"I ain't tellin' you assholes nothin'!"

The man on the other side of the bolted-down table was a walking cliché. His face was pitted by forty-odd years of abuse, disease and neglect. His ragged ponytail was dyed black but showed streaks of dull grey at the roots, where the thinning hair hadn't left pallid flash exposed instead. His gaunt body was clad in black leathers that just emphasised the greasy, artificial lustre of his slicked-back hair. His fingers were adorned with rings probably selected more for their destructive potential than appearance. His skin was pallid, his sunken eyes darting from side to side.

Lennox held them, his own blue eyes ice cold. He leaned forward, his jacket spilling open to reveal both the muscled torso straining his shirt and the revolver tucked into his waistband.

It had taken an effort to get that one past Frye and her precinct lieutenant. It took more to get into the interrogation room, and into the lead chair. Even now, Lennox could feel the detective bridling in her seat beside him. The expression of cold terror on the face of their suspect made the effort worth it.

Lennox didn't react to the defiance. He reached into his jacket, making the movement slow and obvious for the sake of the jumpy detective as much as her suspect.

The photograph of Sunstreaker's alt-mode hit the table face up. Its edges were curled now, a fold running through one corner. It had been in the wars… quite literally. Lennox had carried it in his breast pocket to Poland and back, only rediscovering it at when he stripped down back at base. This petty crook didn't need to know that, any more than the teenage kids who'd pointed the finger at him.

All they needed was to know was that they were in a boat load of trouble.

All they needed to see was the hard-as-nails "special forces" officer who seemed to outrank their local cops, his cold eyes and the anger that clenched both fists and jawline.

"Never seen it."

The loser's eyes darted left and right. A nerve twitching by his jaw quirked his mouth in an odd scowl-smile-scowl-smile dance. Lennox didn't need the slight headshake from Detective Frye to read it. His hand slammed down on the table, fingers splaying open at the last moment, but still landing a resonant impact.

"Look again," he said.

It wasn't just the criminal who'd jumped with that last blow. Frye shot her guest a wary look, before leaning forward. Lennox settled back in his chair, his eyes never moving from the car thief's as she spoke.

"We got the kids, Reggie. Y'know? The punks who you palmed off with a fraction of what that thing's worth." She sucked air past her teeth, shaking her head. "Can't say they were brimming over with gratitude. Or loyalty. We know they sold it to you. All we want to know is what did you do with it after that."

"Yeah? You can't prove nothin'"

"Couple of not-badly-off kids running on the wildside, lawyered up and already signing the plea bargain? Tell me, Reggie, what makes you think you're not going down for a twenty stretch?"

They already had the man's full attention, but until now he'd been slumping in his seat, playing it cool. Now he jerked upright, dragging his eyes from Lennox to stare at the detective beside him.

"For grand theft auto? Even if I was admitting it – which I ain't, un'nerstand? – that's hardly a nickel!"

Frye sat back, looking at Lennox. The major didn't allow a flicker of emotion to show on his face. He fingered the ring he wore, nodding in satisfaction when the voice recorder on the desk died with a splutter of dull sparks. Finally the tech guys had come up with a useful gadget. And finally he'd lost patience to the point where he was prepared to use it, even in the heart of a downtown precinct.

Another evening was drawing in and he'd already spent hours on these gutter-scrapings. Back at the base, Ratchet would be waking Prowl up, if he could. For all Lennox knew, Sideswipe and Sunstreaker might already be gone. He had no time to be subtle, even if he knew how, and there was no way he wanted a record of this.

Detective Frye and the prisoner were both looking at the recording device with surprise. Lennox knew he'd have their undivided attention before long. His expression was utterly cold, utterly determined as he spoke.

"Tell me, Reggie, have you ever had to conceal a corpse?" His question could almost be taken for idle curiosity… almost. "Do you want to know how many lives I've taken, how many you're never going to hear about on the news?" Okay a fair number of them had been Decepticon. The few civilians who'd got caught in the crossfire had been returned to their families, but in a place and with a set of cover stories that still twisted the roil of guilt in Lennox's gut. "You don't. You never will."

It wasn't just the low-life car thief swallowing as he looked at Lennox now. Frye's fists had clenched on the table, her eyes wary and suspicious as she studied her guest. She could hear the ring of truth in his voice, even if Reggie couldn't. Without evidence or even a hint of what he was talking about, she could do nothing about it.

Lennox leaned forward, his voice low.

"If my soldier dies, if you don't tell me anything and everything you know about that car, the state isn't going to have to spring for a twenty stretch, or even that nickel you were talking about. My guy dies, and there's nowhere you can run, nowhere you can hide… nowhere you're going to be safe."

"H…hey!" Reggie rallied. On a better day, Lennox might even give him credit for that. "This is intimidation!"

Frye looked inclined to agree. She looked from the broken voice recorder to Lennox with the first shadows of real unease on her face. Lennox could see her trained body tensing, ready to act. He didn't quite ignore her. He was too well trained for that. But she wasn't his target.

"No." He leaned forward, looking into Reggie's eyes, and wondering how long this loser would last against Ironhide, or even Ratchet. "It's a warning." He slammed his hand on the table again, outstretched fingers across Sunstreaker's image. "The gold-trimmed corvette… where… is… it?"

The man caved.

"Look, I don't know anything about a soldier, okay? I ain't going down for no soldier I don't know nothing about. It was just a car! Nice one, sure, but just a set of wheels!"

"WHERE?!" It was a command bellow, and it echoed off the walls of the small room.

"I don't know! Sweet rides like that, we don't bother with the local crews. Not like we could offload the thing, even if we could 'jack it without a burnout. But if we can't sell local, we can trade, see? Got contacts – Europe, Russia, Asia, yeah well, mostly Asia. They know quality when they see it and they don't ask too many questions. They got the tech, I got the feet on the streets. So I made a few calls, see? Fixed a price. Truck turns up with a crate, loads it up, and it's out of my hands."

Another head had poked itself around the door during the torrent of words, checking on the noise. Frye shot Lennox a considering look before waving away the support. She leaned forward, her hands flat on the table.

"I want names, dates, places."

He didn't hold them back. It would just be helpful if he knew more.

An email address that was never the same twice, burner cell phones at both ends, a bank transfer to an offshore account, and a hard-sided red truck big enough to take the corvette whole. It wasn't much to go on, but it was more than they'd had this morning. He needed to get back to base, and set wheels in motion.

Frye didn't speak to him as she walked him to the door of the precinct. Her eyes burned into his, suspicion and anger mingling there. He'd helped her break a car smuggling ring she hadn't even known existed. Even so, he knew that if he ever set foot in her precinct again, he'd be lucky to walk out a free man. She didn't need to say it. He didn't need to hear it.

They'd both do what needed to be done.

The guilty silence in medbay had only stretched out perhaps two minutes, but it felt like vorns. Ratchet went through the routine of tests and checks with a permanent scowl. He could feel the tension in the air. He'd feel better though if he was clearer on which of them should be feeling the guilt and why.

He didn't expect his angry criticism to inspire repentance. And there was hardly going to be surprise. Yes, Prowl had almost died. And it was true that there'd been no fatalities in Poland, but only because Prowl's intervention had made it so. Ratchet knew that as well as Prowl himself. They would have been slagged out there without the tactician's advice.

"Thank you." The words might have been ground out of him, almost burning his vocaliser. The medic vented a sigh, shaking his helm. "But you're going to be stuck in here a while longer. I've fixed your systems up, but it will take a few joors before they replace the charge you exhausted on being a slagging idiot. Stand up now and I reckon your frame will let you know exactly what it thinks of the idea. So you're going to sit there, and you're going to sit still! The less strain you put on your spark now, the quicker you'll be back on your feet. I'm not even going to bother pointing out that you could both use the rest right now."

Prowl looked levelly at the medic, one hand rising again to rest above his spark. Ratchet couldn't suppress the shiver of guilt and regret he felt in the face of that gaze. Maybe his tone had come across as a bit more accusational than he'd intended.

"I did not choose this. I will not contest your recommendations without great need."

There was no point arguing with the tactician. Both knew he'd had no choice. Ratchet kept the scowl on his face nonetheless.

"How much do you remember?"

Prowl inclined his head, unsurprised by the question. He'd crashed before his tactical processor could finish filtering its own records and back up the non-classified information to his core databanks.

"I remember intervening, directing the action for several breems and selecting Jolt as a decoy for a bait and snare manoeuvre."

The medic grunted, actually pleased that the losses were less severe than he'd expected. Given Prowl's impaired functioning, even while the processor was active, Ratchet had been willing to take a bet that his memories were sketchy at best. As it was it looked like he'd only lost access to the end game rather than the whole affair. Until he was fit enough to boot the secondary system and run a cross-match on whatever data remained uncorrupted on his tactical databank, he'd have to live with that. It was better than Ratchet had anticipated, but it also stole away his patient's get-out clause.

"Then you remember overriding the first half dozen warning messages from your systems?"

Prowl's silence was eloquent. Ratchet glowered at him and then sighed, turning away from his more vocal patient and back towards the warrior lying on the berth opposite. Sideswipe's murmurs had faded into silence over the last day, the glow in his optics dim and unseeing. His systems wheezed, errant signals from Sunstreaker distorting them and leaving his spark-pulse erratic and precarious. Ratchet was once again watching the youngling he had tended sink towards the matrix, and once again helpless to prevent it. He intended no more than a quick, impotent check of Sideswipe's vitals before leaving both front-liner and tactician to rest and returning to his office. The feeling of Prowl's optics following his movements, and the frown on his patient's face when Ratchet glanced back at him, stopped him in his tracks.

"Sideswipe… there was something…?"

Ratchet mirrored his friend's frown, taken aback by the uncharacteristic lack of certainty in Prowl's voice. The tactician swung his legs over the edge of the berth, leaning forward and gazing blankly at the floor as he wracked his processor for hints of whatever it was he half-remembered.

"Don't you dare!"

The last thing Prowl needed was to strain his processor now. Ratchet braced himself, his sensors on maximum, ready to intervene if he got so much as a slagging suggestion that his patient was about to engage his tactical systems. For a moment it looked as if Prowl was tempted. Whatever he'd noticed while working in the device's encrypted databanks had only left the most fleeting of impressions on his core processor.

"Sideswipe… Sunstreaker… There was something, just as I was about to shut down my tactical core. I tried to stretch it out. Something… Coordinates…?"

Ratchet listened to him articulate those glimpses and quite suddenly found himself praying Prowl could take them further after all. The tactician's voice faltered. His fists clenched. Sensors primed, Ratchet could see the increased power drain to his core processor and wondered how long he dared let the fragile mech take even so small a risk.

Silence fell, stretching the seconds into vorns as Prowl focussed on those hints. Then the mech gasped, his gaze snapping up to lock on their semi-conscious front-liner.

"Sideswipe, executive command: report location Sunstreaker."

There was a buzz in Sideswipe's vocaliser, his automatic systems in a losing battle against his frame's degeneration as they recited a string of coordinates. They were shifted from those he'd given before, but no more believable. If anything, Ratchet realised queasily, they were buried still deeper below the lifeless ocean floor. Prowl nodded, unsurprised, before his expression cleared into careful neutrality.

"Sideswipe, executive command: report location Sideswipe."

Ratchet blinked, his optics cycling through a reboot first at the pointlessness of the question and then again when the stricken mech, lying less than three metres in front of them, answered it.

A mech's location grid was calibrated against the local geomagnetic and gravitational fields, modified by a constantly-updated unconscious electrical and atmospheric map. Ratchet knew for a fact that those basic orientation systems were still active in his red hellion. Even if Sideswipe had lost them, his systems should report his last known position, or perhaps a random string of numbers that could place him anywhere in the infinity of space-time. There was no way he could place himself in the same location, to within a few tens of metres, as his lost brother.

Prowl's backstruts straightened, his optics blazing. He pushed to his feet, only for his medic to catch him when his legs buckled after two steps. There was resistance from Prowl as Ratchet pushed him back down, but it was a weak and feeble thing.

"Let me up. Optimus… I have to tell him!"

Ratchet's fingers tightened on the dull grey armour, his finger servos applying enough pressure to attract the exhausted tactician's attention.

"Tell me."

"Surface vessel. Latitude: 3.1405 North, Longitude: 142.712 West, speed: 72.4 km/h, bearing: -84 degrees magnetic."

Prowl's optics flickered, the effort of reaching his conclusion exhausting his non-existent energy reserves. Ratchet eased his patient down to lie the berth, taking the time to check that Prowl was entering a normal recharge. Already though, he'd passed on the coordinates. Already he was daring to hope.

"Frag!" Robert Epps' voice held the same tight mixture of hope and trepidation that everyone clustered around the gantry shared. Beside him, peering into the same monitor as he unzipped his jacket, a newly returned William Lennox reached out to thump his second's shoulder, not so much in rebuke for the profanity as in acknowledgement of the shared emotion that inspired it.

The major looked up at the Cybertronians around him, voicing the question for them all.

"He's right, there's a boat there - cargo ship from the satellite images. Question is: why did he point us to it? If what that loser told me in the city was true… Damn, there are too many unknowns. Are we looking for Sunstreaker when we get there, or just another clue to follow up?"

Ironhide's cannons cycled, the whine as they charged the perfect counterpart to the rising sense of excitement. "I say we go find out."

Optimus Prime folded his arms, his battle mask deploying with a decisive click.

"Agreed."