It was not the first time in his life that Sideswipe had woken up feeling like he'd been hit by a mass transit. He waited impatiently while his systems booted up, trying to access his most recent memory files. His energon levels were pretty high, so whatever had happened, he'd gotten decent medical help. And, all things considered, there wasn't that much pain, just a sort of dull ache all over.

He could tell Sunstreaker was nearby, sulking, which was oddly comforting. They'd been in a battle, hadn't they? He'd been using the seekers to fly, which had been amazingly cool. Had he fallen off? Where the pit were those memory files?

Oh.

Oh, Primus, he'd crashed right into that big giant mech thing, hadn't he? How had he survived? He un-shuttered his optics as his systems finished coming online, and discovered that he was lying on a medberth in a dim room with high ceilings. Sunstreaker sat at the end of the berth, watching him, and there was another unconscious mech lying on the berth next to him.

Sideswipe shifted and tried to sit up. It took a few astroseconds, but he got there. His whole frame was a mass of temp plating and newly replaced, unpainted armor, and sitting wasn't very comfortable, but it gave him a better angle to look around. The room appeared to be some sort of warehouse that had been turned into a medbay. He could see medics wandering from berth to berth, and a whole lot of injured or unconscious mecha.

Sunstreaker turned away from him.

"Hey," Sideswipe said. "Did we win?"

"Yeah." Sunstreaker was definitely angry about something.

"Great," Sideswipe said, looking down at himself again. "Wow, I look terrible."

"No kidding."

"How am I not dead?"

Susntreaker glared and didn't answer.

"What?" Sideswipe asked.

"You almost fragging killed us!"

"What? You want an apology?" Sideswipe said. "You'd have done the exact same thing if you'd thought of it."

Sunstreaker's glare intensified.

"Okay, I'm sorry," Sideswipe said. "I should have at least warned you. But really, how did I survive?"

"You got lucky," Sunstreaker said. "Your spark hadn't quite gone out by the time I got you to a medic."

Sideswipe looked down. So Sunstreaker had been the one to save him. It was lucky he hadn't passed out as soon as Sideswipe crashed.

If Sunstreaker had passed out, he would have fallen off of his seeker, and probably died, and that would have been the end of it. Sideswipe really had almost gotten them offlined.

"How the frag did you even get the seeker to do that?" Sunstreaker said.

"I got it going in the right direction, then knocked it out," Sideswipe replied. "We're just lucky its wings and momentum carried us the rest of the way. That would have been supremely lame otherwise. And I did try to jump free at the end, but I timed it wrong."

Sunstreaker shook his helm.

A medic came over—a medic he recognized.

"Hey!" he said. "Ratchet, right?"

"You," the orange and white medic growled. "I told you not to do stupid unnecessary things like that."

"Did you see that thing I took down, though?"

Ratchet huffed.

"I think it might have been necessary."

The medic whacked him on the helm with his wrench.

"Ow!"

"Shut up, I need to make sure all your repairs are taking," Ratchet said and Sideswipe bore it patiently as the medic poked and prodded and muttered to himself. When he was finished, Ratchet threatened to detach all of Sideswipe's limbs if he tried to get up, and then wandered away to check on a different patient.

Sideswipe was all right with staying put for now. It might get boring later, though. He shuttered his optics and let himself slip into sort of a half recharge. His self-repairs were working like crazy and he felt pretty weak. Sunstreaker stayed where he was, still feeling sulky. Sideswipe did feel kind of bad, but not quite enough to regret what he'd done. Taking down that thing had been important. He un-shuttered his optics again. "Hey, Sunny?"

"Yeah?"

"You know that thing I crashed into."

"Yeah."

"Do you know what the pit it was?"

"I think they're calling it a combiner," Sunstreaker said. "It was five mechs who transformed into one giant mech."

"What?" Sideswipe said.

"You need me to call that medic back so he can check your audios?"

"No, I mean where the pit did Megatron get… that's just wrong!"

"Mecha are saying it's some sort of historical thing that they had before the Quintesson wars," Sunstreaker said.

"Really?"

Sunstreaker shrugged. "I haven't bothered to find out for sure."

"Combiner," Sideswipe said. "That sounds deceptively benign."

Sunstreaker shrugged again.

"Did I kill it, at least?"

"Yeah."

"Ha! And it counts as five because it was five mecha."

He could almost hear his brother rolling his optics.

Silence fell for a few breems, or at least relative quiet. You could hear the medics and some of the other injured mecha talking, and occasional pedesteps, and the piercing but still easily-ignored beeping of medical equipment. Sideswipe had nearly slipped into recharge when he heard someone approaching.

"Hey."

He un-shuttered his optics and looked toward the voice. It was that green wrecker who'd been there when he'd crashed. "Hey."

The mech seemed to study him. "That was pretty hardcore, what you did."

"Yeah?" Sideswipe said, pushing himself back into a sitting position and trying not to wince. "Thanks." He thought he knew where this was going.

"I'm glad you made it."

Sideswipe nodded.

"So, we were talking and we might want to revise what we said before… and offer you an invitation onto the team, you know, when you're recovered."

"You sure?" Sideswipe said. "After all, I'm just a mouthy troublemaker."

"You're definitely Wrecker material," the mech said.

Sideswipe glanced at Sunstreaker, but he was pretty sure his twin didn't care either way. Sunny was kind of weird like that. "You know what?" Sideswipe smirked at the big green mech. "I think we'll stick to doing our own thing. Thanks, though."

The green mech looked a little surprised, but not offended. "All right," he said. "I guess we did kind of ask for that. I'm Springer, by the way."

Sideswipe nodded.

"You change your mind, you let us know."

"Sure."

Springer walked away.

"I thought you wanted to be a Wrecker," Sunstreaker said.

"I don't need to be part of an exclusive club to be awesome."

"You also don't need to fragging get yourself killed."

"I said I was sorry."

"But you didn't mean it."

"Someone had to stop that thing, somehow, and I had a good opportunity. Besides, I'm fine."

"Is that what you thought when you flew yourself at it?" Sunstreaker said, "That you'd be all right?"

"Yes," Sideswipe said. "I told you, I tried to jump free. I just didn't quite get to the actual jumping part in time. I knew I was going to get hurt, but I didn't think I was really going to die until right at the end when there was nothing I could do about it."

Sunstreaker heaved a sigh and shook his helm.

"You don't think I'd intentionally do something that dumb," Sideswipe said. "Life's worth a little more than taking down a 'combiner.' Frag, that just sounds so lame. Combiner..."

"Well, you could have said that," Sunstreaker said. "Instead of acting like this whole thing is a great big joke."

"I did say that," Sideswipe said. "You just weren't listening." Sunstreaker was still glaring at him, but Sideswipe just lay down again and looked up at the ceiling. "I actually… I actually don't know if I'd give my spark for this cause."

Sunstreaker was silent, but at least he wasn't quite as angry anymore.

"I guess it could happen," Sideswipe said. "Participating in battles is kind of risky that way, you know. But I don't know if, in the moment, I'd choose to die fighting for that Prime mech. Probably not."

Sunstreaker was still silent.

"But I like him better than Megatron. Especially after Vos."

"What if the Prime was lying about Vos?"

"You think he was lying?"

"No," Sunstreaker said. "I think Megatron was lying."

"Well, we trust your instincts," Sideswipe said. "So we can assume Megatron sank Vos."

Sunstreaker nodded.

"In that case, I guess we picked the right side after all," Sideswipe said. "Not that it was hard. The names are kind of a dead giveaway. What kind of honest mech would call his army the Decepticons? I bet Megatron's not really that bright."

"Probably not."

"Complete idiot."

"Yep."

Sideswipe sighed. He was bored again, especially now Sunstreaker wasn't angry with him anymore. "You think Ratchet would really detach all my limbs if I tried to get up?"

"No," Sunstreaker said. "Because I'd beat him to it."

"You're no fun."

"Just go back to your nap."

"Will you tell me a bedtime story?"

"You're glitched."

Sideswipe laughed, then grimaced, then lay still. It was going to be a long orn.

"…so, all things considered," Chromia said. "This battle hit the 'Cons a lot harder than it hit us. And this time, we're the ones with more prisoners than we know what to do with."

Optimus nodded. "Thank you, Chromia. Prowl?"

Prowl stood. They'd been busy enough with the battle clean-up that they hadn't been able to hold a meeting with everyone here until now, more than a full orn later. Prowl started giving a summarized tactical report. For the first time since the Tarn evacuation, the casualty number had been surprisingly low—at least the Autobot casualty number. It had been a miraculous success. Of course, it would have been much worse if they hadn't been able to interrupt and re-route the Decepticons' communications. And it had still cost an unacceptable number of lives, even if it was a smaller unacceptable number than Prowl had feared.

He didn't look at Jazz as he described the mech's part in the plan. Prowl felt horrible for what he'd asked Jazz to do, though it had made the victory possible. He'd tried to find a path that wouldn't bring the mech in contact with any fighting, but that hadn't worked well. After the battle, he had commed the two surviving mecha from the unit Jazz had been with and asked them what had happened. The mech who had been conscious through the whole thing hadn't wanted to talk about it, but from what he had said, Prowl could infer that Jazz had singlehandedly killed a lot of Decepticons.

Prowl desperately wanted to apologize, but he probably wouldn't be able to get up the courage, and even if he did, it wouldn't go well. He wasn't particularly good at apologizing.

He finished his report and sat down. There was a lot to talk about, and a lot to do. The meeting went long enough Prowl could tell some of them were really getting sick of it. But eventually, it did come to a close, and they all left. Prowl pushed his guilt aside—he had too many things to plan for and too many decisions to make. He ran down a mental list in his helm. At some point he needed to talk to those twins. They'd ignored orders again and had completely abandoned their unit, but on the other hand they'd taken down a lot of seekers, not to mention the combiner. So he wasn't really sure if he should punish them or thank them.

Once the meeting was over, Prowl went to his office. He was tired, but he knew he wouldn't be able to recharge—there was too much to think about.

The one truly staggering number in Chromia's report had been the number of dead seekers. If they hadn't hated the Autobots before, they surely did now. More seekers had died in this battle than had died in the explosions when Vos had fallen.

In winning this fight, was Prowl also helping the war win? Frag it, why had Yoketron said that? Now Prowl was questioning himself. He couldn't afford to question himself, not when the Autobots were relying on him. He would be more careful—he would try to keep the casualties as low as possible—but he wouldn't let that compromise his efforts to win.

Wheeljack crouched in the shadows, watching the door. Shockwave was in that building, he knew. He had been careful. He'd gotten this far. Now he just needed to get in there, find Shockwave, and kill him. Neurosis was the real goal, of course, but Wheeljack hadn't heard any rumors about Neurosis at all, even though the Decepticons had captured the Institute. Maybe Wheeljack could figure it out while he was here.

It might be harder to kill his old friend, now that he'd healed a little and was more sane. He'd have to keep in mind that it was what Shockwave would want. It was too late for him to die innocent, but Wheeljack could kill him as soon as possible, before he did too many terrible things for Megatron.

He crept toward the building, watching his opportunity approach the doors. Two mecha, both with nothing more than a single red optic for a faceplate. Wheeljack wasn't sure what that meant, but he was pretty sure they weren't drones. Their frame types were different, and one of them looked like a femme.

Wheeljack took a deep vent, waiting for the right moment, then slipped out of the shadows and followed them into the building as silently as possible. He barely made it through the doors as they closed, but fortunately the guards didn't turn to look at him. He ducked down the first side passage, and followed it. It was all right if he got captured—in fact, he expected to get captured at some point. But if he could find Shockwave before that point, he could do this on his terms. At the end of the corridor, there was another hall, branching off, and a door with a window in it. He glanced in and could see only dim light and what looked like energy fields, just out of sight. Prison block. Probably not what he was looking for.

He started heading down the branching hallway, but heard voices and pedesteps approaching around some corner. He doubled back, unsure which way they were coming from, and tried the door.

It was unlocked. He slipped in and looked for somewhere to hide. There was a desk against the wall, which he ducked under.

Then he turned around and met the optics of a mech in the cell across from the desk. They stared at each other for a moment. The other mech's optics were dim and flickering, and his faceplate bore a dull, exhausted expression. There were several other mecha in the cell with him, only some of whom seemed to be conscious. A mad cackle came from somewhere else in the room and Wheeljack flinched, fighting off a sudden flashback from the Institute.

"Silence!" someone else shouted. "You eternal nuisance!"

Wheeljack shuttered his optics. He needed to get out of here. No. He needed to focus on what he was doing—finding Shockwave in order to offline him.

The door opened and Wheeljack froze. The mech who'd been watching him quickly looked away, and Wheeljack backed up, trying to vent quietly as several mecha came into the room.

"Shockwave wants all three," a femme's voice said. There was something uncomfortably familiar about that voice. "He needs to clear some cell space."

Wheeljack watched their pedes as they gathered around cells further into the room.

"Unhand me! Release me you scum! I'll kill you all!"

"Do we all get to go together?" A cheerful voice said. "This is exciting!"

Wheeljack tried not to shudder. Shadowplay, almost certainly. Stage two, and stage five. The third mech they took said nothing and didn't resist. Possible stage four or respite. Shockwave was still doing it then? Or was Neurosis here too?

Wheeljack counted eight sets of pedes leave the room and then the door closed. He crept out from under the desk.

"Are you here to help us?" The mech who'd been looking at him asked in a whisper.

"I'm here to kill Shockwave," Wheeljack said.

"Good," the mech said. "Set us free and we'll help you do that."

Wheeljack hesitated. That had not been part of the plan. And he'd have to figure out how to get the cells open anyway.

"I can't," he said. "I don't have keys. Do you know where I might find Shockwave, though?"

The mech shook his helm. "This place is new. I don't know it well enough yet. He has a lab, though…"

"First right, second left," another one of the mecha in the cell said quietly. "Then through the second-to-last door on the right. Or you could just follow those guards."

Wheeljack nodded and went to the door.

"Good luck."

He didn't reply, just went out into the empty corridor. The guards were almost around the corner. He thought for one horrible moment that one of them had seen him, but they turned and walked out of sight, dragging one shouting protesting mech with them, and leading the other two. All but one of the guards had that single optic instead of a faceplate.

He crept forward and around the corner, but took long enough that the hallway was empty by the time he got to it. He walked down, looking for the second-to-last door. Once he got to Shockwave, he had a bomb he could pull out of subspace that he could set to go off almost immediately, killing probably everyone in the room, including himself.

It would be worth it.

He walked past a side corridor and two of the guards jumped out, aiming weapons at him. Wheeljack jumped and backed away, then ran. The guards chased him and one of them tackled him from behind.

Pit. He struggled to break free as his hands were pulled behind him and stasis-cuffed. He couldn't get into his subspace like this.

"I thought I saw something," that eerily familiar femme's voice said.

"Should we take him to Shockwave?" the other guard said.

Yes. He wanted them to take him to Shockwave. If they took him to Shockwave and went through his subspace, he could find a way to activate some of the explosives…

"No," the femme said. "He's busy. We'll take this one to the holding cells and Shockwave can deal with him later."

Wheeljack was forced to his pedes and marched back to the room with the cells. They shoved him roughly into an empty one and put up the energy field.

The one-opticed femme stood in front of the cell, staring in. "What was your objective here?" she demanded.

Wheeljack just looked at her.

"Whatever your purpose, it was foolish, Wheeljack."

His optics widened. "Formulaic," he said.

She didn't acknowledge her designation, just turned and left the room, followed by the other guard.

Were they Institute mecha, then?

Was that what Shockwave looked like now?

Wheeljack sank slowly to a sitting position. He figured he ought to be scared—he figured he ought to be worried about what they would do to him. But at the moment, he just felt numb. That femme might have been a person once, but now she was just a soulless shadow.

He would have to kill her too, if he could. He would have to find a way to kill all of them.