Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The theater was a tomb for a dead age, and Tarn was its sole mourner.

Dust motes swirled in the dim light, rows of empty seats stretching into the shadows. The air was thick with the scent of oxidized metal and memories, a stillness that clung to the plating and seeped into the spark. The only signs of life were the flickering beam of light and the grainy images it cast upon the worn screen.

At the center of it all Tarn occupied more than two seats, his massive frame settled deep in the decaying velvet. A cube of fine high-grade sat mostly forgotten in his claws. Tarn’s gaze never wavered from the screen, which played out a scene from another lifetime.

“You say forever like it’s something we can hold,” murmured the flier on the screen, voice crackling through the ancient speakers.

His lover, a grounder with shining optics, reached for him. Their hands brushed barely before the shot changed, the suddenness of it causing it to glitch. The colors were washed out, the world rendered in shades of sepia and regret.

“Isn’t it?” the grounder whispered back.

The flier’s laugh was a hollow sound, dissolving into the hum of simulated rain. “Forever is just a word we use to pretend we have time.”

The grounder’s optics flickered. “Then let’s pretend,” he closed the distance, pressing their foreheads together in a gesture of such intimate desperation it made Tarn’s spark clench. The film glitched again, their faces blurring for a second before snapping back into focus. “Let’s pretend we have all the time in the world. Let’s pretend the war isn’t coming. Let’s pretend—”

“Pretending won’t stop the war,” the flier murmured.

A beat. A breath held in the silence.

“No,” the grounder admitted in a softer voice. “But it might make the waiting hurt less.”

The music swelled then, a tremble of violins distorted by the theater’s failing acoustics, a sorrow so profound it resonated in the very metal of Tarn’s being. The shot pulled back, framing the lovers against a rain-streaked window, their reflections ghostly and transient in the glass.

Tarn didn’t move. He simply watched, claws curled tight around the cube. His grip tightened, a minute flex of pressure. On screen, the lovers would continue. They would part, they would weep, they would promise things that rusted and shattered. It was the only way these stories ever ended.

Beautiful and tragic lies.

The audio cut out abruptly, and in the sudden vacuum of sound, the real world rushed in to fill the silence. Gunfire cracked through the streets outside, a staccato rhythm of violence. The wail of police sirens was swallowed by the guttural hum of engines and the occasional thud of a body meeting the pavement. The city was a beast that feasted on itself, its hunger insatiable, its violence seeping into every crack and shadow.

The chaos was a harsh reminder of the reality he lived in.

Tarn considered deactivating his audials, but then the film’s soundtrack sputtered back to life and he was pulled into the fantasy once more. He let himself be absorbed, as if he could be drawn through the screen and into the celluloid, as if he could become someone else— someone whose spark wasn’t cold and heavy, someone who still believed in things like love and hopeful endings.

In here, he could pretend he still had the luxury of believing in something close to forever.

But nothing is meant to last that long.

The music faded. The credits rolled, as they always did, and the screen glitched one final time into darkness. Tarn sat motionless in the ensuing silence.

Eventually, he exhaled a slow vent of air, swirling the dregs of his high-grade before bringing it to the mouth-slit of his mask. The syrupy sweetness did nothing to chase the bitterness from his intake. It had been a while since he’d subjected himself to this particular film.

The chaos outside escalated. A burst of automatic gunfire. Shouting. More sirens. Chaos felt closer. The city didn’t care about his melancholy. It never had.

Tomorrow, he would snuff some poor fool’s spark. Tonight, he allowed himself to drown in a fantasy. A detached sort of amusement flickered through him. He wondered, not for the first time, how much longer he would be able to do this. How many more tomorrows he could face before the pretense finally shattered for good.

──────────────

“Are we there yet?” Blades asked for what felt like the hundredth time.

“Ah, almost there,” Kaon replied with a strained smile and forced politeness.

At the last possible moment, Blades had insisted on joining today’s mission. This was a simple job, one Tarn could have— and should have— handled alone. His habit of bringing Kaon or Vos was one of quiet companionship, not necessity. On the rare occasions that demanded it, Tesarus and Helex would provide their particular brand of force and tag in as well.

But he hadn’t been expecting Blades, a young speedster who Megatron had on probation.

Tarn owed Megatron his life, and that was enough reason why he couldn’t refuse when Blades threw himself at Tarn’s pedes, optics wide and pleading, babbling about how badly he wanted to be the trigger man for this job, how he swore he wouldn’t mess up, how he just needed the chance to prove himself. Tarn exhaled slowly.

Now Blades was in the seat beside Kaon, bouncing with enough energy to power the shuttle himself.

“How do you steer this thing? Does it have, like, a manual override? What happens if we hit turbulence? Can I try piloting? Just for a second? C’mon Kaon, I won’t crash it—”

Tarn was profoundly glad the shuttle was non-sentient. He felt a genuine pang of sympathy for Kaon, who was visibly resisting the urge to strangle Blades. With a quiet sigh, Tarn deactivated his audials, cutting off the noise, and pulled out a datapad from his subspace. The screen displayed one of his favorite poems by Megatron, “The Ashes of Revolution”, a piece that always settled his spark when the world grew too loud.

The words blurred slightly as the shuttle banked, but he didn’t need to see them. The rhythm of the verses was etched into his memory. Then the shuttle finally shuddered to a stop. He reactivated his audials and calibrated them, the world rushing back in.

Runout’s shitty rented house stood before them. It was a dilapidated structure that looked like it might collapse under the weight of its own rust. The neighborhood seemed quiet.

“According to his energy signature, Runout’s home,” Kaon reported.

“If I do this right, will I get a cool nickname like you guys?” Blades blurted, already springing from his seat. He unsusbpaced a suspicious box and clutched it with the giddy reverence of a sparkling with a new toy.

Tarn ignored the question. “What’s in there?” His claw tapped a slow rhythm against his datapad.

Blades grinned with barely contained energy. “Just wait and see,” he said and, because restraint had never been his strong suit, he added, “Did some research. Turns out Runout’s an oil cake junkie.”

“There’s a cake in there?” Kaon arched a brow.

“A few small ones,” Blades confirmed, edging toward the shuttle door. “So when he bites one— heh, you’ll see. Just wait.”

Before either could respond, Blades was gone. Tarn and Kaon exchanged silent glances. Tarn sighed. Through the shuttle’s window, they watched as Blades handed the box to Runout, another speedster, though where Blades burned bright with restless energy, Runout moved like something drained.

Then Blades was back, sliding into his seat with all the subtlety of a fired bullet.

“Well?” Kaon prompted.

“Just— just give it five minutes,” Blades grinned, bouncing in his seat.

Even through the empty black sockets, Tarn caught Kaon’s expression. That particular tilt of his helm that silently asked why did you accept this? Tarn exhaled, shaking his helm as he subspaced his datapad, resigning himself to the wait. Silence stretched in the cabin, heavy and uneasy, broken only by Blades’ incessant tapping. The speedster was almost vibrating out of his plating.

“Did you use poison?” Tarn frowned slightly under the mask. It would be… different. Blades’ usual methods involved less subtlety and more stabbing with those knife hands of his.

“Way better,” Blades said, his grin widening.

Silence settled once more. Long seconds crept past, each one heavier and more portentous than the last.

Kaon arched a brow again. “How do we know if—”

The explosion cut him off.

It wasn’t a large blast, but it was vicious. The windows of Runout’s house shattered, followed a split second later by a shockwave that rattled the shuttle. Then, a ringing and absolute silence fell, somehow louder than the blast itself.

Tarn gritted his denta. “What,” he hissed, keeping his voice dangerously low, “was that?”

Blades grinned even wider. “Oil cakes!”

The three of them tumbled out of the shuttle, sprinting up the cracked walkway and into Runout’s house as alarms wailed, set off by the blast. Slag. Police will be here soon. Tarn slammed his shoulder into the front door, and they found Runout in the kitchen. The acrid stench of scorched circuitry and superheated metal warred with the cloying tang of spilled energon.

“Fucking slag,” Kaon murmured.

The scene was carnage. Runout’s frame still sat in his chair, though sat was generous. The blast had hurled him backward from the kitchen table, leaving a grotesque smear of fluids and shredded internals components across the floor. His neck was a ruin of split metal and sparking wires, cables dangling like severed tendons. Pink energon oozed from the wreckage, pooling thick and syrupy around his frame. His chest plates had been punched inward, exposing the remnants of a spark chamber.

Blades spun around in a slow circle, like an idiot. “Where’s his head?”

Tarn’s gaze locked onto the wall, where shards of optic glass glittered amid a violent splatter of pink. The remains of what had once been a processor clung to the plaster in glistening strands. “You blew it to pieces.”

Kaon crouched beside the corpse. “What did you put in those cakes?”

“Blasting caps,” Blades replied. “Like— ten of them?”

Tarn pinched the bridge of his mask, shaking his helm. “Unbelievable.”

“But he’s dead, isn’t he?” Blades gestured to the mess, as if this were a point in his favor.

“We’re supposed to bring back the corpse to collect the payment,” Tarn reminded him in a low voice. “The client asked for it to be as intact as possible.”

“Well— we still have the energy signature from the frame, right?” Blades asked.

“Yeah, but it mostly depends on the frame type. With the spark and processor gone?” Kaon shrugged. “Not exactly useful for identification.”

Tarn didn’t wait for further debate. He stalked to the berthroom and returned with a bundle of threadbare sheets, spreading them across the filthy floor with a sharp flick of his wrists. “Help me lift him,” he ordered, claws already digging into the mangled junction of Runout’s shoulders.

Kaon moved without hesitation, grabbing the corpse’s legs with the detachment of someone who had done this too many times. Blades, however, froze. His face twisted in visceral disgust as a glob of congealing energon sloughed off the body with a wet plop.

“He— he’s a mess,” Blades choked.

Tarn’s helm snapped up. “You detonated his throat. You turned our target into scrap art. Now you will shut up, wrap him, and carry him to the shuttle. Or I will personally rearrange what’s left of your processor. Do I make myself clear?”

He allowed his outlier to creep into the last words, just enough to make Blades’ spark stutter. His optics flared with panic as his frame locked under the invisible pressure. His spark pulsed erratically for one horrifying second, choking on the weight of Tarn’s voice.

Then Tarn released him. Blades gasped, stumbling forward and grabbing the sheets with shaking hands, his digits fumbling as if the fabric itself might bite him.

They moved quickly. Tarn hefted the majority of the weight himself, energon soaking through the thin fabric and staining his claws. The wail of police sirens was a converging chorus, growing louder, closer, as they shoved the dripping bundle into the shuttle’s cargo hold and scrambled inside.

The shuttle’s engines whined to life, lifting them from the ground just as the first patrol cars screeched to a halt outside Runout’s shattered home. The sirens faded behind them, their cries swallowed by distance and the hum of the engine, the neighborhood shrinking into a map of insignificant lights below.

Once they were clear, Tarn transformed. Once, twice— to relieve some stress. Then he sank into his seat, the leaden weight of the day settling deep into his struts. This was such a mess.

──────────────

Kaon had scoured records (a task that thankfully hadn’t taken long) of Runout’s close acquaintances, past lovers, anyone who might help with the problem Blades had so spectacularly created. That was how they found Pharma. Runout’s ex-conjunx. A surgeon, no less, graduated from the prestigious Deltaran Academy.

Tarn hadn’t expected the good doctor to live in a place like this.

Pharma’s apartment building was a study in urban decay. It was… modest. Unremarkable. The kind of structure that blended into the grey sky, its walls thin enough to hear neighbors arguing through them. Not the residence Tarn would have guessed for a mech of such a reputation. Then again, reputations were often lies wrapped in a thin layer of polish.

He raised a hand to knock but the door slid open before his claws could even graze the metal.

The mech who stood there was taller than Tarn had anticipated, though still a full helm shorter than himself. A flier, judging by the sleek wings that protruded from his shoulders. Blue, white and red paintjob, with medical insignias stamped on the wings like hard-won badges of honor. His optics were a bright yet exhausted blue, the kind that had seen too many long shifts and too little recharge. Even so, Tarn couldn’t deny this mech was handsome.

Those tired optics flickered over Tarn’s mask, then down to the Decepticon insignia across his chest. The medic’s mouth twisted into a faint frown.

“Whatever your propaganda is, I’m not interested.”

He moved to step past Tarn, a gesture of pure dismissal, but a single clawed hand planted itself against the doorframe, blocking his path.

“Doctor Pharma, correct?” Tarn purred.

The medic exhaled slowly and crossed his arms over his multilayered chest in a gesture that was equal parts defiance and self-preservation. “That depends,” he said, tone cautious but edged with steel. “Who are you and why are you here?”

“I’m Tarn.” The designation alone was usually enough to make lesser mechs flinch, their sparks stuttering in their chambers. Pharma’s didn’t. “And I’m here to inform you that Runout’s dead.”

The doctor didn’t seem surprised. There was no gasp, no widening of the optics. Just a slow, considering blink. “Murdered?”

“Yes.”

Those piercing blue optics slid past Tarn’s frame to where Kaon and Blades waited in the idling shuttle, then back again. “You’re not police.”

“No.”

“You killed Runout.” A statement, not a question. “And now you want something from me.”

Tarn’s vents almost hitch. Lying to those perceptive optics felt as futile as trying to hide rust under a coat of fresh paint. “Yes.”

Pharma inhaled deeply, his multilayered chest shifting minutely—

« You’re going to tie him up? » Kaon’s comm popped up on Tarn’s HUD. Normally, they would. Normally, restraints and a few strategic threats sped things along. But there was something in the way Pharma held himself. No trembling, no panicked vents, just the careful calculation of a mech who had seen the worst this world had to offer and had learned how to navigate it. He wasn’t afraid. He was careful.

Tarn tilted his helm. The doctor might be far tougher than his polished frame suggested.

« Not yet. » He replied to Kaon.

Pharma’s mouth pressed into a thin line. “Alright. Whatever it is, make it quick,” Pharma’s optics grew distant for a moment, likely checking his internal chronometer, before they refocused again with precision. “My shift starts soon.”

“We require your expertise and your… proximity to Runout,” Tarn’s voice dropped to its most diplomatic register, lowering his arm from the doorframe once it was clear that Pharma wouldn’t flee. “Is there another way to identify him that doesn’t involve his spark or processor?”

Pharma hummed, a low and thoughtful sound. “Runout had… a body modification.”

Tarn’s claws flexed minutely at his side. That could work. “Where?”

The doctor’s lips pursed, his handsome features twisting into something caught between embarrassment and visceral distaste. “An organic spike mod.”

For the first time in decades, Tarn was grateful for his mask. The revelation was… unexpected. And absurdly inconvenient. But an ex-conjunx was a reliable source, and desperate times called for… creative verification methods.

“Would you be willing,” Tarn began, each word measured, “to identify him by this… particular modification?”

Pharma’s wings hitched slightly. “What’s in it for me?”

The question hung in the air for a few seconds. Tarn’s processor raced, analyzing angles and leverage. They had none. No threats seemed like they would land on this mech, and promises were cheap. Then, the solution presented itself, simple and transactional.

“A ten percent cut of the client’s payment for the corpse.”

Pharma’s optics narrowed as he considered the offer, tapping a digit against his elbow. It seemed like the doctor wanted to refuse. That was obvious in the new stiffness of his wings, in the tight line of his jaw. But Tarn knew, and he was certain Pharma knew it too, that he had nothing to lose here. And the other, uglier truth they both understood: money was money, and corpses didn’t spend shares.

──────────────

The cargo hold smelled of dried energon and scorched metal as the four of them crowded around Runout’s remains. Tarn watched as Kaon and Blades peeled back the threadbare sheets, revealing the grey frame beneath. Most of the energon had crusted over in thick patches, but Runout remained as headless as ever.

Then, before anyone could react, Blades unsubspaced a laser gun with the barrel already glowing hot.

Pharma’s arm shot out, slamming Blades’ wrist against the shuttle. “What the fuck is wrong with you?” The laser gun clattered to the ground.

“I was gonna shoot the hip plating off!” Blades whined, cradling his wrist. “It’s the fastest way to see his spike.”

Silence. Tarn didn’t need to look at Kaon to know they were sharing the same exasperated thought. It was highly probable that Pharma was experiencing tenfold. Tarn squeezed his optics shut behind his mask; he remembered how strong the urge to strangle Blades was.

“That,” Pharma said through gritted denta, transforming some of his digits into a set of screwdrivers, “is not even remotely necessary.”

Tarn blinked, focusing on the doctor’s hands. He observed the detached efficiency as Pharma set to work on the hip plating. There was no hesitation in his movements. This mech had been conjunxed to the corpse now splayed beneath his tools, yet his hands remained steadier than most surgeons Tarn had seen. Something akin to respect stirred in his chest before he remembered. Of course Pharma was unshaken. This was a mech who rebuilt lives daily, who scrubbed others’ energon from his joints between shifts. What was one more corpse to a medic?

It was a mirror to his own existence. What was one more corpse to a hitman? A murderer—

“So, doc,” Blades’ unwelcome voice sliced through Tarn’s introspection. “You into grounders in general? Or just the ones with modded spikes?”

The question was crass, invasive, and utterly inappropriate. Yet, despite himself, Tarn was oddly interested in the answer.

Pharma didn’t even look up. “That’s none of your business.”

Blades opened his mouth again, his face already shaping another imbecilic query, so Tarn cut in. “Let the doctor work, Blades.”

The speedster looked like he wanted to argue, his mouth opening and closing, but he ultimately just pouted, falling into a sullen, for once, silence.

The last screw clattered to the floor, and once Pharma transformed his tools back into blunt digits, he peeled back the hip plating as if he was removing a bandage. Tarn’s olfactory sensors were immediately assaulted. The nauseating cocktail of stale lubricants and decaying, acrid smell of dead metal flooded the space. Kaon’s nose wrinkled in disgust, and Blades literally gagged, turning away.

There it was. A neon green organic spike, which looked… wrong. Profanely so. Like some vile, alien parasite had taken root and festered within the mech’s interface array. Its veined surface pulsed faintly even in death. Tarn briefly wondered why the spike remained of a vivid color while the rest of the frame had already greyed.

“Well, there you have it,” Pharma said, wiping his hands on a cloth produced from his subspace. “That was Runout. Unless you’ve stumbled upon some other speedster with identical kibble and… that,” he gestured vaguely at the exposed modification. “An internal energon sample could confirm this further, but that would require a full autopsy and more time. Which I think you don’t have.”

Tarn opened his mouth, but Kaon spoke first. “Is it just me, or is the spike moving?”

Pharma didn’t even glance at it. “Completely normal post-mortem reaction. Nerve circuitry discharging residual charge,” his tone suggested this was the most basic, boring medical fact in the world, the equivalent of explaining that the sky was blue. “Anyway,” Pharma exhaled, tossing the soiled cloth next to the corpse, “if that’s all you needed, I’ll leave now.”

“Thank you for your cooperation, doctor,” Tarn inclined his helm, voice carrying genuine appreciation. He was, after all, a mech of his word. “We’ll be in touch about your… compensation.”

Pharma scoffed, and Tarn chose to believe it carried the faintest trace of amusement. “Don’t remind me.”

In one fluid motion, the doctor stepped back, transformed, and shot into the sky. His sleek jet form cut through the cloud cover, leaving a trail of ionized air behind.

Tarn made the mistake of watching him go.

A half-second too late, he registered Kaon’s hissed curse. Tarn blinked— the image of the retreating jet seared into his processor— then turned around slowly, and found Blades with two laser guns, one held in each unsteady hand. The barrels were trained on Tarn and Kaon.

Slag.

Chapter Text

“That’s all I needed to see,” Blades said, the cheerful lilt of his voice now sharpened. “Guess old Runout and I will be going now. And I’ll be taking all the credit.”

Tarn remained perfectly still except for a quiet intake of air. His double cannon sat useless in his subspace. He lacked the certainty that he would be faster than the laser gun pointed at his chassis. He had brought Kaon for his technical expertise, but now he bitterly wished for Vos’ alt mode.

“Threatening your own partners is unprofessional,” Tarn said, modulating his voice to that dangerously smooth register that made sparks stutter. But one wrong move, one ounce of pressure from his outlier, and Blades could pull the trigger. “Megatron won’t stand for this.”

Blades barked a laugh, but it looked forced. “Megatron’s not here, is he? And let’s be real,” he quivered and shook one of the guns in Tarn’s face. “You all treat me like slag. Like some idiot newbuild who’s still figuring out how to transform. Well, it’s my show now. And that payout? It’s gonna buy me a one-way ticket out of this Pit hole,” he shook the guns again for emphasis. “Oh, and Kaon? Thanks for teaching me how to pilot the shuttle.”

Before either could react, Blades lunged backward and slammed the cargo door shut. The metallic clang was a final insulting period. Tarn gritted his denta hard enough to strain his jaw. Slag. Slag.

They didn’t chase him. What could they do? Unarmed, grounded, they could only watch, deadpan, as the shuttle’s engines whirred to life. It lifted unsteadily, wobbled like a drunk animal in the air, and plowed into the nearest cliff in a shower of sparks. Tarn stared, processor struggling to reconcile the humiliating absurdity of it.

Well. That had been anticlimactic.

After two seconds, the shuttle careened back to the ground. Half of it erupted into flames with theatrical gusto, as if the universe itself had grown tired of Blades’ nonsense and decided to dispose of him with a mocking spectacle.

Perhaps Blades was naturally bad at piloting, but as they walked toward the smoldering wreck, Kaon cleared his vocalizer. “So. Small confession,” he said, the brief chuckle in his voice carrying no trace of nerves. “I may have locked the shuttle to my energy signature. Just in case.” He tilted his helm toward the flames. “But it shouldn’t have even taken off.”

Tarn’s vents hitched in something perilously close to relief. He clasped Kaon’s shoulder firmly. “Well done.” Tarn was profoundly glad he had brought Kaon on this mission.

“You should’ve let me bring the Pet though,” Kaon huffed, wiping soot from his empty sockets.

Perhaps Tarn should have. Perhaps that wretched creature would’ve saved them time, or at least made Blades’ suffering more… artistic. Prolonged. But Tarn had never shared Kaon’s fondness for the thing’s messy enthusiasm.

They picked their way through the wreckage, the acrid scent of vaporized circuits and burning fuel filling their olfactory sensors. Kaon moved toward the cargo hold while Tarn approached the shattered cockpit.

Blades’ body was slumped in the pilot’s seat, his face a ruin of scorched metal and energon. The telltale burn pattern of a point-blank laser pistol discharge spiderwebbed outward from what remained of his chin. It didn’t surprise Tarn. Blades had always handled knives better than guns.

“Tarn,” Kaon’s voice cut through the smoke. “Runout’s corpse isn’t salvageable. The flames ate through most of him, and what’s left is basically slag soup.”

Tarn’s gaze slid back to Blades. To the wheels still attached to his shoulders and ankles. Just like the ones Runout used to have.

Hm. There was an idea.

──────────────

“So let me get this straight,” Pharma said, unfolding one arm to make a dismissive gesture in the air. “You want me to attach an organic spike to a corpse so it passes as Runout?”

It hadn’t been hard to find Pharma’s clinic. Tarn announced their arrival with a simple comm, to which Pharma had replied with how did you get this frequency? in a tone that suggested he didn’t want to know the answer. Now they stood in the doctor’s immaculate office, surrounded by shelves of datapads organized by some system only Pharma understood.

Tarn hadn’t known anyone else familiar with organic modifications. Nickel had already done her part, reconfiguring Blades’ kibble and repainting the corpse to match Runout’s specifications perfectly. Well, repainting in shades of gray. The fact that both mechs had been speedsters helped with the energy signature emanated from the frame, but now that they knew about the... distinctive modification, that final detail needed addressing too.

“I don’t think the mod will be necessary,” Nickel shrugged, standing next to Tarn. “The kibble and paintjob should be enough.”

“I don’t want to risk it,” Tarn said. Then he turned to Pharma. “Yes, doctor. That’s the plan.”

Pharma’s optics rolled, a flash of exasperated blue. “No, that’s what you need me to do.”

The doctor exhaled, tapping a digit against his elbow. His optics narrowed, and he was clearly considering every aspect of this situation, a tell Tarn recognized from their last encounter.

Nickel’s comm pinged in Tarn’s HUD. « I still think the mod is unnecessary. »

« It is necessary, » Tarn replied on their private channel.

The client must not notice the switch.

Nickel snorted, a noise she didn’t bother to filter. « If you’re so sure, let’s bet on it. A hundred shanix says the client won’t even check. »

Beneath his mask, Tarn allowed himself a small smile. « Done. »

Pharma’s voice cut through their silent exchange. “I’ll do it. For half the client’s payment.”

Nickel’s engines flared with a snarl, her small frame practically vibrating with outrage as she boosted herself on her rockets to be at optic level with the tall doctor. “Half!? You scavenger—!”

“These mods aren’t cheap,” Pharma interrupted, frowning at Nickel’s pointing digit in accusation. “So before you continue screeching, not all of it goes to me. The organic plating alone costs more than you little assassins make in a year,” his voice raised at the end, then he gritted his denta.

Nickel’s engines growled, her vocalizer getting ready for another—

« Take my cut if it bothers you, » Tarn commed, watching Nickel’s optics snapped toward him in surprise. « I don’t mind. »

A huff. A heavy exhale. Then, with palpable reluctance, Nickel settled back and her rockets powered down. She planted herself beside Tarn, arms crossed tightly. « That’s not the point, but whatever. »

Tarn inhaled slowly. He turned his gaze fully upon Pharma. “We have a deal, doctor.”

──────────────

Under the glare of the overhead lamps in the surgery room, Blades’ decapitated carcass lay splayed on the operating slab. Pharma’s optics scanned the corpse and he wasted no time in critiquing Nickel’s modifications with the detached air of a master examining a student’s clumsy work. The plating alignment on the knees was off by three degrees, the paint mix she used will flake under UV exposure—

Nickel’s engines snarled. Tarn intervened before she could snap again, saying she did her best. Tarn knew Nickel was no professional. He knew that she had taught herself everything, clawing up her way up from nothing. Perfection was never the expectation.

But they needed this to be perfect.

Then Nickel excused herself moments later, stating she and Kaon would take the Pet back to base. But as she turned to leave, Tarn’s HUD pinged with a private message. « Pretty thing, isn’t he? Shame about the bite. Good luck but I’m outta here. »

The words burned in his display like a brand.

“You’re not going with her?” Pharma arched a brow, already scrubbing in at the station.

Tarn inhaled, ignoring the sudden temperature rise in his frame. “Not yet”, he said, leaning against the wall with what he hoped passed for casual indifference.

Pharma’s digits shifted, elongating into a specialized set of different tools as he walked toward the slab. “So you’re staying to watch me work,” he began to unscrew the corpse’s hip plating. “Afraid I’ll sabotage your little farce?”

The thought hadn’t even occurred to Tarn. Perhaps it should have. “Not at all,” he countered, modulating his voice into a smooth tone. “I’m merely admiring your work.”

A glare. Then Pharma’s optics narrowed, scanning Tarn’s mask as if he could see straight through the polished metal to the mechanisms beneath. After a tense moment, the doctor simply huffed and returned to his work.

“I thought our next meeting would be over shanix,” Pharma muttered, scoffing slightly. “Not over a corpse.”

Unable to stop himself, Tarn chuckled. “Unpredictable things happen often in our line of work.” Although nothing like this. “But you can trust my word, doctor.”

Pharma made a noncommittal hmph that could have meant anything. His focus never wavered from the task at hand.

Tarn cleared his vocalizer, the noise unnaturally loud. “I noticed you were… remarkably composed when confronted with what remained of Runout,” he tilted his helm, watching as the final screw came loose and clattered onto the tray. “I apologize for Blades reducing him to molten scrap.”

Pharma’s shoulders lifted in a shrug, along with the tall vents on them. “Don’t apologize for the dead.” The pelvic plating came away with a wet sound. Pharma removed it, revealing perfectly ordinary interface equipment beneath, soon to be discarded for something more organic. “Besides, I wished him dead plenty of times myself. Had I known he was worth something…” a small smirk curled at the edge of Pharma’s lips. “Maybe I’d have done it sooner.”

Tarn wasn’t entirely sure if that was meant to be humorous. He found, with a quiet thrill, that he didn’t care either way.

──────────────

The coordinates sent by the client led them to the fringes of the Rust Sludge Flats, where the very air was poison. Their new shuttle (a hasty replacement after Blades’ incident) hovered just above the ground, its landing struts sinking slightly into the unstable terrain. Tarn watched as tendrils of greenish mist curled around the cargo ramp and wrinkled his nose beneath his mask, the filter struggling to render the miasma tolerable. He wanted this over with.

Fortunately, Shockwave arrived precisely on schedule. His single yellow optic glowed like a warning beacon through the haze, flanked by two unfamiliar mechs. The first was a hulking combination of tank treads and helicopter rotators, his armor pockmarked with scars that suggested either battlefield experience or reckless experimentation. The second was smaller, almost Vos-sized, with an alt mode Tarn couldn’t immediately place. Something about the way they moved, silent and precise, set his battle protocols humming.

“Tarn,” Shockwave’s voice was as emotionless as ever. “Your punctuality is appreciated.”

“We aim to please,” Tarn purred, ignoring the way Nickel subtly elbowed Kaon behind him. Next to Kaon, the Pet gnashed its denta wickedly, its chain leash rattling against the cargo hold floor.

The pleasantries lasted exactly as long as Tarn expected: not at all. Shockwave gestured with his hand and his escorts moved forward to inspect the goods.

Tarn gave a subtle nod to his team, and they stepped back from the cargo hold, allowing the strangers access. Kaon pulled the Pet with him. It growled low in its throat at the unfamiliar mechs.

The disguised corpse lay under a tarp, its grey arm peeking out and gleaming dully in the swamp’s sickly atmosphere. Everything was perfect. The kibble adjustments, the wheel placement, the faint pulse of the energy signature. The distinguishable interface modification. Everything.

As the helicopter-tank hybrid reached for the tarp, Tarn’s claws flexed imperceptibly, his double cannon ready for anything. He had staked his reputation on Pharma’s work. On the good doctor’s discretion.

The tarp slid off to the ground with a wet slap, revealing Blades’ corpse refashioned into Runout’s likeness. Shockwave stepped forward, his singular optic cycling wider as he examined the grey frame. Tarn suppressed the urge to fidget, quietly analyzing every minute twitch of the scientist’s digits. What calculations were running through that infamous processor? It was a question best left unasked.

A mechanical click. The smaller escort, the one who moved like Vos, began unscrewing the hip plating. Tarn’s lips curled behind his mask. Of course they would check. Of course they knew about it somehow. He turned just enough to catch Nickel’s gaze, his optics bright with smug victory. She rolled hers so hard it was audible. Tarn chuckled silently. Another bet won.

The plating came away, revealing Pharma’s... artistic addition. Shockwave nodded slowly. Then he turned toward Tarn.

“What happened to his head?” he asked in his monotonous voice.

“He resisted extraction,” Tarn replied smoothly. “Termination at close range was required.”

It wasn’t strictly untrue. It was more of a half-truth wrapped in the veneer of professionalism.

“And his internal energon?” Shockwave asked.

“Siphoned.”

Shockwave’s single optic dimmed as he stared. “To drink, I assume.”

Tarn merely tilted his head, shrugging slightly. Let the ex-senator draw his own conclusions based on rumors that only burnished Tarn’s team reputation.

“I would’ve preferred a sample,” Shockwave finally hummed, “and the frame as intact as possible in my lab. Especially the processor. But this is... adequate evidence.” His digits traced the edge of the organic modification almost curiously. Tarn winced. “Payment will be transferred.”

As Shockwave turned away, Tarn allowed himself a single and steady exhale. Of course they had drained Blades’ lines. The last thing they needed was Shockwave running spectral analysis on energon that didn’t match Runout’s signature. As for the processor? Well. Even Shockwave couldn’t reconstitute what Blades had so spectacularly exploded.

With another minimal gesture, Shockwave directed his escorts. They took what they believed to be Runout’s carcass and loaded it into their shuttle’s cargo hold.

“Convey my regards to Megatron,” Shockwave intoned politely as he turned to leave.

Tarn swallowed hard and inclined his helm. He was acutely aware of the unspoken truce between their leader and the scientist, of that strange yet mutual respect. If Megatron still deemed Shockwave worthy of professional courtesy, then Tarn would follow suit.

His HUD pinged. The shanix transfer notification glowed in his periphery, the sum exactly as promised.

“Our thanks,” Tarn said, though Shockwave was already halfway up his shuttle’s ramp.

The door hissed shut.

Tarn turned to his team. Nickel had her arms crossed on her chest, utterly unimpressed. Kaon stood at parade rest, though the Pet’s chain strained in his grip as it sniffed hungrily at the spot where the corpse had lain.

“Let’s return to the Tyranny,” Tarn said, rolling the tension from his shoulders, his treads relaxing minutely. The mission was done, the payment secured and, most importantly, their deception intact.

──────────────

The Tyranny Bar had seen better days, its flickering neon sign a dying spark in the urban gloom. Tarn pushed through the door, and his olfactory sensor immediately caught the syrupy tang of high-grade and the acrid bite of spilled energon. Old. The kind that seeped into floor seams and never scrubbed out.

In the corner, Vos, Tesarus, and Helex hunched over a card game. Their laughter was sharp enough to flake plating. The static-crackle of a stuck jukebox ballad provided a discordant soundtrack.

Nickel slid into the empty seat beside Helex, tossing a stack of chips onto the table. “Deal me in.” Her demand was met with a chorus of jeers and the clink of cubes.

Tarn lingered by the doorway, his mask filtering the bar’s stench into something tolerable. Kaon settled beside Vos, chaining the Pet to his chair. The creature gnawed on a discarded strut it found somewhere, optics gleaming with feral delight. Kaon rewarded it with an absentminded pat, his hollow sockets crinkling at the edges in a smile.

“So, who won the bet?” Helex elbowed Nickel as the cards were shuffled in his massive hands.

Nickel huffed. “Ask the bastard,” she muttered, jerking her helm toward Tarn.

Tesarus snorted as Vos snickered. Kaon flagged the usual waitress, a mech with a dented chest plate and a permanent scowl. “Two cubes of engex, please,” Kaon said, holding two digits in the air.

Tarn turned away from the table but smiled under the mask, letting the noise of his team wash over him. They were alive. They were whole. It was enough.

The bartender, a grounder with one optic and one empty socket, polished a glass cube. “What can I get you, sir?”

Sir. The word clawed at Tarn’s audials. He didn’t like being called that, but he had never corrected the bartender even after decades.

“Triple-distilled engex. No ice.” Tarn gripped the counter, attempting to sit, but the stool creaked under his weight. He remained standing.

The bartender expertly poured the liquid and slid it across the bar with a straw. Tarn nodded in appreciation and lifted the cube, the straw disappearing into the mouth-slit of his mask. The engex burned, not enough to erase the past few days’ bitterness, but enough to make the weight of his own helm feel lighter.

Behind him, Tesarus’ voice rumbled through the bar. “Why’d Shockwave want that mech dead anyway?”

“Actually, no idea,” Kaon shrugged, one hand still petting the Pet’s head.

“Well, we didn’t ask him y’know,” Nickel snorted.

Vos added that no one cared as long as they were paid for the job.

“Vos is right,” Helex said, cards flicking between his digits. “It’s not our job to ask questions. Right, Tarn?”

Tarn took another measured sip. “Exactly,” he nodded, the straw clicking softly against the glass as he set it down. “We’re hitmen. Professionals.”

“Damn right,” Nickel grinned, sparking a chorus of chuckles. The laughter of mechs who knew the weight of their work.

“Not like Overlord,” Helex added, smirking as he dealt another hand. “That glitch couldn’t be professional if it bit him in the aft.”

A round of laughter followed. Ah, yes. Overlord’s failed attempt to carve out his own syndicate had become their favorite joke. No one knew where the bastard was these days, but he was definitely not successful. Tarn snorted, a sound that was almost lost beneath the noise.

He drained the last of his engex, setting the empty cube on the counter. The laughter of his team swelled behind him, a discordant symphony of survival, but the sound felt distant now, separated from him by an invisible pane of glass. He made his way to the stairs.

“You’re not joining us?” Nickel called out and, just like that, the laughter vanished.

Tarn’s claws flexed, then stilled; a minute tremor he allowed no one to see. “Perhaps later.”

Nickel arched a brow but said nothing. She gave a curt nod that held no conviction. Tarn excused himself with a mirroring gesture and climbed the stairs. Each step was heavier than the last.

“By the way,” Tesarus’ voice floated up after him, “where’s the new guy?”

Tarn didn’t look back.

The second floor was a tomb. The noise below dulled to a muffled whisper that was quickly swallowed by long shadows and older ghosts. Megatron sat in a booth at the far end of the loft, surrounded by a darkness that seemed to emanate from him. He was leaning over a datapad, its glow carving deep hollows under his optics and along the severe lines of his face. He didn’t look up when Tarn entered.

“Report.” The word was rusted iron.

Tarn clasped his hands behind his back. “The job is done. Shockwave paid in full.”

A hum. That was all. No praise. No interest. No weighty acknowledgment.

Silence stretched. In this moment, Tarn was grateful for the mask because it hid the painful clench of his jaw. Once, he had burned cities to embers for moments like this, just him and his lord, the weight of Megatron’s attention worth more than any throne or fortune of shanix. Now, the booth gaped between them like a chasm. The mech who had once rallied armies against the Functionists with a single speech now barely lifted his helm from a datapad. Tarn wondered what held his focus so completely, but he knew better than to ask.

He did not mention the corpse switch. He did not mention Pharma’s steady hands as he worked on a corpse, nor the way the doctor’s blue optics had pierced through Tarn.

But— Tesarus had a point. Why Runout? A nobody. A speedster with a mod even the brothels would sneer at. Why would a mind like Shockwave care about a the processor of a nobody? The question burned in Tarn’s throat, but he swallowed it. They weren’t paid to ask. They were tools. Weapons. Nothing more.

And yet—

Weren’t they just becoming what they had sworn to destroy?

Megatron finally looked up, his brows lifting. “Is there anything else?”

Tarn hesitated. The laughter downstairs swelled again, a discordant reminder of the family he’d carved from violence and shared scars. For a fleeting moment, Tarn ached to voice his unease. To demand answers, to understand. But the moment passed, crushed under the weight of protocol and chilling fatigue.

“Can it wait until tomorrow night?” Tarn murmured.

Perhaps he was overthinking. Perhaps Shockwave simply wanted another broken thing to experiment with. A profound weariness settled deep into Tarn’s struts, but his posture, the disciplined set of his shoulders, never wavered.

Megatron held his gaze, optics as unreadable as the void. Then, he nodded dismissively.

“I’ll be right here.”

Chapter Text

The theater’s projector whirred, casting flickering light over the empty rows. On screen, the romcom’s protagonists bickered in a sun-drenched café, their voices tinny through the ancient speakers. Tarn sprawled across two seats, a half-finished cube of high-grade dangling from his claws.

He’d seen this film before— knew the flier would trip over his own pedes in the next scene, knew the grounder would catch him with that saccharine smile— but the predictability was the point. No surprises, no gunfire. Just two mechs pretending the world wasn’t burning outside.

The door creaked open, and Tarn checked his internal chronometer. Right on time.

Pharma’s silhouette cut through the gloom, his wings backlit by the emergency exit sign. He paused at the aisle, optics scanning the rows before landing on Tarn. For a moment, neither moved and Tarn pretended he wasn’t watching him. Then Pharma slid into a seat, not beside Tarn, but close enough.

The doctor crossed his arms, wings hitching slightly, and Tarn expected him to scoff. To demand why they were meeting in a ruin that smelled of mildew and nostalgia. They were here for a reason, but Tarn didn’t know what to say. The silence stretched, and he thought he had miscalculated. Perhaps Pharma would leave. Perhaps this had been a mistake.

But then the flier on screen tripped, just as predicted, and Pharma snorted.

Tarn’s grip tightened on his cube. He risked a glance. The dim light caught the bright blue of Pharma’s optics and the curve of his smirk. He was watching, actually watching, not just enduring this for the payment. Something in Tarn’s chest stuttered, stupid and eager, as if he were a newbuild again.

“When you commed the meeting place,” Pharma said, still eyeing the screen, “I didn’t imagine we’d actually watch a movie. Much less that you were the type for romantic comedies.”

Tarn couldn’t help but smile under the mask. He’d chosen this place because they still played some of the classics, and because no one came here anymore.

“It’s been a while since I’ve watched this one,” Tarn said.

“Hm. It’s a good choice.”

The casual praise shouldn’t have mattered. It didn’t. Tarn distracted himself by pulling up Pharma’s bank details on his HUD and transferring the promised cut. The notification chimed softly in Pharma’s helm.

The doctor checked it, optics growing distant for a second, and his smirk widened. “So the client did buy your farce.”

“Indeed.”

Pharma’s optics flicked to him, assessing and amused. “I’m glad my skills were worth the price.”

“Your discretion even more so,” Tarn purred.

Pharma snorted, a soft but dismissive sound, before returning his attention to the film. He settled deeper into the worn velvet, one arm resting on the divider between them. The flickering light from the screen played across the elegant lines of his face, highlighting the contrast between the colors of his multilayered chest. He looked entirely at ease, as if meeting assassins in crumbling theaters was just part of his weekly routine.

Tarn watched him for a moment longer, captivated by the unguarded shift in the doctor’s posture, before forcing his own gaze back to the movie. On screen, the grounder dipped the flier in a laughably impractical dance sequence. Pharma scoffed and shook his helm, but his optics never left the screen.

Tarn’s claws flexed against his thigh, and the words were out before his processor could censor them. “Dance with me. There’s a place nearby—”

“I don’t dance,” Pharma frowned and his accent curled around the words, making them sound both dismissive and intriguing. It was sharp and melodic, a distinct cadence that was decidedly not local. Tarn wondered how he had failed to notice it before.

“Dinner, then.” Tarn leaned forward, and the ancient seats creaked. “Or do you not eat either?” he teased, modulating his voice to soften the edge of the words.

Pharma turned fully now, swiveling in his seat to face him. His optics narrowed, scanning Tarn’s mask, studying him. The doctor looked like he couldn’t decide whether to be offended or amused. He opened his mouth, and Tarn’s spark clenched, fearing a refusal. He had to be faster.

“I’ll pay.”

──────────────

The restaurant was the kind of place Tarn rarely frequented. Crystal chandeliers refracting light across white linen tablecloths, servers moving like ghosts between private booths. He’d chosen it for two reasons: the privacy booths (soundproofed, shadowed, perfect for conversations that never happened) and because the clientele valued discretion over curiosity. No one would remark on a masked mobster and a winged surgeon sharing a meal. Or so he hoped.

“Table for two,” Tarn murmured to the host, a sleek mech with polished doorwings. “The back booth.”

The host’s optics flicked to Pharma, then away just as quickly. “Of course, sir.”

Pharma’s wings gave a minute, almost imperceptible twitch as they were led through the hushed dining room, though his gaze lingered appreciatively on the vintage engex display behind the bar. The host excused himself with a bow.

“Seriously— the back booth?” Pharma arched a brow, sliding into the curved violet seat. “Expecting some assassins?” he murmured dryly.

Tarn smiled behind the mask, settling his considerable weight across from him as a small candelabra flickered between them. “Just avoiding unwanted eyes.”

He hadn’t missed the host’s lingering glance. Tarn found himself hoping the look was simple curiosity at best, or bitter professional jealousy at worst. Even after the Functionist era’s official end, old prejudices died hard; it was still uncommon, and to some, unnerving, to see a flier in the medical field, their frames built for the sky yet dedicated to the art of healing. Tarn knew he wasn’t the only killer to ever use this restaurant for a mission or to gather intelligence, and a cold prickle of reconsideration went through him. Bringing Pharma here, a mech who stood out by his very design, might have been a miscalculation. Perhaps the host thought Tarn had brought the good doctor here to end him. The irony of that thought, so far from his actual intentions, was a private and bitter amusement.

His thoughts were cut short by the arrival of a server. Tarn ordered without looking at the menu, his memory banks supplying the selections from a previous visit. “The Vosian sparkling engex, the Iaconian crystal grade energon appetizers, and the Praxian spiced alloys.”

The server left and Pharma frowned slightly at Tarn. “You’ve been here before.”

“Once.” To poison a senator. He did not mention that part.

The server returned with an ornate engex bottle, pouring the effervescent liquid into two glass cubes.

Pharma lifted his into the air. “To profitable partnerships.” Tarn clinked his against it, savoring the way the doctor’s accent curled around profitable.

Then came a spread of delicacies: crystalized energon shavings, seared cyber-venison, and something that pulsed faintly in its dish. Pharma poked at the latter with a fork.

“I assume this is alive.”

“Only briefly.” He lifted his mask just enough to sip the engex, the sweet effervescence a shock on his intake, and he savored the way Pharma’s bright optics lingered on the exposed edge of his jaw before he set the cube down. “Try it. It’s an acquired taste.”

Pharma scoffed but took a small bite. His optics brightened involuntarily, a brief flare of surprise and pleasure. Tarn meticulously filed the reaction away in his memory banks.

“So,” Pharma said, wiping his lips with a napkin, “Nickel’s work on the corpse.”

Tarn stiffened.

“It was atrocious.” Pharma swirled his engex, watching the liquid cling to the sides of the glass. “But it wasn’t the worst I’ve seen,” he conceded, a smirk playing on his lips. “With proper training, she could be decent. She has potential.”

Tarn’s spark pulsed oddly. He appreciated the faint praise. “I’ll tell her you said so.”

“Don’t,” Pharma hid his smirk behind his cube. “I have a reputation to uphold.”

They lapsed into a comfortable silence while eating, the kind that should have been awkward but wasn’t. Pharma’s wings relaxed incrementally, their sharp edges softening under the influence of the engex and the booth’s intimate gloom. Tarn watched the way his long digits curled around the cube, the way his accent thickened just slightly when he muttered a disdainful comment about an overpriced garnish.

“You never told me,” Tarn said abruptly, “what you’re using the shanix for.”

“Did I have to?” Pharma arched a brow, a challenge in his tone.

“No, of course not. But I’m curious.” Tarn’s tone made it clear he would drop the subject if Pharma refused.

The doctor’s optics flicked up, gauging his sincerity. “Cybercrosis research.”

“Ah,” Tarn leaned forward, tilting his helm in genuine interest. “That makes sense.”

“Funding’s hard to come by when your superiors think it’s a waste of resources. As if watching mechs rust from the inside out is merely… aesthetic damage.” Pharma’s grip on his cube tightened. “Most don’t even believe it’s a real thing. That the Cybertronian body can simply die of old age in one of the most terrible ways imaginable.”

Tarn listened, rapt, as Pharma’s voice dipped into something raw and furious. He spoke of nerve-circuit decay, of creeping necrosis, of the maddening itch that victims reported feeling deep beneath their plating. His accent slipped through more with every word, its melodic sharpness becoming more pronounced until Tarn could finally pinpoint its origin.

“I had been funding the research from my own salary, but that had to end when Runout siphoned my savings to mod his spike,” Pharma rolled his optics, the gesture dripping with a potent mix of fury and contempt.

Tarn’s optics widened a fraction. “I assume he did it without your knowledge.”

“I didn’t find out until much later. It was one of the main reasons I left him,” he stated, his voice cold and flat. “Among many, many others. The only nice thing he ever did for me was send me a shitty video a day before he fucking died.”

“What was it about?” Tarn asked after he finished chewing a morsel of the spiced alloy.

“Our very few happy moments together,” Pharma scoffed, the sound devoid of any real humor. “It wasn’t even two seconds long.”

“And what did you do with it?”

Pharma paused for half a second, his fork hovering over his plate, before snorting. “What else was I gonna do with it? I deleted it.” He then speared a piece of the seared cyber-venison, and Tarn found himself memorizing the way his lips parted to receive it. He took another slow sip of his engex, the sweet burn a grounding sensation.

“I need to ask,” Tarn said, setting the cube back on the table. “How does a brilliant and talented surgeon end up conjunxed to a junkie with no ambitions?”

He relished the way Pharma’s wings gave a minute, pleased flare at the compliment, but the doctor’s fork stilled mid-air. For a moment, Tarn feared he’d overstepped a carefully drawn line, until Pharma laughed, a sound both sharp and bitter as the engex.

“I was young. Stupid. Mad,” he took a long sip from his cube. “I wanted to spite someone. But I didn’t spite anyone except myself,” Pharma’s fork scraped against the plate, such a jarring sound. “Runout was the match I used to burn my life down, and now I’m left to pick up the ashes,” he let out another bitter laugh. “Pathetic, isn’t it?”

Tarn lowered his gaze. He found himself disliking the self-contempt that laced Pharma’s words, the way it dulled the sharp, brilliant edges of the mech before him. He had sought to uncover the doctor’s past, not to witness him diminished by it. The raw honesty was a gift but seeing the bitterness it spawned made Tarn’s own spark clench with an unexpected protectiveness. He didn’t want to see this brilliant, sharp-tongued surgeon reduced to ashes by the memory of a worthless match.

Tarn leaned forward, the booth creaking softly. “I think it’s brave,” he murmured, the words leaving him before he could reconsider them.

Pharma’s optics narrowed, as if searching for mockery in the words. “Brave?”

Tarn’s claws flexed against the fine linen of the tablecloth. “To admit you were wrong. To survive it and move on.” The mask hid his expression, but his tone, softer and more earnest than he intended, betrayed him. “Not everyone does.”

Pharma didn’t reply, but his digits tightened around the cube, his knuckles straining. He just nodded once as his optics grew distant in contemplation. The engex between them glowed faintly, casting shifting highlights on the table. After a few silent moments, Tarn deftly changed the subject.

“Your accent. Protihex?”

Pharma blinked, pulled from his thoughts, then a soft huff escaped him, followed by a perfect smirk. “Not many mechs can place it. Not that quickly,” his digits relaxed against the crystal of his cube.

“You’ll notice I’m not like many mechs, doctor,” Tarn chuckled warmly. He watched the way Pharma’s optics flicked to his mask, as if trying to decipher the expression beneath.

“Clearly.” Pharma leaned back, his wings spreading slightly against the plush booth as his smirk widened, becoming more genuine. “And you? Don’t tell me your designation comes from the city of Tarn.”

“Not only that, but I’m from there as well,” Tarn admitted, swirling the dregs of his drink.

“Tarn of Tarn?” Pharma arched a brow, the playful lilt in his voice at odds with the keen intelligence in his gaze.

“Just Tarn,” his claw stilled on the rim of the cube. “I abandoned my old designation to become someone else.”

Someone who didn’t flinch at the sound of his own name. Someone who wasn’t looked down upon by everyone.

Someone stronger.

──────────────

The long evening with Pharma had been an unforeseen but lovely deviation, a melody played in a minor key that had lingered in his audials long after the final note.

Tarn hadn’t planned for the way the doctor’s optics brightened when he smirked, or how his wings tilted just so when he was considering a particularly sharp retort. He hadn’t accounted for the way time seemed to slip through his claws like smoke, the hours stretching long past what was polite, long past what was professional.

A strange warmth had settled deep in his chest, a low hum that had nothing to do with his engine. He felt… unmoored. Light-headed in a way that was dangerously close to intoxication, yet he’d been nursing the same cube for an hour. His processor kept replaying fragments of their conversation— the melodic curl of Pharma’s accent, his sharp intelligence and sharper wit, the surprising vulnerability beneath all that polish.

There was a buoyant feeling in his spark, like a floating sensation. For a few hours, he hadn’t been Tarn the enforcer, the killer. He had just been… a mech, enjoying the company of another.

The road back to the Tyranny bar blurred beneath his treads as he sped through the neon-lit streets, his tank form cutting through the night. The city’s glow painted the asphalt in streaks of electric blue and sickly yellow, but Tarn barely registered it. His chronometer ticked far past midnight— later than he’d intended, later than he’d ever kept Megatron waiting.

He’ll still be there.

Megatron was always there.

But something— something cold and sharp twisted in Tarn’s fuel lines, a creeping dread that had nothing to do with the hour. The Tyranny loomed ahead, its familiar sign flickering erratically, as if struggling to stay alive. The door was slightly ajar.

That was wrong. The door was never left open.

Tarn transformed mid-stride, his pedes hitting the ground with a heavy thud that echoed in the oppressive silence of the street. The scent hit him first. Thick. Wrong. Energon. Fresh and spilled in quantities that made his battle protocols scream to life.

Then, the silence. No laughter. No clinking glasses. No Pet snarling.

He pushed the door and—

Bodies.

Kaon was slumped over the bar, his empty sockets staring at nothing, his digits still curled around a half-crushed cube. Nickel lay sprawled across the card table, her small frame almost peaceful if not for the gaping hole in her chest. Helex and Tesarus’s massive forms were crumpled near the door, their armor scorched and dented, as if they’d tried to make a final stand to block the exit. Vos—

Vos was in pieces.

The bartender’s single optic was wide, frozen in a permanent rictus of terror. The waitress— what was their name? — lay near the kitchens, still clutching a shattered tray.

The Pet’s chain lay severed on the floor, but there was no sign of the creature itself.

For a single, suspended second, Tarn stood there, his processor scrambling, failing to make sense of the absolute carnage. Then—

Megatron.

He took the stairs three at a time, his spark hammering against its casing like a trapped animal. The loft was dark. The booth was empty. No datapads. No half-finished reports. No Megatron.

Nothing. As if he had never been there.

Gone.

Gone.

Tarn’s claws dug into the wall and the metal shrieked under the pressure, groaning as it tore. His vents hitched in short, ragged bursts. The Tyranny— his team, his sanctuary— was a graveyard. And Megatron—

A raw sound tore from his vocalizer, a wretched fusion of a snarl and a sob. He ripped his mask from his face, casting it aside with a clatter that was lost in the overwhelming silence. The cool air hit his exposed face and the exposed wiring of his scar, but he didn’t feel it. He felt only a void, a howling, incinerating rage that threatened to consume him whole.

Whoever did this would burn. He would tear the very stars from the sky to find them, and he would make them scream.

Chapter Text

The stairs protested under Tarn’s weight as he descended, each step slower than the last. The cool air of the bar below prickled against the exposed mechanisms of his face— a raw sting he usually didn’t have to feel. His mask lay upstairs where he had cast it aside, a discarded piece of dead metal he couldn’t bear to wear in this tomb.

His team’s greyed-out frames littered the bar like discarded puppets, their optics dull and unseeing. There was a knot in Tarn’s throat, tight and suffocating. Nickel lay nearest, her small frame curled above the card table. Tarn knelt, his claws hovering over her face. He could not bring himself to touch her. The sight of his own claws against her cold plating was too profane.

She didn’t deserve this.

None of them did.

His vocalizer emitted an ugly sound, half-growl, half-choke. He clenched his fists until the joints creaked. His gaze fell to a large shard of a broken cube nearby, lying in a shallow pool of pink energon. The liquid was still, like a dark mirror, and in it he saw himself.

A generic face that would’ve been perfect had it not been for the scarred and pitted metal that was half of his face. The ruined circuitry ran from his left optic to his lower lip, his whole left cheek a gouge of wires. It was a wound his own nanites tirelessly tried to heal but never could. Not that he’d ever wanted it to. The scar was a reminder. A promise to never make the same mistake ever again.

Now, it just felt like a flaw. A crack through which the numbness was leaking out.

A detached impulse took hold. He raised a claw and picked at the edge of the seam; the microscopic nanites sparked and died under his touch. He dug deeper, peeling them back to reveal more of the damaged wiring beneath, the nerve endings buzzing with a pain that was somehow sharper than the hollow agony in his spark, yet he felt nothing. Nothing at all.

He needed to feel nothing.

The transformation sequence seized him before he had even fully decided. His frame compacted, plating and armor shifting and locking with a series of heavy and percussive clunks. For a glorious second, the world simplified into treads, engine, and cannon. Then he transformed back into root mode, the world exploding back into painful clarity.

It wasn’t enough.

He did it again. Tank mode. The scent of energon and death was muted inside his own hull. Root mode. The sight of the carnage hit him like a punch in the face. Again. Tank. Root. Tank. Root. The shift was becoming jerky, uncontrolled, his frame protesting the abuse, his cog straining inside his left hip, but the mechanical rhythm was a mantra, a distraction from the howling void within. He was an addict finding his fix in the middle of a massacre.

Clunk. Shift. Clunk. Shift.

On the tenth (or twelfth? thirteenth?) frantic shift back to root mode, his audials, sharpened to a razor’s edge by the sudden surge of adrenaline and grief, caught a new sound beneath the ringing in his helm. Rustling.

The transformation seizure stopped as suddenly as it had begun. He froze, his massive frame a statue amidst the wreckage of his life. Every sensor focused on the faint noise coming from behind the bar.

A low snarl answered the silence. From behind the toppled counter, the Pet slunk into view. Its plating was matted with dried energon that didn’t look like it was its own. It bared its denta at him, a weak mimicry of its usual fury, optics glowing with a feral light in the gloom.

“Of course you survived,” Tarn’s voice scraped raw from a vocalizer that felt just as torn up as his face.

The creature whined, wearing only its collar but no chain attached to it. The Pet surviving was definitely Kaon’s doing, his sentimental fool of a team partner hiding the beast while the killers carved through the rest. Tarn exhaled sharply, a ragged vent that shook his entire frame. He extended a hand, and the gesture felt alien and clumsy.

The Pet hesitated, sniffing the air, then limped forward and butted its helm against his claws.

Useless beast. Your job was to protect them.

Tarn stood abruptly, turning back to the corpses. The brief interlude was over. Time was a luxury he did not have— if they had taken Megatron, if they had slaughtered his team like scraplets in a grinder, they were probably already after Tarn too.

His transformation back to tank mode was deliberate and filled with a grim but final purpose. He rolled behind the bar, the movement feeling more natural now, a suit of armor he could don for one a last, terrible duty. He transformed back, his root mode appearing amidst the shattered glass and spilled high-grade. He opened a hidden panel under the counter (a compartment not even the bartender knew about) and grabbed a handful of small, glowing vials. Nuke. He uncapped one and downed its contents in a single motion. The synthetic rush was immediate, burning through the numbness and sharpening the world into a series of cold and hard facts. The other vials disappeared into his subspace. Rations for later.

From the same compartment, he drew now a set of empty vials. He moved to each of his fallen comrades— Nickel, Kaon, Vos, Helex, Tesarus. Very gently, he breached the sanctity of each spark chamber, siphoning a small measure of their innermost energon. The liquid glowed with a soft, pink light as it filled each vial, a captured fragment of their essence. He sealed them, one by one, and then subspaced them. They were heavy. They were all he had left of them.

Then he unsubpaced a spare mask and put it onto his face, the magnets clicking into place so only the bright red of his optics was not covered by the dead metal. Then, he turned his double cannon on the bar.

The first shot hit the engex shelves. The explosion was immediate and voracious, the volatile liquid igniting and spreading fire across the walls and ceiling. The second shot took out the support beam near the door, ensuring the structure would collapse.

He did not look back as he transformed. The Pet, sensing the danger, scrambled inside his open tank hatch just before it sealed shut.

Tarn’s tank form reversed, then powered forward, crashing through the already weakened wall and out into the alley as the Tyranny Bar, his home, his legacy, roared into an inferno behind him. A funeral pyre for the only family he had ever known.

──────────────

The city became a watercolor of bleeding light and bruised shadow, smeared across his vision as Tarn tore through the streets in alt mode. The nuke sang in his lines, a cold and clarifying fire that burned away the static of grief and honing his world to a single point: survival. The Pet’s whines echoed inside his hull, a grating reminder of a loss too vast to comprehend.

He engaged his holoform disguise, the projection of hard light rippling over his plating until he was just another anonymous heavy hauler. He pulled on his outlier ability, masking the unique frequency of his spark until it was a nearly imperceptible hum. A ghost. He had to be a ghost now.

But even a ghost could have one last tether to the world of the living.

His comm crackled to life in the sealed silence of his cab. His processor supplied a name, a face, a voice that did not belong in this nightmare of ash and energon. The one good thing that had happened before it all went to hell.

He waited, his engine an anxious rumble, for long and agonizing moments until the line connected.

“I didn’t expect you to call me this soon,” Pharma’s voice was laced with a dry but curious amusement. Alive. Whole. Unharmed.

The relief that slammed into Tarn was so potent it was almost a physical blow. It was immediately followed by a colder dread. He doesn’t know. He’s still in his world, and I’ve just dragged a chain of corpses into it.

Tarn’s vocalizer glitched, static spitting from it before he could force the words out. He could not tell him everything. Not over a long frequency channel. But he had to warn him. He had to make him understand the danger without sending him into a panic.

“Doctor,” Tarn began, his voice a ragged thing he barely recognized. He modulated it, trying to sand down the desperate edges. “Listen to me. Your association with me... it may have drawn unwanted attention.”

A beat of silence on the other end. Tarn could picture the exact way Pharma’s optics would narrow, the skeptical tilt of his helm.

“Unwanted attention,” Pharma repeated, the amusement gone and replaced by caution. “Could you be more specific, or are we speaking in riddles tonight?”

“Armed attention,” Tarn clarified. “I need you to be careful. Lock your doors. Arm yourself. Assume no one is coming as a friend.”

It was the best he could do. A warning from one professional to another.

“Wait— what?” Pharma said on the other end of the line. “Who’s they?”

“I don’t know yet,” Tarn admitted, and the failure of the admission burned like acid. “But I will find out.” The promise was a vow etched into his spark.

The line hissed with a prolonged silence. Tarn could almost hear the calculations running behind Pharma’s optics, weighing the risks of a hitman’s paranoia against the cold fact that hitmen had very real reasons to be paranoid. Tarn feared, for a terrifying moment, that he had made a catastrophic error. That Pharma would sever the connection and change his frequency, cutting Tarn off from the only spark in the city that didn’t currently feel like it belonged to an unseen enemy.

Then, unexpectedly, came the question. “Are you hurt?”

The concern, so simple and direct, lanced through the nuke-fueled clarity and found the grieving mech beneath. Tarn’s engine stuttered and his treads almost lost their rhythm on the asphalt. He could not answer that. He could not form the words to describe the hole where his team used to be, the phantom pain of a missing leader, the way his own scar seemed to ache with a fresh, psychic wound. The only wounds that mattered were far beyond a surgeon’s skill.

The silence stretched, saying everything he could not.

“Stay alive, doctor,” Tarn said finally, the words a rough plea. He severed the connection before Pharma could reply, before he could hear the pity or the fear in his voice.

The Pet growled inside his tank form, as if sensing the fresh wave of weakness that threatened to drown him. Tarn revved his engine, a defiant snarl against the night, and accelerated. The only way out was through. He would find who did this. He would make them burn.

And he would make sure the good doctor was still alive to see it.

──────────────

The Pet whined as Tarn transformed at the edge of Runout’s neighborhood, its claws scraping against his interior plating. He ejected it with a hiss of hydraulics; the beast tumbled onto the asphalt, shaking itself. Tarn ignored it, his focus already sweeping the perimeter. No movement, no lights, just the same ruin Blades had left behind in his incompetence.

“Stay,” Tarn ordered, a pointless command to a creature that, like himself, seemed to have forgotten how to obey. He was ignoring every protocol that screamed for him to flee the city, to go to ground, to simply survive.

Why was he here? The question echoed in the hollowed-out chamber of his spark. Logic dictated he should be halfway to the safehouse by now, or scouring the rest of the city for whispers of a hit. But logic had died with his team.

His processor, sharpened by the nuke and shattered by grief, kept circling the same jagged pieces. The timeline was too convenient. Their last job. Runout’s death. Then, barely any days later, the annihilation of his team and the disappearance of Megatron. It had to be connected. The client, Shockwave, was the obvious thread. The cold and brilliant scientist had the resources, the lack of morality, and the motive— if he had discovered the corpse switch.

But that was impossible. The switch had been flawless. Pharma’s work was impeccable, Nickel’s repaint convincing. Shockwave had accepted the goods and paid in full. To then turn around and orchestrate a massacre over a perceived slight was… inefficient. Petty. Not Shockwave’s style at all.

So then, who? A rival syndicate? Another mob making a power play? Overlord finally crawling out of whatever hole he had been festering in to seek revenge? The possibilities were a hydra, each head more terrifying than the last. He had no evidence, no leads, nothing but the gnawing certainty that it all had started here, in this shitty, blown-out house, with a junkie speedster and a modified spike.

This place was the first domino, Tarn was almost certain. He had to see it again. There had to be something he missed.

He slipped through the shattered back door, his frame silent for his size. The house still smelled of scorched metal, stale energon, and the faint rancid odor of decaying matter. The kitchen was still a grotesque tableau of Blades’ handiwork, a monument to amateurish overkill.

Last time, his focus has been trained on the corpse. Now, he began his search. He pried open drawers warped by the blast, their contents spilling out; rusted tools, spare parts for a frame long gone. He overturned the slagged remains of a data terminal, but the drive was a melted lump of silicon and plastic. He peeled back the smoke-stained wallpaper like a medic probing a wound, looking for a safe, a hidey-hole, anything.

Nothing. Just the detritus of a dead mech’s worthless life.

And then he found it. Tucked behind a loose chunk of baseboard, half-melted from the heat. A cracked holoframe—

Tarn froze.

He wiped the soot and grime with his thumb, and the image flickered weakly to life. Pharma’s face, younger, brighter, smirked up at him. His wings were swept high with a confidence that bordered on arrogance. Runout’s arm was slung around his shoulders, the speedster’s grin wide and unburdened by the addictions and failures that would later consume him.

Something hot and ugly coiled in Tarn’s fuel lines. Jealousy. Such a stupid reaction. He was standing in the ashes of a nobody’s life, coveting a ghost’s past. Primus, he was pathetic. He did not have time for this. His claw tightened and the glass of the holo cracked, biting into his palm. The image sputtered and died.

A sound from upstairs froze him. Not the creak of settling wreckage. The heavy thud of a pede.

He melted into the berthroom’s shadows, his battle protocols flaring to life with a silent but deadly hum. He became part of the darkness, his vents stilled, his spark signature pulled tight against his chassis.

Two mechs thudded down the steps. Bulky, armed, their plating scarred and patched. Their insignias had been hastily scrubbed; Tarn couldn’t make out what the symbol was. They didn’t seem like part of Shockwave’s team, or Starscream’s seekers. They were hired muscle.

“Slag, I can’t believe it’s not here,” one of them muttered, a grounder with a crude rotor blade welded onto his shoulder. He kicked a dented cabinet in frustration.

“Boss isn’t gonna be happy,” the second grunted. He was spindlier, with a sniper’s scope fused directly to the side of his helm. “I’ll comm the other two.” A pause as he accessed his internal comm. “Yeah, we got nothing. Place is scrap. Yeah, we’re heading out.”

Tarn’s audials sharpened, and—

The Pet chose that exact moment to leap through the broken window, shattering the last intact pane of glass with a dramatic crash.

“Slagging—!” the rotor-bladed mech yelled, spinning around, his weapons snapping up.

Fool beast. Usually, Tarn wasn’t prone to brutality. However, with the luxury of stealth gone, he had no choice.

He rounded the doorway and his double cannon’s barrels were already glowing, cycling through target locks before his pedes even hit the kitchen floor. The rotor-bladed mech was still turning, his optics wide with surprise. Tarn didn’t give him the chance to aim. He fired.

The shot wasn’t meant for a quick kill. It was a brutal strike that took the mech square in the throat, obliterating his vocalizer in a spray of molten metal and pink mist. The mech dropped his rifle, hands flying to his neck as he choked silently on his own energon, stumbling backward into the wall.

The sniper scrambled, not for his main rifle, but for a pistol at his hip, a clumsy gesture for a frame bristling with integrated weaponry. Almost as if he wasn’t accustomed to using them. The Pet, enraged by the noise and the sudden movement, lunged from the shadows. Its denta sank deep into the mech’s calf joint, grinding against the cabling beneath. The sniper howled, a sound of pain and fury, and kicked out hard. The sound of cracking metal was sickeningly distinct. The Pet yelped, such a pitiful sound, and went skidding across the floor, its leg bent at a wrong angle.

Tarn’s spark lurched. A fury, purer and more focused than any he had felt all night, ignited within him. That beast was all he had left of Kaon. Of his team.

He didn’t think. He didn’t aim. He simply pointed his double cannon and fired.

The sniper’s head vanished. Not exploded, not melted— vaporized. The pink mist of atomized energon hung in the air for a second before the headless body crumpled to its knees, then slumped forward onto the floor.

Silence, ringing and absolute, descended once more, broken only by the wet, gurgling attempts of the first mech to breathe through a ruined throat.

Tarn stalked toward him, each step a death knell. The Pet whimpered, dragging its injured leg, but was alive.

“Who do you work for?” Tarn snarled.

The rotor-bladed mech grinned, his denta stained pink with his own energon. “You’re— deader than your team, Tarn,” he choked out, the static-laced words a bubbling whisper.

A faint beep began to pulse from his chest. The telltale countdown of a built-in dead man’s switch.

Slag.

Tarn snatched the Pet by its collar and leapt, throwing his full weight forward. He didn’t aim for the door; he aimed for the weakest part of the wall, already compromised by Blades’ blast.

The explosion behind him was deafening. The concussive force hurled them through the plaster and wiring, heat searing Tarn’s back plates. Debris rained down around them as dust and smoke filled the alley. The Pet whimpered, shaking off dust and chunks of drywall. Still alive.

Tarn pushed himself up, his systems running damage reports. Superficial. Then he heard it— a crackle of static.

A voice, tinny and distorted, sputtered from a half-crushed radio amidst the new wreckage of the living room. Without its addressee’s comm available, the signal had been forced to bounce back to the closest non-sentient device able to receive it.

“—check the ex-junx’s place. Maybe the doc’s got it.”

Tarn’s optics widened.

Pharma.

──────────────

The radio’s message overrode every other directive in Tarn’s processor. He was moving before he had fully processed the thought, his tank form roaring to life and tearing out of the ruined neighborhood.

The image of his team’s bodies was seared onto the back of his optics, and now it was overlaid with a new horror— Pharma, cornered in his own home, because of him. The pain from the explosion at Runout’s house was a distant throb, a problem for another mech. The Pet’s frantic whining from within his hull was an ignorable buzz.

His focus was so absolute, his panic so all-consuming, that he forgot the basics. He forgot to activate his holoform disguise, his true colors revealed into the night. The careful blanket he had wrapped around his spark signature slipped, its unique and powerful frequency blaring like a beacon into the night.

He was a ghost no longer.

A shadow fell over him, then a second. Two sleek jet forms dropped from the cloud cover, their engines a synchronized whine that grated on his audials. Seekers. Their alt modes were a common military design, but the aggressive way they fell into formation behind him was anything but standard. Slag. Not now.

A warning shot streaked past his front left tread, exploding against the asphalt and showering the street with debris. The message was clear: stop or be stopped.

Tarn had no intention of doing either.

He tried to reach them with his outlier, to seize their sparks and paralize them, but he couldn’t. They were out of range, far into the sky.

He swerved violently, the Pet yelping as it was thrown against his interior plating. Another burst of laser fire scorched the road where he’d just been. They were herding him, trying to force him into a kill box. Irrational rage boiled over. Starscream. The association was immediate and venomous. That preening, treacherous parasite who called himself a senator now had a finger in every pie, and his seekers were always the ones to make a bad situation infinitely worse. Tarn knew it in his spark, but he couldn’t afford to jump to conclusions; assumptions got mechs killed. Even if his assumptions were usually right.

He was not a helpless grounder. His turret— the two cannons mounted on his back— rotated 180 degrees. Targeting systems flared to life in his HUD, painting a crimson lock on the lead seeker.

You want to dance? Let’s dance.

He returned fire. The cannon’s report was a deafening crump that shook his entire frame. The seeker banked hard, the shot screaming past its wingtip. The second seeker answered, its own barrage pinging off Tarn’s heavily armored rear plating. It was an absurd, high-speed duel: a tank and two jets trading fire in the dead of night.

He couldn’t keep this up. They were faster, more maneuverable. They would eventually wear him down or call for reinforcements. He needed to disappear.

The glowing river of the city’s central motorway surged with late-night traffic ahead. It was a risk, a terrible risk, but it was his only shot. Gunning his engine, Tarn veered off his course and plunged down an exit ramp, merging into the thick stream of vehicles.

The sudden cacophony of mingling engine sounds, shouting comms, and overlapping fields was overwhelming. He focused, pushing energy back into his holoform disguise. The projection stuttered, then solidified, transforming his infamous tank form into a grimy, nondescript long-hauler. He didn’t even need to mask his own energy signature. He simply let his spark relax, allowing it to be swallowed by the chaotic soup of a hundred other signatures pressed too close together. He was a single leaf in a raging river.

The two seekers shot past the exit, then circled back, hovering at the edge of the traffic flow like frustrated avians. They weaved between the slower traffic, scanning, searching. Tarn held his course, his pace steady and unremarkable, his spark hammering against its casing. For a long, agonizing minute, they were a constant threat in his rearview sensors.

Then, as if on an unseen command, they broke off. The two jets climbed vertically, silhouetted against the moonless sky for a moment before shooting off into the distance, defeated by the crowd.

Damn them. The delay had cost him precious minutes. Minutes Pharma might not have.

Any pretense of caution evaporated. The moment the seekers were gone, Tarn slammed his accelerator. He tore out of the traffic flow, masking his energy signature. His holoform flickered as he careened into back alleys too narrow for his frame, scraping paint from his sides. The Pet howled in protest with every sharp turn, every jarring impact. He didn’t care. He plowed through overflowing dumpsters and ignored the angry shouts of mechs he nearly sideswiped. Recklessness was a price he was willing to pay.

Pharma. Pharma. Pharma.

The name was a pulse in his processor, synced to the hammer of his spark. Pharma’s apartment building finally loomed ahead, a grim sentinel in the rundown district. Most of its windows were dark, save for one.

His.

Tarn didn’t bother with the alley. He transformed mid-stride in the middle of the street, his pedes slamming onto the pavement with enough force to crack the asphalt. The Pet was ejected, tumbling onto the ground and shaking itself off with a confused yelp. But Tarn was already moving, a purple and black avalanche taking the stairs three at a time.

The door was ajar. Tarn’s cannon snapped up as he shouldered through—

— and froze.

Pharma stood in the center of the living room, a specter of controlled violence. His wings were flared to their full span, a classic flier threat display. Every one of his digits had been transformed into different tools: scalpels, bone-saws, screwdrivers, syringes— all dripping with viscous pink energon that pattered softly onto the floor.

Two mechs lay mangled at his pedes. The first was a mess of severed cables and split plating, his throat carved open in a grin that went audial to audial, a lake of energon spreading from the ruin of his neck. The second was still twitching, a wet gurgling sound escaping the deep stab wounds that punctured his major fuel lines. His optics flickered, dimming as he choked on his own fluids, one hand feebly clutching at a gaping hole in his abdominal plating where Pharma’s tools had evidently found a weakness and exploited it with ruthlessness. A mess of wires and guts spilled from the gaping hole.

The doctor’s ventilation came in ragged, heaving bursts, his frame trembling with the aftershocks of combat. Then his optics— bright, electric blue and burning with a feral intensity — locked onto Tarn. Pharma’s own plating was a testament to the struggle; deep scratches scored his multilayered chest, his left wing was badly dented and hung at an awkward angle, and his cockpit was splattered with so much pink energon it was impossible to tell what was his and what was theirs. But his stance was steady. Unbroken.

“Pharma—” Tarn’s voice was rough as he lowered his double cannon. He took a cautious step forward, his own battle protocols disengaging. “Are you alright? Are you hurt?”

Pharma’s optics widened, as if seeing Tarn for the first time. The feral light in them flickered, replaced by a dazed, almost hallucinatory disbelief. He blinked slowly, his weaponized digits retracting, transforming back into elegant, though now bloodied, hands.

“This is why I don’t go out with terrorists,” Pharma hissed. “They always drag me into their slag,” His gaze dropped to his stained hands. A full-body shudder ran through him. “Fuck. I need a cigarette.”

The tension in the room didn’t break so much as it… settled, condensing into a thick haze of shared trauma. The Pet, having slunk in behind Tarn, whined softly and began cautiously sniffing at the greyed-out corpses, limping as it held its tail tucked low.

Tarn’s optics swept over the two dead mechs. Grounders. Bulkier than the average enforcer, but not the heavily modified brutes he’d faced at Runout’s house. These were common thugs. Whoever had sent them had severely underestimated the good doctor, thinking a surgeon would be easy prey. The brutality of their deaths proved how catastrophically wrong they had been. The energon on Pharma’s frame was a badge of their fatal error.

Tarn turned from his inspection of the corpses to watch him. With movements that were slightly unsteady, Pharma fumbled a single cigarette from a half-crushed packet. He didn’t seem to care about the energon on his digits as he placed it between his lips. A small welder’s tip emerged from his index finger, sparking once to light the end. He took a long, deep drag as the tip glowed a fierce orange, then walked to the blown-out window, exhaling a plume of smoke out into the night air from both his lips and the vents on his shoulders.

Tarn’s left optic twitched almost imperceptibly behind his mask. He despised the habit, the smell, but he held his tongue. The doctor’s wings were still held stiff and high, the fine edges trembling with the residual charge and adrenaline still coursing through his circuits. The cigarette wasn’t a vice in that moment; it was a regulator, a focal point to keep the crash at bay. Tarn exhaled deep and slow.

“I think the people who went for you,” Tarn said in a low voice, “might have gone for my team too.”

Pharma’s bright optics snapped away from the window, focusing on Tarn with laser intensity. The haze of smoke cleared from his gaze, replaced by sharp alarm. “What?” he demanded, the cigarette dangling between his digits. “Why do you think that?”

Tarn held his gaze. There was no easy way to say it. No way to soften the blow. But he needed to say it— needed to hear it aloud himself.

“Because they’re all dead.”

Chapter Text

Pharma’s optics flickered. The battle-fury drained from his frame, replaced by dawning comprehension. His gaze swept over Tarn, taking in the state of his frame. The scouring heat-burns across his back plates from the explosion, the fine layer of dust and dried energon matting his armor, the minute tremor in his claws that were now clenched at his sides.

“All of them?” Pharma’s voice was quieter now, the sterile tone of a medic confirming catastrophic news. “Kaon? Nickel?”

Tarn could only give a single nod. The image of Nickel’s small, curled frame flashed behind his optics, and he had to physically lock his joints to stay upright.

Pharma’s wings, which had been flared in a defensive threat-display, lowered incrementally. He looked from the two mechs he had killed at his pedes to the devastation written on Tarn’s frame. Then those sharp optics narrowed, studying Tarn even through his mask, diagnosing more than just the grief.

“Are you on drugs?” Pharma asked in a flat tone.

Tarn stilled. He considered lying, but what was the point? The nuke’s synthetic clarity was a tangible buzz in his lines, a stark contrast to the fog of despair. “It helps me to focus,” he replied, almost too evenly. “As I’m sure your cigarette helps you to calm down.”

Pharma rolled his optics. “Everyone to their vices, I guess.” He took a final drag from the cigarette before stubbing it out on the windowsill. “So what’s the plan? I suppose standing here isn’t it.”

“We can’t stay,” Tarn said urgently. His sensors were still screaming, scanning the hallway, the street below. “If they sent two, they’ll send more. We need to mask your spark signature before leaving— they’ll be scanning for it.”

Pharma paused. “What? I can pull it tight, but I can’t just… mask it.”

“I can,” Tarn stated, taking a step closer. “My outlier ability. I don’t just hide my own— I can create a dampening field to hide others’ as well. But for a sustained mask, strong enough to fool a dedicated hunter… I need a direct connection,” a panel on his wrist slid back, revealing a port. “A hardline is more efficient. More durable.”

Pharma’s optics dropped to the port, then back to Tarn’s mask. They both knew the intimacy of the request. A direct connection meant lowering firewalls, granting access to his most fundamental systems.

“It’s that or they find you the moment we step outside,” Tarn pressed. He could feel the nuke-fueled paranoia itching at the edges of his logic.

Too long. We’ve been here too long.

Pharma’s own wrist panel retracted sharply. “Fine. Do it.”

Tarn snaked a cable from his port, clicking it securely into Pharma’s. The moment the connection solidified, Tarn’s consciousness expanded and his optics grew distant. He felt the hum of Pharma’s spark, the architecture of his firewalls, the lingering adrenaline spike from the fight. It was intensely personal.

He focused, pushing past the foreign systems, and began weaving a complex shell of neutral energy around Pharma’s spark signature. The effort of masking someone else’s signature was most surely going to drain him of energy. It was like holding a heavy weight perfectly still.

“Is he your friend?” Pharma asked suddenly.

Tarn’s focus remained locked on the delicate energy-weaving, the task demanding most of his processing power. He prompted Pharma with an inquisitive hum, signaling for him to continue.

“The mechanimal.”

Ah. Tarn’s gaze flickered, barely registering the Pet as it licked the energon from the corpses. “No,” he replied. “It’s… it’s just a turbofox.”

“Oh. I see,” Pharma said as Tarn continued working. Then Pharma exhaled sharply. “The ones who came here… they were looking for something. They thought I had it. What did Runout have that was worth all of this?” He subtly flexed his digits, as if testing the connection.

“I was hoping you could tell me,” Tarn said, his focus split between the delicate energy weaving and the conversation.

The distorted voice from the radio in Runout’s house echoed in his mind.

Maybe the doc’s got it.

“I have no idea,” Pharma shrugged. “I cut looses with Runout years ago.”

Tarn exhaled slowly. Once the energy mask was locked in place, he retracted the cable. The sudden severance of the connection left a strange void, and then his systems registered the new but constant energy drain. It was a reminder that he was operating on borrowed energy and chemical will.

“Done,” he informed Pharma, who closed his own wrist panel. Tarn’s optics snapped toward the door, scanning the hallway. “Can you fly?”

Pharma shrugged, rotating his injured wing with a wince. “If I can hammer out the dent on my wing, yeah. The scratches are superficial.”

“Good. We’re leaving now,” Tarn said in an urgent tone. “To them, you’re probably a loose end.”

“A loose end,” Pharma repeated, a hint of his usual dry sarcasm returning, though it was brittle now. “Charming.” He was already moving, grabbing a medkit and a few other items, subspacing them quickly. “I assume you have a plan beyond ‘don’t get killed’?”

Tarn’s processor, which had been a roaring storm of grief and rage, finally caught on a single point of purpose. Pharma. Alive, but in danger. Because of his job, his team, his failure.

“I get us to safety first,” Tarn said, his voice hardening once again. The mask hid his expression, the persona of the enforcer a necessary shell to contain the screaming void inside. “Then I find out who did this. And then I erase them from existence.”

He looked at Pharma, who was now watching him with an unreadable expression— a mix of apprehension, sharp intelligence, and something else Tarn could not name.

“The us,” Pharma said carefully. “Am I included in that particular pronoun?”

Tarn took a step towards him. The distance between them felt charged, but different than it had in the restaurant.

“They think you have what they want. That makes you the only lead I have,” Tarn said, the practical hitman’s logic taking over. It was only half the truth, and from the look in Pharma’s optics, he knew it. “So yes, doctor. For now, you’re with me.”

And I will not let them take you too.

──────────────

« So Megatron is not dead? » Pharma asked through a private comm line.

The doctor’s jet form cut through the grey sky, both sleek and predatory even beneath the holoform disguise projecting a common courier model. Below, Tarn’s alt-mode tore through back alleys and deserted routes, his own disguise rendering him just another anonymous vehicle in the night. Every one of his sensors was stretched to its limit, scanning for tails, for the tell-tale energy spike of a weapon charging, for any sign that the hunters had picked up their scent again.

« No, he… he’s just missing. » Tarn commed back, tasting ash in his mouth.

Megatron must be in the safehouse. He has to be.

A constant strain pulsed behind his optics— the price of using his outlier to actively mask not just his own, but also Pharma’s spark signature. It was a relentless energy drain, a weight he would have to bear until they were safe and out of range.

« Stick to the planned route. The safehouse is on the fringes of Helex’s old merchant district. »

« I know the district, » Pharma’s reply was clipped, all business. There was a faint sigh over the comm. « I’ve already sent an encrypted message to my clinic. Told First Aid I was taking an indefinite sabbatical for ‘personal research’. He’ll manage. »

Pharma’s tone told Tarn that he was not thrilled about being forced into hiding in some rustic safehouse, but he was, as Tarn was learning, profoundly pragmatic. He adapted. He survived.

« Who do you think it is? » Pharma pressed, cutting through Tarn’s thoughts. « Rival syndicate? The senate? »

Tarn’s engine revved, a frustrated growl vibrating through his frame. « On my way to your apartment, I was attacked by two Seekers. »

« Starscream’s? » Pharma asked.

« Most definitely, » Tarn said, taking a corner too fast, his treads screeching against the asphalt as the Pet whined from within his hull. « I don’t think the whole senate is involved, but… he and Megatron had a lot of issues. »

That was a monumental understatement, but Tarn didn’t want to get into details. He hoped Pharma would understand what he meant.

« Hm, makes sense. » Pharma commed, as if it was the most obvious conclusion in the world.

« My other suspect is Shockwave. » Tarn frowned internally. « He was the client, and he wanted Runout’s processor. Specifically. I thought it was just another twisted experiment, but… » He exhaled heavily, the phantom image of the Tyranny’s carnage momentarily blinding him, the scent of spilled energon and fire overwhelming his sensors once more. « This is something else. »

And I’m not entirely sure what it is.

« Wait— you hadn’t told me Shockwave was the client who wanted Runout dead. That makes sense. Runout used to work for him. It’s so obvious the fucking thief stole from Shockwave. » Pharma explained.

The pieces clicked into place with such clarity that Tarn felt a fool for not seeing it sooner. Of course. It was never about the mech, but about the property. Shockwave’s cold fury was not directed at an individual, but at a variable that had compromised his work. A thief.

« Doctor, you have a brilliant mind. »

« I just connected the dots, » Pharma snorted, and Tarn could almost picture the casual but elegant shrug of his wings. « I didn’t know Shockwave was the client until now. »

« Even so, » Tarn commed. The compliment had slipped out, unvarnished and sincere. He quickly steered back to practicality. « Now, what did Runout stole? » The question was murmured more to himself in contemplation.

Pharma exhaled. « Runout was a junkie and an idiot, but he was paranoid. If he had something valuable, he wouldn’t have kept it on him. He had a few… stashes. Bolt-holes from before I even met him. I can guess a place or two. The thing is that we don’t know what he stole, which is probably what Shockwave is looking for. »

A flicker of something— not quite hope, but direction— ignited in Tarn’s spark. It was the first solid lead, the first thing that wasn’t just blind rage or overwhelming grief. A thread to pull in the suffocating darkness.

« Once we’re secure, you’ll give me the locations, » Tarn stated.

« Obviously, » Pharma replied, a hint of dry defiance returning.

A moment later, a distinct chime echoed through their private comm link— an incoming call on Pharma’s end. Tarn’s engine tightened, his paranoia flaring. Every sensor focused on the jet above him.

He heard a dismissive click. « Don’t worry. It’s no one important, » Pharma said; the call had been evidently rejected.

The reassurance should have settled him. Instead, a cold trickle of doubt seeped in, and Tarn wanted to believe it was the nuke fueling his paranoia. Perhaps it was just the clinic’s staff wanting to check in with Pharma. And yet—

Can I fully trust him? The surgeon was brilliantly unpredictable, a mech of sharp edges and hidden depths who had just coolly executed two intruders. His allegiance was to his own survival, a principle Tarn understood all too well. And yet, here he was. Flying a pre-determined route to a mob boss’ safehouse, offering intel on a dead ex-conjunx.

Tarn wanted to trust him. Primus, he needed to trust someone. The weight of being alone was already crushing him. He needed Pharma’s keen mind, his steady hands, his unshakable composure. He needed to believe that not everything beautiful in his world had been destroyed.

──────────────

The safehouse was a silent box nestled deep in the woods, smelling of dust and disuse. The moment they were inside, Tarn’s first action was a frantic search. He stalked through the sparse rooms, his spark hammering against its casing, hoping against all reason to find a familiar and massive silhouette waiting in the gloom. But there was no one. Only shadows and silence.

A heavy certainty settled in his fuel lines. Megatron was not here.

His optics then snapped to the small control panel on the living room wall, the kind used for environmental controls, but in this safehouse, he knew it was passively linked to Megatron’s private comm network. It was a connection for emergency alerts.

He strode over, claws clicking against the interface, trying to pull up the last accessed logs, the last messages sent or received. The screen remained stubborn, flashing a single word: LOCKED. A snarl built in his throat. He could likely bypass it, but not now, not with his processor frayed by nuke and grief. The finesse required for hacking was beyond his current chemically sharpened yet emotionally blunted state.

“You have some nasty burns on your back plates.”

Pharma’s voice, clinical and calm, cut through the static in his head. Tarn turned to find the doctor already unpacking his medkit on the kitchen table. The dim light of the safehouse glinted off his plating, not as battered as Tarn’s frame, but with a few scratches and superficial cuts. Here, secluded in the woods, they had both dropped the holoforms and the energy masking. The relief from the energy drain of his outlier was immediate, but it left a hollow feeling in its wake. He felt tired. He could not remember the last time he had a break or a recharge.

“It’s superficial,” Tarn dismissed.

“It’s a wound that will impede your mobility if it fuses incorrectly. Sit,” Pharma ordered, not looking up from his preparations.

The doctor had a point. Tarn acquiesced, settling onto a sturdy stool. He felt cool air on his back as Pharma assessed the damage, though his digits were both deft and warm. Then Tarn felt a cleanser-soaked cloth, wiping away soot and debris from the scorched armor. The pressure of those skilled digits on his frame felt… good. To be tended to. To have someone else’s focus on his well-being. Pharma’s company was a quiet anchor.

It was not how he had imagined it would be though. In the fleeting daydreams he had allowed himself shortly after their dinner, he had pictured a slow but deliberate courtship— another fine restaurant, perhaps a walk through a secluded gallery, a chance to see that sharp smirk soften into a genuine smile. Perhaps a dance too, if he ever convinced the doctor.

“Have you been transforming a lot lately?” Pharma asked, his voice taking on that specific but distracted tone of a medic focusing on a task.

Tarn paused, considering his answer. Lying seemed pointless. “Yes. Why?”

“I noticed there’s an imbalance in your stance,” he put down the cleansing cloth. “Every time you walk, you favor your right side, and your hip joint emits a faint whine when you put weight on it. That tells me your cog is burnt out from excessive transformation.” His digits, now transformed into a welder and a pair of tweezers, began sealing a particularly deep crack in his plating.

Tarn was silent for a long moment. The diagnosis was unnervingly accurate. “It’s another vice,” he admitted in a tiny voice that did not sound like his.

Pharma continued his work, silent save for the soft hum of his tools and the occasional hiss of a weld. Then the doctor inhaled, as if preparing to speak, and Tarn expected a lecture, a dry recommendation for physical therapy and a stern warning to lay off the transformation addiction— but then Pharma snorted. Actually snorted.

“Well,” Pharma chuckled. “This certainly isn’t how I imagined our second date would go. But I’m learning a lot about you.”

The comment was so unexpected it threw Tarn’s processor into a brief stall. Then, he smiled under the mask. “No,” he agreed. “I didn’t imagine it like this either.”

He had not imagined the scent of scorched metal would replace fine engex, or that their second date would be in a dusty safehouse with death on their heels. Yet, despite it all, Pharma’s presence was more than enough. Tarn would have just preferred it under different circumstances— any circumstances where the air didn’t smell of energon and loss.

“But I find I have no complaints about the company,” Tarn added, the flirtation feeling clumsy yet sincere.

Pharma’s hands stilled for a fraction of a second before resuming their work with an amused snort. “Flattery won’t get you a discount for this,” he murmured.

Tarn chuckled briefly in response. He heard the quiet sound of Pharma’s digits shifting, the tools retracting and transforming back into blunt digits. A moment later, the doctor began applying a cooling sealant to the last of the burns, the gel a welcome relief against Tarn’s plating.

“Are we even sure we’re being hunted by the same people?” Pharma asked. “What if it’s all a coincidence? It doesn’t seem like Shockwave has a reason to want your team out of the picture.”

He had a point. Pharma was most certainly a target for Shockwave; his connection to Runout was the obvious reason. But the massacre at the Tyranny… the brutal overkill of it did not seem like the dispassionate scientist’s style. It was messy.

“Perhaps he wasn’t after them, but after Megatron,” Tarn ventured, the theory forming even as he spoke it.

His processor conjured the image of Megatron, shackled in one of Shockwave’s labs, a specimen for one of his unethical experiments. But the thought hit a wall of contradiction. Weren’t Shockwave and Megatron still in a tense but functional negotiation? Their dealings, while strained, had not devolved into open hostility. So what had happened to shatter that fragile truce?

Pharma hummed, a thoughtful sound. “Do you think Shockwave and Starscream are working together? You did say you were attacked by two Seekers.”

Tarn exhaled sharply. “Not impossible, but unlikely given their clashing egos.”

The idea of those two narcissists cooperating on anything beyond the barest transactional level was difficult to envision. Tarn could not be certain of anything, and he hated that feeling of uncertainty— a fog that no amount of nuke could ever truly burn away.

Yet, the timeline was undeniable. Both events— Runout’s death and the massacre of his team— had happened in a short span of time. It was either a monstrous coincidence, a perfect storm of unrelated tragedies, or a calculated, multi-pronged move designed specifically to throw him off balance and leave him reeling and vulnerable.

The Pet, which had been sniffing around the perimeter of the room, finally settled, dozing off near Tarn’s pedes.

Pharma stepped back, putting some of his tools back into the medkit. “Done.”

Then, almost absently, he reached down to scratch the dozing turbofox behind its ear. The creature, still half-asleep, leaned into the touch with a soft whirr of its engine.

Tarn experimentally moved his shoulder, his own claw grazing the edge of the treated area. He couldn’t quite reach the center of his back, but the stinging pain had been replaced by a cool numbness. “I appreciate it, doctor.”

Pharma gave a single nod and then sat on the stool right across from Tarn, the weight of the day seeming to settle on his own struts as he massaged his own neck. The Pet’s ears twitched at the movement, then pulled itself up onto its four paws and, with a limping gait, walked over to Pharma to rest its snout on top of the doctor’s thighs, looking up at him with its one good optic.

“Hey, you,” Pharma murmured. A genuine, if tired, smile touched his lips as he petted its head.

Tarn just stared, a complex knot of emotions tightening in his chest. He was not particularly fond of the beast, but it was a living piece of Kaon, of his team, of the Tyranny. Seeing Pharma show it a kindness he himself rarely did was… disarming. But it revealed a layer of softness he had not anticipated, and in that vulnerability, he found a seed of genuine trust.

The nuke was wearing off, its fire receding like a tide and leaving the barren shore of his grief exposed. He had limited vials and would save them for true emergencies— for when he needed to be a weapon, not a grieving mech.

A corrosive guilt began to eat at the edges of his processor. He would never forgive himself for not being there with his team. What difference could he have made? Could his cannon, his outlier, have turned the tide? And Megatron…

Tarn did not want to fail him like he had failed his team. He may have become disillusioned with the mech his lord had become— with the brooding figure in the dark booth— but that did not mean he wanted him dead. Far from it. A part of him hoped Megatron was still alive somewhere, held captive but fighting. And yet, he didn’t know what was worse for Megatron: to be a prisoner, subjected to who-knew-what indignities, or to be lying dead in a ditch, his mighty spark extinguished and his frame left to rust. Both possibilities were already a failure.

He felt as if he had been running nonstop, and now, without its chemical shield, the full weight of his loss pressed in, both his struts and spark aching. He knew the mess of his emotional field was bleeding out, a chaotic signal Pharma could undoubtedly sense.

“She would’ve been a great medic,” Pharma said softly, not looking up from his gentle petting of the creature’s head. “Nickel.”

The words struck directly at the raw wound of his grief. Tarn swallowed hard, the motion feeling foreign. The knot in his throat was both a physical and emotional obstruction.

“I know.”

Chapter Text

Following Pharma’s leads, they began with the search.

The storage facility in the Dead End was a canyon of rusting metal lockers, a graveyard for forgotten things, most of them smelling of oxidized metal and neglect. Acquiring the key had been almost insultingly easy. Pharma, with a performance of weary nonchalance, had claimed to be Runout’s conjunx coming to finally clear out his slag. The older mech, optics dim with disinterest, had simply slid the key across the counter without even asking for a proper identification. Tarn found the lack of security both convenient and deeply depressing.

Now, the small screen on the locker door beeped green, indicating it was unlocked. Tarn hauled the rolling door up, its shriek of protest echoing in the narrow alley. Stale, dead air washed over them. The locker was a tomb of a poorly lived life.

The Pet, its leg now perfectly functional thanks to Pharma’s ministrations, trotted inside first, immediately burying its snout in a pile of mildewed rags and whuffling with interest.

“Primus,” Pharma muttered, waving a hand in front of his olfactory sensor. “Remind me, what are we looking for in this junk heap?”

Tarn stepped inside, his broad shoulders nearly brushing the walls. He picked up a dented crate and peered inside, finding only corroded spare parts. “I’m not certain. Something small. A data slug is the most probable. It’s more likely he stole intel from Shockwave than a physical device.” He tossed the crate aside with a clatter. “But we look for anything that seems out of place. Anything that doesn’t belong in the life of a….” his gaze swept over a stack of empty engex bottles, “… a junkie speedster.”

Pharma sighed, the sound full of long-suffering resignation, and started on a stack of boxes. For a while, the only sounds were the rustle of discarded packaging, the clang of useless components, and the Pet’s happy snuffling. Tarn found boxes of garish polish, a collection of racing dramas, and what looked like the remains of several stolen comm units.

“Ah, his refined cinema phase,” Pharma said dryly, holding up a case of movie holos.

Tarn expected more racing dramas, but the titles were different from what he could see. The Proposal, Ashes of a Spark, Happily Ever After. Sappy, high-brow romantic dramas. Just like the one they had watched in the theater where he and Pharma met for the payment.

“Did you enjoy these?” Tarn asked, unable to keep a note of curiosity from his voice. “The dramas.”

Pharma shrugged. “They were, like, the only thing we had in common,” he admitted, tossing the case back into a nearby crate. “Though, I still prefer romcom dramas over the racing ones. They have a certain… structural predictability I find comforting.”

“I must admit they’re not my favorite,” Tarn replied, the confession feeling strangely intimate in the dusty silence of the locker. “But I enjoy them from time to time. The predictability is, as you say, comforting.”

There was a small but genuine smile in Pharma’s lips, a stark contrast to the sharp smirks and cynical scowls that usually defined his expressions.

A moment later, Pharma let out an incredulous bark of laughter.

Tarn’s helm snapped up. “What is it?” Had Pharma found something?

Pharma wasn’t holding a data slug. He was holding a plastic bag that was already falling apart from being kept all those years in this dump. Inside wasn’t a piece of intel, but a cheap, gaudy, neon cyan trophy. The inscription on the base was barely legible. 2nd place – Dead End Drag Race – Sector 11.

“Stars above,” he chuckled, shaking his head as his blue optics glinted with bitter amusement. “He told me he won this the night we met. Said he’d outmaneuvered three professional racers in a canyon run. Made it sound so... daring,” he looked at Tarn, holding up the tacky prize. “He must have picked it up from a scrap heap.”

Tarn felt an unexpected and petty surge of satisfaction. The foundation of their relationship, or at least Pharma’s memory of it, was as fake as the trophy’s cheap plating. “A liar to the very core,” Tarn murmured, and the words tasted like a victory.

“Definitely,” Pharma said, tossing the trophy back into the box with dismissive clatter. “I was conjunxed to a collection of other mechs’ stories and stolen valor.”

“How long were you two together?” Tarn asked, trying to sound casually curious and not like he was dissecting a rival’s failed campaign.

Pharma scoffed, going through another box that was most definitely full of garbage. “Not long. Barely a year, I think. It felt like a decade. And I never saw him again until you showed up at my door with his corpse,” he gave Tarn a sideways glance, a sly smirk playing on his lips. “A far more memorable reunion, I must say.”

Tarn’s lips curled beneath the mask. “I aim to be unforgettable, doctor,” he purred.

Just then, a melodic chime cut through the air. Pharma’s helm tilted slightly, his optics growing distant for a second as he registered the incoming comm.

Tarn’s spinal strut went rigid. “Incoming call?” he asked, modulating his tone to sound like idle curiosity. He wasn’t certain he was successful in erasing the sharp edge of worry (and the unwelcome hot spike of jealousy) from the question.

The chime cut off abruptly, and Pharma’s focus returned to the box in front of him, his expression unreadable. “Yeah. No worries, it’s just… a friend of a friend. He’s been trying to get a hold of me. Probably wants to ask if I know where his ex is,” he shook his head. “But given our current situation, I won’t be answering of course.”

Tarn gave a slow nod, the tension in his frame easing minutely. The explanation was reasonable yet vague, and the frequency of the calls gnawed at him. He filed the unease away for later examination.

They resumed their search, but the locker had yielded all its secrets, and they were paltry ones. There was no data slug, no hidden compartment, nothing but the sad detritus of a mech who had valued nothing, not even the mech he had called conjunx once.

“This is futile,” Tarn finally declared, wiping a streak of grime from his wrist. “There’s nothing here.”

Pharma closed the lid on the last box, his expression one of profound disgust. “No. There isn’t,” he looked around the locker one last time, his gaze lingering on nothing in particular. “Just trash.”

Tarn had to agree. The Pet, having found a half-gnawed strut to occupy itself, seemed to be the only one who had profited from the excursion.

“Then we’re done here,” Tarn said in a low voice. “We move to the next location. He had to have hidden it somewhere.”

Pharma nodded, stepping out of the locker and into the dim light of the corridor, the Pet trotting dutifully at his heels.

──────────────

The bar, The Busted Optic, was the kind of establishment that made the Tyranny look like a five-star resort. It was a grimy pit where the air smelled of cheap engex and cheaper decisions. According to Pharma, Runout had washed glasses here for a few months and the owner, Gear, used to let him stash things in the back.

“This one requires a softer touch,” Pharma had murmured as they approached, his holoform disguise flickering and dying away. “Let me handle this.”

Tarn nodded and hung back, his own nondescript truck holoform in place as he watched Pharma push through the doors. He followed right after Pharma and, from his vantage point, he saw the interaction unfold. A grizzled old mech with a polishing rag slung over his shoulder looked up from behind the bar, his single optic widening in recognition.

“Well, slag my gears! Doc Pharma! Ain’t seen you in an age.”

“Gear,” Pharma said, offering a practiced but charming smile that didn’t quite reach his optics. He leaned against the bar, wings relaxed. “You’re looking well.”

“Oh, don’t lie to me, doc,” the mech, Gear, chuckled, though he clearly preened. His optic then flickered past Pharma, landing directly on Tarn’s disguised form. “Who’s your friend over there? Doesn’t look like the chatty type.”

Tarn’s engine tightened, his spark hammering against its chamber.

Pharma didn’t glance back. “Oh, him? Just my new bodyguard. My clinic’s in a rough neighborhood. You know how it is,” he waved a dismissive hand. “Speaking of which, I’m here on a bit of a sentimental errand. You remember Runout?”

Gear’s affable expression soured. “That thief? What about him?”

“He, ah, left something of mine here. A disk with some personal research. Sentimental value, mostly. He mentioned once he’d stashed it for safekeeping in the old engex cellar. A long shot, I know, but would you mind?”

Tarn watched, impressed despite himself, barely registering the Pet licking at some suspicious substance on the floor. The lie was flawless, layered with just enough truth and self-deprecation to be believable.

Gear studied Pharma for a long moment, then shrugged. “For you, doc? Sure. Just don’t take all day. And don’t touch the good stuff,” he gestured with a thumb towards a heavy door behind the bar.

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Pharma purred. “You’re a lifesaver.”

He gestured for Tarn to follow, and the noise faded behind them. The door to the engex cellar hissed open, revealing a room lined with racks of dusty bottles. The moment the door sealed behind them, Tarn let his holoform dissolve. The Pet, who had slunk in after them, immediately began sniffing at the base of the racks.

Pharma went straight to the far corner, where a stack of crates labeled with the industrial icon of Vos was. He ran his digits along the seam of the wall.

“Here,” he said, finding a catch. “Help me move this.”

They shifted the heavy crate together. Behind it was a small, recessed panel in the wall, barely noticeable. Tarn wedged a claw into the seam and pried it open with a squeal of protesting metal. He watched as Pharma reached into the hiding spot.

The doctor pulled out a small box. For a moment, Tarn’s spark surged with possibility. This was it. The stolen data. The reason for all this death, this running, this ruin.

Pharma pried the lid open. His shoulders slumped. “You have got to be kidding me.”

Tarn leaned forward. Nestled inside were two tickets, their holographic foil dulled with age. They were for the Iacon 5000. Tarn’s internal chronometer quickly calculated the date stamped on them; they were more than a century old, a relic from an event long since concluded. And given everything else they had uncovered about Runout’s penchant for lies, they were almost certainly forgeries.

“Nothing,” Pharma snarled. “Just more trash,” he snapped the lid shut and tossed the box back into the darkness, where it clanged against a stack of empty engex cubes.

Frustration clawed its way up Tarn’s throat. Another dead end. Another glimpse into the pathetic, hollow life of the mech who had inadvertently set this catastrophe in motion. Tarn felt a fresh wave of fury, both at Runout and at the frustrating futility of it all.

“We’re wasting time,” Tarn growled.

He turned, intending to storm out, his systems flooding with frustrated adrenaline. But as he and Pharma moved back toward the cellar door, it hissed open before they could reach it.

They were not alone.

Framed in the doorway, backed by the shadows of the hallway, was Gear. But the affable bartender was gone, replaced by a mech with a cold glint in his single optic. And he wasn’t alone. Clustered behind him, crammed into the narrow corridor, were at least ten other mechs. Their armor was scarred, their postures coiled and aggressive, and every single one of them had a laser rifle or a blaster pointed directly at Tarn and Pharma’s chests.

The Pet let out a warning growl, crouching low to the ground, right next to Pharma’s pedes.

Gear smiled, a thin expression. “Sorry, doc. But the bounty on your bodyguard’s head is worth a lot more than my fondness for you,” he cocked his head, gaze locking on Tarn’s mask. “Someone out there really wants you dead.”

“This was a setup,” Pharma said, voice dangerously calm. His own digits subtly shifted, ready to transform into weapons.

“Eh,” Gear shrugged. “T’was a chance, and we had to take it. A shame though,” his digit tightened on the trigger. “I liked you, doc.”

Tarn did not give him the chance to fire.

A single shot from his double cannon obliterated the doorframe and the two mechs standing directly in it. The concussive roar bought them a precious half-second of shock and confusion.

Tarn thought about using his outlier, but in the confined space, he could accidentally affect Pharma’s spark. He would not take that risk. Instead he lunged forward, becoming a whirlwind of focused brutality. His left claw seized the barrel of the nearest rifle, wrenching it upward as it fired, the blast scorching the ceiling. His right claw drove like a piston into the joint between the mech’s neck and shoulder, severing critical cables in a spray of sparks. The mech shrieked, collapsing, pink energon spurting from the severed wires.

To his side, Pharma was a blur of flier agility. He didn’t have a brute’s strength, but he had speed and terrifying knowledge. As a thug charged him, Pharma sidestepped, his digits elongating into a bone-saw. He didn’t aim for plating; he aimed for the delicate fuel line at the back of the knee. The saw bit deep with a screech of metal, and the mech crumpled, his leg useless. Another tried to grab his wing; Pharma spun, his hand and part of his forearm transformed into a chainsaw and ducked under the thug to then cut him in half. A mess of wires and blood and guts spilled from the now severed frame.

The Pet was all denta and claws, a demon on the ground. It ignored armor and went for the cabling at the ankles, its repaired leg allowing it to dart and weave with feral grace. It latched onto a mech’s calf, shaking its head violently and tearing out a handful of wires with a sickening crunch. The mech yelled, stumbling, and was promptly finished off by a brutal kick from Tarn.

But they were still outnumbered. A shot Tarn couldn’t dodge grazed the treads on his left shoulder, sending a wave of searing heat through his frame and leaving a molten streak. He grunted, stumbling back a step. He saw Pharma take a hit to the right wing, the impact spinning him around and leaving a blackened scorch mark on the white plating. Tarn growled and returned fire, vaporizing the offender’s rifle and part of his arm. The Pet yelped as a stray kick connected with its ribs, but it barely paused, its optic burning red.

“Tarn, your left!” Pharma shouted, even as he drove a syringe-tipped digit into the neck cabling of a mech who got too close. The assailant convulsed and dropped, systems shocked into stasis.

Tarn spun, his cannon already swiveling. He fired a concussive blast that sent three mechs flying back into the hallway, clearing a temporary path quickly filled by more thugs. He could feel the strain of the fight, the fresh wounds, and the constant, draining effort of keeping their spark signatures suppressed. They could not hold this position for long.

“The ceiling!” Pharma yelled, gesturing with a bloodied hand toward a rusted ventilation grate above the engex racks.

It was their only way out.

Tarn did not hesitate. He fired a carefully measured shot that blew the grate inward in a shower of metal and dust. “Go! I’ll cover you!”

Pharma transformed in a flash of blue and white, his jet engines roaring to life in the small space. The Pet, following after the doctor, scrambled up the racks with surprising agility and launched itself through the opening into the night air above. Tarn laid down a relentless barrage of suppressing fire, forcing their attackers to duck for cover as Pharma’s sleek form shot up through the hole in the ceiling.

A laser bolt caught Tarn in the thigh, a piercing burn that made his leg buckle. He snarled, firing one last wild shot behind him, and then transformed. His tank form was a poor fit for the vertical escape, but his powerful treads found purchase on the stacked crates. He launched himself upward, crashing through the remains of the vent and out onto the bar’s flat roof.

The cold night air hit his sensors. Pharma was already circling, his cockpit canopy sliding open. The Pet leapt inside frantically and the canopy snapped shut.

On the street below, Gear and his remaining lackeys were already spilling out of the bar’s front entrance, weapons raised.

Tarn’s transformation back to root mode was a painful and jerky motion. He slammed a fist onto his own chassis, forcing his overtaxed systems to comply. Here, with Pharma safely out of range, Tarn’s outlier flared to life. It was an invisible wave of pressure that seized the sparks of the mechs below. They cried out, a chorus of strangled shrieks and gasps, as their bodies convulsed and collapsed onto the grimy pavement, weapons clattering from their grasp.

He then activated his holoform disguise, solidifying over his scarred frame. Above, Pharma also activated his own, being replaced by the generic courier model.

For a moment they hovered, Tarn hiding on the rooftop as Pharma camouflaged into the grey sky, their sparks hammering in sync. The panicking mechs below, now leaderless and disoriented, scanned the area in confusion, their prize having vanished into the night. As they stumbled forward, searching the wrong end of the street, Tarn finally allowed himself a sharp but ragged exhale.

« Let’s go, » Tarn commed, his voice strained with pain and effort. He jumped off the opposite side of the roof and transformed back to alt-mode midfall. He hit the adjacent alley with a jarring impact that sent fresh agony lancing through his wounded leg, but his treads kept moving.

Pharma shot past him and they accelerated, weaving into the sluggish river of traffic. They were bleeding and battered, but they were alive.

« Well, that didn’t go as planned. » Pharma muttered over the private comm line.

« No, » Tarn growled back, the constant drain of masking their sparks was like a vice tightening around his core. « It didn’t. »

His thoughts churned with a new yet cold clarity. They were chasing ghosts, digging through the trash of a dead mech’s life for a prize they couldn’t even identify. It was a fool’s errand. Shockwave was the architect of this hunt; he was the one who had set these events in motion, who had turned Pharma into a target. The direct approach was the only one left. The search for a stolen trinket was over. It was time to start hunting the hunter.

A rising cacophony of sound dragged him from his thoughts, a convergence of sirens and the overlapping beeps of gridlocked traffic. His battle protocols, still humming from the fight, flared again.

« What’s going on? » Pharma asked, his jet form dipping slightly in the air to get a better view.

Tarn scanned the surroundings, his sensors on high alert, and then the true sirens started— the blaring wail of enforcer vehicles. Tension seized his struts. Were they already compromised?

« The police— » Tarn began, his spark clenching.

« I don’t think they’re after us, » Pharma interrupted, his observational skills sharp. « Look. »

The squad of enforcer vehicles didn’t slow for them. They shot past, their lights painting the street in streaks of red and blue before screeching to a halt a block ahead. The officers transformed, their root modes pushing brusquely through a gathering crowd that was stalling traffic. Other civilian vehicles were transforming too, craning their helms to see what the commotion was about.

« Should we...? » Pharma prompted, his meaning clear.

Curiosity warred with caution. Lingering in a crowd, injured and wanted, was against every instinct. Tarn frowned internally, his paranoia screaming at him to flee. But the hunter in him won out.

« Let’s see what happened, » he commed, already driving to the curb.

His holoform disguise remained activated even as he transformed. The shift to root mode sent a fresh jolt of agony through his wounded leg, and he had to lock his knee joint to prevent himself from falling. Nearby, Pharma did the same, his movements slightly stiff, the holoform over his frame glitching for a nanosecond over the dent in his wing. The Pet, sporting a new scorch mark on its flank, dropped down from Pharma’s cockpit and trotted to their side.

Together, they pushed their way into the periphery of the murmuring crowd. Mechs were whispering while pointing. The enforcers were trying to establish a perimeter, but the sheer number of onlookers was making it difficult.

“What is everyone looking at—” Pharma muttered, his voice trailing off as he finally saw past the wall of helms and shoulders. His frame went rigid. “Oh. Scrap.”

Tarn followed his gaze. And then he couldn’t look away.

There, in the center of the cordoned-off area, lying in a grimy alley mouth as if discarded, was Shockwave. Or what was left of him.

His purple frame was gouged with deep, savage claw marks that rent through armor and circuitry alike. His single yellow optic was a shattered ruin, a web of cracks radiating from a brutal impact point. His cannon arm had been severed at the shoulder, lying several meters away like discarded junk. Wires and internal components spilled from the brutal tears in his chest plating, pooling in a congealing lake of pink energon on the asphalt. It was a display of overwhelming, savage violence. It was a message.

Tarn could only stare, his processor scrambling, his own injuries forgotten. This had become infinitely more complicated. The mech he had just vowed to hunt down and eviscerate was already dead. Publicly, brutally, and undeniably executed. They were standing in a crowd of gawking strangers, wounded and pursued, with no leads left.

Slag.

Chapter Text

“Hold still,” Pharma murmured while he assessed the damage on Tarn’s stretched out leg.

Tarn sat on the edge of a storage crate while Pharma sat on a kitchen chair before him, the medkit open on the floor. The light caught on the scorched and blackened plating of Tarn’s thigh, where a laser bolt had bitten deep during their escape from The Busted Optic. On a ragged blanket nearby, The Pet lay curled in a deep recharge, its sides rising and falling.

He watched as the doctor’s digits transformed into a welder and a set of micro-tweezers. Pharma began debriding the scorched edges of the wound, peeling back warped metal to access the damaged circuitry beneath. The scent of ozone and superheated metal filled the small space.

“The cabling is fused,” Pharma stated clinically, his brow furrowed in concentration. “I can reroute the primary actuator, but you’ll have a fifteen percent reduction in lateral mobility until the new filaments regenerate. Try not to get into any high-speed chases for a few days.”

A humorless sound rumbled in Tarn’s chest. “A luxury I doubt we’ll have.”

His gaze was fixed on the far wall, but he wasn’t seeing the peeling paint. He was seeing Shockwave’s corpse, displayed like a grisly trophy. The act was too blatant, too theatrical. Too brutal. Just like the carnage at the Tyranny.

“I believe it was Overlord,” Tarn said aloud. “The brutality. The spectacle. It’s his signature. He went after my team, and now after Shockwave. He’s clearing the board.”

Pharma’s tools stilled for half a second before resuming their work. “That sounds logical,” he conceded. “But why now?”

“Perhaps now he’s strong enough to make a move. He probably knew the Decepticon syndicate had been decaying,” Tarn’s spark clenched at the admission. “We were the last significant power bloc. Shockwave was the most powerful independent operator. Eliminate us both, and the territory is his for the taking. He has the ambition and the lack of sense for a move like this,” Tarn frowned beneath his mask. “The problem is… we have no leads on Overlord’s whereabouts.”

“Hm. So what’s the plan?” Pharma asked, transforming his tools back into blunt digits and applying a cooling sealant gel to the rerouted cabling, offering immediate relief from the burn. “Chase a ghost?”

“Well, we don’t need to find Overlord yet,” Tarn’s claws flexed against his knee. “We find the one who makes public appearances. Starscream. He fancies himself a senator now, preening in his office. Easy to find. And he had Seekers on my tail,” Tarn growled. “Either it’s a coincidence, or he knows something.”

Pharma hummed in response and then gave a few pats to Tarn’s thigh. “There. That should hold, provided you don’t decide to transform fifty times in the next hour,” Pharma said dryly.

Tarn almost snorted at that, a weak smile tugging under the mask. Then Pharma leaned back against the chair, wiping a smear of carbon scoring from his hand. He was silent for a long moment, his gaze fixed on the freshly repaired wound, as if gathering the courage to speak a difficult truth.

“Tarn… I don’t want to slow you down.”

Tarn’s spark stuttered. He blinked at the doctor.

“I know masking two spark signatures is draining you more than if you just masked your own. Draining you faster than your systems can compensate for, especially with injuries like this,” Pharma continued, his voice firm and pragmatic, devoid of self-pity. “You’re running on nuke and willpower. Every joule of energy counts. And what you’re planning to do… it’s not a job for a surgeon and a turbofox.”

Tarn stilled. The doctor was right, of course. The constant drain of his outlier was a tangible weight on his spark, a tax on his already depleted energy reserves. The thought of Pharma leaving him behind sent a sharp pang through his chassis. The doctor’s company had become a quiet anchor in the storm, his sharp mind and steadier hands a vital counterbalance to Tarn’s own consuming grief. They had made a good team in that bar. They had fought, bled, and escaped. Together.

He did not want to be alone in the crushing silence again. The path of vengeance was a solitary one; one Tarn had come to dread.

But the memory of laser fire scorching Pharma’s wing, of the doctor being a single shot away from joining Nickel and his team…

He would not add Pharma to that pyre.

“You wouldn’t be slowing me down,” Tarn said, words rough but sincere. “But I do not want to get you killed.”

He saw the faintest tension leave Pharma’s shoulders. It was the relief of a professional whose accurate diagnosis had been accepted.

Tarn looked down at his freshly patched thigh, the new weld lines stark against the old plating. He swallowed hard.

“Overlord might not be after you,” Tarn began, voice low and carefully measured. “Or whatever it is that Runout stole. That was most certainly Shockwave’s vendetta, and with him dead…” he shook his head. “The immediate threat to you personally may have passed. However…”

He hesitated, his claws flexing. He did not want to sound like he was giving an order, forcing Pharma to be trapped here. He wanted it to be a request, a… a hope.

“I would prefer it if you stayed,” he finally said, the words feeling both tiny and immense. “You would be safer here. Away from the… mess I am about to walk into.”

Pharma’s optics softened almost imperceptibly. He did not look offended or trapped; he looked… resolved.

“Oh, don’t worry,” Pharma said, a faint wry smile touching his lips. “I’m not going anywhere. Someone needs to finish patching up our four-legged friend. And besides,” he added, his gaze sweeping over the dusty safehouse with a look of professional disdain, “this place could use a proper sterilization. It’s a biohazard waiting to happen.”

A weak but grateful smile spread beneath Tarn’s mask, his spark pulsing warmly in his chassis. “Very well.”

His gaze then drifted from the doctor’s face to the blackened scorch mark that still marred the white plating of his wing. The sight of it sent a pang of guilt and something fiercer, more protective, through his spark. He wished that he could do more for him than just offer the shelter of this dismal box.

Pharma stood, closing his medical kit with a definitive click. Tarn pushed himself off the crate to stand as well, testing his weight on the repaired leg. It held, the joint emitting only a faint whine.

“I’ll be right here,” Pharma said, echoing the last words Megatron had said to Tarn in another time, another place.

That seemed so long ago.

──────────────

The Senate District was all polished lies. Gleaming spires clawed at the grey sky, each one a testament to the corruption and compromise Tarn had once fought to burn away. And now, the most notorious turncoat of them all had an office here. It was enough to make his fuel lines burn.

The elevator door slid open with a chime, revealing a lobby of muted opulence. Plush benches were occupied by a handful of mechs, their frames sleek and polished, their attention absorbed by datapads. The air was filtered and scentless. Tarn’s presence was an immediate dissonance, his battle-scarred frame and the iconic mask a stark blot against the curated serenity. He ignored the subtle shift in posture, the flicker of optics as he passed. His gaze was fixed on the long desk ahead, manned by several secretaries whose placid smiles were as polished as their chrome.

He approached the one who looked the least busy. The mech looked up, his optics doing a slow journey from Tarn’s masked face to the insignia on his chest, and back again.

“Good evening. I require an audience with Senator Starscream,” Tarn said in a modulated voice even at its most civil.

The secretary’s digits were already typing into his console. “Do you have an appointment?”

“No, I do not.”

The typing continued, the soft clicks the only sound between them. The mech hummed in acknowledgment, a sound that came a second too late for Tarn’s liking. “Alright, sir, you can wait here while I check if the Senator is available.”

The secretary then pressed two digits to his helm, his focus turning inward as he presumably opened a comms line. Tarn took this as his cue to step away from the desk. He moved to the side, leaning his broad frame against the cool wall and crossing his arms instead of taking a seat. A low thrum of frustration built in his engine, quickly suppressed. He had thought, foolishly, that arriving without a holoform would grant him immediate access. He and Starscream were… former acquaintances, after all. He had expected recognition, fear, a swift escort to the inner sanctum. Instead, he was being made to wait like a common petitioner.

He felt slightly stupid; he should have come here to confront Starscream immediately after the attack by those two Seekers. But then Pharma had entered the picture, and their fruitless search for Runout’s phantom prize had consumed everything. And now Shockwave was dead. There had to be a connection somewhere, a thread linking the Seekers, the bounty, the public execution.

He lifted his gaze from the floor, sensing he was being watched. His optics locked instantly with the secretary’s. The mech almost flinched, optics wide for a second before he quickly turned away, his hushed comm conversation suddenly becoming more rapid and urgent.

Tarn frowned beneath his mask and uncrossed his arms. The placid silence of the lobby now felt different. He could feel everyone’s optics on him, the subtle tension in the frames of the mechs on the benches. He wanted to blame the paranoia on the nuke leaching into his systems, on the draining effort of the last few days, but his hunter’s instincts screamed at him.

He moved before the situation could escalate further, or before Starscream could be warned and flee. The secretary’s console had displayed the floor number— a fleeting glimpse of digits he had memorized without conscious thought. He did not wait for the elevator, which was currently all the way up on the last floor. A grand staircase, all sweeping curves and polished metal, promised a more direct route.

Just as Tarn began to take the stairs, the secretary shouted behind him wait! but he ignored it, quickening his pace. After a few moments, he realized he wasn’t being chased, but his pace never wavered. Then he emerged into a silent hallway. He checked; correct floor number. Only one door here mattered, and Tarn quickly found that screecher’s polished nameplate.

He didn’t knock. The door to Starscream’s office slid open with a hushed hiss as Tarn bypassed the lock with a focused electromagnetic pulse from his outlier. He stepped inside.

Starscream, perched behind a vast desk, nearly jumped out of his plating. He had been finishing a video call, and the screen flickered out just as Tarn’s shadow fell over him. A micro-expression of pure panic flashed across his face before recognition dawned, smoothing his features into a mask of oily politeness.

“Tarn!” Starscream exclaimed, leaning back in his chair. The gesture was meant to look relaxed, but Tarn saw the tension in his wings. “To what do I owe the… pleasure?”

Tarn ignored the false courtesy, his gaze sweeping over the ostentatious room. It was all for show, just like the mech himself. He came to a stop before the desk.

“Senator,” Tarn began, attempting his best to sound polite. “I assume your secretary informed you I was already on my way to your office.”

Starscream’s brows furrowed in what appeared to be genuine confusion. “Informed me? What? I wasn’t informed of anything.”

Tarn paused, his senses sharpening. He could feel the pulse of Starscream’s spark from across the desk, a nervous rhythm, but his field radiated genuine surprise. It didn’t seem like he was lying. But then, Starscream had spent a lifetime perfecting his performances. Tarn had not imagined the secretary’s frantic comm call, the sudden tension in the lobby. The pieces did not fit, and that only meant the call was with someone else.

“Well then,” Tarn said carefully. “I will go directly to the point. Not long ago, I was attacked by two of your seekers,” he tilted his helm, red optics behind the mask boring into Starscream’s. “I am here to understand the reason behind it, as one of the last remaining pillars of Megatron’s organization.”

Starscream’s wings hitched with feigned offense. “My seekers? Please. Those were probably renegades! Disgraced members of the Air Force who went rogue long before I… ascended to my current station,” he waved a dismissive hand. “I’ve been trying to bring them to justice myself. They tarnish the reputation of my entire command.”

Tarn frowned behind his mask. It was a plausible explanation. The seeker frames were common military issue; it was entirely possible they were not under Starscream’s direct thumb. But with this mech, truth and lies were woven from the same thread. He could not be certain.

Before Tarn could press further, Starscream’s optics narrowed with a sudden curiosity. “You said… ‘one of the last remaining pillars’?” he echoed, a sly tone entering his voice. “What happened? Don’t tell me the great Decepticon syndicate is finally crumbling?”

Tarn’s spinal strut went rigid. He had said too much. Involving this preening parasite in his grief felt like a desecration. But the words were out, and Starscream was already sniffing for blood. Tarn looked down, his claws curling into fists at his sides.

“My team was purged,” he ground out, trying not to clench his denta. “And Megatron is missing. I am the only one left.”

Starscream did not even have the decency to look surprised. He leaned forward, a conspiratorial gleam in his optics. “Is that so?” he murmured. “Well. I really shouldn’t be saying this, much less to you, Tarn… but since you seem to be in the dark, I feel it’s my civic duty to inform you,” he paused for dramatic effect. “Your head has a current price on it. A rather substantial one. If two rogue jets already attacked you… I’m sure there will be more.”

Tarn blinked. He already suspected that, but this confirmation sent a cold chill, entirely separate from the nuke, tracing its way down his back struts. Someone out there really wants you dead. Relief flooded him that Pharma was back in the safehouse, away from this crossfire.

He needed to be more careful. He was a beacon.

The memory of Overlord’s brutality flashed in his mind. His distinctive theatrical violence matched the massacre at the Tyranny and Shockwave’s very public murder. He had no other leads. He had to take the chance.

“Overlord,” Tarn stated, the name cutting through the silence. “Do you know where he is?”

Starscream arched a brow. “Overlord? Hm. Last I knew, he started a syndicate and failed. Miserably. I think you already know that.”

“I do,” Tarn growled, impatience simmering.

“But then,” Starscream continued, tapping a digit on his desk, “he tried to relive past glories. Became a gladiator, you know. Like old Megatron used to be. Before he got… philosophical.”

Tarn’s spark clenched. “In the Kaon arenas?”

“Yes,” Starscream confirmed with a smug little smile. “In the Kaon arenas.”

Well. It was a direction. A thread, however thin, to pull.

Without another word, Tarn turned to leave. The audience was over.

“This has been an enlightening conversation, Senator,” Tarn said, pausing at the door. His voice dropped to a lethal purr. “But if I find you’ve been… creatively editing the truth, know that my return will not be for another chat.”

He did not wait for a reply. The door slid shut behind him, leaving Starscream alone in his gilded cage. Tarn did not know if he could believe a single word that had been said, but he had nothing else for now.

Chapter Text

The Kaon Pits were a ruin where legends had gone to rust.

Tarn stood in the cavernous emptiness, pedes crunching on debris. The roar of the crowds was a ghost in the air, replaced by the lonely screech of wind through shattered support beams. The scent of spilled energon had long since been overpowered by the reek of rust and decay.

This was a fool’s errand. He had known it the moment he’d transformed at the outskirts, a leaden certainty settling in his spark. Trusting a single word from Starscream was an exercise in self-deception. Futile.

But then he saw a lone guard, leaning against a crumbling wall with the weary posture of a mech tending a grave no one visited anymore. Tarn approached him and asked about Overlord.

“He’s not here, as you can see,” the guard said preemptively in a raspy voice. “Hasn’t been for ages. The owners, what’s left of ‘em, couldn’t stomach his… eccentricities. Said he was bad for business. Too unpredictable. Drove away the high-paying customers who wanted a regular show, not… whatever he did,” he spat a glob of lubricant onto the dust. “Heard he found a new home. The fights are bloodier in the underground. Less rules. More his style.”

The underground. It was yet another vague direction, but it better than nothing. The underbelly of Kaon had a thousand entrances and ten thousand secrets.

“Where exactly?” Tarn asked.

The guard shrugged. “Eh, you could try and ask in the Emberglow. It’s a club, down in the lower sectors. They know things there. The kind of things most mechs pretend don’t exist.”

──────────────

The establishment the guard had called the Emberglow was less a club and more a sensory assault. Nestled deep in Kaon’s lower sectors, the air was a thick soup of low-grade engex, cheap perfume, and ozone. A deep, thrumming bass vibrated through Tarn’s very struts, punctuated not by music, but by the rhythmic clanging of machinery and the occasional, unmistakable moan of pleasure from shadowed booths and curtained alcoves. It was a different kind of pit, one dedicated to a more intimate type of transaction.

Tarn’s holoform was activated, but his sheer size still made him stand out. He had barely taken a few steps into the chaotic gloom when two mechs detached themselves from the swirling crowd and slid into his path. One was sleek and chromed, with an unnerving fluidity to his movements, while the other was broader, with armor polished to a soft gleam.

“Well, hello there, big mech,” the chromed one purred, his voice a silken whisper. “You look a little lost. What do you want today?”

“What do you need?” the broader one added, his tone warmer, more inviting. He reached out as if to touch Tarn’s arm but stopped just short. “We can give it to you. Anything you desire.”

Tarn felt a wave of profound, almost scandalized discomfort. This was far outside his usual milieu of bars, battlefields, and executions. The direct, carnal energy of the place was as disorienting as a flashbang. He cleared his vocalizer.

“I am here for information only,” he stated, his modulated tone cutting through the ambient noise. “I was told to ask here for the underground fights. The ones without rules.”

The two buymechs exchanged a glance, their flirtatious demeanors evaporating into something more cautious and knowing. The chromed one let out a low whistle.

“Yeah, lots of mechs look for that,” he said, his voice losing its purr. “Most of ‘em don’t come back.”

The broader one elbowed him gently. “Shh, it’s not our place to deny them that, and you know it.” He turned his attention back to Tarn, his expression now one of professional assessment. “You can talk to Madam Cipher. We can lead you to her.”

Tarn gave a single nod.

They weaved through the pulsating heart of the club, past entwined frames and mechs lost in chemical bliss, until they reached a reinforced door guarded by a silent brute. A nod from the chromed mech and the guard stepped aside. The door hissed open, revealing a small and surprisingly quiet office.

The room was an island of calm. Someone with elegant, sharp-edged plating the color of tarnished silver sat behind a minimalist desk. Her optics, a piercing, luminous green, lifted from a datapad as they entered.

“Madam,” the chromed one said, with a slight bow of his helm. “This mech is looking for the underground fights.”

The two mechs melted back into the club, the door sealing shut behind them. Madam Cipher’s gaze swept over Tarn’s disguised form.

“Hm. You do look like a fighter,” she observed, her voice a calm, measured contralto. “Are you a soldier?”

Tarn supposed the truth, in this specific context, did not matter. “I used to be one.”

She hummed again. “And are you here to fight? Or to watch?” she asked, steepling her digits.

Tarn frowned behind the mask. He had not anticipated an interrogation. He paused, weighing his words. “With all due respect, that is none of your business. I just need to get through.”

Madam Cipher studied him for a long, silent moment, her green optics seeming to peel back the layers of his holoform to the wounded, furious mech beneath. She seemed to want to ask more, to gauge the risk he represented, but ultimately, she simply stood.

“Follow me,” she said.

She led him to a section of the wall that looked no different from any other, but a wave of her hand over a nearly invisible panel made a section of it slide away, revealing a steep, dimly lit staircase. The primal roar and the sickening crunch of metal on metal wafted up, a stark contrast to the hedonism of her club.

“Through there. Down the stairs. Follow the noise,” she instructed, her voice devoid of all warmth. “And try not to start a war.”

Tarn briefly wondered why there would be direct access to the lower arenas from a hedonistic club, but he simply nodded at her. He stepped through the doorway and began his descent, the roar of the hidden arena swallowing him whole.

The atmosphere felt hot, thick with the smell of ozone, scorched metal, and spilled energon. A cage of reinforced beams enclosed the fighting pit, and the crowd surrounding it was a seething mass of roaring, chanting mechs. Tarn mingled at the back, his holoform making him just another anonymous spectator.

His optics, however, were locked on the center of the pit.

Overlord stood triumphant, his frame a brutalist sculpture of white and blue plating, splattered with fresh energon and lacquered in gore. At his pedes lay the twitching frame of his opponent, a shuddering wreck. The crowd surged as Overlord, with theatrical slowness, bent down.

With a sickening crack of overstressed hydraulics, he wrenched an arm from its socket, tossing the limb into the baying crowd like a grisly prize. The mech beneath him convulsed, a spark-deep scream locked in its mangled vocalizer. Then the other arm followed, torn free with a ripping sound of sheared cables and torn plating, energon spraying in a wide, pink arc.

The legs were next. Overlord planted a pede on the mech’s chassis, pinning the twitching frame. He took a leg in each hand and, with a roar of effort that cut through the din, pulled. Metal shrieked in protest before the hip joints gave way with twin, explosive pops. The crowd surged again in a wave of ecstatic violence.

Now a limbless, gushing torso lay beneath him. Only then did Overlord deliver his finale. He shifted his weight, the heel of his pede grinding into the spark chamber. He bent, his claws closing not around the head, but digging into the sides of the jaw. With an excruciating torque, he began to pull.

The sound was one Tarn knew intimately— the scream of metal yielding, the snap of spinal struts, the wet tear of vital wiring. It was a long, drawn-out death rattle of a frame. With a vicious shriek of sundered plating, the head came free, trailing a grotesque train of spinal conduit and shredded neural cables. Energon erupted from the headless neck in a torrent, sluicing over Overlord’s pedes and painting the pit floor in a slick, vibrant pink.

Overlord held the grisly trophy aloft, a fountain of energon still dripping from the severed neck. Then he brought it close to his face. He pressed his denta against the dead mech’s lips in a macabre parody of a kiss before biting down hard. There was a wet crunch, and when he pulled back, clamped between his sharpened denta, was the mech’s glossa, torn out at the root. He smiled, a wide and manic grin, and extended his arms in a victorious pose as the crowd descended into utter, screaming insanity.

Tarn watched, his frown deepening behind his mask. The excessive brutality was a performance. This had not been a fight; it had been a dismantling. The other mech had been a prop, a thing to be taken apart for the baying crowd, and he had never stood a chance against Overlord.

Most of ‘em don’t come back.

Tarn did not move as the crowd began to disperse, the spectacle over. He watched Overlord drop the head with a dismissive clatter and stride through a reinforced door at the back of the pit, leading to the fighters’ quarters.

Tarn circled the edge of the crowd until he reached the same door. A brutish bouncer moved to block him, but he was slow, and a low-frequency pulse from Tarn’s outlier made the mech’s frame seize up as he slumped against the wall. Tarn pushed the door open.

The corridor beyond was narrow and poorly lit, lined with heavy doors. The sound of Overlord’s heavy footfalls was easy to follow. Tarn stopped at the last door, hearing the hiss of a solvent spray inside. He deactivated his holoform. The disguise was useless now; he needed Overlord to see exactly who was confronting him. Not a phantom, not an enigma, but Tarn. The one he had wronged.

He knocked. The sound was absurdly polite in the grim corridor.

The door slid open. Overlord stood there, a cloth in hand, wiping the last pink streaks of energon from his chest plates. His expression was one of mild, arrogant curiosity— the look of a king interrupted in his chambers. That curiosity sharpened, focusing on the masked face before him. Recognition dawned and then bloomed into a wide smile.

“Well, well, well. The voice of the revolution himself. Slumming it, Tarn? Come to try your hand in the pit?” Overlord stepped back, gesturing mockingly for him to enter. “Don’t mind the mess.”

The room was a cramped box, windowless, little more than a storage locker repurposed with a berth and a tool rack. It was the perfect pressure cooker.

Tarn stepped inside, the door sliding shut behind him. “I’m not here to fight you, Overlord. I’m here for information.”

Overlord chuckled, a low, unpleasant sound. “Aren’t you always? What does the great enforcer need from a simple fighter?”

“Where is Megatron?”

A pause. Overlord’s brows rose in genuine surprise, then he snorted, settling into a mocking smirk. “That old man? I haven’t seen him in millennia. Why do you ask? Don’t tell me he’s finally gone and gotten himself killed.”

The casual dismissal, the lie behind the smirk, angered Tarn.

“Don’t play the fool, Overlord,” Tarn snarled through clenched denta. “You were always so jealous. Furious that your own pathetic syndicate crumbled to nothing while ours endured. That’s why you went after my team. After Megatron. And now Shockwave. You’re cleaning house, eliminating every reminder of your failure.”

For a moment, Overlord just stared, as if processing a language he didn’t understand. Then a bark of disbelieving laughter escaped him. “Let me guess,” he said slowly. “Just by the ‘style’, you’re assuming it was me. The brutality must have been so beautifully excessive that little Tarn’s processor immediately went to me,” Overlord’s tone was mocking. “I’m flattered.”

Tarn’s optics narrowed. “Where is Megatron?” He repeated.

Overlord blinked slowly. “I have no fucking idea,” he took a step closer, “because it’s not me!” he roared, his composure cracking. “You’re being fooled, Tarn. Deceived, as that old decrepit used to say, but I’ve no part in any of this! I have my own empire to build here. I don’t care about you, or Megatron— much less about Shockwave!”

He took another step forward, crowding Tarn in the small space, his field a blistering wave of outrage.

“If it had been me, Tarn, don’t you think I’d be chasing you instead of you chasing me? If I had finally decided to clean house, do you think I’d still be fighting in this pit? Damn, you wouldn’t have the need to go looking around for Megatron— I would’ve hung his corpse in front of your dead team!”

Tarn’s optics widened, studying him. The outrage felt real, a white-hot core of indignation at being blamed for another’s work. But he had come all this way, risked exposing himself, chasing the only lead thrown to his pedes.

This had to be it.

“You expect me to believe you’re innocent?” Tarn said in a low voice, a last defense against the crumbling certainty of his vengeance.

“I don’t care what you believe,” Overlord sneered, his face now inches from Tarn’s. “But if you’re here, in my space, accusing me… you didn’t come just for a chat, did you? You came hoping it was me. You came looking for a fight.”

Overlord’s fist moved faster than anything his size should be capable of. It was brutal piston-punch aimed directly at Tarn’s mask.

The nuke’s clarity allowed him to move. Tarn jerked his head aside, the blow grazing his audial instead of shattering his face. The impact against the wall behind him dented the reinforced metal.

Civilized conversation was over.

Tarn’s double cannon snapped with a glow of imminent violence. He didn’t have room to fire, but he used it as a bludgeon, swinging the massive weight into Overlord’s side. The impact was a resonant clang of metal on metal, sending the larger mech staggering back into his tool rack with a crash of scattering implements.

“Just like old times, eh Tarn!” Overlord grinned, his words grating between vents hitched from the blow.

He roared and lunged forward again, his immense strength strained against Tarn’s grip as he grabbed the cannon barrel and swinged it in a full circle, taking Tarn with it. He grunted as his back slammed into the berth, snapping it in two with a deafening crack,

As the shattered berth collapsed beneath him, Tarn’s claw shot out, seizing one of the broken metal legs. With a snarl, he pushed himself to his pedes and drove it like a spear towards Overlord’s throat. He twisted to evade it, but he wasn’t fast enough. The shank of metal scraped along the side of his neck, gouging a deep furrow through the cabling. Pink energon welled up instantly, spraying across Tarn’s chest. Then Overlord aimed a punch at Tarn’s face, but he stopped it with his own fist.

Overlord laughed. “You do know you won’t bring them back, right?” Overlord taunted, his voice a grating singsong even as they wrestled. “All this… for what? Revenge is so stupid, Tarn! What do you get from it? Literally nothing!”

Tarn snarled and aimed a punch at Overlord, but he stopped it as well with his other hand. “Shut up!”

He knew. Of course he knew they would never be back. The truth of it was a hollow ache that had lived in his chassis since he first found the ruins of the Tyranny. But the debt remained. Revenge was the least Tarn could do.

“You don’t know anything!” he shouted, desperation clawing at his vocalizer, as they remained stopping each other’s fists.

“Oh, so now you accept that I don’t know anything,” Overlord chuckled, answering with a piston-driven kick to Tarn’s abdomen that lifted him off his feet and slammed him into the wall, driving the air from his vents in a pained gasp, and he felt internal components shriek in protest. “But I know you, Tarn. I know you believe you have to do this. That you owe them. Which is what makes you so tragically stupid!”

Gritting his denta, Tarn pushed past the blinding pain and reached for his outlier, trying to find the unique frequency of Overlord’s spark to snuff it out like a candle. But before he could lock on, Overlord grabbed him by the helm and smashed his face into the wall. One, two, three— Tarn lost count.

Pure agony exploded through Tarn’s skull, his concentration shattering into a thousand glittering shards of static. Desperate, he triggered his transformation sequence. In the cramped space, it was a weapon in itself, his heavy tank treads punching backward, catching Overlord square in the face with a crunch of metal. The surprise blow sent him stumbling back, tripping over the wrecked berth.

Tarn transformed back to root mode, his vents hitching. The brief respite was over in a nanosecond. Overlord, face now dented and leaking, responded. Hatches on his torso snapped open, and a volley of missiles streaked across the tiny room.

There was no space to dodge. Tarn crossed his arms, his double cannon taking the brunt of the blast. The weapon, a part of his very being, was scorched and mangled. But one missile got through, detonating against his recently patched thigh. The explosion tore through armor, exposing the complex joint and sending a torrent of energon cascading down his leg. A ragged groan was torn from his vocalizer.

It was only then, through the smoke and the haze of pain, that he felt the cool air on his face. A spiderweb of cracks had spread across the left side of his mask, a shard had fallen away, exposing the scarred metal and raw wiring of his cheek.

Overlord’s optics lit up with manic delight at the sight. “What a pretty face you hide! Let’s see the rest of it.”

He lunged again, but Tarn was ready. They met in the center of the ruined room, a cyclone of tearing claws and brute force. Tarn felt Overlord’s talons dig into his side, seeking a weakness. They found it. Overlord’s claws drilled deep into the juncture of his hip and lower torso, puncturing a fuel line.

Tarn froze, his systems seizing for a terrifying second as a flood of energon poured from the wound. There was a whine trapped in his throat.

Overlord leaned in, his face inches from Tarn’s broken mask. “Oh,” he cooed. “Was that a main fuel line?”

The strength in Tarn’s leg vanished, but the incinerating rage kept him upright. “Shut up!” he snarled, and with his last reserves of strength, he drove his own claws into the gash he’d made on Overlord’s neck. He didn’t punch; he clawed and ripped, tearing through a fistful of cables and wires until his digits closed around the housing of Overlord’s vocalizer. With a vicious yank, he tore it out.

Energon poured from Overlord’s neck. He staggered back, his hands flying to the ruin of his throat. His frame shook, his shoulders heaving in a silent, horrifying mimicry of laughter. No sound came out, only the wet, gurgling hiss of a breached ventilation system.

They stood there, locked in a stalemate of mutual destruction, vents heaving. Energon seeped from a dozen wounds on each of them, pooling on the floor amidst the wreckage. Tarn’s leg was scorched, his side was gushing, his cannon was slagged, and his face was exposed. Overlord was mute and bleeding out from the neck.

It had been enough.

With a contemptuous glare, Tarn turned and stormed out of the room, shoving the broken door aside. He half-expected a final attack, but none came. Overlord just stood there against the wall, his silent, shaking laughter the last thing Tarn perceived before stumbling into the corridor.

Leaning heavily against the wall, leaving a smear of pink behind him, Tarn transformed. The shift was agonizing, his systems protesting the damage. His tank form was slower now, like a wounded beast. He did not know if he had enough fuel, enough strength, to make it back to the safehouse. But as he powered forward, the image of a quiet anchor and a pair of blue optics fueled his desperate, bleeding flight.

──────────────

The world was a smear of pain and disorienting motion.

Tarn’s engine grinded with a sound that spoke of shattered internals. Every rotation of his treads sent fresh agony lancing from his injured leg up through his spinal strut. The gash in his side, was a white-hot brand of pure anguish.

The one mercy of his alt-mode was the constant pressure it exerted on the worst of his wounds, slowing the catastrophic leak of energon that would have already left him a greyed-out husk on the asphalt. He could feel the vital fluid sloshing heavily inside his hull, a morbid counter-rhythm to the labored chug of his engine.

He had long since left the glaring lights and roaring chaos of Kaon behind. Now, there was only the winding, dark road leading into the fringes of the Helex district, the skeletal trees closing in like silent sentinels.

His HUD was a frantic mess of damage reports. [CASCADING SYSTEM FAILURE. FUEL PRESSURE CRITICAL. COG INTEGRITY: 24%.] The warnings blared in crimson glyphs, strobing across his vision. He tried to focus on the path, on the coordinates of the safehouse he had seared into his navigation system, but the world was beginning to tilt.

The edges of his vision blurred first, dissolving into static. The dark shapes of the trees wavered, their outlines smearing into the starless sky. A dizzying vertigo seized him, making his treads slip on the gravel shoulder. He overcorrected, the movement sending another shriek of protest from his mangled hip joint.

Just a little farther. The turn is… the turn is coming up.

But the landmarks were swimming in and out of focus. Was that the gnarled, lightning-struck tree he was supposed to pass? Or was it just another shadow, a phantom conjured by his failing processor?

The hum of his own systems was growing distant, muffled, as if he were sinking. The acute pain was receding, replaced by a deep cold that was somehow more terrifying. It was the cold of shutdown. Of stasis.

Pharma.

He had to get back. He had promised. He could not leave the doctor alone.

Tarn did not want to be alone.

His energy reserves, already savaged by the constant drain of his outlier and the brutal fight, were bottoming out. Alerts flashed with renewed urgency. [CRITICAL ENERGY DEPLETION. ENTERING STASIS LOCK PROTOCOLS IN 10... 9...]

No, he tried to snarl, but no sound came out.

He wrestled with his navigation, his consciousness fraying at the edges. He had to send a message. A location. Something. His thoughts fumbled through his failing systems. The emergency beacon. He triggered it, pouring the last dregs of his will into the command.

A communication window flickered open in his HUD, the recipient field auto-populating with the only contact he had added in the last decade. But the glyphs were blurred, swimming in a sea of static. He could not read the name, and the image was a blur of white and red, but he didn’t have time to hesitate.

[EMERGENCY BEACON ACTIVATED. LOCATION DATA STREAMING. STATUS: CRITICAL.]

The message was a desperate spark cast into the night.

The road vanished. The trees melted into a swirling vortex of darkness. His treads lost purchase entirely, and he was sliding, crashing through underbrush, the world a cacophony of snapping branches and screeching metal.

His momentum carried him off the path and into a dense thicket. His front end slammed into the unyielding trunk of a massive pine, the impact finally, mercifully, halting his agonizing flight, as the countdown reached its end.

[INITIATING EMERGENCY STASIS LOCK.]

The world was gone. The pain was gone. With a sound like a dying sigh, his engine sputtered and fell silent. Tarn powered down, alone in the dark.

Chapter Text

What sin drives you the most?

Wrath.

How righteous.

My fury is justified. My anger is pure.

You wear vengeance like armor, but it corrodes from within. You will become what you aimed to destroy.

Consciousness was a slow, painful tide washing over a shore of wreckage. It did not wake Tarn so much as it reclaimed him, pulling him from the numb void and depositing him back into the symphony of his own agony. System after system booted in a staggered sequence, each one reporting its damage with a clinical despair. The pain was a pervasive throb, a constant rhythm conducted from his ruined leg to the deep puncture in his side. He was lying down, the scratchy, familiar texture of a berth beneath him. The safehouse berth.

A shadow loomed over him, backlit by the room’s dim light. It was tall, with a silhouette that tapered into elegant wings.

An angel, his half-online processor supplied, the thought hazy and dreamlike. But he was a creature of the pit, forged in violence and bathed in energon. He was far too damned for angels.

His audials calibrated with a faint pop, and the world rushed in. The soft whir of a turbine engine. A voice, laced with a dry, familiar sharpness.

“... Can you hear me? Tarn...”

Pharma.

Tarn’s optics focused, the blurry silhouette resolving into the doctor himself. Pharma was looking down at him, blue scanning Tarn’s frame with a medic’s assessing gaze. The light from behind him cast a faint halo around his helm, making his white and red plating seem almost ethereal. He was, in that moment, unbearably beautiful.

Tarn’s vocalizer produced a static crackle. He cleared it, the sound rough and grating. “How... how did you find me?”

Pharma arched an orbital ridge. “What do you mean? You reached out to me.”

Tarn’s own optics widened slightly behind the remains of his mask. He didn’t... he had no memory of that. He tried to access the file, to pull up the comm log, but his internal systems returned a fragmented error message.

Seeing his confusion, Pharma’s expression softened minutely. “You sent me your location. A very dramatic, ‘status: critical’ kind of message. It was rather hard to miss.”

Vulnerability washed over Tarn. He had been reduced to that— an automated distress call, a dying animal signaling its location in the dark. “I... apologize for the inconvenience, doctor,” Tarn murmured. “It seems you are forever patching me up.”

Pharma snorted, a gentle sound. “Someone had to stop you from bleeding out in the middle of the woods. You’ve made a habit of requiring my services.”

“Thank you,” Tarn said sincerely. “For keeping me alive.”

Pharma shrugged, but Tarn caught the slight, pleased tilt of his wings. “Well, I could have done more, but alas, this is not a clinic and I only have certain tools at my disposal.”

“Doctor,” Tarn said, holding his gaze. “You have done more than enough.”

He meant it with every fiber of his being. He wasn’t certain if Pharma could comprehend the depth of that gratitude— that it wasn’t just for the repairs, but for the simple fact of not being alone. For having someone to return to.

Gathering his strength, Tarn attempted to push himself up on his elbows. A stabbing pain lanced through his torso from the effort, and a choked grunt escaped him before he could stop it.

“Take it easy,” Pharma chided, his voice firm but not unkind. He slid an arm behind Tarn’s shoulders, supporting his weight as he helped him sit up properly. The touch was clinical but Tarn’s spark hammered against its casing all the same. He couldn’t even relish the contact as a new sensation was vying for his attention.

A cool draft. On his face.

His claws flew up, and his digits met not smooth, dead metal, but the pitted and scarred texture of his own ruined cheek. The exposed wiring tingled at the direct touch. His mask was torn.

He froze, his entire frame going rigid.

Pharma, having settled him, took a half-step back, his gaze not shying away, but not probing either. “Your mask was already shattered when I found you,” he explained. “I'm guessing it was either the impact... or Overlord.”

Tarn’s spark clenched. The conflict was immediate and visceral. It had been so long since anyone had seen his face. The scar was his shame, his reminder of a mistake. To have it laid bare felt like being flayed open. Yet, Pharma wasn’t staring in horror or pity. He was just... looking at him, as if Tarn were any other mech. The normalcy of it was disarming.

His first instinct was to unsubspace a spare, to slam the familiar walls back into place. But as he met Pharma’s steady gaze, the instinct died. Hiding now felt like a lie. After everything— after Pharma had dragged him from the woods, staunched his bleeding, seen him at his most broken— donning a new mask would be an act of profound disrespect. To both of them.

He grabbed what was left of his mask and took it off, demagnetizing it from his face. Then Tarn let his hand fall to his knee and stared at the torn mask for a moment. His face was now exposed. The decision was terrifying. And liberating.

His processor, now fully online, caught on the catalyst for all this damage. “Yes,” Tarn said, the word heavy with the memory of gore and shattered metal. “It was Overlord.”

Pharma’s optics widened, then he crossed his arms. “So. Did you avenge your team?”

The question, so direct and blunt, was physically painful. The memory of the fight, of Overlord's furious denial, of the hollow and pointless violence, crashed down on him. The knot in his throat tightened, making it hard to speak. He hadn’t avenged anyone. He had merely mutilated and been mutilated in turn and come away with nothing but the chilling certainty that the true enemy was still out there, watching, unknown. Even after all this time, Tarn feels no closer to the end.

He could not answer that. Not yet. The failure was too fresh, the grief too immense. He needed a moment. A different kind of ritual.

He inhaled slowly, the action stretching his plating. “Have you eaten?” he asked.

Pharma’s brow arched again, a flicker of surprise in his brilliant optics. He shook his head.

“Then I will tell you everything,” Tarn said, shifting carefully, his pedes finding the floor. The movement was agonizing, but he pushed through it, the desire to do something— something normal, something nurturing— overpowering the pain. “While I cook for us.”

The surprise on Pharma’s face melted into genuine, wide-eyed astonishment. “You cook?”

──────────────

The safehouse’s kitchen was small, but it was serviceable. Tarn moved through the familiar, methodical motions of preparation with a focus that soothed his frayed processor. It was a different kind of precision than planning a hit or commanding a battlefield; this was creation, not destruction.

From a chilled storage unit, he retrieved two thick strips of ore-rich alloy, their surfaces marbled with energon crystals. He seasoned them with a thin layer of mineral shavings that popped and sizzled as they hit the hot surface of the pan. The kitchen began to fill with the scent of searing metal, undercut by the aroma of the spices. In a second, smaller pot, he brought a measure of refined energon to a gentle simmer, infusing it with slivers of softly glowing geothermal crystals. They dissolved slowly, thickening the fuel into a rich and gleaming glaze that promised a steady release of energy.

The Pet circled his pedes with hopeful whines, its optic fixed on his every move until Tarn poured a measure of fuel into a dented bowl in the corner. The creature fell upon it with messy gusto, lapping eagerly.

Pharma had taken a seat on a rickety chair by the small table, watching the domestic scene with an expression of lingering bemusement. He idly scratched the turbofox behind its audial as it ate, his gaze occasionally drifting from Tarn’s movements to the exposed lines of his face.

“So,” Pharma said quietly. “It wasn’t Overlord.”

Tarn didn’t look up from the alloy strips, using the tip of a claw to test their give. “No,” he confirmed,. “The brutality of the murders was in his style. A performance of gore for an audience of one. But the rest…” He flipped the strips deftly, revealing a perfectly seared underside. “The secrecy, the bounty, the waiting... That is unlike him. Overlord wouldn’t hide. If he were responsible, he wouldn’t have stopped until he himself had hunted me down and mounted my head on his wall,” he finally glanced to his right, meeting Pharma’s gaze. “Finding him brawling in the underground… he was exactly where he wanted to be. He had no grander scheme in motion. Only the next fight.”

“Have you considered that he might have been lying?” Pharma asked. “Playing a deeper game?”

“I have,” Tarn said, transferring the seared alloy to two plates. He spooned the gleaming crystal-infused energon glaze over them, the liquid settling into the grooves of the metal. “But his outrage felt genuine. He was insulted that I would credit him— or blame him— for another’s work. No,” he concluded. “The lie came earlier,” he arranged a portion of gently steaming, brittle crystal shavings beside the alloy, their delicate structure meant to cleanse the palate. “I think Starscream is the one hiding something. I was so certain it was Overlord that I didn’t interrogate that preening senator properly. I was chasing a ghost, and he knew it. Perhaps I should pay him another visit.”

From the corner of his optic, he saw Pharma nod slowly. “I agree. But,” he added, his voice firming, “you’re still recovering. That leg needs at least another day to seal, and your fuel lines can’t take another brawl. I suggest you rest for at least two days before we continue with this.”

He knew Pharma was right, but still, a flicker of impatience ignited in Tarn’s spark. He had lost so much time already on false leads. Every moment spent resting was a moment the trail grew colder, a moment his team’s murdered remained unpunished. The debt remained.

“Doctor’s orders.”

Tarn turned, two plates in his claws. Pharma was looking at him, a small genuine smile on his lips. It was both a tease and a request, layered with concern and a hint of that sharp wit Tarn cherished since the beginning. The impatience dissolved, replaced by a warm, blooming feeling in his spark. He found himself smiling back, a real and unguarded expression that felt strange on his uncovered face.

“Very well,” Tarn acquiesced in a softer voice than intended.

He brought the plates to the small table, setting one before Pharma, then taking the seat opposite him. For a moment, they just sat in the quiet, the only sounds the Pet’s contented lapping and the soft hum of the safehouse systems.

This is what a normal life could be like. The simplicity of sharing a meal, of quiet companionship. He wouldn’t mind if his life were like this every day.

Pharma picked up his utensil and took a cautious bite of the seared alloy. His optics widened, his wings giving a slight, involuntary hitch. He chewed slowly, thoughtfully, then looked at Tarn with a new kind of surprise.

“This is… good,” he said, the admission sounding almost reluctant. “Really good. If I had known you cooked this well, we would’ve saved shanix on not going to that restaurant.”

Tarn almost snorted, a quiet amused huff of air. “Taking you to a fine restaurant was never a burden, doctor,” he said, the truth of the statement settling comfortably between them. “But I am glad you like it.”

They ate in a comfortable silence that was far more nourishing than the food. For the first time since he’d walked into the carnage of the Tyranny, the howling void within Tarn felt a little quieter, the edges of his grief softened by the simple, staggering comfort of not being alone.

──────────────

The following day passed in a quiet haze of repair and respite. Tarn’s leg, under Pharma’s meticulous care and his own robust systems, had knitted back together, the new weld lines fading into a network of silver against the older plating. The setting sun cast long shadows through the windows, painting the interior in shades of orange and red.

They had just shared another meal, a simple but carefully prepared dish of grilled electro-trout fillets with a side of salted thermal noodles. Tarn’s spark pulsed with warmth every time Pharma ate with unfeigned gusto, his sharp features softening in satisfaction. It was a sight more rewarding than any target eliminated, any verse of poetry recited. He would cook for the doctor every day. He would learn a thousand recipes if it meant seeing that focused pleasure on his face. The Pet, having been fed earlier, was somewhere outside, its faint barks echoing from a distance.

The domestic quiet was a fragile thing, but for now, it held. As the last of the light bled from the sky, Tarn turned to the small sink to wash the dishes. He was intensely aware of Pharma’s gaze on his back, tracing the treads on his shoulders, the unguarded plane of his scarred face when Tarn dared to glance back.

He heard the soft scrape of the chair as Pharma stood. Tarn didn’t turn, but his claws almost stilled under the solvent stream. He heard the quiet footsteps approach, and then Pharma was there, leaning against the counter beside him, close enough that his shoulder nearly brushed Pharma’s wing.

Tarn finally turned his head to look at him. Pharma’s expression was unreadable, blue optics searching Tarn’s face with curiosity. He was studying the scars, the exposed wiring, the story of pain etched into steel.

“It’s strange,” Pharma murmured, almost a whisper. “Seeing you like this.”

Tarn’s spark stuttered. “A disappointment?” he asked, the old insecurity rising to the surface.

Pharma’s lips quirked into a faint smile. “No. The opposite,” he reached out very slowly, giving Tarn every opportunity to pull away.

His digits, so skilled and steady, did not touch the scar. Instead, they gently traced the undamaged line of Tarn’s jaw, a touch so feather-light it was almost imagined.

Tarn went completely still. His processor focused on that single point of contact— the first truly intimate touch he had allowed himself in centuries, and it sent a shudder through his entire frame.

He turned off the solvent and turned fully, the movement bringing them inches apart. His own hand came up with a mirroring hesitation, cupping Pharma’s cheek gently as he leaned into the doctor’s touch. There was a small smile on Pharma’s lips, and then his hand slid from Tarn’s jaw to the back of his neck, pulling him down until they kissed.

It was slow, deep, and searching. Pharma’s lips were softer than Tarn could have ever imagined, and the taste of him (mixed with the rich aroma of their shared meal) was amazing. Tarn had forgotten how much he had wanted to kiss the doctor, and now, he melted into it, a low hum vibrating in his chest. He wrapped an arm around Pharma’s frame, pulling him flush against his, their broad chests pressing together.

When they parted for a vent, Pharma’s optics were bright with desire and his smirk returned, now edged with pure hunger. Confidently, he hopped up onto the kitchen counter, scattering a few unused utensils. He wrapped his legs around Tarn’s hips, pulling him insistently into the space between his thighs, drawing him closer until their plating scraped together. Usually, the kitchen would not be Tarn’s first option for an intimate encounter, but he found a strange beauty in that. It made the moment real.

“Any preferences?” Tarn asked in a low rumble, his forehead resting against Pharma’s. The formality of the question was absurd given their position, but it was all his reeling processor could supply.

Pharma’s smirk widened. He leaned back, bracing himself on his hands on the countertop, painting a picture of elegant debauchery. “Pressurize your spike.”

The direct command, delivered in that melodic accent, went straight to Tarn’s interface array. With no hesitation, his own panels slid back, his gleaming spike pressurizing fully and baring his valve. In response, Pharma’s triangular crotch plate transformed away and his panels retracted, revealing a stunning blue valve, already glistening with lubricant, and his own spike, sleek and pressurized.

“That’s gonna be a stretch,” Pharma huffed a laugh, optics widening down at Tarn’s spike.

He saw the doctor fingering himself, making room, and Tarn was unable to look away from that gorgeous valve. His spike was as beautiful— all of him was beautiful. Tarn wouldn’t mind spending hours here, preparing him with his digits and glossa, learning every sound of pleasure he could elicit. He was about to propose it to Pharma, but then the doctor’s hand suddenly gripped Tarn’s spike. A moan threatened to escape, a raw sound he barely managed to stifle by biting his own lip.

Then Pharma guided him, lining the broad head of Tarn’s spike up with his own wet, ready valve. The contact was beyond electric, sending a jolt straight to Tarn’s sensor-net. Pharma’s lubricants smeared all over the swollen head, locking Tarn in place by tightening his legs around him, and Tarn took the cue.

He pushed inside, and the tight heat was already overwhelming. The stretch was clearly intense; Pharma hissed as his optics flickered, but his grip on Tarn’s arm only tightened.

“Let me know if it’s too much,” Tarn managed in a strained rasp.

“Sure, I will,” Pharma gritted out, the words tight but in a tone that indicated he could take it. The sheer confidence of it sent another thrill through Tarn’s circuits.

Then, there was the insistent press of Pharma’s heels digging into Tarn’s lower back, demanding urging for more. Tarn obliged and pushed forward inch by inch, smoother and deeper than before, until he was fully sheathed, buried to the hilt inside that clenching, perfect heat.

Pharma’s head rolled back against the cabinet with a soft thud and a delicious, wanton mewl escaped him as he adjusted to the fullness. Tarn couldn’t help the low moan that finally broke free, ripped from him by the merciless pressure of Pharma’s calipers around his spike. It felt incredible.

Then Pharma’s head came forward again, his optics half-shuttered with pleasure. He cupped Tarn’s scarred face and dragged him into a kiss. It was slow and deep and rough, their fields pulsing together, charge building between them like a storm. Pharma bit Tarn’s lower lip, dragging it between his denta before releasing it with a wet sound. The mix of pain and pleasure sparked a rumbling purr from Tarn’s engines; he wanted the doctor to do that again.

In between kisses, Pharma rolled his hips and pulled Tarn even closer, until their chests were literally touching. “You need to fucking move,” Pharma whispered into his mouth.

Tarn swallowed thickly and his vocalizer crackled. “I was waiting for you to order me to.”

At that, Pharma’s optics gleamed with delight and a wide smile spread across his face. “Oh. That’s good to know,” his voice dropped to a sultry whisper. “Then move.”

The command erased all hesitation. It was a permission and a purpose, and Tarn obeyed.

His hands found their way to Pharma’s hips, one sliding around to cradle the small of his back, under the bronze turbine. He pulled out slowly, the drag exquisitely tight, making them both gasp. Then he thrust back in. The action elicited a gasping moan from Pharma. It was the most beautiful sound Tarn had ever heard, a symphony that eclipsed any poetry he’d ever cherished.

He did it again, pulling out and driving in a little deeper this time, and was rewarded with another gasped moan, this one higher, more desperate. The rhythm was established then, and Tarn lost himself in it— in the feel of the brilliant, sharp-tongued doctor coming undone in his arms.

Pharma’s own hands flew to Tarn’s shoulders, clutching at the seams of his treads, his digits scrambling for purchase. He loved the feeling of Pharma’s legs wrapped tightly around his waist, the way they cling to each other, the way the doctor rolled his own hips as much as their position allowed to meet Tarn's thrusts, urging him on. The counter creaked, a distant and unimportant sound beneath the pounding of Tarn’s spark and the slick sounds of their joining.

One of Pharma’s hands left his shoulder to cup his jaw, pulling him closer into a kiss that was messy and desperate, all clashing denta and sliding glossas. Their moans died in each other’s throats, the kiss breaking and reforming between ragged vents, their hot breath mingling. Tarn’s cooling fans were screaming at their maximum speed, whirring uselessly as they tried and failed to expel the scorching heat building within his frame. He could feel the answering heat against his own treads— the hot steam puffing from the vents on Pharma’s shoulders, adding to the sweltering, intimate atmosphere. His own valve, bared and neglected, dripped lubricants down his inner thighs, a secondary ache of need that was overshadowed by the primary overwhelming pleasure of being buried inside Pharma.

He wasn’t going to last. The coil of heat in his abdomen was winding to a breaking point. Desperate to focus on Pharma’s pleasure, to stave off his own end, he wrapped a hand around Pharma’s spike, stroking him in time with his thrusts.

Pharma broke the kiss with a loud, wanton cry, his helm falling back. “Fuck, Tarn— !”

Tarn chased his mouth, swallowing the cry, swallowing every gasp and moan he could pull from the doctor, drinking them down like a mech drying of thirst. He was a creature of pure sensation, every circuit alight, every sensor screaming with pleasure. The tightness within him was unbearable.

“Pharma— I’m going— to—” he managed to rasp against Pharma’s lips, his vocalizer emitting static with the strain.

“Yeah— do it!” Pharma gasped, his own frame tensing, calipers beginning to flutter erratically around Tarn’s length.

Tarn bit his own lip, a ragged sob tearing through him as his overload crashed over him. He spilled deep inside Pharma, pumping hot transfluid into the clenching valve in pulsing waves, his thrusts becoming shallow motions as he rode out the convulsing pleasure. Through it all, he never stopped stroking Pharma’s spike, and it was only a moment later that Pharma screamed fuck! as his own climax seized him. His calipers clamped down incredibly tight around Tarn’s oversensitive spike, milking him dry as his transfluid spurted into Tarn’s fist.

In the dizzying, charge-strewn haze of their shared climax, Pharma pulled him into another kiss. Tarn hummed, a satiated sound as he melted into the doctor’s mouth, imprinting the feeling, the taste, the very essence of this moment into his memory banks.

As the aftershocks faded away and they gradually regained their breath, foreheads resting together, Pharma tilted his head slightly and captured his lips again, but this time it was slower. Then Tarn felt the smirk form against his lips before Pharma whispered, his voice husky and promising. “Why don’t we continue on the berth?”

His legs tightened around Tarn’s hips, and his arms locked more firmly around Tarn’s neck, just above his shoulders. Tarn took the cue, sliding his hands beneath Pharma’s thighs.

──────────────

The berth was a comfortable tangle of limbs and warmth. Tarn lay on his back, the steady thrum of his spark a calming rhythm beneath his plating. Pharma was sprawled atop him, a warn and solid weight, his helm resting on Tarn’s chest and one arm slung across his waist, digits tracing soothing circles on his hip. The frantic energy of their coupling had mellowed into a satiated stillness, the scent of their mingled fluids and heated metal still filling the room. Tarn caressed gently the doctor’s turbine, his processor filled only with the sensory input of Pharma’s warmth and the lingering, pleasant ache in his struts.

He felt Pharma shift, pushing himself up slightly to look down at him. The dim light caught the elegant lines of Pharma’s face, his blue optics soft with a post-overload haze, but sharpening with a flicker of curiosity.

“Can I ask you a question?” Pharma’s voice was a murmur.

Tarn smiled, an unguarded expression that felt less strange each time. “Yes.”

Pharma’s gaze was fixed on the ruined half of Tarn’s face. “That’s an old scar.”

The smile faded from Tarn’s lips. He knew this was coming. The exposed truth of him was impossible to ignore forever. “That is not a question,” he deflected, his voice losing some of its warmth.

“I know,” Pharma said gently. He propped himself up on an elbow, resting his chin in his hand. “That was a statement. Your nanites should have already done their job on healing it. So my question is, why don’t you want it healed?”

Tarn’s gaze shied away, focusing on a crack on the wall instead of the perceptive doctor. He licked his lips, his glossa tracing the familiar torn plating of his upper lip.

He remembered the dizzying hope of his reframe, a gift from Megatron, a rising revolutionary who saw potential in a nobody from Tarn. A strong, powerful body, and with it, a new and normal face. It was all he had ever wanted— to shed the weak, despised face Damus had been turned into. To become someone new, someone worthy. And then, that Dinobot tore it all away. The anger had not just been at the pain, but at the loss. He had been given a pristine face— something precious— and he had failed to keep it safe. The scar was a brand. A reminder of his failure to protect what was given to him. A lesson to never forget.

And hadn’t he just lost something precious— his team— again?

His silence must have stretched too long because Pharma spoke again, his voice gentler than Tarn had ever heard it, carrying genuine care. “I just want to understand.”

The words pulled Tarn back from the memory. He looked up, meeting those brilliant optics again. He saw no pity there, only a quiet but unwavering focus. He saw the mech who had dragged him from the woods, who had stitched him back together, who was lying in the berth with him. He owed him more than silence.

He sighed. “Because…” he began in a tiny voice. “It’s a reminder of a past mistake. One I must not forget.”

Pharma’s expression softened minutely, a subtle relaxation around his optics. He tapped two, then three digits against Tarn’s chest.

“I see.”

The words hung in the air, neither an absolution nor a condemnation. They were simply an acknowledgment. The doctor was still watching him, contemplatively, and Tarn did not want to know the expression he wore himself.

“It’s a harsh form of penance,” Pharma murmured, his voice still soft but laced with that clinical sharpness that was inherently him. “Denying your own frame the ability to heal. It’s a chronic injury you choose to maintain. That’s…” he paused, searching for the right word, his optics flicking to the scarred plating. “That’s self-harm, Tarn.”

Tarn’s first instinct was to deflect, to retreat behind a wall of formality. But the weight of Pharma’s body atop him, the warmth of their shared berth, the memory of their intimacy… it all made such defenses feel hollow and cowardly.

“It is a necessary one,” Tarn countered in a mutter. “Some failures are too grave to be erased. They must be… remembered. Viscerally.”

“I understand the sentiment,” Pharma said, his tone shifting from soft to firm, a doctor’s authority bleeding into the lover’s murmur. “But I am a medic. My purpose is to heal. And I care enough…” he leaned in closer, his bright optics locking with Tarn’s. “… that I don’t want to see you hurting yourself. Not when you don’t have to. The past can be a lesson without being an open wound.”

The care in the statement was more disarming than any pity could have been. It struck at the very core of the conflict raging within Tarn. Of allowing himself to be healed, in every sense of the word.

He was on the verge of a reply, a confession perhaps, that he didn’t know how to stop, when Pharma moved suddenly. Gracefully, he pushed himself up and straddled Tarn’s hips, a hand curling around Tarn’s chest plate. Their panels were still open, dried transfluid on their plating, and Tarn could feel the damp heat of Pharma’s valve ghosting over his spike, which was already beginning to pressurize again in response to the proximity. The mood in the room shifted in an instant, from somber reflection to rekindled hunger.

Pharma looked down at him, a familiar smirk gracing his lips. “Maybe I can provide a more pleasant kind of distraction.”

He began to move, a tantalizing roll of his hips that dragged his wet valve along the length of Tarn’s half-pressurized spike. The sensation was exquisite, a promise of the overwhelming pleasure they had just shared. Tarn’s hands came up to grip Pharma’s hips, thumbs stroking the blue plating. He wouldn’t mind this at all. He would let Pharma ride him into the next sunrise until both their processors were blissfully, wonderfully blank.

“Pharma…” he rasped, the name both a plea and a prayer.

But just as Pharma positioned himself, ready to sink down, an insistent chime echoed through the room. An incoming comm.

Pharma froze, his entire frame going rigid with irritation. A frustrated sigh escaped him, and he dropped his forehead against Tarn’s chest with a clang.

“Slag it all,” he cursed under his breath. “Maybe if I finally answer, he’ll stop bothering me.”

He didn’t move from Tarn’s lap, but the seductive energy was gone, replaced by annoyance. The comm chimed again, more persistent this time.

Pharma growled venomously, dismounting Tarn and sliding off the berth in one fluid yet irritated motion, but not before grabbing his cigarette from the ashtray. Tarn watched him striding out of the room, already snarling into his comm. “No, Prowl, I’ve no idea where your fucking ex is!”

Tarn was left alone in the rumpled berth, the heat of their connection rapidly cooling. He supposed the call was a harmless one— some personal drama from Pharma’s past life. A jealous ex of an ex. Or a friend. Still, it didn’t seem like a threat.

With a soft exhale, Tarn pushed himself, swinging his pedes to the floor and heading for the washracks. It didn’t take him long to fully clean himself. Then he dried himself and moved into the living room. He could faintly hear Pharma’s voice from down the hall, sharp and irritated, still tangled in his comm with Prowl. “I told you, I— No, you listen to me—”

Tarn did not interrupt. Instead, he approached the small control panel on the wall— the passive link to Megatron’s private network. With a quiet click, a panel on his wrist slid back. He pulled a cable from the port within and plugged the other end into the panel’s access point.

His consciousness expanded, his optics growing distant as his processor connected directly with the safehouse’s rudimentary systems. The familiar LOCKED glyph greeted him, a digital sneer. Last time, it had been an insurmountable wall. This time, it was a challenge.

He pushed past the primary firewall, his mind applying a focused logic to the code. It was clumsy, not the elegant work of a specialist like Kaon, but it will do. It had to. Alerts flared in his HUD, warnings of unauthorized access, but he ignored them, driving deeper. He could feel the strain, a pressure building behind his optics, but the nuke-sharpened clarity was gone, replaced by a colder, more desperate determination.

Finally, he shattered the last encryption layer. The logs unfolded before his mind’s eye. He scanned them, not knowing what he was searching for— a clue, a name, a whisper of the plot that had destroyed his life— anything. He filtered by date, narrowing it to the days surrounding the massacre. Most were routine, automated status pings that meant nothing. His spark hammered, a frantic drum against its chamber. Was this all for nothing? Another dead end in a graveyard of them?

Then he found it.

The very last comm Megatron had received. The timestamp was mere hours before the attack on the Tyranny. Tarn opened the message.

S0UNDW4V3: Coordinates secured. Awaiting your arrival. The chaos here will provide sufficient cover for our departure.

For a moment, Tarn’s systems stalled. The world narrowed to that single string of text. The distant murmur of Pharma’s voice, the very beat of his own spark— it all vanished into a howling void.

Our departure.

T He had constructed so many scenarios in the grief-stricken theater of his mind. Megatron, fighting a glorious last stand against impossible odds. Megatron, captured and tortured, his mighty will unbroken even in chains. Megatron, a martyr to the cause he built, his disappearance a tragic mystery. He had never, not in his most fevered nightmares, considered this… this calculated cowardly escape.

He knew.

Megatron knew. He knew chaos was coming. Chaos that would provide cover. A convenient distraction orchestrated by an enemy, which Megatron and Soundwave had seen coming and decided to use. To slip away in the ensuing panic, leaving the last remnants of the Decepticon syndicate to bleed out on the floor.

Tarn felt numb, glyphs blurring in his processor. It was the numbness of absolute, irrevocable disillusionment.

All of it. The decades of service. The cities burned to embers in his name. The poems he cherished like scripture. The speeches about strength, unity, and the unbreakable bonds of those who fought together. All of it was just… noise. Polished lies to keep the weapons sharp and the loyal fools in line.

He was such a fool. The most loyal fool of all.

He had dedicated his life, his very identity, to a mech who viewed loyalty as a one-way street, ending at the precipice of his own convenience. Megatron had preached about the corruption of the Senate, of the Council, the faithlessness of the old world, while all along, he possessed the most profound faithlessness of all. He had permitted his most devoted followers to be butchered. He had given the order, directly or through his inaction, for Tarn’s world to be erased.

And for what? To run away with Soundwave? To what? Start over? Hide?

The anger came then, but it was a quiet and corrosive thing, directed inward. Anger at himself for his idiocy, his blind devotion. He saw every moment of doubt— every time he’d pushed down his unease about the mech brooding in the dark booth— not as a failure of faith, but as a warning from his own processor that he had been too much of a coward to heed.

He had believed in a ghost. He had built a family on a foundation of sand, and the tide had come for them, called forth by the very mech who claimed to own the shore.

Slowly, Tarn retracted the cable from the wall panel. The connection severed, his optics calibrating, and the LOCKED glyph returned to the screen, a meaningless symbol now. He had his answer. It was an answer that offered no direction, no new enemy to hunt. It only hollowed him out further, leaving a void where his purpose had once been.

──────────────

The night air was cool on his exposed face, a sensation that was still foreign and unnerving. Tarn sat on the rough-hewn steps of the porch, staring down at the torn mask in his claws. It was more than a piece of armor; it was the face of the enforcer, the loyal weapon, the believer. Now, it was just a piece of scrap, as hollowed out as he felt.

The door sliding open didn’t startle him. He didn’t look up.

“Oh, there you are,” Pharma’s voice cut through the silence. “I was looking for you.”

Tarn didn’t react, his gaze locked on the dead metal in his hands. He heard the quiet footsteps, the shift in the air as Pharma carefully lowered himself to sit on the step beside him. Tarn could feel the weight of those brilliant blue optics on the side of his face, studying his profile, the scar he could no longer hide.

“What’s the matter?” Pharma asked, his voice quieter now, losing its edge of casualness.

A beat. Tarn debated the merits of silence, of carrying this new corrosive truth alone. But what was the point? The foundation of his world was already ash. Secrecy felt like just another layer of the lie he’d been living.

He swallowed thickly. “Megatron’s gone.”

Pharma was silent for a moment. “Dead?”

Tarn considered it. Was that what he wished? The finality of it? He was not certain. A clean death would have been a tragedy he could mourn. What he had discovered was something far more insidious.

He shook his head, his grip on the mask tightening until the metal creaked. “I accessed his comm network through the control panel. He left the planet. Hours before my team was murdered.”

The silence from Pharma this time was different. It was comprehending and heavy. Tarn could almost hear the gears turning in the doctor’s processor, connecting the same damning dots he had. There was a know in Tarn’s throat. How could he have been so naïve?

Even after centuries, he hadn’t changed at all.

After a long moment Pharma spoke, his tone pragmatic. “What will you do now? Will you go after him? Leave the planet?”

Tarn hadn’t truly thought that far ahead. The concept felt abstract, like planning a vacation from the bottom of a grave. “I could,” he admitted, the words hollow. “But it’s not worth it.”

He heard Pharma’s soft, almost imperceptible sigh; it sounded suspiciously like relief. A long moment passed.

“So,” Pharma said, the word crisp. “He abandoned you and your team.”

The blunt summation was a lance to his spark. “Yes,” Tarn ground out. That was the heart of it, stripped of all poetry and ideology. Megatron knew. He knew they would die, and he allowed it. He used their deaths as a distraction for his own escape. Coward.

“I’ve been there too,” Pharma said in a soft voice.

Tarn finally glanced at him. The doctor was looking out into the dark woods, his expression unreadable. A part of Tarn, the part still wallowing in the unique agony of his own betrayal, didn’t fully believe him. How could anyone understand this specific, soul-crushing brand of faithlessness?

“So you know what it's like?” Tarn asked numbly.

Pharma scoffed, a bitter sound that seemed to hold decades of resentment. “Believe me, I do.” He turned his head, and in the dim light, Tarn could see the hard set of his jaw. “There was… someone. A colleague. I thought we were… aligned. Friends, at least. Then one day, he was just gone. Left Cybertron on some grand, self-important quest. Didn’t even say goodbye,” he shook his head, a flicker of old pain in his optics. “It felt as if our… association… had been a burden to him. A chore. I never saw him again.”

Tarn stared at him. The story was different in its details, but the core was the same. The casual dismissal. The profound lack of regard. “I can't believe someone would leave behind a brilliant and smart mech like you,” he said, words sincere and fierce.

A small smile curled Pharma’s lips, a genuine reaction to the compliment despite the bitter topic. “His loss,” Pharma said with a dismissive flick of his wing. “And Megatron lost you. Their shortsightedness is our gain.”

The simple but arrogant truth of that statement sent a warm pulse through Tarn’s numb spark. Before he could form a reply, a sleepy whine sounded from the doorway. The Pet padded out, yawning, and trotted over to Pharma. It curled up right at his pedes, rubbing its snout affectionately against his ankle.

The domesticity of the scene, the shared confidences, the sheer exhaustion of the day— it all crashed down on Tarn at once. The emotional whiplash left him feeling scraped raw and incredibly tired.

“We should recharge,” Tarn said, voice rough with fatigue. “We have to pay Starscream a visit tomorrow.”

Pharma, who had been scratching the Pet behind its ear, stilled. “Uh, about that…” he began, a note of chagrin entering his voice. “My call with Prowl? Yeah, he wasn’t calling just to ask about his ex. Sometimes I forget he’s a fucking cop. So turns out he had been trying to contact me so we could speak about Runout. I don’t know exactly about what— Prowl didn’t want to tell me over comms— but I have a good guess. Said I should meet him tomorrow, as soon as possible.”

Tarn processed this. Prowl. It was a common designation, but there was Prowl. A notoriously rigid police officer. This changed things. “You’re telling me it wasn’t any Prowl, but the Prowl,” he clarified.

“Yup,” Pharma confirmed.

Tarn looked at him, at the implication hanging in the air that Pharma might have considered going alone. “And… you plan on going alone?”

Pharma snorted, as if the idea was absurd. “Of course not. We’ll even bring the Pet.”

A small, real smile finally found its way onto Tarn’s lips. It felt strange, but good. We.

Pharma stood up, stretching. The Pet got to its feet, tail giving a lazy wag. “It’s getting late. C’mon.”

He turned and entered the safehouse, the turbofox trotting dutifully at his heels. Tarn was left alone on the porch for a moment longer. He looked down at the mask in his grasp. It was the symbol of a dead cause, a broken faith, a discarded identity.

Slowly, he opened his claws. The mask fell to the ground with a dull clatter.

He stood and followed Pharma inside, not looking back.

Chapter Text

The road out of the district was a grey ribbon unwinding beneath Tarn’s tires. His holoform projected a perfect illusion of mundanity. Above, Pharma’s jet form, disguised as well, cut a silent path through the overcast sky. The constant hum of his outlier was a familiar weight in his spark, a shell of neutral energy wrapped tightly around both their signatures. For now, it was manageable, a mere background drain. The Pet was a restless weight inside Pharma’s cockpit, but the doctor didn’t seem to mind.

« Prowl sent the coordinates for a docking bay near the tether, » Pharma said through their private comm line. « Neutral territory. He claims it’s more ‘discreet’ than his office. »

Tarn’s engine revved. « Of course he did. It reeks of a trap, but it’s the only thread we have left. »

« I haven’t ruled out that possibility, » Pharma sighed. « But I don’t think he wants us in cuffs. This feels… transactional. He wants something. »

« They always do, » Tarn growled back. The memory of Megatron’s betrayal was a fresh, cold void in his chassis. Trust was a currency he was rapidly depleting. « Once we’re done with Prowl, we pay a visit to our esteemed senator. I have questions regarding his creative editing of the truth. And I am fresh out of patience for his games. » The image of Starscream’s grin in that opulent office made his engine growl.

« I’ll look forward to it. Just try not to reduce his entire office to— »

Pharma’s comm cut off in a burst of static.

Three military seeker frames dropped from the cloud cover like raptors, their engines a synchronized deafening whine. There was no demand to halt, no warning shot. Only the sudden but terrifying glare of target-lock lasers painting their flanks.

« They found us! » Pharma shouted, the noises of his evasive maneuvers bleeding through the comm.

« I see them, » Tarn snarled, swerving violently. A missile screamed past, so close the heat of its passage scorched his paint and detonated against the cliff face ahead. Rubble showered the road.

Laser fire streaked past Pharma’s wings, forcing him into a violent evasive roll. « But— how did they find us? » Pharma’s voice was tight with strain as he corkscrewed through the air, a missile screaming past his undercarriage. « Our signatures are masked. Our frames are disguised. »

« I am not certain, » Tarn growled, frustration and a spike of fear for the doctor coiling in his fuel lines.

It was impossible. Unless... unless they hadn’t been tracking a spark signature at all. Had Prowl’s comm been compromised?

His turret swiveled 180 degrees. Targeting data flooded his HUD. He returned fire, the cannon’s report a deafening crump that shook his very struts. The lead seeker banked hard, the shot grazing its wing in a shower of sparks. It was a futile game; he was a lumbering beast on the ground, and they were the masters of the air.

His spark clenched, a physical pain that had nothing to do with the strain of his outlier. Pharma was up there with them. A surgeon in a dogfight. He was agile, surprisingly so, but he was outnumbered.

« Just keep them busy! » Pharma commed, as if reading his fear.

Tarn saw him roll, a blur of blue and white, a spray of chaff dispensers glittering in the grey light. One of the seekers pursuing him wobbled, sensors confused, and Pharma capitalized, his own integrated lasers scoring a deep smoking gouge along the seeker’s fuselage.

They were driving him, herding him. Tarn realized with dawning fury that they weren’t just trying to kill him; they were corralling him, and Pharma by extension, away from the main thoroughfares. The road narrowed, winding into a crumbling industrial sector of rusted silos and dead-end streets.

« Tarn, they’re boxing me in! » Pharma’s comm was strained. The sky above the silos was a cage of intersecting laser fire.

« I’m coming! » Tarn roared, plowing through a chain-link fence, transforming scrap metal into shrapnel. But he was too slow, too earthbound.

He skidded into a vast courtyard, surrounded on three sides by towering skeletal structures. A perfect kill box. Above, Pharma was forced down, his landing gear scraping against the concrete in a shower of sparks as he transformed back to root mode. The Pet tumbled out from his cockpit with a furious snarl, its plating bristling.

The three seekers transformed in unison, landing with practiced grace, their weapons raised. It didn’t take long for Tarn to arrive and then he transformed into root mode; he would not die cowering. He would take at least two of them with him. His double cannon glowed, priming for a point-blank shot that would likely kill them all in the concussive blast. Pharma’s own digits shifted into tools and weapons.

A fourth jet shot down from the heavens.

“Cease fire, you imbeciles!” he shrieked, cutting through the tension, and Tarn immediately knew who it was just by the voice: Starscream.

His transformation was a theatrical flourish of crimson and white. He landed lightly, his wings hitched high in a posture of supreme arrogance. He did not even look at his own mechs; his gaze was fixed on Tarn’s mask. Not the torn one. He was a creature of habit, and the habit of a lifetime, the armor of the enforcer, was not so easily discarded. The dead metal hid his expression, a familiar shield between his shattered world and the prying optics of others. The other seekers lowered their weapons, though their postures remained tense.

Starscream’s gaze swept over the scene, taking in the scorch marks, the snarling turbofox, Pharma’s defensive stance, and then again, Tarn. His red optics narrowed, and a conflicted frown twisted his lips. It was a sliver of something that looked unnervingly like apprehension.

“We need to talk,” Starscream said, his voice losing its usual theatricality, becoming low and urgent. “And you’re not going to like it.”

Tarn stood his ground, systems humming with energy. His gaze flickered back to Pharma, a silent check. The doctor stood ready, his sharp optics narrowed, assessing the situation. Reassured by his steadiness, Tarn returned his full focus to the senator.

“Then speak now,” Tarn said, his voice a modulated threat that made the very air vibrate. “No lies.”

Starscream’s optics darted skyward for a a second, as if expecting another, more terrifying presence to descend. The apprehension Tarn had glimpsed earlier was now plain on his face.

“Look. The massacre at the Tyranny…” Starscream began. “… it was a contract. Shockwave paid me— paid us— to do it. He was very specific about the… brutality. You can guess why.”

A silence, ringing and absolute, followed the confession. Inside Tarn, a storm of incinerating rage ignited, so potent it was a physical pressure in his fuel lines. Shockwave. The calm scientist. The client who had paid in full. And Starscream, the preening opportunist, the weapon he had hired.

The red optics behind Tarn’s mask burned. “How do I know you’re not lying?” Tarn’s voice was dangerously soft. “For all I know, Shockwave is dead, and you are simply blaming a corpse for an atrocity you orchestrated.”

Starscream groaned in exasperation. “He’s not dead, you fool! He faked it! The public display was a ruse to make everyone think he was out of the game. He’s still out there, pulling the strings. He’s the one who put the substantial bounty on your head,” Starscream jerked his head towards his seekers, “a bounty some of my less-disciplined associates have been trying to collect.”

One of the seekers shuffled, muttering, “It’s a great sum.”

The pieces were shifting, the puzzle reforming into a far more horrifying picture. Shockwave, alive. Shockwave, hunting him.

“Shockwave may be the orchestrator,” Tarn’s voice dropped to a lethal purr, “but it was you and yours who pulled the triggers. You who slaughtered my team.”

“We were only doing our job!” Starscream defended, his wings flaring in a mix of offense and self-preservation. “Just like you do! Or… used to.” He had the sense to look slightly apprehensive after the jab.

“But… why?” The question was ripped from Tarn’s vocalizer. “Why would Shockwave want us dead? Our last job was for him. He paid us in full.”

Starscream shrugged, a gesture of genuine ignorance that was somehow more insulting than a lie. “I’ve no idea why he would want you dead. I just take the shanix and do the work.”

Tarn briefly wondered why Starscream, a senator now, would still take these jobs. For the extra shanix? Or perhaps the Decepticon in him never truly left. Then Tarn’s processor focused on why Shockwave would hunt them. He searched his memory files and remembered the corpse switch. The lack of Runout’s processor. Or perhaps Shockwave wanted the Decepticon syndicate out of the way for some reason he couldn’t understand yet.

Though the reason did not matter anymore.

Tarn’s optics narrowed. He decided to test the waters, to see how much Starscream truly knew. “Do you know anything of Megatron? His last location?”

Starscream almost snorted, a look of pure contempt washing over his features. “That old coward? Please. I bet he’s hiding in some backwater quadrant of the galaxy. Probably got tired of Shockwave’s… eccentricities,” his expression sobered, the earlier fear returning to his optics. “And… if he did flee the planet, then he was right in doing so. I’m not sure what Shockwave is planning, but he’s building something terrible, and I don’t want to die. If I were you,” he said, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper, “I’d leave the planet as soon as possible.”

The warning landed not as concern, but as a genuine threat assessment from a mech who knew the players. It was the most valuable thing Starscream had ever given him.

Tarn processed the torrent of information. A new, terrifying scale to the threat.

“Why are you telling me this?” Tarn asked, because it did not make sense. “Why now? You could have let Shockwave’s hunters pick me off. You would have been richer for it.”

Starscream’s optics darted again, a nervous tic Tarn was beginning to recognize. The arrogance bled from his posture, replaced by the survival instinct that was his true core.

“Because I’m not an idiot, Tarn,” he hissed, the words dripping with bitter fear. “I took his shanix to kill a rival syndicate. A simple but messy business transaction. But this… this weapon he’s building? This is different. It’s madness. And when a mech like Shockwave starts building a doomsday device, he doesn’t leave loose ends. He doesn’t leave witnesses,” he took a half-step closer. “I was a loose end the moment I took that contract. So are you. The only difference is, you’re a much bigger, angrier loose end than I am. You’re the only one with both the motive and the sheer unhinged capacity to actually stop him. I’m not telling you this out of the goodness of my spark. I’m telling you because you’re the only weapon I have left to throw at him.”

It was the most honest Tarn had ever heard him. A desperate act of self-preservation. Starscream was trying to aim a hurricane.

Tarn nodded slowly.

“This has been an enlightening conversation, senator,” Tarn modulated his voice into a deceptively calm tone. He began to walk forward, his heavy pedes crunching on the debris.

To his credit, Starscream held his ground, though one of his wings gave a nervous twitch. He looked wary, but not yet terrified.

“I’m glad we could… clear the air,” Starscream said, a sliver of his usual smarm returning.

Tarn stopped within arm’s reach. He extended a clawed hand. A truce. An agreement.

Starscream looked at it with suspicion, but after a moment’s hesitation, he reached out and placed his own hand in Tarn’s.

They shook once.

Then Tarn’s grip tightened like a hydraulic press, locking Starscream’s hand in an unbreakable vise.

“What—?” Starscream had time to gasp before Tarn’s other fist, a wrecking ball of condensed fury, slammed into his midsection.

It wasn’t his full strength— that would have punched straight through his spark casing— but it was enough to lift the seeker off his pedes. The air left Starscream’s vents in a pained, wheezing shriek. He doubled over, clutching his abdomen, optics wide with shock and pain.

“For accepting the job,” Tarn stated flatly. He released Starscream’s now crushed hand.

The other seekers surged forward, weapons rising, but a sharp gesture from a wheezing Starscream stopped them.

Tarn looked down at the gasping Senator, then let his gaze sweep over the other jets. “And tell your seekers to stop hunting me.”

Without another word, he turned his back on them. He walked back to Pharma, who was watching the scene with a look of clinical assessment, a faint but approving smirk on his lips. The Pet growled once, low in its throat, at the downed seeker.

“Let’s go,” Tarn said to Pharma in a quiet but firm voice. “We have a cop to meet.”

──────────────

« Do you believe what Starscream said? » Pharma’s voice cut through the static of Tarn’s thoughts.

They were in alt mode again, hiding under their holoforms, on their way to the docking bay near the tether.

Tarn considered the question, processor replaying the seeker’s every flinch, every frantic glance skyward. « His reactions seemed genuine enough, » he commed back, the memory of Starscream’s fear feeling more authentic than any of his lies. « The fear was real. He believes Shockwave is a threat to his own existence. That is a motive I can comprehend. »

« Hm. A weapon of mass genocide, » Pharma mused. « It doesn’t surprise me as much as it should. But it does fit Shockwave. »

Incinerating rage, so potent it made his fuel lines constrict, washed through Tarn. « He paid Starscream to erase us, to clear the board. All of it… the brutality, the desecration… was just a line item on a budget. » The chilling banality of it was a new kind of horror. They hadn’t been slain in a rival’s fury or a righteous war. They had been… decommissioned.

« And now we are the loose ends he failed to tie up, » Pharma stated, his tone both sharp and precise. « Starscream was right about that, at least. He’s trying to use you as a weapon of his own. »

« I am aware, » Tarn’s engine gave a low growl. « But his cowardice has given us the truth. And the truth is all I need. Shockwave is the one responsable for my team’s murder. Everything else is noise. »

──────────────

The docking bay near the tether was a cavern of shadows and echoes, smelling of stale ozone and cold metal. It was the kind of place where deals went to die. Prowl stood alone under a flickering overhead light, his doorwings held stiff and high, expression unreadable. He watched them approach, his optics doing a quick scan of Tarn’s unmistakable frame.

Pharma came to a stop a few paces from the police officer, his wings angled in a subtle challenge. “You’re late to the party, Prowl,” he greeted.

Prowl’s gaze didn’t waver from Tarn. “Pharma,” he said, voice flat and devoid of warmth. “You do know who you’re standing next to, right?”

Pharma’s frown was immediate and sharp. “Of course I know. Get to the point— what did you want to discuss about Runout?”

Prowl finally shifted his attention to the doctor, though his posture remained rigidly alert. “There are… concerning rumors. Before his very public demise, Shockwave was engineering something. A bioweapon. A genocide machine. The specifics are unclear, but the potential for catastrophic loss of life is not,” he clasped his hands behind his back. “Despite the spectacle of his murder, I have my doubts about his current status.”

« Why are we the last ones to know about this fucking weapon or machine everyone’s talking about? » Pharma sent through a private comm. Tarn frowned under the mask.

“Shockwave is not dead,” Tarn’s modulated voice rumbled, drawing Prowl’s sharp gaze back to him. “He deceived us all.”

Prowl’s lips thinned. “How fitting for someone who used to be a Decepticon,” he continued, “I cannot legally act on rumors. So I paid Runout, who used to work in one of Shockwave’s labs, to acquire evidence. He was successful, but he was murdered before he could deliver it to me. His last comm to me stated he had sent the data to you, Pharma, for safekeeping.”

Pharma’s optics widened in genuine surprise. “What? I don’t have it. The last time I saw Runout— alive— was almost a decade ago.”

“He was very specific,” Prowl insisted, his tone leaving no room for error. “He told me he sent it to you.”

“I don’t—”

Tarn watched as a series of realizations flickered across Pharma’s face— dawning comprehension, annoyance, and frustration. The doctor sighed, smearing a hand on his face.

“Oh, you have got to be kidding me,” Pharma muttered. “Don’t tell me it was the fucking video… the two-second video he sent me…”

Tarn’s own memory banks supplied the conversation from the restaurant, the raw honesty Pharma had offered him.

“But you told me you deleted the file,” Tarn said aloud in a low voice.

Pharma looked at him. “I did, but I still have the backup file,” he admitted. “And I didn’t know it contained valuable intel. I thought it was just… another one of his pathetic attempts.”

All this time, the thing Shockwave had been hunting for, the reason for the killers in Runout’s house and Pharma’s apartment, had been sitting dormant inside Pharma’s own processor. A two-second clip of fake happiness. A digital Trojan horse.

Pharma’s gaze returned to Prowl, his professionalism snapping back into place. “Alright. Fine. So I give you what Runout sent me, and then you’ll go after Shockwave, right?”

Tarn observed as Prowl simply arched a brow, his silence more telling than any lie.

The pieces clicked for Tarn. Prowl’s rigid posture, his insistence on meeting in this deniable location, his lack of backup. He could not move officially.

“No one knows you paid Runout to steal from Shockwave,” Tarn stated. “And you don’t want anyone to know. So you want us to go after him for you.”

Prowl did not deny it. He did not confirm it. He merely said, “You have a very clear motive to go after him. Wasn’t he who ordered the hit on the Tyranny?”

The casual mention of his team’s murder, delivered with such detachment, sent pure fury through Tarn’s lines. He took a half-step forward, claws curling into fists. “How do you know—?”

A cold smirk touched Prowl’s lips. “It doesn’t matter.”

« Of course he wants us to do the job for him, » Pharma’s voice hissed in Tarn’s comm. « Prowl has always been willing to get his hands dirty, but if he can avoid it and have someone else’s hands permanently stained… that’s his preferred method. »

Tarn’s spark hammered against its chamber. This was it. The path was clear, paved with vengeance and this bureaucrat’s cowardice. He was being made an offer he could not refuse, to become the very weapon he had always been, but this time, for his own cause.

He inhaled sharply, the sound a pressurized sigh. “I will do it. On three conditions.”

Prowl’s doorwings gave a minute twitch. “State them.”

“One,” Tarn held up a single claw. “We are not retrieval agents. We will not bring back the machine or bioweapon. We are there for Shockwave. Once he is… dealt with, you can send your own clean-up crew to secure the lab.”

“Acceptable.”

“Two,” Tarn continued, his voice dropping. “You will clear my criminal record. All of it. I want to disappear when this is over.”

A part of his processor whispered that he was just like Megatron, running away. But then the comparison died as quickly as it was formed. Tarn would finish business first. He would not leave his team unavenged— he owed them that much. Then, he would disappear of the radar.

Prowl studied him for a long moment. “Also acceptable.”

“Three,” Tarn gestured to the Pet, which was sniffing at a greasy puddle nearby. “You will take the turbofox. Ensure it is cared for.”

That gave Prowl visible pause. He looked at the scruffy, half-wild creature, then back at Tarn, his expression unreadable. Finally, he gave a single nod. “Very well. I accept your terms.”

The deal was struck. The path was set. As Prowl turned to collect the protesting turbofox, a profound silence settled over Tarn. He had bargained with a serpent for the privilege of walking into a dragon’s den. It felt less like a strategy and more like a ritual sacrifice. And he was the offering.

« Why did you…? » Pharma commed, a private thread of concern amidst the deal they had just made.

Tarn commed back. « Because I want to face Shockwave myself. »

It was the only reason that mattered. Vengeance for his team, and a final, bloody period at the end of the story. After that, perhaps he could finally discover who, or what, was left.

──────────────

The safehouse was too quiet.

The Pet’s absence was a palpable void near the doorway, a space now empty of its low growl and the scent of wildness. Tarn had told himself it was a tactical necessity, a liability removed. The lie was thin and cold comfort.

He focused on the ritual of maintenance, the disassembly and reassembly of his double cannon. Each component was wiped clean of grime, each connection tested with a click that echoed in the stillness. The weight of the weapon in his hands was a familiar anchor, a piece of his old self he could not yet shed.

Across the room, Pharma worked with his own kind of precision, arranging and rearranging the contents of his medkit. The soft clink of glass vials and the slide of polished steel were the only sounds.

“So,” Pharma began. “You plan on disappearing.”

Tarn’s claws stilled around the cannon’s barrel. He had known this was coming, had felt the question hovering in the space between them ever since he had laid his terms before Prowl. All his rehearsed answers— pragmatic and detached— crumbled to dust under the weight of the moment.

“Not leaving the planet, but…” Tarn swallowed thickly. “Going to a quiet district.”

“A quiet district,” Pharma repeated, not looking up from his medkit. “You make it sound almost idyllic.”

He finally closed it and turned. Pharma was watching him now, blue optics sharp with that clinical curiosity that saw straight through armor and pretense. Tarn had long since discarded his mask here; there was no point in hiding from the one mech who had seen every shattered piece of him.

“It’s not about idyllic,” Tarn said. “It’s about… cessation. An end to the noise,” he exhaled softly. “I have been a weapon, a symbol, a murderer. I find I am… tired of being all those things.”

Pharma tapped two digits on the table. “And what will you be instead?”

The question, so simply put, struck a chord deep within Tarn’s spark. It was the question he had been circling, the terrifying void at the end of his path.

“I don’t know,” he admitted, the raw honesty feeling both dangerous and liberating. His gaze did not waver from Pharma’s. “But I would not… I would not face that particular unknown alone. If you were willing.”

He let the offer hang in the air, immense and fragile. He saw the conflict in the minute hitch of Pharma’s wings, the subtle tension in his jaw. It was the pull of a clean, orderly life— the clinic, the respect, the world of medicine he had carved out for himself— warring with the bloody and uncertain orbit they now shared.

“You’re asking me to abandon my entire life’s work,” Pharma stated, his tone not accusatory, but factual. “To become a fugitive in all but name.”

“I am asking you to build a new one,” Tarn countered, voice softening to something barely above a whisper. “On our own terms. But it is your choice.”

Pharma was silent for a long moment, gaze drifting from Tarn to the grimy window, as if he could see that hypothetical future through the filth. The silence stretched, and Tarn’s spark thrummed a painful rhythm against its chamber. He had laid himself barer than he had in any fight, and the wait for a verdict was its own unique torture. There was again the itch to pick at his scar.

Finally, Pharma’s optics slid back to him. He did not refuse. He did not agree. He simply gave a slow nod.

“We’ll have to survive Shockwave first,” he said, voice regaining its practical edge. “A rather significant prerequisite.”

The tension in Tarn’s struts released in a wave so potent it nearly left him lightheaded. It wasn’t a yes, but it was far, far from a no. It was a possibility— a terrifying but beautiful possibility.

As if on cue, a soft chime echoed in the room. Pharma’s optics flickered, his focus turning inward to his HUD.

“It’s Prowl,” he reported. “The data’s decrypted. He’s sending the coordinates now. Shockwave’s primary lab, buried deep in the Acid Wastes.”

The moment of vulnerability shattered, replaced by the sharp focus of the hunt. Tarn’s expression hardened, the softness evaporating like coolant under a blowtorch. The future, with all its terrifying potential, would have to wait.

“Good.”

──────────────

The coordinates for Shockwave’s lab were a cold star burning in Tarn’s HUD, a final destination he had never dared to imagine. The reality of it settled in his chassis, a physical weight that made the safehouse walls feel like they were closing in.

They were in the berth, a sanctuary that now felt like a fleeting dream. Tarn lay on his side, his broad chest pressed against Pharma’s back, one arm draped over the doctor’s frame. Their legs were a comfortable tangle of limbs that belied the storm gathering in the silence between them. He could feel the fine tremors of residual energy running through Pharma’s frame, a mirror to the conflict churning in his own spark.. The warmth of the doctor’s plating against his was the only thing that felt real.

Neither of them was recharging. Tarn did not want to break the silence, to shatter this fragile piece of peace. But the path ahead was a yawning chasm, and he could not step into it without speaking.

“I will leave at first light,” Tarn murmured against Pharma’s neck. “Alone.”

Pharma went completely still in his arms. For a long moment, there was only the sound of their synchronized ventilation systems. Then, Pharma turned within the circle of his arms to face him. In the dim light, his blue optics were sharp, searching Tarn’s uncovered face.

“Alone,” Pharma repeated, his voice dangerously quiet. It wasn’t a question. It was a challenge.

Tarn’s spark clenched. “It is a suicide run, Pharma. You heard Prowl. A genocide machine in his primary lab. He will probably have an army. Your skills…” he gestured vaguely, the movement constrained by their closeness. “Your skills are for saving lives, not ending them in a pit.”

A sound of exasperated disbelief escaped Pharma. He pushed himself up on an elbow, his gaze burning into Tarn’s. “My skills are for winning,” he countered, his voice a sharp hushed whisper that carried more force than a shout. “Or did you already forget the Busted Optic? My apartment? I am not a piece of glassware to be left on a shelf while you go off to die dramatically!”

“This is different,” Tarn insisted. He fought to keep his own voice low, the argument a private but desperate thing. “This is the mech who orchestrated the death of everything I had. I will not lead you into that.”

“You’re not leading me. I am choosing to walk beside you,” Pharma shot back, his accent cutting through the gloom. He leaned in closer, his forehead nearly touching Tarn’s. “Or did you forget what happened the last time you tried to play the solitary avenger? You nearly let Overlord turn you into scrap! You would have bled out in the dirt if I hadn’t been there to haul your rusting carcass back here.”

The memory was a lance of cold shame, sharp and undeniable. He saw the truth in Pharma’s optics— not just defiance, but a fierce and terrifying loyalty. This was a partner. A mech who had decided, for reasons Tarn still struggled to comprehend, that he was worth defending.

Tarn blinked slowly. The fear of losing Pharma was eclipsed by the staggering realization that he did not have to face the void alone.

He was silent for a long moment, gaze locked with the doctor’s. Finally, the rigid line of his shoulders eased. He gave a single, slow nod.

“Very well,” he rumbled, the words both a surrender and a promise. “We go together.”

A satisfied smile touched Pharma’s lips, but his optics remained soft. He brought a hand up, his skilled digits gently tracing the line of Tarn’s jaw before he lifted Tarn’s hand. He pressed a slow, deliberate kiss to the center of his palm, a seal on their pact.

The gesture, so intimate and trusting, shattered the last of Tarn’s reservations. He cupped Pharma’s cheek in return, his thumb stroking the pale plating. He leaned in, capturing Pharma’s lips with his own.

This kiss was not like the others— not frantic with hunger nor soft with post-overload haze. It was deep, and searching, and solemn. A vow made in the silence, a promise of a future they had to first claw from the jaws of the past.

When they finally parted, their foreheads rested together, vents cycling softly in the dark. The frantic energy had mellowed into a resolved stillness. As they drifted into a troubled recharge, their frames slotting together as if made to fit, one thought echoed in Tarn’s mind, a silent oath to the mech in his arms.

I will not lose you too.

Chapter Text

It was insanity.

The plan, such as it was, felt less like a strategy and more like a high-wire act over a pit of smelting slag. They had agreed on it together, of course. Tarn had laid out the coordinates, the schematics Prowl had provided, the known entrances. He had advocated for a frontal assault, a brutal straightforward purge. For now, he was still a weapon; this was how weapons were meant to be used.

But Pharma had dissected his approach. “If I were Shockwave,” he had said, his voice calm and analytical in the safehouse, “a paranoid scientist looking for what’s his, I wouldn’t be swayed by force. I’d be swayed by reason. And by my own ego.”

His plan was one of misdirection. Pharma would be the distraction appealing to Shockwave’s pragmatism, all while Tarn found another way in to evade the army of modified thugs.

“No,” Tarn’s spark had clenched. “Absolutely not. It places you directly in his path. Unarmed.”

“I am never unarmed,” Pharma had countered, a sharp, confident glint in his blue optics. “I have my wits. And he’ll be focused on me, not on you. It’s the only way to get close. You said it yourself— he relies on secrecy, not showmanship. We need to exploit that.”

Tarn had hated it. Every circuit in his processor had screamed at the risk. But he had looked at Pharma, at the stubborn set of his jaw, the unwavering certainty in his gaze, and found his objections turning to dust. He trusted the doctor. And so, he had relented.

Now, standing at the edge of the Acid Wastes, that felt like a fragile crystal thread stretched to its breaking point. The landscape before him was a corpse, picked clean by chemical winds and time. The sky was a poisonous, jaundiced green, and the air carried the acrid sting of metal oxidation and things long dead. In the distance, Shockwave’s lab was a squat tomb of stained concrete. It was utterly nondescript, a perfect hiding place for an experimenter’s work.

His outlier was a constant pressure in his spark, a shell of dead energy wrapped so tightly around his own signature he felt smothered by it. He watched from the cover of a rusted machinery graveyard a half mile out. Through his magnified optics, he watched Pharma. The doctor was a solitary figure of brilliant blue and white against the corroded expanse, walking towards the bunker’s seamless door. He made no attempt to hide, his frame held with a surgeon’s perfect posture, his wings set at a confident angle. He was the picture of a mech here on legitimate business.

It was the longest walk of Tarn’s life.

« I’m in position, » Pharma’s voice was a calm signal in Tarn’s private comm. « No visible sentries. »

« That was to be expected, » Tarn commed back, his gaze scanning the empty landscape for any sign of a trap he had missed. « Abort if anything feels wrong. Anything. »

« Your concern is noted, » Pharma commed, a thread of dry amusement in his voice that did little to sooth the tension in Tarn’s struts. « And unnecessary. Now, quiet. I’m opening the channel. »

A faint click signaled the opening of the broader comm line Pharma would use to contact the lab. Prowl’s courtesy. Tarn’s own receiver was patched into it, but he was a silent witness.

“This is Pharma,” the doctor announced, his voice projected towards the bunker, losing none of its melodic confidence. “I am here to return stolen property to its rightful owner. I wish to speak with Shockwave.”

For a long, heart-stopping moment, there was only the whisper of the toxic wind, a mournful sigh across the ruins. Tarn’s grip on the rusted beam he leaned against tightened.

From the massive front door, four mechs emerged, their frames bulky with crude armor and heavy weaponry. They fanned out, surrounding Pharma with practiced efficiency, their rifles raised and trained on his chest.

Tarn’s spark hammered. His claws dug into the rusted metal, peeling back strips of corroded metal. He could drop two of them before they even registered the shot. But he could accidentally reach Pharma as well.

Over the open comm, he heard one of the thugs. “State your business. Clearly.”

“I believe you’ll find I am perfectly clear,” Pharma replied, his tone laced with a hint of impatience, as if addressing a slow-witted intern. “I have something Shockwave wants. Data he believes was lost. I’m here to give it back and end his tiresome hunt.”

The lead thug tilted his head, listening to a sub-audial comm. He grunted. “He’ll see you. Move.” He gestured with his rifle barrel towards the dark entrance. “No sudden moves. Try anything, and we slag you where you stand.”

“The thought hadn’t crossed my mind,” Pharma said smoothly, and Tarn could perfectly picture the faint smirk that would be on his face.

He watched as Pharma walked forward, not as a prisoner, but as an invited guest. The blue and white frame was swallowed by the darkness of the bunker. The thugs followed him in, and the massive door slid shut with a resonant thud that echoed across the wastes.

The silence in Tarn’s audials was immediate and absolute. The open comm line was still active, but it carried only the faint echo of Pharma’s steps and the heavier tread of his escorts from within the belly of the beast.

His optics scanned the structure’s periphery, hunting for a flaw, or a crack.

There. On the eastern face, nearly obscured by a drift of chemical-hardened sludge, was a grille covering a large pipe. It was an outflow conduit, wide enough to shunt the lab’s toxic waste into the surrounding plains. The gaps between the rusted bars were wide enough, perhaps, for a determined tank.

« I’ve found a potential entry point, » Tarn commed through the private line, his claws finding purchase on the grille. The metal shrieked as he peeled it back, the sound deafening in the wastes. He froze, waiting for an alarm, for a squad of thugs to pour out. Nothing. Only the wind. « A waste conduit. Proceeding. »

« Try not to make a mess, » Pharma commed, the dry amusement back in his tone. It sent a flicker of warmth through Tarn’s chilled spark.

Transforming was out of the question. He would have to crawl. Tarn squeezed into the opening, his broad shoulders scraping painfully against the slime-slicked interior. The passage was a tight, agonizing squeeze, his plating squealing in protest with every inch he gained. He was a hulking ghost in a metal intestine, the darkness absolute, his world narrowed to the faint sounds from the comm and the frantic thrum of his own spark.

The stench was immediate and overwhelming— a thick, cloying miasma of spent chemicals, congealed energon runoff, and the sharp tang of decay. Viscous fluids, glowing with sickly bioluminescence, sloshed around his pedes and clung to his plating. He moved for what felt like an eternity, navigating by the faint, foul draft and the dim light of his own optics reflecting off the dripping walls.

Finally, another grille appeared ahead, offering a view into a sterile corridor. He paused, scanning for cameras. One, two... he spotted them, their lazy sweeps predictable. He timed his exit, sliding the grille aside and dropping into the corridor with a wet thud the moment they were turned away. He pressed himself into the shadows, leaving a trail of oily, reeking filth in his wake.

« We’ve arrived, » Pharma’s voice came, pulling Tarn’s focus inward. The acoustics had changed; the echo was gone, replaced by the low hum of powerful servers and the drip of… something chemical. « He’s here. » .

“Doctor Pharma.” A new voice answered, flat, monotone, devoid of any inflection. It was a voice Tarn had last heard accepting payment for a corpse, a voice that had praised his efficiency. It now sent a wave of incinerating rage through his lines. “You possess data that belongs to me.”

“We are both mechs of science,” Pharma replied, his tone flawlessly smooth, a blend of respect and professional contrition. “If my life’s work were stolen, I would move heaven and earth to get it back. I apologize on Runout’s behalf. I didn’t know the imbecile had sent it to me. I only recently decrypted it and realized what it was.”

“An apology is an illogical response from a mech whose apartment was recently besieged by my associates,” Shockwave countered. “The logical conclusion was that you and your former conjunx were working in concert. A theft, followed by a strategic disappearance.”

“A logical conclusion,” Pharma conceded. “But an incorrect one. I had deleted the file. I only restored it from a deep-level backup when I realized the… persistence… of your interest. I have no desire to be hunted for a handful of equations I didn’t want and cannot use. I am here to return your property and end this… inconvenience.”

There was a long pause. Tarn could almost feel Shockwave’s single optic boring into Pharma, weighing the flawless reason against the possibility of deception.

“Your reasoning is efficient,” Shockwave stated finally. “The data.”

Tarn heard the faint click of a datachip being slotted into a console. He knew it was the virus Prowl had provided, a digital plague designed to crash Shockwave’s network and create chaos. The silence that followed was heavier than the one in the wastes, a taut wire waiting to snap. Tarn held his breath, every sensor on alert, the reeking filth from the waste conduit dripping from his seams onto the sterile floor.

The silence was broken not by Shockwave, but by a new, panicked voice that crackled over a lab-wide intercom, shrill and terrified. “Boss! Intruder in Sector Gamma! We have a visual! He’s— he’s covered in shit, but it’s him!”

Tarn’s fuel ran cold. His optics snapped upward, scanning the ceiling. There, in a high corner he had missed in his initial sweep, a tiny red light blinked, malevolent and unblinking. The filth that had granted him entry had now painted a perfect target on his back.

The silence on the comm line stretched for a horrifying second. Then, Shockwave’s voice returned, colder than the void.

“So. The enforcer evaded termination. You did not come alone, doctor.”

Pharma’s voice was rushed, a masterful performance of startled confusion. “I don’t know what you’re—“

A burst of sharp and agonizing static screamed through Tarn’s audials, so powerful it made his vision whiten. It was the sound of a comm line being violently, physically severed. It cut off with a final, deafening pop that felt like a spike driven into his processor.

Then, nothing.

The silence in his audials was more terrifying than any explosion. It was a void, an absolute severance. The open comm line, his tether to Pharma, his window into the room, was dead.

Panic flooded his lines. It was the feeling of losing everything, all over again.

Stealth was over.

He transformed, the roar of his engine a challenge that shook the very foundations of this hell. His double cannon glowed to life, casting a hellish, pulsing light on grim walls now destined to be his canvas. They knew he was here. Fine. Let them come. Let them die.

His cannon boomed, a concussive blast that didn’t just kill the first thug-- it unmade him. The mech’s head vaporized in a cloud of molten shrapnel, his legs staggering two steps before collapsing. A second blast caught a pair rushing from a side corridor, fusing them together in a shrieking molten embrace of twisted limbs and bubbling armor. Sparks from severed lines and dying frames filled the air like a macabre blizzard, his outlier snapping them into nothingness, each extinguished spark a silent screaming note in the symphony of carnage.

They poured into the corridors, wave after wave of faceless, nameless obstacles. A laser blast, searing and precise, found its mark. It sheared through the main hydraulic lines in his left arm. The limb went instantly dead, a ton of useless metal now hanging by a grotesque tangle of screaming wires and shredded mesh, gushing thick, reeking fluids that painted the walls in streaked arcs. He ignored the dead weight, using its momentum to swing it like a wrecking ball into another attacker, crushing the mech’s chest with a percussive crunch.

He staggered forward. Another blast, this one from a plasma rifle, took a chunk out of his thigh armor. The armor peeled back like burning foil, revealing the complex joint beneath, now glowing a molten, ominous cherry-red. Agony lanced up his spinal strut. He roared, the sound tearing from his vocalizer, and brought his pede down on the shooter’s helm. The metal skull collapsed with a sound like a stomped fuel can, optic glass shattering and brain module pulping into a grayish-pink slurry under his tread.

He was a monument of ruin, his own energon now mixing freely with hydraulic fluids and the liquefied innards of his enemies. The reeking filth from the waste conduit was baked onto his plating by weapon fire, creating a nauseating perfume of scorched sewage and death. The only thing that mattered was the path ahead, the pull in his spark that screamed Pharma.

He finally reached a set of reinforced double doors, larger and more imposing than any he had seen. The command center. The heart of the beast. With a static-laced roar, he leveled his functioning cannon and fired point-blank.

The world dissolved into sound and fury. The doors buckled inward, their locks shearing with a deafening metallic shriek. One door was torn completely from its housing, slamming into the wall inside with a crash. The other hung, bent and mangled, revealing the scene he had dreaded and expected.

The room was vast, dominated by a central console covered in flickering schematics of the genomic destabilizer— a planet-killer rendered in cold light. And there, before it, stood Shockwave, his optic fixed on the entrance.

But Tarn’s gaze barely registered him. It locked onto Pharma.

The doctor was held fast by two hulking brutes. One had Pharma’s arms wrenched to a side, stasis cuffs on his wrists. The other had a massive hand clamped over the lower half of Pharma’s face, digits digging cruelly into his jaw, silencing him. A thin trickle of energon welled where a sharp digit had pierced the plating. Pharma’s optics were wide, but not with fear. They burned with a furious intensity that met Tarn’s own, a look that promised retribution.

He tried to charge, his ruined leg buckling for a nanosecond. The name was a ragged, desperate prayer torn from a broken vocalizer. “Pharma!”

Three more thugs materialized from nothing and grabbed him. One wrapped arms around his cannon, another locked onto his good arm, and the third, seeing his weakness, drove a powerful kick into the back of his ruined leg.

The joint gave way with a sickening crack. He crashed to one knee, the impact jarring his very spark. He struggled, but the combined weight was too much, his body too broken. Energon, both his and his enemies’, slicked the floor. His gaze, frantic and burning, found Pharma. The doctor was still held fast, but his optics were locked on Tarn, blazing with a fierce unspoken signal—

Don’t you dare give up.

Shockwave turned from the console, his monotone voice cutting through Tarn’s snarling static with the chill of absolute control. “A crude but clever parasitic code. A predictable attempt at sabotage,” his single optic glowed, fixed on Tarn. “Did you truly believe I would insert a foreign data chip into my core systems without analyzing it first? The file was a ghost. You brought me nothing but confirmation of your own desperation.”

The revelation was a different kind of blow. They had walked into this, thinking themselves clever, and Shockwave had been waiting, his logic an impenetrable fortress. Prowl’s virus, their best weapon, had been a useless toy.

Tarn’s vents hitched. He forced his helm up, ignoring the grinding protest in his neck cabling, his gaze drilling into the unblinking yellow optic.

“Why?” he ground out, the word thick with static and a grief so vast it threatened to short his vocalizer. “The Tyranny… my team… why?! Our last job was for you. We were efficient. We were loyal.”

The word felt like ash in his intake. Loyal to what? To this?

Shockwave took a step closer. “Loyalty is an emotional variable. It is inherently unreliable. The Decepticon syndicate was a relic of chaotic impulses, a sentimental attachment to a failed ideology. My work,” he gestured vaguely to the schematics of the genomic destabilizer still flickering on the main screen, “requires order. Purity. It cannot be compromised by loose ends.”

Loose ends. The term was so cold, so dismissive, it didn’t feel real. But then the faces flashed behind Tarn’s optics, searing his processor. Kaon’s quiet competence. Nickel’s irreverent wit. Vos’s lethal presence. Helex and Tesarus, a wall of unwavering force and humor. Their laughter in the bar’s mess, their trust in the field, their lives… all reduced to this. A clerical error. A variable to be scrubbed.

“My failure with Runout…” Tarn rasped, the memory of the headless corpse and Blades’ idiocy a fresh wave of shame, “... that’s what signed our death warrant?”

“It merely accelerated the timeline,” Shockwave confirmed, as if discussing a minor scheduling conflict. “It demonstrated a lapse in operational control. It confirmed that your unit, for all its perceived efficiency, had become a liability.”

A liability.

Ther were a lot of things that still did not make sense for Tarn, but all those doubts and questions were undermined by the incinerating rage that had been a constant companion since he first saw the ruins of the Tyranny. It was no longer a fire, but a dense, cold, and infinitely heavy point of absolute fury in the center of his spark. It was the weight of a dead star, pulling every memory, every ounce of pain, every shattered promise into its core.

It wasn’t just rage anymore. It was annihilation.

And it snapped.

The singularity of his rage detonated. With a roar that was less sound and more a physical tear in the fabric of the air, fueled by grief, the nuke, and a love that had curdled into something infinitely more violent— Tarn moved.

He didn’t fight the thugs holding him. He simply expanded, his right arm and his torso twisting with horrific strength. The last screaming wires and hydraulic lines anchoring his left arm gave way with a sound of ripping metal and a spray of vital fluids. The entire limb tore loose, crashing to the floor in a heap of useless plating. He barely registered the loss, the void in his shoulder socket just another space to be filled with fury, though his there was now an imbalance in weight.

The thugs stumbled back, stunned by the self-mutilating display of power. Tarn ignored them; he was focused on the mech before him.

Shockwave was a logician, not a brawler, but his survival instinct was primal. His fusion cannon arm came up, the barrel glowing with energy. A blast meant to vaporize a spark chamber erupted, but Tarn was already inside his guard, too close. The searing energy sheared past Tarn’s helm, taking the top of his left audial with it and scorching a molten trench across his treads.

The heat was nothing. The pain was fuel.

His remaining hand shot out, not for the torso, but for the cannon itself. His claws closed around the barrel with a shriek of tortured metal, and he wrenched it downward, using his greater mass and momentum to unbalance the scientist. Shockwave staggered, his optic widening a fraction in what might have been the first spark of true fear.

He drove his forehead forward, a brutal piston, directly into Shockwave’s face. There was a crunch of glass and circuitry. The protective lens over Shockwave’s yellow optic shattered. Tarn felt the wet pop of something vital giving way behind it, a burst of viscous energon and optical fluids spraying across his own face.

Shockwave reeled back, a garbled, staticky noise escaping his vocalizer. Tarn didn’t let him recover. He released the cannon and his claws found purchase on Shockwave’s shoulder joint. He dug in, piercing deep, and with a roar of tearing metal and sheared cables, he tore the entire arm, fusion cannon and all, from its socket. Energon erupted from the ruin in a violent pink geyser.

A searing pain suddenly exploded in Tarn’s own face. Shockwave’s remaining, functional hand, tipped with sharpened digits, had lashed out in a blind, desperate swing. The claws scraped across Tarn’s left optic, shattering the lens and tearing the delicate housing from its mooring, and he roared in pain. A crimson alert flashed in his HUD. [OPTIC UNIT 01: DEACTIVATED. SENSOR INTEGRITY COMPROMISED.] He could feel the ruined orb dangling by a few wires, a useless, swinging weight against his cheek.

He barely flinched. The pain was a distant echo. He was a vessel for vengeance.

From the edge of his remaining vision, he saw movement. The thugs, having recovered their wits, were charging. And he saw Pharma, on his knees, twisting his wrists, aiming the powerful thrusters on his heels at the stasis cuffs. The metal was already glowing cherry red.

Certain that Pharma was out of range, Tarn let his outlier flare.

He didn’t target them one by one. He unleashed a wide-frequency pulse of pure, soul-crushing resonance. It was a scythe of invisible energy. The three charging thugs didn’t even have time to scream. Their frames seized, their optics blazed white for a nanosecond, and then they collapsed to the floor in a synchronized heap, their sparks extinguished mid-beat. The room fell silent save for the sputtering of wires and Tarn’s own ragged vents.

He turned his full attention back to Shockwave, who was stumbling backward, clutching his sparking shoulder stump. The scientist was armless and half-blind, but the cold light of logic still flickered in his ruined optic.

Tarn took a heavy limping step forward. His one functional leg was agony, the other hanging by threads of metal and prayer. But he had all the leverage he needed.

He lunged, his body a battering ram. He didn't use his claws. He wrapped his single, massive arm around Shockwave’s remaining leg, locking it against his own chest. He planted his good foot, ignored the shrieking protests from his other leg, and wrenched his entire upper body backward with every ounce of strength his ravaged frame could muster.

It wasn’t a clean pull. It was a brutal and grinding torsion. Metal shrieked louder than anything yet. The hip joint, already stressed, exploded outward in a shower of pistons and shredded cables. With a tearing sound of a spinal strut being sundered from the pelvic cradle, the leg came free.

Shockwave’s torso, now a limbless, gushing wreck, hit the floor with a wet thud. It twitched, a fountain of energon still pumping from the horrific wounds. Tarn stood over him, his own body a shattered monument, clutching the severed leg in his hand. He stared down at the sparking, twitching ruin of the mech who had destroyed his world.

The debt was paid.

Silence descended, broken only by the sputtering of severed wires, the drip of fluids, and Tarn’s ragged vents. He stood, swaying, amidst the carnage. His one remaining leg groaned, the joint finally giving way completely with a crack. He collapsed onto the floor, lying amidst the ruins of his enemies, his body a shattered wreck.

Pharma, his stasis cuffs now dark and broken, rushed to his side, skidding to his knees. His medic’s optics widened, taking in the catastrophic damage. The missing arm, the two shattered legs, the plating in ruins, the energon leaking from a dozen mortal wounds.

“You stupid…” Pharma didn’t finish the curse. His voice was stripped of its usual composure, filled only with awe and a terror that had nothing to do with their surroundings.

Tarn’s lone optic, dimming, focused on him. “It’s…” he ground out, each word a struggle, laced with static. “Done.”

“Shut up,” Pharma hissed, his hands already moving, applying seals to the most grievous leaks. “Don’t you dare offline on me. Don’t you dare.” Pharma’s voice was a distant and frantic thing, buzzing at the edge of a vast and welcoming darkness. “—not doing this here. I am not losing you in this pit.”

Tarn felt strong hands grip what remained of his shoulder pauldron and the jagged ruin of his hip. There was a grunt of immense strain, a shriek of overtaxed hydraulics from Pharma’s own frame, and then the world tilted violently. He was being lifted, hoisted. The mangled stumps of his legs dragged uselessly, but the bulk of his torso settled against Pharma’s back, his one remaining arm dangling over the doctor’s shoulder. The weight distribution was all wrong, a nightmare of broken physics, but Pharma held him. He staggered under the burden, his pedes scraping for purchase on the floor slicked with energon, but he did not fall.

They were moving. Leaving the charnel house of the lab behind. Tarn’s lone optic, its lens cracked, flickered across the scene— the scattered limbs of the thugs, the twitching, sparking heap of Shockwave’s torso lying in its own vile fluids. A final, grim satisfaction, cold and quiet, settled in his spark. It was done.

The world blurred into a haze of grey corridors and the rhythmic, strained sound of Pharma’s vents. The sterile stench of the lab was replaced by the dry, toxic air of the Wastes. They were outside. The greenish light of the sky was an assault.

“I just contacted Prowl,” Pharma’s voice was a strained thing. “Said the lab is his to clean, and the target is—" he adjusted his grip, heaving Tarn higher on his back. “Stay with me, you,” he gritted out, his voice raw with exertion. “Talk to me. Say something. Anything.”

Tarn tried. He wanted to tell him it was alright. He wanted to ask if Pharma was hurt. He wanted to say his name. All that emerged from his vocalizer was a burst of wet, crackling static, the sound of a system tearing itself apart from the inside out.

His good optic glitched badly, the world stuttering in and out of focus— a flash of Pharma’s determined, gritted jaw, the endless grey of the plain, then darkness, then a flicker of a white wing. The processor that had once commanded fear across a city, that had strategized the fall of syndicates and memorized the cadence of Pharma’s laugh, was now a storm of error messages and failing subroutines.

“That’s it, just… just keep making noise,” Pharma urged, his pace relentless. “Don’t you go quiet on me.”

But the static was fading, too. The howl of the wind grew distant, as if he were sinking deep into a warm, silent sea. The pain began to recede, a blessed numbness creeping in from his extremities towards his spark. The last thing he was aware of was the steady, stubborn heat of Pharma’s frame against his own, a single point of warmth and solidity in a universe that was rapidly turning soft and dim.

His optic flickered one last time.

Then everything went dark.

Chapter Text

Consciousness returned to Tarn as a slow and gentle tide. The first thing to register was sound— the low, droning cadence of a news feed.

“…averted what could have been a planetary catastrophe,” a polished, authoritative voice was saying. Tarn’s foggy processor supplied the name: Orion Pax. “The swift actions of the Enforcers, led by Commander Prowl, uncovered and neutralized Shockwave’s hidden laboratory in the Acid Wastes.”

Tarn’s lone optic onlined, its focus blurry. On a wall-mounted monitor, he saw the visual. Prowl stood stiffly beside Orion, his doorwings held high, his face a mask of grim duty. Orion, earnest and forthright, addressed an unseen reporter.

“The schematics for a genomic destabilization weapon have been secured,” Prowl stated, his voice flat. “The threat has been eliminated. There will be a full review of security protocols to prevent a future incident of this magnitude.”

He’s good, Tarn thought, the observation distant, wrapped in layers of sedation. Prowl had scrubbed the scene. There was no mention of a one-armed, half-legged berserker or a surgeon-turned-saboteur. They were ghosts in the official story, as they were meant to be.

His systems continued their lazy reboot. His audials calibrated, sharpening the sound of the news feed before he could process a desire to mute it. His optic lens adjusted, resolving the room. It was clean, clinical, but small. A private room in a clinic, not a major hospital. Weak, natural light filtered through a slatted window.

His gaze drifted from the screen and found Pharma.

The doctor was sitting in a chair pulled up to the medical slab, a datapad resting in his lap. His attention, however, wasn't on the text. He was watching Tarn, a quiet, assessing look in his blue optics. At his pedes, a familiar, scruffy shape was curled in a tight ball, its sides rising and falling in sleep. The Pet.

As if feeling the weight of his gaze, Pharma looked from Tarn’s face to the monitor. With a flick of his wrist, he muted the news feed, the sudden silence ringing in the small room. He placed the datapad on a nearby table, his focus now entirely, undividedly, on Tarn.

“How do you feel?” Pharma asked, his voice soft, yet still carrying that underlying note of clinical precision.

Tarn cycled his vocalizer, the action feeling strange, new. The static was gone. “I…” he began, his voice a dry, unused rasp. He flexed the fingers of his left hand, then his right. He shifted his legs beneath the thin thermal sheet. “I can feel my limbs again.”

A sound escaped Pharma—a short, sharp ex-vent that was both amusement and profound relief. “I’m glad. My team and I worked hard enough to rebuild most of them.” His tone was proud, as expected, but beneath it, Tarn felt an immense wave of gratitude so potent it threatened to overwhelm his newly calibrated emotional dampeners. He offered a faint, genuine smile.

His optic flickered, and a small, persistent notification appeared in the corner of his HUD. [SYSTEM FAILURE: LEFT OPTIC CALIBRATION.]

He brought a hand up, his new digits— blunt and unfamiliar— tracing the sealed metal where his left optic should have been.

Pharma’s expression softened minutely. “Your nanites are weaving the facial tissue back together,” he explained. “But… we have no spare optics here. It’s a small clinic.”

Tarn let his hand fall. “Don’t worry, doctor. I can live without an optic.”

He noticed the way Pharma’s features tightened almost imperceptibly, a faint frown of dissatisfaction. The doctor leaned down, his skilled fingers finding the spot behind the Pet’s ear, scratching gently. The creature’s tail gave a single, sleepy thump against the floor.

After a beat, Pharma spoke, his gaze fixed on the turbofox. “I found two clinics and a hospital who are in need of a new CMO.” The statement landed oddly. Tarn’s brow furrowed because wasn’t Pharma already the CMO here? But then the doctor’ optics met Tarn’s. “If you still plan to disappear into a quieter and smaller district.”

It clicked. The offer wasn’t about a job for Pharma. It was a list of options for them. A path laid out for their shared future.

Slowly, Tarn reached out, his larger hand enveloping one of Pharma’s, holding it gently between his claws. The gesture felt more intimate than any kiss. “I will always be in your debt,” he said, and he meant it with every fiber of his being.

Pharma smiled, a soft, unguarded expression that was rare and beautiful. But it quickly morphed into a familiar, sharp-edged smirk. “You can make it up to me by cooking. You are surprisingly good at it.”

A low chuckle rumbled in Tarn’s chest. He began to push himself up, feeling the fresh welds pull and his new shoulder joint rotate with a satisfying smoothness.

“Careful,” Pharma warned, his hands coming up to steady him, helping him sit fully upright on the slab’s edge.

Once settled, Tarn didn’t release him. Instead, he guided Pharma’s hands to rest on his own shoulders, forcing the doctor to rise from the chair and stand between his knees, brought into close proximity. Tarn’s own hands settled on Pharma’s hips, holding him there, a solid and welcome anchor.

“I also dance and sing, for your information,” Tarn murmured, looking up at him.

Pharma quirked an elegant brow ridge. “Sing? You’re fucking with me.”

“It’s true. Should I be more incompetent to make you at ease?”

That earned him a real, melodic laugh. “Don’t you dare. Your particular brand of terrifying competence is what kept us both online.” Pharma’s hands slid from his shoulders to cup his face, his thumbs stroking the undamaged plating of his cheek. Tarn leaned into the touch, his single optic shuttering closed for a blissful moment.

When he onlined it again, his gaze was drawn over Pharma’s shoulder to the muted news feed. A new headline scrolled beneath a blurry, long-range image: DECEPTICON BOSS SPOTTED OFF-PLANET. The figures of Megatron and Soundwave were indistinct shadows. Tarn watched them, waiting for the old hurt, the betrayal, the rage to resurface. He felt only a hollow emptiness, a chapter finally and firmly closed.

Then, Pharma’s hands were petting his helm, fingers gently tracing the seams of his crests. The touch was a quiet command to look back, to be present.

Tarn obeyed, turning his head away from the ghost on the screen and towards the living, breathing mech in front of him. He smiled up at Pharma, at the mech who had stood in the path of the storm. He was self-aware enough to know the vengeance wouldn’t bring his team back— the vials of their innermost energon, still safe in his subspace, were a testament to that permanent loss. Life was heartbreaking, but it demanded you keep going.

Hearing the Pet’s soft snores and looking at Pharma smiling down at him, Tarn had found a way.