Sideswipe checked in both directions and then felt along the metallic wall panels on one side of the hallway. There were no cameras around him spying on him so he had only to worry about being seen by another Autobot. He played his fingertips along the seams in the wall, working at them to find the place where Jazz had hidden the door lever to his secret passage. Was it only in the parallel universe? He was intensely curious.
He had approached Jazz about it – privately, of course – but the saboteur was notoriously reticent about these things. "Well, from what you're telling me," Jazz had mused, "there's a secret passage in a parallel universe." He smiled broadly. "Hey, that's groovy, m'man."
Frustrated at his failed attempts to find a panel opening, he lightly tapped the bottom of his fist against the wall. Something metallic rattled in his forearm. He opened his arm compartment and picked out the small piece from Sunstreaker that had fallen to the ground when Swoop took off from the solar power plant. He turned the memento over in his fingers, thinking of the license plate and hood emblem kept by the Sunstreaker of the parallel reality. Then he curled his fingers around the piece and gazed down the hallway. He still needed to check on his illicit stash of goods…
In the parallel universe, when Sunstreaker awoke, First Aid was working with his back turned to him. His chronometer had been reset during repairs so he was unsure how long he had been kept offline. Medical bay was quiet and First Aid was preoccupied with other matters. The Autobot doctor did not even notice that the yellow warrior was back online.
Sunstreaker raised himself on his elbows and let the world seep back into his awareness. He remembered the fight with Skywarp and the blue Seekers. They had left him for dead in the desert. He also recalled trudging back toward the power plant. Skywarp had knocked him to the ground again. The memory was filled with interference from internal alarm relays.
Then, he remembered, the interference had cleared briefly as he lay on the ground. The haloed image of Sideswipe standing over him brought an expansive smile to the yellow warrior's lip components. He closed his optics to savor the memory. Somewhere, somehow, Sideswipe was still out there, and he had returned to save him.