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“They wanted me to be an object. I am an object. An object dirty with blood. Mechanisms make endless demands on my life. But I don’t totally obey: if I have to be an object, let me be an object that screams.”
— Clarice Lispector, Água Viva
Orion is being kept on core support in the infirmary until Ratchet can figure out what to do with him, so he’s been spending most of his time recharging, and the rest of it floating half-awake with optical input turned off, too tired to even look at anything. He can eavesdrop, though, and it’s the only form of entertainment currently available, so he’s been doing a lot of that. Right now he’s listening to the entire Autobot crew arguing about nothing while Ratchet completes their preventative maintenance, and has been on and off for some time.
“I’m just saying, though,” Smokescreen says. “It must have been non-stop in the Con command center. Even Airachnid was kind of a babe.” He pauses. “Even if she was pretty freaky.”
“No way, man,” Bulkhead says. “Not with Soundwave always lurking around. Now that’s a freaky Con.”
“Okay, sure, he’s freaky,” Smokescreen says. “But those cables? He was packing some serious heat. You can’t tell me that no one was trying to get in on that.”
Knock Out snorts. “More like no one was quite that suicidal,” he interjects. “If you really wanted Megatron to slag you, there were easier ways to go about it.”
Everyone goes silent for a moment, and Orion puts in the effort to activate visual input, wanting to see what has everyone so interested, but they’re all just standing around staring at each other. Finally Bumblebee frowns and says, “Wait, do you mean that Megatron and Soundwave were—involved?”
“What?” Knock Out’s optics flare briefly in surprise. “No. Soundwave’s reality matrix is damaged. He can’t integrate experiences in real time. Or—couldn’t, I guess. Anyway, Megatron didn’t tolerate that kind of thing.”
Orion frowns, confused; he thought the reality matrix was an internal structure generated by the core, not a physical component that could actually take damage. And beyond that, Soundwave certainly seemed to have independent decision-making capacity. He wants to ask, but he can’t generate enough power to activate his vocal unit.
“Well, at least that’s one thing Megatron got right,” says Bumblebee, after a moment.
“Hold up,” Wheeljack interrupts, turning back to Knock Out. “I know you’ve seen Soundwave fight. You can’t tell me that mech didn’t know what was going on.”
“Obviously he could fight,” Knock Out says. “He just had to process all his external inputs separately. I never did figure out how he was doing it without melting his processor, but you can’t argue with the results. Still, without real-time integration, he couldn’t connect his emotional processing subsystem to his reality matrix, so interfacing was a no-go. I thought—at least I was pretty sure that it’s the same for Autobots,” he adds, a little uncertainly.
“It’s the same,” Ratchet says, coming over to join them. “Although we require an individualized assessment to legally determine inability to consent. But are you sure?”
“I’m sure,” Knock Out says. “Anyway, no one ever tried it, not as far as I know. Not like Soundwave couldn’t defend himself. He didn’t have a face underneath that screen, did you know that? Just a bunch of spinning teeth. He got half the fingers on my right hand, once,” he adds, and cradles the aforementioned hand against his chest with a demonstrative shudder.
Orion wants to keep watching, but he’s just too exhausted—the resource expenditure for optical input was too much for his recovering systems. He falls back into recharge still wondering what kind of injury could have possibly caused the damage Knock Out alluded to.
It comes up again a few days later, when Ratchet is getting Orion connected to a core regeneration unit for some seventy-five hours of treatment.
“So, about Soundwave,” Ratchet starts, still fussing with the enormous bundle of wires and cables connected to Orion’s core systems. “How did you determine incapacity? If he’d selected an interfacing partner, what would you have done?”
“I never really thought about it,” Knock Out says, after a moment. “Since no one ever asked, Soundwave included. I suppose I would’ve had to evaluate whatever process he was using to fight and see if it would allow him to make real time decisions about interface, as well. And I’d have needed to know who the partner was, too, and whether or not Soundwave wanted to produce a sparkling.” He pauses, and then adds, “And then I would’ve checked with Megatron.”
Ratchet nods thoughtfully and starts the regeneration unit, which produces the sensation of a hot vibroblade jabbing into Orion’s neural net. Orion gasps, and also goes completely limp as the regeneration treatment immediately claims all of his system resources.
“Sorry,” Ratchet says, patting Orion sympathetically on the leg. “That might sting for a little while. We have a similar assessment process, although it’s formalized,” he adds, to Knock Out. “I’ll send you the file. And when treating Autobots you’ll have to maintain medical confidentiality, even from Optimus. Something to keep in mind when you start practicing independently.”
“Megatron was his medical proxy,” Knock Out says. “What do Autobots do instead? Do you just decide on your own or do you bring in a consult?”
Orion manages to jerk his attention from the agonizing pain long enough to stare at Knock Out.
Ratchet stares at him, too. “No, we have medical proxies. Although if the patient lacks capacity and a medical proxy hasn’t been identified, you would ideally request a consult before making any major decisions, if there’s anyone available to do it.” He pauses. “I just didn’t realize—the nature of their relationship.”
“Well, I certainly didn’t understand it either,” Knock Out says. “But I guess it doesn’t matter, now.”
“Well…” Ratchet says. “It might. Raf trapped him in the Shadowzone, but I don’t think he took any fatal damage on the way there.”
“Wait, Soundwave’s alive ?” Knock Out jumps up, knocking an exam table to the side with a clang. “You can’t let him out! He’ll kill us all! And most importantly, he will definitely kill me for being a traitor,” he hisses.
“We won’t let him kill you,” Ratchet promises, with perhaps an unwarranted level of confidence—Orion doesn’t really remember his experiences as Optimus all that well, but he remembers enough about Soundwave’s combat abilities.
Still, if Soundwave is alive, they can’t rightfully keep him trapped in the Shadowzone without access to energon. They’ll have to take the risk.
“We can’t afford the risk right now,” Bumblebee says, when Ratchet brings it up. “If Optimus was at full strength…” he trails off. “It’ll just have to wait. Soundwave didn’t take any major damage on the way in; even if he was nearly out of energon, his reactor should still hold out for thousands of years in stasis. We need to stabilize our position first.”
Orion tries to argue, but his damaged vocal unit requires more power than his systems can divert from the ongoing core regeneration treatment. He squints his eyes disapprovingly in Bumblebee’s direction instead.
Ratchet thinks on that. “You’re right,” he finally says. “I don’t think it’s urgent yet. Still, we’ll eventually have to get the space bridge in working order, and once that’s done, Soundwave will almost certainly devise a way to activate it from the other side.”
“You’re probably right about that,” Bumblebee agrees, after a moment. “Still—we should hold off on completing the repairs for now. At least until we have a containment plan, and enough Autobots recalled to hold the base.”
Ratchet nods, apparently satisfied. Orion isn’t, but another sharp stabbing burst of pain coruscates along his circuitry, and he has to cancel all external input and just exist in an electric haze of misery.
Orion’s core regeneration treatment finally comes to an end two nights later, completing with a series of pleasant little beeps and an abrupt shift from system-wide hot agony to only a dull ache in the center of Orion’s chest. He can tell already that the treatment worked.
Ratchet comes trudging into the infirmary a few minutes later, grumbling a little to himself, even though it’s the off-shift and he should be recharging. He looks painfully exhausted. Still, he gets straight to business, plugging into the core regeneration unit and sitting there for a moment before suddenly bursting into tears.
“Ratchet?” Orion questions, his voice scratchy and low with unrepaired vocalizer damage.
“Optimus,” Ratchet sobs, and it occurs to Orion that—Ratchet doesn’t know. None of them know.
“I’m—” not Optimus, Orion starts to say, but Ratchet hushes him.
“Just rest,” he says, wiping lubricant roughly off his face, and he presses a button that leaves Orion feeling suddenly exhausted beyond measure. “We’ll talk in the morning,” Ratchet promises, and Orion slips into recharge before he can generate a protest.
Orion does mean to tell the others that he isn’t Optimus anymore, but somehow, he can’t bring himself to say it in the face of their joy and relief. His emotional subsystem responds by generating conflicting experiences of guilt and contentment, which Orion’s systems struggle to integrate into an actual decision-making model. The end result is that he still doesn’t say anything, but spends a not-insignificant chunk of time having disrupted defrag cycles, during which his subconscious produces imaginary scenarios in which he is permanently exiled from the Autobots or thrown tumbling into the Well after the Matrix.
Even accounting for the emotional disturbance, though, Orion finally feels well for the first time that he can remember experiencing. Now that the core regeneration is complete, Orion’s power output is stronger than ever; it’s as if the loss of the Matrix also eliminated some final remaining constraint left over from his original construction. Even his vocal unit has finally submitted to self-repair, after weeks of error messages. To Orion, it feels like a confirmation that he made the right choice, that it was time for the Matrix to return to Primus.
Ratchet, though, doesn’t seem quite as pleased. “I’m keeping you under observation for at least another week,” he says. “These results are nonsense. You should be in core recovery, not generating enough power to run the damn base.”
After some negotiation, Orion consents to another week in the infirmary, mostly to appease Ratchet, but also to retain access to the partially-repaired space bridge—it’s still located in the infirmary while Ratchet works on it. He also enjoys the unintended benefit of restricted visiting hours, which everyone except Arcee respects.
Arcee slips into the infirmary after-hours just as Orion decides the coast is clear, and stands up to sneak over to the space bridge. The overhead lights all come on at once and Orion freezes, caught. Orion blinks at her a couple times and has to reset his brightness valuations before he realizes that Ratchet hasn’t suddenly turned blue and pink and shrunk down to a third the size.
“It’s time for you to get out of here,” Arcee says sternly, stomping over to the recharge unit and staring at him.
“I promised Ratchet I’d let him monitor me all week,” Orion hedges.
Arcee snorts. “So let him monitor you,” she says. “But we need you out there, too. Bumblebee is trying, but it’s not the same without a Prime.”
“I’m no longer a Prime,” Orion reminds her. “And I’ve been… looking forward to retirement,” he adds, not untruthfully. Of course, when he separated from the Matrix, he’d been imagining—a slightly different kind of retirement.
“You’re still our Prime,” Arcee insists. “You don’t need the Matrix for that.”
Orion shakes his head, guilt washing through him all over again for the secrets he’s keeping. “Bumblebee has already proven himself an effective leader,” he says. “And I’d prefer to not disrupt our established operations, especially so close to our first democratic elections.”
Arcee is eventually convinced to leave—although not to fully drop the matter—and Orion hurries over to the space bridge to inspect it. As it turns out, the space bridge isn’t just within Orion’s ability to repair; the repairs are practically complete already. Or at least, they are if you have the core output capacity to jumpstart a space bridge yourself and don’t need to hook up an additional temporary power source, which Orion fortunately does.
Orion is nervous about using his own internal weaponry—he knows that he’s technically used it plenty of times, and he has combat routines, but it still feels a little daunting. He sneaks out the next night to grab a spare blaster from the armory instead. And the night after that, he solders the last few connections together, releases a jump cable from his left side, and plugs in to start the bridge back up again.
He waits patiently by the side of the bridge for several long minutes before he realizes that Soundwave isn’t coming out. And he should be—Bumblebee was right to say that Soundwave would come out fighting, and activating the bridge from the other side is well within Soundwave’s capabilities.
It could be a trap. It probably is a trap, but if it isn’t, and Soundwave isn’t coming through the bridge because he’s too injured to make it through on his own—
Orion should contact one of the others and tell them what he’s planning to do. But he’s also pretty sure that if he does, they’re going to try to stop him. And if he waits around too much longer, then someone is going to notice the new power draw and come investigating, and interrupt him anyway. So instead, Orion takes a deep intake and dives forward into the swirling green and purple light.
By the time he gets out of the Shadowzone, it seems like the entire base is there waiting for him, all of them shouting questions over each other. Orion pushes through them and sets Soundwave down gently on a repair table.
Ratchet comes hurrying over, smacking Smokescreen out of the way impatiently. “What’s wrong with him?” he demands.
“I don’t know,” Orion says, glancing down at Soundwave’s unconscious, battered frame. His illumination routines are all completely dark. “He was already unconscious when I found him—I wasn’t able to wake him up.”
“Okay, stay here and keep him on the table if he wakes up. Everyone else, get out!” Ratchet shouts, and reaches for a fistful of monitoring lines. “Not you,” he adds, when he catches Knock Out trying to sidle out the back door.
Ratchet starts getting Soundwave hooked up to the monitors, and Knock Out reluctantly comes over to help attach a refueling line.
“Didn’t you say we had to keep medical confidentiality?” Knock Out asks. “Why is Optimus allowed to stay when everyone else has been kicked out?”
“Medical confidentiality doesn’t apply to prisoners,” Ratchet says. “I’ll send you the flowchart, but essentially, there’s an exception in the case of ‘need to know’ information—safety concerns, strategically valuable information, and the like. Anyway, in Soundwave’s case, we need Optimus here in case he manages to escape his restraints.”
“He wouldn't even be here if it wasn’t for Optimus,” Knock Out mutters darkly, only half under his breath.
Ratchet shoots him a sharp look, then turns and smacks the top of a piece of equipment. “Why isn’t this working?” he demands. He whirls around and starts rearranging the lead wires that are already hooked up to Soundwave.
“Ugh,” Ratchet huffs, after several more tries. “This is impossible. None of his ports are responding to standard medical inquiries. I can’t even get a null result!” He digs around in a drawer and comes out with an armful of handheld scanning equipment.
Knock Out snorts, crossing his arms. “Good luck with that,” he says. “You’re not going to get medical access. He’s locked down tighter than a Seeker’s tertiary port.”
“Well, how did you manage to treat him?” Ratchet asks, waving his scanner in clear exasperation. “I’ve tried plugging in, and I’ve just tried triggering his reboot four different times—he isn’t powering up.”
“What, are you interested in my opinion now?” Knock Out asks. “I said we should leave him where he was!”
“Take it up with Optimus,” Ratchet says. “What would you do?”
“Just stick to external scans until you can figure out what the issue is,” Knock Out says. “He gouged all of the internal power routing out of his ports after you guys caught him the last time, so we’ll have to rebuild a neural access port.”
That triggers a burst of pain along Orion’s remorse circuitry, and he cringes, looking away. He’s glad that he can only remember that moment vaguely, a brief impression of standing over Soundwave, certain that the cortical psychic patch was the only decision, if not necessarily the right one.
“Then you can insert yourself into his boot up sequence from there to create a medical access pathway,” Knock Out continues nonchalantly. “He’s got some really nasty viruses queued up, though, so you’ll have to be quick about it.”
Ratchet doesn’t look particularly enthused by this plan, but after trying and failing to get any of their standard scanners to connect, eventually he caves and has Orion drag the short-range gamma ray scanning equipment out of storage.
“These readings are ninety-percent junk data,” Ratchet complains, once Orion helps him get everything set up. He pushes the readout over towards Knock Out. “I think his core containment system is generating equipment interference. You’ve seen what his vitals are supposed to look like—see if you can make heads or tails of this.”
“It looks like there might be some sort of residual energy around his spark,” Knock Out says, after staring at the screen for several astrominutes. “Check for evidence of a core power surge, maybe. His power flow definitely appears disrupted.”
Ratchet connects to the data and reviews it for a few moments before suddenly sitting back, optics flared wide. “That’s not a power surge,” he says, staring down at Soundwave. “That’s a sparkling.”
“A sparkling?” Orion asks. There hasn’t been a sparkling in—ten thousand years, at least.
“What?” Knock Out pushes Ratchet out of the way to review the scanning data himself. His head swings back and forth between Soundwave and the screen several times before he finally sets the scanner down. “How in the seven hells did he get sparked in the Shadowzone?” he asks.
Ratchet smacks Knock Out on the arm disapprovingly, but truthfully, Orion is wondering the same thing.
Orion finally gets released from full-time medical supervision, but he still ends up spending most of his time in the infirmary—ostensibly because he’s in recovery after straining his systems running around in the Shadowzone, but mostly because he’s hiding. Everyone seems to have an opinion about what Orion should be doing, and who he should be talking to, and whether or not he should be disbanding the nascent electoral process and reinstating permanent martial law instead. Someone that Orion vaguely recognizes as a pre-war Council advisor even corners Orion in the street and tries to extract a campaign endorsement from him. Worse still are the other Autobots, who all want to celebrate his miraculous recovery, and have no idea that Orion isn’t the person they all loved and grieved for.
So, Orion is back to his previous occupation: sitting quietly in the infirmary’s recovery ward while Ratchet berates his patients.
“Something is seriously wrong with Soundwave,” Ratchet announces. He shoves a diagnostic tablet into Knock Out’s face. “I thought it was an equipment malfunction at first, but I’ve manually confirmed the results. I know he’s a nonstandard build, but we’re talking more than just his face—a ton of his circuitry is destroyed or just plain missing. Is there a reason why he’s never received treatment for this?” he demands.
“What?” Knock Out says, and holds the screen back a little from his face to actually review it. “Oh. No, that’s not just Soundwave, most of us were built without designated pleasure circuitry. Overseers weren’t too big on positive reinforcement, you know.”
He reaches over to Ratchet’s computer and zooms in on part of the diagram. “It’s a simple fix. Normally you’d just remove the disruptor magnification unit that should be here,” he explains, pointing to a ragged gap in the circuitry. “You can see where Soundwave ripped his out— so unsightly, this is why you should go to an actual surgeon, people—anyway, just replace it with a sensory interface module and then train it to reinterpret a couple of the pain pathways as pleasure. Eventually they start rewriting themselves.”
He pauses. “Of course, it can’t be done without reciprocal neural access—there’s no other way to demonstrate the experience without feeling it first-hand—so Soundwave hasn’t ever had the procedure. And at this point it’s been so long since that circuitry’s been used for anything that his systems might just reject the installation. I’m almost positive that he’s deactivated all of his pain receptors and just relies on pressure sensors and internal diagnostics to identify damage.”
“That’s incredibly dangerous,” Ratchet says, and then his optics flare brightly. “Wait a second, are you telling me no Decepticons have pleasure circuitry? How on Cybertron do they encode positive experiences? You’d have to repeat them—thousands of times, at least, before your emotional subsystem could get enough metadata to generate a positive value.”
“Well, that’s why we started replacing the disruptor units,” Knock Out says.
“What about the Vehicons?” Ratchet demands. “Were they built with pleasure circuitry?”
“Uh,” Knock Out says.
That, of course, jumpstarts a crusade to repair every single Vehicon and Eradicon ever produced, and Ratchet won’t tolerate any delays or excuses. Orion is roped into Vehicon collecting, since most of them are understandably suspicious of unplanned medical procedures.
“This is for your own good,” Ratchet says firmly to his current batch of victims, who are all sitting in a terrified huddle where Orion has coaxed them into the infirmary. “I may not be able to expand your cognitive functioning as much as I’d like, but I can at least help you all establish baseline functioning.” He shoots a pointed glare in Knock Out’s direction.
Knock Out laughs. “If you think the Vehicons are bad, you should see Soundwave’s coding. I wasn’t kidding when I said he couldn’t integrate. It’s a cybermaze in there.”
Ratchet frowns in a way that Orion associates with nothing good, but all he says is, “Well, we’ll see about that once we get that access port installed.”
Orion eventually gets kicked out of the infirmary for Soundwave’s procedure, and makes his way to Optimus’s quarters. He needs to recharge, but he can’t quite bring himself to dust off the enormous rest unit and lie down. Instead, he picks through the few personal effects scattered around the room, mostly datapads and weaponry, reminders of battles that Orion didn’t fight and Autobots that Orion never met. There’s a datapad of poetry that seems interesting, but picking it up leaves Orion feeling so suddenly sick with second hand misery that he has to drop it and back out of the room.
He stands in the hallway for a long time, just staring at the cold scuffed metal floor while his emotional subsystem runs a quiet, low-level archival cycle, tagging and storing the memories that the poetry brought up without making Orion consciously experience them again. Eventually, though, his systems start demanding a rest cycle to complete integration, and Orion retreats back to the infirmary.
Orion steps inside quietly; Ratchet and Knock Out’s shifts are long since over, but Ratchet often recharges in the infirmary when a patient is convalescing. Fortunately, the recharge units all appear to be empty, and the only sign of life is the glint of the hallway track lights against Soundwave’s dull black armor.
As the door closes shut behind him, though, he turns and realizes that Ratchet is there, sitting alone in the dark. Orion looks frantically back over at Soundwave, but the machines surrounding him are all humming steadily, with none of the frantic alarms that would indicate a medical emergency.
“What’s wrong?” Orion asks softly, and when Ratchet only sits there silently, unmoving, Orion comes over and stands beside him. He places a hand on Ratchet’s shoulder, and Ratchet leans fractionally into the touch, just barely registering against Orion’s pressure sensors.
“Were there—difficulties with port procedure?” Orion guesses.
“No,” Ratchet says. “I managed to establish neural access. We’ve never captured Soundwave long enough to do that, you know.”
Orion grimaces, uncomfortable with the idea of unauthorized neural access. Even in Soundwave’s case, where it’s clearly a medical necessity, it still feels like a gross violation.
“We need to get Knock Out in here,” Ratchet says, finally looking up. He signals the infirmary lights to turn back on, then rubs his face heavily with his hands.
Knock Out comes scowling into the infirmary, and Ratchet drags him over to Soundwave and pulls up a diagnostic screen. The delicate piece of equipment plugged into the primary neural port at the base of Soundwave’s neck emits an affirmative beep.
“All of these pattern recognition routines have been manually written,” Ratchet says, his voice gone warbly and shot through with static. “He doesn’t have an integrated consciousness at all. He—this is beyond any sort of accidental damage, or construction error. He’s been lobotomized.”
“Yeah, I told you,” Knock Out says. “He’s obviously some sort of experimental model. There were probably others like him to start with, but, well...” he shrugs.
Without real-time integration, it’s unlikely any of them lived very long , Orion thinks grimly, his speculation unit producing the logical conclusion.
“Anyway, I always figured whoever built him didn’t really want him to know what was going on. They were probably looking for more of a ‘no questions asked’ kind of mech,” Knock Out adds.
“Can you—fix it?” Orion asks Ratchet, but even as his vocal unit produces the words, he knows what the answer is going to be.
“Not without wiping his personality,” Ratchet says. “And probably melting his core while I’m at it. So, no.”
Orion looks over at Soundwave. He isn’t small by any means—he certainly isn’t a civilian build—but laid out on the repair table, armor scuffed and dented, wires and cables poking out of him in every direction, the thinness of his frame becomes apparent.
“If Soundwave doesn’t have an integrated consciousness, how did he decide to have a sparkling?” Orion asks quietly.
Ratchet shakes his head grimly. “I’ve dated the sparkling’s conception to within the last three days of the war,” he says. “There are a lot of potential secondary progenitors. But I don’t see how Soundwave could have—participated.”
Even Knock Out looks serious at that, staring unhappily down at Soundwave. “He didn’t have a functioning neural access port,” he points out. “So however the transfer took place, it would have required physical core access.”
Orion briefly cancels optical input to process that; Soundwave, presumably captured by—someone—his armor yanked apart for core access, forced to receive a sparkling. Orion’s own core generates a flare of sympathetic pain, a false damage report instantly appearing in his internal display. Orion’s logic center points out that Soundwave likely couldn’t feel physical pain, but that seems suddenly irrelevant in the face of the experience his speculation unit is generating.
Ratchet’s hand curls comfortingly over Orion’s forearm, and Orion leans slightly into the touch. They stand there together for a long time, but eventually, Orion’s system reallocates resources to return to standard functioning, and both of them have to recharge.
Ratchet waits until the next standard shift to call Bumblebee, and Orion stays quietly attached to his recharging station, trying to blend in.
“What about the sparkling?” Bumblebee asks, when Ratchet explains what he found. “Don’t they start to develop a personality during incubation?”
Orion looks sharply over at Ratchet; he hadn’t considered that.
“Soundwave’s existing neurotrauma won’t impact the sparkling’s development,” Ratchet reassures. “But we need to talk about his future, not just the sparkling’s. By all rights Soundwave should be on trial for war crimes when he wakes up, although considering we let Megatron run off into the sunset, he probably should be eligible for your integration program.”
Bumblebee nods. “I don’t want to exclude anyone from the program,” he says. “Not if they want to change.”
Ratchet huffs. “The thing is, I highly doubt that Soundwave is going to agree to become an Autobot, but I’m not convinced he actually has the capacity to make that decision, or to go on trial, for that matter,” Ratchet says. “Looking at his coding—I thought what the Decepticons did with the Vehicons was bad enough, but at least they’re designed to make independent decisions.”
“He can’t make independent decisions at all?” Bumblebee asks. “I know Knock Out said his reality matrix was damaged, but I guess I didn’t realize how bad it was.”
“I can’t truly say. He clearly demonstrates responsive decision making, but it can’t be core-generated. He must—construct a logical model, and then select the outcome with the greatest chance of success,” Ratchet says.
“Well, that explains a lot about his rate of success, to be honest,” Bumblebee says. “Let me think.” Bumblebee actually crouches down and lets his gross motor systems all fall into a neutral position, clearly reallocating resources to the problem.
“Look, I think we have to be realistic about this,” Bumblebee says, after a few processing cycles. “Ratchet, you’ll have to determine Soundwave’s actual capacity once he wakes up, and we’ll take it into account. But we all know he’s going to come up fighting. So, the biggest consideration here is how we’re going to prevent him from damaging others. Or the base.”
Ratchet nods. “For now, I just want special dispensation to keep him in the infirmary when he wakes up, not a cell,” he says. “And there’s something else—Soundwave’s sparkling has stopped accumulating mass.”
“What does that mean for us?” Bumblebee asks.
“He needs a primary connection,” Ratchet says. He waves a hand to indicate the bundles of tubes and wires and cables all snaking over Soundwave’s frame. “His condition is stabilized, but without direct core support and primary integration from another Cybertronian, he’s going to lose his sparkling. And however the sparkling was generated, he obviously wants to keep it, or his systems would have released it by now.”
“We can’t force an Autobot to connect to him,” Bumblebee says. “I can ask for volunteers, but I’m not sure Soundwave would accept any of us, anyway.”
“His options are fairly limited regardless,” Ratchet says. “In someone without a sufficient core power load capacity, just his baseline energy demands could trigger a critical excursion. Ideally, he needs a connection with someone whose maximum output exceeds his power requirements by at least two standard deviations.”
“He’s a Decepticon,” Bumblebee says. “Do we even have anyone with those kinds of stats?”
“Not really,” Ratchet says. “Ultra Magnus. Optimus, if he feels sufficiently recovered, but I’m still hesitant to risk it.”
“I’ll do it,” Orion says instantly.
Ratchet and Bumblebee both jerk around to stare at him.
“I forgot you were here,” Ratchet says grumpily.
“I didn’t even notice you were here,” Bumblebee says. “Why didn’t you say anything? And how are you so sneaky now? I feel like there’s something so different about you,” he mumbles to himself.
“I just didn’t want to interrupt,” Orion says. It occurs to him that even if he doesn’t say anything, eventually the other Autobots are going to figure out that he isn’t Optimus anymore, but he still doesn’t speak up. A pang of guilt travels through his emotional subsystem.
“We’ll need to ensure you have a sufficient power supply,” Ratchet says, frowning heavily, but he doesn’t reject the offer.
Ratchet insists on a slew of tests and re-tests and an extremely painful core integrity probe, but the truth is, there isn’t anyone else. So, seven hours of unnecessary medical procedures later, Orion is standing beside Soundwave’s repair table with a core support cable already hooked up to his insides. For safety’s sake, Ratchet had the infirmary and most of the base evacuated, with the exception of necessary personnel—which, since Knock Out flat-out refused to be anywhere near a conscious Soundwave, means it’s just Orion and Ratchet.
“Remember, his combat systems are still going to be active when he wakes up,” Ratchet says, making a few last-minute adjustments to his equipment. “I got all of the weaponry out of his subspace, and he’ll burn through his power supply quickly, but he’ll probably still be able to do some damage before we can get him under control.”
“I’m prepared,” Orion says, moving closer to Soundwave and adding his own weight to the mechanical restraints holding him to the table. They can’t activate stasis cuffs or weapons disruptors without risking damage to the sparkling, but Orion doubts the unpowered durasteel will hold for long. “Ready when you are,” he adds.
Ratchet plugs into the medical access port he installed under Soundwave’s cranial unit, and after a few astroseconds, Orion can hear the slow steady whirring of Soundwave’s systems humming back to life. Soundwave’s illumination routines flare on in sequence, running through a complex pattern Orion associates with base computer reboots, then suddenly shut off.
Soundwave instantly shears through the restraints and tries to slam his head into Orion’s, which Orion just barely manages to dodge. “Soundwave, wait!” Orion cries, frantically wrestling him back down onto the table. “Just hang on, we aren’t going to hurt you, I promise.”
Soundwave responds by playing a high-pitched screeching noise directly into Orion’s auditory receptor.
“Agh,” Orion cries, instinctively jolting away, and Ratchet interrupts by smacking Soundwave in the chest with a pair of forceps.
“Settle down!” Ratchet yells. “You’re going to damage your power routing. I just replaced half of that circuitry!”
Soundwave does actually tilt his head at that, although he doesn’t stop fighting. At least he can’t release Laserbeak in this condition, so Orion isn’t being shot at, too. He dodges a cable that managed to escape its restraints before it can take out his shoulder servo, crackling with electricity. Soundwave’s power systems are clearly struggling; Orion is fast, but he shouldn’t have been able to fully avoid that hit at close range.
“Soundwave, run a power systems check,” Ratchet demands. “All this fighting is counterproductive. If you look at your diagnostics—” he cuts off, scurrying out of the cable’s range before it can snatch him. Orion tries to pull the cable back without losing his grip on Soundwave’s arms, and gets an underpowered laser to the hand for his trouble.
Soundwave does at least seem to be running out of steam. At one point he lies back limply, panting out exhaust, but when Ratchet dares to creep a little closer Soundwave transforms the end of his primary data cable into a sharp rotating point, which he instantly uses to stab Ratchet in the foot.
“You lead-brained ‘Con,” Ratchet growls, hopping around comically. There’s a smoking hole in his top layers of armor, and if Ratchet wasn’t such a dense ball of pure durasteel he probably would’ve lost the foot entirely. “We’re trying to help you!”
“Soundwave, think of your sparkling,” Orion pleads, and the cable briefly freezes before wrapping around Orion’s arm and slowly attempting to pull it out of its socket. Fortunately, Orion’s shoulder sockets are quadruple-reinforced with durasteel and titanium, so he isn’t too worried. “Run a power diagnostic,” Orion urges. “Can’t you detect it?”
Soundwave’s screen turns to face Orion blankly.
“You need core support, and quickly,” Ratchet snaps, limping back over to the repair table. “Optimus has volunteered, and I recommend you accept his offer. Without a hookup, your sparkling won’t have enough energy to finish coalescing.”
The constricting cable stills, and Soundwave’s illumination routines start back up, dim.
“Let me help you,” Orion says. He stares down into Soundwave’s screen. It’s still a little disconcerting to see Optimus Prime’s face reflected back.
“Diagnostics,” Soundwave finally demands, in Ratchet’s voice.
Ratchet lets Soundwave see the diagnostics screen on his scanner, which Soundwave immediately inserts a data cable into, instantly rendering the equipment too dangerous to be used on any Autobot ever again. Ratchet scowls. “You’re lucky I have more than one of these now,” he snaps.
Soundwave doesn’t respond, apparently reviewing the data. A loading symbol appears on his screen. “Describe…proposed medical procedure,” he eventually plays.
“You need to be hooked up to core support,” Ratchet says. He indicates the cable hanging awkwardly out of Orion’s chest armor. “Optimus can provide the core power you need to support your sparkling, and once your systems have stabilized, we’ll remove the cable and you can operate independently.”
The loading symbol pops back up again, but eventually, Soundwave retracts his data cables and starts the sequence to open his core housing.
Providing core support isn’t particularly painful or difficult, but it is a little boring. Soundwave isn’t permitted out of the infirmary, so neither is Orion, and despite the sheer amount of time Orion spent hiding in the infirmary after being released, he did appreciate having the ability to leave.
Even worse, Soundwave’s systems aren’t recovering properly. He certainly seems much improved—Orion is constantly preventing him and Laserbeak from hacking into the network or hijacking infirmary equipment, and is unable to prevent either of them from terrorizing Knock Out—but his sparkling isn’t responding to the influx of energy.
“Your core output is recovered, but for some reason your systems are redirecting resources away from the sparkling,” Ratchet says, when Soundwave finally submits to an examination. “It’s still viable, fortunately, but we need to figure this out before it starts losing mass again. It’s possible that your self-repair systems have misidentified the sparkling as a foreign contaminant, or that your core containment system is drawing too much power. Are you going to let me use the neural access port I went to all that trouble to install?”
Soundwave doesn’t respond. Ratchet gets up and walks behind him anyway, and when Soundwave doesn’t immediately attack—Orion keeps a close optic on his cable housing—Ratchet plugs right in. Eventually, though, Ratchet just unplugs, shaking his head unhappily.
“I can’t identify the source of the problem from here,” Ratchet says, stepping back around to face Soundwave. “I need to review your internal logs, but I can’t see them without reciprocal access.”
“Access: denied,” Soundwave immediately responds, in the base computer’s voice. Orion is a little concerned about where he got the recording.
“Is there anyone you’d consider granting access to?” Ratchet asks. “What about Optimus?”
Soundwave doesn’t respond. A series of white dots flash across his screen.
“I can write a routine to redirect your self-repair, but I won’t be able to target the source without seeing the connection between your self-repair program and your core logs,” Ratchet presses. “Writing it blind is too dangerous—I can’t risk guessing wrong and interrupting your core power supply.”
Soundwave still doesn’t say anything.
“Reciprocal access goes both ways,” Orion points out. “I’ll have to trust you, too.”
Soundwave stares at him for several long astroseconds, but eventually he turns his head, and the access port at the base of his neck slides open.
Orion glances involuntarily over at Ratchet, who only nods. “Just copy any of his internal logs that seem related,” Ratchet instructs. “Anything connected to the sparkling, or to his power management system.”
Orion runs a quick exhaust cycle, pushes everything out of frontal processing, and plugs in. For a moment the connection seems strangely empty, and after an astrosecond of confusion, he goes tumbling into Soundwave’s systems in a disoriented rush. His systems can’t complete the access protocols, lost in Soundwave’s incoherent experiential structure.
“The connection is unbalanced,” Ratchet says, and Orion hears it as if from a great distance. Ratchet starts to say something else, but external input suddenly winks out, leaving Orion scrambling. His systems force a sensory adjustment routine, trying to prevent degradation in his own reality matrix. He’s vaguely aware of Soundwave attempting to stabilize their connection, but he isn’t actually able to respond.
Soundwave doesn’t seem at all inconvenienced by Orion’s lack of cooperation; he simply forces a data packet over with a sharp, painful jolt, and Orion’s systems grab onto it in desperation, integrating it instantly without even an attempt at sanitization.
Fortunately, Orion’s personality doesn’t start disintegrating, so it isn’t a neural unraveller. Anything else his systems can probably flush out, especially since the packet releases an instruction set to reroute the intense stream of data coming from Soundwave through Orion’s reality matrix in a manageable configuration. The final result is something resembling real-time experiential integration, although it’s happening on a very disconcerting seven microsecond delay. Still, it’s enough for Orion to complete the access key exchange and establish a firm connection.
Soundwave immediately comes hurtling through Orion’s firewalls, and Orion does his best to keep any sensitive information out of reach, but truthfully, he’s a bit distracted by the reality of—of Soundwave. The intensity of it all is somewhat overwhelming. Where another Cybertronian might have fifteen or twenty active routines in conscious processing, Soundwave has hundreds, and thousands more hovering on the edge of Orion’s perception—all carefully and delicately programmed, semi-intelligent routines meant to store and categorize information on the conscious level, all flowing in together to inform yet more routines routed through Soundwave’s logic and strategy units, creating a chain of action and reaction that Orion can actually see in real time.
“You really can’t integrate,” Orion realizes. Knock Out said it, and so did Ratchet, but Orion didn’t understand it until now, seeing the truth of it—Soundwave’s quick, incisive mind trapped behind a hundred thousand calcified layers of hard-coded reroutes and neural blocks.
Soundwave’s input modules are all functioning, and his events processor works fine, if a bit disjointedly. He also definitely has an active emotional subsystem and the minimum required hardware for it to function. The issue is that his core coding, which was clearly tampered with at the factory where he was sparked, has had the core integration protocols stripped out. It’s not possible for his systems to assign standard tags to experiences, because his systems can’t integrate the experiences into a coherent whole—every sensation is stored separately—and he can’t generate emotional tags at all. Orion realizes, with a growing sense of disbelief, that not only Soundwave’s tagging system, but that Soundwave’s entire conscious experiential structure has been manually written.
Orion is no neurospecialist, but his archival coding is meant to understand and categorize information, and he doesn’t have any trouble understanding what he’s seeing. Soundwave was clearly built to be drone-responsive, his actual personality cordoned off with more neural inhibitors than Orion has seen even in two previous lives. Orion looks away in shame, disgusted all over again by the circumstances of Soundwave’s construction.
“How did you manage to produce a sparkling in the first place?” Orion asks. “You can’t even access your own motivator on a conscious level—I don’t understand how you’re making decisions at all.”
After a moment of consideration that Orion can’t follow—Soundwave clearly does have a decision-making structure, but it isn’t routed through his motivator in any standard way—a set of memories opens up for access, and Orion’s reality matrix starts the complex process of translating them into experiences his systems can properly integrate.
Soundwave’s memories are all coldly efficient, mostly a series of sparsely-tagged datalogs and mission outcomes, more reminiscent of AI-generated reports than any experience Orion has ever archived. Worse than that are the occasional sense-memories that come creeping in: a sharp cold sensation along the fifth segment of Soundwave’s spinal strut; the dull red pulsing of a low fuel warning; the tight miserable pressure of restraining bands locked against his armor.
Eventually Orion follows the convoluted pathway to Soundwave’s sparkling, carefully archived and tagged as a low-priority long-term mission. Laid out in clinical details are the extensive efforts Soundwave went to: long quiet hours spent programming neural viruses to insert into himself, targeting his own priority tree; the moment of triumph when his systems accepted Megatron as a secondary progenitor; the careful acquisition of source material—apparently he seized the chance created by Knock Out’s sudden absence to steal Megatron’s generative coding samples from the Decepticon infirmary; the actual coding transfer, which Soundwave completed alone, manually inserting the materials and the generative charge into his own core containment field with only Laserbeak for backup. And every step of the way he was fighting himself, pushing back against his own core code.
Orion is starting to understand how it worked—the long painful struggle of not just generating a totally novel desire from his emotional core, but actually acting on it—all those thousands of years that it took to layer up into conscious processing, Soundwave’s entire life in the gladiatorial pits of Kaon, the whole Primus-forsaken war. Orion can see just how many processing cycles it took for his motivator to take action, the way that, without emotional tags to upgrade the urgency, the desire kept getting pushed back in the priority queue. Soundwave finally got around it by assigning himself as a commander in his own core coding, treating it like a mission, because that’s what his brain is designed to do. And now, circling precariously around Soundwave’s own spark, is the tiny little burst of energy that Soundwave spent ten thousand years generating.
Orion gives in to the desire to drag Soundwave close, heedless of the sharp armor scratching against his chin. Soundwave doesn’t have the pleasure circuitry to enjoy it, but he doesn’t pull away, either. Orion can see his pressure sensors all lighting up, one of his sensory routines parsing the sensation of armor pressure without associated damage and tentatively tagging it as Megatron.
“I’m not Megatron,” Orion reminds him.
Affirmative, Soundwave signals, and from inside of their connection Orion can see Soundwave manually creating a new tag, Orion, and assigning the sensor readings to it. It’s a process that any other Cybertronian would complete subconsciously—that any other Cybertronian would be able to seamlessly, thoughtlessly integrate—but Soundwave has been manually categorizing his own experiences for a long time.
Ratchet makes an impatient noise, which trickles down at a delay into Orion’s sensory subsystem, and Orion forces himself to return to the task at hand. Soundwave helps him pull the relevant power management logs, and after another long moment he releases the connection.
Orion can barely stay awake long enough to give Ratchet the logs, his systems suddenly exhausted from the strain. Ratchet is still disconnecting when Orion falls into a deep, systems-wide recharge.
Orion wakes to the unmistakable sound of combat. His systems instantly cycle into full alert, and he looks over to see Soundwave perched silent and still, his head tilted towards the sound. It might be safer to remain in the infirmary—only one of them has functional combat experience, and it isn’t Orion—but Orion can’t bring himself to stay behind while the others are in danger.
They burst through the northwest entrance in a rush, Orion nearly running over a trembling civilian in the hallway in his hurry to get through the doors. At first he doesn’t realize what’s going on; the Autobots are all shouting over each other, and someone shoves an enormous blaster into his hand, while on the other side Bulkhead is yelling at him to get Soundwave back inside already.
Soundwave smacks Smokescreen out of the way with a tentacle, and Orion turns to snap at him, only to look through the chaos and see—Megatron. For some reason, the sight hits him like a null-ray to the chest, literally sending him a step back before he catches himself and freezes his motor routines.
Megatron is completely unaffected, standing in an enormous crater with his arms crossed in irritation, energy blasts bouncing harmlessly off his armor in every direction.
“Megatron!” Orion yells, once his systems have recovered. He starts pushing through the other Autobots. “Autobots, cease fire!” he commands, in Optimus’s voice, and around him the sounds of energy discharge slowly fizzle out.
“Optimus, wait,” Arcee protests, hurrying over to his side, but Megatron ignores both of them; he only has eyes for Soundwave.
“Soundwave,” Megatron says, after a long while staring. “You are alive.”
Affirmative, Soundwave signals.
“Why did you not come to me?” Megatron demands, then seems to notice the core support cable. He whirls on Orion before Soundwave can answer, his canon visibly powering up. “What have you done to him?”
“Soundwave is alright,” Orion promises, “He’s just—”
Soundwave flashes his screen, stretching out a data cable for Megatron’s attention. “Sparkling—ACQUIRED,” he plays, and then, in Knock Out’s voice, “Megatron—his generative coding.”
“What?” Megatron roars.
Orion eventually convinces the other Autobots to go inside the base and let them speak privately, although his environmental sensors catch Arcee lurking with an energy rifle just outside of eavesdropping range.
“This is a very poorly-designed trap, even for Autobots,” Megatron says, casually stroking Laserbeak when he circles around to land on Megatron’s shoulder. “Although I suppose that,” he indicates the core support cable disdainfully, “explains why Soundwave would summon me through long-range scanning codes.”
“If you thought this was just a trap, why did you come?” Orion asks, bewildered. He decides not to ask when Soundwave managed to access the long-range scanning equipment; they’ll have to rewrite the permissions regardless. Although now that he thinks about it, he realizes guiltily that Soundwave probably got the access key from his own archives. Their connection wasn’t exactly secure on Orion’s end.
“I do not fear Autobot traps,” Megatron says dismissively. “As you well know, Orion Pax.”
Orion can’t help but jerk back a little. It’s the first time anyone has spoken Orion aloud since he woke up.
Megatron notices, of course. “Don’t think you can fool me,” he says, red eyes glowing brightly. “I’d recognize that guileless little smirk anywhere. Tell me, do you plan to try to capture me?”
Orion shakes his head, irritation building up in his emotional circuitry. “Of course not,” he says. “I would never violate a ceasefire agreement—not when I was Optimus, and not now, either. You’re the one who always betrayed our agreements in the past.”
“I suppose you’ve conveniently forgotten your decision to undermine the revolution and claim the Primacy for yourself, then,” Megatron snarks.
“No,” Orion says. “Although—I do have the archival data from both of my previous personas, but most of it isn’t core-attached.”
Megatron stares at him. “You’re a newspark,” he says, appalled.
“I’m ten thousand years old,” Orion protests, but his spark isn’t truly in it. He has—seven weeks of experiential memory. And half of that was spent lying down and unable to talk.
Still, the vaguely unsettling recollections of his two previous lifetimes seem as though they ought to count for something. Even if he can’t quite remember what it all felt like, he certainly knows what happened.
“You shouldn’t even be off base without a minder,” Megatron says shortly. “How in the hell have you managed to convince these idiots that you’re Prime?”
“You just thought I was Orion Pax,” Orion protests.
Megatron waves him off. “Irrelevant. Tell me, what do you plan to do when they inevitably realize that you aren’t their leader anymore and have you deposed?”
“I am going to tell them,” Orions says guiltily. “And as you know, the Matrix is lost to us—I’m no longer Prime, and neither is anyone else. We’re having democratic elections to select a secular head of state.”
Megatron snorts. “Well, I’m sure that will go swimmingly.”
Orion thinks of his limited encounters with the candidates so far, and rubs his hands over his face. “It will,” he says firmly. In his periphery, his sensors catch Arcee readjusting the sights on her rifle.
After Orion talks Megatron out of simply yanking the core support cable out himself, the three of them end up in the infirmary, with Bumblebee and Smokescreen and Arcee all standing guard. Knock Out is nowhere to be found. Neither are any of the Vehicons, for that matter.
“Soundwave can’t maintain the motivator access needed to prioritize the sparkling, so his systems keep identifying it as an unnecessary power draw and trying to release it,” Ratchet explains. “I’ve written a program to simulate the emotional priority tag that would ordinarily generate without intervention, which should resolve that issue, but the sparkling’s energy requirements are still significant. Soundwave needs an external power source to support its growth.”
“For how long?” Megatron questions.
“The sparkling should finish coalescing within the next month or so.”
“Alright,” Megatron eventually decides. When Ratchet doesn’t immediately do anything in response, Megatron frowns at him. “Hurry it up, medic. I’m not sitting around here all day.”
“You’re not sitting around here at all,” Bumblebee interjects. “The agreement we had was that you would stay away from Autobot territory. And I don’t see why we should let Soundwave go with you, if you’re the secondary progenitor,” he accuses.
“What in the hell are you talking about?” Megatron snaps.
After an increasingly loud argument between Megatron, Ratchet, and Bumblebee, which Soundwave makes no attempt to participate in, a decision is reached: Soundwave will integrate Ratchet’s routine, Ratchet will transfer the core support cable from Orion to Megatron, and Megatron and Soundwave will leave as soon as the procedure is over.
“You really shouldn’t be taking off like this,” Ratchet tells Soundwave disapprovingly, yanking the cable out of Orion’s internals with a distressing crunch. “Sorry,” he adds, to Orion. “That might sting a little.”
“It’s alright,” Orion manages. After a few heavy exhaust cycles he manages to get his armor closed again.
“I’ll get this cable swapped over, but what are you going to do when it needs to be removed for the sparkling transfer?” Ratchet continues irritably. He motions impatiently at Megatron’s chest with the cable.
“I can handle the removal,” Megatron snaps, sliding open his chest armor without even a moment’s hesitation. “You’ll recall that the gladiatorial ring rarely had functioning medics.”
“And that’s another question,” Ratchet says, instantly inserting an armor lock into the gap. “Once the sparkling hits peak mass, you only have a limited time period to safely complete the frame transfer. Where are you going to source the frame materials? Who’s going to construct it?” This last question is accompanied by a pointed look at Soundwave.
“That’s enough from you, medic,” Megatron says. “Don’t think I’m not aware of your schemes. If we require engineering assistance we’ll hunt down Shockwave.”
“No one is scheming,” Orion jumps in. “I won’t let anyone try to harm your sparkling, and neither will any Autobot,” he promises.
Ratchet scowls. “It’s not Autobots I’m worried about.” He turns to Soundwave. “Are you sure you want to leave with him? We can give you and your sparkling a safe place, here.”
Soundwave flashes an upside-down smiley face on his screen, and plays a recording of Optimus’s voice, “—less civil methods of interrogation,” and then Ratchet saying, “No ordinary Cybertronian, inside or out—strongly suggest opening him up —”
Orion’s motor systems come to a complete stall. He only has a few memories in his archives of Soundwave before the war—mostly as Megatron’s silent and terrifying shadow. But of course Soundwave did have a life before being consigned to the gladiatorial ring with Megatron; he certainly isn’t a standard combat build. Soundwave’s efficient, expensively-constructed frame was built for a different kind of work, the sharp spinning teeth hidden under his mask obviously meant to inspire a more personal type of fear than the showy claws and spiky armor the other gladiators sported.
Orion’s emotional subsystem is preempting resources, trying desperately to process the inevitable logical outcome, because—Soundwave isn’t an ordinary Cybertronian, not at all. And it was—it must have been Autobots who made him that way. Orion briefly cuts visual input, unable to face the truth, and yet unable to fully look away.
“That’s not fair, Soundwave,” Bumblebee says reproachfully. “You were withholding information critical to the survival of innocent beings. Anyone would have responded poorly under those circumstances.”
“I wouldn’t!” Orion cries, his vocal unit coming back online. “I wouldn’t. And I can’t believe that you would. That— Optimus would. That was wrong, can’t you see that?”
Orion’s archives suddenly retrieve the moment Megatron brought up earlier, when they confronted the Council—he remembers, vividly, the sharp misery of betrayal, of realizing that Megatron was just as violent as the Council said he was, remembers looking at Soundwave and feeling nothing but fear and repulsion. And—and Megatron was violent, and he was vengeful, and cruel, and a thousand other things that Orion never wanted to be true. But—so were the Autobots. So was Orion.
Everyone stands staring at him in shock for a long moment. Eventually Arcee manages to activate her own vocalizer. “You were there, too!”
Orion shakes his head fiercely, ignoring the lubricant flowing freely down his face. “I wasn’t,” he says, but even as the words come out, he knows they aren’t true. “Or—not all of it was me.”
“What do you mean?” Arcee asks, and Orion realizes—
“Optimus is gone,” he finally admits. “I mean—I have his datalogs. But his core data was lost when he threw the Matrix into the Well.”
Orion only has his memories because after the first time he lost them, Ratchet installed a backup archival storage system with a completely separate, shielded connection to his core. It worked, but routing the system around the Matrix meant that it couldn’t retain experiential memory. Even when Optimus separated from the Matrix, and thought for sure it would destroy him—Orion knows, intellectually, that he was scared and exhausted and completely, one-hundred-percent certain that it had to be done. But he doesn’t actually remember feeling that way.
The other Autobots are all staring, frozen, and Orion doesn’t know what else to say. He can only look away, silent, as his emotional subsystem heats up with misery and shame.
Ratchet somehow manages to gather Orion up in his arms, despite being only half his size. “I’m sorry, Orion,” he says, stroking over Orion’s back. “I’m sorry.”
“I’m sorry, too,” Orion chokes out, and Bumblebee and Arcee and Smokescreen come rushing over, too, and Orion can’t do anything but hold them close, riding out the tears for a long time.
At some point he becomes aware that Megatron and Soundwave are no longer in the infirmary, and that if he doesn’t catch them before they take off then he may never get another chance. He manages to shake off everyone except Smokescreen, who just grips his energy rifle tighter and pretends not to hear when Orion dismisses him.
“Megatron, before you go, we need to talk,” Orion calls out, hurrying out of the base with Smokescreen trailing behind. Megatron and Soundwave are standing just outside, deep in some sort of private, silent conversation.
Orion glances over at Soundwave, who only stares at him, before deciding to just say it. “Look, I saw Soundwave’s core directory,” he tells Megatron.
Megatron raises an enormous durasteel eyebrow.
“It was medically necessary,” Orion says, but he can feel his core operating temperature rise by half a degree. “Anyway, the point is, Soundwave might not be able to complete standard integration, but he’s still capable of independent decision making.”
“I am aware,” Megatron says.
“Then you shouldn’t be interfering with Soundwave’s choice of interfacing partners,” Orion says.
Megatron cycles his optics rudely. “I’m not interfering with anything—he has a sparkling, doesn’t he?”
“From stealing your generative coding out of the infirmary,” Orion points out. “And Knock Out said you threatened to destroy anyone who tried to—establish a relationship with Soundwave.”
Megatron snorts. “The constant propositions were impacting his efficiency rating. He can choose his own partners, but I won’t tolerate interference with operations.” He pauses. “Wouldn’t.”
“Alright,” Orion says, and starts to make his goodbyes, then realizes—“Constant propositions?”
“I believe there was an undue interest in Soundwave’s data cables,” Megatron says dryly.
Orion blinks, his systems stalling as they decide whether to categorize that information as humorous or purely disturbing.
“I knew it,” Smokescreen crows, before Orion can respond. “Just wait until I tell the other guys…” he trails off, apparently remembering that his audience includes both Megatron and Soundwave. “Uh, never mind.”
Megatron cycles his optics. “Enough Autobot nonsense. Soundwave,” he commands.
Soundwave instantly transforms into his jet mode, and Megatron pauses for a moment. “Until next time,” he says to Orion, and then initiates his own transformation sequence. The two of them take off in perfect harmony, apparently unbothered by the power cable still tethering them together.
Orion watches them go, and then the sky after them. Eventually even Smokescreen grows bored and goes inside, but Orion isn’t ready to return just yet. He walks aimlessly through the compound, trying not to run into anyone who might be tempted to start a conversation.
A huddle of Vehicons goes silent as Orion walks past, dim red optical sensors tracking his movement. It occurs to Orion, a little belatedly, that maybe they don’t just fear unplanned medical procedures—that to the Vehicons, the Autobots are just as terrifying and inscrutable as Megatron ever was.
Orion makes it past the temporary quarters and storage hangars, and deep into the unrepaired North side. He eventually finds an old, crumbling observation deck, and climbs up, settling against the rail to watch the sky. It’s a bright clear gray, nothing like the melancholy Orion feels now that Megatron and Soundwave have gone.
After a little while, Bumblebee’s little yellow horns come peeking over the edge behind him, and Orion motions for him to sit down, too. Bumblebee does, sinking down beside Orion without comment.
“I know not everything we did was right,” Bumblebee eventually says. “But what else could we do? What Megatron wanted, what the Decepticons were fighting for—that wasn’t justice.”
Orion picks at a piece of exposed rebar. Overseers weren’t too big on positive reinforcement, Knock Out said. Building Knock Out and Soundwave and the other Decepticons without pleasure circuitry—building them just to take orders, to obey, without even the ability to experience joy—Megatron was right to say that the Council deserved to die for that. But—that didn’t stop Megatron from doing it to his own people, to the Vehicons.
“No,” Orion finally says. “We can’t let them build the world they were trying to build. But we can’t go back to how things were, either.”
“I thought when you woke up, everything would go back to normal,” Bumblebee says quietly. “But I guess that was never going to happen.”
Orion thinks about Optimus Prime’s last few moments, the misery burned into Orion's consciousness even without truly experiencing it. “Optimus was—really tired,” he tells Bumblebee. “I think Megatron is, too.”
Bumblebee scoots a little closer, and Orion reaches out to intertwine their hands, Bumblebee’s fingers disconcertingly tiny against his own. Some part of Orion still feels like he should be civilian-sized, built to fit into the access pathways behind the data storage consoles in the Hall of Records. He’d probably just knock the consoles over, now.
“We’ll figure it out,” Orion promises, and Bumblebee scoots over close enough to lean into Orion’s side.
The war that Optimus Prime and Megatron fought destroyed Cybertron and two-thirds of its population, and countless civilians on other worlds. And Orion Pax and Megatronus, before that—neither one of them made the right choice, standing in that Council chamber. But Orion has another chance.
In the distance, Orion can still see the vapor trails that Megatron and Soundwave left behind, on their way to wherever they’re going. Orion knows, with deep, sudden certainty, that they’ll be back. The only question is what they’ll come back for, whether or not they’ll be back to start another revolution. And Orion swears quietly to himself—he’ll make sure that they don’t have to. No matter what it takes.