When Megatronus onlined, he was in a small, empty room that he had definitely never seen before. The walls were painted a sort of off-white, and it was rectangular, not round like the tunnels or misshapen like the cave. He had been recharging on a raised platform instead of the ground and, other than that, the room was completely empty.

Megatronus sat up, wincing. He'd been injured, and he ached all over, but not as badly as he ought to. Someone must have done repairs on him.

Not Photodraft, though.

Photodraft was dead.

Megatronus shuttered his optics, trying to hold back the torrent of emotion that accompanied the thought. He was alone again. Everyone he had ever known was dead.

Part of him wanted to wonder where he was and why, but a larger part didn't care. A larger part of him just wanted to be dead too. He had been told that when you died, your spark rejoined those of your friends and ancestors in the Well of Allsparks. He wasn't sure if he believed it, but he'd rather risk that than continue on alone.

Why was he still here? It had been his fault, so why had they killed everyone but him?

And where was he?

Eventually, the questions gained enough traction to drag him up off of the berth. He found he was chained to the wall, but the chain was long enough that he could get nearly to the door at the far end of the room.

It was so white in here, and clean. What was this place?

A prison? The others had talked about prisons sometimes, but Megatronus had no way of knowing whether it was like this.

All he could do was wait for someone to come in and tell him what was going on.

He was waiting for a long time but eventually, after what seemed like forever, the door opened. He looked up and was surprised to see a familiar faceplate. It was the mech who'd told Spiral to kill everyone. He had four guards with him, and he watched Megatronus thoughtfully for a while before speaking.

"Where did you train?"

"Train?" Megatronus asked.

"You offlined five of my guards and injured fourteen more. Don't try to tell me you never learned how to fight."

"I don't have memories before the mines," Megatronus said.

"What's your designation?"

"Megatronus."

The mech snorted. "Think you're funny, do you?"

Megatronus glared at him. "So what am I doing here?"

The guards took a step forward, but the mech raised a hand and they stopped. "The first thing you need to know," he said, "Is that I am not some petty mine crew guard. I am what you'd call a supervisor."

Megatronus should probably have been impressed and afraid, but he wasn't. He didn't care what this mech could do to him.

"Knowing that," the supervisor said, "I expect you to be civil with me. If you are, and if you cooperate, you may find yourself better off than you were in the mines… That is, if you survive."

Megatronus met the supervisor's optics, a little surprised. "If I…survive?"

"Oh, that's right," the mech said. "You haven't been told, have you? You're a gladiator now, Megatronus."

"I… what?"

"You will participate in your first fight in two orns, once your injuries have had sufficient time to heal. If you don't disappoint me, then things will go well for you. You might even be afforded the freedom to leave this room, if you behave… What? Don't just stare at me."

"You want me to be a gladiator?"

"You will be one," the supervisor said. "How long that lasts is up to you, of course, but the crowd doesn't appreciate it when you refuse to put up a fight. You took out nearly twenty guards, Megatronus. You didn't think we'd let your talent go to waste."

Megatronus took a deep vent and let it out slowly. Photodraft had told him once that he could be a gladiator—that things would be better for him if he was. He would get more energon, and freedom, and medical attention.

He would have to fight. But fighting had never seemed difficult.

"Well?" the supervisor asked.

Megatronus looked up. Well what? He didn't have a choice in the matter, did he? Was he being given an opportunity to speak? Why would a supervisor want to listen to anything he had to say?

"Are you going to cooperate?"

"I suppose so."

"Good," the supervisor said, and waved one of the guards forward. The guard walked forward and unchained Megatronus, who had to overcome the momentary temptation to attack him. He was still fighting the urge when the guard pulled a cube of energon from subspace and handed it to him.

The other mech hesitated for a moment after Megatronus took it, as if waiting for a 'thank you' or something. Megatronus ignored him and stared at the energon in his hands instead. He wasn't sure if he wanted this. It made him think of the cave floor, bathed in the energon of his friends.

"A medic will come in an orn to be certain you are healing."

Megatronus looked up.

"Do well, and you will be afforded privileges."

The supervisor and his guards left the room.

Megatronus looked down at the energon again. He could smell it.

He reached down to set it upright on the ground and then stared at the door for a long time.

So he was a gladiator now.

This was a dream, this was all just a horrible dream. He got up and started pacing the room. There had to be a way to bring them back. Photodraft, Alloy, Mudskimmer, Treadline…

He'd watched each of them offline. He hadn't been able to save them, and here he was, still alive and all alone. Why? Why was he still alive? What had he done to deserve this? What crime from his forgotten past had sent him to the mines?

Why was he different?

Megatronus stopped at the door and pressed himself against it. "Why?" he asked. "Primus, why? What did I do? Why didn't you stop this from happening?" He shuttered his optics. "Why! Answer me! If you're really there, then tell me why!"

There was nothing but silence.

Megatronus sank slowly to the ground, too full of misery and frustration to weep. Primus wasn't going to help him. Primus didn't care, did he? No one cared. No one cared about mechs like Photodraft or Rivet. No one would tell their creators that they had been killed. No one would write their designations down anywhere. They might as well have never existed.

Photodraft had worked so hard. He had repaired the others so many times, lost so much recharge. He hadn't given up on caring, and it hadn't gotten him anywhere at all. Now he was dead and no one would remember him.

Megatronus wanted to scream, but he couldn't. He felt as if the whole world was pressing down on him with its emptiness and pointlessness. There was no meaning, no reason to keep going, no reason to live when you'd only die eventually. Photodraft hadn't made a difference. Rivet hadn't made a difference.

Megatronus had. He'd gotten them all killed.

Then maybe he hadn't. If he hadn't shown up, they might have died earlier.

It was all pointless. They were gone, and like so many others, they would be forgotten.

"No," Megatronus said out loud. "No, I won't."

He stood slowly.

"They killed Treadline, they killed Alloy and Photodraft and Mudskimmer, and Cavedark, and Rivet, and…"

He listed the names of those he'd known who had died in the mines, thinking back even to those whose designations he had never learned. Those mechs had had designations.

"I won't forget them," he said. "I won't forget them and so at least until I'm gone, someone will remember them." He glitched on the last few words, and his voice sputtered out, but he had gotten to his pedes. He would keep getting up again.

Before he was gone, he had to find Spiral and kill him.

Before he was gone, he had to do something about this. There were mechs dying in the mines—even as his spark pulsed, others went out. And it was wrong. There were better was to run things. Someone was responsible for this, and if Megatronus couldn't save anyone, at least he could try to find out whose fault this was and make them pay.

Rage burned silently within him, supporting him, strengthening him. It was a bottomless, eternal rage that he was certain could fuel him indefinitely.

They had chosen to let him live.

He would make sure they regretted it.

Megatronus stood with only a thin piece of metal in between him and the world he had never seen before. The door would open within a breem.

He wasn't sure if he was ready.

He had been briefed on the rules the joor before. If his opponent wasn't mecha, he had to kill or be killed. If he was fighting another mech, there was the possibility of mercy, but only after a good fight.

He felt calm—it was almost as if someone else was standing in front of this door, not him.

He didn't fear for his life. He doubted the universe would be so kind as to kill him.

The door opened, and Megatronus walked out into the arena as he had been told to do.

It was a wide, circular pit, with smooth walls, and all around the edges were stands. Megatronus had never seen so many mecha.

He had never been somewhere so bright.

He looked up for the source of the light and saw the sky.

It was a deep color, blue like energon, but darker, and the light, the sun, was a brilliant circle hovering just above the stands. He could feel its warmth. He had never felt warmth coming from a light before, except during energon explosions.

A sound rose from the crowd, like the roar of a thousand drills, but Megatronus was still looking at the sky.

There was no end to it, no ceiling. He had known this of course, but seeing it was different.

How far away was that sun?

A new, shrieking sound brought him back down to his present situation, and he made optic contact with a large something across the ring from him. It had a beak-like mouth, wide, flat optics, and ragged-looking wings that ended in claws.

Was this the sort of thing they normally pitted you against in your first fight?

Megatronus watched it calmly. It shifted, bobbing its helm back and forth on its long neck, seeming to judge him.

Megatronus stepped forward, and it mirrored him, stalking closer to the center of the circle. For the first time since his friends had died, Megatronus felt alive, and almost afraid. This thing looked like it could tear him to pieces, and that would hurt. He knew how to fight, of course, but he had never actually learned. What if his skill deserted him now, when his life depended on it?

He couldn't let himself think too hard or he wouldn't be able to do this.

The creature might have seen his momentary hesitation, and it lunged forward, beak snapping.

Megatronus ducked away from it, just barely avoiding the loss of an arm. The crowd responded. He hadn't even thought about the fact that mecha would be watching him.

The creature tried to claw him with one of its wing-like legs, but he threw himself out of the way and got up, ready now.

The sky was too vast and the crowd was too loud and the light was too bright.

But Megatronus knew how to balance.

They had given him a short blade, and he pulled it out of subspace now and watched the sun reflect off of it for an instant before returning his attention to the creature.

The thing's mad optics stared at him and it started to circle, so he mirrored it, balancing, watching. When it lunged forward, he would step to the side, when it backed up, he would advance. It shrieked and the sound grated in his audios. With his spark pulsing erratically, he attacked. It snapped at him, and he backed away again.

The tone of the crowd had darkened. They wanted energon on the ground and screaming and dying, not a dance.

The creature lunged and this time, Megatronus did not step out of the way. With a shout, he rushed forward, which startled the monster enough to distract it. His blade was sharp. It sheared through one of the creature's arms before the thing could react.

Its cry of pain and rage was drowned out in the thunder in the stands.

Megatronus did not wait. He lunged forward again, too eagerly. The creature's beak closed on his side, and he felt things bend and snap inside of him as he struggled in its grasp. It lifted him high and threw him with enough force to send him soaring across the arena. He crashed into the smooth wall, bounced off, and hit the ground. The force of the impact rolled him twice before he finally came to rest.

He had lost his blade.

Megatronus rolled over and willed himself to his pedes.

The creature was bearing down on him, enraged, murderous.

Megatronus could feel energon pooling inside of him, but it didn't hurt as much as Spiral's whip.

The creature roared and Megatronus roared back at it. He dodged out of the way just as it reached him, letting it crash into the wall behind him. He ran for the center, where he'd left his blade, but running hurt, and it was much faster than him. He tried to dodge out of its way, but its wing hit him, knocking him down. Before he could get up again, it was on top of him, tearing at him with its still-attached claw. Megatronus, unwilling to let this mindless horror get the better of him so easily, reached up past its beak, grabbed one of its big, flat optics, and yanked. It backed away with a hissing sound, and Megatronus struggled to his pedes again. He was close to his blade. So close.

He started trying to walk toward the weapon, but the creature kept itself in between him and his hope for survival. He was leaking heavily now, and it was only a matter of time before he collapsed. He needed to get past it and get that blade back, but this thing was guarding it.

The blade… wasn't the only weapon on this field.

He let the creature push him back and then drive him toward the wall again. The claw he had cut off was just behind him. If he tripped over it, the creature would take advantage of that and jump on him.

He took a step back, feeling dizzy and giddy.

Another step. The back of his pede was touching the clawed arm. He rolled backward, pretending to trip, and his opponent took the bait, but as he fell, he reached down and took hold of the severed limb, right at the base of one of the long, sharp claws.

He finished the roll and was back on his pedes just as the creature crashed down on the spot he would have been if he had actually fallen over.

He didn't give it time to recover.

In an instant, the creature's own claw was buried deep in its optic.

It screeched and reared up, and Megatronus stumbled past it and ran to retrieve his blade. Vents stalling, and tanks boiling, he picked it up and turned around.

The creature threw its weight into him and he flew halfway across the arena, clutching the blade. It came bearing down on him, screeching.

Megatronus got slowly, painfully, back up and waited for it to reach him.

At the last moment, he ducked under its vicious beak and rammed the blade deep into its chassis, through its armor and into its spark chamber. It collapsed on top of him, pinning him to the ground, and he wasn't sure if the rushing in his audios was the crowd cheering, or just static.

There was still one thing he needed to do.

With a deep groan, he braced himself against the ground and lifted.

The creature rose as he struggled to straighten his knees, and stand up one last time.

Wires snapped inside of him but he heaved the creature up and off to the side and stood.

The sky above was the color of energon, but darker. The sun was a great optic, watching silently in contrast to the crowd's cheering.

Megatronus picked up his blade and walked, leaving a trail of blue footprints all the way out of the ring and back through the now-open doors to the small anteroom, where he collapsed and his broken systems shut down.

Megatronus came online to pain and silence. He waited for an instant, with his optics shuttered, for Spiral's shouting to wake him fully so that he could get up and get into line for energon.

And then he remembered, and the pain wasn't just physical anymore.

Everyone was dead. He was alone.

He didn't move until he heard the sound of a door opening. Then he opened his optics.

Two guards came in, followed by another mech Megatronus hadn't seen before. He had the symbols of a medic painted on him, though. Megatronus had already come to recognize those.

He came over to Megatronus's berth and reached down to touch something on the side of it. Megatronus felt suddenly strange, as if gravity had increased. He tried to sit up, but found he couldn't. He couldn't move at all. He was magnetized to the berth.

The guards came to stand at either end of where Megatronus lay, looking bored, as the medic scanned him, then pulled on a piece of armor that was out of place. Megatronus cried out, and the medic shot him a glare. "You're fine."

Megatronus shuttered his optics and gritted his denta as the medic worked, waiting for it to be over. He wasn't half as gentle as Photodraft had always been. When he was finally done, he released Megatronus from the berth, and backed away.

He and the guards left, and after a breem or so, Megatronus sat up with a moan. They'd left some energon for him by the door. He took it and was still sipping it when the supervisor came in, flanked by more guards.

They had more impressive guards for the gladiators. In his condition, Megatronus probably couldn't fight his way through a crowd of them, especially with their energon prods.

Those things probably couldn't cut you up like the whips they gave to the miner guards though. They didn't want to damage their precious gladiators.

"Well," the supervisor said. Megatronus set his energon down and looked up at the mech who had chosen to put him here.

The supervisor didn't look scared. He should have been.

"Well," Megatronus repeated.

"Don't talk back to me," the supervisor glared at him.

"Apologies," Memgatronus glared back.

"You did quite well in your first match."

Megatronus shrugged, and managed not to wince. "You gave me a very worthy opponent. Are first matches normally that dangerous, or am I not as impressive as I thought?"

The supervisor looked a little nervous for a moment, or at least confused. Then his expression darkened. "If you absolutely must know, the Roc was not meant to be an opponent, but a punishment. It liked to kill its prey slowly. You didn't think we'd actually let you live after you offlined so many guards, did you?"

Megatronus shrugged. "Oh. Sorry, I didn't know you cared about the guards down in the mines, I thought you just wanted me to make you more money."

The supervisor waved his guards forward, and Megatronus steeled himself, but still shouted in pain when a live energon prod was rammed into his already aching side.

"I can still have you killed," the supervisor said. "And claim that you died of your injuries."

Megatronus looked up at him.

He would not beg for his life.

"You did quite well," the supervisor said again. "Now we have to replace the Roc."

That sounded like bad news for Megatronus. How would they punish him?

"We would have you killed, but, you caught Clench's attention. He just happened to be watching that match, and he wants you to fight again in a decaorn. By then, your injuries should have healed enough that you can fight. You will have some training, in the meantime."

Megatronus took in a deep vent, and nodded.

"Your trainer won't be as tolerant as me."

"Good."

The supervisor shook his helm, and Megatronus felt the energon prod again.

Then they left. Megatronus stared at the door for a long time after they were gone. He had nothing to do but sit. He wouldn't mind training, especially if it would teach him more about fighting and give him something useful to work on. He didn't mind getting enough energon, but he almost missed the hard, processor-numbing work of the mines.

He'd gladly go back to it if he could have Photodraft and the others online again. That hadn't been so bad.

Photodraft had once told him that being a gladiator would be better, but it most certainly was not. There was no one to talk to, for one thing, and nothing to do but get too much recharge, and think about what he had lost.

He paced for a few joors, ignoring his protesting side, and eventually settled on planning how to find Spiral and kill him.