Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

               It had already been a long cycle. Every single cycle was long one those days; the Sarge had been pushing them even harder since someone had gotten the brilliant idea to drop a tower on him. Sentinel Minor hadn’t exactly been a pushover beforehand but he was far worse with his servo out of commission. Wasp knew a little yellow scrapling when he saw one, or the handiwork of one as it were, and he had no idea how the little glitch had managed it this time but there was no way that bumbler wasn’t behind things.

               He was of course going to pay him back. Some bots needed to learn the hard way where they did and did not belong, and let it never be said Wasp wasn’t generous enough to give what was due. It wasn’t just being forced into more rigorous routines that caused a problem, it was that any move they made here effected their shot at the big leagues, both individually and cohesively. Sentinel Minor wasn’t just another military mech and he wasn’t one of the officers on his way out the door either, he was well on his way to becoming a Prime. Any mech who had so much of an inkling as to how the system worked could tell you; if your commanding officer wasn’t happy, you weren’t going to be either. That couldn’t be more true with one of the Academy’s up and coming as their drill sergeant.

               Bumblebee was not going to be the mech to scrap Wasp’s chances into the Elite Guard. No one was getting that opportunity, and so one disgruntled minibot had spent half of his downtime bouncing ideas to slag the scraplet off of Ironhide. Most of them got shot down as being too dramatic. But what wasn’t dramatic about being forced into guard duty on some rustwater outpost due to nothing but the sheer negligence of a teammate nobody even liked? Ironhide, unsurprisingly, hadn’t had an answer for that, only chuckling something about it not being that bad as he downed the rest of his cube, but what did he know? He was too optimistic about things, it was stupid really. Wasp knew better.

               In the end he was all for the Autobot machine, but weren’t you supposed to replace the gears that didn’t move right?

               It was that idea that had sent Wasp slinking off towards the barracks, plausible plans more than venting frustration finally springing to the forefront of his processor. There wasn’t a problem he couldn’t fix; even if that problem was an annoying yellow mini. Of course the barracks weren’t empty when he’d entered, Wasp wasn’t quite that lucky. There was Bumbler in all his useless wonder trying not to glance in his direction, and beside him Longarm who seemed to make a distinct point of not outwardly hating anyone in their squadron. Longarm he could respect.

               Both of them however bore witness to the oh so graceful trip that had Wasp landing flat on his faceplates. Embarrassing. Even more embarrassing though was Bumblebee’s immediate rush to help him – he did not need help from anyone, nevermind numb nodes himself. People were watching. Wasp ripped himself away from the other minis servos like the bot carried a virus. Fighting down the bout of mortification from his own clumsiness was more than enough to jam Wasp’s helm in a locker while he focused more intently than he needed to on what he’d come to grab. He was blind to the world around him, and hadn’t even noticed Sentinel Minor until the entire room was staring at him. The locker inspection was a surprise one after all, and ill-timed at that, but Wasp had no information to give on the device in question except for the protest that it wasn’t his.

Well, they hadn’t liked or believed that one.

At first there was denial. That dreaming state of disbelief where the lights shine too bright and the noises are too loud, where the movements and words come fast and yet sluggishly slow. It was as if the world were washed in water. Wasp had protested his entire way towards the facility, trying desperately to explain the situation to mechs that refused to listen. When the spires of the Tarnian Stockades finally came into view he had hardly recognized them for what they were. It was some other building, it was some other life, he wasn’t strapped down in stasis cuffs with his insignia crudely blackened out – this wasn’t what happened to Wasp.

Autobots put a lot of work, time, and money into their prisons; especially the high security ones.

“You’re making a big mistake! I’m not the mech you’re looking for, I’m innocent!” It was no longer the little red guy behind him, that mech had been traded off for a larger white one, the troopers you’d see patrolling around the larger cities; if they could afford them that was. Iacon could, but Wasp had his doubts there had been so much as local enforcers in Altihex. Nevertheless the guard wasn’t listening, and Wasp twisted his helm as far as he could trying to so much as get a glimpse of the mech.

“I can’t say it any more than I already have – I’ve never even met a Decepticon, I can’t have! If you look at my record you’ll see!” Again he was ignored, and the frustration froze into fear as the prison gates opened heavy and imposing.

Wasp stared ahead with blue optics like saucers, but he didn’t stop talking – he didn’t think he could afford to. “Just listen to me; I’m innocent! But I think I know who you’re looking for, I can take you to him, I can—“

The doors slammed behind them, actually slammed like archaic slabs of stone, and the entire countenance of the mech behind him changed instantly. “Listen you little creep, you’d better drop the act. There’s not a slagger stupid enough to help you now.”

The utter derision in which he spoke would have been enough to slap Wasp into silence, if the sight of the stockades themselves hadn’t already done so. Denial, disbelief, part of Wasp had still wildly believed this was all part of some elaborate joke, that any moment now they’d drop the charges and the stasis cuffs and explain that they did this to scare all the newbies and congratulations, he’d passed. That hope died on the Autotrooper’s tone. He was serious. This was serious, this was actually happening.

Oh slag, this was actually happening.

As imposing and dark as it had been on the outside, the interior of the stockades were Autobot order in its most dangerous form. A triple-gated system was the first thing to greet him and more than enough to twist that dread into something much worse; a sense of permanence. Each rose high behind the other like a great monolith, and Wasp stared up at them nothing but a scared kid. A stupid, scared kid. He could have been dreaming for all the world seemed so dark and too big, but this facility hadn’t been built with Autobots in mind. There wasn’t a line out of place or a break in the symmetry, and Wasp shrunk back from the gate as he was wheeled towards the dangerous buzz of the laser barrier. There was no escaping from behind that wall. This couldn’t be happening; it was a joke, it was a mistake, it was wrong, it was—Wasp’s systems shuddered in protest, but it didn’t stop his guard from exchanging a few simple words with something that only beeped in response.

This shouldn’t be happening.

The first gate crackled to life; blue laser wall fizzling through into a green one. It didn’t look any less dangerous than it had to the optic, but EM sensors clarified that all the voltage running through the barrier had been cut. Without ceremony or so much as a word he was pushed through, and it was only when the first gate was shut again behind them with enough current to bring down the likes of Megatron himself that the second one opened, this one morphing blue to red. There was no way out. There had never been a way out of the stockades; in all the millions of years the four main facilities had stood no one had ever successfully made an escape, as far as Wasp knew that was. The worst of the worst; the insides were crawling with Decepticon scum and Autobots so low that stripping them of their colours hadn’t been enough, murderers, and terrorists, and conspirators. He didn’t belong here. Yellow lights blinked out of the twilight darkness and it took until they were almost through the third gate for Wasp to realise they were optics. He was being watched.

The third gate opened clear and shot through his EM field with a jolt as they passed through. They had been scanners. They were gates, but they were also scanners. Freedom locked behind him with the renewed buzz of the third gate closing and for the first time in his short life Wasp felt claustrophobic. Ahead a tiny drone with the same yellow optics lit up a dim blue path in the clean dark halls. They followed it; no questions, no answers. Not for a criminal. In fact the only thing Wasp could hear was the beeping of little drones, the footsteps of his guard, and the hum of potential energy around him; everything was at once too big and too small, too quiet and too loud – he’d never felt more unsettled.

He wasn’t supposed to be here. He was innocent. He wasn’t a spy. He was framed.

He was in big trouble.

               Wasp could attest his innocence until his vocaliser shorted from exhaustion, but there was really only one thing that could help him now. And though it took three tries to get past the block of static Wasp managed.

 “I want my trial.”

               He didn’t get it. No, instead he was pushed towards the sanitation chambers, an invasive, intolerable process that left him shuddering long after it was over. He hadn’t even known there were that many things you could screen a bot for and douse one in. The drones ran everything here, little beeping slagheaps who had jammed things into him diffusing his stingers and weapon systems. Wasp had expected that, what he hadn’t expected was for the little glitches to lock his t-cog as well. Helplessness never knew such a form. Then his guard returned and his was dragged, still dripping wet, down long corridors of tiny cells with optics in red and blue glaring out at him. They further they went the less blue he saw; Decepticons. Actual Decepticons, he’d only heard stories and seen pictures of them, but here the ugly brutes were in full time and they thought he was one of them. Had Wasp the presence of mind to actually look at any given one of the cons rather than watch with dead optics as the cells pass by in smears of dark colours, bright lights, and more upon more of the tiny drones that guarded them he might have noted that the propaganda posters had hardly exaggerated their monstrousness. He would have noticed how small he was.

               Even among the rest the cell was tiny. It was as if it had been constructed specifically for his size specifications and designed purposefully to allow him as little room as possible without jamming any gears. Later Wasp might learn the amount of truth behind the observation; at that point there wasn’t a thing these mechs didn’t know about his physical frame.

               “Home sweet home.” The guard behind him spoke again for the first time in what seemed like ages, and it was only to snicker at him as he jammed a series of codes into the keypad by the cell. “Isn’t that right prisoner number 05166?” He hated that guard, he really did.

               However he had also been reminded of his own vocaliser, blessedly still online, and fighting down the wave of revulsion that accompanied the number Wasp found his voice again. “I said I want my trial.” One of the little drones – this one square and squat like a trash-bot – zipped over and connected into an external port by the cell. All at once the barrier fell away.

               Every word counted now.

               Behind him the guard barked a laugh, muffled through the white facemask and assured with the control he held here. “Decepticons don’t get trials.”

               That was tire scrap. Wasp had been taught better than that, and deserved better than the piston poor treatment he was getting. He could have spat as he was disconnected from his stasis cuffs, and in the dizzying moment it took for his motor fuctions to recalibrate themselves, jumping back to life with a crackle, he was shoved roughly into his cell. His cell. The words carried weight. “That’s scrap and you know it, every bot gets a trial! Everyone gets to go in front of a tribunal, you owe me that!” As long as they knew enough to ask for it; Wasp had always figured that he of all bots would have been that last of them to have to use that little kernel of advice.

               The world was bathed in blue as the cell barrier phased in again, claustrophobic and small. Immediately he wanted out. The guard stayed long enough to lean on the wall laughing outright now. He wanted to deck him. “Well until you get one, you’ll just have to wait here, number 05166.” Conspirationally he moved in as if to whisper something, which was a stupid move with a facemask on, and downright insulting when everyone could hear him regardless. Wasp didn’t so much as move towards him, glaring with as much disdain as the other surely felt. “You might not want to stop ventilating though, it could take a while.”

               “Go frag yourself.” It wouldn’t help. But what right did this gear-grinder have to talk to him that way? To make him into some sick joke—he was not a joke; he’d been framed. It wouldn’t help, and even then Wasp knew it, it wouldn’t get him what he wanted but he was incensed all the same.

               It wasn’t appreciated. The auto-trooper’s good mood vanished in an instant as he straightened back up. Rightly or wrongly Wasp took some pride in that achievement. “Watch it, inmate. You don’t want Leader-1 here to pump 40 000 volts through your new home now do you?”

               That was enough to break it.

               Wasp very nearly lunged at the barrier. “You can’t treat me like this, who the frag do you think you are?!” It was too much. Everything was too much; he’d onlined this morning in the bunk he’d earned thinking of nothing but training and breakfast and whether or not Ironhide would be able to get his own aft out of berth for once before Sentinel Minor kicked it out and now he was helm deep in the biggest trouble he’d ever been in throughout his short lifecycle. And if that wasn’t enough no one could even see fit to treat him as anything more than a piece of scrap metal!  Somewhere across from the both of them a mech broke into a gritty cackle and Wasp could not stop shouting if he tried.

               “I keep telling you I’m innocent! I’ve never even seen a con!” Another little drone joined the first, this one taller than the trash-bot Leader-1 and quite stern looking. “And if you’re too defunct to even look into it then you can just go and get me someone with more processing power than an energon dispenser, because clearly you don’t have it!” The drone regarded him sharply for a moment, then in a voice hard and metallic ordered:

               [PRISONER: DESIST DISTURBANCE.]

               One smug look from the autotrooper ensured that wouldn’t happen and Wasp disregarded the real guards in favour of launching more threats at the mech in front of him. Insulted and degraded and confused, he’d lost what little composure he’d had and hurled it at the obvious source of his affliction.

               “You’d better hope for your sake you’re cut as directly from the mould as you look, because when I get out of here, I’m going to find you—”

               [PRISONER: DESIST DISTURBANCE.]

               “And when I do, there’s not going to be enough of you left to make sl—“

               The drone jammed a prong into the blue barrier wall and Wasp saw nothing but electric static, threats stopping in a screech as a charge like a lightning bold pulsated through his frame. Systems shut down immediately in attempt to preserve themselves and something popped sending a crackle of dispelled energy lancing over his optic. It was only a moment, but it felt like a century, and finally Wasp slumped to the floor, forced into stasis.

               The first night in the joint was neither the longest nor the hardest he’d ever have to face, but what it was; real and raw, hit him with a whiplash force as he tried to process the truth. This was his reality now.

               He had come online slowly. Left in a heap with circuits scrambled and confused to his surroundings and situation; it hadn’t taken long for everything to click back into place. Wasp turned his helm – though the movement hurt like the pit – to the barrier wall and found none of his previous company still present. Well that was one problem solved at least, sort of. With his chronometer having been reset alongside everything else he couldn’t have been sure how long he’d been out, the lights above still betrayed the same blue lowlight they had upon his arrival and said nothing of the outside world. It was a vacuum, bereft of outside influence and locked in its own stasis. Drones filtered past his cell with documentable regularity; a blue one, a purple one, each paying him no more mind than they did each other even as he groaned in the rippling aftershocks of his forced suppression. They didn’t care.

               Wasp watched them for a few moments until his optics grew bleary and pixelated from staring and his processor strained from trying to find a pattern to the way they passed. There was none. Rebooting his optics in a series of short flickers – one was glitching and he was trying so hard to ignore it – Wasp turned his attention to the four walls around him. It wasn’t so much as cell as it was a closet. About the size of an energon cube, he found he could touch both side walls with his arms outstretched and lengthwise the cell was hardly long enough for the tiny slab of a berth that had been provided. Wasp was by no means a large bot, his frame type was called ‘mini’ for a reason and easily much smaller than even the slightest of Decepticons but they had been prepared for him all the same. The information they’d taken used to custom fit for him his own tiny torture chamber. If there was a logical reason behind the precaution, Wasp couldn’t see it. At a stand his sensor horns grazed the top of the cell uncomfortably; he hunched in on himself and felt like a feral.

               Outside and across the endless scattered stream of knee high drones there was only the next cell. A wide expanse of blue barrier with a mammoth mech behind it; Decepticon, it had to be. It was too big and too ugly to be anything else, covered in dead-metal grey plating with gross protrusions like blunted wings sprouting out of its chassis. Luckily it was also in recharge at the moment, or appeared to be, and Wasp rightfully wished it would stay in it until he got out of here. Big ugly scrapheap. He’d heard cons were bigger than bots, he’d seen the posters, but it was another matter entirely to come face to sleeping face with one.

               It didn’t make sense. How could they think he was a Decepticon spy?

               Pacing the cell soon became pointless with so little room to spare and Wasp’s aversion to turning his back to the war machine locked behind two buzzing walls of deadly voltage. He tried the berth and hated it, curling instead in front of the useless slab of scrap. It didn’t make sense. It didn’t make sense, he couldn’t be here, he couldn’t be trapped like this. Servos clenched into fists he forced himself through a stabilizing subroutine, so much more difficult without the ability to transform so much as a cog. Wasp was never one to panic; panicking didn’t get you to the top, but then again neither did being locked in the stockades and surrounded by cons. His optic pixelated again and Wasp tried to shut it out.

               How could they think he was a Decepticon spy?

               Didn’t they see? He didn’t even look like he could be a spy! Built from the first and most common of the artificially produced frametypes, without so much as a single modification to it and raised on planet, Wasp had been one of the only bots in his sector to be even accepted into the Autobot training camp. He was more Autobot than most Autobots! Slowly Wasp curled into himself more, resting his helm on his knees and rebooting his optics again. They’d figure it out. They had to, it was all just a mistake. Somewhere along the line things would stop adding up, they’d have to see they’d grabbed the wrong mech. It was only a small comfort, but Wasp latched onto the thought anyways, even as his visual feed blinked into static once more. Above he could hear the beep and patter of even more drones as they scattered about. They were everywhere. With beady little optics and not a shred of morality, he had heard about the minicons before.

               But they’d figure it out. They would. If he could convince himself, he could get through this. And in the meantime Wasp would fight down his trial no matter how long it took. A shuddering sob of a laugh shook the minibot as he realised the truth of his thoughts – as of right now he had all the time in the universe.

               He may have looked the part of a convict, huddled in the corner and clutching to himself as he went over convictions, facts, and protocols, but Wasp crushed it down mercilessly. He knew what he needed and inside he was filling himself with an ignorant, determined hope in efforts of crowding out the fear and the utter sense of betrayal he’d been subjected to. He wasn’t helpless, but this place did its best to ensure he felt so, and it was powerful. Across the gap the con shifted, and Wasp backed further into his cell.

               They’d figure it out. Autobots didn’t leave behind one of their own, not here. It’s not how Autobots functioned, it wasn’t how the machine worked, and it wasn’t the society they lived in. From beginning to end everyone was in it together, and anyways he had—

               He had friends outside. Friends who had to know the truth. Friends who trusted him, and who he’d come to trust.

               Wasp tried to forget how the very closest of those friends hadn’t even been able to look him in the optic when they’d slapped the stasis cuffs on. It… It was just shock. What else could it be? He was shocked too. In a few days they would realise – Wasp had never needed anyone for anything, but he wasn’t alone in this.

               The night stretched on, dim half-light never changing and steady patrol of minicons never ceasing. Horribly surreal, unbearably silent; Wasp had watched his entire future slide through his servos in the course of a single solar cycle. No one had made a grab yet for it but himself. He wouldn’t lay down and take it, he wouldn’t let himself panic, but even as he went through the subroutine again the stricken tightness in his spark never stopped. Once more Wasp’s vision blurred, but this time it wasn’t due to any glitching internal damage.

               Coolant left a bitter sting.

Chapter Text

Impression was everything. Everything. Anyone who said otherwise was either lying or an idiot. It was impression that would decide who you were to your peers and, more importantly, your superiors for the rest of your foreseeable lifecycle. That did of course also make impression an opportunity, if you weren’t a total bolt-brain, and Wasp was determined to make the most of his.

What he hadn’t bargained on however was how stupidly simple it would be. By all means he should have been insulted by the group of bots they had him in with: big, stocky, treads. If it weren’t for the sheer and obvious fact that Wasp could outshine them all with his speed if not his strength then the mini might have had half a mind to demand an explanation as to why he was saddled with the loose gears. As it was however and as far as Wasp was concerned, the imbalance in frametypes already put him a cut above the rest. This would be easy.

Optics on the goal.

Naturally it hadn’t taken long before he was swept up in the sad world of awkward small talk. They had time to kill and nerves to burn waiting for their drill instructor to finally show up; Wasp wasn’t immune to them, he was just better at hiding it. But the mech was… alright. Almost aggressively orange, who had ever rolled out of berth one cycle and decided that was a good colour? Apparently this mech had, and he also boasted endurance stronger than triple-reinforced titanium which was a bold claim Wasp was very upfront about needing to test directly. It was halfway through whaling on the mechs chestplate – he hadn’t lied, he wasn’t budging – that Wasp was informed he hit harder than the other guy.

Other who? Wasp couldn’t imagine he was referring to either of the two mechs around them, one was big enough to be a fragging con, and the other… well Wasp had a hard time reading him, but he looked strong. Bristling immediately he’d demanded an explanation; “What other guy?”

The mech shrugged. “’Nother little mini just like you. He’s yellow though.” His accent placed him clearly in the rural sector of Cybertron faster than any other indicator possibly could have and Wasp hoped his own voice wasn’t quite so obvious. “You city bots all look the same.” There was no possible way it could be.

Bad. Another mini in the group was bad news. It was a well-known fact in the city that if you’d seen one, you’d seen them all, and there went sliding Wasp’s claim to superiority. The other two cadets were situated nearby, one who’d been watching their challenge now staring up at the towers, and the other reading over some datapad who was politely reserved from everyone. They weren’t part of the conversation, but he could feel them listening in nonetheless.

Wasp laughed as if he’d heard a particularly good joke. “Oh. You mean that guy. Yeah, I know him. I think I saw him stall three times by the loading bay,” He leaned in conspiringly, “and between you and me it sounded like a carburetor problem.”

Hook, line, sinker; the mech bought it, but then again he didn’t seem particularly clever. Optics widened in the black screening. “Really? He was?”

Wasp wouldn’t be lost in the crowd. All that was left was to scoff and wave the other away. “Why would I lie about that?” This mech was nothing but an idiot. All pecs and no processor; it was a good thing Wasp knew how to deal with idiots. You just had to tell them what to think. “He’s probably from Kaon or some slag, you know what those mechs are like.” Wasp was banking on the fact that the country bot didn’t.

He must not have because he started laughing. The mechs that hailed from that city-state were slaggers; it wasn’t called the ‘Pits of Kaon’ for nothing after all.

“Why? Where are you from?”

The lie slid off of his glossa easily. “Praxus.” It was the closest thing to Iacon that wasn’t actually Iacon; believable and not a complete slagheap. It would work.

Impression was everything, and Wasp had passed the test and made his prospects. After that the game of 20 questions became simple; merely a manner of painting yourself in the best light possible, with a few harmless aberrations here and there. Wasp was good at what he did, and he needed to show it. When a flash of yellow caught his optic, he left to go confront the yellow mini, and put that bot in his place early.

Only one of them was making it out of here with a shot at the Academy.

He had to get used to the idea of never being alone.

Wasp onlined and the world was already in action, minicons marching by in their endless rounds, security cameras glowing from their corners, laser barriers buzzing with an almost renewed vitality… and a pair of sharp red optics which turned to stare directly at him. Before he could will the motion away Wasp was flailing backwards spectacularly and hit the wall behind him with a crack. His vision flickered once more before clearing up completely; it wasn’t glamorous, but then he was helm deep in prison horror, wasn’t he?

The con, the con across from him – the massive one who was easily three times his size at a sit –pulled a lazy face that was somewhere between amused and assured and laughed. A slow, stupid chuckle; Wasp knew that laugh.

“So, who’re you?”

Belatedly Wasp noticed that the glitch in his optic had healed overnight, unfortunately it gave him a clear view of the mech before him. The con was a brute. Every bit the slobbering, rotting sack of slag they’d always been taught cons were, from his freakish red optics to his disgusting purple wings. Wasp had never so much as spoken to a Decepticon and he didn’t plan to start now. Pointedly the mini turned his helm away from the idiot. He’d rather rust in silence.

Apparently the hint wasn’t taken because the con tried again. “Hey. Mr. Innocent, I’m talkin’ to you.” He spoke strangely, almost in a rumble but low as if he was trying to get between a whisper and a growl. Wasp looked over at the nickname and regretted it immediately; if you gave these types an inch they would try to take a mile.

“Nice show yesterday, I almost thought they were gonna believe you.” There were too many teeth in the grin and the con laughed again, this time quieter as another one of those flat-square minicons streamed past. This time Wasp wasn’t giving the slagger the satisfaction. The glare he had conjured was aimed at the wall instead, boring into it with all the frustration he’d built up as Wasp turned away again – this time with his whole frame. He may have been stuck with criminals, but he wasn’t going to interact with them if he could help it.

“So—‘ey! Are you ignoring me again?”

Wasp kept his optics trained on the dead grey wall reminding himself with conviction; the slagger couldn’t do anything here. Not from behind those lasers.

In his peripheral he could see the con shift. “Oh I get it. You think you’re better than me. I give you about a decacyle in here, Autobrat.”

Personally Wasp had been hoping he’d be out sooner than that. With a grunt the con gave up on him, instead busying himself with whatever rusting crankcases like him normally did locked inside a cell small enough to count as a storage closet. Apparently it involved tapping on the floor. Maniac. Wasp offlined his optics and waited. There was little else to do.

Half a klik passed. Tap. Tap.

A full klik passed. Tap-Tap. Tap-tap-tap.

Two kliks. Tap-tap-tap. Tap.

It wasn’t five kliks before a reaction had been dragged out of Wasp, and with his temper worn thin it was an explosive one. “Would you fragging stop that?!”

“Thought you were ignorin’ me.” Petulant, he was like an enormously large sparkling – not that Wasp knew anything about sparklings – and the mini snapped:

“What the frag is your malfunction, bolt-brain?”

He shouted just a little too loud, his voice synthesized just a little two shrill. Two things happened at once; the con across from him went quiet as dead space, and one of the minicons stopped short outside their cells. It was the same one who’d shocked him yesterday, or an identical copy at least with a single wheel for a pede and tiny optics made all the more scrupulous looking through the design of its helm and foremask. Unblinking the minicon turned sharply, boring its beady optics like lasers into Wasp’s own. He didn’t need another jolt to get the hint. This was a disturbance. Wasp went still, silent, hardly daring to glance away from the minicon as he waited a terse nanoklik.

And then another.

On the third the minicon righted himself to face to corridor and zipped past.

Wasp hadn’t the time to vent a sigh of relief before the giant con rounded on him somehow growling in an even lower register than before. “Rule number one, kid.” Both flicked their optics in tandem in the direction the drone had left. None returned. “Talk low, engine frequency, don’t give High Wire a reason to think yer actin’ out.”

Talking was not allowed in the stockades, but drones could not catch everything.

His name was Astrotrain, or as the guards called him prisoner number 02160, and he’d been here for a long time. Wasp didn’t ask for the information but he got it regardless along with a litany of arbitrary questions he refused to answer himself. It seemed the con was interested in what was happening outside of this veritable pit, the state of Cybertron even though Decepticons hadn’t been allowed pede or wing onto the planet in millions of stellar cycles. Understandable, he supposed, the stockades were designed without so much as a spark of stimulation, the thought of spending vorns in such a place was almost enough to have Wasp screaming right there. Astrotrain was big and ugly and stupid, but Wasp knew how to deal with stupid, he had learned how to deal with stupid, and he knew that the… train – he didn’t look like a train – was likely his best source of information at the moment. It was nothing but necessity.

Astrotrain – seriously, what kind of train had wings? – must not have had a neighbour for a long time because he hated Autobots, or kept saying that he did, but talked to Wasp regardless. He told him about the different minicons and the patrol cycles they apparently took, but what Wasp needed to know was the time it would take until he saw another Autobot again. It had to be sometime soon right?

 He had gotten laughed at for that one, and so had stomped the three paces his cell allowed away to sulk in the corner. No one stopped him of course because no one cared. Wasp found it was far too easy to act normally in this place, as if this was where he had functioned all his life. It hadn’t even been a full solar cycle.

It had been far too long already.

Stiffly he reminded himself that he’d have to come across someone who would listen to him sooner or later; he’d make them listen, and outside the stockade walls the gears were shifting already. He’d get out.

Rations came next. Wasp almost missed it. Another minicon, this one blue and cutesy and named Grindor if he remembered correctly, coded in to the keypad on Astrotrain’s cell and a shoddy cube of energon jutted out from a transformation seam on the wall. It closed as quickly as it had opened; quick, painless, and with as little interaction as necessary, that was the way in which the stockades operated. Wasp wondered where exactly on the wall his cube would conjure from. He was hungrier than he had realised, and though he was sure the fuel would taste like slag wanted it anyways. The minibot turned and left the area entirely.

What?

Wasp waited a full three kliks before turning on Astrotrain. “What the frag? Why didn’t I get any?” It was a difficult task to keep his voice in the right register – a soft sort of buzz to meet his sleek, efficient engine – but a glance from a passing drone indicated that he hadn’t quite succeeded.

Astrotrain waited until the minion had passed before shrugging massive shoulders. “Nother one’ll come.” The cube looked comically small in his massive servos as he downed it and Wasp felt his tanks rumbly emptily. They were better at duplicating the sound from his engine than he was.

Sure enough another Grindor showed up not ten kliks later. But it wasn’t there for him; the little drone stopped outside Astrotrain’s cell surveying the scene before chattering angrily upon realising that the cube it had come to repossess wasn’t on its designated retrieval spot. Grindor buzzed when the Decepticon laughed at it, but after a short game of cat and mouse had its prize and sped off to the next cell to repeat the aggravating cycle. There was nothing for Wasp, and the mini glared as the drone booted off again.

“They can’t treat me like this.” There was a basic right to life that was being denied here.

“What are you gonna do about it?” Picking crudely at his denta with broad digits Astrotrain hardly spared Wasp a glance. “Entitled glitch, save your energy.”

To say he was insulted was an understatement, and not wanting to risk discipline through betrayed emotion – he wasn’t going to be on the wrong end of High Wire’s shock again if he could help it – Wasp settled for flicking the con a couple of rude hand gestures. What reason did they have not to feed him? Had they just forgotten? It seemed unlikely in a place as structured as this and Wasp couldn’t help the foreboding lurch of his empty tanks. The notion they’d actually starve a prisoner to death was absurd of course. They wouldn’t do that. That went against all Autobot ideals and protocols… they wouldn’t do that. Somehow, maybe it was because of the uncomfortably tiny enclosures or the trigger happy guards, or maybe it was the total lack of anything resembling compassion in this place, but Wasp didn’t quite believe himself. With nothing else to do he curled up on the berth, about as comfortable as it had been the night previous, and doodled patterns into the wall with his servo.

He was frustrated again, stressed again. He wanted to know why they wouldn’t feed him. He demanded to know.

He didn’t have to wait long to find out.

At some point Wasp must have dozed off because in one klik he could see the regular stream of guards and light and the constant drone of energy barriers, and then in the next there was a small congregation of minicons outside of his cell. Wasp vaulted to a stand and nearly smacked his helm off the ceiling. Embarrassing. The only saving grace lay in the fact that there was hardly anyone around to see it. The minicons were unconcerned, and while a purple one plugged into the wall an orange one addressed him in a gratingly pleasant tone. It had been programmed to be appeasing, obviously.

[Prisoner 05166: You will be moved.]

Moved? Moved where? Wasp didn’t like the sound of that and shrunk back from the metallic voice that tried and failed to be placating.

If they had emotions at all Wasp would have suspected that the orange drone – Sureshock, that one was Sureshock – was enjoying its job far too much.

[Inducing stasis: 5, 4—]

What? No. They couldn’t do that again.

[3, 2—]

“Wait, stop!”

[1.]

His protest fell on basal deaf audios, when Sureshock hit one the results were instantaneous. The shock cut through his core like a laser, painless but forceful. His systems read blank and Wasp collapsed forward onto is knees, paralyzed from the neck down. Then the cell barrier buzzed away, shorted out in one nanoklik and infiltrated with drones in the next. The group of minicons were experienced in moving mechs, most easily three times his size, and Wasp would only watch helplessly as they strapped him still kneeling onto a gurney and carted him out of the room.

“Stop! What are you doing, get your grubby little servos off of me!” Well almost helplessly, but a sharp uni-toned reminder about disturbance from one of the High Wire drones shut him up quickly.

There was no way to know where they were going. Every corridor was monotonous and uniform; dim lights, blue barriers, lines of minicon guards like some sort of swarming insects that parted in perfect synchronization as they passed. As if it couldn’t make matters worse, his one source of information – as grudging as it was – had only waved boredly at the procession as it passed. Where were they going? What could they possibly want with him? Desperately Wasp fought to believe they wre letting him go, that the case had been cleared overnight and he would be a free mech again. The hope was there, but the trust was not; nothing ever went through the council overnight. Everyone knew that. Still there was nothing he could do but hope. Hope and attempt to ignore the optics hungry for stimulation that bore down on him as they passed. Wasp felt like he was on exhibit and tried not to stare back.

Optics on the prize, everything else was fear.

Dark. The room they brought him to was dark and grey and barren – some sort of holding room. It wasn’t the entrance, and Wasp’s vents hitched with a fresh bout of fear as the thought occurred to him: they… they didn’t offline mechs here, did they? They couldn’t. Frantically he darted his helm and optics around the room; two steel doors, several arrays like the one on his cell the drones could plug into, cheap strip lighting plastered to the walls. Wasp demanded, almost pleaded to know what they were doing with him, where they were, but he received no answer. Typical. Never once had he feared for his life in such uncertain terms.

The drones buzzed and beeped to each other. One approached the array and he yelled at it. It plugged in and his systems shook and strained with the effort to move. He wasn’t going offline here, he wouldn’t do it—they couldn’t do it! Wasp didn’t see the drone approach him from behind, didn’t feel the sting of manual override until the world shorted out and went black. Wasp screamed.

It was a long time until anyone came to get him. It felt much longer, an eternity of darkness and fear. Paralyzed and blinded Wasp hadn’t been able to fight off the coursing panic this time, heaving dry vents into the empty room. He waited, for there was little else to do, and it was agony. Nothing was certain then except for the nanokliks that ticked by slower than they ever had and the firm notion that he didn’t want whatever was waiting at the end of them. What had Wasp done to deserve this? He’d done nothing.

Silence permeated the room, it suffocated the room, drowning out his own venting and racing past his audios; when the door opened it was with a raucous whirr and the crashing stomp of pedes against the floor. Heavy, menacing, Wasp flinched. The only saving grace being that he managed to stay as silent as the room.

He waited.

There was a cough, the grumble of an old vocaliser clearing itself of static and then they spoke. “Alright Wasp, I’m sure you know the drill.”

It was an Autobot. He assumed at least, but it had to be. It certainly wasn’t one of the monotone drones addressing him. Wasp inclined his helm towards the source grateful for the minute relief.

“We’re going to ask you some questions and you’re going to answer them.” Another Autobot. They would listen to him.

A second voice spoke up. “The quicker you co-operate the easier this will be on you.” This voice wasn’t quite as gruff as the first, younger though no more uncertain than the other mech. Two of them then, this was good. Wasp started a nod before he realised just what they were telling him. What he’d gotten himself into.

“Wait a klik.” His own voice came out cracked and scared. Wasp could have cringed. “Are you interrogating me?”

The one mech, the younger one, chuckled. “What did you expect, that we take you out for a cube?”

He may have been scared strutless, but he wasn’t any less indignant about his treatment during this entire ordeal. If Wasp had control over his optics or his motor controls he would have sneered, “Well I never did get my damn ration this morning.” It wasn’t until the words were leaving his vocaliser that he entertained the notion that the mistake had likely been intentional.

Cruelty and impudence were defense mechanisms. When threatened Wasp had always launched himself right back at the source of his problems, clever enough, determined enough to find the best angle to undermine that which thought to harm him. This, despite its appearance, was not such a case, and these bots could help him if he played his cards right. Wasp changed his tune.

“I’m innocent!” This was an interrogation. There were real mechs. This was his chance. “The geniuses in command grabbed the wrong mech; I’m not the spy, if they had bothered to look into it you’d know that!” A proper explanation to proper Autobots. Mechs who knew better, mechs who would not only listen to him, but actually do something about it; Wasp was getting out of here. He’d been blinded, and he couldn’t see them but the silence that stretched between the bots was satisfying.

And then it was disconcerting.

“Do you think we don’t know about you, Wasp?”

What did they know about him?

He didn’t want to find out. “We talked to your ‘friends’ and we got some interesting answers from them. Seems you told every bot you met a different story didn’t you?” Their words were all he could hang on to in the fog of sensory deprivation, and as the younger sounding mech's voice turned hard and cruel Wasp swallowed thickly. Pushing down panic; to say he hadn’t always been truthful was an understatement and Wasp knew it.

“It wasn’t because I’m a spy, I—“

“Oh really? We couldn’t even get a straight answer as to the city state you hail from.” They didn’t give him time to explain. They wouldn’t let him do anything.

“That’s because no one wants to admit they’re from Altihex!” Obviously, the city was a slagheap and Wasp had always deserved better even if he had been well and above the most unfortunate mechs there. Wasp had seen his opportunity in boot camp and invented his own past to suit his needs. It wasn’t that unheard of was it? He hadn’t lied to the government, only his idiot friends and teammates. Karma came back in the worst of ways.

“Mute it, traitor!” Loud and vicious his first interrogator rejoined the scene and Wasp cringed back from the assault in the darkness.

“We know who you are, we found the device coded for Decepticon transmission, and we saw the hacks you attempted to make into the system!”

“Did you think tampering with the database would go unnoticed, Wasp?”

“You’re not hiding anything from us.”

The onslaught was relentless. He couldn’t move, he couldn’t see, he couldn’t even speak in amongst all that yelling. Wasp started to yell back. “If you already know then why are you questioning me!?” Stress was winning, and he wasn’t thinking – but how dare they yell at him when he’d told them so many times: “I’m innocent!”

Another stretch of silence, a half laugh, gruff and low; Wasp was jerked forward in a rough motion. “You’re going to start with the codes to the Decepticons transmission frequency.”

The what?

He was scared. He’d never been treated like this. “I don’t know them! I’m not a spy!” He spoke like a broken record, but Wasp had nothing else to say. Shaking he forced down the wave of static growing in his vocaliser.

At some point the second mech had moved behind him, displaced and jarring now as they spoke. “You’re not saving anybody Wasp. You’re not helping. Do you think the Decepticons care if you’re here with us or on the field? You’re expendable. You mean nothing to them.”

All commands to move fell upon deadened systems. Stasis was stasis. Wasp’s voice was full of static. “That’s because I’m not their guy!” He had to give them an answer. They wouldn’t stop until they got their answer. Wasp threw the most likely candidate on the chopping block and wondered why he hadn’t sooner. “Bumblebee is! He’s the one you want, he—“

He didn’t register that he’d been pulled back until his helm snapped forward again with the momentum. There was no time to think about it before something hard and square slammed against his jaw. Wasp was stunned. Lolling his helm to one side dumbly and poking his glossa tenderly against the inside of his cheek. Surely his mouthguard had been dented, he could feel it jabbing in jagged points against his faceplate. Though slowed by his induced stasis the pain blossomed out down his neck and to his spinal struts and Wasp stuttered.

Neither bot was talking to him anymore.

“I’ve had enough of this. Put him through the works.”

“Traitor deserves it anyways.”

“I’m not a traitor!” It had taken too long to find his voice again, but he had to protest the accusation, it was all he could think to do. It wasn’t helping in the slightest.

“Can it!” Wasp flinched in preparation for a blow this time, he’d been in enough dumb fights to know when another hit had been instigated, but it only served to prove against him in the moment, a fact he could neither help nor explain. These slaggers hit hard, and Wasp coughed ragged static and attempted to keep his processor. The universe was black and loud and volatile, and he couldn’t escape it, he couldn’t forsee what the next move was, when the next punch, or accusation, or demand would come.

Optics on the goal, optics on the goal; he couldn’t even see it.

It took a klik of shuffling, silence, and arbitrary comment from one to the next and then something was humming as it came to life beside him.

Wasp quailed. “Wh-What is that?” He fell into panic. “What are you doing?” Hysteria. “You can’t treat me like this! I’m an Autobot citizen!”

Gruff Voice didn’t care to keep him quiet this time. “I don’t see an insignia.”

It had been taken from him.

One of the mechs plugged something into the central port on his chestplate – he hadn’t even felt them open his manual systems until the connection was made – but offlined from the neck down he was powerless to stop them. Helpless.

“Let’s see if you feel like talking after this.”

They weren’t listening, but Wasp was and when the machine flicked to work it was with a quiet whirr of high powered gears.

At first he didn’t feel anything, anticipation climbing only higher and pushing his ventilations out in sharp short bursts waiting for a pain that never came. Then something clicked deep inside him, so much so that he didn’t hear so much as feel it, the dull thud of something moving against numbed system. Within a flicker his HUD scrawled a new message across his vision: T-cog online. 93.6% operational.

Then it jumped to life.

Wrong. It felt wrong. System errors and warnings flashed across his vision with increasing frequency, the only thing he could see in the pitch blackness of dysfunctional optics as his processors came to the realisation that his t-cog was acting on its own accord. It felt wrong. Insistently, his systems warned Wasp to shut down the program; tried to do so autonomously, but his processors had no control over his frame and prompted by external machinery it thought to be his own they went for the transformation.

Wasp screamed. Metal screeched across metal. Powerful surges of energy coursed through his frame with no place to send them, his internals moved to shift but his plating was stuck still in stasis and they pushed against their constraints. It hurt. It felt wrong. His frame trembled with the abuse it was forced through and his vocaliser wouldn’t stop straining through his screeches. System errors flew across his optics in angry red script. He shook and screamed – shocking static torn from him – as the pain, grinding and twisting internal pressure, came to a shuddering stop. The reprieve lasted only long enough to register the fact that it had happened at all. Another jolt came quickly, coursing through overstrained circuitry and jamming gears as he was forced through another attempted transformation. It wasn’t going to happen, but the notion was proving about as useful as his own innocence. Wasp felt as if he was being torn inside out.

Once, twice, three times they forced him through it before leaving him dry, broken, and gasping for enough air to cycle through overheated circuitry exhausted with the efforts of tearing him apart. His own systems were turning on him.

“Feeling any more co-operative?”

The voice broke through the pain oppressive and ominous, all Wasp could manage was a pitiful groan.

“I don’t suppose that you are, but I’ll ask you again. What are the frequency codes?”

Why did they care so much? Wasp didn’t want to hear it, he didn’t want to know. Forming coherent thought was proving to be even more of a task than conjuring coherent words, but pulled forward aching again and prompted roughly for an answer Wasp sputtered them out anyways.

“I don’t know! Nobody ever told me!”

It was true. It was true. He didn’t know anyone.

“Which bots do you report to? Position and designation!”

“I’m not—“ That wouldn’t help. That had never helped. But in that moment it was only one of two things Wasp knew how to say. The air was thick and hot and burning, and it took a moment for Wasp to realise the smoke was coming from him. “I don’t know!”

“Where are the other operatives located? Which sectors? I want names!”

He was coughing sparks, he could feel it. He was burning inside, he could smell it. The fried wires of his own circuitry making him sick and dizzy. “I’m… I’m innocent!” His processors and vocaliser were the only things he did retain control over, but in the end even they betrayed him. Wasp choked.

The younger voice came back again, but Wasp didn’t find the change any relieving. Just a different flavour of a beat down. “We can do this all night cycle, Wasp. We don’t get tired of it, but you… well how long do you suppose your t-cog is going to last under these conditions?”

A direct threat. This wasn’t happening. Wasp couldn’t see them, he didn’t know them, he was forced to depend on them. And if he didn’t give them something they’d send him back to the pit. Wasp gasped, he slobbered, he blubbered, and he tried to give them something they could use. He wasn’t cut out for this. “I was framed! It’s gotta be, gotta be someone else in the platoon!”

A scoff was all he received. “Put him through it again.”

“No! No! It’s Bumblebee! It’s—“

This time it was his own screaming that cut him off, laced with white noise, and rattling with something long since come loose in his struggles. Autobot interrogation was designed for Decepticons, and that meant it didn’t end until they got what they wanted. Wasp had nothing to give them.

He couldn’t be sure when they’d returned him to his cell. He couldn’t be sure when the stasis had worn off. The harsh stream of light that had ambushed his sensory networked had alerted him to the use of his optics once more, but Wasp hadn’t so much as acknowledged the change. To put it quite simply, he was in misery. No amount of hope that it would soon be over or assurance that he would get his over those who had wronged him was enough to alleviate the ache this time. It was an ache through every sort of his sensors that permeated from his very core.

A long time passed before he was able to make it from his knees to the berth. He sat upon it heavily, catching only the red glare of Astrotrain’s optics on him again before he hid his helm behind his knees. Not this; he didn’t want to deal with this, he didn’t want any of it. Wasp wanted to go home. Not home in the sense of where he’d been protoformed, he didn’t give a scrap about where he’d originated from, but where he’d been before. Home with his friends and his future and the overlying sense that everything was going according to his plans. Wasp had always had his plans, he’d always been fast enough, smart enough, to look ahead and prepare for it. He was elite guard material short and simple, headed for great things and recognition throughout the galaxy. But he’d never been helpless before, and he didn’t know what to do.

Sometime into his reverie a drone began to beep at him. He ignored it and the annoying thing buzzed louder, impatient for his attention. What did it want? Drained and bleary Wasp glared out at the little scraplet. It was the energon drone from before – or at least one that looked like it – and a cube of pink fuel was dispersed through the compartment in his bare cell quickly after the minicon became satisfied that it had his attention.

Energon. Finally. And only through a cruel sort of serendipity that it had arrived well after Wasp had lost any appetite. The mini had half a mind to refuse it out of spite, but even he wasn’t that obstinate. Or stupid. This was all he was getting today.

It took a few tries, and a lot protocols he had to squash down, but shakily Wasp shuffled the few steps over to his ration. His plating still felt as if it would rattle and twist clean off, and he collapsed back down where he was in hopes of subduing it.

Astrotrain hadn’t given a scrap about the fact he’d been tortured – and Wasp wasn’t sure if he expected a con to or not – but he was interested now, leaning forward intrudingly even though he was locked well out of harm’s way.

“So they are giving you special treatment.”

The smirk that came with it wasn’t kind, but Wasp didn’t have it in him to care. He downed the cube in a few short slurps – it was about time someone have him special treatment. The energon tasted like slag, and it probably always would. Wasp didn’t care.

When the staggering dizziness set in a few breems later however, followed by more hardware warnings and the overwhelming need for recharge and a systems reboot, he began to care. Bait for a trap Wasp couldn’t predict.

“A sleeper agent?! You mean they had him set to go off at any cycle?”

“I believe the protocols have already been activated.”

He couldn’t see. Wasp onlined slowly, and he couldn’t see again, couldn’t move again, but it was different than before. Instead of the fear and vulnerability, he felt open, raw, and numb. Again voices swirled by in a mist of confusion, they weren’t the same ones as before and he wanted to be scared—should have been scared, but there was nothing there. No warnings or errors appeared on his visual feed, no feedback returned from his systems, he felt like he was running off of spark alone. His spark was scared. His frame was dead.

“But how can that be? That’s highly inconsistent with every other sleeper case we’ve had.” They were attempting soft, secretive tones but it filtered through so loudly to Wasp. Who were they?

“The files are present.” Whoever that was, they had an awful voice synthesizer. It came through monotonous and synthetic. A bland tone that was difficult to follow. “However they are in a different format than they’ve ever been; it’s a larger more complex file.”

Were they aware he was here? Where was here?

“Can’t you crack it?” This one was accented, but he couldn’t tell from where.

“What’s the point?” A third one. Suddenly, he hadn’t expected it even in his haze, and this one loud, too loud, unbearably loud. Did he know how loud he was? “He’s a sleeper, and that means short and simple that he doesn’t know anything. You’d be wasting time making him crack it!”

“So you suggest we bypass the whole incident, Wheeljack?” Who were they talking about?

“No, I suggest you be thankful they caught him at all.” Were they talking about him?

Wasp wanted to go back to sleep.

Tensions were rising, even he could feel it, and the voices who were as fragmented as he felt continued talking.

“What ever happened to our ministry of science that the Decepticons are gaining technology over us?”

“Hey! I can program a processor during my recharge cycle Highbrow, don’t think I can’t, but these malware and override protocols are a whole ‘nother kettle of cogs. Whoever they’ve got programming ‘em is a maniac!”

That awful monotone spoke up again and both others stopped, like he held some kind of respect. “There are actions we can take. We may be able to retrieve a large amount of data from the prisoners latent memories, the subroutines record even while his functions are overridden. I predict a 73.64% success rate through this method.”

“Well, why wasn’t this brought up earlier? We’ll have to go with that.”

He was swimming. Through waves of broken code and data, something flickered and moved towards him, and he could see it? He could see it.

“Hey Perce… is he online?”

“Scrap.”

Routine was setting in far too quickly. The next cycle Wasp woke up to the busy but monotonous scene he’d left. Fuzzy processor, disjointed thoughts. He didn’t speak to Astrotain until the… shuttle annoyed him into it and he didn’t receive his rations at all. Wasp knew what came next. It didn’t stop him from running cold regardless, systems threatening to freeze outright and still so sore. He wasn’t freaking out, he wasn’t freaking out, he wasn’t freaking out—he was terrified regardless. There was a glitch, something he was missing. Wasp paced his cell like an animal but he couldn't find what it was and didn’t resist when they came to get him, it would only be more degrading.

Today it was ‘shock therapy’ to ‘jumpstart his databanks’, but they kept him scared, they kept him vulnerable. Gruff Voice sounded less enthusiastic about the event than the other and Wasp turned his attention solely to the mech behind it asking repeatedly that Autobot Command review his case and give him the trial he deserved. Optics on the goal.

He thought the fear and anticipation of whatever they were planning to do would be worse than the punishment. He thought it couldn’t be worse. He was wrong.

If he’d had something to tell them, he wouldn’t be burning. If he’d been the spy he wouldn’t have fire crawling along his circuitry and explosions popping behind his optics, audios, his mind. If he’d been a con he wouldn’t be screaming.

But Wasp was innocent. What a surprise that they didn’t listen to him.

Chapter Text

Wasp had been protoformed to live alongside the elite, it’s what he was built for, it’s what he wanted to do and that was never so obvious as it had been when he was training in preparation for the Autobot Academy. Boot camp had been his to take, and Wasp hadn’t wasted so much as a nanoklik of that opportunity. Theirs was a world of rules to bend, chances to take, and alliances to forge. Wasp kept in the clear with his superiors, could show off (and show up) with the best of them, and knew which bots were worth talking to; he was in his element, and it wasn’t a fact that escaped him. One day there’d come a cycle where everyone knew his name.

               Of course that didn’t for a nanoklik mean he couldn’t have fun with it. Work hard; play hard, it wasn’t so much for the balance as it was for the gain, he liked building his repertoire since he’d decided who he was going to be. This time he’d gotten a good one and he was smug crossing the grounds towards the barracks.

               He caught Ironhide just outside the common grounds where the mech was chatting with the mudflap – the other two were locked in some discussion Wasp didn’t actually care about either, and it seemed the whole squadron was present. For some reason Wasp couldn’t quite fathom Ironhide liked talking to Bulkhead. As if they had anything in common just because they’d been onlined in similar sectors. Ironhide was no mud slinger, even if he sounded like one. He personally knew one of the biggest old vets from the Great War – had done offhand jobs for him apparently – and had high ambitions for the elite guard. Only as an officer of course, but Wasp would be commanding the squadron one day.

               Slinking over to the pair, Wasp tried not to convey just how little he thought of Ironhide’s choice in conversation partner. He didn’t try very hard though.

               “Hey Wasp!” Bulkhead waved with a wide arc and Wasp ignored him outright.

               “Cancel any plans you had for the cycle, we’re going to get some real training done.” He was smug, but Ironhide half grimaced at the thought of doing any more work than they already did.

               Wasp’s tone had him grinning again nonetheless; it only meant one thing. “What did ya find this time, Wasp?”

               A passcard. Wasp waved it between the two mechs smugly. “Some idiot Beta must have left it behind. It’ll get us directly into the advanced training facilities.” Simulated combat, virtual reality missions, advanced one-on-one and even team combat against the very best in Decepticon AI’s, the facility was only for Alpha and Beta cadets; those who would be progressing directly into the Autobot Academy. Entry level Omegas such as them could take more than 5 stellar cycles before they reached that level, but the only thing stopping them from pushing that number was a lack of access. They had that now.

               Ironhide pulled Wasp’s servo up to get a better view of the card, the two shared a grin, but it was their unwelcome company that had to ruin the fun.

               “Uhhh, do you really think that’s a good idea guys?” Bulkhead clearly didn’t think so, and Wasp clearly didn’t care what he thought. “That area is restricted for a reason you know.”

               Typical. At the word ‘restricted’ one ugly horned helm was turning their way, and Wasp sneered. “Well maybe for you or your little bumbler friend it is, but Ironhide and I have an actual future with the elite guard.”

               As always Bulkhead wasn’t thinking of himself first, he sighed. “You really oughta be nicer to him Wasp.”

               Well that was a laugh, so much so that it’s exactly what Wasp did, leaning an arm back to brace himself on Ironhide as he threw his helm back into it. Why did Bulkhead care? It’s not like he had any allies here.

               “For the last time! He’s not my friend!”

               Case in point. There was the bumbler, timing as impeccable as ever and with Longarm behind him watching the group. Wasp had a full show now, and pressed a mocking servo to his spark mimicking sympathy. “Don’t say that! He’s right there, he might hear you.”

               It was a game with quick turns, one he always came out successful in. Bumblebee faltered, Bulkhead shifted uncomfortably, and Wasp twirled the passcard in his servo, leaning back on his friend casually now. “Face it Bumbler, a bot like you wouldn’t last five kliks in a real training module.”

               “I would so!” Predictably the yellow mini went for the card and Wasp nearly stumbled over Ironhide’s pedes trying to keep it away from him. It took some creative passing between the two of them and exactly one sneer before Bee just lunged at Wasp instead, but their tussle didn’t last long before someone was interrupting again.

               “Oh, let him come Wasp. It never hurts to have an extra pair of optics around.” Longarm. Always doing his best to appease everyone, he was also the most experienced mech in the squad and… probably the most skilled too. Longarm was someone Wasp couldn’t ignore. Scowling behind his mouthguard, Wasp pushed Bee away from him and looked to Ironhide; the deciding vote.

               The orange mech chuckled, that stupid country bot laugh he always did before anything and placed a friendly servo on Wasp’s shoulderplating. Ironhide was elite guard material, he knew how to handle himself. “How ‘bout you show ‘em how an elite guard commander fights?”

               That he could do, and with a smug quirk of his optics Wasp was turning away from the group and waving the card above his helm as he sauntered towards the training grounds. “My card, my rules. You’d better not get us caught.”

               The minicons were acting out of order again. No more chaotically than normal, no they were still a perfect algorithm of order and agenda, but instead with a different wave to their pattern than they normally used. Wasp hadn’t known he’d been paying enough attention to notice the change, but he had and that probably wasn’t a good sign. He wanted to ask what they were up to. Wanted to, but unwilling to risk it with Leader-1, the little drone commander and the second worst of them all, lurking so close by. He’d been caught twice already for ‘disturbance’ and didn’t want to risk any more discipline from the damn drones if he could help it.

               Besides, it wasn’t his fault he kept getting caught, his fragging vocaliser was on the fritz.

               Pacing his cell wasn’t giving him answers any faster, and as much as he tried to work past it his frame ached from repeated interrogations, or whatever they were calling it now. It wasn’t everyday they wheeled Wasp off to jam electrodes in his helm and pump volts of energy through his frame, but it was often enough that every time the mini found his optics offlined in the now familiar room it was like he’d never left. It was taking its toll; joints popping and squealing in a way that they just shouldn’t have in a bot of his age and quality of manufacture. He knew torture when he was subjected to it. It made him fidgety.

               What were they planning? Wasp scratched impatient lines down the sides of his cell as he waited. A glance to Astrotrain – the only real mech he had access to, notwithstanding the ones in the cells on either side of him that he heard from but never spoke to – and the scrapheap was grinning at him; pointedly looking between the drones and Wasp like he knew something. Smug bastard. Wasp should have just ignored it of course, but instead he flipped a couple of rude gestures in Astrotrain’s direction, which was just as good. The drones weren’t coming for him this time that he knew. Their pattern wasn’t right for it.

               How long had he been here that he was starting to take account of their patterns?

               Nothing happened. For a long time nothing happened, and when the tension reached its peak with no sign of the springing snap of action that could relieve it Wasp began to entertain the notion that he was going stir crazy in this place. It was all in his helm.

               That’s when the floor lurched backwards, sending Wasp stumbling with it.

               Instant panic. He was still struggling for his footing when the high pitched ringing started and not a nanoklik later drenched in a wave of high pressure solvent. A harmless barrage, but it hit Wasp like a lightning bolt and the mini shrieked nearly stumbling over himself again in his leap away from the spray.

               It was shower solvent he came to realize slowly as deep uproarious laughter broke out behind him, spraying out of a row of vents that had been transformed from a seam in the back wall. But that was it. Wasp stared up at the solvent that was slowly soaking him numbly for a moment, no longer feeling like he enduring electrocution and instead left with the sensation of being slapped. Was that it? No cleanser, no mitten, not even a scrubber? This was it? This is what they considered a shower?

               Indignant, the mini turned to his only source of information. He was still laughing from under his own downpour.

               “Did he jump?” Whoever was on Wasp’s left called out and Astrotrain nodded, still chuckling like he’d never seen a better stunt in his life.

               “He jumped like a glichmouse!”

               Wasp glowered. “What the frag is this?” A point to the shower earned him only an unimpressed glance from the shuttle.

               “What’s it look like?” Under the shrill noise of liquid pushed through piping and the dull roar of it splattering across cell walls they were able to talk more freely. There was little room for Astrotrain to get the crest of his helm under the spray, but the massive mech maneuvered himself under it happily nonetheless. “They’re givin’ the cells a rinse.”

               Mindboggling. He had to make a joke out of everything. Wasp sneered in response.

“Well they must be, this could hardly constitute as anything else.” Or perhaps the aim was to accomplish both tasks at once. Solvent poured down both the walls and Wasp’s frame, escaping down a grate in the sloped floor, and leaving behind a scent overbearing and clinical in its cleanliness. “What do they expect us to wash ourselves with?”

Astrotrain shot him that look that was somewhere between annoyed and amused, the one that had become synonymous with ‘stupid Autobot’ and rubbed along one of his shoulderplates. “Ya got servos, don’t ya?”

That was vulgar. That was abhorrent, it was bad enough running your servos down your own frame like that in a proper enclosed washrack, nevermind with everyone – Wasp wasn’t doing it. He stood stiffly in the downpour and glared offended at the Decepticon.

“What?” Astrotrain was working the solvent down his arms and grinned. “Don’t you want to wash the smell of burnt circuits off of ya?”

That did it. Wasp jolted again, moving faster than his aching frame allowed as he flipped himself around to grumble on the wet, padless berth with his back to his company. It was bad enough to be hosed down in the same quarters one slept in, but to be expected to scrub your own frame like an animal was just depraved. There would come a time stellar cycles from now where Wasp would change his tune about the ordeal, as they all did, but for now he was simply above that level of degradation.

Ten kliks later the showers stopped again, cells realigning back into their normal configuration with a staggering click of cogs and pistons. They were left to drip dry.

It should have been a difficult process adjusting to life in the stockades, it should have been impossible; Wasp managed it. As the shock and indignation settled the dull standstill of monotony took its place, surrealism fading and leaving only memories of the outside. It hadn’t been so long ago Wasp had been onlining every morning to the piped ceiling of the barracks and Ironhide snoring like he'd broken his muffler beside him, but it felt like another life entirely. Now it was four walls, close enough to be claustrophobic and set after set of mindless drones.

He got used to them too, their chittering and beeping and the stock phrases each repeated with no knowledge of what they were actually saying, and in time the constant glare from their optics and the notion that they were always watching him. There came a day Wasp also got used to them carting him off blind and frozen to a dark room with a darker purpose – one that was never made perfectly clear to him – though ‘worn down’ was probably a more apt description of it. He was worn, but stubbornly refused to admit it.

Things that had once stood to him as appalling eventually filtered through to normal, commonplace, unimpressive; he even grew accustomed to the way Astrotrain always seemed to know when he was about to online. Most mornings he awoke to some bad attempt at humour or the – okay he’d figured it out, he was both a shuttle and a train – mech just outright staring at him. It had been unnerving at first, but like anything else had become routine. But what else was there to do in this spark forsaken place but get on each other’s nerves?

Wasp hated the Decepticons by his coding, naturally, and Astrotrain was no fan of Autobots; they weren’t friends by any stretch of the imagination or even friendly, but they occupied each other’s time regardless. It was necessity. It was unavoidable. Astrotrain would talk about how the place was designed that way, sometimes, when he wasn’t making an aft of himself. About how they’d built every corner and every inch with a plan in mind. The plan was basal isolation, wearing them down until a point where they could see their comrades but couldn’t so much as think to ask for help. The monotony, the routine, the dim lighting, droning sounds, and cramped quarters, it had all been planned for; designed that way to subdue them. Or that’s what he told Wasp at least, with utmost seriousness as he glanced sporadically to the side at something beyond what the mini could see. He’d seen it happen, allegedly, some mechs were more susceptible to the virus that was infecting them, the Autobots intended to numb their minds with repetition and make them lose the cause they fought for, and it worked.

Nothing but Decepticon hype, Wasp thought he was an idiot. Laser barriers and hyper-reinforced walls were more than enough to subdue, not to mention constant policing from the minicons; anything else was just a result of cutting as many corners as they could get away with and throwing the standard of living out the window. It wasn’t intentional tortue; Wasp knew torture. More than one argument broke out against the concept, most of which had Wasp shouting at the shuttle across from him and whoever was on the left side of his cell – it had to be a con – and all of which ended with at least one warning of : [PRISONER: DESIST DISTURBANCE].

At some point Wasp would learn that Astrotrain wasn’t as stupid as he was perceived to be either, after all, why bother holding them online in cells at all when they could just induce modified stasis?

Wasp never heard from the con to his right. Not once.

“Alright Wasp, think you can give us a few more?” He really didn’t want to. “After all, nothing is too much for the cause, and you’re a good little Autobot aren’t you?”

He hated him. He really hated him. Wasp knew it as acutely as he knew just how much he was capable of doing about the situation at the moment: nothing. Even informing the mech of exactly which port he could go and shove it in was currently outside the realm of Wasp’s capabilities with his frame smoking and twitching and popping as it was. There was never any respite from the onslaught of electrocution. Groaning in protest at the mech behind him, Wasp tried in vain to online his optics once more. It was of course unsuccessful.

Once upon a time he wouldn’t have thought Autobots capable of enjoying torture so much, and less so that it would be legal within the system to this degree. Of the two mechs that had questioned him the first time, only one was still behind the switch. Gruff voice mech had been replaced with another – all he could tell about the new guy was that he was cold as ice – decacycles ago. He thought maybe Gruffy hadn’t had the tanks for it, and if you thought about it that was kind of funny. Wasp had never been naïve, but he had been taught that it was the Decepticons who were the sadists.

He spat his own fizzing oral solvents on the floor and the mech he’d come to hate so much tutted derisively. “You can handle a few more.”

The switch flipped, but Wasp was prepared for it, and thrown mercilessly back into his world of searing heat and bright flashes of light; a current that buzzed and tore through his very core. The noise ringing in his audio sensors was his own screaming, completely involuntary but it ripped his vocaliser to shreds. He couldn’t stop it any more than he could the pain and heat and pressure that burned behind his optics. Systematic. The charges targeted his memory banks in specific patterns, he couldn’t feel the work but his internal scans dutifully relayed the information back to him.

[Error. Corruption in banks: MEM:\\HPPOCMP_1.xex, MEM:\\Autnom_circ11.log.xex. Failsafe initiated.]

[Error. Damage to Autonomic-Somatic link. 47% Operational. Self-Repair disabled.]

[Error. Optics inoperable – induced stasis.]

[Hidden file MEM:\\458 itusem_botchedopportunity113.log Accessed.]

They were looking for something. Something he’d locked away in his memory banks from everyone, including himself. That’s why they kept bringing him in. It made sense given that they still believed he was a spy, but the logic behind the action didn’t soothe Wasp any. What they were looking for couldn’t be found; it didn’t exist, he wasn’t a spy. They’d never get what they wanted, but the technology behind their methods did work. Wasp’s cracking vocaliser splintered ugly and raw in his throat as his memory banks cobbled together a file he’d long since forgotten.

Old friends he’d abandoned in yet another bid to get ahead in life, Wasp hadn’t even realised he’d forgotten it. He’d had an oppourtinity as a youngling, a chance he and a friend had managed to wrangle for themselves, one that could get them out of the city. Well one of them at least. That had been the problem. It wasn’t a fantastic job by any means, but it was a start and work was hard enough to find in Altihex, even for the mechs who had gotten a decent education as Wasp had. It wasn’t the credits he was after, it was the chance to get out, so he deserved the job more. Wasp was smart, but his friend had been tough and the job had called for strength and endurance; he’d done what he had to and relayed the wrong directions. Only Wasp had shown up at the job cite – the project was cancelled two solar cycles later and left him with only his burning bridges. It had never bothered him.

“He’s got something.” Cold-bot could somehow always tell.

“Took long enough.” Another flick and the pressure died down to aftershocks. They left him convulsing and the thick smell of fried circuits finally began to make themselves apparent. This time it was coolant Wasp spat away, running down his faceplates and collecting along his mouthguard.

“So, what have you got for us, Wasp?”

“Overhaul!” Wasp cringed as his vocaliser protested and rattled, but he had to tell them something. “Overhaul was my—was a contact.” No, he’d been a friend, but Wasp had already thrown him under the fire once.

He lied. He had to. The first time it had been out of nothing but desperation; he’d done it to make them stop. So they could have what they wanted, so they didn’t have to hurt him anymore, but Wasp quickly learned that it wasn’t enough. After he’d broken the first time they had only doubled their efforts. Now progress was being made, as far as the Autobots were concerned, secrets were coming out. What they didn’t yet know was that all of them were Wasp’s own lies.

 Sparks showered as something his nociceptors couldn’t sense snapped inside him, and Wasp wished not for the first time that he could turn his HUD off as well as his optics.

It was something in his hard-drive. He didn’t even know what that piece did!

He couldn’t stop relaying fake tips to them, not now that he’d started, not when Cold-bot could tell when they’d unlocked a file and his partner – one Wasp had never even bothered to nickname because he hated him that much – was more than content to fry him into a smoking pile of scrap. Who knew what they’d do if they found out he’d been lying? He couldn’t afford to stop.

Hanging his helm at a loll he hoped they were done and listened as the room drifted in and out between his audios. The mechs were talking again, but Wasp was only waiting for one thing.

“That’s all you’re getting out of him today.” Cold, clinical, he hoped Cold-bot got drafted into a suicide mission. Some dead space mission in the middle of nowhere.

“Well I guess that’s a wrap then. Send the minicons back in.” And that one. That one he just wanted to fry.

               In the growing futility of his waking life Wasp’s mind drifted more to the outside world than he should have let it.  There was simply too much time on his hands between recharge cycles, but constantly dwelling on the past, on what might be happening without him, was a poison.

               Did life just go on without him? It was hard to imagine that it could, but naïve to assume that it wouldn’t. Cadets would still be training for top positions, Sentinel would be screaming his helm off, the Academy would be scouting for talent, and his unit would be faring worse without him. For sure. That bumbler might have fooled everyone once, but he couldn’t hide behind his lies forever. Revenge was a slow burn, Wasp knew that, and if he was absolutely certain of one things it was that he wasn’t going to miss the chance to personally thank that Bumblebee for sending him here. Watch the little yellow slagger burn for his treason under the same bots he actually believed he was good enough to work for. A lifecycle in the stockades for framing an innocent was all he deserved. Did he even realise the gravity of what he’d done? Wasp doubted it, there was no way the little glitch wasn’t being played, but the thought of the bumbler forced behind his own barrier provided Wasp with his own perverse sense of enjoyment.

               So let the little gear grinder think he’d done the world a service, he’d bumble his way through training and he’d slip up sooner or later. Someone would catch on, maybe Sentinel, maybe Longarm; Wasp had one better because he had Ironhide.

               Wasp had never been one to rely on others; he didn’t need it most of the time, but isolated and aching in the constant light of his cell he was relieved to know there was someone else he could count on. Someone outside who had connections and could make people listen. Ironhide knew people, he’d worked for an old hero of the state, of the Great War itself, and he wouldn’t just stand down and let anyone rust unjustly in prison. Ironhide was smarter than he seemed and Wasp knew that better than anyone.

               It kept him going some nights.

               “What… Wha—… What are they doing?” It took three tries to get his voice back into the right register and hurt like the pit to maintain it but Wasp needed to know.

               The minicons were at it again, filtering past in a long progression of purple, orange, and brown, with a squat Leader-1 at the front as always. He’d come to recognise each individual drone at nothing more than a glance, Reachout, Sureshock, and Duck-e in this group, and had long since learned the jobs and designations of each.

               The blue ones and most well liked were Grindor, and they were in charge of prisoner maintenance; namely energon. Once a day the little gremlin chittered and whirled angrily for cubes to be returned and servos to stay away from the transformation hub they were pushed through. Astrotrain had an ongoing war with the dumb thing that he thought was hilarious and Wasp thought was nothing but pathetic. The drone was annoying enough as is.

               Duck-e and Reachout were the mechanic and engineer respectively and came in ugly frames with uglier paint jobs. They didn’t interact with prisoners much, nor did they have the means to do so, but emitted these annoying high frequency tones instead as a means of communication. Only the other drones could decipher it. Apparently the drone language changed in dialect in a sporadic algorithm to prevent inmates from translating it, at least that’s what Astrotrain had told him but it wouldn’t have been the first time the shuttle lied outright for his own amusement.

               “Whaddya mean? They’re having a parade.” Just like that. Wasp buzzed as the Decepticon twisted a servo behind his back to scratch at blunt wings.

               “Frag off.” Wasp squeaked it more than he meant to.

               “Ey! Watch your fragging tone.” He meant it literally, and Wasp cursed as he tried to force his voice back into the right register. The mech on his left grumbled something about ‘fragging yourself over again’ but as usual Wasp ignored it. What did he know?

               It only took two tries this time, but Wasp wasn’t taking any chances and rumbled his engine along with his words to help mask it. Crass maybe, but given the present company he didn’t really care. “Tell me what they’re doing, numb nodes.”

               Astrotrain grumbled, his own voice markedly lower than anything Wasp could produce. “The slag should I know? Wait and see you little brat.”

               The procession had long since passed, and there was no guarantee they would return along the same path, but Wasp waited nonetheless. It’s not like there was much else to do. Sureshock was the ‘communications’ minicon, meaning she gave some vague descriptions and orders in a flat cheery voice before, in Wasp’s experience, usually inducing stasis. She could never be found in any instance where one would conceivably need a comminucations officer, but was also the only minicon capable of understanding Cybertronian, as opposed to just a few key phrases and cues. Wasp wondered idly if someone else was being carted off for interrogation.

               Whatever it was, someone screamed, and a moment later Wasp was following Astrotrain’s optics to the left. Minicons. Far more than had passed them by the first time, and with cargo in tow. The mech was a Decepticon, hardly surprising, with ugly green-yellow plating, treads, and a backpiece that looked like it had at one time carried a lot more machinery than it did now. Whatever he’d been, he was as pathetic as the rest of them now, doubled over and on his knees with his servos crossed behind him. The mech dwarfed the drones that surrounded him, but they had been programmed to deal with large frames and had him magnetised to a familiar platform and utterly helpless. Wasp had been there before, but never seen it. Was that what he looked like when the drones carted him off to get fried? He didn’t want to think about it.

               “Well they want him for somethin’” Came Astrotrain’s obvious conclusion, and Wasp broke into a fit of coughing trying to scoff at the idiot. The mech in question looked more panicked than anything, it was unnerving to see the emotion from red optics, even more so than his unnatural silence. They hadn’t gagged him.

               Something crashed from the right as the convoy passed by them. Wasp flinched backwards and smacked his helm off the ceiling of his cell, but before he could so much as shout back at the source the air had descended into chaos.

               Another crash against the wall. Loud and forceful. Then a voice: heavy and low and absolutely boiling with rage. “Hey! What are you doing with him?” The wall shook as another blow landed against it. “How long has he been here?! Answer me!”

               It took Wasp a moment to realise the shouting belonged to the mech in the cell next from him. He’d never heard him before.

               “Scavenger! The pit did they do to you? You slagging little piston munching… What did you do to him! Get back here!” He’d rarely heard a mech so angry. Another slam against the wall separating them, but this time Wasp was prepared for it.

               So were the minicons. Highwire leapt down from one of the many perches he frequented, aggressively advancing on the con to Wasp’s left.

               [PRISONER: DESIST DISTURBANCE.]

               Trigger happy and monotone, the drone had only one stock phrase and prowled on the catwalks above the cells, monitoring constantly. Easily the most hated among the drones, and the only ones that made Wasp physically cringe, but they weren’t after him this time.

               The con across from him – Wasp would never learn his name was Bonecrusher and would never care – took the bait. “Mute it, you little spike sucking slagger, when I’m through with you there won’t be a wall left standing in this joint, I’m gonna turn this place to scrap—where are you taking him?!” Frantic. The entire display was frantic, despite the con’s growling, and he smashed against the wall again and again trying to bring it down. Wasp couldn’t see anything anymore as the procession passed him by and Highwire moved right up against the cells array, but there was no missing the fear that was felt.

               Highwire wasn’t playing games today. The con was silenced immediately, revolt shorting out to the sound of a hot current pulsating through thick metal. The crash that followed was the con landing hard on the ground, offlining faster than gravity could pull him to the floor and enough to shake the foundation once more.

               Nobody flinched. Nanokliks passed in terse silence and then all at once the chaos broke again into the order the stockades were known for; minicons dispersed, energy barriers buzzed, cameras continued their slow rotation, and inmates neglected to catch each others optics.

               Everyone had their breaking point.

               He never heard from the Con to the right of him again after that. It wasn’t until much later that Wasp even learned the mech had been removed one night cycle shortly after while he slept. There hadn’t been much Wasp knew about the con – next to nothing at all actually, and after the event Astrotrain refused to tell him anything. Not that there was anything he particularly wanted to know, but all the same it was jarring to have something constant so suddenly changed. There had never been any illusion of control behind the laser barriers, but Wasp had come to find a sense of security in his cell. Now he could be certain that feeling was through fabrication only.

               It was a single event in a fixed point in time, and soon enough it faded into a foggy memory like all the others. His had become a world of constants, and so he’d been, idly clawing determined grooves into the cell wall when things changed again. Wasp’s mind was numb to anything but the angry marks he was slowly working into reinforced walls, but the shock of anything above knee height moving through the corridors was enough to catch his attention.

               He didn’t like change, it always ended up for the worse. The mech was an Autobot, with faded paint and token blue optics which were scrutinizing him starkly. Wasp glared back.

               “Hey, kid.”

               He knew that voice.

               In fact he only knew that voice.

               Wasp was on his pedes in an instant, halfway between flinching away and outright snarling at the mech in front of him. Big blue jeep with a fat cigar hanging out of his mouth – it wasn’t lit but Wasp could still smell it – he was as gruff looking as he sounded.

               And completely unperturbed at the reaction he’d elicited. “Yeah, yeah I know. You don’t like me.”

               Like him?! That was the understatement of the vorn. Wasp could have lunged at the bars, but instead he balled his servos into fists, pushing it down. Every ounce of his aggression filtered through his cracking voice. “You son of a glitch, you fragging fried me!” What did he want? Why was he here?

               “It's my job.” Kup agreed to the accusation as if it were common knowledge and Wasp did flinch back then, angry, confused, and glaring. The old jeep vented a sigh. “Listen up. Command wants to close your case, they’re not interested in looking into it anymore—“

               “That’s bullscrap!” Wasp shouted, slamming his fist into the wall. “I’m innocent! I told you that! I shouldn’t even be here, this system is slag!” His tirade was cut short as the mini realised just how loudly he was shrieking; there was no way the minicons would allow that. Oddly enough however, there wasn’t a pair of beady optics in sight. That was wrong, wasn’t it? He didn’t trust it.

               Kup shot Wasp a look that sent Wasp shrinking back on himself and chewed on his cygar before answering. “Don’t tell me what I already know, kid.”

               Wasp was confused – what was the point of this – but the Autobot continued, gruff as he’d always been. He wanted to hate him.

               “You’re set up for your trial in the morning cycle. They’ll come get ya and they’ll give you an attorney – state appointed, but that’s the best you’ve got. Clear?”

               “What?” It took nearly a full klik for Wasp to register what he was being told. Quirking an optic he stared at the old mech suspiciously, but his anger didn’t dissipate. “I should have had one lunar cycles ago!” Because that’s how the system was supposed to work!

               Kup was neither phased nor amused; he seemed tired actually if anything. “You’re lucky you got one at all.” Leaning forward he looked Wasp right in the optic. “Make it count.”

               There was a conviction there, set hard in worn optics and Wasp nodded dumbly. He had his trial. He finally had his trial. It seemed like so long ago that he’d been viciously fighting every chance he had for his innocence, and now that faded memory had finally paid itself off; he was getting out of here. Wasp would never trust the mech in front of him, but he didn’t have to. He knew things would pull through for him in the end. He knew he had put his trust in the right bots, that they’d come through for him in the end. Wasp didn’t need to rely on anyone most of the time, but it sure came as a relief to know he could.

               After all, Wasp was innocent. Someone had to believe him.

               The next cycle two Autotroopers came to retrieve him before Grindor had even passed out the energon. Which should have been illegal in its own right – let a bot eat. They didn’t know who he was, as evidenced by the way they stumbled awkwardly over his ID number before calling a Leader-1 over to induce stasis throughout his cell. They carted him off , magnetised down and in stasis cuffs again, it hardly seemed necessary when he wasn’t resisting, but given the mechs these troopers usually dealt with it likely usually was. Nevertheless he felt more trapped than he ever had. Wasp didn’t spare anyone a glance on his way out. Why would he? Astrotrain was convinced that he was just being taken for show and would be back at the end of the cycle – the slagger was just jealous because he’d been ditched in some pathetic con bid at the edge of Autobot space and was never getting out. Wasp didn’t care.

               The triple gate system arched high above their helms, every bit as intimidating as it had been the first time Wasp had seen it, nearly a full stellar cycle ago. Since the cycle before Wasp hadn’t stopped thinking about the outside – true there wasn’t a megacycle that went by when it didn’t cross his mind, but last night had been incessant; he’d finally get to see it again – but it was for the first time he came to the realisation that he might never see the dark twilight world of the stockades again. It wouldn’t be too soon, Wasp’s vents hitched regardless.

               The jump between each bridge was a lifetime spent waiting. Wasp didn’t think it was possible, but if anything he was more anxious on his way out of the facility than he’d been going in. He thought. He couldn’t actually remember it that well. The first gate was behind them and Wasp was tense. The second gate was behind them and the mini couldn’t help the twitch in his optic. By the time the third gate closed behind them with a sheen from green back to blue Wasp’s vocaliser had taken on a soft high pitched buzzing; all that lay before them was the thick reinforced alloy door. He couldn’t get out of here fast enough, but the guards had reason to pause.

               “Hand on, the Commander said this one’s real mouthy.”

Well that was a stunning review when he hadn’t said so much as a word, but on went the muzzle regardless, and Wasp even had the courtesy not to growl at them. It was in silence that he was moved through the heavy archaic gates and into the dim orange lighting of the underground.

               Orange.

               It was so nice to be out of the frigid dim blue lighting that plagued that place. Wasp reset his optics. He wasn’t going back. Not on his life. He’d done more than his share of time in that veritable pit, and he was going to make sure the right mech paid for it this time.

               Wasp was sold on his conviction; it wasn’t until he saw his own reflection in dark glass as they waited for the tram that would take them out of the underground that he even entertained the thought that this might not be the end. Slouched and huddled in burnt and dented armour, flaking paint, kinked mesh, and his optics… he didn’t even recognize them as his own, frenzied blue circles that squinted and glared. He was strapped and cuffed with a muzzle forced awkwardly over his mouthguard like something feral.

If they were hoping for a convict, Wasp looked the part.

               He should have known it was a joke. Really.

From the very beginning all anyone had been interested in was finding a reason to pat themselves on their own damn backshields for a job well done. It had never been about justice in any sense of the word as Wasp knew it, the way the Autobots taught it. But Wasp had been instructed to expect that, hadn’t he? His barrister; Command had hand-picked a good one, the most pathetic two-wheeler of a mech they could find for the job. Wasp was certain they’d done it for the sole purpose of screwing him over, but apparently the fact of the matter was Rang or Ring or Wrong or whatever his name was, was the only bot willing to take the case. He should have known then. Rang had told him what to expect before the trial, he warned that the odds would be against them, but Wasp didn’t see how they could be. Just getting the trial had been the hard part and Wasp had spent so much energy in doing so that he felt he deserved the win by default. Practical or not, he had earned at least that. Besides he was innocent, how bad could it be?

It was bad.

From the start Wasp was treated as if he’d already been proven a criminal. He wasn’t held in stasis but they did keep him in gag and cuffs, marched past a sea of unfamiliar faces like he was up for display. Rang had told him as well not to speak out of turn, but Wasp didn’t see how he possibly could with a piece of cheap government tech locked over his mouth.

Needless to say he was silent throughout the overview and opening statements, despite how much he felt whoever it was on prosecution deserved to lick a livewire, and he did. The mech clearly had no issues with taking potshots on Wasp’s questionable appearance as long as they were sandwiched between frustratingly acute accusations. Was that even allowed? It wasn’t, but it went unchecked for far too long.

Rang was useless. It wasn’t intentional and Wasp knew it, but the mech was just so… underwhelming. He made good points, more than a few of them ones Wasp had never thought of himself, and even executed his argument well – or would have if anyone in the room was actually listening to him. They weren’t; Rang managed to be so unimpressive that even the judge talked over him, and he was interrupted no less than three times before he could protest against the direct and irrelevant line of attacks aimed at his client. It was suggested that if prosecution did not want to be reminded of Decepticons, then perhaps Wasp should not be forced to stand as one. Cuffs stayed on, but the muzzle came off and Wasp could actually feel halfways grateful for that.

Next came statements and testimonies; long, exhausting, and not unlike beating your helm against a steel wall. Plenty of bots Wasp knew and few he wanted to see took the stand, but not a single one the bot he was looking for. Sentinel Minor was the worst of the bunch, saying Wasp had never been impressive in the squadron and that even still he’d ‘always had a hunch’. Wasp wanted to deck him, that was complete and total bullscrap! When next the windbag claimed to have singlehandedly uncovered Wasp as a traitor the mini vaulted from his seat angrily.

“You’re full of scrap! It was Bumblebee who found the comm tech on me, not you.”

That had been the wrong thing to say. So much so that beside him Ring had sunk his quiet little helm into his unassuming servos and stayed that way for a full fifteen nanokliks. Wasp’s own turn at the stand hadn’t gone much better after that.

During the break between cycles Wasp was allowed the oppourtunity to ask his attorney about important questions and concerns. He’d done so aggressively, frustrated, worried; he wasn’t positive things were going so well. “What the pit, Wrong?” His voice squeaked and buzzed even more than it had in the courtroom. Quite frankly it was getting painful to listen to. “Are we getting slagged out there? We’re getting slagged out there aren’t we? I thought you said you could prove I was framed!”

This trial was worth everything that Wasp had to give, and suddenly his mouth felt dry.

 “Actually it’s Rung.” It was with a long vent that Rung – because apparently that was his name – corrected him. “And I said I’d do everything I could to prove it, you weren’t left with a lot of loose ends to tie up.” He’d told Wasp that too now that the mini thought about it, but there had to still be an argument somewhere.

Wasp shifted, restless and tense with a battle he couldn’t afford to lose. “Well… The rest of our witnesses will help.” They had to – there were still some who hadn’t gotten a chance to talk yet.

Or so Wasp thought, but Rung was issuing him a concerned look now and his spark threatened to drop. “Wasp, there are no other witnesses.”

Well that couldn’t be right.

That absolutely unequivocally couldn’t be right, he hadn’t even seen him yet and— Abruptly and inappropriately Wasp found himself laughing. It was not a pretty sound. 

“What about Ironhide?”

Rung glanced away only for a nanoklik but already Wasp wanted to snap him just for that. Nevertheless the skinny orange mech didn’t avoid the question aimed at him like a dagger. “He opted to give his statement before your trial.”

But that didn’t make any sense. “Why would he do that? That’s fragging stupid!” He knew the answer to his question. He knew it already and he really wished he didn’t. Wasp’s voice jumped up an octave as panic finally made itself known. “He knows right? He knows that this is the only fragging chance I’m going to have to stay out of there? He’s an idiot so you have to tell him everything! If I don’t win this thing,” Oh slag, he might not win this thing. “If I don’t win it then I have to go back, I’m not going back in there! You have to get him!” Because… Because he was counting on him.

It had been a long solar cycle, a hard solar cycle, and they were both tired. Rung looked at him with such genuine apology that for a fraction of a nanoklik Wasp thought it would be okay.

“Wasp,” He was still quiet, but this time Wasp heard every single syllable, “no one vouched for your innocence.” No one.

Everyone had their breaking point.

Chapter Text

It wasn’t an easy thing to find time for yourself in boot camp, not when you shared the barracks with four other bots at least. Wasp thought of all things the accommodations would be what he hated the most, but instead he found himself really getting to know the rest of his squadron; and whether he wanted it or not it wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. The things he learned ranged from the unwanted knowledge of what one actually did on an energon farm – he didn’t like Bulkhead, but he sure as the pit didn’t envy him either – to the reports of recommendation that had landed a mech like Longarm a chance at boot camp and the Academy in the first place. He was going straight through to the top, you’d have to be glitched to not recognize that already, not that Wasp was jealous. It was helpful to know where people were coming from and if they had any shot at where they were planning to go. Boot camp was a fresh start at a new future and no one bothered to lie about it. No one but Wasp.

                There was one old warn out saying the Sarge liked to drill into them: ‘they were all individual cogs of the great Autobot machine.’ Simply put, it didn’t matter who you liked and who you hated, you were all forced to work together. A bot really got to know the rest of his squadron that way, and though Wasp had never quite hated anyone the way he hated Bumblebee it had also been far too long since he’d maintained a friend like Ironhide either. Sometimes he forgot he’d decided not to do that anymore; Wasp only had optics and processor for his ambitions after all.

                Most of the time.

                “Wasp!” Ironhide caught up with him again easily and the mini smiled in genuine.

                “Did you get it?” Ironhide fell into step beside him but Wasp had to nearly double his pace to keep up.

                “’Course I got it.” He grinned back. “I told ya I could get it.” And there it was, in one big orange servo Ironhide held an electronic paint manipulator, the kind that came as a magnetic chip you could covertly plant anywhere on yourself… or someone else. They weren’t an easy piece of tech to get and even as Ironhide passed it off to him Wasp hadn’t believed his friend could actually obtain it. But then again, when had the mech ever let him down?

                No really, Wasp couldn’t think of a once.

                “Yeah, fine, you did.” He may have agreed easily enough, but he couldn’t let Ironhide get away with just that. Wasp stuck his pede to the side and let Ironhide trip over it.

                Most things started with a fight or competition between the two of them. Stupid contests that neither one gave up on and no one ever won. Ironhide feigned a servo on Wasp’s back and shoved him forward, and it wasn’t long until it had evolved into full body checks as they tried to topple one another, Ironhide had the clear advantage obviously, but Wasp didn’t really care. This is always how it went between them; it’s how it had the first time and things were no different now on the whatever-teenth time Ironhide had pushed him into the dark waiting solitude of a storage warehouse. He was an iron wall – obviously – but Wasp had built up momentum this time and as he forced the full weight of his frame and then some at his friend fully, Ironhide went with the motion this time and dragged Wasp up to plant a kiss on his mouthguard.

                Instantly Wasp was spluttering, as if he hadn’t known what was coming, as if he didn’t enjoy it. Both accounts were false, and he scrambled for purchase lifted nearly a foot off the ground. “What if someone sees us—what if someone was in here Ironhide! Did you even check?” He settled for standing on the orange mech’s treads and glowering at his lazily smug expression.

                “We wouldn’t bother them.” No one was ever in the far quadrant of warehouses. They held no oil or energon, just large spare parts for machinery that hardly ever had to be replaced. Both of them knew that, but Wasp scowled nonetheless.

                “You’re a real idiot you know that?”

                “Yeah, thanks for reminding me.”

                This time it was Wasp who moved back into it, dropping his mouthguard so he could kiss Ironhide properly this time and leaning flush against his sturdy frame. It wasn’t yet practiced, but it wasn’t quite new either. Blunt fingers made their way to Wasp’s hips and the mini dragged himself backwards again.

                “We don’t have that long. We should get back to—“

                A line drawn under his backshield this time and Wasp cut himself short with something he’d never admit came anywhere close to a squeak. Ironhide grinned big and even though he’d just expressed how little time they had for it Wasp wished he’d put that stupid mouth to better uses.

                “Calm down would ya? No one’s gonna notice.”

                He was right of course. It’s not like they were about to be late for training or a roll call or anything. Ironhide had the most mildly infuriating ability to know exactly what he was talking about at the least opportune times. Wasp could say he hated it, but he’d only be lying. You really got to know the rest of your squadron in a place like the Autobot boot camp. You got to learn how to work around others, take orders, and make connections. And Wasp liked having a mech he could actually trust by his side.

It was over. All of it, over. It had blinked by in an instant and Wasp was never getting back what he lost. He’d never see so much as a Cybertronian moon again, as underwhelming as they were, for all he’d been though. The towers of Iacon and academy gates might as well have been the AllSpark for all he was ever going to see of them again. It was over.

Everything had been different on the journey back to the Tarnian stockades. Time slowed to a halt then blinked by in the resonant flicker of his optics; everything was different now. He’d lost his one chance to get out – if it could even be called as such, he’d deluded himself from the start and he knew it, he knew it! – And now he had no more. The prison wasn’t a blip in the radar, not a snag in his plans, it was an endgame now. It was the endgame. No one was going to help him this time – no one even wanted him out. No one believed Wasp was innocent.

That hadn’t been an easy line of code to process.

Wasp didn’t remember how the trial ended, he didn’t think to get one last look at the world he’d be locked away from, not even one good one at the mechs who had so openly betrayed him, no. He’d been numb through the verdict, the words filtered past him but nothing took, no faces, no names, not even the decision on whether he was guilty or not. He must have been. Wasp didn’t remember if Ring had even been there at the end of the trial, and he was cuffed up and carted away again without so much as a protest; it wasn’t until the barrier went up and the world washed in blue again that the mini even knew where he was. It felt normal to be in his cell. It felt comforting to hear the steady buzz of the energy barrier. Wasp shook his helm as it pounded with an ugly emotion he couldn’t even think to categorize and slumped to the floor.

Days turned to decacycles and the stockades continued to turn within the Great Autobot Machine, steady and rhythmic as it had ever been. Wasp didn’t notice. There wasn’t much he noticed anymore. Even the things he used to know had faded into a dead grey blur, the drones, the walls, the clockwork organization; even the most basic elements of his world were nothing in the face of the truth.

He didn’t mean a thing. Not to anybody.

Life didn’t mind that Wasp had frozen, life moved on regardless. His interrogators of course hated how unresponsive he’d become, and Wasp knew it. Normally he would have taken his pleasure from that fact, but like everything else in his waking life he just didn’t care anymore. It was almost funny how much he used to care. Why had he cared so much? About his glitching vocaliser, the bastards in the dark room, deceiving the minicons long enough to have a conversation – what had it gotten him in the long run? Had it gotten him out? Had it gotten anyone to notice? No. He’d just been denying the inevitable.

Besides, he was innocent.

Astrotrain must have howled when he had returned, thrown back into the pit Wasp had claimed just earlier that day that he’d never be returning to. He must have loved it, but Wasp couldn’t remember one way or another. All he had stored in his databanks was an indiscernible amount of time unmarked by his chronometer in which he drank poorly filtered energon when it was provided to him and stared at blank walls when it wasn’t. Eventually the shuttle tried to get his attention again, slowly at first and then with the same persistence he’d always had when being ignored. Wasp didn’t notice, and if he did he didn’t care.

He didn’t care about anybody.

                Some days it was like a mantra, but during others it was a wave. Anguish and panic, kicking and screaming within his mind, which was fitting because Wasp couldn’t move if he’d wanted to. Not a physical restraint this time but a mental one.

He hadn’t been there. He hadn’t been there for Wasp’s own trial, and the reason? Obvious: he just hadn’t cared. There was no more painful a truth and Wasp couldn’t get away from it. It was there in the morning, and it was there at night; it was there with every slow click of his chronometer, never fading and never any more of a lie than it had been the moment before. He didn’t care. Maybe he’d never cared, maybe he’d planned to drop him from the start. Stupid, he was so stupid, he’d always been stupid, Wasp knew that—but who was the bigger idiot? Who was locked underground? Who had put their trust in a worthless, rust-addled bumpkin from the rural projects?

                He should have known, he couldn’t believe—he’d thought he’d found a friend for once! At least… that’s what he’d wanted. Subconsciously Wasp had tried to hold off the inevitable flood of betrayal for as long as he could, but the stockades left a bot with lot of time and little to do with it but think. They’d been friendly, they’d been close, they’d—Wasp had never told anyone else the things he had told Ironhide, he’d never liked anyone as much. Not to say that he’d never—but it hadn’t mattered as much then! Something had felt different between Ironhide and him, something had felt right. It had been easy back in boot camp. If Wasp had had so much as two chips worth of processor to rub together he would have realised that had been the first warning. Now he just felt hollow and dead and damp from his cheeks to his chin. Why hadn’t he been there?

                Ironhide had avoided his optics when they had carted him off the first time. He’d outright refused to look at him, staring straight ahead and then at the ground as if he hadn’t existed at all. Wasp had known that— from the very first night he’d known that.

                But he’d ignored it, pushed it away, forgot. And played it a thousand times over in his databanks now.

                It mattered. It mattered so much.

                Abruptly, dead staring turned into directionless violence; ugly aggression with nowhere to go. It wasn’t like Wasp didn’t notice. As much as it stung to have his best friend betray him – more like a punch to the gut – Wasp knew full well that he hadn’t been the only no show on the day of the trial. Oh no. Right when you thought a mech couldn’t sink any lower there was Bumblebee on the bottom of the scrapheap. Bumblebee hadn’t been there either. He didn’t have the bearings, he didn’t have the common decency— he didn’t want to risk Wasp giving him away!

It broke him, it burned him up – both of them at once, his biggest friend and his best enemy, and the twin ‘who the frag cares?’ they’d both shoved in his faceplates. And here was Wasp locked away and unable to do anything about either of them. When the shock and awe shattered, all that was left was anger; pointless and wasted. More often than not he tried to pick fights with Astrotrain, and when that didn’t work he went for the unseen cons on either side of him (a new one had been brought in to replace whoever had been on the right) or even the minicons. It got him slagged more often than not, but that was a welcome distraction from thinking about those who had betrayed him. About those who hadn’t been there.

                How had it not been worth their time to be there?!

                He’d tried so hard not to think about it. Wasp slammed his servo into the side of his cell, solid and unshakable. Predictably it didn’t move so he gouged long lines into the grooves he’d already long since scratched and wished the walls would crumble. He wanted the world to crumble, he couldn’t think about them anymore, couldn’t think about how he’d been left to rust.

                He was worth more than that!

                Another slam into the wall and Wasp screamed along with it. It felt better. He didn’t care. He wasn’t thinking about it! Never before had he felt his removed brand so thoroughly; it didn’t sting, it burned.

                “How long do ya think yer gonna be able to keep that up, idiot? If yer gonna flip yer gears then be quiet about it, yeah?”

                Astrotrain. The one mech who always had something to say when no one wanted it and effectively ignored him the rest of the time. He hated him.

                Wasp outright snarled back. “Does it look like I care?”

                It really didn’t, and at the very nearly sympathetic look he received – sympathy! From a Decepticon – Wasp was on his pedes and kicking at the cell this time, unleashing what little training he’d gotten the opportunity to learn before his life had been deemed worth so little no one had even attended the execution. You know, back when he’d still had friends, and plans, and a couple megacycles here and there to sneak away and do something stupid.

                The next blow stung but Wasp didn’t feel it one bit.

                He wasn’t the only one, Astrotrain rested his helm in his servos unimpressed. His optics remained trained on the catwalks above them; unlike Wasp’s his cell was actually tall enough that he could get a glimpse of the drones above. “You know, you can slag yourself if you wanna, but don’t—“

                Right on time. The Decepticon cut his words short as the now familiar sight of High Wire jumped down from above his cell.

                “Don’t what?” Wasp spat the question, if he saw the drone he didn’t do anything to try to appease or evade it. It was beyond Wasp anyways, his vocaliser had become a nightmare to control at the best of times. “Does it look like I care?” Repetition was the hallmark of a weak mind, a lack of exposure, a small world. Wasp didn’t have it in him to hate himself, but he could sure as the pit hate everyone else. And with Astrotrain unresponsive High Wire became the next target.

“Go on and slag me you little scraplet.” Taunting the minicons openly was stupid, really stupid, especially when it came to the security drones. High Wire stared back long and hard.

[PRISONER: DESIST DISTURBANCE.]

“Yeah?” He wanted the fight. “How about you go frag yourself?”

“Wasp. Stop it.” It took some brass bearings to chance diverting High Wire’s attention once he’d locked onto a prisoner. It was risky. Risky and fruitless; High Wire didn’t look away, and Wasp wasn’t about to listen. For some reason Astrotrain had tried anyways.

But what real right did he have to get involved? “Come on, slag me you useless oil-stain! I’m innocent!”

[PRISONER: DESIST DISTURBANCE.] High Wire was advancing now, serious, stoic, Wasp saw Astrotrain throw a servo up in resigned exasperation and slammed an already bruised fist into the wall again.

“I said I’m innocent!”

He was unconscious before he hit the floor.

Nothing in the end outlasted the stockades.

One day it stopped. The minicons who had been like clockwork ever since the first day Sureshock had dropped the stasis on him and dragged him off to interrogation never came for him. As far as Wasp could tell that only meant something much worse was forthcoming. He’d waited for it (it was inevitable after all), scratching his plating to the silver as he watched for something to happen. Some anomaly, some change, some break in the wave of endless buzzing and ordered swarm.

Everything Wasp had learned about his prison life so far failed him. It never came. Precisely 10 megacycles since his last arrival Grindor passed by again, issuing a cube that went unnoticed and untouched until the minicon picked it up once more. Wasp wasn’t convinced he’d escaped his fate, but when 10 megacycles after that the drone returned again he was forced, more silver than green at this point, to re-evaluate his conviction.

They weren’t coming. For once nothing was happening, he didn’t have to go back there, didn’t have to endure bout after bout of painful electric shocks that fried him from the inside out. It was a good thing; too good really, but after a solid decacycle of no one but Grindor touching the array on his cell Wasp realised he was out for good. Even they didn’t care anymore.

By all means he should have been ecstatic.

Staring up at the four walls that comprised his entire world now Wasp realised he really never would be leaving them again.

                It wasn’t his fault. It wasn’t his fault. He was innocent, he’d been framed, he’d never fragging done anything that could make him out to be a Decepticon spy. He’d been framed! He was innocent! He—

                In the absence of all else Wasp had even more time to think about those who had sent him here. Everything was blurry. It proved exhausting, debilitating, and when Wasp could stand ruminating on Ironhide no longer he’d latched onto the other one. Bumblebee. There was a name that held nothing but red hot fury – he hated him, but hate was easy, hate Wasp knew what to do with. Bumblebee had done it all, Bumblebee had taken everything from him. His friends, his freedom, his future…  Wasp would never see any of it again, and for that he had only one mech to thank.

                Bumblebee.

                He had never, never liked that little piston rod, not from the first solar cycle, but had Wasp known what he knew now about him he would have run that bumbler out of camp from the start! He’d never gotten anywhere on his own, he’d never done anything for himself, always at the bottom of the pack, always towing the bottom line; he was a useless glitch of a mech and somehow, somehow Wasp was the one rusting away in the stockades for it. Well he was going to get Bumblerbee. He could barely see. He was going to get that bumbler like the bumbler got him. Locked away with a bunch of Con’s or screaming for his life in a smelting pit, he’d give that slagger exactly what he deserved, one day.

                In many ways it was better that Wasp found a new topic to focus on. He reset his optics to get them working again. When betrayal got swapped for revenge so too did listlessness and regression. Fragmented attention and old memories filtering through to a pure rage. Rage at Bumblebee and rage at the world. Had he been abandoned? Betrayed? Well he knew who was responsible for that. Wasp knew who to blame, Wasp knew who to slag. That sneaky little crankcase thought he had escaped him, well he had escaped him but he couldn’t run forever. Oh no, Wasp knew, he knew exactly who he was going to personally thank for sending him here; with a couple puncture wounds to the tank.

                It was better. He didn’t have to look for answers he didn’t want to find. He didn’t have to wonder what he could have done either. The answers became obvious and even as his vision pixelated and faltered he knew it was all Bumblebee. Why was he rusting in prison? Bumblebee. Why had he torn his paintjob to scrap? Bumblebee. Why hadn’t Ironhide, hadn’t anyone, believe him? Why had he been abandoned at the trial? Why was he still innocent?

                Bumblebee, Bumblebee, Bumblebee.

                Wasp was going to get him, Wasp was going to get him back, he was going to crush himмм====\\:, he’d get him, he’d get the chance one day, it was only a matter of time. Bumblebee couldn’t run, coulddnnn’t hide, the only real protection he had were the cell walls, and the gli͞tc̵h̨̀͢iǹg, glitching drones.

                He was going to fragging kill that bumbler—that bot, that Buм̢b̢͠l̢͘є́̕\̢͠\̕̕̕B҉umble-bot.

                [PRISONER: DESIST DISTURBANCE.]

                The voice was cold, emotionless, droning. He must have been talking out loud. Wasp flinched, shuffling to the back of his cell as if the distance could in any way protect him from the mini-con’s discipline. High Wire stared at him. Astrotrain stared at him. Wasp stopped muttering and scratched up his arm instead.

                It wa͡ś̪̲—as better this way—this way. So muc̵h̛ bètter͢.

                Wasp was going to kill him.

                When he came out of recharge he did so thrashing. Flailing and fighting as if he was assaulted from some unknown and invisible source. What was that noise, what was that noise?!

                Whatever it was, it had stopped as soon as it had started. Shrill and scared and skewered, he wanted to say he’d never heard anything like it but found that not to be the case. It had been something. Something sending harsh vibrations into the air around him, something clawing at his vocaliser like the monster from a sparkling’s horror story. Broken, rattling, uneven…

                It took more than a moment of harsh venting on the padless berth for Wasp to realise that the noise had been him. He’d been screaming, but from what he couldn’t tell. Wasp never dreamed anymore.

                Screaming was a disturbance.

                Silent now and hoping it would help, the minibot dragged himself off the slab of a berth and into a crumpled huddle beside it. He hid his optics behind crossed arms and bent knees and pretended not to see the familiar drone looking back at him. It wasn’t his fault this time, he was innocent.

                Disturbances weren’t tolerated in the stockades.

                “Who’s Bumblebee?”

                A dangerous question. They’d hardly started for the cycle (what cycle? Time was meaningless here) and already Wasp wanted to slag something.

                Unsurprisingly his reply was little more than a buzz. “Don’t talk to me about that traitor—that traitor-bot!”

                “Yeah, but who is he?” He had never known when to take a hint. Or, more accurately, Astrotrain had no reason to. “’Cuz you never talked about him before.” Wasp’s optics flickered as he tried for a glare, but even as the shuttle pulled a face at it he wasn’t surprised; Autobots never lasted as long as the Cons in this place.

                “He’s nobody!” The mini paced the three steps available to him within his enclosure like an animal, immediately incensed and with nowhere to move. “I am going to crush him—He’s nothing!”

                Sure he wasn’t.

                Wasp didn’t need to look up at Astrotrain’s ugly mug to know he wasn’t about to drop the subject, he was as stubborn as the first day they’d met, not that they ever should have met because Wasp knew full well, full well, full well that he shouldn’t be down here!

As predicted the Decepticon didn’t drop the subject, no instead he paused to drain the rest of his cube. “Right. Ya didn’t start talking about him until after ya got another visit, when you were asleep.” The massive con chucked his cube into the back corner where he knew Grindor would have to fight with him to get it and thought it over. “That was yer third one you know. First time was yer second night here.”

“Shut up.” Wasp had moved on from pacing to peeling the paint off his shoulderplates now, grating the domed cap rough against the reinforced wall. He needed to peel down the wall. He cut—he scratched—he tore up the cell. “That gear-grinder, that gear-grinder he wasn’t there! Fragger!” That wasn’t it, that wasn’t all there was, something needed to come out that couldn’t, and Wasp grew all the more frustrated for it. His own cube of energon still sat on the dispensing pad, unnoticed and unwanted.

Astrotrain tried again. “And so yer Autobot friends – the ones who keep grabbin’ ya – they’re interested in this guy because…?” The prompt was obvious, should have been obvious, it was a slow lead to the bigger questions Wasp should have been asking.

The mini threw his fist into the nearest surface instead. “I don’t have any friends!” It wasrue true It was t It was true.

A groan of ‘Give it up, Astro’ from the left went largely unheeded, but Astrotrain vented long and low because of it. “Yer not listenin’ to me. They’re doing somethin’ to ya, Wasp.”

He couldn’t hear it, he didn’t want to, scratched servos rose to uncalibrated optics and Wasp tried to blink the error messages away. They weren’t leaving, why weren’t they leaving?! Red optics a cell away morphed into angry corrupted red text. His HUD filtered line after line of broken coding and breached firewalls and Wasp tried to shut them out manually; servos over optics, face to the floor, it had to st̷op i̶t̸ h̷a͏d to̕͠p̴̶, şt̀o̖p҉, įt ḩ̶͡a͝d͠͡ ̢̕t̸͞o҉ ͘͡s̨t̸o̶̸͟p͜͝҉p̡p̴̧̡\͏\\..

ư̴̢̨m̧͡b̸̷̡̨l̕e̴̵̷͜ǫ̢̀̀͘t́͢͞҉͏u̵͢m̛҉̛͢b̸̀͜͡͠è̕̕͏l̶͟͜͡e̡̕̕͏͠u̡̢͟͡m҉̛͟͡b̧̀̀l̵̷͜e̵̢͝

It stopped. Everything stopped. Wasp’s vision went black and in the absence of it came a static surge that tore through his systems like a tornado. Wasp shrieked.

“Shuuuuuuuut up! Shut up! Shut up! It’s too loud!”

This one didn’t stop. The surge jumped from system to system, angry, and hot, and crackling with a displaced energy his resistors should have been built to supress. Helpless to stop it, Wasp curled on the cold floor and waited for the inevitable. His own screams were distant and fading, but Astrotrain’s voice filtered through in a rumble regardless.

“Don’t go into recharge, kid.”

Chapter Text

A little hard work could take you a long way; it was a saying even older than that one about ‘all becoming one’ and Autobots ate it up like it was triple refined energon. It was anyone’s guess as to who came up with that particular piece of processor blowing enlightenment, but practically everyone created before the past two million stellar cycles saw fit to repeat it. He’d heard it back home, he’d heard it on the networks, and he’d definitely heard it in Boot Camp. A lot in Boot Camp. It was a favourite in Boot Camp. Be that as it may however, Wasp knew one better and that’s where things got easy; if hard work took you a long way then smart work got you twice as far. And at less cost to yourself. Success wasn’t just about toeing the lines, it was about reading between them.

               One the other hand however, a little Bumbler put you right back at square one. The mech had a serious malfunction. Either that or he just really liked putting him incompetence on full display, it could have gone in one direction or the other at this point; Wasp was willing to believe it was a mixture of both. The first time he’d pranked the Sarge with some stupid pink goo, the second time he’d been dumb enough to get caught spying on him. The little glitch just couldn’t seem to stop acting like a little creep, even after he and Ironhide had given him a full example of how much they enjoyed all the extra work he kept piling on everyone. 

               Seriously. He was following him right now.

               It was hardly worth the effort to do so, but Wasp wasn’t about to let himself get tailed by the squeaky wheel of the group. Turning around the next corner he doubled back quickly and waited for Bumblerbee to come looking for him – which was rookie mistake number one, by the way.

               Bumble-bot didn’t disappoint. One ugly pointed helm poked itself around the corner and in a tangle of limbs Wasp tackled him to the ground.

               “Ow! Hey—Ow!” Bee landed hard with his servos twisted behind him and wasted no time breaking into a false grin. “Oh. Hey Wasp, I didn’t know you were right there.”

               “Alright numb nodes,” If he leaned forward at the right angle he could push Bumblebee’s face back into the cold ground where it belonged. “Why were you following me?”

               “Following you? Who said anything about following?! Ow! Hey! You can let go now!” Bumblebee made for a bad innocent and Wasp wrenched his arm back even further.

               “You really are a little glitch-case aren’t you?” Wasp sneered behind his mouthguard. “Who’s spike did you have to suck just to make it this far?”

               “Haha. Very funny. No ones.” There was no point in struggling in the hold he was in and, almost intelligently, Bumblebee didn’t try to; he was waiting for an opening instead.

               Which he wasn’t going to get.

               “Sure you didn’t.” Sarcasm wasn’t considered an art form, but it probably should have been. “I’m sure you’re just dying to finally catch the Sarge alone again and give him another one, but don’t you dare start following me around too you little gear grinder.”

               Aside from the flush of insult that accompanied Wasp’s blatant insinuation Bumblebee maintained his composure far better than expected, gritting his denta behind a façade smirk. “Why? Afraid I might ruin other mechs for you?”

               There wasn’t a single course of action that could have torn Wasp’s servos off of Bumblebee any faster. And then right back on as he dragged the yellow mini to a stand and shove him back down again. Bee landed on his aft with a grimace, which he still seemed to find pretty funny and Wasp glared at him from a stand.

               “Don’t ever touch me.”

               “Oh believe me, you don’t have to worry about that Wasp.”

               Bumblebee liked to pretend he knew so much about how things worked around here, when really it was a wonder he hadn’t been run out yet. Wasp hated him.

               Of course they couldn’t keep him locked up forever. They tried, oh yes, absolutely they tried, because each and every one of them had been in on it from the beginning but Wasp was smarter than that. Wasp was better than that. He knew what they were planning, he knew how to stop it. Try as they might they couldn’t frame him. Wasp had never betrayed a word of himself, and when the time finally came that the mounting evidence of his innocence couldn’t be ignored they had no choice but to let him go.

               He just had to wait it out. He could wait it out. He could wait it out.

               His fast track into Autobot Command had been derailed, and hopes of a respectable career ruined, but Wasp had a new future now. And nothing, not even the great walls of Fortress Maximus would stand in his way. He knew what he wanted.

               For lunar cycles Wasp kept his optics on the monitor channels, his audios on the airwaves, looking for what he knew had to be found. A bot could run, but he couldn’t hide. Sooner or later something would show up – it had to, it would!

               And then one day, it did.

               He saw him. Unmistakable even through the grainy footage of pirated data; there he was. As every bit as obnoxious and underwhelming as he’s always been even with the overly proud stance that bore his insignia – striped with the mark of the elite guard – for all to see. Bumble-bot. That was Bu̴̸͠m͟b͟l͞é̴-b̷͢o͢t̵͢. Standing exactly where Wasp should be. He would be, he would be.

               Slagger didn’t stand a chance. Wasp had been planning his revenge for stellar cycles – for vorns – and there was no force in the universe strong enough to save him from it. Not this tį͘͡M̷̢̛͢Ȩ̀ ̨̨͜͜ ̶͢ ̡͠. He’d found him. He’d find him! In the cold blue light of the monitors Wasp broke into a laugh.

               In the sterile blue light of the stockades he shivered.

               Wasp onlined with a yelp that turned into a screech as his optics finally calibrated to the brightness of the room around him: clear and white. His head was swimming, frame sluggish, and Wasp blinked a few times until his vision came into focus.

               He didn’t know where he was.

               Immediately the panic welled up inside him. This wasn’t where he’d been, this wasn’t where he was supposed to be. No drones, no barrier, no cell – where was he?! Wasp tried to move and found he was restrained and that had never in the history of anything been a good sign. He wanted to get out̵ţ͢t̜̤t̸̖̝͖͔̺͕, he needed help he needed to get rid—getri_d of this buzzing in his helm.

               “Oh good, that worked. You’re awake.” Either the lights dimmed or Wasp’s optics became accustomed to them, but he found himself glaring down a skinny white mech with a datapad. “Number 05166? Yes, I’m going to run a series of question by you. The quicker you answer the quicker you’ll be out of here, understand?”

               What? Oh no. No. He wasn’t going back to that again. “Frag off Question-bot! Don’t tou-tou-touch me!” Wasp’s voice stuttered and glitched and his processors ached with it. Something was missing, something wasn’t working, Wasp tried to run through sub-protocols but the error messages wouldn’t show. He knew they should have been there. Internal scans alerted the mini to the fact that he was plugged into a system long before his optics caught sight of the wires protruding from his chest. “Let go of me!”

               Question-bot kept glancing at something above Wasp’s helm and typing speedily away on his datapad. Something was interesting, whatever it was; he felt like he was under a microscope. The mech brought a servo to his comm system and it was all Wasp saw before his vision pixelated and blurred, shorting out to a pitch black.

               “Perceptor. His EEG waves are far more deviant than we anticipated, even with a non-success. I can already tell. Should I send him to the medbay? No? Just the patch then. Of course, sir.”

               Who was that? He knew that…

               By the time Wasp’s optics reset themselves Question-bot was buried behind his datapad again. He struggled against his restraints, it wasn’t stasis locked; he had a chance, but the mech merely waited him out.

               “I’m going to ask you a few questions now, try to answer as best as you can.”

               “Don’t touch me!” He was done with this, he was done with this, he thought he’d been done with this! Why were they coming back̴k̡k//:͡ ͏n̶o̷w? Why couldn’t he see? Move? Something was wrong, very wrong, where was he?

               Question-bot was distressingly passive behind his half visor; neither cruel nor aggressive like Wasp had come to expect from these mechs. “I’m not going to touch you.” He stated it like a fact and wasted no more time on Wasp’s distress. “What’s your designation?”

               What?

“… Wasp.”

“Frame-type?”

Was this a trick question? “Minibot. 65356-9292-346.”

“And model number?”

“Wh—You have files!” He didn’t like this stupid game. His head hurt. “You tell me!”

Question-bot nodded like that was the correct answer as well and jotted more notes – they had to be notes – down in his datapad. He kept his optics above Wasp even as he spoke to him. “Tell me how you got here Wasp. What’s the last thing you remember?”

This was wrong. Something was wrong. Wasp offlined his optics, shook his helm, and immediately regretted the action. Everything ached. The walls were white, the light was bright and crisp and clinical, orderly, neat; Wasp glared down the Autobot who was patiently waiting for an answer.

“You some kind of doc-bot?” Medic. That’s what they were called. Medic.

“I’m a research technician.”

Research… He was a science-bot, not a medic, and that meant the test subject was…

“No!” Everything in Wasp’s programming rejected that idea and immediately the mini started struggling anew. “Stay away! Stay away from me!” They were in his processor, he didn’t want them in his processor! Wasp would have spat on the bot if his mouthguard had still hinged properly, but that had been dented for a long time. “I’m innocent! I’m innocent! You don’t touch me! It’s Bumble-bot! You go get Bumble-bot, question Bumble-bot, but don’t touch Wasp!” He couldn’t be here, he had to leave, he had to get that Bumbler, he had to—

Wasp buzzed to himself, caught up in racing internal thoughts that glitched into the next and revolved around a single point. He had to get him, he had to show themм̢m, he was going to gGg͔̣͉͉͚͆̾̈́et him, he was going to leave, he wsasw̓͐̾ͣ͂ā͐̇was.͘͝.̡̀.

He didn’t notice Question-bot move across the room and then back again until the mech’s cold servos were placed directly on his open central port.

“Don’t touch Wasp! Question-bot said he wouldn’t touch Wasp!”

You could never tell what a mech with a visor was thinking, even if this one wore more like glasses. The mech – scientist – plugged something into Wasp’s system – it was a chip or a patch or a – and it was installed and taken up within nanokliks. There was not stopping it, it overrode weakened firewalls and protectiveware like they didn’t exist at all. Wasp shrieked another protest as his internals switched into safe mode.

[Initializing Defragmentation Cycle]

That… that wasn’t a bad thing, was it?

“You didn’t give me much choice.” Question-bot stepped away again, pure business and nothing else. “Don’t worry, this should get you back to baseline.”

Wasps processors clouded with the seldom felt but always familiar sensation of the defrag process, with all the damage sustained it would be a long cycle, but at least he wouldn’t remember it. Blearily Wasp noted how cold the room was, and as he glanced above for the first time since he’d come online again he saw all the monitors he’d been connected to. They told everything.

               Wasp never went home. They gave him a new one, with longer walls and a ceiling you didn’t have to slouch for. And cameras. Lots of them. More than there’d been in the rest of the stockades. Before it had only ever felt like the minicons were watching, but now Wasp didn’t know who was. Here the minicons were few and far between, and the normally cramped cell spaces stretched out so far that Wasp found it hard to believe he even had neighbours. A Grindor here, a Reachout there, they had no business to attend to and no one to guard so far down in the recesses of Cybertron’s very own pit. There was no one here. It felt cold, it felt empty; a void.

               Sometimes Wasp would wake up in a panic convinced of High Wire’s beady yellow optics boring into him. They never were but he felt them all the same as cold and relentless as they were inevitable.

               He hated that colour.

               But it didn’t matter to them now that he’d spent the last several vorns accustomed to one room, one pace, and one ugly Decepticon mug across from him. It didn’t matter to them that he’d, through nothing but time and dedication, scratched over a thousand thin lines into the reinforced walls. Letters, numbers, names, all of that was gone now. All of it was left behind. Wasp scraped the back of his armguard against the smooth alloy of his new cell and found it was more impressionable than his last had been. Good. It would take a long time he knew, as he gashed another line beside the first, but it was important. It was something Wasp could do to affect his surroundings; there wasn’t much left under that heading these days. Nothing to do. No one to talk to… not that his options had been particularly good before, but at least the stupid shuttle had always responded!

               In place of the minicons Wasp had been granted with scientists – just like the first he’d had to deal with. It wasn’t an improvement. Always watching, writing, scurrying from one place to another; what did they have to rush for? Nothing else existed outside his new four walls, he was sure of it. There was nothing, there was no one. They didn’t even look at him!

               “Hey! Bolts-for-brains! Talking to you Science-bot! Let Wasp go!”

               Sometimes he’d shout at them as they passed by, but it was a rare event when they’d actually stop for him outside of reading scans and asking annoyingly simple questions. This one didn’t, he didn’t even slow down, and Wasp chucked the piece of kibble he’d managed to pick out of his arm guard at the barrier wall in retaliation. Fragger. Wasp wished he could wonder what the purpose of so many science-bots was, but he wasn’t stupid. Automatic scans shot in semi-regular intervals through his EM field; they were watching him all the time, they were in his processor, he just didn’t know what for.

               The floor lurched with a mechanical whirl, but Wasp had long since learned to prepare himself for it. He stepped back in time for the spray of solvents to hit his backshield and stared at the altered seams on the floor; changed only temporarily. It was a change. Any change was good. Wasp had never gotten as used to the disgustingly open excuse for a washrack as Astrotrain had promised he would, but there was absolutely no one around to watch anymore so what did he care?

               It wasn’t as good a trade as it had once sounded.

               “Prisoner 05166?”

               Why did they always say that like there was anyone else here? There was no one else here, he was all alone.

               Wasp shivered from the one corner of his cell he’d deemed safe and glared acid up at his visitor. It wouldn’t stop him, it never did, and it never had. Wasp had never had any say in what happened to him. They hurt him; everyone had hurt him, but Wasp was used to it now.

               He couldn’t remember if he’s seen this science-bot before, but the mech punched codes into the wall with the help of a minicon just like all the others had. He entered the cell just like all the others too and ordered Wasp up onto the berth.

               Wasp was long past the point of resisting the procedure, but it didn’t mean he had to like it. He hated it. He hated the science-bots, he hated the questions they asked and the things they injected into him, installations, updates, patches for programs his systems couldn’t read and could never fight off. He hated losing cycles, he hated coming out of recharge and forgetting where he was, and he hated that no matter how much he kicked and screamed and cried he couldn’t evoke a reaction out of anyone, not even from the damn minicons!

               But most of all, more than anything else, he hated Bumblebee. In the light of that every other slap in the face just became another strike against him.

               It was his fault.

               It was his fault. It was his fault.

               It had alwayalws ays been his fault. When Wasp got his servos on that slagger he was going to rip him limb from limb, he was going to take evér̀y͠ţ͢h̷in̢g̛̲̜͍͔̠ from him. Everything! Until Bumble-bot was the one sitting cold and broken and alone wondering what stellar cycle it was and where all his friends had gone!

               No future, no future, he’d take that all away, all of it, all gone! And leave Bumble-bot – Bumble-bot – crying out that he’d been framed. Liar! He’d make Bumble-bot admit what he’d done and then Wasp would go free, he’d go free and he’d go and he’d get Bumble-bot. He’d strip the ugly yellow off his frame and paint him up like the traitor he was. And he’d get himmмм======//:, he’d̨͟ ̴͠ge͏t͝ ̛͠H̶҉̴ himgethi̷m̧͚͈̟͝, pay him back in full for what he’d done, put himself back on top – and then they’d see.

               There was a traitor among the ranks. There was a spy. Wasp knew it – but Autobots were stupid, Autobots were blind! But Wasp wasn’t b͢͜l̶i͜nd. Wasp could see, Wasp was innocent, Wasp was a good bot!

               Wasp wasn’t a bot at all anymore, and he couldn’t show them anything when they wouldn’t listen.

               So he’d force them. Wasp would find Bumble-bot, and when he did he’d get Bumble-bot, he’d slag him to pieces and punch out his vocaliser and leave him to rust. And then they’d see and they’d let him go, they would finally let him out of here and Wasp would have friends again, Wasp would have a life again, Wasp would have everything Bumble-bot had gotten to have! And after that, when Wasp had everything Wasp had lost, Wasp would track down and Wasp would f̵i͠n͘͢d that Bumble-bot…

               Nothing else mattered. Nothing else had ever mattered.

               Time was irrelevant. Routine was meaningless, routed, inescapable, and faulty when it was needed most. There was no escaping this; on his good cycles – more few and far between than they’d ever been – Wasp knew it.

               Today was a good cycle but Wasp had been listening to the hustle and bustle of a very unbelievable atmosphere for the better half of a breem. He was scared to open his optics; scared of the inevitable when soft berth, warm air, and contentedly whirring machinery would give way to the harsh reality. He knew where he was. He was curled up in the space between his berth and the rear wall with his back to whichever bots and drones that were passing by and his helm sunk low to his knees. The berth went unused – and it was soft as glass – the air was cold – and his joints were always aching for it – and any nanoklik now was due for another scan piercing intrusively through his EM field.

He was where he always was, he must have been glitching. It’s not like his HUD ever informed him of that anymore, anyways. Still the warmth didn’t fade behind his growing consciousness, and maybe it didn’t have to be so bad. Maybe if he just kept his optics just and his frame perfectly still then Wasp could pretend the hallucination was real. Just for a bit. Just until his systems crashed again. Wasp could pretend. He could pretend he was somewhere safe, and warm, with a big soft berth and designer grade energon, and a room downstairs, just too far to be heard, full to capacity where mechs he could call friends were waiting. Or even one – just one.

The sound that bubbled out from behind his mouthguard wet and raw managed to startle even Wasp, his optics shot open immediately scared he’d ruined the illusion.

A clean white ceiling stared back at him. A monitor at his side, a berth with padding beneath him, a door with an actual frame on the far wall. Slowly Wasp brought his servo to his face – green instead of the dull grey they’d been even though he’d scratched the paint away a v… maybe even more than a vorn ago. There was only one logical conclusion: he must have really slagged his databanks this time. What else could have provided an illusion so strong? Wasp never dreamed anymore.

Sitting up on the medberth, because that’s what it was, a medberth, Wasp looked around the room almost reverently. His throat hurt, and his helm hurt even more, and something was off in a way he really couldn’t place and almost didn’t want to. Wasp hardly dared to ventilate for the fear that he’d shatter whatever spell he was under. After all it wasn’t like… He couldn’t possibly believe that he was out.

Right?

A thud on the other side of the door didn’t freeze Wasp before his thoughts took the dangerous turn towards freedom, but the muffled vocals that followed had him shooting back down to lie against the berth again. He didn’t want to know. Whatever it was, whoever it was he didn’t want to see them. Maybe if they thought he was in recharge they’d just let him stay in this room. Wasp offlined his optics and tried not to exist.

               It didn’t take long for the mechs outside to make their way in, a low angry beep, a quiet curse and the whoosh of the opening door swept away any last chance Wasp might have had to bolt.

               “What I’m saying is that he should have been brought in a lot sooner.” He didn’t recognize the mech through voice alone, but he sounded more professional than military. Wasp wasn’t stupid enough to take a peek.

               “He’s a stockades bot, First Aid. They’re all in disrepair from being holed in with Decepticons. He came to us in that condition.” That wasn’t Question-bot was it? No. No it couldn’t be. It couldn’t be him, Wasp was finally out. “Besides the patches were working just fine before, there must have been some external error.”

               Suspended belief came crashing down again like a plane of glass and Wasp’s spark shattered.

               “That’s not what I’m referring to.” The medic was typing something into the monitor now and Wasp felt the command that forced his ventilations to slow. “I know the conditions of the mechs down there. He had torn the entire epidural layer of nanites off of his frame, don’t you want your subject to remain static?”

               “Obviously.”

               “Then you’re obviously also aware of what a risk being stripped to the silver like that poses to autoimmunity. How many times have I asked you to let me look at your intended subject first? The least you could do is keep them healthy.”

               “Look.” Question-bot was almost amused. “I just want to get the job done; we’re only really interested in his processor. Everything else is extraneous.”

               First Aid stopped partway through addressing that he’d applied a fresh coat of paint regardless to peer at the scientist suspiciously. Wasp pretended he couldn’t hear them and wished he was dead. “What are you testing on this one anyways?”

               Wishing was easy, pretending took work.

               “We’re researching polygenic resistances in base coding, as I told you. If you’re looking for more information than that, you’ll have to talk to Perceptor.”

               “I’ll hold you to that.” A few expert tweaks to the input and First-Aid was guiding his patient out of a mounting distress. “You’ll get your subject back at the end of the cycle. I need to make sure he’s at least stabilised before you start your game of trial and error again.”

               One cycle. Wasp couldn’t have enjoyed it if he wanted to.

               Cycles passed. Cycles passed. He passed them waiting, he passed them planning, he passed them lying on the floor talking to himself – shouting at himself – because no one cared to stop him. Sometimes cycles passed and Wasp wasn’t even present for them, curled in the corner in an induced stasis as his systems tried to sort out the bugs and errors and glitches it wouldn’t tell him he had through reboots and recharge. That wasn’t the bad part really, he hardly remembered drifting out of heavy states of sleep just to fall back into them.

               The bad part was being awake. The bad part was being frozen in that stasis, more a wall of ice that held him fast, as drones, creatures, things moved behind him, or below him, or sometimes even across his vision. Wasp couldn’t always see them, but he could feel them, he c̀ou̶ld̀ hear̸ them. At first there were several of them, shifting and sli͜ding, or like clockwork with beady yellow little optics. Then there was just one. Just one with a horned helm and bright optics. Just one, a doppelganger who’d stolen his frame, and his fame, and his future…

               Bumblebee tormented Wasp. Always just far enough away that he couldn’t reach him – Wasp always too far, or too slow, or too frozen to catch the slagger where he stood. First mi͚͈͞s̛̥Mistake. He’d catch him! If only he could. Wasp would catch Bumble-bot. Wasp hated Bumble-bot. Wasp would get his revenge!

               Buм̢b̢͠l̢͘є́̕\̢͠\̕̕̕Bumble-bot didn’t believvvve him, or must not have from the way he teased and taunted and laughed at Wasp. That annoying, infuriating laugh! Now he was within Wasp’s grasp, now he was out, back in, out, in, out, in. Bumble-bot danced in the line of his vision and Wasp screeched in vitriol. He broke through the stasis. He broke through the ice. He broke through the thick plating of Bumble-bot’s helm as he smashed it again and again on the floor of his cell; the sight of big blue optics blown wide with mixed shock and terror scorched in behind his own as Wasp beat him until his servos were numb.

               But Bumble-bot wasn’t there.

               No one was there.

               Wasp was alone. Obviously he was alone. There was no one here, there was never anyone here, Bumble-bot only belonged in the stockades he didn’t, he wasn’t… But Wasp had heard him, he’d felt him, the sticky wet of fresh energon, he could smell it! Between his repainted servos, dented and gnashed and broken, Wasp found only smears of his own energon streaked across the floor and crawling down his wrists. It smelled cheap.

               The next time he woke up in the medbay Wasp got to stay for a full three cycles. It was the little victories that meant everything. Wasp liked it better here, it was warm… it was nice. There was a sense of relief that came with being held up in the medbay that Wasp couldn’t quite explain, didn’t know how to explain. They were still watching him, though. He wasn’t supposed to get up or move around too much and that Wasp didn’t like, but after being caught tearing up the back of one of the monitors once and trying to break into the air duct another time First Aid had threatened to secure Wasp to the berth if he didn’t stay in it. When threats alone hadn’t been enough he’d made good on it.

               Magnets. “Wasp hates magnets.”

               “Well I don’t like having to use them, so behave.” The Doc-bot was almost nice when he was around. Almost. But you couldn’t trust a mech with a visor, so Wasp didn’t. He resisted every treatment and pulled the welds off his servos not once but two times now. Doc-bot had been re-patching them now, and when he asked why Wasp had done it, Wasp told him: Wasp was innocent!

               Wasp was innocent. No one believed Wasp. Doc-bot hadn’t either. Sometimes Wa̶s̕p thought that he must be going crazy—but no one understood! Wa̶s̕p was right, Wa̶s̕p had been framed! No one cared about Wa̶s̕p anymore. The medbay was quiet, even when Doc-bot was around. Quiet, but not lonely. It was a change; Wasp liked it.

               As with all things Wasp had liked it didn’t take long for it to turn sour.

               First of all the bot had a voice so monotonous you could hardly tell one word from the next. Secondly, First Aid had been arguing with him for so long that the ‘quiet conversation’ had turned into a full blown discussion not quite far enough away to escape Wasp’s audio receptors. He could hear everything.

               “With all due respect, I fail to see how this particular set of experiments ever made it past the board of ethics. No mech should be subjected to that level of treatment.” Doc-bot wasn’t as slag awful at holding his ground as Wasp would have assumed. It didn’t mean he trusted him though.

               “We have been given a unique opportunity.” What he was saying was important. Wasp knew it was, Perceptor was an important science-bot, but the single pitch from his vocaliser buzzed around Wasp’s audios and lost all meaning. Concentrate. Words. Opportunity. B̢ų̶̸ḿ͜b͏ĺ́e-́b̡o̧͞͏t̵̨. “Though the prisoner has been manipulated with Decepticon files, he still maintains his Autobot base coding, this is an ideal circumstance for essential research.”

               “On viral warfare.” The emotion in the medibots voice was almost comical in comparison; Wasp was paying attention again. “I can’t condone even the use of prisoners if that’s what they’re being used for, since when did our Magnus allow us as Autobots to stoop so low?”

               If Wasp had been able to see anything properly from the angle at which he’d forced himself upright against his restraints he might have found some significance in the pause between the bots’ argument. As it was he only hoped they’d start physically fighting. That would be funny.

               “Cybertron Intel has advised an acceleration of the program.”

               “So they can gain access to a weapon capable of taking out the entire planet?”

               “Not exactly. Upon completion the malware should be incompatible to Autobot base coding 99.7% of the time.”

               “Perceptor have you seen that Autobot? His processor could pass as a breeding ground for those viruses!” Now they were talking about him. What did Wa̶s̕p have to do with weapons? Why were they in his processor? Come talk about Wa̶s̕p to Wa̶s̕p’s faceplates!

               Neither of them did.

               “I’ve seen the significant results between this trial and the Decepticon ones. We are on the right track.” Sacrifices were made for the sake of Autobot science regularly. It was technology that had won the war and in light of that a few prisoners were of little consequence.

               First Aid however, was a pacifist. “I don’t want to know what happened to those Decepticons.”

               “Hey!”

               Don’t talk about Wasp.

               “Wasp has rights! Wasp gets a say too!” Wasp had no rights, and he knew that, had learned that better than anyone. You could hardly fault a mech for trying though. “Let Wasp go!”

               Let Wa̶s̕p go. Wa̶s̕p was too busy for arguing. Wa̶s̕p had things to do.

               Three nanokliks before First Aid vented a sigh noticeable even through the mask that covered up the rest of his faceplating – what was he hiding under all those anyways? – and marched back into Wasp’s room to jab in restrained defeat at one of the consoles. Perceptor followed and Wasp regarded him suspiciously with quirked optics before he was pulled back down by the berth again. This was the important science-bot? He was almost as small as Wasp!

               “The anti-virus Red Alert sent me hasn’t taken affect either, he’s become completely treatment resistant.” You could almost feel sorry for the poor Doc-bot, with his servo pressed to his mouthplate in a show of quiet frustration. Almost. Not quite. Wasp found more interest in trying to remove his servos from the berth again as he muttered incoherently under his breath. Concentrate. Concentrate. They were talking about him.

               “Have all options been expended?” It was a carefully worded question from Perceptor. Wasp wrestled a servo free of the magnetism and tried to catch the seam of his welds against his denta.

               The noncommittal hum from First Aid was supposed to be taken in the negative. “There’s a manual reboot, but I should have every right to refuse him back into the ministry’s servos after this.” Wasp gouged a line down his servo again and First Aid made his decision, pulling the minibot’s servo away from his mouth again as he readied the necessary tools.

               “I assure you,” Perceptor had a hard time sounding reassuring. “Cybertron Intel has confirmed that there are no other viable candidates that meet the necessary requirements.”

               “Well Intel had better be keeping a close watch on the treatment of mechs under their program. I know the new Prime has a lot of expectations on his name, but he wont find any glory like this.” A needle, another needle, an electro-magnetic destabiliser, something with a magnetic pull that Wasp didn’t know what it did, he shifted a fraction down the medberth and tried to determine the best time to attempt a bolt.

               "Glory is irrelevant." It must have been hard to be so emotionless. Hard for Wasp. These mechs weren't going to let him go anywhere -- Wasp tried struggling again, but the magnets held him fast. "The Decepticons have been making exponential progress in their technology. If they were to surpass us chances of Autobot victory would be minimal."  

               “So we respond with torture?" First Aid shook his helm. "You might as well call it what it is.”

               But he was wrong.

               “What does Doc-bot know? Wasp has already been tortured!” Wasp sneered it, but no one listened to what he had to say. Why did no one believe Wasp? The medbay was better, better than torture. The stockades were torture, isolation was torture, Bumble-bot was torture; Wa̶s̕p had become the expert on torture, and this time he wasn’t going back. No he wasn’t going back.

               “Wasp, I'm going to activate the manual reboot switch behind your optics. This won't hurt, but it might be uncomfortable -- hold still now.” Doc-bot's words were sad, but the action was fast. With one nanoklik Wasp was staring at the dual ends of two sharp needles, by the next they were submerged far between his optics and the protoform mesh that surrounded them. Any scream was rendered mute. Wasp stared up in silent horror as dull sensations of pressure and refracted light alerted him to the shift of the needles underneath his optics, the decompression as they hit something deeper than Wasp had sensors for and kept going. The magnetic pull came next, above him this time as it pulled the needles to where they needed to be, sinking them further into their mark. Pressure was a thick and building current under polyform plastic until Wasp was sure the stars he saw were cracks. 

               Doc-bot was right, it didn’t hurt, but somehow the truth of his words was even more jarring. 

               Slowly his vision faded from blue to purple. Wasp held very, very still. 

Chapter Text

“You’re joking.” Ironhide only sounded about half as incredulous as he looked. “You’re tellin’ me you never had to deal with mag skeeters?” That wasn’t fair.

               “No. I lived in the middle of the city, I’ve never even seen one.” What had started out as their usual banter and roughhousing had slowly developed into just why you never wanted to be outside during a magnetic storm if you were on either of Cybertron’s polar moons. It was funny, even Wasp could admit, the way Ironhide described how the little insects would darken the sky like a cloud, buzzing around to suck static from the sky while it was available and getting into everything. Harmless, but annoying. Wasp hadn’t thought there’d been anything more than scraplets out in the rustwater rurals, just waiting to shred you to filings. It had always painted a pretty unattractive picture of the country, not that ‘solid wave of pests’ was much better.

               “Well you didn’t miss nothing.” Ironhide glanced up at the sky as if he expected a horde of bugs to descend on them that nanoklik, he was still smiling though in that content almost lazy way he had. Wasp didn’t regret the decision they had made to ditch camp after their duties for the day. “Towards the end of their cycles they glow real pretty though. We used to catch ‘em in canisters when we were just bitlets.” Ironhide’s bright blue optics met Wasp’s again and the mini shrugged.

               “What was the point of that?” He asked. They’d ended up on the outskirts of Iacon almost a megacycle ago and hadn’t done much since. It was kind of nice.

               “I dunno.” The reply pulled out of Ironhide with a great shrug of his shoulders. “We just did it.” He didn’t really need any other reason than that. “C’mon Wasp, you must have done dumb things for fun back where you’re from.”

               Had he? Yes. Was he going to talk about it? Not on his lifecycle.

               Wasp had honestly forgotten which city state he’d convinced Ironhide he was from, but it didn’t really matter right now, there was no one around for miles to hear them. “Not really, I just wanted to get out of there.” Wasp stopped drawing random patterns on the ground to lean back on his servos, expression mixed between arrogance and annoyance. “I was one of the richest bots in town, I didn’t have time to waste hanging around everyone else.” Even when he had Wasp had never bothered getting too close to anyone; a rich unit for a poor area wasn’t much to brag about, but it had set him apart from everyone else. He had better roots.

               “Oh.” Ironhide nodded thoughtfully as if he hadn’t just been indirectly insulted – not that Wasp had meant it that way of course. At some point the country bot had laid back against the ground with his optics on the sky and his servos behind his head. “You were always heading for the Elite Guard, huh?”

               Now Wasp was smug, but alone together with the mech he’d come to call his best friend it manifested in a much more earnest pride. “Obviously.” He flicked a pebble at Ironhide and the orange mech grinned at him as it plinked off his armour harmlessly. “Could you really see me ending up anywhere else?”

               The way Ironhide studied his frame then was almost embarrassing. Like he was actually seriously considering the question or trying to picture Wasp with twin rows of stripes on either side of his insignia. He shook his helm. “Nah, not really. You’d make a great commander, least that’s what I think.”

               Well now that was embarrassing. It almost put a blush on Wasp’s faceplates to hear it aloud. Instead he hopped up onto his knees and carried on excitedly. His ambition, his dreams, his drive; Wasp had an enthusiasm behind them that never surfaced as positively as it did when Ironhide looked at him that way. He knew everything about Autobot Command. He knew how the system worked, and who they wanted, he knew the scores behind all the battles in the Great War and the names of all the heroes, past, present, and up and coming. Wasp had been protoformed to live alongside the elite and he knew it, but to hear that someone else thought so too was… appealing to say the least.

               Enough so that he couldn’t keep the energy out of his expression. “Yeah?” Wasp leaned forward with the question before he could compose himself. “You’re right, I probably would. Except ‘great’s not gonna cut it, I’m going to be a superstar one of these cycles. Even bigger than Rodimus.”

               Ironhide leaned back up on one arm for that one, shooting Wasp an even but amused look. “You mean the bot mech’s are calling ‘the chosen one’?” Nothing had brought bright young Autobots into the camps quite like the story of Rodimus, the hotshot who’d proven himself so quickly that he’d hurdled straight up into the Academy, and the watchful optics of Command, stellar cycles before his time. Everyone wanted to meet him, or fight him, or be him, and somewhere in Iacon’s Academy right now that bot was training up to become a Prime, or an Elite, or even the future Magnus some were saying. But who said it could only be him?

               Besides Wasp didn’t need the story, he just wanted the status.

               “Sure that’s what they say now,” Wasp’s grin was wide enough to see the corners of it from under his mouthguard. “But I haven’t had my chance yet.” It was a lofty goal, ridiculously so, both of them knew it. Ironhide was laughing at him again in that big low chuckle and Wasp chucked another piece of rubble at his big dumb helm. One that he didn’t quite manage to dodge in time.

               It too bounced off harmlessly. “Heh, okay. Well when you’re king of Cybertron you’d better have a good job for me.”

               Well obviously, what kind of commander would let their best soldiers go to waste?

               “Just you wait, Bolts-for-Brains,” things were going right for Wasp, he just knew they were. “Cause when Autobot Command finally takes an interest in me they’re not gonna know what hit them.”

               Bumble-bot didn’t know what hit him. He woul͜d͠n̶’t. He didn’t. HhHe never saw it coming. No matter how many times Wasp slagged him the Bumbler never saw it coming. Did he think he didn’t deserve it? Did he think he’d gotten away? Wa̶s̕p knew who the real traitor was. Wa̶s̕p knew who had put him here, he knew who had destroyed his life, and that B̷u̶m͘͡b͏l͢e-͜͡b͠ò̴t—Bumble-bot! – He wouldn’t give Wasp the satisfaction of watching the horror slowly creep across his hideous grey faceplates like an infection of cosmic rust. He wanted that. He the dread and displacement that came with the observation that your life was effectively over; spark-stopping, hollow, and more jarring that Wasp had ever believed it could be. He wanted to see it. He wanted to see it on that slagging, vile, traitorous Bumble-bot, he wanted him to feel what Wasp had felt!

               But Wa̶s̕p didn’t feel that way anymore. Wa̶s̕p didn’t feel any way anymore. He didn’t like thinking of bad things, Wasp stopped thinking of bad things.

               Stup̵i̶d͘ Bumble-bot.

               Bumble-bot was everywhere. Wasp curled up and raked his servos down the back of his helm. Once more he forced Bumble-bot to conjure in his mind and struck him down with blows to the gut, chest, helm. It wasn’t enough. It was just a dream. It didn’t feel like anything. How many times had he tried? Countless. Wasp had tried countless times. He beat him into the floor, he tore his plating to scrap metal, he cornered him in the confines of his cell and chased him down the endless corridors, it was useless, all of it—useless! There was no escape for Wa̶s̕p.

               The next time he caught the Bumbler it was with a sharp elbow to the backshield. One that would—would have—would force his prey directly onto the ground. Wasp hadn’t forgotten how to move, Wasp hadn’t forgotten how to fight. Wasp slammed his pedes into denting armour, he popped fuel lines, he cracked windshields, he taunted every cry, every strangled plea that escaped Bumble-bot’s mouth and promised to ripe his scrap for parts vocaliser out next. It’s it’swhat h what he d͟͏͠ę̵̛se͘r̸̵͟ved!

Wasp wanted what he deserved. Dropping to the ground the mini hunched over the mass of twisted plating and parts that had become Bumble-bot. With a violent twist and the pop of protesting clasps he ripped dented the yellow casing off Bumble-bot’s helm. He wanted to see it. He wanted to see the horror.

               But it wasn’t there. It wasn’t there. Bumble-bot hadn’t seen it coming, he hadn’t seen anything – Wasp had done everything right! Bumble-bot had tried to run, Bumble-bot had been in pain, Buм̢b̢͠l̢͘є́̕\̢͠\̕̕̕Bumble-bot had cried for help! But his face was still locked on the same dumb smile he always wore when Wasp slagged him. Bumble-bot was blank. Blank like everything everything outside of Wasp had become. Everything was blank.

               Wasp swatted the placid grin away in disgust and the rest of Bumble-bot went with it. He punched the wall. He tried again.

               Of course that wasn’t really how Wasp was going to do it. Those were nightmares, fever dreams, fantasies. They were nothing but a way to pass the time, brought to life through isolation, aggression, viralware…Wasp knew full well how he was actually ggoing to do i://it. He couldn’t kill Bumble-bot. No, first things first he couldn’t kill him. Bumble-bot didn’t deserve all the things that Wasp had never gotten.

               Bumble-bot had gotten everything Wasp had never gotten. Bumble-bot had a future, Bumble-bot had friends, Bumble-bot was safe, and secure, and satisfied.

               But what did Wasp have?

               Wasp had plans. Wasp was going to hunt Bumble-bot down, he’d catch him alone, he’d take everything from him; Wasp was going to steal Bumble-bot’s life like Bumble-bot had stolen Wa̶s̕p’s a͞ẁa̡̨y!̴̢

               Wasp had his plans.

               He knew how he was going to do it. He’d had time. Time to reflect and ruminate and perfect, more time than he’d known what to do with, more time than he could spend wasting with anger and confusion and despair… so Wasp had started plannnn̢͏̸n̵ing. To steal Bumble-bot’s life right out from under himмм====\\:, to watch his friends turn on him and his future crumble. Because Wasp hadn’t forgotten. No, Wasp hadn’t forgotten, he was the only one who hadn’t forgotten, he was the only one who knew! Bumble-bot was the real traitor, the spy, Bumble-bot was the one who got to rust away underground. Stuck in the stockades for a million stellar cycles,ten million stellar cycles, until his frame was grey with dust and ash and death, until even Wasp couldn’t tell who he was.

 No one would believe what Bumble-bot had to say about it when it happened, no one would even listen to him. No one had ever listened to Wasp.

               That was Wasp’s favourite part. When he became Bumble-bot, when he destroyed Bumble-bot, when he was his own mech again, everyone would listen to him! They wouldn’t hate him. He wouldn’t be the traitor. Wa̶s̕p wouldn’t have to be alone anymore, finally other bots would understand!

               Wasp refused to miss anyone who wouldn’t miss him, he wanted the whole universe to forget about Bumble-bot as well.

               It was always quiet in this part of the stockades, but never more so than during the night cycle. Even the science-bots weren’t around then, scuttling about and taking notes and watching datapads and arguing about things. There were always things for them to argue about, there were always science-bots to annoy Wasp and ignore Wasp and send him shouting down the halls, and pųl̢l͢ìng at his servos and picking at the walls. They were watching him now. There were lines on the walls and scratches down his armour. From his curl on the floor Wasp stared back at the optics looking in at him, purple, blue, red. If they said something Wasp ignored them. It was so silent, startlingly silent, but Wasp couldn’t break it. Twin spots of yellow passed him by and Wasp dashed past the mech in front of his cell to chase after them.

               Wa̶s̕p didn’t need to know where he was going, or who he passed, or how he’d gotten there, he only needed to slag Bumble-bot. It was all he wanted, all he had ever wanted, Bumble-bot was the traitor, Bumble-bot was the spy, and Wa̶s̕p w̸͟a͝s̸͠—̶̢Wá̢ş͏͘p ͝w̵̵̛as…

               Wasp saw him.

                Ducking around one of the corners Wasp had never seen the end of in the halls, all yellow plating and zipping pedes and bright optics. Wasp chased him down naturally – like he always would, like he was MeaNt to do – and it felt more intense and surreal than it ever had before. He could hear the smack of each pede against the floor, feel the strain of ventilations deepening to regulate his systems, the growl that rippled out of his vocaliser. But it was q̀ui̸et, so quiet, and they were the only two who existed in the universe.

               He caught Bumble-bot on the next turn, with a servo on his backshield and a sharp tug that sent the mini stumbling into the back wall. Knee to gut, fist to faceplates; Wasp slammed his servo into the wall behind Bumble-bot’s helm and discovered he was alone again. The stockades were static with a silence that packed around his audios and sent Wasp checking – futilely of course – through error reports once more.

               But it wasn’t Wa̶s̕p’s audios. And it wasn’t Wasp’s optics. And it wasn’—wasn’t Wasp’s processor at all this time. Not entirely.

               It was always quiet in this part of the stockades, but never like this. Long walls rose up on either side of Wasp like they always had, but there was no blue barrier to reflect of his purple optics this time. There was no barrier at all. Wasp was out of his cell.

               The corridor spanned long from its apex in two different directions. Wasp picked one and ran like he had the entire Elite Guard after him.

               Spark pounding, pedes flying, Wasp ran and he did not look back. Not to see if he was being followed, not to look for Bumble-bot hanging around the corners, not even to check his surroundings. If Wasp stopped for so much as a nanoklik he’d be scrap metal, the dream would end, he was sure of it. So Wasp ran.

               He’d been carted through them before, more than once and to more than one destination, but the winding tunnels of the stockades spread so much further, so much deeper than Wasp had ever imagined them to. With the faint glow of only the remaining cell barriers to light his way they took on an eerie otherworldly glow that only stretched them out even further. He was slagged. He’d be caught. He was dreaming. Wasp didn’t stop. Directions weren’t worth so much as a scrap when you didn’t know where you’d started from to begin with, Wasp stumbled around corners and bolted down corridors. His frame protested with every jolt he took it through, weak from misuse and aching under the strain of it. But what time did Wasp have for that? He had no time; no time at all. Wasp had only enough time to throw one pede in front of the other and k̨̕e͟͜͠e͘p̡ m̷͏ov̵in͏̡͢g͟͠͞.

               At some point his surroundings changed again, cells started slotting closer together and lined themselves with red optics, the halls became wider, the motionless minicons more frequent. Minicons. The first one he’d run into had had Wasp jumping out of his plating sure he was slagged. But even after nearly tripping over the little drone hadn’t evoked a response, not a buzz or a command or a light from those beady yellow optics, Wasp had decided that it was dead. All of them were dead. Wasp hadn’t stopped to ponder that one any more than he had stopped to ask an inmate for directions; he was going the wrong way. He knew he wWwas. Wasp stopped short and took the next left, he kept on it until the cells spread out again and launched down another. It all looked the same. It all looked the same! Hall after all, block after block, monotonous lines and squares and çycl̀͠e̕͞s̵̡͜ ͜ built to numb the mind and snuff the spark. Wasp had spent a lifetime in the stockades and knew them no better than he had learned in the first week he’d been introduced to them. This was the pit. He was lost in the pits. He kept running.

               Without the minicons online the facility was alarmingly quiet. It was wrong. It was so wrong. There’d never once been a shift without minicons in the stockades; they were as much of a permanent fixture as the inmates themselves. They were everywhere still, dark, offline husks shuttered down and powerless and scattered around the corridors and catwalks mid-cycle. Wasp ducked and dodged around them as he went, afraid that even just a touch would break them out of their stasis. Let sle_pi͝n̵g minicons lie.

               The fact that they’d all succumbed to the same surge that must have blown the lights was probably the luckiest thing that had ever happened to Wasp.

               A turn right, and a turn again, and a mad dash back in the other direction when Wasp thought he heard pede falls that weren’t his own. At one point he thought he recognized his surroundings as different from the others, at another he heard someone call his name from behind as he bolted around dead minicons and past cells that might have been familiar; Wasp didn’t stop for any of it. He didn’t stop until he hit the colossal arches that marked the single known point of access in and out of the system.

               He’d found it, he’d found it, there was nowhere, no way to hi—hide from Wa̶s̕p.

               In the pitch dark the triplegated system rose more imposing and monolithic than ever before. Dark and grey and silent, it was like another world. Without the constant electric buzz of the barriers or whirring of the drones Wasp’s universe seemed unnaturally still. But the gates were off and open as if they’d never worked at all, nothing but gravemarkers for the minicons scattered underneath them, still stalled mid-duty with optics blank. Wasp was alone.

               He felt it.

               It couldn’t be this easy. It was never this easy. It was a dream. What else? But Wasp had never had a dream where the gates were off before, he’d never talked through them himself without guards to punch in the passcodes and drones to subvert the current. Any one of the three had enough current running through them to bring down even the strongest of Decepticons, that’s what they had always said.

               They were dark as dead metal now. Wasp reset his vocaliser but the static didn’t settle.

               It was a trap, wasn’t it? It was too easy. Wasp would go through only to find himself walking up in his cell, or the medbay, or they’d h͜u̡rt͡ him again they were always hurting him! And Bumble-bot, Bumble-bot would…

               Bumble-bot.

               Buм̢b̢͠l̢͘є́̕\̢͠\̕̕̕Bumble-bot was the guilty one. Bumble-bot was the one who should have been here, been behind the gates, at the mercy of the drones, with no friends and nothing to look towards! Bumble-bot had ruined Wasp’s life, and W Wa̶s̕p was never going back to his cell, he was never going to be an Autobot experiment.

               Never.

               Something jolted back to life and sent Wasp stumbling backwards in alarm, the whirr of its machinery broke through the still air in a cacophony of moving parts and pure panicked adrenaline. Wasp was out—Wasp was out of time. He too jolted, forwards this time into a sprint that didn’t break until he was well past all three gates, well past the twin double doors in front of him. Wasp heard the drones coming back online, he felt the hum of energy fields reinstating, he saw the pixels scatter about his vision. Wasp ran and he didn’t look back.

               It didn’t take long for the Autotbots to figure out they had an escapee as far as Wasp could tell. One klik he was dashing away from a silent facility in the eerie orange glow of the underground and the next he was tripping over his pedes to stay out of sigh as the entire city went on red alert. Autotroopers everywhere. Wasp hugged close to the walls, ducking into shadows and forcing down the ventilations ragged and raw that pushed past his broken vocaliser with a rattle. Every step seemed to take him farther away from where he needed to go, deeper into the underground. It was nothing but an accident that had him falling into one of the troughs which made up the many rivers of the aquaduct network that ran underneath Cybertron. Reservoirs of coolants and oils for the planet. Revolting, but Wasp could use revolting. Wasp wasn’t getting caught. Wasp wasn’t going back.

               He was out. Finally out, finally free, even as he sludged through lubricant slime it felt surreal, as if the real world was back inside, in the dark walls and buzzing drones and endless time. But he͠ ͟was out. Wasp wasn’t dreaming this time, Wasp never dreamt anymore anyways. Now he was free, exhausted but free. Free to do what he wanted, take what he wanted, and start his revenge! And when Bumble-bot’s life was his then Wasp would be free to start all over again too. He wouldn’t be stuck in the slime forever. S͢tų̴p̢̨ìḑ͞u̞͇̼̥̖s̼e͔̣͓̘͈l̳̩̰e̥̠̘̪̰̲̞̰s̺̙̩̦̼̝͇s̻̼Bu͕̝̳͖͉̕m̵͎͉̘b̭̬͎̰́le-bot!

               Wasp didn’t find himself laughing until after the noise hand bounced off the domed tunnel walls and back at him, cracked, nasaled, and manic. 

               It was pretty funny.

               Several breems later found Wasp breaking towards an unguarded ship in an explosion of action his energy levels really hadn’t accounted for. They’d been waiting for him to make a move. Shots made contact in front of him – the ground, the ship – but Wasp hadn’t forgotten his training. He hadn’t forgotten how to run, how to dodge, how to slam the bay door on the faceplates of the bots who thought they could catch him and rig a civilian class ship into the atmosphere. He hadn’t forgotten, he’d never forget, not a single face; he still had no access to his weapons of alt-mode thanks to the drones who had locked his t-cog so many vorns ago, but with servos scrabbling against his central array Wasp was determined to figure it out. There was nothing to stop him now, he’d find Bumble-bot, he’d get his revenge, his life, his justice. Everything he deserved to get, everything only one bot had taken from him. In the end nothing mattered but Bumble-bot, nothing had ever mattered.

               Wa̶s̕p had p͙͝l̼͖̰̟̱͓ͅa͔̻̠n͇̤͚͈̘̘̞s̝͈͜.

               [This is an all sectors bulletin: The Autobot traitor Wasp who had been incarcerated in the Tarnian Stockades successfully broke out last night cycle and is currently at large. Wasp was last seen piloting a stolen civilian class ship through the Lithone asteroid belt and Elite Guard enforcers are….]

               It was all over the datanet. First they’d heard it through the central command lines flagged with an urgency of six, then from the news feeds who had spun every angle on it they could from thoughtless fear mongering to stoic patriotism. You couldn’t blame them though, this was unprecedented; no one had ever breached the security of the stockades before. Lastly they had heard it from Ultra Magnus himself who was enforcing an even stricter watch on the spacebriges on the outer-rim of the commonwealth. With how close the Decepticons had been creeping to Autobot borders these cycles, it was a good guess that Wasp would attempt to bridge himself right to them.

               All of these had come within a megacycle of one another. It had been a good morning for Ironhide, right up until they’d been called to the bridge that is.

               Of course the team all had a lot to say about it. That was natural. For most of it they were wondering just how a single mech could have busted out of the stockades in the first place. Ironhide didn’t have much to add to that. He hadn’t been thinking that he’d ever have to talk about Wasp again. It wasn’t expected to say the least of it, but if Ironhide would have thought back he’d find that unexpected had more or less been the standard for Wasp. Nothing he’d ever done had matched with what he said.

               “Hey, didn’t you say you used to know him though? Yeah, you told me that once, right? Ironhide?”

               Ironhide didn’t join the conversation again until Hot Shot waved a servo in front of his face. “Huh? Oh, yeah sorta. We had the same platoon in boot camp at least. ‘Til he got caught.” It felt like a bigger deal than it probably was. Lots of bots used to know other bots, it’s just that one of those had turned out not to be much of a ‘bot’ at all. It had to happen to someone.

               Hot Shot had a lot more to say about how creepy it must have been to be in training with a spy, but Red Alert only gave him about five nanokliks of that before dragging the little racer off for the repairs he’d been trying to avoid since the cycle before.

               That got things almost feeling like normal again. Ironhide was just about to follow Brawn out and be done thinking about it for the day too, but he should have expected Rodimus to catch it all.

               “Ironhide.” Rodimus Prime was a good commander, everything he’d always been made out to be when he was going through the Academy really, and he saw a lot more than he pretended to. “Is this a big thing or a small thing? Because you’re looking kind of… hesitant.” Or maybe Ironhide had just said too much that night he and Brawn had both drank their weight in high-grade.

               It wasn’t really a problem at all though. Not by a longshot. “It’s no thing.” He assured. “Just didn’t expect it.”

               “You sure?”

Ironhide shrugged, when it came to duty there was nothing else to say about it. “Me and Wasp might have been friends or something for a bit, but that stopped when they slapped the stasis cuffs on him. I don’t like being taken for an idiot.” He didn’t think Wasp would have even remembered him, and in the end that was just as well.