If Bluestreak's smile was any wider, his face would probably have split in two. As it was, the mesh in his cheeks felt strained with the size of his grin.

He turned, admiring his reflection. His wings were large, with smooth, flat plating. He spread them out as wide as he could, reveling in the sheer joy he felt from that simple action. They felt glorious, and they looked even better.

Bluestreak could vaguely remember being fairly happy at the reformat that Teletraan 1 gave him after they were reactivated on Earth. But now, he looked even better than he did before. In fact, he looked amazing.

He looked right.

The ground under him vibrated, and he suddenly realized that he was standing on the palm of a huge mech – someone the size of a cityformer. The gigantic mech lifted him to the same level as his glowing red optics, and smiled. "Bluestreak," the huge mech boomed. "How do you feel?"

"I feel great!" Bluestreak said. He flicked his wings, still delighting in the feeling of the air flowing over them, and added, "I can't remember the last time I felt this comfortable in my own frame."

"That is good to hear." The impossibly deep voice reverberated in Bluestreak's chest. Then the enormous mech frowned, and another hand began reaching towards Bluestreak. "But it looks like there was a mistake. You don't need those wings."

"What?" Bluestreak stumbled backwards, but found that the hand was closing on him. As the giant fingers of the hand grew closer and closer, Bluestreak held up his own hands and said, "No, wait! I do need them!"

"No. I will fix this and take them away." An enormous thumb and finger reached towards him as if to catch him between them.

"Stop!" Panicking, Bluestreak leapt from the hand and instinctively fired his thrusters, darting away from the huge mech with a spin and a twitch of his ailerons.

But he wasn't fast enough: the hand flashed out and closed around him. "Hold still, Bluestreak," the mech said. "This might hurt, but I'm just trying to fix this mistake." The mech grabbed one of his wings between its fingers...

...and pulled.

Bluestreak screamed in pain as his wing was ripped from its mounting. "Stop! Please don't do this! Stop!" He thrashed, trying to free himself from the huge mech's grasp. "Please!"

"Just one more," the huge mech said, turning him and reaching for the other one.

"No!" Bluestreak screamed as the giant fingers pinched closed on his remaining wing and pulled.

He landed on the floor with a loud thud. One of his door wings scraped against the side of his berth, sending a jolt of pain into his shoulder.

The tranquilizer program that had been installed in his processor so long ago during basic training launched itself. As its code spooled out, it soothed over the panic that it sensed in him: regulating his ventilations, relaxing tensed cables, shunting looped responses into secondary threads, and pinging him with a location, diagnostic, and time.

He was in the Ark, in his quarters. He was on a planet that the inhabitants called Earth. Aside from some cooling issues and minor frame damage, his systems were running smoothly. It was the middle of the night, and there were four hours before his morning shift started.

He was safe.

"Lights!" Bluestreak gasped, and waited while his optics adjusted to the sudden brightness.

He lay back on the floor and let his cooling fans run, counting to one hundred like he'd practiced with Rung after his tranquilizer program had been installed. He wished that Hound was back from his patrol duty, since Hound always knew the right things to do and to say after Bluestreak woke from recharge in the night, panicking and flailing.

He pinged Hound on a short-range frequency, hoping that maybe his friend had returned early. He waited a full minute before conceding that Hound wasn't back in range yet.

He was just glad that their other roommates were also away. Trailbreaker had gone out on patrol with Hound, while Brawn was still in medbay after the last fight with the Decepticons. His other roommates knew he had bad nightmares occasionally, but they just assumed (like everyone else) that he was still traumatized by whatever happened in Praxus.

Bluestreak cycled his optics at the orange ceiling. Maybe he was still traumatized, but only his spark remembered exactly what he was traumatized about. Maybe Smokescreen had been right, way back in their first session in the Iacon hospital. Maybe his spark really did remember his frame being crushed and his wings being ripped off. Maybe that really was the cause of his nightmares.

The tranquilizer program sent a message to his HUD, letting him know that it had run its course. He did feel better, with his fans running at a normal speed and his spark no longer feeling as though it was about to burst free of its casing. But a resignation settled over him. He knew that Smokescreen would get a message telling him that Bluestreak's tranquilizer program had been triggered again, and that meant that Bluestreak would have another session with him to discuss it in a day or two.

Ugh. Bluestreak didn't know what he was going to say this time. It was the same sort of nightmare every single time: either being trapped under rubble, or having his wings ripped off of his frame. How many times could they discuss how much an event he couldn't even remember bothered him?

He wondered if he could figure out a way to hack the coding in the tranquilizer program so that it would stop sending notices to Medical when it launched. Surely he couldn't get into trouble for hacking his own brain.

An image of Ratchet flashed across his vision, and Bluestreak winced. Ok, maybe he could get into trouble for hacking his brain.

With a groan, Bluestreak slowly rolled over, climbed to his pedes, and consulted his chronometer. He had three and a half hours until his shift started. There was no way he was going back to recharge now, not after that nightmare. And while Prowl was probably up this early (or, more likely, still up from the previous day), Bluestreak didn't really want to bother his friend with his problems. The only thing he could think to do at this hour was to go down to the mess hall, collect his daily ration, and maybe read one of the nature magazines that Hound had given him on a datapad.

He grabbed a pad at random and left his quarters.

The halls of the Ark were almost silent, although he could still hear the whirs as Red Alert's cameras tracked his progress to the mess hall. Bluestreak could have done with a little bit of noise to get his processor off of the dark places it began wandering. Maybe he should have grabbed one of the datapads with music that Blaster and Jazz had collected from the humans, instead of something to read. He flared and resettled his plating, trying to get it to feel comfortable, but he knew that was likely a losing battle after having one of his nightmares. His plating and frame wouldn't feel right for the better part of the day, now.

He scrubbed at his face as he turned down the corridor towards the mess hall. Another dream about flying. Another nightmare about losing his wings. If there was symbolism in the dreams, it was lost on him.

It had taken over a thousand years, but Bluestreak had finally felt comfortable in his frame before they came to Earth. Bluestreak had figured out what was wrong with his sensor wings: they were too stubby and too small. But he wasn't able to work out how making the changes he wanted to see in the mirror would work with his alt mode; all of his body paneling would need to be redesigned and redone. Making all of those changes seemed impractical, especially since he was always on the move with his unit. And besides, resources had become scarce in the later days of the war on Cybertron. Making huge changes to a mech's armor and plating was expensive and time consuming, and the Autobots lacked the resources to do it. Making those changes for what were essentially cosmetic reasons seemed impossible.

When he explained the problem to Hound, the green mech had looked at Bluestreak's sensor wings thoughtfully. A few days later, Hound and Sunstreaker showed Bluestreak how paint could be used to give the illusion that his wings were broader and larger. Hound explained that some truck frames and tankformers used similar paint applications to disguise their size and shape in the field. The illusion wasn't perfect, of course, but it was good enough that Bluestreak could look at himself in the mirror without feeling that odd sense of anxiety and wrongness that had plagued him for so long.

Then they boarded the Ark... And crashed on Earth... And were brought back online four million years later.

The reformat that Bluestreak received from Teletraan 1 was a wonder. Sensor wings became door wings. Plasteel sensor covers became fragile glass. The bulbous corners of his Cybertronian alt mode were replaced by smooth lines and contoured surfaces and shiny chrome of a vehicle the humans called a Datsun. The doors of his vehicle mode were much longer than his original sensor wings had been, and their shape was almost perfect.

It was amazing.

Bluestreak had spent almost as long as Sunstreaker did admiring his new form in the washrack mirror. And while some of the Autobots disliked the exotic look that the human vehicles gave them, Bluestreak loved his updated reflection.

It was only when he had one of his nightmares that he thought about his frame, now.

The mess hall was empty, as Bluestreak expected. He stood at the energon dispenser, leaning on the counter heavily while waiting for his ration to dispense. When the dispenser finally beeped to indicate his cube was full, he picked it up and turned to find a seat where he could read his datapad.

He gasped, almost dropping the cube, when he saw a mech standing less than a meter away from him. "Aaah!"

"Hey there, Blue," Jazz said with a grin, leaning on the counter casually as if he'd been there for hours.

Bluestreak clapped his hand onto his chest. His spark had just calmed down from his nightmare earlier, but it was now spinning fast once more. "Primus, Jazz. You are unnaturally quiet."

"Just tricks of the trade, my mech," the spy said. "But sorry 'bout that... I honestly didn't mean to startle ya." Jazz paused. "Yer up early."

Bluestreak stepped away from the counter and from Jazz, still unnerved that the other mech had gotten so close without him noticing. "Yeah. Just getting some reading done before my shift," he said as brightly as he could, waving the datapad.

Jazz's visor was locked on Bluestreak's optics, and his smile faded. "Did ya have a nightmare?" he asked quietly.

Frag. Did everyone know about his nightmares? Then again, Jazz seemed to know just about everything that went on in the Ark. Bluestreak let his door wings droop a bit. "Is it that obvious?" he asked, letting his fatigue creep back into his voice.

Jazz shook his helm. "Nah," he said. He punched a few buttons on the energon dispenser, then turned back to Bluestreak. "But nightmares are a fact of life for Special Ops mechs. Some of my agents have 'em real bad." He gestured around his visor vaguely. "There's a look a mech gets around the optics when they've had a bad one. You've got that look right now."

"Oh." Bluestreak rubbed his optics, wondering if there was a way to mask whatever Jazz had seen in him, then shrugged. "Yeah. I had a nightmare. All my roommates are away, and everyone else is on duty or recharging. I figured I'd just come in here and read for a bit until it was time for my shift."

The energon dispenser beeped, and Jazz pulled a cube from it before requesting another cube. "Did ya want to talk about it?" Jazz asked. "Or just have someone to talk to so yer not alone?" He gestured at the dispenser. "I was gonna take a ration to Prowl, but I can come back if ya want." When Bluestreak started to shake his helm, Jazz added, "It don't have to be a serious talk. We can just chat about music or shows or anything else ya like."

Bluestreak smiled. "I appreciate the gesture," he said. "I really do. But I'll be all right. It's just a few hours until my shift starts, and night shift is going to be coming back pretty soon. Mechs will be coming in here for fuel and..." Bluestreak shrugged and shook his helm. "I'll be all right. But thank you."

Jazz grabbed the second cube from the dispenser. "All right. I'll leave ya to it, then." He gave Bluestreak another considering look. "But I'll just be in Prowl's office. If ya change yer mind, just give me a comm."

"I will. And thanks again." Bluestreak watched as Jazz left the mess hall. He was glad that Prowl seemed to have started some kind of relationship with the Polyhexian. Even though it had been centuries on Cybertron (and millennia in stasis) since Bluestreak had explained that he didn't feel anything except friendship for Prowl, he still caught Prowl watching him with a strange expression now and then. Hopefully, now that Prowl had picked up with Jazz, those strange looks would stop.

With a sigh, Bluestreak turned and sat at a table, facing the door of the room. He peeled open his cube and sipped from it before flicking the datapad on.

Bluestreak knew that the article should have been interesting. It was about migratory birds, something that Hound had been enthusing about just a few weeks ago. But instead, Bluestreak's processor kept drifting to the dream he'd had, and how good it had felt to spread his wings. The pictures of the flying creatures in the article did nothing to help.

After several attempts at reading the same paragraph and not remembering what it said, Bluestreak set down the datapad and rubbed his optics again. He reflexively pinged Hound's frequency once more, not expecting to hear anything back.

When his ping was returned and was followed by a comm request, Bluestreak's spark leapt. ::Hound! You're back in range!::

::Yup. We're just coming up the road to the Ark now.:: Even over the comm, Hound's voice sounded tired, but it had the same cheerful lilt it always did. ::What's up? I figured you'd still be in recharge.::

Bluestreak couldn't keep the sense of defeat out of his voice. ::I had another nightmare.::

::Oh, no. I wish I'd been there for you.:: The distress in Hound's voice was plain.

::It's not your fault. You were out on patrol. But... I'd like to see you, before my shift.:: Bluestreak perched on the edge of his chair, staring at the door of the mess hall as if Hound was about to walk through it. ::Just to say hi, and take my mind off of it. To talk about anything and nothing, if that's all right.::

::Absolutely.:: Hound's voice was firm. ::We'll be back at the Ark in less than ten minutes, and I've already got my report prepared to be filed. So no more than twenty minutes. Where can I find you?::

::The mess hall. I'll get your ration ready for you.:: Bluestreak was already rising to punch in Hound's code. ::And thanks. I know you usually like to get washed up before tromping through the Ark.::

::You're way more important to me than a shower. I'll see you soon, Blue. Hound out.::

Bluestreak collected Hound's ration from the dispenser and returned to his table. He'd been sitting there for almost five minutes before he realized that the tension in his wings had faded.


Of course it was a trap. They should have known it was a trap. And if they'd followed protocol (like Prowl had drilled into him over and over) and called it in before investigating the strange signal they'd discovered, Bluestreak and Sunstreaker probably would have been warned against checking it out.

On the plus side, the Decepticons were more likely to take Autobots prisoner than kill them outright, these days.

On the minus side, Bluestreak now knew what the inside of the Decepticon brig/torture palace looked like.

Bluestreak's processor was still swimming from the cheap shot he'd received from Drag Strip, but he jerked back to full awareness when he felt his wrists being lifted over his helm and locked into restraints. He guessed he was shorter than their usual captives, since the tips of his pedes barely touched the floor of the brig.

Turning his helm to the left, he saw that Sunstreaker was being strung up in the same way. His pedes were also just barely touching the floor; maybe the restraints were adjustable? Bluestreak shook his helm and opened his mouth, but nothing came out. Right. The inhibitor they'd slapped on his neck had disabled his vocalizer along with his comms.

Sunstreaker glared at Brawl as the tankformer checked his restraints. Then he glanced over at Bluestreak. Sunstreaker's fingers formed a quick sign: You ok?

Bluestreak nodded. He was banged up, but otherwise his diagnostics were coming up green.

He just hoped they stayed that way.

Bluestreak had never been captured before. On Cybertron, it was rare for an Autobot to survive being captured by the Decepticons. Most often, the unlucky captives were tortured for information before being tossed to the troops as playthings. Allowing prisoners to be beaten to death by the troops for fun was apparently cheaper than spending the energon to execute them.

But on Earth, the rules had changed. Both sides had limited numbers, and limited resources. While the Decepticons outnumbered the Autobots, the Autobots had the humans on their side. Deaths occasionally still happened during battle, but captives were usually traded for concessions from the other side. And while Optimus Prime was adamant that they not use torture on any of their prisoners, the Decepticons had no such compunctions.

Bluestreak looked at the Decepticon guards and thought back to what Sunstreaker had said before the 'Cons had trussed them into stasis cuffs and applied the inhibitors. "Don't let them get to you," Sunstreaker had hissed as the Stunticons bickered over who was going to sit on Sunstreaker and who was going to put the cuffs on him. "We both got our distress calls off before they jammed us. The Autobots will come for us. Just tell them what they want… They'll find it out anyway. And don't give up. Help will be coming!"

Maybe they wouldn't be tortured. Maybe they'd just be questioned. Bluestreak held onto that hope as the Decepticons slapped the cuffs on him, silenced him, and threw both of them into the back of Motormaster's trailer.

He'd heard what happened to Autobots who the Decepticons decided to torture. It wasn't uncommon for a mech to spend a few weeks in the medical bay recovering from their ordeal. Sideswipe and Sunstreaker had both spent time in the Decepticon brig. Neither of them had wanted to talk about it much, although Sideswipe made jokes about their experience that only seemed to highlight how bad it had been. Hound had been captured once, and still had nightmares about the experience from time to time. And one time, Cliffjumper had literally been sent back to the Autobot base one part at a time, with his helm and torso being the last parts delivered.

In the Decepticon brig, Brawl paced back and forth between them, glaring at them both in turn. He nudged Sunstreaker with the butt of his rifle. "You, we've seen," he said, his voice deep and gruff. Then he turned to Bluestreak. "But you... You're new." He leered at Bluestreak. "'Tex is gonna have a lot of fun with you."

Bluestreak's ventilations stalled and his optics widened. 'Tex? As in Vortex?! He looked over at Sunstreaker as the frontliner started thrashing in his restraints, his engine revving hard. Sunstreaker's flailing only fed into Bluestreak's growing fear.

Bluestreak was very familiar with all of the names of the Decepticon interrogators on Earth, and none of them were gentle. Soundwave probed your processor directly, looking for memories to exploit and information that you didn't even know you had. Barricade was a master at hacking, stripping firewalls and implanting viruses that slept so deeply in a mech's processor that it took weeks to root them out, and months to make sure you were clean. But Vortex...

Vortex specialized in pain.

It was Vortex who had disassembled Cliffjumper part by part. "I'm helping you escape, Cliff," he'd told the red minibot as he'd removed his forearm, slicing open hydraulics and joint bindings slowly. "I'm helping you escape one little part at a time."

The red minibot had been freed over a year before, but he still went into a panic if he saw a surgical scalpel.

"Stop playing with my new toy." Bluestreak's helm jerked up as the rotary came into the brig. Vortex stopped in the doorway, looking at Bluestreak with an admiring gaze. "This is a rare opportunity for me and I don't want anything to ruin it."

Bluestreak had seen Vortex on the battlefield, usually combined as Bruticus's left arm, but he'd also seen him in the air. While Bluestreak liked what the Earth reformat had done to his own frame, it had done wondrous things for Vortex. The helicopter was now all sleek lines and dangerous angles in the air, and in root mode he had broad shoulders, a thin waist, and squared hips. His rotor blades spread out from his shoulders in a v-shape, drawing Bluestreak's optics down to the mech's red visor and stern faceplate.

Bluestreak shook his helm. Maybe his processor was still addled from that hit he'd taken. This wasn't the time to get all besotted with a rotary.

With a flick of his fingers, Vortex gestured at Sunstreaker. "Turn off his inhibitor. I want to hear why this grounder's ruining his paint with all his thrashing." As Brawl reached for Sunstreaker's inhibitor, Vortex asked, "So what's got you all worked up, sweetspark?"

"Leave him alone!" Sunstreaker roared as soon as his inhibitor was turned off.

Vortex huffed a laugh and turned to Bluestreak. "Who, this prize? The Autobots' star sniper?" He trailed a finger along one of Bluestreak's door wings as he walked up to him, causing them to tremble uncontrollably. Vortex laughed, flicked off the inhibitor, and laughed again as Bluestreak whimpered immediately. "I've got plans for you," he purred, the timbre of his voice somehow going even lower, causing heat to pool low in Bluestreak's abdomen.

Bluestreak shivered.

"He doesn't know anything!" Sunstreaker yelled. He yanked on his restraints once more. "He's just a private. He's barely got any security clearance. I'm the one you want to interrogate."

Vortex sniggered at that. "Who said anything about interrogation?" he asked. "I just want to play." The rotary slid a finger down Bluestreak's cheek and hooked it under his chinguard to tip Bluestreak's helm upwards. "Hmm. What should I do first? Slice open your pretty wings, or ruin your data ports?" He leaned closer, his vents blowing warm air over Bluestreak's plating. "What do you think... Bluestreak, is it?"

Bluestreak's fingers twitched in their bindings, wanting to stroke down the edges of the rotary's blades and – slag! He turned his helm away, hoping that if he wasn't looking at Vortex he could derail this fragged up train of thought. This was a 'Con! This was the sick glitch who'd taken Cliffjumper apart bit by bit! This mech's face was the one that haunted Hound's nightmares, making him wake in the night, crying out and thrashing! This was one of the most feared Decepticon interrogators! So why couldn't Bluestreak rip his optics off of the mech's visor and blades and why was he wondering how it would feel to run his glossa down their length and -

"I asked you a question." Vortex slid sideways a step so that he filled Bluestreak's field of view again. His face was only half a meter away from Bluestreak's, and Bluestreak could see just a hint of the mech's optics behind his visor. It was tantalizing. "I asked what you think."

Before Bluestreak could formulate a coherent answer, he heard his vocalizer say, "I think you look delicious."

For a moment, everything stopped. In that moment, Bluestreak thought his processor had crashed, because the brig went dead silent. Then suddenly his helm was tipped upwards again as Vortex grabbed his chinguard and brought his face just centimeters from Bluestreak's. "Who told you to say that?" the rotary yelled into his face.

It felt as though his spark had stopped. Why had he said that? Was he trying to get himself disassembled? "I- I- No one! No one told me to say that. I'm sorry. I don't know what I was thinking. I'm sorry if I offended you. I didn't think. I-" Bluestreak's babble of words was cut off as Vortex shoved him backwards in the restraints, and he squawked in pain as his shoulders were wrenched in their sockets.

"Why did you say that?" Vortex growled. He still stood in front of Bluestreak, his visor blazing. One hand wrapped around Bluestreak's neck while his other was balled into a fist at his side.

Bluestreak gaped at Vortex, trying to find the words. No, not trying to find the words: he realized that he knew why he'd said that. He'd said it because Vortex was gorgeous, a sleek magical machine that Bluestreak could have looked at all day, and would have loved to touch. But he couldn't just say that to him, and what other explanation could he give Vortex that he would accept?

His processor raced, trying to find an answer that wouldn't get him killed – or worse – and he glanced away from Vortex again. For some reason every time he looked at the rotary, his spark spun and his door wings trembled, just shy of fluttering, and he wanted to touch him so badly, and none of this made any sense at all, and...

That's when he felt the tranquilizer program kick in.

The program had detected a processor loop beginning, just like when Bluestreak felt trapped in a small place or when a nightmare blurred the lines between hallucination and reality. The program slowed his ventilations, let him relax into his restraints, sent his fear and confusion at his emotional responses into secondary threads, and pinged him with his location, diagnostic and time.

With his processor clear of the clutter and noise, he was able to think clearly. Of course his reaction to Vortex made sense. The mech was delicious to look at, even if he was dangerous.

Perhaps that was part of the appeal.

Bluestreak raised his helm and looked Vortex directly in the visor. "I'm sorry if I offended you," he said. One part of his processor gibbered at him, trying to draw the words back, but the tranquilizer program tamped that response down as being unhelpful to the current situation. What remained was reason and honesty as his spark saw it. "Offending you really wasn't my intent. I was just... I was just startled by how incredibly attractive you are." When Vortex continued to stare at him, Bluestreak shrugged as well as he could with his hands bound over his helm. "What? It's true. You are."

"Blue, what are you doing?" Sunstreaker hissed.

Vortex glanced at Sunstreaker, then back to Bluestreak. Behind the rotary's visor, Bluestreak could see his optics narrow. "Who are you?" he asked, his voice low and deadly.

Bluestreak's certainty faltered, doubt creeping into his processor. The interrogator had said his name earlier, so he knew who he was. Was this some kind of mental game? Then the tranquilizer program smoothed over that misgiving as it was designed to do, and let his training kick in. The interrogator asked him a question; it was wise to answer it as best he could. Bluestreak straightened in his restraints as much as they allowed, and said, "I am Private Bluestreak of Praxus, Autobot High Command, based in Outpost Earth."

"Praxus." Now it was Vortex's turn to hesitate as he rolled the name of the city-state around his mouth like a fine blend of high-grade. He lifted his free hand and traced the upper edge of Bluestreak's door wing again thoughtfully, only lifting his finger away when Bluestreak's wing trembled under his touch. "Praxus." Then, with a sudden movement, Vortex dropped Bluestreak's chin and whirled on Brawl. "I'm taking him to my lab. Get me some cuffs," he barked.

Brawl gaped at Vortex for a moment before shaking his helm. "You shouldn't do this, 'Tex. Lord Megatron said that we were only supposed to –"

With a roar of his engine, Vortex shoved Brawl to the side and grabbed a set of cuffs off the wall. "I don't care what Megatron said. I'm taking him to my lab." He pressed a button on the wall and Bluestreak felt his bindings release, only to have his hands jerked behind him and cuffed again. Vortex grabbed him by his upper arm and started pulling him from the brig. "Walk or I'll drag you," Vortex growled.

"No! Leave him alone!" Sunstreaker yelled, kicking his legs out futilely as Vortex led Bluestreak past him. When Vortex ignored him, Sunstreaker yelled, "Blue! Remember what I said! They'll come for us! Don't give up!"

"If you kill him, Megatron's gonna be seriously fragged off at you!" Brawl shouted as they left the brig. "You know what he said after that red one you took apart!"

Killed? Red one? Cliffjumper! Bluestreak leaned back, pulling against Vortex's insistent tugging on his arm. "Wait!" he said. "I honestly don't know anything. I swear I'll tell you everything I do know. Just please don't take me apart! Please don't send me back in a box!" Bluestreak didn't need to check his processor threads to know that his tranquilizer program had run its course and shut down. It would be hours before it could launch again.

The look that Vortex gave him was unreadable, but when he spoke his voice was more gentle than it had been in the brig. "I'm not going to disassemble you," he said. "Not now, anyway. Just... Shut up until we get to my lab."

The lab was a few doors down from the brig. The walls were lined with all manner of saws, pries, bars, and surgical tools. A stained table was in the middle of the room, outfitted with restraints designed to hold any size bot, from the size of Bumblebee up to Optimus himself.

The gibbering part of Bluestreak's processor wondered which of the stains on the table belonged to Cliffjumper, or to Hound. The gibbering part of his processor wondered if Hound would miss him if he died here.

As soon as they entered, Vortex pushed him backwards until Bluestreak sat down hard on the table surface. But instead of pressing him down onto the table and putting him into the restraints, the rotary took a step back and closed the door to the lab. With his back to Bluestreak, Vortex took a deep vent, his turbines spinning as he cycled his air. Finally, after he'd visibly gathered himself, Vortex turned to face Bluestreak and said, "Now. Tell me who you really are."

"I... I told you already." Bluestreak stared at Vortex, still wondering if this was some sort of new psychological torture. "I'm Private Bluestreak of Praxus, Autobot High-"

"What is your serial code?" Vortex asked. This voice was strangely calm and quiet.

Bluestreak hesitated. "Why?" he asked warily.

A mech's serial code was imprinted into their spark signature from the moment it was ignited. Hashes of it were used to create medical overrides, but it could also be used to create complex viruses that dwelled deep inside the spark, disguising the viral code as part of the mech's own personality matrix. All medics could read a serial code with a scanner, and most mechs could recite their own for emergencies. But Bluestreak was sure that just freely giving his serial code to a Decepticon was a bad idea.

Vortex stayed where he was, but stared at Bluestreak intently. "Because," he said. Behind his helm, his blades quivered. "I need to know who you are."

"I'm…" Bluestreak tried to raise his hands in a shrug, but they were still in the cuffs behind his back. He lifted just his shoulders instead, his door wings bobbing behind him. "I told you who I am," Bluestreak said insistently. "Asking me the same question over and over again won't change the answer."

Vortex's engine snarled. He turned and slammed his fist into a comm speaker set in the wall by the door. "Vortex to Hook!"

A moment later the speaker crackled. "Hook here. What do you want? You just got the prisoners... You can't possibly have damaged them bad enough to need me already."

"Just bring me your spark scanner," Vortex said, his tone demanding. "I'm in my lab."

"Use your own!" Hook snapped back.

"Barricade broke mine last week."

There was a pause. "Fine. I'll be there in a few minutes." Then the comm bleeped and went silent.

Vortex had not removed his gaze from Bluestreak the entire time he had been speaking to Hook. He took a few steps towards Bluestreak and then stopped. "Tell me someone put those words in your helm," Vortex said, his voice almost pleading. "Tell me someone told you to say that to me."

Bluestreak shook his helm. "What things?" He thought back to what had happened in the brig, and his optics widened. "You mean... About how you look?" When Vortex nodded, he tried to shrug again. "I... Look, I have a thing for rotaries. I always have. It's nothing about you in particular. I just like how your frames look, all the curves and angles. I get teased about it all the time." He felt his face flush as his words brought his mind back to the interrogator's frame, and all the things that his processor wanted to do to it. Oh, slag... If Soundwave was going to have a turn at him later, Bluestreak knew he was going to die from embarrassment instead of energon loss. "Like I said, I'm sorry. I should have kept it to myself. I didn't meant to –"

As Bluestreak spoke, Vortex's expression grew more and more pained. Finally he flung his arm out, and interrupted Bluestreak with a shout. "Enough! That's enough." He paced back and forth a few steps, his visor locked on the ground, before looking back up at Bluestreak. "Those things you said to me... The way you said it. Only one other mech has ever said those things to me before."

Bluestreak leaned back slightly, trying to keep his door wings steady. Only one other mech had ever told Vortex how gorgeous he was? That just wasn't fair, especially with how gorgeous he was. Bluestreak's spark sank in pity. "Oh. Oh! I'm so sorry. Are you... Are you lonely?" he asked quietly.

"What?" Vortex asked, stopping his pacing for a moment. Then he shook his helm. "No, no," he muttered. Then he laughed quietly and looked up at the ceiling. "Slag. You get distracted just like him, too." He turned and walked up to Bluestreak, stopping just short of the Praxian's knees. "What you called me. You used the word 'delicious.' That's an unusual way to describe someone, don't you think?"

Frowning, Bluestreak said, "Well, I... I guess it is a little unusual." He'd thought the term a lot, for many different mechs. But he supposed he'd only said it out loud a few times. He'd muttered it to himself the first time he'd seen Springer in action, leaping into the air and transforming into his copter mode in a way that turned Bluestreak's processor into mud. He'd gasped it at Hound once, right before the green mech had managed to send Bluestreak into a hard reboot with just his hands and glossa.

And he'd said it to Vortex.

Vortex hadn't looked away from Bluestreak as the Praxian pondered why he'd chosen that particular word. "Only one other mech has ever said that to me. If it was just that, I wouldn't have thought much about it. But your chatter, the way you choose your words, how you look at me, even just the way you hold your wings..." Vortex reached a hand out as if to touch Bluestreak's door wing again, and Bluestreak instinctively jerked his wing back out of reach. Vortex let his hand fall back to his side. "I need to know that it's not just a coincidence."

The door beeped, then slid open. Hook walked into the lab holding a scanner in his hand. He took one look at Bluestreak and scoffed. "You haven't even started," Hook said. "Or are you softening him up first?"

Vortex snatched the scanner out of Hook's hand. "Let me worry about him," Vortex snarled. "Now get out."

Hook stiffened, then huffed in an exasperated way. "'Thank you for bringing me a spark scanner right away, Hook'" the medic said in a high-pitched voice. Then his voice dropped back to its regular pitch. "You're welcome, Vortex." With one last glare at the copter, he turned and stomped back out of the lab.

As soon as the door slid closed, Vortex locked it and turned the scanner on. "Hold still," he muttered, and ran the scanner over Bluestreak's chest armor. Bluestreak had enough time to wonder whether he should have moved or tried to mess up the reading (Would holding his vents cause the scanner to misread his code? Was there anything he could do?) before the scanner chimed and Vortex stared at the screen. A moment later, Vortex looked up at Bluestreak, his visor blazing brightly. "It is you!" he shouted, and turned the screen to show Bluestreak.

The code on the screen was Bluestreak's serial code. He blinked at it for a moment, then looked at Vortex. He wondered what sort of game Vortex was playing, and wondered whether he should play along. Was there any point in lying? Finally he shrugged and said, "Yes. That's my code."

Vortex shook his helm and looked at the code again, and made a strange, strangled noise. "No. It's you." He pointed at Bluestreak. "You. Thunderbolt!"

Bluestreak stared at Vortex. "Sorry? Who?"

Vortex jammed his finger against Bluestreak's chest. "You are Thunderbolt!"

Hesitantly shaking his helm, Bluestreak said, "No... I'm Bluestreak."

"This code..." Vortex gestured at the scanner in his hand, then threw it on the table next to Bluestreak. "I know this code – your code - as well as I know my own. It's Thunderbolt's code. I know it because I had it engraved on my spark chamber." He laid his palm against his chest. "And Bolt – you - had my code engraved on yours." He pointed at Bluestreak's chest again.

Bluestreak leaned back, away from Vortex's hand. "That's... very interesting," he said, trying to make sense of what Vortex was trying to do. Were these mind games? Bluestreak thought only Soundwave played those with his prisoners. Maybe they'd been cross-training. "And… And it must have hurt. But I can assure you, there's nothing engraved on my spark chamber." And please don't make me show you, Bluestreak thought desperately. He hadn't even shown his spark to Hound; he certainly didn't want to show it to this Decepticon, no matter how attractive Bluestreak thought he was.

But Vortex had stepped away from Bluestreak and started pacing again. "It did hurt. We knew it would hurt, but we wanted… We did it right at the beginning of the war. That way, if one of us died, the other would always remember..." Vortex rubbed his face with his hands, then turned to look at Bluestreak. "You were part of a squadron that was sent to Praxus. They said you were shot down by the Civil Defense Corps. After the city fell, they looked for your frame, but..." Vortex hung his helm. "They didn't find you. Praxus had put up a Pit of a fight. You were gone, but so were lots of other Decepticons. And I couldn't..." The rotary paused and gestured down at his frame. "I volunteered for the combiner program. I wanted to fill that hole in my spark somehow. But..." He thumped his fist against his chest once before splaying his hand flat against his plating. "My team was never able to replace how I felt about you."

Bluestreak had scooted as far back on the table as he could, and still leaned away from the pacing interrogator. "Look, I don't know what you're talking about," he said. "I told you. I'm Bluestreak of –"

"No!" Vortex roared. He whirled, his hands out at his sides, fingers curled into claws. "It all fits! Your code! The way you talk and talk. You were in Praxus. The little flutter of your wings when you're thinking." Vortex's voice broke slightly. "The Autobots must have found you. They took you... They put you in a grounder frame. They desecrated you. They turned you into a fragging Autobot!" Vortex's hands balled into fists. "You were one of the elite seekers! You were a member of the Vosian Guard! We were... We were together! Try to remember, Thunderbolt!"

Shaking his helm, Bluestreak looked away from the copter. His processor churned, and he felt it starting into a loop once more. He pulled a vent, trying to count his fan rotations, trying to calm the spin of his spark, trying to do anything so that he could think. Think! Vortex was a master at torture, and torturing the frame wasn't the only way to break a mech. Sunstreaker's voice came back to Bluestreak then, exhorting for him to be strong, no matter what Vortex did. "I am Bluestreak," he said as firmly as he could manage.

Suddenly his field of vision was filled with a visored face. "We would go flying, just the two of us," Vortex said, his tone suddenly more gentle than he had been a moment before. "We would fly as high as we could, then transform and free fall, just to see who would fall the farthest before switching back to alt mode. You always won." Vortex put his hands on Bluestreak's shoulders. "You hated fighting. You didn't want anything to do with the war at first, but eventually you joined up, after Vos was hit by the Autobots." Behind his visor, his optics roamed Bluestreak's face searchingly. "You loved puzzles. You were the best hacker I've ever seen in my life. You could talk for ages about everything and nothing. You did this thing with your hands that... that..." Vortex gave Bluestreak's shoulders a little shake. "We were so good together, Bolt! You must remember. You have to remember. Look at me!" His voice became pleading, static crackling around the edges of his words. "Look! Look with your spark! Tell me what you see! Tell me you remember us!"

Bluestreak's optics darted around Vortex's face, looking for any sign of deceit. The mech looked sincere, as much as Bluestreak could make of his expression behind his visor and faceplate. But he also remembered Hound telling him about how Vortex had asked him to count the slashes he placed in his tires, then tutting and forcing Hound to start back over again at one when Hound lost track in his haze of lost energon and pain. He remembered the stutter in Sideswipe's ventilations as he'd tried to laugh off the four days he'd spent in the Decepticon brig at Vortex's mercy. He remembered seeing Huffer's usual dour grumpiness turn into shock and despair after he helped bring the box containing Cliffjumper's helm and torso into the base.

He looked at Vortex, as he was asked to do. What did he see? He saw a rotary frame, one that gave him a thrill when he ran his optics over it. But the mech behind the beauty was also a brutal, vicious monster who had done horrific things to Bluestreak's friends.

Bluestreak flicked his door wings out and lifted his helm, looking at Vortex evenly. Enunciating each word clearly, he said, "I am Private Bluestreak of Praxus, Autobot High Command, based in Outpost Earth." Then he slammed his mouth shut and glared at Vortex.

Vortex held his gaze for a moment longer before releasing his shoulders and stepping back. "That's it, then," he growled. "They did kill you, after all." The blades over his shoulders trembled before he took a steadying vent. He glared at Bluestreak. "It would have been better for everyone if you'd just stayed dead."

A few minutes later, Bluestreak stumbled into the brig beside Vortex. Brawl watched as Vortex trussed him back into the overhead restraints before saying, "What's up, 'Tex? I thought you were looking forward to breaking someone new."

Vortex flung the cuffs at Brawl, not even looking as the tankformer fumbled to catch them. "I'm not in the mood anymore," Vortex muttered and stalked out of the brig.

Sunstreaker had stared at Bluestreak with wide optics as soon as he'd come back into the brig. When Brawl turned to put the cuffs away, Sunstreaker whispered, "Are you all right?" His gaze roamed over Bluestreak's frame, obviously looking for damage or leaks.

"I'm fine," Bluestreak said quietly, then looked at the door where Vortex had disappeared. "He didn't do anything to me. I'm fine."