When he came to, he was met by the pleasant feeling of being under no influence from any sedative or drug. Nothing to make him 'compliant.'
His limbs still felt weak, and they ached with each pulse of energon that flowed through his lines. The long period of time he had gone for without moving could be held accountable for his stiff pain.
He frowned, suddenly remembering that he had no idea how long it had been. His memories were foggy, mismatched so badly that he couldn't even figure what was his and what wasn't. Had he been here for long? If so, was anyone missing him? Did they know he was gone? Did they care that he was suffering in a lab that smelt of fresh energon and the jarring tang of metal?
His processor sent out a burst of panic, and his spark whirred, ignoring the feeling as it chirred in its casing, reaching out once more.
He had eventually gotten used to his spark trying to push itself away from his body. No matter how unnatural, he couldn't bring himself to care, nor could he bring himself to look down at his maimed and lacerated protoform. Not when his very essence of being was so content, shifting and bobbing around as it bumped itself against his chest.
His processor derided his spark at every chance it could, but the orb continued to dance and whine, asking for something that he wasn't willing to give.
Another spark.
He glanced around, craning his neck as best he could to get a good glimpse at his environment.
Gurneys were riddled with suspicious, and grotesque stains, the metal corroding away as rust took its place.
He shifted, feeling uncomfortable as he glanced down at the berth he was on. Much the same, but only a tiny bit cleaner than the gurney, which did nothing to ease his queasiness as he squirmed on energon stains and other bodily fluids that made his fuel tank queasy.
He suddenly could feel each open wound on his back, rubbing on the filth that was his berth, and mixing in with fluids that weren't his own.
The rest of the lab was empty, and he avoided looking at particularly nasty looking medical tools and sinks with bloodied internals that laid discarded in small dishes.
His gaze shifted to the other side of them room, and he gasped softly as his spark gave a demanding shove, his optics landing on a limp mech, protoform much like his own, his red armour abandoned on the ground.
His optics fluttered, ignoring his spark as it began its incessant shoving, once again desperate to escape its casing.
The mech was conscious, he realized, watching as pale optics stared blankly up at the dirtied ceiling.
He wondered if his own optics looked like that, dim, and almost dead with an inscrutable cryptic gaze.
He opened his mouth, glossa feeling along each of his denta as he stared at the mech nervously.
Who was he?
His mouth closed, mind drawing up blank at what to say.
'Hello' felt too friendly for such a horrible environment, and 'who are you?' felt demanding, too pushy for someone in the same predicament as himself
"Can you hear me?" He asked instead, voice soft, and he winced at the crackling of static that followed each word.
Silence ticked by, and he wondered if the mech heard him, or if his audials were even functioning.
"Yes." The other mech answered eventually, waiting through another lapse of tranquillity as they both got lost in the quiet sounds of the laboratory before he finally acknowledged him.
He had always like the sound of silence, finding it much more comforting than the often judging voices of others.
"Were you talking to me? Or the void, and now you're shocked because it answered."
He shook his head, glancing sheepishly over to the other mech, who was still staring up at the ceiling, realizing that he had failed to answer this time.
"I can."
The other mech laughed, vocaliser crackling and hissing as the dry sound came out, not sounding at all happy or lyrical.
"You haven't seen it, have you?" He inquired blithely, a tight smile slithering across his lips as he finally broke contact from the ceiling, instead drawing his gaze to rest on his own resting body.
Pale optics scanned over his scarred protoform, similar to his own, lingering on his chassis, before once again drifting back to the ceiling.
He frowned, optics spinning in their lenses as he glanced down.
They had given him a completely clear spark casing.
He stared, intake picking up speed, pumping away until his breath left his vents and his processor whirled around unclear thoughts.
Red, angry and throbbing.
His spark twirled in its casing, practically showing off the scars, the black edges and the red shadows that bounced out from the casing as it bobbed around.
Mutilated. Left shrunk and jagged, looking so small in his casing.
He shuddered, eyes locked on the dismembered spark.
Why was it so small?
Why was it still happy? Why was it bouncing around with such alacrity that it made his fuel tank churn?
Why did it still sing, and chirr, and hum when it was butchered, no longer gleaming with a fresh, glowing white. A glowing white that shone like a lonesome star in a pitch black sky.
The orb was now red, with jagged and gutted black lines that were littered across the glowing embers.
He opened his mouth to scream, but nothing came out, except for a few hitching breaths and dry heaves that hurt his throat and put pressure on his vents.
He felt like he was falling, the gut-wrenching feeling of your tank plummeting out of your stomach all too similar.
Why did his spark and processor feel like two different mechs?
A quiet buzz fluttered around his audials, and he tremored, gasping as a humorless laughter joined In with the faded background noise that was assaulting his sensors.
It grew louder, haughtier, a mockingly dry sound that rocked his core.
"Do you remember?" A soft voice asked, slipping into his head and coiling itself around his own conscience, whispering softly into his own spark and processor.
His audials picked up no sound, and he squelched every thought in his mind, trying to block each image, notion and thought that floated around in his conscience.
"Do you remember?" It hummed, sneaking into his processor and giggling.
He shrieked.
He felt delusional.
He kept seeing broken images, fluttering above his head as they spread out across the ceiling, spiraling across it in waves of colours and shapes.
It was mesmerizing, but it hurt his processor, sent it aching and screaming at him as he stared up, optics stiller than they'd ever been.
He couldn't pull himself away from the patterns if he tried. They called to him, puttered around him, soothing him despite the pain they caused.
He ignored the shrieks of the other mech, seeing a brief image of his own spark slipping in amongst all the shapes and colours.
Red against an abundance of pastel colours.
Jagged black lines. The orb faded out, spluttering across the entire ceiling in a quick flash, leaving shadowy greys in its wake.
Hands were suddenly touching him, and the screaming grew louder.
He ignored them, eyes on the ceiling as he was dragged up, hands holding him tightly underneath his arms as he was tugged across the floor. Cuts in his protoform protested as they were jostled, opening the wounds to let fresh energon out.
He could feel each little trickle, slipping down his back and over his arms to drip onto the ground. Each flap of his protoform screamed in agonized pain as they were covered in grime, or caught in cracks or by loose screws.
He didn't yell, too enthralled by the cloud like shapes fluttering over his optics, following him as he was pulled across the floor.
They burst bright green at him as he was hauled up onto the other berth, where the mech screamed and thrashed, restraints rattling and jerking the berth as he was pulled on.
The scientists rolled him onto his stomach, right on top of the squalling mech.
His chest plate parted, and he stared down at the panicked face. The face that was twisting in so much negative emotion, lips curling in distress as his cheeks began to flush a red hue.
Panicked optics met desolated ones, and they stared at each other.
He found himself lost in the other's optics as the pictures picked back up, flashing in-between the blue of the lenses as they danced and hovered once more, showering him in flashing images that echoed in the other mechs optics.
Their sparks met each other, merging into one, and the mechs eyes rolled upwards, screeching into the stale air as he wriggled and thrashed.
He stared.
The images were becoming overbearing, and his processor itched.
They spiraled outwards, before curling back into the mechs optics.
He giggled once more, "Do you remember?"
"Do not talk to me."
His anxiety had turned to anger, and hatred filled his spark.
All he got back from the other mech was a disillusioned feel of detachment.
Colourful images sometimes assaulted his optics, and he tried to block them out, but no matter how hard he shoved at the other mech, he still always floated back. Knowingly or not, he didn't care.
Each little feeling and thought he got from the other mech terrified him. It angered him to his core because he still didn't know what exactly had been done to him, to both them, but it terrified him.
He was losing himself to a mech he didn't know, a mech who had seemingly taken some of his spark, ripped it away from him and taken it for himself.
'More like took both of our sparks, mashed them together, and then tore at them until they split in half.'
"Get out of my head." He snarled, optics narrowing into a slicing glare.
A scowl flickered across his face when he got no reply, and he settled back into the berth, eyes fixated on anything that wasn't the broken orb that he now had to call his spark.
It wasn't even his spark anymore, he was a part of the crazy mech who was creepily vacant, staring with a vacuous expression at the ceiling, form eerily still from when he woke until he fell into recharge.
He didn't have a life-force anymore, his essence was gone, not to call his own anymore.
He still couldn't even remember his name.
"Do you remember?"
"GET OUT OF MY HEAD!"
It took the detached laughter of the other mech to realize he hadn't said it out loud.
"Proteus."
"What is it, Sentinel?"
Sentinel frowned, leaning up against the doorway as he observed the senator, "Some mechs are getting suspicious."
"If it's the low-class bots again just dispose of them, you should know that." He grumbled, finger swiping through datapads as he scanned through them briefly,
The security officer shook his head, "It's not the low class this time."
"Then who? Stop being dramatic and just spit it out." Proteus commanded, impatience belittling his tone as he switched off the datapad
Sentinel shuffled further into the office, arms crossed as he eyed the senator.
"Well?" He ventured, fingers encasing each other as he rested his elbows on the desk.
"We have senators getting suspicious, sir." Sentinel finally disclosed, watching as the senator's mouth twisted into a scowl.
"And who would that be?"
"Senator Shockwave."
Proteus's optics narrowed, whirring in their lenses as he unfolded his hands, "Has he said anything yet, made a scene? Or is he doing something quietly, diminishing our stance behind our backs once again?"
Sentinel shrugged, "I'm just your security mech."
"He's to recalcitrant for his own good, so unseemly for a senator. But if he hasn't said or done anything now, he will soon. And then, well, one more 'patient' won't hurt."
Starscream smirked, observing the 'twins' in his laboratory. One of them, the lucid dreamer, was staring at the ceiling, while the other glared at him, struggling in his restraints as Starscream ventured over, picking up a sharp medical incision tool as he went.
He was excited, as he always was when his experiments were successful. What he hated, was failed experiments, and he couldn't wait to introduce his successful test subjects to the abundance of mechs who had died, maimed and mutilated, in the room next door. They were clumped together, a pile of dead bodies rusting away because he couldn't be bothered to move them.
But they mattered no more, all that mattered was he could finally move forward in his studies. A race of forged mechs couldn't stop at two, after all.
A genetic code, developed by himself, with the help of some other staff. A code that can be implanted with time, to spread their core and wiring, and kick-start his new experiments, his new race.
Some of them had been unsure, not willing to lose the first successful batch they had in cycles.
"Won't this mean one of them will have to…" Slipstream had said, trailing off as she waited for a confirmation.
"Yes." He'd replied, confident that his work would succeed.
He moved closer to the berths, standing between the two as he took in the sight of the two mechs that would soon come in an abundance.
"Let's try something, shall we? Something that might help you understand your situation."
His voice came out clear, with haughtiness coating each word as he leered condescendingly at them, twirling the tool between his fingers.
He lifted it, watching it glint in the yellow light of the room, before plunging it into the thigh of the mech staring at the ceiling.
He shrieked, optics finally losing focus as he thrashed in his bonds, screaming as Starcream twisted the knife, and smiling when the other one joined in, thrashing as if he were the one being stabbed.
Energon oozed out of the wound, the other mech screaming with his counterpart as the tool was pushed deeper, and Starscream watched excitedly as they matched each other's pain.
"This," He laughed, "Is only test one."