"What do you mean Soundwave knows?" Avi demanded.

Axel clearly wasn't feeling the same alarm that Avi was. The grounder walked right past him to the next communications relay and started checking over it. "Look, this extra training—whatever you're doing behind your commander's back—it's happening on board the Nemesis, right?"

"Yeah," Avi admitted.

"Soundwave knows," Axel confirmed. "Take it from me. I hear a lot of what goes on on this ship, and I still don't know all the details of your med bay trips." He held up a finger. "And I don't care, so don't tell me. But Soundwave does know."

And here Avi had thought that talking to one of the surveillance corps would be reassuring. At least Starscream didn't know yet, though anymore it seemed the commander was the only one who didn't know that Avi was in serious training to be a medic. Maybe he shouldn't have come to Axel for sympathy. With Soundwave as a boss, what would he know about having secrets?

Avi was only a little jealous of the grounder. As far as he knew, Axel had been one of the first Vehicons to request transfer, and he had settled right into surveillance and communications duties as if he'd been made for them. If he had any regrets, they certainly didn't show.

For the most part, anyway. "Frequency shift," he was saying, presumably to the readout he was peering at, since Avi was behind him and had no idea what he was talking about. "Every single time we change altitude. I keep telling them we could just use an algorithm, but no, the navigation crew can't be bothered to help us set up a link. Who did this manual adjustment? Recoil? Is he blind?"

Avi hadn't realized that the altitude of the Nemesis mattered to anyone but the fliers, but this wasn't exactly what he had come to talk about. "Do you think I should transfer?"

Axel fiddled with the relay a little more and stood back to look it over. "I think I need to go talk to whoever's at the helm," he decided. He hiked back past Avi toward the lift that went back down into the ship.

Avi followed him. "It's just—what if..."

Axel waved off his explanation. "The fact that you're here asking me about it makes it pretty clear that you want to."

It didn't help at all. Avi already knew he wanted to be a medic. That wasn't the part that was forcing him to hedge and worry over it. There was a moment of silence in the lift before Avi blurted out, "How did Breakdown take it? When you asked to serve somewhere else?"

"It doesn't matter. Breakdown isn't Starscream."

That was true. Breakdown, Avi knew, would be proud of him. Breakdown was fine with whatever they did, so long as they stayed out of trouble. But Starscream... what if Starscream was disappointed? Just imagining it made Avi's wings drop sharply.

"You Seekers are too uppity," Axel continued. "We're not on different teams. We're all Decepticons."

"I know that," Avi murmured.

"Yeah? Then stop acting like swapping to the medical division is working for the enemy." Axel folded his arms with the certainty of experience. "The best thing you can do for all of us is do what you do best."

"Oh. Uh..."

The lift stopped. Avi was glad he hadn't formulated a response, because when the doors opened, Soundwave was on the other side of them. The lieutenant looked up from the console he was working at. Avi tried to be still and unobtrusive; in any case, Soundwave's gaze passed right over him. Axel, on the other hand, strode forward, already talking.

"Sir, our readings are going to continue to be off unless we set up a program to adjust the relays depending on the ship's position. The program should be no problem, it's just getting the data stream from navigation."

Soundwave watched Axel as he approached. So did Avi, who was fascinated by the sight of someone barging into a room and talking at Soundwave.

"I can put together a coding team and get it taken care of, but it would speed things up if navigation knew your authority was behind it, sir."

Soundwave nodded once.

"All right." Axel nodded back and kept going. Avi realized he was still in the lift and hurried to follow.

Once they were out in the corridor, Avi commented appreciatively, "Wow."

Axel started so slightly that Avi almost didn't catch it. "Well... I know what I'm doing," he said, not quite in his usual matter-of-fact tone.

Avi couldn't argue with that. And Axel seemed happy, in his own weird, fast-lane way. Maybe Avi should just—

That was precisely when Avi realized what time it was. "Oh, scrap—I have to go." He started sprinting for the med bay, then hesitated. "Could you not tell anyone about this?"

Axel shrugged. "Don't worry. No one will say anything."

Avi waved his thanks and jogged on. Maybe it wasn't such a bad thing that the surveillance corps knew. Soundwave's people would be discreet. And in the meantime, Avi could figure out what to do about all this.

"If Starscream finds out," Axel continued from behind him, "it'll be because you're incredibly obvious."

Then again, maybe Axel hadn't been the one to talk to.