Onslaught broke ground. Heaving himself through the litter of fractured rocks, he performed a scan of their surroundings before his visual sensors had a chance to take anything in.

"Clear." He rolled away from the hole, landing in a crouch, his rifle ready. Swindle followed, flying rather than climbing from the cave. He assumed a defensive position, alert and silent, looking for once like the soldier he was meant to be. Onslaught nodded to him, and they were off.

The Ark glimmered in the morning sun, a vulgar orange lump protruding from the mountain. Onslaught kept to the hillside, tracking Swindle as he stuck close behind. Blast Off's intel indicated that the brig was towards the aft, built into the secondary fuel tanks. Made sense, Onslaught thought, given that they wouldn't need the ship for interplanetary travel any more.

He had the urge to shoot it. Not just shoot it, but utterly demolish it, pull its plates apart with his bare hands, deconstruct it from the outside in. There was no time to examine the impulse, to uncover whether it came from the gestalt programming – a shadow of half-remembered pain, Bruticus's incoherent grief at the loss of Vortex – or whether it came from his own deep loathing of the Autobots. Whichever, he fought to keep it in check; he couldn't afford to lose himself in this battle.

The first shot seared past his arm at exactly the moment his audials began to register the alarm.

"Slag!" Swindle threw himself behind a boulder. "I do not need this!"

Onslaught was inclined to agree. They were still over a klick from the ship, too far to make a break for it and still have time to bust Vortex out.

He pressed close to the rock, scanning for energy signatures. Four Autobots ahead, and one circling behind. No idea who they were. Not Ironhide though, thank Sigma, and – he had to hope – not Prime.

"There's better cover ahead." He spoke low, not a whisper, but for Swindle's audio sensors only. There was no point in switching to comms, the Autobots would already be trying to crack their encryption. Swindle made a noise, halfway between assent and a nervous choke.

"Now!" Onslaught roared, transforming as he leapt, missing the sting of a laser by a few brief feet. He landed, the shock juddering through him, his tires already spinning, kicking up rock and sand and dust as his cannon turrets swivelled, disgorging a rapid barrage of fire. And Swindle was behind him, also transforming, also accelerating over the brittle, crumbling earth. His cannon fired, a blaze of purple light. Not a direct hit – no screams, no cries – but close enough.

There was a long moment of confusion, a hot rush of excitement, the burn of energon. Dust billowed around and behind them, and the Autobots continued to shoot.


.


"What's going on?" Perceptor's voice was quiet over comms, and Prowl struggled to make it out past the roar of incendiaries, and the over-loud, echoing rumble of Onslaught's engine.

"Decepticons," Prowl replied. "Onslaught and Swindle. The others can't be far away." He didn't pause to speak, but kept firing. To his left, Skyfire hunched, taking careful aim with his photon missiles. To his right, Sideswipe fired with gleeful abandon, that curving half-grin on his face, his brother echoing his pose a short distance away. Only Bumblebee was out of range, attempting to close in on the 'cons from behind.

"Oh," Perceptor said. "Oh dear. Should we continue with… um?"

Wheeljack cut in, his voice emerging far louder from the speaker than it should. "What Percy's tryin' to say," he said, "is do you want us to box to 'con?"

"Yes," Prowl said. He didn't need to think about it; there was no other option. They couldn't wait for Optimus. This was their chance to isolate Vortex, to take out his personality component, to remove him from the war.

To bring down the Combaticons. The thought was a satisfying one. Reduce the Decepticon gestalts by one, reduce the threat to the Autobots, to his companions, his friends.

And if they could capture more of them in the process, it was all for the better.

"Do it now," he said.

"Sure thing," Wheeljack replied, and the comm. pinged out.


.


The red lights taunted him. Vortex lay on the bunk, conserving his energy. The flicker of declining numbers filled his optical feed, flooding his HUD. It was a countdown to something, although it wasn't clear what. To the door opening, and Perceptor removing him from the cell? To Skyfire pinning him while they dismantled his helm and removed his personality component? To an eternity of waiting, wanting, unfulfilled and isolated.

Not the box, not the box, not the box. Slag! Not that again. He couldn't be dealing with that. Not now, not ever. He suppressed a shiver; even that small movement was too much right now. He had to think, to keep on thinking, but not to move. He had to conserve energy. Had to plan for the moment they deactivated the energon bars.

He had to ignore the insistent dull thuds from outside, the faint zip and zing of battle. Could be his team, come to get him. No, he stamped on the thought. He couldn't rely on that. A Decepticon who couldn't get himself back to HQ didn't deserve to get back to HQ at all. He wasn't sure if he believed that, but it was a much-repeated maxim, and he really couldn't trust that his team would think differently. The sounds could be Autobots training, could be Omega Supreme getting a tune up. Could be a lot of things.

When Wheeljack and Perceptor came back, he was utterly still, straining to hear more of what was happening outside.

"You don't look so smug now," Wheeljack said. Vortex ignored him, it wasn't worth the effort it would take to scrawl a response on the surface of the berth.

"Wheeljack!" Perceptor snapped. His hands shook as he typed a code into a keypad on the console. "Could you, uh, calibrate the intake protocols on the reception module please."

Now that didn't seem like a ruse, not like earlier. A reception module? That sounded far too much like an object you might put a personality component into once you'd extracted it.

Vortex cut all feed to his quivering tail rotors, and shifted slightly to tuck them under his chest plates. Couldn't give the Autobots any indication of his discomfort. He had to think of something…

But he was fresh out of ideas. Wait until the energon bars were deactivated and pounce. It was the best he could come up with. Slag, it was all he could come up with.

On the console beside Perceptor's left hand, the little red numbers continued to cycle down.