Everything was bright. Too bright. Slowly I drifted awake and I found myself annoyed. Where did all this light come from? Must be the sunrise. My bedroom windows always faced it. But this was different. Did dad turn my lights on? I was on my back, laying on something hard and cool. This was not my bed.

This was not my bedroom.

My eyes shot open.

The light was nearly blinding and I attempted to cover my eyes but my arms felt too heavy and refused to budge. There were odd noises, like thumps. And a voice. It was familiar but they were clearly panicked.

"Ok. Ok." he said, "She's not dead, She's…yes, she's still alive. Primus, did I do this? But she was doing it before I even—why did I pick her up? Of course I made it worse."

Blue light filled my vision for a moment, and the voice continued, "Ok. Still alive. She's still alive. Do I call a medic?"

"What?" Was all I managed and the voice went suddenly quiet.

"Kathrine!" The light was blocked and two glowing eyes came into focus above me.

A sharp wheeze was my best attempt at a scream.

He moved from sight, "Ok, definitely alive."

It was him. I was still here. The ceiling hung high above me and a horrible feeling slowly sunk into my chest as my mind caught back up. I couldn't believe it: It was real. I wasn't dreaming.

"Fella, you ok?"

I nodded but found myself quickly on the verge of tears. My throat hurt terribly as I tried to hold back sobs. With effort I pulled my hands to my face, rubbing my palms against closed eyes.

"What's going on?" He asked, "I promise I won't grab you. I'm sorry about that, I wasn't thinking," he sighed, "Wasn't thinking again. Sorry."

"I just need-" I choked out, "need a moment." Once the tears came it felt impossible to stop, and silence fell around my muffled sobs. I tried to pull myself together, but to be honest, I was having trouble finding a good reason to. I should have never even been at the lab, in a way this was all my fault. I just had to see the test. I had begged for years, before any kind of prototype had even been seen as possible. I made him promise he would show me, and he jumped through hoops to give me my one chance. What if I messed something up just by being there? What if dad blamed himself?

I'm not sure how long it was, but when I finally cracked my eyes open I felt drained. The sides of my hair and the back of my neck were wet with tears and my hands felt gross from wiping at my nose. I probably looked pretty worse for wear too. When I rolled my head slightly to the side I could see my robot friend sitting on his knees waiting patiently, as much as him being there should have reinforced my despair, I was grateful I at least wasn't facing this entirely alone.

Pushing myself into a sitting position wasn't as impossible as it had felt when I had first woken up, and I noticed my backpack laying haphazardly next to me. Quickly I found the half-empty tissue pouch I had shoved in the pocket ages ago and blew my nose.

"Hey, uh," he sounded unsure, "That was quite a leak there, are you ok? Was that an injury? Did I...?"

I shook my head, studying the gross tissue I held in my lap. I wasn't sure what to say, nor did I really have the energy to worry about it. When I did try to speak I had to stop and clear my throat; I was beginning to appreciate how patient he was being with me. "So this is really space?" It felt like less of a question and more of a confirmation.

"Fraid so."

"How do I know?" I asked, trying hard not to sound accusatory, "How do I know it's the truth? It feels like I'm just sitting in a room, not a spaceship." How do I know he wasn't lying?

"How do you think a spaceship is supposed to feel, exactly?"

I didn't have a reply, and it was clear he wasn't trying to be rude. Everything I had seen in my brief time here, including him—especially him—seemed to only confirm that at the very least, something was terribly off about the place. Whether he was lying or not didn't change that.

"I know it must be hard, but you're gonna have to trust me on this one," he said, "We don't have windows in the maintenance tunnels, naturally, so it may be a bit before you can see yourself."

I squeezed my eyes shut. Despite how fatigued my mind felt, there was a myriad of conflicting emotions still bubbling away underneath. For now, I just needed to focus on keeping myself together, "Ok."

"Let's-" he started carefully, "Let's talk about how you got here again."

"I told you," I squeezed the tissue in a fist and didn't look up from my lap, I couldn't help but feel a bit miffed, "I got here an hour ago, no one took me, or-or kidnapped me. My dad's team was working on some machine, it had to of been that. And why jump to kidnapping? How does that make any sense?"

"Hey, hey. I believe you, no one nabbed you. It just seemed the most likely before: I've heard of bots keeping pets in the past, that's all."

Every fiber of me froze. The word 'pet' bounced around my head, destroying what little train of thought I had managed to pull together. I looked up fearfully, too scared to even think through the implications.

Startled, he quickly backtracked, "Not that that's what's happening! You're sentient: It would never be allowed, very very much not allowed. It's not even common. I mean maybe a decepticon would, but I've never heard of any autobot doing something like that, and it'd be practically a death sentence if our commander ever found out—" he abruptly stopped, rubbing his eyes with a sigh, "I'm rambling, I'm sorry. Kathrine, you don't need to worry, we don't see you that way."

I nodded and quickly looked back at my lap; my tissue was now shredded.

"I'd never let anything happen to you, my commander too," his serious tone was broken by a small laugh, "And the medic: He'd probably disassemble anybot if they even tried to lay a digit on you."

"Even you?" I couldn't help but retort.

There was a relieved huff, "I hope you'll let me stay in one piece fella."

He was being so nice: not just friendly, but also clearly trying to keep me from panicking again. I really hadn't a clue why. "Thank you," I blurted, but when I tried to continue the thought I found myself at a loss. Thank him for being patient? For being nice? Or perhaps for not killing me the moment we met. "...just, thank you."

"Hey, no problem," he nodded, "And I do believe you, that you didn't get taken. I looked back at your, uh... you call it a phone right? And everything checks out: you lost signal around a cycle ago, an hour in your time. You've also got messages received as recently as two hours ago, and I even see some photos from your planet taken within the past few days. It's a very solid alibi."

"You looked through my phone?"

"And copied the contents," he continued, "You said your dad was working on a machine? I couldn't find anything about it in your messages with him."

"You read my texts?"

He blinked, studying me for a second, "Kathrine, the machine. What do you know about it?"

"Right," I felt my face heat up a bit, "It's some kind of prototype. Dad couldn't tell me hardly anything about it, just that it was big."

My robotic friend looked like he had a question but I quickly clarified, "Important. Like it would change a lot of stuff. Some kind of new transportation, pulling something apart and putting it back together somewhere else. That's how he said it, I don't even know if that's the truth though. They were testing it today, like officially. I think something went wrong."

Obviously. I chided myself. I didn't just stumble my way here. I could remember the little room I had been allowed to watch the experiment from. It wasn't the main control room, just a space for collecting data, there was just enough room for a few computers, a few of dad's colleagues, and a chair for me. On the wall was the squat observation window. Through it, the test chamber had looked empty, just blank white walls and a concrete floor. I had been told that that would change once the experiment started. It had been an understatement.

The initial flash at the start of the test was the clearest in my head, beyond that it was difficult to piece anything together. I relayed as much to my new robotic friend, "I do remember a lot of bad sounding noises, and light. A lot of light, but it didn't look right, it was odd," I struggled to find better words. "I don't know. But when things went wrong I remember hearing shouting, I think they were trying to evacuate." It was taking more and more effort to recall the details. My memories felt like torn-up snapshots: A tile floor, the static smell of ozone, a shout, the feeling of standing, of moving, of feeling scared. Then nothing. "After that it all goes white."

"Then you woke up here?"

"Yeah," I eyed him, he looked like he knew something.

"Where did you wake up? Was it close by?"

I quickly described my journey here, and then the dark room, but when I got to the massive machine he shifted.

"Ah, well. Slag."

"It's bad?" I asked quickly.

"That room," He looked uneasy, "Sounds an awful lot like the one next to our quantum generators."

Now he really wasn't making much sense.

Noticing my confusion he nodded, "Sorry, quantum generators are how we make jumps, quantum jumps, for long-distance travel."

I nodded, trying my best to keep up.

"If the generators are involved in this… well, things could be complicated: the things themselves don't make much sense. See, they don't really follow the laws of physics," he explained, grinning briefly at me, "Right? Don't ask me how it's possible. All I know is a lot of nasty stuff can happen if things go wrong."

I didn't even want to know. "This seems nasty enough to me. Do you think my dad's machine was one of those?"

"How you described it? It doesn't really sound like it, not in any way that I've heard," He frowned, "But see, when you lost connection we had just made a jump. I didn't hear about anything going wrong, but between your machine and our generators, there's clearly some kind of connection. Too many things line up."

"Do you think it's reversible?"

"I wouldn't know fella. Our scientists might be able to figure it out."

"Wait, they're here? Like on the ship?"

When he nodded I pushed myself up to unsteady feet, "Ok then, let's go."

Glowing eyes slipped from me to the floor around us. The room was still a chaotic mess, made even worse by the large tools now scattered about, "Lieutenant's going to have a glitch when he sees this," he muttered.

"A problem for our future selves," I started to jog towards the large door, "C'mon."

When I turned back around he was still seated, looking rather conflicted, "Technically I need to report you first."

"Report?" I echoed.

"Let the higher-ups know there's an organic on board. They'll probably want to meet you. You know, look into everything properly. Our chief medical officer will want to examine you too; he'll probably actually offline me if I don't take you."

My face paled, "I-I think I'm good actually. Those scientists, what if they figure it out real quick: send me back right away? Then there'll be no need for all that."

He gave an apologetic shrug. "Better safe than sorry. They'll get our best people on it as soon as I send the report, I'm sure," he reassured, "They'll speed things up if they think it's time-sensitive, if that's what got you worried."

"Partly," I wrung my hands. I didn't really want to explore this place more than I had to, much less meet many others. I wasn't really sure why though, maybe I was afraid it would make things seem more real, or maybe it was as simple as social anxiety. Considering my situation the latter felt especially ridiculous to me, but I couldn't deny it was there. Something else was eating away at me though. "I think I'll be ok though," I answered, "If it means I could go home, I'll do it."

"It's ok to be scared fella."

Suddenly I felt exhausted, "I don't want to be."

"Everyone gets scared."

"You'll be there the whole time right? Even for the examination?"

"'Course fella," there was a low hum, "Tell you what, I'll send the report, to get our scientists on it, but I'll let the ol'medic know we'll be taking our time. We can go when you're ready."

"You don't have to wait for me. Really."

There was another hum, sounding very unconvinced, "You look ready to have another glitch. Let's just take a few minutes, I have to clean up anyway." He reached for the metal box, flipping it over with ease, and began placing large tools back inside.

For a long moment I watched. "Thank you, again," I said finally.

"Go do your thing," he snorted, "Unless you'd like to help."