—one week later—

It was literally the middle of the night when Jazz snapped out of recharge. There were no alarms going off. Nobody on the emergency comm channels. Not even any noise in the corridor outside his quarters. Jazz blinked at the ceiling, processor reluctantly ticking up from a half-completed recharge cycle for no reason whatsoever. No internal errors came back from a quick systems check. Weird, he thought, and tried to drop back to sleep.

...only to be jerked alert halfway through the shutdown sequence by a strange fluttering sensation between his hip joints.

Jazz squirmed on his berth, hoping to untwist whatever cable or gear was out of whack in there, and tried again to— his entire pelvic gimbal convulsed, seemingly from the inside out, and he let out a yelp of surprise. A strange heat suffused his internals and his ventilation system opened up. The fluttering in his lower abdominal section turned into a full-on throbbing.

Vocalizer spitting something halfway between static and inarticulate nonsense, he rolled off the berth, intending to make for the medbay. No need to wake Ratchet just yet; if whatever it was worked itself out on the walk there, no harm done. He only made it as far as the floor directly beside his berth. Something inside him was triggering unfamiliar pressure sensors, and his processor was reading the data as pure, raw pleasure. Every actuator from his hips down turned to mush, and he found himself curled up nearly double, kneeling on the floor.

The ...thing... inside redoubled its efforts. Jazz could feel a distinct push-and-pull as more sensors he'd never felt before lit up. He was about to comm Ratchet— this was entirely too weird, no matter how good it felt— but it sped up again, and he let out a whine despite himself. His whole frame felt as if he'd been dumped into a pool of heated oil, all relaxed and gears slack, but at the same time, an electric tension in his struts grew stronger. Jazz pawed uselessly at the featureless codpiece armor beneath which parts vibrated and oscillated. It felt like interfacing, but not quite the same; his spark was quiet but his frame sang with frantic bliss.

What had to be overload finally struck, a heavy and solitary event low in the pit of his core internals, so unlike the social, open, back-and-forth of a shared spark merge, but no less enjoyable... if confusing and just a bit alarming.

He was still on the floor, vents going full bore, trying to work around his shock, when his systems betrayed him, dropping him back into recharge before he could call the medbay.

"Where is Mixmaster?" demanded Megatron, glaring around the war room. "I recall specifically ordering him to be present."

Through the pale glow of the hologram detailing their next raid target, Starscream scowled at the other officers as if holding them each personally responsible for the delay. Rare was the occasion Megatron deigned to let one of Starscream's plans make it to this stage; damned if he was going to let some jumped-up chemist blow it for him. /Mixmaster. Report to the war room immediately!/ he barked over the public comm.

/Er, Hook here,/ came the reply from the resident medic, showing a shade more discretion by using the command comm line, /Mix came in half a joor ago with... something./

/Something./ Megatron packed a novella's worth of impatience, annoyance, and warning into that single deadpan glyph.

/Lord Megatron, I apologize,/ Hook replied. /I don't know much yet, still running some deeper scans. Mixmaster's suffering some kind of... spontaneous spasms. Seizures, almost./

Soundwave, who had been seemingly ignoring the conversation in favor of studying the proposed raid plan, suddenly looked up.

"Fantastic." Starscream crossed his arms over his cockpit and stared at the ceiling. "I need that glitch's so-called expertise for my plan and he's gone and picked up some virus."

/Begging the Air Commander's pardon,/ snapped Hook, /but it's not a virus. If one Constructicon has it we all do, and we're all clean. It's the first thing I check. Thank you./

/Hook: state exact nature of Mixmaster's affliction./ Soundwave interceded before the medic's snide tone could set Starscream off. /Physical injury or processor fault?/

/Initial scan came back all systems nominal, which is why I'm taking a deeper look. I'll know more in a.../ Hook's voice trailed off. /...i-in a joor or s-so.../

/Hook?/ Megatron prompted.

If anything, Hook sounded almost breathless. /Apologies... Mixm-master is having another... episss-sode.../

"Tell me again how a gestalt link was a good idea?" muttered Astrotrain from the other end of the room. Megatron growled in warning, then spoke over the comm to Hook.

/Just figure it out. You have half a joor./

/...yes... ye-yes, Lord Mm... oh Primus—/

Megatron cut the comm channel, not bothering to hide his combined disgust and confusion. By the looks of faceplates around the room, he wasn't alone.

"Was it just me," Astrotrain, ever the enemy of subtlety, asked of the room at large, "or did it sound like he was... overloading?"

"Dismissed," Megatron snarled, turning for the door. "Soundwave, find out what is going on. I'll be in my quarters."

Just when he'd thought they'd broken their habit of waiting until their energon stores were bare to plan a raid; he couldn't even take this delay out on Starscream. Megatron couldn't muster up the energy to be truly angry at the moment. He needed a cube or two— they still had a modest reserve yet— then he'd be in a proper mood to storm the medbay for answers.

Hmm. Maybe a dram of coolant as well. His lower core had begun to heat up.

Mirage was in the corner of the rec room, sitting at his usual table, a half-consumed cube and datapad on the table in front of him. He was also completely invisible.

Hound knew he was there, of course, the minute he walked in, thanks to his specialized sensor suite. It wasn't unusual for Mirage to do his disappearing act around the ship when he was feeling moody or insular. Hound frowned to himself while pulling his daily ration from the dispenser. Mirage had seemed fine yesterday evening. What'd happened?

He was going to respect the implicit signal for privacy until he saw— detected, really— the spy trembling and rocking slightly back and forth. Quietly and casually, so as not to attract the attention of the rather cutthroat board game being played by a cluster of 'bots at the other side of the room, Hound moved over to Mirage's corner and sat down a few feet away from him.

"'Raj, you okay?" Hound murmured into his energon without looking at the blank spot in the corner.

It took a moment for the reply to come. "... yes, I think so." Mirage's voice was only just above a whisper, quavery with... pain? Sadness? "Just give me a moment, Hou- oooohhhh."

Abandoning all pretense of being by himself, Hound moved a bit closer and put his hand on Mirage's unseen shoulder. "What's wrong? Are you hurt?"

"Probably just—" Mirage suddenly curled up where he sat, forehelm touching the table, frame going rigid, practically vibrating under Hound's hand. Alarmed, Hound almost paged the medbay on the spot, but after a couple seconds Mirage seemed to relax.

"Mirage, what the dross?"

"I'm fine now, Hound, it was probably just some feedback from... something." Mirage decloaked, an odd grin playing at the corner of his mouth. "It's probably nothing."

Hound fixed the spy with a look as he slowly sat up. "Probably nothing? 'Raj, you're running hot. I can feel it through your plating."

"I'm fine!" Mirage insisted airily, leaning back against the wall. "Sometimes something causes a little interference with my disruptor and a few wires get crossed and I'll feel a little funny for a few orns. I'm sure my self-repair will sort it right out in no time."

"Okay, but... I've seen you feeling 'a little funny' and then there's whatever that just was," Hound said, gesturing up and down Mirage's frame. "Your disruptor faults ever put that big a smile on your face before?"

Mirage threw a quick look to the table across the room. The board game ("No! Not the robber! Damn it, Cliffjumper, I need that quarry!" "If you give me all the wheat in your hand I might be persuaded to put the robber someplace else..." "Wow, didn't take long for this to turn into Mafia of Catan, did it?") was still occupying the attention of the other mechs. Nobody had noticed the pair in the corner.

"No, I'll grant you that was a bit... unusual." Mirage grabbed his cube and downed the rest of the energon in one go. "Rather intense. Pleasurable, in fact. Only lasts a few minutes, it's nothing."

"Wha... how long has this been going on?"

"Hound, will you relax? This is only the third time it's happened in the past few days. I just couldn't get out of the rec room when this one hit. Oh, stop looking at me like that, would you? Don't call Ratchet, I know you're thinking it. Jazz will take me off the duty roster and I'm to go on a mission tomorrow."

"Exactly why I should be hauling you into the medbay myself," Hound retorted. "What if that happens while you're deep in the Decepticons' ship or whatever?"

Mirage's expression took on a distinctively mulish look. Hound gave him a gentle shove. "C'mon. Off duty's better than locked up in the 'Cons' brig. Or worse." Just to make sure he got there, Hound all but force-marched his friend straight to the medbay. Mirage offered up only token objection, tacitly acknowledging that yes, Hound had a good point. The medbay doors slid open just as they rounded the corner, and Tracks emerged.

"I wouldn't bother," said Tracks as he swanned past Mirage and Hound. "Our good doctor's not in a healing mood today. If anyone needs me, I'll be in my quarters, slowly deactivating."

"What in the..." Mirage peered after Tracks, baffled.

Inside the medbay, Ratchet turned to greet the pair by waving a handheld scanner threateningly in their general direction. "I don't see any smoking holes in either one of you, so unless you'd like to let me in on the joke, you'd best roll right back the way you came."

"Mirage had some kind of fit in the rec room just now," Hound said, ignoring the spy's indignant huff. "Had him curled up and overheated."

"Red Alert came in here claiming someone had hacked his motor controls, Tracks says he's being turned inside out..." Ratchet ran the scanner over Mirage's frame as he grumbled. "Did Prowl declare a prank amnesty day? ...ah, see? Normal readings across the board."

"Doc, I saw it happen," Hound protested. "Whatever it was had him shaking and practically locked up. Tell him, Mirage."

"He's... he's right," Mirage reluctantly admitted. "But it's not like I'm in any pain. It's just sort of... sort of like... well, an overload. Only from down here." And he pointed directly to his codpiece.

Ratchet was silent for several seconds. "Would you mind getting up on the berth here, Mirage?" he asked, strangely calm.

Now genuinely concerned, Mirage did so without protest. "Did Red Alert and Tracks have the same, er, symptoms?"

"Twice is coincidence," Ratchet said, left hand transforming into a set of tools. "Three times is a pattern. Spontaneous overload-like spasms centered in the lower abdominal core... Alright, just hold still, I'm just going to take a look, see what the scanner's not telling me."

Hound moved back against the wall, out of the way but offering his moral support as Ratchet unlatched the interlocking plates just above Mirage's pelvic gimbal. After a few moments of bemused prying, the medic activated his comm.

/Red Alert, Tracks, please report to the medbay... I may owe you both an apology./

"This structure was found in all three." Ratchet gestured to the hologram floating serenely over the center of the officers' conference table. "Identically situated in the lower anterior core, dead center behind the codpiece."

Ironhide leaned in, squinting at the strange apparatus. At first glance it could be mistaken for a small fuel tank, or a coolant pump. "Alright," Ironhide drawled. "I'll bite. What is it?"

"That's a very good question," Ratchet replied. "It seems to be the source of the spontaneous spasms Red, Tracks and Mirage are experiencing."

"But what is it, Ratchet?" Optimus studied the diagram intently. "How did it get there?"

Prowl reached out and manipulated the image, rotating it this way and that. "And is this some sort of Decepticon ploy? A bomb, or monitoring device, perhaps?"

"No," replied Ratchet, "and no. Trust me, this gets a lot weirder than that. Plus none of them have had any chance to be compromised recently. Red Alert himself confirmed this. The reason a basic medical scan missed it is because it seems to have integrated seamlessly into their systems, and I do mean seamlessly. If I didn't know any better, I'd swear it's supposed to be there.

"Took a quick scan of Tracks' code and almost didn't find anything," Ratchet continued. "But you know how all the basic functions like fuel pump regulation, coolant distribution, self-repair nanites and such— the code that governs that is spread out over hundreds of clusters, all the autonomic functions are."

"Yes, it's so if one cluster is damaged you don't suddenly cease functioning entirely," Perceptor put in. "But what does that have to do with this inexplicable implant?"

"There's code running this thing." Ratchet gestured to the diagram. "Distributed the same way."

Prowl frowned. "But that would take a master code surgeon. Or a hacker with unparalleled skill and long-term access to the individual's processors."

Ratchet nodded. "Again, seamless integration."

"Can they be removed?" Optimus asked. Ratchet held up a finger.

"You may want to hold that question, Prime. I'm not quite done." Ratchet caught the hologram and turned it around. "I actually monitored Tracks as he had another episode; I got to see the whole thing, start to finish. Back here is a kind of reservoir that collects repair nanites and holds them there, until something triggers this piston-like mechanism to engage. That's where the spasms happen. The piston and the socket both are packed with sensors, and the corresponding code reads it as intense pleasure. While that's going on, the nanites travel down the center of the piston, and upon this overload-equivalent, they're released up into this larger chamber."

"For what purpose?" Perceptor put in. "And why these three?"

"Four."

All optics turned to Jazz, who had been unusually silent the entire time. Ratchet pinned Jazz with a particularly sharp look. The head of Special Operations and Bane of Decepticons simply wilted where he sat and nodded as if confessing to an unspeakable crime.

"When we're done here, medbay." Ratchet smoothly turned back to the hologram. "This main chamber here has a line tapped into the energon filtration system. It's a negligible drain, as far as I can tell, but the kicker is what it's feeding." And Ratchet manipulated the hologram to split apart in cross-section.

There within the tank-like structure of the mysterious mechanism, nestled in a little bundle of hair-thin wires, hung a tiny point of bright light.

"A spark."