Decepticons apparently considered decontamination showers the epitome of cleanliness. Mirage had seldom felt more hygienic. Drones had removed his armour to scour him shiny while outside Thundercracker guarded the door. No sane mech would challenge a broody Seeker with a fractious sparkling.

Soundwave joined them while they were waiting for Hook and it was as though he became invisible. The noble marvelled. His own outlier ability had never worked so well. None of the Decepticons infesting the hospital glanced in his direction, not even with Tempest in his lap.

When the Constructicon ordered them into a consulting room, he glared at the bitlet then frowned at Thundercracker. No optic contact was made with the Autobot. After quartexes being eyeballed by guards, Mirage found being unseen was a relief. He lay down on an examination table as instructed. The tingle-itch of a high resolution spark scan washed over him.

Hook's mood did not noticeably improve after he had analysed the results.

"Inbred high caste speed freaks." The perfectionist engineer sneered.

"So he's close?" Thundercracker asked intently as he returned Tempest to Mirage's care. The sparkling again quieted once he was near the 'Bot's spark though he groused, unhappy with their location and company. His Carrier couldn't blame him for not liking Hook or the hospital.

"You wouldn't comprehend the intricate details and it would be better if he were Vosian but evidently Iaconian nobles shared many of the ultra-high performance modifications that make Seekers infuriating to treat." Hook put Mirage's and Tempest's spark frequencies on a display and ran a comparative diagnostic for show-and-tell.

"As you can see, the amplitude variations are concordant within the ninetieth percentile and while the sigma-wave function is aberrant due to frame-type dissimilarities, its underlying mode is in whole integer cadence. The lack of subsidiary or sympathetic reduplication in the medial aurora confirms scintilla intacta status. The posteroanterior orientation of the ignis flare shared by both subjects validates the single source Celeritas Hypothesis, incidentally."

Hook looked from the display to his audience and saw four sets of incomprehension. One he could excuse as the sparkling was barely aware of his own peds. Another he did not verbally or mentally remark upon because Soundwave never forgot or forgave. So he poured 100% of his derision on 50% of the imbeciles.

"If you want to go through with your idiotic proposal, there is nothing medically to stop you." Hook clicked off the display. "Pay attention when I say you absolutely cannot form a spark bond with the Autobot while he is sustaining your sparkling." When Thundercracker made to protest, the Constructicon simply talked over him. "You need to touch sparks to initialise those laughably archaic paramour protocols you're using to cover your exhaust. That is not a bond."

"How long a touch?" Mirage inquired to test whether he was an unperson to Hook or merely low status.

"That depends on how primed your systems are to be a good little peripheral." He'd never understood the popularity of racers. Fast in the street, fast in the berth but friction burn was hardly alluring.

"Specific duration required." Soundwave stated not asked.

"Under a breem." Hook had never seen a bond form that fast and those few split-twins he'd observed had needed longer than that to stabilise their sparks.

"We'll do it now?" Thundercracker asked. He put his sigil to the bonding contract, sending it to Mirage as he waited for the Autobot's answer. This wasn't what he'd ever imagined doing. He'd dreamed about having perfect harmony with his trine, of being one unit in the sky, a blade through the wind. He hadn't got that and never would now. At least he wasn't taking a secondary out of lust. This wasn't vice. It was gambling.

Mirage saw the light in the Seeker's optics. Soundwave was sitting right there. The spy meticulously checked the document, confirmed his amendments were there, paused a scripted plausible moment of hesitation, then signed. It wasn't what he wanted but it was a start. He returned the contract thinking acceptable thoughts. Mostly of decorating his own room now he'd have a window.

Jazz had once said merging sparks with a mark was only difficult if you thought of it as sharing. It wasn't. You gave exactly and only as much of yourself as you wanted. You couldn't fake a merge even with an intoxicated partner. The spark knew. But the spark knew only what it felt not why. Get your processor in the right mode and you could feel whatever you chose to feel.

Mirage felt that said more about Jazz than it did about the efficacy of sequestering your emotions. He gave Tempest to Soundwave then shuffled over on the examination table so Thundercracker could lie down beside him. They'd all done something like this to jumpstart a comrade. Evidently the 'Cons had too as the Seeker automatically reached for a line rather than opening his cockpit.

"Side to side or you over me?" Thundercracker asked, shifting his canopy away and triggering the locks on his armour. When was the last time he'd opened up for anyone but trine or a medic? Before Earth, certainly. Before the war? He'd shared with his creators, with kin as a youngling. There'd been offers from his peers. Lots of juvenile Seekers liked to have a taste to learn what they preferred. His Carrier had treated Vos like a buffet before bonding but Cloudrunner's fond reminiscences had always irritated his sires. Thundercracker had never had his Carrier's easy, airy confidence.

Mirage would have insisted on being on top if his soon-to-be conjunx had suggested covering him. That Thundercracker had apparently instinctively offered the dominant role to him, with two other Decepticons watching, spoke volumes of the jet's priorities. An excellent time to establish how they would be going forward.

"Side to side." The spy offered, moving to put his back to the wall as he stretched out on the table. There was egality and then there was common sense. He wasn't baring his neck to a hack or a hacker.

Thundercracker got into position then opened his chest before he could remind himself the Autobot was Spec Ops. He heard Tempest begin to fuss and suddenly this was easy. He put a hand on the grounder's shoulder to steady them both, started a countdown, damped his trine-bond as much as he could, and leaned in.

The 'Bot needed two goes to get his chest open. At the creak of his locks, Thundercracker eased his grip and flared his wings to screen them. The token privacy seemed to help. Warm light with just a tint of gold joined his pale blue. There was no proof but the high caste had considered near colourless sparks a sign of good breeding, emblematic of the purity of Primus. He thought it more likely snobbery because stored sparks tended to have unbalanced spectra giving them stronger hues.

They felt sad and worried and tired. There was fear, blunt like a stripped gear. A sprinkle of hope well battened down.

An alarm on his HUD went off. Thundercracker pushed himself away as Mirage slammed his chest shut. They each individually cycled their vents. The merge hadn't been long enough to leave anything or raise any charge. A cascade of new code activated deep in an archive, sending a reciprocal ping to a matching string. It felt like a tank filtration cycle or a gasket pressure check, something autonomic that you only noticed when it was out of sequence.

"Is that it?" Thundercracker had expected something a bit more... something. Mystical. Formal. Obvious. He didn't feel any different, though he kept his bond locked down. If he were lucky, his trine wouldn't notice. He didn't think he'd ever been that lucky but maybe Primus would smile upon him.

"Let me check before you start holding hands." Hook interrupted what could have been an intimate moment of spiritual connection but wasn't.

"Yeah, we'll need to verify the change for the paperwork." The Seeker put himself back in order and sat up. He hesitated before shifting aside so the Constructicon could get at his conjunx. Was that something new or did he just not trust Hook flourishing a widget?

Mirage pushed himself into a sitting position. He submitted to the coding check by putting himself mentally in his cell in the internment camp. This would get him out. Not free, not yet. Out was a start. A new beginning on a Cybertron at peace.

"The pet protocol is active." Hook bit each glyph. "If I had been created with that, I'd've had it excised as soon as I could get at my own code. A disgusting legacy of a corrupt system." The two high caste ignored him. The crane turned to Soundwave. "It's verified. The Autobot is linked as a secondary to the fool. Only a major surgical rewrite, which I cannot perform, can separate them. Or death"

"Then I'll just shoot him." Skywarp snarled, warp energy bleeding off him in a black/purple haze. "Problem solved."