Introduction/Context: This takes place very shortly after the end of Revolution. Continuation of the tangent storyline about the Original 13 that has taken over Spare Parts, but isn't solid enough to be it's own side story.

Maccadam was tired. Liege wanted to go hunt Megatronus, while Quintus wanted to investigate the Core. Amalgamous was bored and wanted to wander the streets of Iacon, but he didn't want to go alone, and no one else wanted to go with him. Logos was depressed, and Micronus had disappeared into subspace.

Maccadam had talked Liege down and convinced Quintus and Amalgamous to keep themselves busy by hanging out with the mortals up on the main floor of the building. Then he'd talked to Logos for more than a joor, trying to cheer him up.

He figured there was nothing he could do about Micronus, so once Logos seemed to be in a slightly better mood, Maccadam went down to check on Alpha Trion.

He made sure his brother was stable, then sat down off to the side of the room. It was nice and quiet down here, and he was exhausted. He tilted his helm back against the wall and let the calm beeping of the spark support machine lull him into a light doze.

Then Alpha Trion gasped and sat upright, dragging Maccadam from his nap.

"What…" Alpha Trion looked down at himself.

"Hey," Maccadam rushed over. "Lie down, Alph,"

"No," Alpha Trion turned to look around, as if searching the floor for something. "The hand. What did you do with his hand? He gave me his hand!"

Maccadam pushed gently on his brother's shoulders, trying to get him to lie down again. "Calm down, mech, everything's okay, but you need to rest. There's no hand or… whatever you're talking about."

"No," Alpha Trion said, grabbing Maccadam's arm. "You don't understand. Vector was there."

"It was just a dream, Alph—"

"No it wasn't!" Alpha Trion said, meeting Maccadam's optics, dead serious. "Go back to where you found me and get the hand. Vector saved me from Megatronus. He showed up, and it was that apparition we've been seeing, but he was actually there. He gave me his hand and then he disappeared and I passed out. I left his hand, you need to go get it!"

Maccadam frowned. "I don't remember there being a hand. Just a big mess and a lot of energon and datapads everywhere."

"Look for it," Alpha Trion said, trying to get up again. "We have to look for it."

"Okay, okay," Maccadam said. "I'll go look for it if you rest, all right?"

Alpha Trion shuttered his optics with a sigh. "Okay."

"Promise me you'll stay on this berth. You're still badly hurt."

"Promise me you'll bring me that hand."

"I'll bring it," Maccadam said.

"Hurry, before they clean up and throw it away."

"Alph, just relax. Lie back down."

Alpha Trion finally let Maccadam help him lie down again. Then Maccadam checked his spark support equipment to make sure everything was still connected properly, and left the room.

He dragged himself upstairs, grumbling. He was too tired to go chase down phantom hands from Alpha Trion's imagination. But he had to investigate, on the slight chance that it was true.

He found Amalgamous sitting alone with his pedes up on a table, staring at the ceiling.

"Hey," Maccadam said.

"Hey."

"You want to go on a treasure hunt?"

Amalgamous looked at him.

"There's something we need from the Archives."

"What? A datapad? That sounds very exciting."

"A severed hand," Maccadam said.

"Oh," Amalgamous raised an optic ridge. "Alph's got spare parts in his collection now? That's a little morbid, don't you think?"

"Come on, Mal, I can't go by myself, and I don't want to bring Quintus or Liege."

"Fine." Amalgamous swung his legs off of the table and got up.

Maccadam was too tired to drive all the way to the Hall of Records, so he cheated and used his groundbridge, opening a portal to a secluded spot in the archives.

"You know," Amalgamous said once they'd stepped through the bridge. "There was a severed hand, now that I think about it."

"What?" Maccadam said.

"By Alpha Trion," Amalgamous said as they walked down an aisle of datapads. "Where we found him. I wondered where it had come from, since he hadn't lost a hand, and it definitely wasn't Megatronus's."

"Huh. That's…" Maybe it hadn't been a dream, then.

"Why do we need it again?"

They went around the corner. Maccadam had almost expected the aisle to be clean, but it was still covered with energon and strewn with datapads. Good.

"Here it is." Amalgamous stepped carefully through the debris and picked up the hand.

"Let me see it," Maccadam said.

Amalgamous turned it over, frowning.

"Mal."

"Okay." Amalgamous tossed it to him.

It was scratched, and a couple of panels on the back had been pried away to make room for protruding wires.

"That's disgusting, by the way," Amalgamous said. "I wonder what all that extra stuff hanging out of the back of the hand is. Some kind of weird disease?"

"No." Maccadam pulled a small light out of subspace and shined it past the wires and mesh. "This is… connected to…" He trailed off, feeling sick.

"What?"

"Sensory relay," Maccadam said.

Amalgamous tilted his helm to the side. "Which means what?"

"You could induce sensations. Some kind of torture, maybe?"

"Interesting."

Maccadam flipped the hand palm-up, studying it. It was the right color, and the right size and shape.

And that apparition had had tubes and wires coming out of it all over.

Frag.

"Mac?"

But what did this mean? And where had he gone? If Vector was in trouble, why didn't he just teleport away? If he could send his hand, why couldn't he send the rest of himself?

What good was sending his…

Oh.

"Mac? Whose hand is that? You've got this concerned look on your faceplate. What's going on?"

"We need to get back to my place," Maccadam said. "Come on."

"Whose hand—"

"Vector's," Maccadam turned and walked back the way they had come, toward the still-open groundbridge.

And he was pretty sure he knew what to do with it.

Alpha Trion looked up when his brothers filed in. One look at Maccadam's faceplate told him they'd found the hand.

He pushed himself to a sitting position, ignoring the discomfort that caused.

"Lie down, please," Maccadam said.

"No," Alpha Trion said. "Do you have a computer console you wouldn't mind losing? That hand has—"

"A data port and some storage," Maccadam continued as he walked over to a computer terminal at the side of the room. "I know."

"This is insane," Liege said. "Why would Vector send us some sort of clue when he could just send himself?"

"You didn't see him," Alpha Trion said. "He could barely talk. Whatever trouble he's in, he needs our help."

"It's a trap," Liege said. "I guarantee it's a trap."

"Yes," Alpha Trion said. "That's why—don't, STOP, Alchemist!"

Maccadam froze. "What?"

"Don't plug that into the console yet. Disconnect the computer first. Pull it out of the wall, disable its access to the public databases, and destroy every possible way it could talk to other machines. If this is a trap, we don't want to spring it on the entirety of Cybertron."

"Right," Maccadam said. "Sorry, I'm not thinking straight. It's been a long orn. Hold on."

Alpha Trion watched as Maccadam started disconnecting the computer and disabling some of its settings.

He steeled himself for bad news. They had been so worried about Megatronus and the war that they'd all but forgotten about Vector. The more he thought about it, the more he saw that this could be an even larger problem. Someone or something had murdered Onyx—which was no small feat—and then had made Vector disappear. Vector, who could see the future, travel through time, and teleport with a warp range of half the galaxy.

Anyone who could successfully capture and contain Vector was a serious threat.

And it couldn't have anything to do with Megatronus, or he would have been making snide remarks about offing Vector instead of dropping hints about 'who the Council was working for,' whatever that meant.

The Iacon Council had served no interests but their own.

"Okay," Maccadam stepped back. "This computer isn't going to talk to any other machines, or the public databases. Am I good to plug this in?"

"Do it," Alpha Trion said.

Maccadam vented a heavy sigh. "Here we go."

Alpha Trion watched as he plugged Vector's hand into the computer console. "Have it scan any files for malware before you open them."

Maccadam nodded and typed instructions into the console.

Almost immediately, text filled the screen, scrolling too quickly to read. Alpha Trion committed it to memory so he could decode it later.

"Pit," Maccadam said, leaning forward and halfway obscuring Alpha Trion's view. "What the frag is all of this? How much data storage does he have on—"

The screen flashed and then went black.

Maccadam frowned.

"I'm guessing it's not supposed to do that," Amalgamous said.

"Not really," Maccadam said. "Should I try to reboot it?"

"Give me a moment, I was recording it," Alpha Trion said, and accessed the memory file, slowing it down so he could read…

No…

"Spark of Unicron…" he breathed.

"What?" Maccadam asked.

Alpha Trion shook his helm. "We… we have to talk to Primus, now. I don't care if he's sick, we have to tell him—"

"We can't."

Alpha Trion turned to stare at Logos, who met his gaze with a grim understanding. He must have been reading as well. He must have recognized the language the file names were written in.

"We can't, why?" Alpha Trion said.

Silence fell.

"Alph," Maccadam said quietly. "Primus is… dead."

What?

Alpha Trion rounded on Maccadam. "No… he can't…"

"We have to figure out what to do about this on our own," Logos said.

"What to do about what?" Amalgamous asked lightly.

"He must have known," Logos frowned, confusion written across his faceplate. "Primus must have known, why didn't he warn us?"

Maybe Alpha Trion was mistaken. Maybe this didn't mean what he thought it meant…

"Warn us about what?" Liege demanded.

And Primus… offline? That couldn't be right. It had to be some sort of trick, or mistake.

He met Logos's gaze again, trying to fight back his shock and horror enough to think.

"Unicron's not waking, is he?" Liege demanded. "Logos? Trion?"

His siblings had been created to fight gods—if Unicron woke, they could handle it.

This, on the other hand…

Logos spoke emotionlessly. "You wouldn't have been able to read it, it was scrolling too fast. But that code—those file names—they weren't written in Cybertronian."

"Wait…" Maccadam said. "You don't mean…"

Alpha Trion took in a deep vent and let it out slowly. "They're written in Quintesson—the Quintesson slave language, to be specific." He stared at the dark screen of the computer console. "They're back."

Amalgamous leaned against the wall, arms crossed, trying to ignore the fact that his internals were twisting themselves in knots.

"I can't believe it," Quintus said, voice trembling. "I just can't believe it. We've been patrolling the edges of the galaxy for a thousand vorns to make sure they never came back! How could they have gotten here? How could they have captured Vector?"

Quintus's panicking wasn't helping. Amalgamous didn't want to think through the implications of this, and he especially didn't want to listen to everyone else talking about the situation. But he couldn't slip away until he knew what his brothers were planning to do.

"If anyone could capture Vector…" Liege muttered.

"But we were watching!" Quintus said. "That's why we left Cybertron! They couldn't have slipped past us."

"It doesn't matter," Logos said coldly. "The most important thing is finding Vector and taking him back. We can't let the Quintessons keep him—he's too powerful. He's obviously still fighting them to some extent, but we don't know how long that will last."

Amalgamous looked down at his crossed arms. He wasn't so sure about that. He didn't like any of this. It still didn't make sense why Vector would just send his hand. He could either teleport or he couldn't.

"Alchemist?" Alpha Trion asked.

"I'm working on it," Maccadam said. He was doing something with a new computer console. They'd decided not to try and reboot the one they'd used before, because you didn't play with technology that might have been influenced by the Quintessons. As a general rule of thumb, you didn't touch anything the Quintessons had gotten their tentacles on.

You burned it, and hoped the smoke wouldn't somehow kill you, or drive you insane, or turn you against your friends.

Sparks, those had been bad times.

Amalgamous did not want to see more times like those.

"Do you think they're in the galaxy?" Quintus asked. "Or do you think they've taken Vector elsewhere? What do you think they're doing with him?"

"We need to wait and see if he sent us a message," Logos said coldly. "Maybe it'll tell us something."

Maybe they shouldn't trust messages from mecha who'd been captured by the Quintessons.

"This is bad timing," Liege grumbled. "We can't fight off a Quintesson invasion with Primus offline and the whole planet in chaos."

"I still don't know how they got past us," Quintus said.

Amalgamous sighed. "They're the Quintessons," he said. "What can't they do?"

"Okay," Maccadam said and sat back. "I can sort through the files now without crashing the computer. What am I looking for, Alph?"

"Something that stands out," Alpha Trion said. "Anything that's different. Or maybe it's encoded somehow… I don't know."

"Or maybe Vector's just went insane," Amalgamous suggested. "And he sent us a bunch of Quintesson computer viruses because he has no idea what he's doing."

Logos glared at him, and everyone else ignored him.

What was Logos's problem lately? Amalgamous knew he was upset about Onyx and Prima and Solus offlining...

"Here," Maccadam said. "This file name's in actual Cybertronian. I'm going to open it…" he looked back at Alpha Trion for confirmation.

"Go ahead."

Sparks… Alpha Trion was in charge now, wasn't he? And if he offlined, then Liege would be next to take command.

And that wouldn't be good.

Everyone was staring at the computer screen now. Displayed on it was a full paragraph of nothing but numbers and dashes. Amalgamous had no idea what it meant, but everyone else seemed to see some meaning in it.

"That's… unnervingly close," Quintus said.

"What?" Amalgamous said.

"It's coordinates," Maccadam explained. "Just a few stars away from us. We could get there with a warp ship in a couple of decaorns. We wouldn't even need the spacebridge."

Amalgamous's spark sank.

That was far too close.

"Well, then what are we waiting for?" Quintus said. "We should get going."

"Right," Logos said.

"I'm coming too," Alpha Trion said. "We need to investigate."

"Hold on one sparking moment," Amalgamous said, forcing an incredulous smirk as the others all turned to stare at him. "You know this is a trap, right?"

"Vector asked for help," Alpha Trion said.

"Since when has Vector ever asked for help?" Amalgamous said. "Does that really seem like him?"

"You didn't see him," Alpha Trion glared.

"You mean the ghost thing?" Amalgamous stepped away from the wall and transformed into a replica of the apparition they'd caught on camera. "I saw it. It's a costume. It's supposed to scare us. It's supposed to make us desperate so we'll walk right into their trap."

"Stop," Alpha Trion said quietly.

Amalgamous transformed back into his normal frame. "They've had Vector for vorns," he said. "Onyx was long dead when Prima and Solus found his frame. We're way too late."

"You don't know that," Maccadam said. "Vector's pretty resilient."

Amalgamous shook his helm. "Okay, but let's just pretend you're right, and those coordinates are actually his location, and rescuing him will actually help, which I don't think is the case. How are we going to do it? Fly up to the Quintesson ship and ask nicely? We sure as pit can't fight our way in. Look at us! Three of us are dead, and Alpha Trion can barely get up off a berth. Megatronus is still out there too. Maybe we should keep trying to deal with him. We might actually succeed at that."

"We have to try to rescue Vector," Logos said. "It's our best chance of stopping the Quintessons. We can't let them use his powers."

"Maybe Mal's right," Liege said. "We don't actually know those coordinates are Vector's location, and this whole situation is suspicious."

"We can't just abandon him, though," Maccadam said. "We ought to at least look for him there."

"Okay," Amalgamous shrugged. "Suit yourselves. It's been a while since we've all offlined together, we might as well go out with a bang and leave Cybertron defenseless."

"You don't have to come," Logos said. "If you're too scared."

Amalgamous was scared. He hadn't been this scared for a long time.

But he wasn't about to admit that.

"I know you don't care about anyone other than yourself," Logos continued. "So leaving you here to protect the planet's no good either. Why don't you just go visit with the mortals upstairs and get overcharged or something. It shouldn't be hard for you to forget about the whole thing."

"Hey," Maccadam said. "Logos…"

"Don't defend me," Amalgamous leaned against the wall again. "Logos knows I'm right, he just doesn't want to admit it. We can't beat the Quintessons. We have no idea how many of them there are, or how long they've been in the galaxy. For all we know, they could be the ones who poisoned Primus. Didn't they supposedly kill their own god?"

Silence fell.

The Quintessons were clever. They'd manipulate everyone, like they had done during the wars. It might already be too late.

"Like I said," Logos told him. "You can stay behind if you're too cowardly to come."

Amalgamous glared at the ground. "If you need my help, you know you could ask nicely instead of trying to guilt me into it."

"If I needed your help, we really would be in trouble," Logos said.

"Hey!" Maccadam said. "Really, mechs."

Amalgamous yawned, trying to pretend that didn't hurt. "Mac, calm down. You should know by now this is just how Logos and I show our brotherly affection for each other."

"You too," Maccadam said. "Knock it off. We don't have time for this game. Alph… Alph, what's wrong?"

Amalgamous looked to the berth, where Alpha Trion was sitting, trembling, staring off into some unknown nothingness.

It was unsettling. "Maybe he's having a vision," Amalgamous suggested.

"I'm about ready to rip your helm off," Liege said. "Shut. Up."

Amalgaous pressed his lip plates together. He really should stop talking. He really should at least try to act like he cared—like he was taking this situation seriously.

And he knew—he really did know why Logos was so upset with him, but he wanted his brother to say it out loud—to admit it.

"Alph?" Maccadam said again.

Alpha Trion shook his helm slowly. "I'm… sorry," he whispered. "This is my fault, it's all my fault…"

Maccadam sighed. "Nothing is your fault," he said. "But Mal's right about one thing. You're in no state to go on a rescue mission."

Alpha Trion buried his faceplate in his hands.

"Quintus, can you stay here with him?" Maccadam said. "I hate leaving Cybertron, but I feel like I need to come on this one. Mal, you can stay too."

"I'm going," Amalgamous blurted.

"Are you sure?"

Coming from Logos, it was easy to brush off, but the idea that Alchemist thought he was too much of a coward to come really hurt.

It wasn't that he didn't care.

It wasn't that he didn't know he was partly responsible.

"I'm coming," he said again. "Okay? I'm coming."

"You're probably right, and this is probably a trap," Maccadam said. He put a hand on Alpha Trion's shoulder. "You might even be right about the Quints poisoning the Core. Who knows how long they've been here. But we can't try to solve this problem if we sit around and do nothing. And on the odd chance that we can rescue Vector from them…"

"We can't pass up this opportunity," Logos finished for him.

Liege nodded, and got up from the bench he'd been sitting on. "All right. What are we waiting for?" he demanded.

"Micronus, for one," Logos said. "We can't do this without him. He's not responding to me, Alchemist, will you try to contact him?"

"Yeah," Maccadam said. "I can try.

"If you go to rescue Vector…" Quintus said. "And you don't come back… what do I do?"

Logos took in a deep vent. "You lie low," he said.

"And take care of Alpha Trion," Maccadam added.

"The Covenant says nothing about us," Logos continued grimly. "Perhaps Primus meant for all of this to happen, and we're not supposed to take part in this war."

That was a chilling thought.

The idea that Primus might have meant for them to die. The idea that their creator might have intentionally led them to this point—to the fate of walking open-opticed into a Quintesson trap.

Primus had asked them to sacrifice themselves before, but there had always been a way back. This time, death would be permanent. With Primus offline, Amalgamous wasn't even sure their sparks would make it back to the Well.

Fantastic.

"While you're trying to get ahold of Micronus," Liege said. "I should go make sure my warp ship's still in working condition. I need some better weapons too, in case we have to fight. Can I use your groundbridge, Mac?"

"Yep," Maccadam said.

"I need time to prepare as well," Logos said. "We won't have more than one shot at this."

"I have things to put in order too," Maccadam said. "Also, Alph, you should lie down. I think you've aggravated your injuries enough for one orn."

Amalgamous didn't want to miss the opportunity to get out of this place for a few breems. "I'll be upstairs," he said. "Contemplating our impending doom. Don't leave without me."

No one seemed to hear him.

That was fine.

He slipped out of the room and climbed the stairs, past ground level and the upper stories of the building, all the way up to the roof, where he could sit and look out over the city of Iacon.

He'd rather be out there in the streets, walking around. But he didn't want to risk a run-in with Megatronus, so the roof was as far as he could go.

Maybe he was a coward.

Maybe he didn't care about anyone but himself.

It hadn't always been that way.

But who else was there to care about anymore? Mecha came and went, offlining just a few hundred vorns after they were sparked. Aside from his siblings, who were all cosmically tired of him, there was no one worth talking to, nothing permanent.

All he could do to keep himself from dying of boredom was to stir up trouble, to start arguments, to make light of serious situations until Liege threatened to tear him to pieces and Micronus disappeared to sulk in subspace, and even Logos lost his cool.

Well, it wouldn't matter for long.

In just a few decaorns, they'd all probably be offline.

All of Cybertron would follow eventually. The only question was whether they'd kill each other all off before they starved.

Amalgamous walked to the edge of the roof.

"We started this world fighting, and we'll end it fighting, won't we?" he muttered to himself. "Primus did love his symmetry. We should have known..."

Maccadam commed him, and he answered with a sigh. "Do you mind? I'm in the middle of a poetic thought."

"Micronus is back. We're leaving in twenty breems."

"Okay," Amalgamous said. "I'll be sure to show up in about nineteen and a half."

Silence for a moment.

"Are you all right?"

Trust Maccadam to ask something stupid like that.

Amalgamous shuttered his optics and cut the comm. then set a timer in his processor for nineteen breems.

Notes:

1. Yep.

2. I know the G1 version of the Quintessons originated from Cybertron, but I've come up with my own, different backstory for them, that I will explain eventually in a far future story. To summarize, they are from the Andromeda galaxy, or maybe some other nearby galaxy, they are determined to eventually conquer Cybertron, and, as Mal alluded to, they did kill their own diety.

3. Thanks for reading!