Fate Calls

by Sci-Fifan95

In life, the only certain thing that applies to us is death. We cannot escape it. We cannot outrun it. It is a fate that finds us all. However, He plays chess. And you don't find out until too late that He's been playing with two queens all along.

44. Mind

(Inhales deeply, and lets breath out slowly) I have returned... And I bring cookies.

No. I have not finished my novel. And no, I have not stopped working on it. The situation is a little complex, but the solution is simple. If you wish to know how it is that there's an update and I am still working on my novel, check out my profile; I go a little more in-depth there.

Many, many thank yous go to all of you out there who reviewed. Seriously, you people stepped it up with the last chapter. Like, in a BIG WAY. 20 reviews on my last chapter, which put the per-chapter average for all of Fate Calls (it's four years old, yay!) at just over 10. I feel humbled. Thank you all again.

TD (older brother, not younger) - I understand perfectly... And also recommend you change your iPad's password.

Thanks for reviewing.

Guest - That is one of literally dozens of songs I wish to eventually become credit songs. It just needs the right scene for it. Still working on that.

Thanks for the review, and suggestion.

Starstealer - As with the Guest above, those two are songs on my list (I should just make a dang document at this point) of potential songs for future chapters. I'm very glad to know that you love my story so much, and that you think it's great I've been keeping that stuff out of my work. I hope you continue to enjoy it.

Thank you for the suggestions and the review.

Darkscar (Reply to Chapter 24) - Do not laugh at the ninja that is Jazz. Things can happen to you... (ominous music plays).

(Reply to Chapter 25) - I will get flak for this, but I regret to inform you that I wouldn't know; I haven't seen any of the Harry Potter films or read the books. (Prepares anti-everything bunker for the hate he will receive). I am glad it ended up better for Arcee and Shadowstreaker than for Hermione and Harry, though.

(Reply to Chapter 6) - I'm sorry, but I'm not sure what you're meaning with that one. What part are you guessing?

(Reply to Chapter 7) - Epic, to be sure (my favorite part of the Prequels is the music), but I do not think it will quite work with my planned re-write of that chapter. I do appreciate that you offered a suggestion, however.

And, thank you for each review that you left.

Guest (Chapter 4) - (Re-listens to his original pick for original chapter) (bangs head on table) as if the writing in those chapters isn't bad enough. Oh, how I look forward to the day I actually can get my planned re-writes (and switch out credit songs) done and out. It's... Painful to look upon.

Thanks go to Crystal Prime for beta reading.

Disclaimer: Transformers belongs to Hasbro. I only take credit for this story and my OCs.

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Darkness.

Cold.

Numb.

Alone.

Arcee's optics opened, but they saw nothing but a cold, piercing, total darkness. She adjusted them for darkness, and they still saw nothing. Not even her servo was visible when she raised it up to her faceplate. It was like being in the dead space between stars.

The air was colder than any she had experienced; it stabbed at her like a thousand icy knives. She felt a layer of frost clinging to her armor, remaining in place no matter how hard she blindly rubbed at it. And all around her, she felt herself being watched. Not someone or something, but by everything.

It sent a constant chill down her spine that didn't come from the cold air.

Where was she? Why was she here? What happened to her sisters and Shadow'? Were they okay?

A rumble came from the darkness, the sound seeming almost like laughter to her audio receptors. A mocking laughter.

The black fury she had been keeping in check was released from the cage she'd crafted for it. She let out a scream that echoed around her, and sprinted out into the darkness with murderous intent. When she found whoever was watching her, she'd break their pedes. Then their servos. Then their digits. Then whatever else she could without offlining them. Then she would end their miserable life by shooting them in helm.

She didn't care if her watcher was stronger than her. She didn't care if there were more than one. She didn't care if they were even Cybertronian. All she cared about was how they dared to laugh while she was in pain and agony over thoughts of her sisters and Shadow'. She would find who was watching her, and she would make them regret mocking her.

Her anger and her spark demanded it. For her family.

Something about the darkness folded and morphed, as if changing shape and texture. While at first it had been ever-present yet distant cold cloud, it turned into a dense, oily, constricting Darkness that smothered Arcee from every angle.

The Darkness grew denser and denser, until Arcee found that she had to literally fight her way through it, which was nearly impossible since she couldn't even see. But it soon grew so dense she could move no further forward. She turned to move her way back the way she'd come, but the Darkness erased her progress and forced her back again.

She was trapped.

The Darkness moved inward, pinning her, intent on swallowing her up entirely. Like a slow moving wall. She screamed again and deployed her blades to slice her way through the invisible opponents she felt creeping in around her.

Her first and second attacks cut deeply into the oily substance, but the third was stopped when the Darkness increased in density again, catching her servo within itself. Her other blade suffered the same fate.

The Darkness slammed her against the ground, and quickly rolled over her. It did not smother her as she believed it would, but instead stopped just short of her—not fully in contact with her besides at her servos, but close enough that she felt its presence far stronger than before. It felt like every twisted, disturbed, and sickly thing all at once.

Her anger faded, and she realized that part of its origin had not entirely been from a desire to make her watcher respect the source of her pain.

She was afraid of the watcher.

Terror spiked in her, and sadness, hatred and self-loathing, and guilt, and despair. Every negative thought, fear, and paranoia flooded her systems, sending her CPU into a dizzying frenzy of emotions she had not felt moments ago.

She was the reason Tailgate was offline; she failed to save Cliffjumper; she was responsible for what happened to her sisters; and she was why everyone around her offlined. Her courted hated her; her sisters had never loved her; and they never told her the truth. She was alone. She would always be alone. And she would never know what it felt like to be welcome.

The thoughts kept coming, and Arcee struggled to keep herself from believing them. She knew logically that she was not at fault for everything she thought of, but that didn't stop her from feeling like she was. Could she have avoided being separated from Tailgate that fateful cycle? Why had she not learned from her past and repeated her mistake with Cliffjumper? What happened to her sisters? What had she done to Shadow' to make him lose himself?

Was she a monster?

The Darkness gave another laughter-like rumble. Like something that was taking joy in her pain.

That caused Arcee's fury to flare again. She renewed her struggle against the Darkness, and managed to break its grip on one of her blades. She cut at the Darkness with all her might. The cut did nothing to damage it, but she was undeterred. She cut it again. And again. And again.

Over and over she cut at it, and nothing about her situation changed besides her mood. She felt more confident in her thoughts. Less uncertain and doubtful. She did not truly know what was her fault and what was not, but she knew she would not let the Darkness have its fun.

In response, the Darkness growled. It pressed against her, catching her blade again and tightening around her entire frame. At first it felt like the coldest hug possible, but then it turned into a crushing force that threatened to warp her armor. Never before had Arcee felt so helpless to defend herself.

Then the Light arrived.

It came in a blinding flash like a million bolts of lightning. Like an exploding sun. Like a quasar.

The Darkness broke in its presence. Its strength shattered. Its power vanished. Its watcher growled and fled. All was Light.

The parts of the Darkness gripping and crushing her burned to nothing; and with their disappearance, she fell into her side, her thoughts returning, her armor and core warming. She laid there for nearly half a klick, with her vision seared white. Eventually it started to return, and she was able to finally see the source of the Light.

A Mech of Light was standing before her. He was tall and broad, and had snow white armor. Parts of his armor floated around him, hovering in place and moving with him with nothing to keep them there. Gold Primic runes were etched on his armor and faceplate, and his golden optics carried a look of authority.

"Come." The Mech of Light's voice was more regal, authoritative, and inspiring than any Arcee had heard before.

Arcee remained stationary. The Mech of Light may have saved her from the Darkness, but she did not trust him; she would not trust anyone in this strange place. Not after what she had been through this cycle.

The Mech of Light seemed to sense her distrust. "If I had intended you harm, I would have allowed him to corrupt you. Now come—the others are already on the move, and your time here is running short."

Cautiously, Arcee picked herself up off the floor and approached the Mech of Light. She did not do so because he had changed her mind, but because she had no other options, and she wished to know the 'Others' he referred to.

Once she was close to him, the Mech of Light raised both servos above his helm. White Light appeared in them, and he brought one down to touch Arcee's shoulder-joint gently. There was a bright flash, and when it cleared, they were somewhere else entirely.

Here, she could see without assistance from the Mech of Light. She saw structures made of metal cubes floating above them, each kilometers upon kilometers tall and wide. A black metal floor stretched in all directions, continuing uninterrupted for countless kilometers until hitting a dome of white light. Dead circuitry lined the floor, but Arcee could not determine a use for any of it.

She found it all of little improvement over the Darkness; everything around her still seemed dead, but in a different way.

Something tapped her in the side of the helm, and she snapped her helm to glare at what had touched her. It was a shard of crystal just floating in the air as if in zero gravity. Green in color and filled with glowing circuitry of near-infinite complexity that made her helm spin just at a brief glance, it was an oddity even in her otherworldly surroundings.

Another, smaller shard of green crystal floated over the first one, and Arcee's attention was drawn to it immediately. Were they from the same source?

Another sliver appeared in her vision. Then another. Then four at the same time. They were everywhere, she realized—crystal shards of various sizes and shapes were above her, at optic level with her, and even embedded into the floor or the structures of cubes. There were thousands and thousands of them.

Yet another shard hit her in the back of the helm. This one traveled fast enough for her to determine the shard had come from above and behind her. Arcee turned and looked up at the structures of cubes floating in the air, her optics searching.

Then she saw it.

And nearly gasped.

Far above the floor, nearly invisible among the many cube structures, were the remains of a massive green sphere. It was in countless pieces now, but when it was whole, it would have been at least as large as one of the smaller orbital stations Arcee used to watch pass over Cybertron while she was still living in the city of her birth—Kaon.

"What is this place?" She asked the Mech of Light.

He didn't answer her. Instead, he waved a servo at the metal floor, and a micrometer-thick control panel appeared from it. "Brace yourself, you will not find this pleasant."

Before Arcee could ask what he meant, or fall into a stance to prepare for an attack, a circular portion of the floor around she and the Mech of Light—thirty meters in radius—separated from the floor and shot upward.

The structures and crystal shards flew past in a blur, and the platform adjusted flight patterns so quickly it made her CPU dizzy. It accelerated so quickly and so suddenly, Arcee fell onto her backplates and found she was forced to remain there; the force generated by their rapid ascent kept her pinned. She hated the feeling of being unable to move.

Then just as quickly as it started, the ride ended. The metal platform came to a stop so abrupt, it propelled her upward. She tumbled in the air for a short time, then adjusted her frame so she righted herself and landed on her pedes. Had she not had the reflexes and training she did, she would have landed on her faceplate.

They were near the remains of the crystal now, surrounded by a cloud of green shards that reflected all light that hit them. Even in pieces, they each were alive. But the cube structures near them remained lifeless and dead, a stark contrast that gave Arcee an uneasy feeling.

She turned to the Mech of Light, who was back to using the panel he had summoned all the way back down at the floor. "Are we done moving around, or are you going to keep ignoring me?"

The Mech of Light paused in his work and looked at her, golden optics as calm as a still sea. "We are done travelling." He turned away and said nothing else.

He continued working at the panel until he dismissed it, only for dozens of holographic displays to appear around them both. There were so many tools and data streams running over each display, Arcee couldn't even process a single one.

The Mech of Light had no such issue. He went from holographic screen to holographic screen quickly, digits flying over holographic keys too rapidly for Arcee's optics to follow. Then he would move to the next, entering commands faster than she could blink. With his regal and commanding presence, he made working at so many displays at once appear incredibly easy.

She doubted Moonracer and Ratchet together would have been able to operate just one.

"If we're done moving, why are you still silent until I ask you something?"

"Because I am waiting."

"For what?"

"For the others."

At his words, scores of platforms identical to the one they stood on appeared from below, stopping at exactly the same height. The ones near them were empty, but most of them held bots Arcee could not see from their location. Strangely, most seemed to be the exact same size and have the same build.

For a moment, the platforms were all motionless. Then they all moved together slowly, steadily. Like they were all on invisible rails. The platforms merged into a single, larger one, each individual platform fitting together perfectly with the others. With each platform that joined with another, Arcee heard a loud clang that echoed like a clap of thunder. The platforms were heavier than they appeared.

Finally, they stopped moving and merged. The final product was a circular walkway with all the control panels in the middle, surrounding a large hole that went down to the floor far below. The walkway was several kilometers wide from one end to the other, and the hole it had in the middle was nearly one kilometer in diameter.

The Mech of Light looked down at Arcee once the platforms had formed the walkway. "They are here. Be brief in your greetings."

His words confused her. Greet who? "What?"

"Arcee!"

She froze at the voice. The familiar, feminine, authoritative voice. That couldn't be who it sounded like; Arcee had felt her offline. She had. It couldn't be her.

Slowly and carefully, Arcee turned around.

She was almost toppled over when Chromia ran up to her and gave her a crushing hug.

Chromia's armor was dented and cracked in many places, and in one case an armor plate had broken entirely. Many of the weapons she carried were also damaged. Beyond that, she looked fine—there wasn't even a layer of frost on her, unlike Arcee. And behind her, Arcee saw Elita standing there with Optimus, Ironhide, and Jazz.

Numbly, Arcee returned the hug she was being given, optics focused on Elita. She felt a knock on the walls she'd placed on all her bonds, but she didn't open them. "You can't be here."

Chromia gave an indignant huff. "Nice to see you, too. I wasn't wanting to hear an actual greeting from you at all."

"You can't be here."

"Hey, standing right here, C.C."

"I fe—… I felt you…"

Chromia took that broken sentence to break their hug, and Elita stepped forward. Again there was a knock at her bonds, stronger this time, and again Arcee ignored it. This wasn't real. She couldn't let herself go back to the emptiness. "Let us in, Arcee. We're here. And we're real."

Arcee wanted so badly to believe that. But how could she? She knew what she had felt—what the endless pain from her bonds had meant. Her sisters had both offlined. There was nothing else that could send that level of agony through a bond… Right?

After Arcee had not said anything or lowered her walls at all, the three mechs behind Elita and Chromia walked forward. Like Arcee, Ironhide and Optimus had a layer of frost on their armor that wouldn't melt. Jazz had no frost, like Chromia and Elita. How strange.

"If ya aren't going to open your bonds with them, open ours," said Ironhide.

"Ironhide, I ca—"

"Ya can and ya will."

Arcee held Ironhide's gaze for a moment at the interruption, but eventually cracked open her bond with him.

A steady flow of emotions flowed from the crack, coming from her bond with Ironhide and—to a far lesser extent—two other bonds connected to him. Arcee resisted the surge of happiness she wanted to feel at finding Ironhide still had two other connections; she had to be sure before she let herself feel that.

She cracked open the bonds she had with her sisters, and an explosion of emotions flooded through the bonds and forced them open fully. Both Chromia and Elita hugged her again, and she returned it quickly. There was no question now—her sisters really were real.

"How?" Arcee asked, breaking contact with her still-living sisters.

"I brought them here," said the Mech of Light.

"Where is 'Here'?"

"That will be answered soon."

"Then why? Bringing them here cut off their bonds. You're the reason for my pain." Arcee sensed her sisters didn't approve of her accusing words, but she didn't care.

The Mech of Light blinked down at her. "I Summoned them here to save them. If I let them be, they would have perished from their wounds within minutes. Your brother would have followed. And you surely would not have been far behind them; your kind commonly die from having too many of your bonds broken at once."

His answer made Arcee feel weak. Her sister's had almost offlined. What she felt from their bonds hadn't been them being taken to this place by the Mech of Light, as she accused—not entirely. Part of it had been Arcee feeling their lives fade away. She didn't know what to think of that, or the Mech of Light's action.

"If you brought Elita and Chromia here to save them, why have you summoned the rest of us?" Optimus asked, Omni Saber slung over his backplates.

"You are here to Understand." The Mech of Light walked toward the hole in the middle of the walkway, gesturing for them to follow.

"Understand what?" Asked Optimus.

Arcee felt her sisters wanting to answer when the Prime asked that, but something kept them silent. She sent curiosity through her bonds with them, but they replied with nothing. No amount of continued nudging the bonds with them got either to acknowledge her silent questioning.

"To Understand the roles you must take. To Understand what you have faced. To Understand him." The Mech of Light pointed to one of the other people on the walkway, who had just gotten close enough for Arcee to identify.

It was Shadow'. But so was the mech next to him, and the one next to him, and the next.

They were all her Shadow'.

Each Shadow' was identical in appearance and different in behavior: one was constantly writing on a data pad in his servos; another was taking apart and reassembling a weapon repeatedly; and another was being transported in a cage, stalking from one end to the other like an agitated animal, his optics crimson and mad with rage.

Arcee could see the confusion Jazz and Optimus were feeling; it was written on their faceplates. But with her siblings there was a suspicious lack of anything meaningful. Each of their bonds were carefully shielded against leaking thoughts and emotions, with Ironhide's own shield hastily constructed. Chromia had shown him something through their sparkbond—something both she and Elita knew and weren't telling Arcee.

"What is this?" Her question was not directed at the Mech of Light, but her sisters. She knew they knew the answer, and they knew she wasn't asking the Mech of Light. Arcee made it clear when she glanced pointedly at them.

Even then, they said nothing. They just kept walking forward. Continued letting her feel emotions from them, ones they purposefully released. But they refused to meet her gaze, and ignored her question.

The act felt like a stab in the backplates.

"These are the Fragments of Shadowstreaker. The Remains," said the Mech of Light, breaking Arcee's anger and frustration before it could even manifest.

Those words made something inside Arcee freeze, but Optimus spoke before she could identify what it was, "What do you mean?"

"He means that I killed your friend."

A black hole of nothing appeared in front of them, sucking in light and reflecting none. A shape materialized from it, forming into a familiar mech darker than a starless sky. Cold stood before them, tall and broad like the Mech of Light, and in every way his opposite. While the Mech of Light was regal and inspiring, Cold's jagged armor and multi-lensed, crimson optics inspired nothing but fear and dread. The clash was made all the more obvious by how the Mech of Light had etchings of Primic runes on his armor, and Cold's had reversed Primic runes.

Arcee felt pure, white-hot anger flare within her at the sight of the twisted mech. She didn't care that her attacks had been useless against him in the ops center. She didn't care that here, he was even more likely to be unharmed by any attack she made. She didn't even have the CPU power to analyze what he said. She only focused on the burning anger she didn't understand. It consumed her thoughts; drove her to launch forward and cut off his helm.

Nothing else mattered to her.

Only the combined efforts of Chromia and Elita kept her from deploying her blades and rushing Cold as soon as he appeared. Even then, Arcee herself had to make a conscious effort to calm down.

While her sisters were helping her from lashing out, Ironhide stepped in front of them. "Who the frag are you?"

Cold appeared to find the question amusing. "I can be a lot of people, including an agent of death. Or just death itself. I like giving myself promotions." He looked behind Ironhide, focusing on Elita and Chromia. "Oh. So you're Orphan-One and Orphan-Two. Huh. Wondered where you scampered off to. How'd that fall treat you?"

Optimus and Jazz moved to flank Ironhide at that. The Prime pulled the Omni Saber—still transformed from when Cold had wielded it—from his backplates and pointed it at Cold. "How…? I saw you fall."

"Did you honestly expect me to place myself in a new body without giving myself a way to jump back? Please." Cold gave the Omni Saber a greedy look, but it changed to one of boredom when he refocused on Optimus. "Did you not learn from when you last pointed that Shard at me? Are you… A little slow? I'm not surprised—all pitiful commanders are. But don't worry, I hear they just came up with a cure: a slow and torturous death. As it turns out, that also cures a lot of other things."

Because of her chief priority at the moment being keeping her anger in check, Arcee wasn't sure if the way the frost on Optimus' armor thickened for a fraction of a micro-klick was a trick of the light or not.

"Would ya mind tryin' it out for us first?" Jazz asked. "Ah hear new cures can be real dangerous. Ah' not puttin' my gorgeous frame on da line without seein' how someone else reacts ta it first."

Cold looked down. "Oh, I'm sorry, Saboteur. I didn't even see you down there! You're so small I could have stepped on you and not even realized it."

"Ah can always chop off ya pedes so ya on my level."

Cold's chuckle was just as chilling as it had been when Arcee first heard it in the ops center. "I almost find it funny how you can still find the will to tell a joke when staring at doom. Almost. I'm still going to kill you as soon as this conversation starts to bore me."

"Enough," the Mech of Light cut in, walking forward so his Light was canceling out Cold's Darkness. "Stand aside."

"Why? I like this spot."

"You are standing in our path. Do not make me remove you from it."

"I find it amusing when you make threats. We both know you can't do anything to me. And I can't do anything to you. We cancel each other out. That's how this works." Cold adopted a look of false sadness. "It's really too bad the same can't be said for anyone else we encounter."

Arcee's anger finally receded enough that she didn't have to dedicate her concentration to controlling it. She reentered the conversation at Cold's statement, but her CPU would only supply her with a question she'd already asked. "What. Is. This?" The three words came slowly, and her voice sounded ragged and strained. Like she'd snap at any moment.

It felt like she would.

Cold's multi-lensed optics shifted to her, then to her fellow Autobots, then at last landed on the Mech of Light again. "You haven't even told them yet? What kind of guide are you?"

The Mech of Light ignored Cold. "What you see around you is all part of Shadowstreaker's Animus. Our exact position is near his Apex Archive."

The explanation confused Arcee, and she saw Jazz and Optimus thought similarly. "I don't understand."

"All things exist on multiple planes of existence. For each solid object in your physical world, there exists a thought of that object in another dimension. The reverse is true when taking thoughts into account in your reality. Each of your thoughts—be they happy, sad, violent, or lustful—creates a physical counterpart in a realm you cannot see. Realms created from the mind are referred to as an Animus, while realms created from the Soul are… Beyond understanding. All sentient beings within this Multiverse and the Omniverse have their own Animus, created from their subconscious thought."

"And we are standing in Shadowstreaker's," Optimus said. "How?"

"Travel to a sentient being's Animus is normally impossible—the realms of existence are opposites. There are, however, two exceptions: one is when the sentient in question possesses enough power to cross reality itself at will; the other is when the creator of an Animus—"

"Dies, and you know someone who knows how to transport others through reality. Both of which happened in this case, blah, blah, blah. You are so boring, Sparkles."

Arcee latched onto Cold's statement. There was no way she'd heard that correctly. But even if she had, how could it be true? Cold took pleasure in mocking her in the ops center; nothing prevented him from lying to cause her pain.

"Is Shadowstreaker really offline?" Jazz had lost his accent.

There was a long pause from the Mech of Light, and that made Cold roar with laughter. "Oh, he is, Saboteur. I killed him myself. I tore his mind apart, shredded his soul to ribbons." He laughed again, his distorted voice sounding like a nightmare—a horrifying, disturbing, twisted nightmare. "And to think, Sparkles here didn't even take the time to tell Orphan—Three. Shame on you, sparkles. Shame."

Arcee wanted to discard what Cold was saying. She wanted to so much. But as she continued looking at the Mech of Light, and noted how he said nothing, Arcee knew it was true.

Shadow' was gone. Just like Tailgate. Just like Cliffjumper. Just like she'd always feared he would be.

And this time, there was no one to fake his offlining.

The part of Arcee that had frozen when the Mech of Light talked about Fragments and Remains spread throughout her frame. It was made all the worse by how they were now all surrounded by wandering copies of Shadow'. All of them were talking softly, but only to themselves or in languages Arcee didn't understand. Only the one in the cage was silent. Still pacing. Still acting like an animal.

None were him.

That thought froze other parts of her: her CPU; her bonds; her spark. She felt numb to the point she couldn't even feel her sisters anymore. She was alone again.

Her walls slammed back into place, locking down all emotions, good and bad. She never should have lowered them.

"How does that make you feel, Orphan—Three? How does it feel knowing I killed your little boy toy? That I made him beg to die? That terror was the last thing he felt before I ripped his mind apart?"

She wished she'd stayed in the dark.

"How does it feel being alone?"

Arcee found herself unable to speak. And no one else spoke, either. Not even the Mech of Light.

But Optimus found his voice; and when he spoke, he was not speaking with his own authority, but the authority granted to him by the Matrix of Leadership. His voice rolled out like thunder, echoing and spreading in all directions with a boom only a Prime could achieve, "Enough!"

For all the authority the Prime put into that single word, he could have stopped an invasion in its tracks. Made armies freeze in the middle of battle. Silence even Megatron.

All it did to Cold was cause him to tilt his helm to the side. "Oh, look who decided to use his big boy voice." He gestured to their surroundings. "Look around you. Do you see the Primes anywhere? Do you feel their influence in anything you see? No? That's because they're not here. They've never been here. That means that little trinket you're carrying has no authority in this place. Here, I reign."

"You're the one who said you two cancel each other out," said Ironhide. his cannons beginning to hum.

"Yes, but do you see Sparkles here doing anything to shut me up? Or stopping me from doing this?" His servo turned into a blade of Darkness, and he stabbed the Mech of Light through the tank. The Mech of Light stood motionless, unaffected. "He's weak and cares only about instructions. Orders. I don't."

Darkness formed around Cold's servos. Tendrils of it lashed out, wrapping around Ironhide and Chromia in an instant.

Optimus cut the tendril that came for him, but two more appeared, one securing the Omni Saber before trapping him. Arcee and the others were already trapped by then.

"What I care about, is amusement. And right now, it would be amusing to watch you all die."

Arcee felt the tendril around her tighten. It was not like what she'd experience in the Darkness before—that had been to secure her in place, this was to crush them all. Quickly she felt her armor bend under the strain, her spark start racing as energon flow was interrupted by the massive pressure. She struggled against the tendril, but the more she did, the tighter it became. The same thing was happening to her fellow Autobots. Still she struggled, trying to break free.

The rate in which the tendril increased its crushing force abruptly increased, surprising her. She was unable to keep a small grunt of pain from escaping her, despite how high a pain threshold she had.

The helm of the Shadow' in the cage snapped in her direction. His crimson optics flashed in black rage, and he let out a roar that echoed multiple times in the nearly endless expanse around them. It did not sound like something that should have come from a sentient being.

Everything stopped. Arcee stopped. Her fellow Autobots stopped. Cold stopped. The tendrils stopped constricting. All the copies of Shadow' stopped, dropping any item they had been carrying.

The dome of white Light in the distance disappeared, a darkness coming in to surround them all. But it was different from the Darkness. This was light enough to see through, but dense enough to reduce visibility.

The cube structures within view transformed. The countless billions of cubes that made up each one changed into patterns they had not before. Bulky and roughly Cybertronian-like forms were shaped from them, each so gargantuan their movements created a powerful wind that blew over the walkway.

As one, the copies of Shadow' turned to Cold. All of them. Thousand upon thousands all staring with blank, unfeeling, laser-sharp crimson optics that followed Cold's every movement down to the slightest twitch. The cube titans did the same, turning blocky crimson optics the size of a city block down at Cold, their immense bodies bristling with weapons ranging from ten feet long to several miles.

The copy in the cage snarled at Cold from the start, fists clenched. The look in his optics was pure, murderous rage. A rage fit for an untamable beast.

Arcee was not sure whether she should be terrified of it all or in mute wonder. She could see the same questions running through her fellow Autobots.

Cold himself watched everything stoically. He did not mock, or gasp in fear, or appear surprised, or even look like he expected all of it. He was just stoic.

The fact he said nothing, told Arcee just how nervous he was.

"I say and do nothing to stop you, because I do not have to." The Mech of Light turned his helm so he was looking at Cold. "And I do not have to, because you are already afraid. Afraid of what he can do."

Cold's multi-lensed optics flashed, but he said nothing to refute the Mech of Light. He abruptly dismissed the tendrils and the power he summoned, releasing Arcee and her fellow Autobots back to the floor. He took another glance at all the Shadow' copies and their giant counterparts, then vanished in another black hole of nothing. The temperature noticeably rose with his departure.

As soon as Cold was gone, darkness faded, and the Shadow' copies returned to normal, picking up whatever item they dropped and continuing to aimlessly wander, with even the one in the cage going back to pacing like before. The cube giants broke apart, reforming into the structures they usually were.

It was as if nothing had been wrong in the first place.

No one seemed to know what to say until Jazz broke the silence, "Well… 'Dat' not somethin' ya see every cycle."

In Arcee's opinion, there was nothing else that would fit with what they just witnessed.

"You must harden yourself to things you have not seen before, Autobot Jazz," said the Mech of Light, continuing in the direction he had been leading them before Cold appeared. "What has just occurred will be far from the most unusual event you will witness once the Xel'Tor awakens."

"You said Shadow' was offline," Arcee stated.

"I did not deny it."

"Then how can he wake up?" Ironhide asked.

"While Shadowstreaker has perished in your reality, the origin of his death was not in your realm of existence, but here here in his Animus." The Mech of Light gestured to the Shadow' copies and the crystal shards floating in the air. "What you see around you is the complete collection of all of Shadowstreaker's mind. His memories, the physical manifestations of different portions and elements of his personality, and things of which you should not know."

Arcee felt uncomfortable with this information. She was essentially walking inside Shadow's CPU, standing among all of his memories without being invited. Part of her felt like she was violating his privacy.

The logical part pointed out he was offline, and she'd seen no memories. But the feeling remained.

They came to the edge of the center of the walkway, where all the control panels had gathered. The Mech of Light stepped up to one and operated it for a moment, and an image appeared of a perfect green sphere. "All these memories and manifestations were contained within the Animus' representation of a mind—Shadowstreaker's Apex Archive. Whatever happens within Shadowstreaker's mind, happens here on a physical level. The same is true for what happens here affects his mind there."

"And his CPU here was torn apart. That means his actual CPU was as well, offlining him," Arcee said tonelessly. Her sisters and Ironhide knocked on her bonds, but she didn't let them in.

"While you are correct, what you are not understanding is if his Apex Archive is repaired, so too will his mind be returned."

Arcee felt a touch of hope in those words, but her rational CPU restrained her emotions until something actually happened.

"So ya can fix da Shadowster'," Jazz concluded.

"With time, effort, and significant levels of energy, yes. But if his mind shatters again, I will not be able to save it; it will be too far gone. And even when I complete the rebuilding, his mind will be remain damaged by his guilt, and my Opposite—the one you know as Cold—will retain his hold on Shadowstreaker's mind. Safety precautions must be put into place to prevent that."

Arcee grabbed onto that last portion of his statement. "What do you need to do to fix him?"

The Mech of Light shook his helm. "You misunderstand, Autobot Arcee. Anything I do to Shadowstreaker's mind would have the same effect as my Opposite's efforts; his mind would break. Any attempt I made to wipe away his guilt would turn Shadowstreaker into someone else—possibly someone unable to care for others. The only way for his guilt to fade is if he forgives himself."

"He won't do that."

"Not without great effort by those around him, no. He will need help from all of you in healing."

Ironhide gave a low grunt. "Why should I help him? Without him, none of us would be here right now. My 'Mia wouldn't have ever been in danger."

Arcee's first instinct was to defend Shadow', to point out Shadow' hadn't been in control of his own frame, but the Mech of Light beat her to it. "Have you considered the possibility that you are partially responsible for what happened to your mate and your sister?"

"How am I at fault for his actions?!"

"You must Understand. The actions of the Xel'Tor are the fault of my Opposite—not the Xel'Tor's and not yours. However, my Opposite only gained the ability to control Shadowstreaker for limited periods of time through the increased presence of the guilt Shadowstreaker carried. It was after Shadowstreaker was dead that my Opposite nearly succeeded in claiming the lives of Autobot Chromia and Autobot Elita. What would have happened had you taken an active role in ridding Shadowstreaker of his guilt before it grew?"

Ironhide had no answer for that, and neither did Arcee.

"But you have said yourself Cold will retain his control of Shadowstreaker," Optimus said. "Keeping him from attacking again cannot be as simple as assisting Shadowstreaker in healing from his experiences."

"You are correct. Before Shadowstreaker was killed, my Opposite relied on being able to heavily influence Shadowstreaker. He could take control of Shadowstreaker's body for short periods of time, but when his time was up, he had to secede control to Shadowstreaker himself. Now that my Opposite has killed Shadowstreaker, he will have complete control within minutes after I rebuild Shadowstreaker's mind."

"Then how do we keep Cold out?"

"Both I and my Opposite are able to influence Shadowstreaker directly through the Emitter. Through this link, my Opposite was also able to use Shadowstreaker to enter the power grid of your base and take control of its systems. In turn, this link allowed me to stop my Opposite before he could escape in his new body. If this connection to the Emitter is blocked, so too will my Opposite be. And while blocking his connection will delay his Journey on the Path beyond when I planned to reveal myself, it is necessary." He raised his servo, and a nearly transparent data pad appeared floating above his palm. He floated the data pad to Optimus. "Contained within this is a list of steps that need to be taken in order for what I suggest to come about. Give it to your medics when you return."

As Optimus sub-spaced the data pad, Arcee asked, "But how do we find this Emitter? We've never heard of anything like that."

"I refer to what the young human, Rafael, first termed as the Delphic. Its true name was lost long ago, but it is one of the Emitters—the White, to be precise."

"You're not making sense." Arcee was confused again, but she could tell her sisters had already heard everything the Mech of Light was saying. "What's an Emitter? Why are you calling the Delphic one, and how do you even know about it?"

"The exact nature of the Emitters is a secret carefully controlled by the Higher Powers. On your plane of existence, only a Xel'Tor has the authority to share this secret with anyone else. As to how I know the White Emitter is in your possession, my Opposite and I can see and hear everything Shadowstreaker does—we have since we were transferred to him."

Understanding dawned in Optimus' optics as the Mech of Light turned to address something on one of the many computers nearby. "The Precursor Protocol. That was you."

"Precursor: forerunner; herald; outrider; something that indicates outcome or event. A crude term for our transfer, but not inaccurate. My Opposite and I were chosen to be guides to Shadowstreaker—two extremes of morality. We were to test him. Teach him. Evaluate him. Examine his potential and his Compass. Just as I was tested, and my Opposite was tested. As every Xel'Tor is first tested."

His explanation just brought more confusion to Arcee and her fellow Autobots.

"'Every' Xel'Tor? Shadowstreaker is not the only one?" Optimus asked.

"Xel'Tor is a title and rank given to chosen individuals throughout the Omniverse. There is only one Xel'Tor per Multiverse. What else it implies is for Shadowstreaker to find out."

"Were you one?"

"Both I and my Opposite. We are two of the Ones-From-Before."

"Before what?" Jazz asked.

"Before the current Apex Race. Before common Cybertronians. Before your section of the universe was in existence."

Arcee grinded her denta at all the vague answers. "If you're not going to actually explain anything, why are we here? Why didn't you just fix Shadow' and be done with it?"

"Because Shadowstreaker is not the only one who has a part to play in the events to come." The Mech of Light turned back to them. "You six have roles you must know."

"'Six'?" Arcee looked at her sisters for explanation, but they said nothing.

"The Xel'Tor is merely the first—the beginning. With their appearance, the other members of the Council of Ardents follow."

"Council of Ardents? What?"

The Mech of Light ignored her. "Xel'Tors are meant to be the teachers of the other Council members, but my Opposite has overstepped his bounds. He has… Changed things for this Universal Cycle. My hand is forced. Now other members of the Council must be on the Path at the same time as the Xel'Tor. Freedom, Concealment, Bravery, Strength—you must be on the Path."

"Ya keep saying things like 'dat like we know what ya sayin'. We don'," Jazz said.

"You will know in time. As will the other members of the Council who I have not Summoned here. But what you must know now, is that you must take care. If you don't, what has happened to Shadowstreaker will happen to you, and I will not be able to save you as I have Shadowstreaker."

Arcee felt chilled at his warning. She looked at her fellow Autobots, and in that moment she knew they'd each felt the same thing. That was what compelled her to finally reopen her bonds, and she let herself be silently comforted by her siblings.

"Soon, you will face the events that have shaped you into who you are, and you must Understand their true meaning. Only you as an individual can Understand the meanings of events from your own lives, and so you must face them alone. However, know that fellow Ardents must support you when the time comes. Just as you must support your fellow Ardents when they need it. This is the most important thing you need to do. There is not room f—"

Something shifted within the Animus. The crystal shards—one moment floating and separate—suddenly gravitated together like they were caught in the gravity of a neutron star. They came together above them and over the gap in the walkway, forming together seamlessly and perfectly.

In micro-klicks, they had formed into a perfect sphere. The exact sphere the Mech of Light had displayed as a representation of Shadow's Apex Archive.

The copies of Shadow' disappeared in puffs of black smoke, taking any items they carried with them. The atmosphere brightened, and the temperature warmed. The cube structures started shifting into different shapes on their on, changing more in a micro-klick than Arcee transformed in a cycle. The frost on the cubes fell off in chunks.

Arcee had no idea how to react to it all.

For the first time since she first saw them here, her sisters looked just as confused as she and the others did.

"What was that?" Elita asked.

"I thought you said it would take mega-cycles to fix Shadowstreaker's CPU?" Chromia added. "You made a pretty big deal about how you needed to put everything back together in a very precise order."

The Mech of Light looked around them, golden optics unreadable. "That… Was not my doing."

"Then who did that?"

There was a flash of Light. It came from behind her, but even then it blinded Arcee. She had to wait a full klick before she could see again, and she turned to this second source of Light.

A being of Energy and Light stood there, its Light making the Mech of Light appear dim. Its appearance was both Cybertronian and human-like, and also of something else. The Light and Energy that made up its body made it appear armored and clothed in white robes that reflected Light. It stood nearly twice the Mech of Light's height, and had glowing white eyes that were pouring forth transparent blue smoke.

Arcee was looking at The Being Shadow' had described. She had no doubt of that. But knowing that did not cause her to produce words. She just stood there, awed by its presence. Her fellow Autobots were as well, even her sisters.

Behind her, Arcee heard the Mech of Light place a fist against his chestplates. "Magister."

"Your time is up," said The Being. Its many-toned voice seemed to shake the air with its mere presence, its sound more ancient than everything in existence. It made the authority and regality of the Mech of Light seem like it was coming from an ignorant sparkling.

"Magister—but I have not finished briefing them."

The Being stepped forward, its every movement regal. "Irrelevant. The One has decreed their time to return to their reality has come. We relieve you of this duty."

The Mech of Light brought his fist to his chest again. "At your command, Magister." He vanished in a flash, leaving them alone with The Being.

"Ah get 'dat ya 'bout ta send us back or somethin' like 'dat, but Ah need ta ask ya somethin' first," Jazz said.

The Being turned its gaze on Jazz.

"Where da frag do all ya powerful entity-types get ya paint? 'Cause Ah swear, ya all have ta be shoppin' at da same store. Is it radioactive or somethin'?"

The Being stared at Jazz for a moment, and then the saboteur was surrounded by Light, and disappeared.

"You are old," Optimus said quietly; to Arcee, he sounded… Amazed? It wasn't a word she would put with him. "Very old."

"Time has no meaning to us." The Being looked at the Omni Saber Optimus had returned to his backplates. "That Shard is not meant for you. You shall not use it."

At its words, the Omni Saber fell to the floor, creating a clang that echoed in all directions. Then Light surrounded it, and it vanished.

Optimus looked at where the sword fell and vanished in alarm. "What have you done? Where is the Omni Saber?"

"It is back in your reality. Leave it where you find it."

Optimus joined Jazz in disappearing in a flash of Light. Elita looked pained at his departure.

The Being looked at Ironhide next. "Are ya sending Chromia after me?"

"No. She and Autobot Elita will remain here with the Centurion who Summoned you here; they will be safe with him."

Arcee felt herself go numb once again. Her sisters weren't coming? Why? The Mech of Light said he'd saved them. Why couldn't they come?

Ironhide's anger from her bond with him nearly made her numbness go away. "What?! No. NO! I'm not going without her!"

"They live only within this Animus. If they are returned to your reality, they will perish. For them to live, they must complete their journey from here. Only then will it be safe for them to return."

"But we just found out they're not offline! Being away will feel like they're offline all over again!" Arcee shouted.

"That is the way it must be. We shall give you a chance to say goodbye."

Arcee could tell from the emotions she got from Ironhide that he wanted to argue with every ounce of strength he had. So did she, but both she and Ironhide knew it would be in vain—The Being's very presence screamed authority. Its word was law. There would be no changing that.

Ironhide rushed over to Chromia and wrapped his massive servos around her, and she returned the favor as much as her own servos allowed. No words were exchanged between them, and Arcee's bonds with them dimmed.

Arcee knew she had to take the chance to say her goodbyes while she could, but she felt like she was in the middle of a dream as she walked over to Elita—a dream worse than a nightmare. She just got her sisters back from the grave, and she was leaving them within twenty klicks? It felt like a betrayal.

A deliberate betrayal.

Assurance flooded from Elita, and she hugged Arcee tightly. "Chromia and I will be okay here; we've already made a little progress on our… Path. Everything's going to be alright, sister."

It certainly didn't feel like that to Arcee. "I thought you both were gone. I thought you were gone, then I saw and felt you two again. Now I'm leaving, and you're staying. You're both online, but it's going to feel like you're aren't. I don't want to feel that type of pain again."

"I know, neither do I. But we don't have a choice right now. We'll be back home as soon as we can be. And when we are, we'll be back for good—no twisted entity will keep us apart."

Guilt welled up in Arcee; and despite her best efforts, she couldn't make it go away. "I should have seen it."

"Seen what?"

"Shadow's problems. I knew he was having trouble recovering from the Hammer, but I didn't try to push him and get him to talk about it."

"Arcee…"

"If I had gotten him to talk, this wouldn't have happened. None of this would have: Cold wouldn't have appeared; Shadow' wouldn't be offline; you and Chromia wouldn't technically be; no one would have been hurt." Had Arcee not had as much control over her emotions as she did, she knew there would be tears in her optics right now. With how strongly her emotions were swirling, there was no way there wouldn't be. "I failed you. I failed all of us."

A flash of Light came from off to their side, and Ironhide's end of Arcee's bond with him suddenly dulled. Chromia joined Elita in hugging her a moment later. "You didn't fail anyone, sis."

"I failed Shadow' by not helping him when I had the chance."

Elita tightened her hug, emotions from her end of the bond mirroring the action. "Don't feel guilty about things you can't control, Little 'Cee. You couldn't have known how much it was affecting him."

"I'm his courted, and—more importantly—his partner. It's my job to know what's affecting him. Or it was."

"Yeah, you didn't talk to Shadowstreaker about what happened to him, but he didn't talk to you, either," said Chromia. "He chose not to be open with how he was really doing. And that was his choice, Arcee—not yours."

Arcee knew that already.

Somehow, knowing that made it worse.

They all stood there for a moment, then regret came from Elita's bond, and after that Chromia's as well. Elita moved back so she was looking at Arcee, servos on both her shoulder-joints. "Arcee… There is something I need to tell you before you go."

Arcee's CPU immediately went back to when she was frozen in place, with Cold right in front of her and in a physical form. He'd suggested he knew something about their creators that Arcee didn't—something her sisters had been keeping from her.

Chromia seemed uncomfortable, and Elita took in a breath, a habit Arcee identified when she was gathering her strength. "Arcee, there's something about our creators that we've never told you. Y—"

"It is time."

Elita stopped herself from continuing, but regret flowed from her end of the bond strongly. The same emotion came from Chromia, and they both looked at Arcee apologetically.

What were they sorry about?

Arcee looked behind her as The Being approached. She couldn't withstand its eyes. They were unblinking and ancient beyond measure, and made Arcee feel like they were staring into her soul. She looked away.

The Being stepped behind her sisters so it was facing her again. This time, she found herself unable to look away, to break contact with those powerful and primordial eyes. "You will be critical in events to come, young one. But we warn you: there is a reason most Xel'Tors never meet their Conjunx Endura. You will need to be as one in order to overcome the odds against your bond. A House divided Falls; a House united withstands Damnation."

Agony clawed at Arcee's helm at The Being's words.

Images flashed before her, so real she could almost reach out and touch them.

A stunning tower in the distance. A beautiful garden in front of her. A mansion around her. A smiling femme carrying her. A laughing mech spinning her.

Screams. A stab to the spark, another following. A dark silhouette looming over her.

And a sparkling howling in unimaginable pain, the room haunted by its cries.

Her cries.

Then she was gone.

---

Arcee was only aware of screaming before she felt herself fall onto her backplates. The silhouette was still standing over her, rooted in place with the authority of doom backing it. Whether or not her optics were open didn't matter—the silhouette was seared into her vision like a phantom.

And the pain. The pain was indescribable. Unrivaled and all-consuming. There was nothing but pain. Pain and the silhouette.

Alone. So alone...

Something stuck her in the neck. Instantly the pain started to fade away. But, almost tauntingly, the silhouette stayed for another moment before it too disappeared. She breathed in and out rapidly, taking deep breathes. The screaming had stopped.

It was then Arcee realized the screams had been coming from her.

The tingle of a medical scan swept over her. "Can you hear me, Arcee?"

Arcee snapped her optics open at the sound of Moonracer's soothing voice. She was met by the sight of the med-bay ceiling, with Ratchet and Moonracer herself crouched next to her, one of Moonracer's servos turned into a syringe. It seemed like no one else was in the med-bay.

"Yes," Arcee said.

"Do you want to stand up, or stay there?"

"Stand."

The tingle of another medical scan passed through Arcee as Moonracer helped her up. Ratchet frowned at the results of it. "Traces of unknown energy particles. Just like with the others." The white and red medic looked up at her. "Where were you?"

"It's… Complicated."

"Let me guess: you were in an Animus, a physical representation of a CPU, specifically Shadowstreaker's?"

Arcee nearly glitched from shock, barely able to nod in confirmation. How had he known?

Ratchet threw his servos up in the air in a display of incredulity, while Moonracer huffed, not unlike how her mate commonly did. "Another point that's like the others. This is officially the strangest event I've ever been a part of."

"It took my top spot when Optimus could no longer use the Omni Saber."

Arcee toned out their words, still focused on the images she'd seen. She forced those to the back of her processor for the time being. "Where are they?"

"The others who were with you, I'm guessing. Look here." Moonracer had turned her servo into a light, and was shining it into Arcee's optics. "They appeared at different points in the base. You're the last one who reappeared. We were honestly getting worried; you were slow to return."

Arcee followed the light as Moonracer moved it in different directions to test her optics. "You're talking like I've been gone for mega-cycles."

"Three, to be exact, though we've no idea what was keeping you. Hold out your servo."

Arcee balked at the casual tone Moonracer used in delivering that piece of news, but she did as she was told. "I've been gone for three mega-cycles? I went straight to the Animus after fighting Cold!"

"Is that the last thing you remember before the Animus?" Ratchet asked from the computer, while Moonracer deployed the syringe again to take a sample of Arcee's energon.

"Yes. That's the last thing I remember before I was… Not here."

Ratchet hummed at her response as Moonracer stepped up next to him. She handed him the energon sample she'd taken from Arcee, and he inserted it into a slot at the computer. Readings Arcee didn't understand filled the screen. "What's all that?" She asked.

"We'll get to that in a moment." Moonracer turned and faced her. "Arcee—are you sure the last thing you remember is fighting Cold?"

The way Moonracer asked that made Arcee feel as if she was missing something. She checked over her memory files, but didn't find anything that would have gone between when Cold threw her into the ops center wall and when she woke up in the Animus. "It's the last thing I remember; I'm positive."

Moonracer shared a look with Ratchet, and the older medic shook his helm. "That makes four: where she went; the particles on her; the readings; and the memories. Not just like the others, but exactly the same as them. That's a statistical impossibility. Oh, wait, I forgot, no it isn't—science and logical explanations have no place in the universe anymore! I should just go ahead and throw out my degree from Crystal City Academy!"

"I already melted mine."

Arcee looked between the two medics, confusion building with each statement they made. "I've had enough of being ignored. Tell me what the pit you're both talking about."

Instead of answering, Ratchet turned the computer monitor so it was facing her and typed out a command. The data readings Arcee didn't understand were minimized, and in its place there was a still image of security footage from the interrogation room Prowl insisted they have.

Prowl was standing at the interrogator's side of the table, while Arcee sat at the other side, optics vacant and unblinking, her gaze on the table itself.

She didn't remember this…

"Field Commander Arcee, can you understand me?" Asked the Prowl in the footage.

"Cold." Her voice in the footage was as vacant as her optics, barely being picked up by the security camera's sensors.

"I will take that as yes." The Prowl in the footage looked at a datapad in front of him for a moment, then back at Arcee. "Field Commander, do you know where you are right now?"

"Room."

"Do you know what happened to Specialist Shadowstreaker?"

"Cold."

"Yes, we know someone else was controlling him—we all do, now. But what we don't know is what happened to him in the first place. You are his courted, and as such may have seen something we have not. Did he show any signs of something wrong with him?"

"Cold."

"Did you see anything?"

"Cold."

The Prowl in the footage changed the topic. "Let us move on, then. Do you know where the remains of the unknown mech came from?"

"Cold."

"Do you know what destroyed him?"

"Light."

"What kind of light?"

"Light."

"Was this light what brought the Delphic to the ops center? Did the light take it from MCMO Ratchet and CMO Moonracer?"

"Cold."

The Prowl in the footage abandoned the topic again. "Field Commander, do you know what Specialist Shadowstreaker's status is?"

"Cold."

The response caused Prowl to pause, but only momentarily. "The Specialist's vitals were flat by the time they got to him. And from what they have said, his vitals were flat before you even saw him. They tried everything, and triple-checked their work before they had to call it. He's offline, Field Commander. They was nothing they could do."

"Cold."

"Given the… Unusual circumstances of his offlining, we need to be doubly cautious. We believe what happened to him could happen to any one of us. We need to know anything you might know so we can make sure it does not. Do you understand, Field Commander?"

"Everything is Cold."

The Prowl in the footage sighed. "Cut the recording; she appears to be suffering from the same ailment as the others. I do not believe she even understands what I'm saying." He was no longer talking to Arcee, but whoever had been watching through the camera. "I'll leave her to your care, Ratchet. Tell me if there is a change with any of them." He stood.

Arcee in the footage suddenly looked up, her gaze now focusing on the wall. "The Moon is Setting."

Prowl stopped and turned and held a servo to the camera, signaling to keep recording.

"The Sky is growing Dark. He is ahead of us, and We are behind; We do not Understand."

"What do you mean, Field Commander?"

"The Chaos Bringer will soon start his Approach. We are not ready."

"Chaos Bringer? Who are you referring to?"

"What twists Anger's Roar? Where does our Bearer wander? Why is Purity absent? How has our Xel'Tor fallen?"

"Field Commander...?"

Arcee felt a shiver go down her spine as she watched the recorded image of herself look at the camera, seemingly straight at her in real life. "The Decision has been made. The Call has been sent. The Council of Ardents will Be again."

There was a flash of Light. Not any light, but Light. When it cleared, Arcee had vanished from the frame, and the footage of Prowl jumped in surprise.

The footage stopped there, and for a moment so did Arcee's spark. She remained staring at he screen, focused on the shocked look on Prowl's faceplate. She had been the cause of that shock, and she didn't remember any of it: his questions; her speech; disappearing; being online at all. None of it.

She looked down at her servos, unable to stop them from trembling. What was she? What thing had she been turned into? Why did she not remember?

Another fleeting image of the dark silhouette standing over her flashed in her vision, and the pain of her forced separation from her sisters hit her in full force. She doubled over in pain, nearly falling off the medical berth she sat on. The freezing and constricting agony of being alone seemed to crush her, trampling out her hopes and happiness. Over and over again, a single thought kept echoing in her helm.

She was like Shadow' now, and that disturbed her.

Why did that disturb her?

She felt Moonracer hit her with the syringe again. "Breathe, Arcee. Breathe."

She did as she was told, and the pain went away rapidly. She laid herself on her side, continuing to breathe and let a sense of calm fill her. Arcee wasn't sure if Moonracer was giving her pain meds or a sedative, but it did the job, and it did the job well.

"That was the exact moment where all four of you literally vanished into thin air," said Ratchet, standing next to Arcee's berth, appearing sideways from her perspective. He crouched so he was looking into her optics. "You really don't remember anything from that conversation? Or what happened once you hit the wall?"

All Arcee could do was shake her helm.

The MCMO sighed. "Five for five. None of them remember anything."

"Given what we're apparently dealing with, we really shouldn't be surprised," said Moonracer.

"No, but that does nothing to help the processor aches." He looked at the computer again, bringing back up the readings Arcee didn't understand. "Four new links, and we can't make sense out of any of them."

That statement caught Arcee's attention, but her mouth wasn't working—whatever Moonracer gave her only worked with physical pain, not emotional. After summoning her walls again and slamming them in place, she was able to return to functioning like an adult should have. "What links?"

Ratchet brought up more data Arcee didn't understand, separated into five sections. "These data streams don't look like much to the untrained optic, but to Moonracer and I, they mean much. What they tell medics or surgeons is the overall status of a patient as efficiently as possible, albeit not in as great detail as focusing on one aspect at a time. And what these five streams tell me, is that five patients aren't as they normally are. They are… Different. Altered. Not significantly, but just enough to show up on scans. The results are frighteningly similar to the changes we noticed in Shadowstreaker after his encounter with the Infinite Reverence."

Arcee's energon ran cold. "I'm one of those four, aren't I? The ones who aren't normal. Optimus, Jazz, Ironhide—they're the other three. We're like Shadow'. We have a link to the Delphic."

Moonracer made a so-so gesture with her servo. "Yes and no. The changes showing up on each of your scans aren't exactly like Shadowstreaker'. His are more prevalent, wilder. Stronger. The ones we are noticing in you aren't; they are more ordered and set. The change in CPU readings makes us think all four of you are linked to something else other than the Delphic."

"Linked to what?" Arcee asked, not liking her explanation.

"That's just it: we don't know," said Ratchet. "It's something, but we have no idea what. We thought the Delphic was unique, but then Shadowstreaker brought back the description of another Delphic-like object on the Paraion world. And now with Optimus telling us one of the things you spoke with said the Delphic is just one out of a group of objects, we officially know less than we did to begin with, which wasn't much in the first place."

Arcee liked Ratchet's explanation even less than Moonracer's. She went silent, and glanced her servos again. She felt apprehensive just thinking about what everything she was being told meant for her, and that was just from what the medics were saying. When she added that to what she had seen and experienced in the Animus linked to Shadowstreaker, her helm spun and pounded, and not just from the sheer amount of information.

The silhouette appeared again. Standing above her and merging with the shadows of the room around her that wasn't the med-bay.

Arcee brought a servo over her optics and ran the servo over her face, contemplating. What was it about her creators that her sisters had been keeping from her? Why had they kept it in the first place? Why did she not remember any of the images she kept seeing?

Out of her peripheral vision, she saw a glint of metal at the back of the med-bay. Precisely, a lack of glint—a dull edge surrounded by metals that reflected light. She looked, and nearly jumped.

Cold was standing in the back of the med-bay. Or rather, what was left of him.

The helm and much of the chestplates were just gone, destroyed from impacts of significant destructive power. The rest of his jagged, shineless frame was being held up in a gravity field. Behind his destroyed body, parts were laid out on examination tables, various instruments and medical tools nearby. She found the sight disturbing.

"Why is he here?" She asked, tone blank yet underlined with anger. That thing took her sisters from her, and offlined Shadow'. Why had they not destroyed it outright?

"Despite the fact Cold controlled it, the frame he created for himself has been an unexpected help in the field of scientific advancement. It is identical to a Cybertronian's chassis, but just better in every way. Armor, optics, energon useage rate, self-repair systems. Everything. Moonracer and I are essentially reverse-engineering it, to make upgrades in the base's systems and our own frames."

Arcee couldn't believe what she was hearing. "After what he did, we're learning from him? We're copying what he made so we can be more like him? Are you fragging insane?!"

"Calm down, Arcee," Moonracer said, voice soothing and calm, servos held out in a placating gesture. "We're not trying to be like him; we're using him. He created that frame from spare parts. Anyone who can do that is someone to be wary of, but also someone who can inadvertently provide others with advances in technology. We're learning what we can from his frame, then we're blowing it up."

"Whose idea was it to delay that part by studying him?"

"That would be Ironhide."

That stunned Arcee into silence. Ironhide was the one who wanted them to learn from Cold's chassis? She wanted it gone as soon as possible, and he of all bots didn't? That thing was part of someone who nearly offlined Elita and Chromia. How could he ignore that and suggest making upgrades from it?

Was she the only one who thought that was wrong?

The med-bay door opened a moment later, and Ironhide himself came running in. His optics locked onto her as soon as he entered the room, and they lit up with happiness and relief.

Arcee started to ask how he could endorse using Cold's frame, but the huge mech had latched onto her and picked her up in a crushing hug before she could get the words out. He sent her a knock from his end of their sibling bond, a strong one.

She opened it and was about to try asking her question again, but paused when she felt just how… Weak he was. Not physically, but emotionally. It was then she realized that while she couldn't feel her sisters at all, everything she'd been through had seemed like one long sequence of events, but for Ironhide it had been at solar-cycles or even mega-cycles. And throughout the entire time, he'd been without the bonds of his sister-in-bond and his mate. While Arcee had felt very alone without being able to feel her bonds with her sisters, Ironhide had it worse than she did. Far worse.

She felt guilty at being angry with him.

Ironhide set her down. "You're a sight for sore optics, Arcee." He looked her over, look concerned. "You're not hurt are you? No soreness, no pain?"

"No, no, I'm fine, thanks," Arcee assured. "I'm just confused. You came running in here, did you know I was back?"

"We comm-linked Ironhide the moment you appeared here," Moonracer said. "Everyone had orders that if they saw you reappear, they were to notify us and Ironhide right away. You appearing here was actually quite convenient."

"I came as soon as they said you were here," said Ironhide, continuing to look over her as if he expected to find severe injuries. "You're sure you're alright?"

"Yes, I'm fine. Still a bit reeling from finding out how long I've been gone. It didn't seem like I'd been away for more than a few breems."

"Yeah, it seemed like it, didn't it? But the truth was the rest of us were gone for three solar-cycles. You… Were a little longer."

"I know. Seven times longer than you were gone." She hesitated in asking how he was, since she didn't want to accidentally disrupt whatever it was that he'd been doing to help him through his time without any bonds. She decided it was necessary, and placed the required emotions through their bond as she asked, "How are you doing?"

"I'm… Better, now that you're back, at least." His words were honest, but she could feel her presence was doing little to help him in missing her sister—his mate.

"Where are Jazz and Optimus?" She asked quickly, to get his CPU off the topic.

Gratefulness came from his end of the bond. "Optimus left on a mission not long ago—he'll be gone a while. Jazz is part of the current Guard detail."

Moonracer and Ratchet simultaneously stiffened at Ironhide's words. Arcee narrowed her optics at the reaction. What had them nervous? "What kind of guarding about? We don't have any detail on base."

Ironhide paused, his emotions in their bond swirling. "It'd be better to show you instead of explain." He went to walk out the door with Arcee following, but was stopped when a wrench hit him in the side of the helm.

"Oh, no you don't!" Ratchet said, stepping forward and blocking Ironhide's exit, another wrench in his servo. "She's not going anywhere until we're sure everything's fine with her. The particles you came in with made it hard for you to drink energon for two cycles after you returned; I don't want Arcee having to deal with that, too."

"She's needs to see him, Ratchet," Ironhide said. "Having her wait on some tests isn't fair."

"But it sure is healthy!"

"Love," Moonracer said to Ratchet, coming to stand next to him, a medical tool in her servo. "You might be the most knowledgeable mech alive anywhere right now, but we both know we don't need to keep her here the entire time. A trip out for a few breems won't hurt, and we can go with them."

Ratchet grumbled something under his breath, but nevertheless went and grabbed his own medical tool before stepping out into the hallway. Moonracer followed.

Arcee kept silent throughout the exchange, too sick of asking what someone was saying and getting no answer to interrupt. She looked at Ironhide seriously. "You know as well as I do that there's been a lot of questions that have been vaguely answered or outright ignored. That being said, I am going to ask you something, and I expect a straightforward answer. Got it?"

"Got it," he said as he started for the door again.

"What do we have a guard detail for?"

"Your courted."

---

Ned Booth had seen the storm coming when they buried their previous camp that morning. Now it was upon them. But while most storms came with lightning and rain and heavy winds, the storms in this area of the world came only with sand and dust.

Lots of it.

A steady wind of more than thirty miles an hour blew in from the West, creating a wall of sand and dust thousands of feet high and reducing visibility to less than twenty meters. Everyone was wearing a scarf and goggles, Booth included.

He was leaning against the hood of one of the four older-model Toyota Hilux pickup trucks Dmitry had given him. Each truck was modified for rough off-roading and long-distance travel, with additional fuel cans attached to their sides and storage containers built into their beds.

In front of him, eight of the twenty-six men he had in his control were digging into the sand dune they'd been in search of for the last three weeks. Even with their combined efforts, progress was slowed greatly by the storm; the winds replaced more than half of every shovel of sand they moved. The rest of the men were using the trucks as cover from the storm.

Booth checked his watch. They'd been parked in place for nearly five hours. Too long. Way too long.

His eyes scanned the surrounding storm from behind his goggles, trying to see through its impenetrable wall of dust and sand. He didn't succeed. But just because he couldn't see anything, didn't mean there was nothing there.

Before he left, he'd seen prototypes of a new kind of man-portable detection system that ignored light and heat. The technology was state-of-the-art and so new Booth hadn't even heard of it two months prior going AWOL. The detection system—called THEIA, for the Greek titan goddess of sight—used electromagnetic waves to detect even the faintest trace of metal through walls, buildings, and even solid stone. How it worked was beyond him; he'd been lost when a tech had tried explaining it. And it didn't matter how it worked.

What mattered was if someone was out there wearing a THEIA, they'd be able to see him with crystal clarity. And if there were multiple people out there, all wearing the same gear, his time was up.

If he was being honest with himself, he didn't know how long had until the S.T.F found something that led them straight to him. The S.T.F had existed for less than a decade, and already it had surpassed or nearly surpassed virtually every military or intelligence organization on the planet. Only the CIA and Combined Applications Group—or CAG—maintained a certain level of superiority. Even then, that was under threat from the rapid technological advances the S.T.F had made. When going against the S.T.F, every hour mattered.

But sometimes, objectives were worth the risk of standing still for hours on end.

Like what they were doing here.

Booth glanced behind him as one of the doors to the Hilux he was leaning against opened and slammed shut. A moment later, Dima stepped up next to him.

Dima was a man in his mid-forties with pale skin and greying short, straight ash brown hair and beard of the same color. His brown eyes were serious, and his face unsmiling, unamused. Never humorous. At seven feet tall, he was a mountain of a man and roughly a hundred and fifty pounds heavier than Booth, all of the weight muscle honed from decades of training and experience. He wore dark, baggy pants and combat boots, despite the heat. A custom bullet-proof vest fitted for his massive chest went over his black sleeveless shirt, various gear sticking out from the vest's pockets.

Dima was Dmitry's lieutenant, and had been sent to make sure the mission went as smoothly as possible. With his background as a former Zaslon—Russia's version of the CAG—he was more than qualified to handle threats.

And having seen what the Zaslon unit at the S.T.F was capable of, it also made Dima the only person within a thousand miles that Booth had to watch himself around.

Booth noted the lack of a MP-443 Grach in the holster at Dima's hip. So he was feeling confident today. Without the Grach, Dima was down to the Karambit hidden at the small of his back and the P-96 pistol in an ankle holster beneath his baggy pants. Booth wasn't supposed to know about either of those weapons.

"What is point of this?" Dima asked, face and beard hidden behind a dark scarf. Unlike Dmitry, who spoke English nearly perfectly, Dima's English was commonly broken. But Booth had to admit Dima's English was better than Booth's Russian.

"Seeing it for yourself is better than an explanation," said Booth.

"You bring us here, drag us around desert, you look at ground, you dig, you make my men dig, and now refuse to answer simple question of why?"

"I know what you're saying, but you don't need to worry—Dmitry will get his money."

"Dmitry give you lot of money to make more money, but you don't. This not make him look good to Pakhan. When Pakhan not happy, Dmitry not happy. When Dmitry not happy, I not happy."

Booth didn't react to the threat hidden in his words. "Dmitry will need to be patient. He knew when I gave him my business proposal that this wasn't a short-term investment. He'll make a profit."

"You promise this now, but how can you provide guarantee?"

"After today, you'll understand."

Dima's dark goggles stared into Booth's own goggles, the larger man's eyes hidden beyond. "Dmitry's patience short. You must be right. If you are not, sand is good place to use as grave." He reentered the truck, closing the door behind him.

Booth let out a breath, relieved to not have the massive Russian standing next to him anymore. He knew Dima's blunt threat was real, but he wasn't worried about it. Once he saw what Booth had brought them here for, he would change his tune.

They all would.

Above the sound of the wind and the grains of sand hitting his goggles, Booth heard one of the men digging hit his shovel against something metal. All eight miners stopped at the sudden noise.

Booth smiled beneath his scarf. They'd found it.

"There, there," he called to the diggers in basic Russian, moving away from the truck so he could watch their progress.

As the diggers refocused their efforts, Dima exited his own truck along with the other three men sitting inside. "What do they find?"

"The answer."

Dima tried to get more out of Booth, but he refused to explain. If he did, Dima would just shoot him right then and there and pack up the entire operation. They needed to see it with their own eyes.

Within a few minutes, a small area of the pit had been cleared. A panel of grey metal lay at the bottom, its surface almost pristine even after all this time. Even though Booth knew about it ahead of time, he still could hardly believe it.

"Not natural," said Dima, moving his head back and forth to look over the panel. His covered face looked at Booth. "Yours?"

Booth knew he was asking if they were on top of a secret US military installation. Booth wished he could say yes. "No."

Dima huffed and shouted something in Russian to one of the men in another truck. The man exited the truck, moved to the bed, and moved toward Dima with a case Booth knew contained several bricks of PVV-5A Plastic Explosive, an explosive usually only used by the Russian military.

"That's not going to be enough," Booth said.

"Nothing withstand explosives."

"This isn't like everything else. Using those charges is just going to be a waste of time."

Dima looked at him, and he knew the huge Russian was glaring. "Then how we get in, smart man?"

Booth ignored the attempted insult. "We find a hole. There will be many buried in the sand, so watch your step."

Dima made a gesture with his hand. The rest of the men in the trucks exited. Once they had, Dima shouted a command in Russian, and everyone who wasn't digging started to search the ground around them, testing the ground with cautious, heavy steps.

Another few minutes went by before one of the diggers cried out in alarm. Booth looked and saw sand disappearing into the ground directly in front of the man, just beyond the visible portion of the panel they uncovered.

Booth felt a jolt go through him. They had a way in.

He dropped into the pit and walked over to the man as everyone not in the pit made their way over, being careful not to step too heavily. He watched as the sand finally finished draining, revealing a jagged, four-foot hole in the thick metal panel he stood on. Booth looked down into the hole, and was met by complete darkness.

He glanced up at Dima, who stood outside the pit, looking at him. "Chem light."

Dima barked at one of the men near the trucks, and the man moved to the bed of a truck. He reappeared a moment later, carrying a sealed package. The man moved to the pit and tossed the package to Booth.

Booth caught the bag easily and opened it. He grabbed one of the light sticks contained within, cracked and shook it, and dropped it into the hole.

The chemical light fell through space, tumbling end over end and growing smaller and smaller, and landed far below.

Booth had been timing the descent. After running a few numbers in his head, he concluded the floor was about a hundred feet beneath him. They'd need the long ropes. "More than thirty meters," he said to Dima.

Dima nodded and shouted more instructions to the other men. A rappel system was quickly set up, attached to the winch of one of the trucks. A few men—Booth and Dima included—were equipped with the appropriate gear needed to repel through the hole. The rest of the men would stay in the storm to guard the area and operate the winch.

Booth hooked himself up to the rope, then ran a few feet of it through his rappel brake, making sure the rope wouldn't catch on anything. He was first in line to descend. After him, Dima would come down. Then the other four men going with them would follow.

Satisfied his gear was operating correctly, Booth backed toward the hole. He inched himself so he was standing on the edge, checked to make sure he wasn't going to hit the other side, and let himself fall back.

Darkness quickly engulfed him, swallowing him up like a starving predator feeding for the first time in months. He only knew the floor was there because his chemical light showed that it was.

Closer and closer he descended, until at last his boots made contact with the metal floor. He detached himself from the rope, took his scarf off, and looked into his dark surroundings. The glow from the chemical light was just enough for him to see in a twenty-foot radius, and it was all flat and made of metal. Nothing unexpected.

But the air here. The air was old, reeking of an age long before humanity. He was standing in a place made by the alien's own hands, built with materials beyond mankind's understanding of science. It was supposed to have been destroyed, reduced to ruin by a sustained bombardment from destroyers USS Halsey and USS Bainbridge. That was what General Shepherd had reported in the official file on this place.

But Booth knew better.

You didn't just destroy a ship made by beings older than stars. Even one that had been in ruins since dinosaurs still walked the Earth. Helical railguns were powerful, but they weren't that powerful. Despite their best efforts, this ancient ship was still very much intact and untouched by human hands.

Until now.

Dima came down the rope, his boots creating a metallic echo in the dark, open space. The massive man removed his own scarf and frowned. "This no bunker."

Booth took another chemical light from his belt and cracked it. Then he drew his arm back, and threw the light as hard as he could.

He and Dima watched the light sail through the darkness seemingly for an eternity. It finally landed about five seconds after Booth threw it, well over a hundred feet from where they stood. The light it gave off highlighted the base of a metal wall.

"This no bunker…" Dima repeated slowly. It may have been a trick of the dim light, but Booth thought he saw a trace of uncertainty on the huge Russian's face.

"No. No bunker."

Booth threw three more chemical lights into the darkness before the other four men joined he and Dima inside the ship. One had hit a wall just outside the ring of light provided by the first light, one had rolled to a stop at an enormous door—which had certainly gained a reaction from the Russians—and the last had kept on going without hitting or highlighting anything.

"Where we go?" Dima asked, looking at Booth expectantly, but also warily. He clearly didn't like where they were, and the fact Booth wasn't reacting like he was.

He thought back to the report he'd read on this ship, and what the Autobot aliens had said about it. They'd claimed it wasn't meant for heavy fighting, but stealth. Its layout was basic, with a total of eight rooms including the reactor core and the bridge. All the rooms were connected by a central hallway, that ran the length of the ship—all eight-hundred meters of it.

And this was one of their small ships.

"That way," answered Booth, pointing in the direction of the distant chemical light.

Dima nodded, said a quick word in Russian, and gestured Booth forward. "You lead."

Booth knew better than to think Dima was really trusting him with leading; the huge Russian just wanted a clear shot at Booth at all times. He would have wanted the same, if their positions were reversed.

He led the group to the chemical light. When they reached it, he took another light and threw it in the direction they were heading. It too rolled to a stop far away, illuminating nothing but more flooring.

Again they traveled to the light. And again the next revealed more floor. Booth had run out of chemical lights after that, and for his next throw had to take the lights given to him by one of the men who'd come down after Dima.

At last, on the third throw since he ran out of chemical lights, the light he threw rolled through an open doorway and was stopped by dark debris.

Booth felt the hair on his arms stand on end. It was real. Truly real. He'd known all along that it was, but something about seeing it in person, seeing a doorway described in the report he'd read, sent a jolt through his body.

"What is this?" Asked Dima. His voice was strained. Nervous, of all things. Like he was struggling to understand what he was seeing.

Booth ignored Dima and strode forward. He cracked the last chemical light he'd taken from one of the other men, and used it to light his path. He passed through the doorway, having to move over the rubble that had once been a door. Was that metal corroded? He thought the alien metals didn't do that. That was useful.

His light illuminated a giant, unnaturally grey foot. One of the alien bodies. According to the report, there were many more around him, hidden in darkness.

But he didn't think about that, because he caught sight of what he came all this way for. What he betrayed the S.T.F to get his hands on.

It was a liquid. A mixture of green, light grey, and dark red. A substance that barely reflected the light given off from his chemical light.

Booth felt the hair on his arms stand on end again. This time, it was from excitement.

He walked forward and stopped just short of the pool of sickly-looking liquid. He set his chemical light down next to him, reached down to his belt, and took out a needle and vial from one of his pouches. He removed the lid on the vial, and carefully filled the needle with the liquid. Then just as carefully, he emptied its contents into the vial. Then he sealed the vial and tossed the needle out into the dark.

At last, he had it in his hands. The cybonic plague.

A pistol cocked behind him, along with several other weapons.

Ah, right. Dima.

Booth turned around without raising his hands. Dima and the other four Russians were aiming their weapons at him, their faces a mixture of horror and fury.

"What is this?!" Dima growled, his P-96 looking like a toy cap gun in his massive hand.

"This? This is the dark secret our governments are keeping from the world."

"What is this?!" Dima had repeated his question for the second time, more forcefully than before. His normally pale face was red with anger.

"This is a ship. A starship. A starship belonging to an alien race of machines."

Dima looked at him like he'd grown a second head. Booth found the disbelief amusing, given their location. "You crazy."

"How am I? You have eyes, Dima—use them. Look around you? What do you see? You see the size of these rooms. You see the bodies of metal titans. You know neither my government or yours made them."

Dima's aim didn't weaver for a second. "You lie! You Americans build them! Want to use them on Russia!"

"You don't believe me. Fair enough—I wouldn't believe me, either. But if you don't believe me, you'll believe Dmitry. Or, to be more precise, you'll believe Dmitry's contacts in the Russian government."

"Russia know nothing of this!"

"Trust me when I say they do. I worked with a lot of them in my old organization. Go head, call Dmitry and see just how much your friends in your government have been keeping from you."

Dima made no move to reach for his radio, though it may have been because there would be no signal within these walls.

Booth took the chance to go on. "The United States, the United Kingdom, Russia, even Israel, they've all known the truth for years: there are aliens living among us. And they've been lying to us all from the beginning."

Dima was silent.

"Oh, yes. They live here. On Earth. They can turn their bodies into any vehicle, look like anything. They are walking weapons of war, capable of untold destruction. The Al Udeid Air Base of my nation's Air Force? The one reduced to ruin? All that destruction came from just three titans like these."

Dima's face was like stone, but Booth saw the horror in his eyes.

"And, Dima… Those three are but a tiny fraction of those found on our world and our solar system. They're everywhere. At any moment, they can wipe out all of mankind. My nation, yours, the world. No one is safe. No one can be safe; they outclass our technology by light-years." He held up the vial he'd filled. "But this right here, this is going to tip the odds back in our favor. But only if you help me."

"You lie to us. Tell us we make money." Dima's words were those of a mob lieutenant loyal to his boss to the end, but their was little conviction behind them.

Booth moved in for the kill. "And I'm sorry I lied to you. Truly, I am, but can you blame me? What would you have done if I'd claimed aliens were living among us, and I had no proof? You would have either shot me or thrown me out the door. I needed to show you the big picture. I have. Now I'm either dead, or we're partners—the United States and Russia, allied against a common cause. Just like it used to be. The choice is yours, Dima. Not Dmitry's. Yours."

Dima kept his handgun trained on Booth for a long, tense moment. The conflict in his eyes was intense and terrifying. But at last, Dima lowered the P-96. Then he filled the other Russians in on what he and Booth had been talking about, and they also lowered their weapons, faces paler than the Russian Winter could ever make them.

Booth had won.

Dima looked at Booth again, and this time when their eyes met, Booth saw not a mob lieutenant looking to make a buck, but a second-in-command looking at his commander. "What we do now?"

Booth looked at the vial in his hand, at the liquid moving around inside it. "Now, we find a monster named Andrew."

---

Arcee paused at the doorway to the brig.

On their way from the med-bay, the medics had continued to run tests and give her injections while Ironhide filled her in on what happened while they were gone. More liked prepared her. But she still was hesitant to open the door. In fact, she didn't want to.

Why? Why was she dreading seeing her courted again? Shouldn't she be thankful to have him back? That he was online?

The answer was as simple as it was twisted: she was blaming him. Blamed him for not being honest with her. Blamed him for letting his problems grow so much. Blamed him for what happened to her sisters.

Funny how quickly her emotions had taken a complete turnaround from when she was saying goodbye to Elita and Chromia. And—to her—in less than a breem. That had to be a record.

But she also knew the way she was feeling right now was a product of her unstable emotional state. Her sisters. The Animus. The silhouette. Watching herself in an interrogation she had no memory of. It was all so much to take in.

"You don't have to see him right now, ya know."

Arcee turned her helm to the side to look up at Ironhide. "No. No I need to. I'm his courted."

"You're saying that like this is a chore."

She didn't mean for it to—didn't want it to. When she searched her spark, she knew she was quite deep in love with Shadow'; her spark would not have accepted his Imprint and Imprinted on his in turn if she did not.

But she realized on the way from the med-bay that Ironhide's statement on the topic of love had a shred of truth to it. It did stuff to your helm. Like it had been doing stuff to Arcee's. Love wasn't easy, and it didn't come instantly. She hadn't been considering that since Shadow' came back.

Realization did nothing to help her with her emotions, or take her anger at Shadow' away, or make her feel less guilty over Shadow's actions. If she'd just seen how troubled he'd been.

… She really hated having emotions, sometimes.

"Arcee?" Ironhide asked.

She sighed. "It's not a chore for me. It's never going to be. It's just…"

"Complicated?"

"I was going to go with difficult."

"Either way," said Moonracer, standing beside her, running yet another scan. "He is not going anywhere. You can take your time to gather your thoughts."

Ratchet chuckled once from his spot next to Ironhide, but said nothing.

"No," Arcee said, tone firm, backed up by emotions being sent to her from Ironhide. "This has to happen now."

Moonracer nodded, then hit the button for the door.

The brig was just as Arcee last saw it after being resized for the Dinobots. The cells, the cold-plasma barrier emitters, Prowl's desk. It was the same.

Apart from the cage in the middle of the room.

It was a perfect square, ninety feet by ninety feet in area, with a locked chamber in front of it that acted as a high-security door. A square shield of modified, double-layered Hard-Light went around the cage and the door, powered by its own generator. A cold-plasma barrier went between the two layers of Hard-Light, fueled with a negative charge that nullified most forms of direct energy. Nearby, Jazz stood guard.

And inside the cage, Shadow' was sitting on the cage's basic berth, royal cobalt optics staring at empty space on the floor. The transformed Omni Saber was embedded into the floor just outside the wall, not far from him.

Jazz looked to the door as it opened, and Arcee saw him flash a smile. "Well, it' 'bout time ya got back. Ah was beginin' ta plan a rescue mission."

Had this been a normal cycle, Arcee would have smiled at the saboteur. Now, however, her main focus was on Shadow'. He looked… Empty. There was no other word she could think of that fit.

"How long has he been back?" She asked, stepping fully into the room. At the desk, she saw Prowl focus his attention on her, watching her warily. She winced at the reminder of the interrogation she didn't remember.

"Two mega-cycles." Ratchet had joined Moonracer in scanning her, moving between her and Ironhide so he could get a better scan. "Moonracer and I were reluctant to believe the others when they came back, saying Shadowstreaker should have been online. Then he just… Came back. Walked right out of the med-bay, arcing with that strange green light. Still had all his injuries, too."

Arcee frowned. "He should have been online before then. The Mech of Light made it sound like Shadow' would be back instantly, and the others had been back for solar-cycles at that point."

"Well, best we can figure, not everything that happens in reality happens immediately in the Animus, even when just micro-klicks before or after something else happens. The same is true in reverse," said Moonracer, taking a second sample of Arcee's energon. "We think that's what happened, and we hope that's why you've been gone for so long, but we honestly have no evidence to support our theory."

Arcee stopped short of the cage. Well short. She looked at the cubes of energon lined against the cage's berth. All of them were empty. "Has he said anything?"

"Ah think Ah heard him mumble one time," said Jazz.

"He was talkative when he first revived," Prowl said, standing from his desk and joining the collection of bots around Arcee. "He inquired extensively about the well-being of us all, but his demeanor changed when he found out your sisters are not with us. He has said nothing since, and that was the cycle he onlined."

"Nothing?"

"Nothing."

Arcee knew that with Shadow', long periods of silence meant he was thinking deeply. But she had never seen him stay silent for an entire mega-cycle, let alone two. And to add to that, he was thinking deeply about what happened to her sisters. Not good. "Has he done anything?"

"Besides drink his energon, no," Ratchet said. "It's a good thing he does that, at least—we mix in a compound described in the data pad Optimus had with him. It blocks Shadowstreaker's link with the Delphic, and prevents him from transforming."

"So why the cage?"

"It is based on the plans given to us by Optimus' data pad,' said Prowl. "The type of shielding it called for was not Hard-Light, but we do not possess the required Tier of technology to understand it. We built the best thing we could in its place."

"It's purely for containment, then? Not a punishment?"

"A precaution. We cannot take risks with someone who may possess… Abilities such as those displayed by Cold." He looked the motionless mech, something Arcee couldn't place flashing in his optics. Suspicion?

Arcee thought back again to when Cold had held a hidden truth over her helm, mocking her with knowledge she still didn't possess. Had Prowl experienced something similar when Cold appeared in the ops center?

She shook her helm. She was getting off-track, and she wanted to get to this before the sedative Moonracer had given her wore off. She wanted to be alone when that happened. "Can I go in?"

Prowl looked at Moonracer and Ratchet, who nodded. He looked at Ironhide next, who did the same. Then he finally looked at Arcee again. "Yes. Walk forward so I can open the first door."

---

I'm a monster. A murderer. I have been since the Hammer. No sense in denying that.

What I've done has hurt people around me. The lives of everyone near me have been altered by what I chose to do. And not for the better.

What I have done is fight my own comrades—literally. I inflicted both physical and emotional scars on many of them, and ended the lives of two of them.

My actions cost me my own life, yet I live.

Why do I live? Why was I brought back? What right do I have to life, after what I've done?

I heard the outer door to my cell open and close, but I didn't pay much attention to it, focused on my own self-loathing as I was. It was only when I heard the inner door power down that I looked up.

Arcee was standing in the doorway. I'd known as soon as I saw Ironhide practically sprint out of the brig that she was finally back, and had seen her enter with Ironhide and the medics in tow. But I still didn't think she'd enter just yet. Clearly, I was wrong.

Physically, she looked fine. No freshly-repaired wounds or scars. Not even a dent marred her armor. But her optics… They looked haunted. Conflicted. Sad, happy, angry, confused, and calm all at once. I could feel the emotion she was barely keeping back, behind her walls.

She looked like she didn't entirely want to be standing in front of me.

And I couldn't blame her.

We stared at each other for a long moment, focusing on the other's optics. Just as I was seeing her mixed emotions, I was sure she was seeing my dark ones; I made no effort to hide them. Didn't try to hold up a false wall. I could feel the optics of the others on us, watching what would happen. I didn't care about them.

"Do you want to take the floor, or me to give up the berth for this?" I asked, looking between her and the floor opposite the bed. I knew she wanted to talk—she wouldn't have walked in so quickly if she didn't. I wanted to talk too, to finally be able to process the emotions eating at me since I found out what happened to Elita and Chromia.

But I didn't let them out. Part of me didn't want to. If I could just keep shoving them to the side, then I wouldn't have to deal with them. I could go on, unhampered by the crushing emotional weight of knowing I had been responsible for Elita and Chromia being technically offline.

When did I become selfish enough to want to ignore something like that?

She blinked once, then looked between me and the floor. "I'll take the berth. We'll be closer to optic-level that way."

I nodded and sat on the floor opposite the berth, the movement causing me to acknowledge how I was missing… Something. It was a nagging feeling in the back of my processor, a constant reminder of something not being there. I had felt like this since I started taking the energon Ratchet and Moonracer gave me, blocking my link to the Delphic. I hadn't known just how strong my connection with it was until it was shut down.

"Do you know what happened?" She asked, taking a seat on the berth.

It was a basic question—a question meant to ease us both into the conversation both of us knew we were going to have. I appreciated that she didn't immediately jump into why she was here. "Yes, I know."

"So you know that yo—"

"Died? Yes. I know." In the last two mega-cycles, I'd heard several people talk in hushed whispers about how I shouldn't be alive. How my CPU should have been empty when I came back. How I'd spent a full week being as dead as dead got. The fact I had a split-second of memory filled with darkness proved I had indeed died.

Despite that, it didn't make me struggle with mortality—didn't make me panic at how fast my life had ended, and regret at how I had met so few of my life goals. It all felt numb to me. Detached. Like it wasn't a big, life-altering event. Perhaps getting shot at so much had made it easier for me to process my own death.

Or maybe I'd turned into a psychopath at some point. I wasn't sure which.

She looked surprised by my uncaring tone, but didn't comment on it. "You used the human term for offlining."

I shrugged. "They both mean the same thing."

"You've been pretty consistent in using our terms since you became a Cybertronian."

"And I still do. But in this case, I don't really care. Death is offlining, and offlining is death. Doesn't matter which one you use."

She paused, the emotions I could see buried beneath her stoic surface shifting. She didn't say anything about them. "What… What was it like?" She sounded uncertain now. Testing. This was a personal curiosity of hers. Not related to why she was here.

"I don't remember."

"You don't?"

I shook my helm. "One moment I was trying to fight Cold, the next I was in the med-bay. Nothing between. No thought. No sound. No color. Literally nothing."

"Not even a sense, a feeling?"

I went over my memories, trying for the hundredth time to remember anything meaningful between when Cold killed me and waking up in the med-bay, getting off the medical berth, stumbling around with that horrible light dancing over my frame. "When I woke up, I do remember feeling a sense of warmth."

"Warmth?" She seemed confused. "What do you mean?"

"The feeling you get after you've had a hot shower after a long cycle. How relaxing it is to lay down under the sun on a clear day, without having to do anything. What it feels like when a painful injury stops throbbing."

"Comfort. It felt like being comforted?"

I thought about it, and decided that was a pretty good word for it. Not… Enough, but a decent description. "Yeah. And waking up felt like stepping out of that comfort and into an icy battlefield."

"That sounds like a dark outlook on life, Shadow'."

"Then I'm not saying it correctly. But, I'm also not saying it incorrectly. I can't really explain it."

"I'll take your word for it."

We both fell silent. She seemed conflicted in how to continue asking questions, and one part of my CPU wanted to just not talk any longer. It wanted her to keep being silent, so I had no reason to acknowledge what I'd done.

The other part was too afraid and ashamed to speak without being spoken to.

Finally, a determined look entered Arcee's optics. She took a breath. Let it out. A habit she and Elita shared when gathering their strength. "Why did you lie to me, Shadow'?"

"What did I lie to you about?"

"About nothing being wrong with you. About you being fine."

"When? Before or after I had my little mental breakdown and thought Cortical psychic patches were flowers?"

"Before and after."

"So both. Yes, I did." No point in trying to dodge the accusation. I could never give back what I owed her, but at least I could be an open book for her. She deserved more than that.

"Why? Why did you lie to me?" There was no anger in her voice, but there was pain hidden beneath her stoic voice. A lot of pain.

Pain I'd caused her, by being the monster that I was.

"Partially because I was trying to convince myself I really was fine, and partially because I didn't want to put what I was going through on top what everything you've dealt with in your life."

Her optics flashed, jaw setting. I almost felt how her emotions shifted. It was remarkable to me that she still retained such absolute control, even in the state of distress I could plainly see she was in. "Don't tell me that. I've tried to get you to open up since you got back. I've asked you about the Hammer almost every cycle. You think I would ask that many times, try that hard, and not be thinking about how it may end up being difficult on me, too?"

"It was my burden, not yours."

"That's not how this works! We're courting, Shadow'—we don't keep things from each other." An odd look entered her optics as she said that, but it quickly vanished.

I still saw it. "Then why haven't you shared all the details of what Airachnid did to you?"

I knew from the look she gave me that I had entered dangerous territory with that. She stood up, servos crossed, standing over me. "That was a long time ago. Too long ago to be relevant. This is about what's going on now."

"Well, if that's the case, let me rephrase: what is rattling you right now?"

Her faceplate went blank, optics doing the same. "You're redirecting."

"You're ignoring the question."

"This isn't about me."

"So it's only about me? I'm the only one in this relationship that needs to share details about what goes on in my helm?"

"What goes on in my helm doesn't lead to other people getting hurt."

That was a low blow; I could tell she knew it, too. But she didn't take it back. She continued looking at me blankly, walls set in place firmly. Like I wasn't her courted. That instead I was a suspect she was interrogating, and nothing more.

I hadn't had that look focused on me in a long time.

I stood up from the floor, but instead of it feeling like I was towering over her, it felt like the opposite was true—that she was my height and I was hers. She had so much more of a presence than I did. "That's the card you want to pull?"

"Yes." She didn't even hesitate.

Anger and betrayal joined the regret and guilt I'd felt since I'd onlined in the med-bay. "Fine. Still want an answer to the same question?"

"Same question: why did you lie?"

"Because I didn't want to talk about it."

I could tell my answer had tried her patience and her control. Her emotions had to have been like a tempest, raging inside her. "That's it?"

"All I'm willing to share."

That statement caused visible cracks in her walls to appear. Her crossed servos clenched, hands forming into fists. Somehow, she still retained control. "Even now, you're refusing to talk?"

"I'm trying to not give you any additional problems to deal with!"

The words came automatically, without thought. As soon as they left my mouth, I knew it was one of the worst things I could have said in Arcee's present state.

The emotions I'd felt Arcee trying to hold back opened like a floodgate. Her control over them went away. Her optics going cold, her, faceplate blank set in a cold fury, body trembling with silent rage. "Well that sure as hell worked, didn't it?!"

I stood there with wide optics, my anger evaporating. The sheer emotion she put into her words stilled me. Tore my spark in two. I'd done this to her.

"And your problem sure as slag didn't become a problem for all of us, didn't it?!"

I'd done this to her,

"Your problem became everyone's problem, didn't it?!"

I'd done this to her...

"DIDN"T IT?!"

All of my repressed emotions came roaring back. The guilt, the regret, the sadness—it all formed into one massive burst of anger and rage. A dark, terrible rage I hadn't felt before. My Protocol activated as Arcee came under threat.

Only I was the threat.

I forced every emotion and self-loathing thought down into a single point. A single, tiny point of incredible density. My fist slammed against the Hard-Light wall, the sound echoing around in the confined space multiple times. "YES!"

The anger in Arcee's optics faded. She took a step back, startled, as if the volume of my yell had struck her. In my enhanced state, I could place everyone outside the cage. Feel their optics staring at me, ready to storm in at all moment to protect Arcee.

"Yes it became your problem! Yes it became everyone's problem! Yes I messed it all up! Yes I'm a worthless piece of slag! Yes I'm just a monster inhabiting an Autobot's body! Yes! Ju—… Yes…"

My vision went back to normal. The storm of emotions I'd felt came back to punch me in the tank. Every negative thought I'd had, every feeling, every hard fact, hit me tenfold. I closed my optics, letting myself collapse against the wall, hands over my faceplate.

The urge to start crying—to bare my soul and just weep, weep over all I'd done, all the thoughts and doubts I had—nearly overwhelmed me. The emptiness I'd been forcing myself to feel went away. In its place came all the emotions I'd suppressed. All the thoughts I'd tried to ignore.

I should have been better. Stronger. I should have listened to the signs. I should have seen the ones I'd missed.

All of this was my fault.

I sat there, shaking with emotion, fighting the desire to let tears fall from my optics, before I felt Arcee fall against me. She fell so quickly, silently, and suddenly, for a moment I thought she'd been completely limp. Her servos wrapped around me, and she buried herself into my chestplate and shoulder. She too was shaking, but I heard no crying from her. No tears. They wouldn't come—it wasn't like her to cry.

No words were exchanged between us as I wrapped my own servos around her. We didn't speak with our optics or make gestures to convey meaning. We just let our emotion-wracked frames do the talking for us. And we let them talk a lot.

The moment was different to me. We'd had meaningful conversation. We'd hugged. We'd kissed. But none of those moments felt as real as this one; none were as pure.

This, I realized, was our first moment of true intimacy. Where we hadn't been fully logical. Where we hadn't communicated in a truly linear manner. Where we'd expressed the full force of the emotions we had been feeling, without filtering anything for any reason.

It felt right.

At last we both stopped shaking; however, neither of us moved. It seemed we were in silent agreement that our close proximity was good at calming our emotions and our sparks. I was grateful for her soothing presence.

"My creators."

Arcee's words broke the calming silence we had fallen, and I adjusted my helm to look at her. "What?"

"What was bothering me earlier." She had adjusted as well, looking up at me, side of her helm against my shoulder-joint. "Cold knew something about my creators that I don't. Elita and Chromia know it, too, but they didn't get a chance to tell me before..."

My guilt came back. "And if I ha—"

"Please, I'm not done."

I stopped talking.

"They didn't get to tell what it was. I still don't know. And now I'm seeing flashes of… Things. Places. Events. Things I don't remember. I don't understand them. I…"

She trailed off again, and this time I saw the conflict in her optics. The pain. "You're afraid." The words sounded alien when speaking to her. Unfitting. Never in my life would I have expected to see her like this—this scared.

She didn't confirm what I said, but her optics told it all. She was. indeed, afraid.

"What are you afraid of?"

"I'm afraid of searching for answers to what I'm seeing. Of finding out what it is that my sisters have been keeping from me." She wordlessly struggled for a few micro-klicks, optics torn. Then finally, she added, "But that's not all I'm afraid of."

"Then what else?"

All she did was look at me, and the implication was clear.

"You're afraid of me."

She shook her helm. "No, no. Not you. Of… Being you. Like you. Like everything that's been happening to you."

I put it all together. Finding out there was something important about her creators she didn't know. The visions she said she had been seeing. The number of unknown factors I'd heard from the others about their trip in the Animus; I was still trying to get my head around having a reality connected with my CPU. It made sense that she was afraid.

"I don't blame you at all for fearing you'll be like me," I said, entirely truthful.

She looked surprised. "How can you accept that so willingly? How does it not hurt you?"

"Because I'm afraid, too."

Arcee was silent, waiting.

"I'm afraid of what I am. I remember everything up to the point Cold killed me. I saw what was happening—saw the abilities that were beating everyone around like toys. And I know they were coming from me, not him. No one should have been able to do what I did, but I did it all as easily as breathing. I'm afraid of that kind of power."

"But you aren't Cold. You wouldn't have used any of those powers like he had."

It was my turn to be silent.

"Shadow'?"

"You're not the only one afraid of me. I'm also afraid of me—of who I'm becoming."

"I'm not sure I follow."

I took a moment to gather together my strength, then said, "I'm not the same person I used to be. I'm angier, less patient. My temper is shorter, and I have less control over it. My thoughts are darker. More and more I'm catching myself thinking deeply about different ways to break someone else's limbs, or the simplest ways to inflict the most pain in an interrogation. I'm… Changing, and not in good ways. And I can't do anything to stop it. It's like I'm watching myself through an unbreakable pane of glass, unable to keep myself from becoming more and more of a monster."

Arcee was still silent as I looked down at her again. "I don't want to be a monster, Arcee. I really, really don't..."

She reached up with a servo. She brushed it across my optic, and it came back slightly damp. Tears had nearly fallen from my optics without me realizing. "You're not a monster, Shadow'."

"But I'm turning into one. I'm a broken mech, Arcee—I can feel it. Something inside me snapped while I was with the Paraions, and I don't know what can possibly repair it. What happened with Cold shows just how far gone I am."

She said nothing, but she didn't correct me.

"I'm a threat to you. I realized that while I've been sitting in this cage. Whatever I am, whoever I'm becoming, it's someone who's going to lead you to nothing but pain and death." I paused, unsure if this was the time to share what I wanted of her. I decided there would be no other time. "Arcee, I want you to promise me something."

"What is it?" She asked, tone quiet.

For the second time in just a few klicks, I had to gather my strength before looking directly into her optics, staring as deep as I could into those beautiful azure orbs. "I want you to promise me that if this happens again, if he starts gaining control, that you'll kill me."

She looked beyond shocked and appalled by my request. "Shadow', I can't d—"

"Please, Arcee. Please promise me. Promise that you won't let me hurt anyone else—that he won't hurt anyone. Not again."

She was silent for what seemed like an eternity, never once blinking or looking away from my optics. Finally, she nodded. "I… Promise." The words sounded like they pained her, and I understood why they did; if our positions had been reversed, they would have pained me.

"Thank you."

We didn't speak again for a long time. Then Arcee broke the silence again, "If you've made me promise something like that, then I want a promise in return."

I found it fair, given what I'd asked. "What promise do you want from me?"

"I want you to promise to let me help you."

"I ca—"

"No. No one can undergo torture and deal with it on their own. No one. Not Optimus. Not Jazz. Not me. Promise to let me in, Shadow'—let me in as your courted should be."

"We haven't done a very good job of being courted, have we?"

It was a delaying question on my part, but also a legitimate one. I'd come to realize in this cell that our relationship hadn't started out as it should have. We were going through the motions of a couple—hugging, kissing, being close as much as possible—but we hadn't been doing the essential things needed to get there.

"No," she said slowly, look in her optics telling me she had reached the same conclusion as I had. "No I suppose we haven't; we've skipped things we shouldn't have. It's left us a base. But why bring that up now? Do you want this to end?"

"No!" Scrap, did she really think I wanted it to? "No. I want this—us—to be right. I've messed up a lot of things in a short amount of time, but more than anything, I want us to be at the same level as our Imprints."

She looked touched by my sincerity, and a touch shy by what being at the level of our Imprints implied. "You have no idea how much I want the same thing. I want us to be closer than we've ever been, so that when that time comes, we're both ready to be one." She traced her digit across my faceplate idly, examining my thick layers of armor. "Do you know how we can fix it?"

"Honestly, no. I don't. Do you?"

"Well, to start with, we can truly lean on each other."

I realized she set up the question as a trap, and I'd fallen for it. "Arcee…"

"Honesty is something we should have established from the beginning… On both of our parts. You're right—I haven't given you details on what Airachnid did to me, and I should. But my wounds aren't as fresh as yours. I'll share if you do. Promise?"

"… I promise."

"Good. Now talk to me."

"Seriously? Now?"

"No better time. Talk to me, Shadow'."

I sighed, but nevertheless started going through the memories I'd been avoiding like the cybonic plague.

Memories of the Hammer.

Arcee sat patiently as I sorted through my memories, and started with little details from whatever I could remember without wincing. "The Hammer had very utilitarian walls, like most Paraion ships and buildings…"

---

Optimus stepped out of the med-bay and into the hallway.

He'd returned from his mission a quarter breem ago, and had just been released by Ratchet after being treated for a wound. He hadn't been fast enough to dodge the drone's attack, and paid for it with a combat knife stuck in his pede. He'd been lucky, according to Ratchet—a few inches to the left, and he would have been sidelined for mega-cycles.

The Prime knew he had a mistake in the mission, and would have been the reason it failed had it not been for Broadside's firepower. He was off; he had been since he returned from the Animus. And he knew why was.

Elita was not near him.

First he'd lost the Star Saber, then The Being had banned him from using the Omni Saber—banned him by speaking. Then Elita was trapped in the Animus, unable to live in their world until she completed a Path Optimus did not know.

Three grave setbacks in less than two jours. He was Prime; he could not make such errors. Yet he had.

What did that make him?

Optimus reached his destination—his quarters—and the door opened for him automatically. He always kept it open.

He froze in the doorway.

Sitting in his chair, pedes propped up on the desk, reading a data pad under lights that should have been on, was Cold.

Multi-lensed optics snapped up to meet his, and Optimus felt his spine freeze.

Cold set the data pad down and stood. "So…" The former Xel'Tor began, voice rumbling like a thunderstorm, jagged armor shifting in the darkness. "What is it that you fear, Little Prime?"

---

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It's still progress. Don't give me that look.

So I'm you noticed that there are some differences with this chapter compared to others before it. Most notably, the lack of time and place. I'm phasing that out, and will go back (at some point) to get rid of all the others I have in the story. It's a practice that's been more of a headache than anything, and it doesn't add anything to the story when I talk about how much time has past, anyway. Plus, it takes away the surprise of finding out Arcee was gone for three weeks, and makes it difficult for me to put in scenes which I KNOW I need to put in, but can't because of my own timeline.

That being said, time stamps and locations will appear at times in the future, but not as they have. That is all.

Another difference is placing ship names in Italics. I realized long ago that the proper way to write is do that with things like ships, but I figured that I may have been doing it wrong, but at least I was consistently doing it wrong. That changed. I'll get to all the ship names... Someday.

There are two credit songs for this chapter.

The first credit song (which took WAY too long to find; I have too many songs in my near-2,000 song playlist that are too epic in scale) is "Switch Trailer Music - Mira" This song is slower, and sadder, but also moving. It fits well with Arcee and Shadowstreaker's ending scene, and the fact their emotions are still quite... Complex, even after all they talk about.

The second credit song is "Kings & Creatures - The Hunted" This one has the right level of suspense and dark themes to fit in with how I left the chapter. And in general, if you love epic music like I do, go check out Kings & Creatures channel on Youtube; their work is phenomenal and they don't get the attention they deserve.

Now, I need to get some stinking sleep; I have a long day of writing ahead of me. Please take some time to review or shoot a PM my way.

Thank you all for reading, and I hope you are all doing wonderfully.

See you soon.

PS: how many of you have seen the latest Star Wars trailer? I literally had to fight the urge to scream at how awesome it was; it was nearly 2 AM at the time, and everyone in the house had been sleeping for hours.