Chapter 3: The Medic's Reward
The soft, green glow of the spark monitor painted the sterile med-bay in ghostly light. Two waveforms danced across the screen, their peaks and valleys no longer just aligned, but woven together into a single, inseparable pattern. The steady hum of the scanner cycled down into silence.
Ratchet grunted, disconnecting the leads from their chests with a series of soft clicks. “Synchronization is back within nominal parameters. Residual stress fractures in the spark casing are healing. You’re lucky.” He turned to input the data into a console. “Another few deca-cycles apart and the damage would have been irreversible.”
He didn’t see Sideswipe move. One moment the red Autobot was sitting on the edge of the berth, the next Ratchet was enveloped in a crushing, metal-on-metal embrace that made his struts groan in protest.
“Thank you,” Sideswipe whispered, his voice muffled against Ratchet’s audial. It wasn’t his usual boisterous tone. It was raw, stripped of all pretense. The gratitude in it was a physical weight.
Ratchet stiffened, caught off-guard. He patted Sideswipe’s back awkwardly. “Yes, well. Don’t make a habit of needing medical rescue from your own stupidity.”
He expected Sideswipe to let go, to bounce back with a joke. Instead, the embrace tightened. And then, another presence shifted beside them.
Sunstreaker stood there, uncharacteristically still. He looked at the floor, then at Ratchet’s shoulder, his usual arrogant glare absent. Without a word, he stepped forward and leaned in, pressing his forehead to the curve of Ratchet’s shoulder plating. It was a smaller gesture than Sideswipe’s bear-hug, but infinitely more profound coming from him. A silent, profound acknowledgment.
Ratchet froze. The gruff medic’s spark pulsed hard against its chamber, a fierce, sudden ache of protectiveness he usually kept locked down. These two, with all their fire and chaos, had been his since they were sparklings dragged into a war too early. He’d patched them up more times than he could count, sewn them back together after battles that should have killed them, and fought their command to keep them from being torn apart. He cleared his vocalizer, which had developed a suspicious static.
“Alright, alright. Enough of the sentiment. You’re wrinkling my finish.” He pushed Sideswipe back gently and gave Sunstreaker a small, acknowledging nod. The golden twin straightened up, his mask of aloofness sliding back into place, but the brief vulnerability had been real.
“So,” Sideswipe said, stretching his arms and bouncing on his heels, the moment officially over. “We good to go? Fully cleared for duty? Because I’m thinking a patrol. Show Sunny the sights. Maybe find a Decepticon to punch.”
“You are cleared for light duty. No active combat,” Ratchet said, wiping down his tools with more force than necessary. “And by ‘sights,’ you mean the vacant lots and condemned warehouses we monitor, correct?”
“The most scenic vistas Earth has to offer,” Sideswipe said, grinning.
“I need to perform a full systems diagnostic on Sunstreaker’s transformation cog. His landing was… enthusiastic.” Ratchet pointed a wrench at Sideswipe. “You. Make yourself useful. Go to storage bay three and fetch me a canister of thermal grease. The high-grade stuff, not the cheap sludge Fixit uses for the ground-bridge.”
“On it!” Sideswipe transformed his hand into a blaster and gave a mock salute before darting out of the med-bay, his energy infectious and sudden in the quiet room.
The door hissed shut, leaving Sunstreaker and Ratchet in the humming silence.
“Sit,” Ratchet said, gesturing to the main repair berth. Sunstreaker complied, the berth giving a hydraulic sigh under his weight. Ratchet connected a diagnostic cable to the port under his left doorwing. Data began streaming across a secondary monitor.
“Your brother,” Ratchet began, not looking up from the screen, “has been a colossal pain in my aft since you left.”
“I know,” Sunstreaker said, a trace of a smirk in his voice.
“Getting into trouble just to feel something. Picking fights with human law enforcement over parking violations. ‘Tactical reconnaissance’ that usually involved demolition.” Ratchet tapped the screen. “Transformation cog looks fine. A little stressed, but fine. Your landing, however, was sloppy.”
“It was a calculated descent into unpredictable terrain.”
“It was a crash.”
Sunstreaker didn’t argue. He watched the data scroll. “Did he… talk about it? The separation?”
Ratchet paused, his hands stilling on the keyboard. He looked at Sunstreaker. The proud face was guarded, but the question in his optics was genuine, almost young. “No. He didn’t have to.” The old medic turned back to his console. “He just got… quieter. And then louder. All the wrong ways.”
Sunstreaker absorbed this, his gaze distant. “I heard things. On Cybertron. Rumors. That he’d gotten himself scrapped. That Bumblebee was going to send him back in disgrace.”
“The first was almost true more than once. The second,” Ratchet sighed, “Bee considered it. For his own safety. But he knew sending him back to you, in that state, would have broken you both for good.” He finally turned to face Sunstreaker fully. “You understand the position you’re in now? Strongarm has you in her sights. She’s by the book, and you’re a living violation of every chapter.”
“I am aware of the cadet,” Sunstreaker said, his voice dropping to a cold, smooth tone. “Her type thrives on procedure because they lack instinct.”
“Her type also files reports that get read by people with more stripes than Bee.” Ratchet disconnected the cable. “You’re cleared. Try not to break anything. Especially each other.”
Sunstreaker stood, his movements fluid and precise again. “Thank you, Ratchet. For… earlier. With Prime.”
“Don’t mention it. Literally. Never speak of it again.” Ratchet busied himself with his tools. “Now get out. I have real work to do.”
Sunstreaker gave a curt nod and left the med-bay. The corridor outside was empty, lit by the same sterile, blue-tinged lights. He could hear the faint echo of Sideswipe’s voice from somewhere deeper in the bunker, probably bothering Fixit about the thermal grease.
He began to walk toward the sound, then stopped. A flickering light from a wall panel caught his eye. It was a vent cover, slightly ajar, its illumination inconsistent. Beneath it, the outline of a small maintenance access hatch was barely visible, a darker seam in the patterned floor.
Something was wedged in the gap between the hatch and its frame. A tiny sliver of opaque plastic.
Sunstreaker knelt, his curiosity piqued. He pried the sliver out with a pointed fingertip. It was a fragment of a data-chips casing, cleanly sheared off. Very new. He turned it over. Stamped on the inside was a tiny, all-too-familiar insignia: the simplified, angular badge of Autobot Security.
Strongarm.
His optics narrowed. He hooked his fingers under the edge of the hatch and pulled. It lifted silently on well-oiled hinges, revealing a dark, vertical shaft descending into the bunker’s lower infrastructure. Climbing rungs were set into the wall.
Without a second thought, Sunstreaker dropped into the shaft, pulling the hatch closed above him. The darkness was complete for a moment before his low-light optics activated, painting the confined space in gradients of gray and green. It was tight, dusty, humming with the vibration of coolant pipes and power conduits.
He descended slowly, his feet finding the rungs without sound. After about fifteen feet, the shaft opened into a narrow horizontal maintenance tunnel. Conduits and cables ran along the walls, and the air was warmer, thick with the smell of hot metal and ozone.
And there, tucked into a gap between two large pipe junctions, was a small, black data-stick. It was deliberately placed, not lost. Sunstreaker retrieved it, turning it over in his hand. It was standard issue, unmarked except for a single, small scratch on one edge.
He wasn’t an expert in subterfuge, but he knew concealing a data-stick in a secret hatch beneath a flickering panel reeked of intention. This wasn’t a misplaced belonging. This was a dead drop. Or a hiding place.
He heard a scuffling sound from further down the tunnel. Muffled, rhythmic. The sound of someone walking, trying to be quiet. Someone with a heavier, less graceful tread than Sideswipe.
Sunstreaker instantly deactivated his optic lights, plunging himself into absolute blackness. He pressed himself flat against the wall, becoming just another shadow between the pipes.
The footsteps grew closer. A beam of light swept across the tunnel floor, then the walls. It was handheld, unaugmented. Not an Autobot’s built-in lamp.
The beam passed over his position, hesitated for a fraction of a second on his gold-plated foot, then swept away. The footsteps stopped.
“I know you’re there,” a voice said. It was filtered, deliberately distorted, but the cadence was unmistakable. Strongarm. “The thermal signature is obvious. Your arrogance is your weakness, Sunstreaker. You think no one looks in the shadows.”
Sunstreaker stayed silent, unmoving.
The light beam snapped back, pinning him in its glare. “You are in a restricted maintenance conduit. This is a violation of bunker safety protocol seven-three-alpha. You will hand over any stolen property and return to the main corridor immediately.”
Slowly, Sunstreaker stepped into the light. He held up the data-stick between two fingers. “Looking for this?”
Strongarm stood ten feet away, her blaster not drawn, but her posture rigid, ready. Her own orange and white plating looked out of place in the grimy tunnel. “That is confidential security equipment. Surrender it.”
“Or what?” Sunstreaker’s voice was a low challenge in the confined space. “You’ll file another report? I’ve read your file on me. ‘Severe disciplinary noncompliance.’ You have no idea.”
“I have a duty.” She took a step forward. “This unit operates on order. On trust. You represent neither. Your very presence is a threat to that order.”
“My presence is the only reason your ‘order’ has a fighting chance,” he fired back, taking a step of his own. The tunnel forced them closer. “You see procedure. I see a battlefield. You see a rulebook. I see the mech who’s saved my brother’s life more times than your datapad has memory. You’re so concerned with the how, you’ve forgotten the why.”
“The ‘why’ is to protect Earth! Not to serve your selfish binary bond!” The distortion on her voice cracked for a moment, revealing the frustration beneath.
The accusation hung in the damp air. Sunstreaker’s field, usually so tightly controlled, spiked with a sudden, cold fury. “Everything we do,” he said, his voice dangerously quiet, “everything we have ever done, is for each other. That bond is what makes us effective. It is the weapon you don’t understand and are too afraid to wield.”
He tossed the data-stick. It clattered on the floor between them. “Your secrets are safe with me, cadet. Because they’re petty. And I have no interest in petty things.”
He turned his back on her, a deliberate, calculated insult, and began to climb the rungs back to the hatch.
Below, Strongarm stood frozen, the beam of her light trembling slightly on the grimy floor. She stared at the data-stick, then up at the disappearing gold figure. Her hand clenched into a fist.
Above, Sunstreaker pushed open the hatch and emerged back into the lit corridor just as Sideswipe rounded the corner, a canister of thermal grease held aloft like a trophy.
“There you are! Ratchet’s gonna weld my doors shut if I don’t… hey.” Sideswipe’s grin faltered. He could always read Sunstreaker’s energy, even when it was locked down tight. “What’s wrong?”
Sunstreaker took the canister from him, his movements precise, controlled. “Nothing.” He looked down the empty corridor, then back at his twin. “We need to talk. Not here.”
The lightness from the med-bay was gone, burned away by the cold, metallic air of the tunnel below. Something had shifted. A line had been drawn, not in the sand, but in the dust of a hidden passage.
And Strongarm, alone in the dark with her confiscated secrets and simmering rage, knew she had just made an enemy who played by none of her rules.