid him no mind.

"Was it the same?" He pressed, an intense light in his fire colored optics that no matter the pain in her helm Jynx could not ignore. "Was it the same as the code in our helms?"

Deep in her chest, fear ran a rapid loop. If she had more of her mind about her she probably would be wheezing in terror by now, but instead all she could do was shiver there on the floor and stare at him.

Because it was.

And she knew just as he did what that meant.

"What do you mean the same code as in your helms?" Ratchet was the one that grumbled it, and Jynx would have begged him to be quiet, but she couldn't.

All she could do was stare as Gambit yanked his gaze over to him. Running those fire red optics up and down him for a moment before they flickered back down to her.

"I thought you said you trusted him."

"I do." She hated how weak her voice sounded. How it trembled along with the rest of her from both the pain and the growing realization in the back of her mind, but she couldn't help it.

"Yet you didn't tell him?" Gambit shot back.

She looked away. "It wasn't supposed to matter anymore. It was supposed to be gone. He was supposed to be dead. It was supposed to have died with him."

"What the slag are you talking about?" Nook was the one that hissed it. Shoving himself to his peds to glare up at the towering mech.

Jynx wished he wouldn't.

Gambit huffed, thick arms crossing over his chest. "I'm talking about the kill switch code Rashact put in our helms."

It felt like all the air got sucked out of the room around them. Every single mech stalled. Each of them blinking up at the huge bot like he lost his mind only to yank their gaze down to her when she didn't deny it.

All Jynx could do was sit there, hunched over her own lap, staring at her claws with a growing sickness in the bottom of her tanks.

"Love," Nook was the one that whispered it. "What's he talking about?"

She hunched her shoulders and refused to meet his gaze.

With a flutter of those long black wings, Gambit muttered. "You really didn't tell him. You didn't tell any of them."

"It wasn't supposed to matter." She breathed it into the quiet, but it sounded like a shout. The secret she had guarded ever since getting left in the sands. The secret she had held close to her chest in an effort to protect herself and even Gambit. A secret she didn't even tell Nook.

All these vorns she had hidden it. Hidden that random cluster of codes in the back of her helm that any medic or the likes would never look twice at if they didn't know what it was. Because it looked harmless enough. It was made that way.

It was made to look like nothing at all, but it held her very life in the balance.

"It matters now, Shorty." The nickname she hadn't heard in a lifetime was meant to soften the blow. She knew that. She didn't know why he would offer it to her now. But he did. A part of her spark wanted to grovel at him for it, but all she could do was peak around at the optics staring down at her with disbelief. Disbelief and a growing realization of horror.

"What are you talking about!?" It was Sunstreaker that spit it up at the mech in a bubbling growl, but oddly enough Gambit didn't rise to the bait. He simply tilted his helm and explained.

"Rashact made us into monsters, mech. Monsters that couldn't be stopped. He made it to where we couldn't think for ourselves in the end. Nothing but mindless droids that he could point in the direction, order a command, and have us rip everything to pieces. He made us the perfect killing machines. You think he wouldn't have built in a failsafe to that, do you? You don't think he would have made something that should we ever snap out of that control command all he'd have to do was flip a switch and poof," A hard snap of his fingers accented the sound. It made every mech around him flinch. "No more problem."

Jazz's jaw worked, but he said nothing.

Jynx wilted there on the floor.

"Flip a switch." Gambit whispered; his own optics full of the hatred he had lived with. With the threat hanging over his helm for most of his life. "That was all it would take. He couldn't have his perfect killing machines rising up and fighting him now could he? That would have been bad for business."

Silence followed the words for a long few breaths until suddenly, Nook swung away from the huge mech. Oddly enough he didn't look at Jynx. He set those wide two-tone optics on the medic and pleaded.

"Get it out." He choked over the words, his doorwings falling behind his back. "Get it out of her helm, medic."

Ratchet darted his gaze down to her, back to Nook, up to his sons, and then back to the towering black mech beside him. He swallowed hard as Gambit simply lifted an optic ridge.

"You can't." He grumbled.

Sideswipe surged to his peds with a growl. "What do you know, how do you know we can't get it out!? He's the greatest medic on this whole slaggin' planet. There isn't anything he can't fix!"

Those fire red optics cut over. "Sure, you want to dig it out, go ahead. The medic probably could. Maybe he might even be able to keep her alive while he did it. But you'd kill everything that made her Jynx."

He turned from Sideswipe to look back at the medic.

"It's a clean-slate protocol. It won't kill us per say, not in the true since of the word. That would have been a waste of all his hard work, wouldn't it? No. It just wipes us. Into nothingness. Nothing left. No memories. No thoughts. None of what once was there before. Blank, empty, start over point. Nothing left of what we were would be left."

Arms curling around her chest, Jynx hung here helm there in the floor between them all. Listening to words she knew but hating them all the same. Hating how scared they made her after all this time. Hating how easily Gambit could just spill out the secret she had guarded for so long.

Because really, what was the point of hiding it now?

Rashact was alive. The proof was burning in the back of her processor.

Nook twisting in a sharp motion back to look at her made her lift her scared optics. Staring at him as those too wide optics darted over her faceplate. She knew what he was looking for. He was waiting for her to deny it.

She couldn't do it though.

No matter how much she wanted to.

"Why," He breathed. "Why didn't you ever tell me that?"

Sensors pinned low in their grooves she swallowed hard, mumbling into the quiet. "It wasn't supposed to matter. He was supposed to be dead. The codes were supposed to die with him. It wasn't supposed to matter anymore."

"But," It was Prowl that cut in, his frame tense but his doorwings low as he stood there beside his quivering mate. "But if he isn't dead. If he does have that code . . . why . . . why wouldn't . . . ?"

"Why wouldn't he have just used it sometime in the last eighty something vorns?" Gambit snapped. "I've spent the last half of my life trying to figure that out. Only thing I can come up with is it would have been more work. I was halfway across the universe. If he wiped me how would he find me? If he left me my mind, he knew I'd come back eventually. I'd come back to kill him. But her, her I don't know why he wouldn't just be done with it. He's had to know where she was."

"Because I was already in arms reach." She whispered, the notion slowly coming to make sense in her sinking spark. Like the break of dawn over the dark horizon, she suddenly understood. The puzzle pieces of all these vorns finally falling together so perfectly she wondered how she let herself be blind of it for so long.

Because she didn't want to see it.

It was as simple as that.

Gambit tilted his helm at her, questioning.

"It's him." She bared her teeth around the words. Angry, scared, and tired all at the same time. "All this slaggin' time and its been him! I've been in the same slaggin' cave as him and I didn't even know it. All these vorns he's been hiding in plain sight. Waiting for you to come back. He let Arsine and I fall apart because it was fun to watch. Because he never found Arsine as useful as you and me. Because he wanted to see just how much damage I would come to do on my own without him having to make me. He was right here the whole damn time!"

Nook stiffened, catching her train of thought with little problem. His whole field surged before he yanked it back. Horror creeping into his optics when he breathed out the words. "The Master."

She nodded slowly.

Around her, the mechs stiffened.

"He's been playing the strings in the background while the world burned around him. Waiting to see what his favorite little lab rats would do. How would we handle freedom? Could we survive on our own? It proved Arsine would never make it without you. So while he left you to find your way back he let me alone to get turned into an angry monster running from his new favorite!"

Rashact was the Master of the Underground. He was the monster that all monsters feared.

All this time.

It had been right there in front of her face. All these vorns she had thought herself free of him, he'd been standing there in the shadows. Close enough to touch, watching her leak and hurt and go mad out of that sick clinical curiosity.

And she hadn't seen it.

She really wasn't surprised when Gambit's engines rumbled into a pitched growl that shock the very air around them. She was not at all surprised when he seized hold of the lab tables around him without even laying a hand on them and sent them flying around the room.

After all, he hadn't seen it either.

---

Dun, dun, duuuuuuuun!

And there you have it. The answer behind all this craziness. Its been him this whole time.

I've waited forever to get here. I'm so excited, you have no idea.

I hope you guys like it! I can't wait to see what you have to say about this one!

Thank you all so much for reading and reviewing. And for sticking with me through another year. I'm going to try and not make you guys wait so long between updates this year. Real life is still crazy busy but I'm planning to squeeze in more writing.

I adore you all! See you next chapter!

-Jaycee