“Decepticons… attack!” Megatron’s call resounded from out of nowhere.

At the sound of the war cry, Sideswipe’s fuel pump cycled frantically. He spun around on the dirt road outside Autobot Headquarters, looking for the enemy. Every servo in his body was tense and his systems brimmed with energy as he anticipated a fight. But there were no Decepticons. All was calm in the distance and the clear sky above was empty. His mechanisms relaxed for a moment, but re-energized when he heard the sound of engines roaring up the causeway behind him. He turned and saw a convoy of Autobots racing to battle, with Optimus Prime in the lead. They tore past him on both sides and left Sideswipe standing in a choking cloud of dust.

“Hurry up!” yelled Sunstreaker, but the brown cloud obscured Sideswipe’s field of vision so he could not see his twin brother. “What’s the matter? You getting too old for this?” Unseen, Sunstreaker laughed heartily.

The dust cloud thinned and revealed the yellow warrior standing tall as he looked away into the distance, an expression of fierce determination on his faceplate. Sideswipe watched, stunned, as his sleek brother transformed. His glossy, yellow body shifted in a pattern that Sideswipe did not recognize, impossibly contorting, twisting and folding into the small shape of a bicycle. Two carefree chimes from the handlebar bell signaled the charge to war. The yellow warrior’s pedals turned and he gently cycled off after the others.

Sideswipe felt like he was made of lead as he watched Sunstreaker leave him behind. He struggled to follow Sunstreaker but it was difficult to move. The hydraulic pressure in his leg servo-mechanisms seemed to be bleeding away and weakening him. He gazed off into the distance at Sunstreaker, who cycled very slowly but disappeared quickly from sight. 

Aggression coursed through the red warrior’s systems as he focused on his leg mechanisms and forced himself to take one big step forward. He could not bear to be left out of a battle. But his anger and determination could not change the painfully slow response of his robot form. Frustrated, he transformed into his vehicle mode to search for Sunstreaker and the others.

His engine shuddered for a moment then made a wheezing noise as it turned over and rattled to life. Sideswipe struggled to gain speed as he drove along the dusty road. With each passing moment, his frame bounced more loosely over his suspension. Sideswipe knew that something was wrong, but he was too consumed with finding the others to pay attention to his strange symptoms. He had to find his brother. 

He scanned the horizon as he lurched down the mountainside toward the valley floor, but the rocky landscape was vacant. Sideswipe grew desperate. His top speed was dreadfully slow. It was as though he was dragging a heavy weight behind him. 

Traveling over the corrugated, rocky ground stressed the joint near his passenger side rear wheel assembly, flexing it uncomfortably. Having never felt so fragile, Sideswipe ran a systems check but could find no problem. Thinking his diagnostic computer must be glitched, Sideswipe visually assessed himself. He looked over his high hood contour at his boxy chrome grille and round headlights, then back along his side panels at the ugly faux wood pattern in the metal. As he followed the shape of his rear paneling higher to find a long, windowed cabin over two rows of back seats, the red warrior realized with horror that he was no longer the low, sleek form of a red Lamborghini Countach. Instead, he had become a station wagon.

This was more than the red warrior could comprehend. Panicked, Sideswipe’s fuel pump surged but to no effect. He could not outrun his own vehicle form. Just then, his rear wheel touched down into a pothole and his pain center lit up. Braking hard, his tires skidded over the loose ground and his back end fishtailed. Road dust smothered him as he came to a sliding stop.

Sideswipe remained in vehicle mode, the pressure sensors in his bad joint aching from over-flexure. After a few minutes, the dust settled and Sideswipe scanned the area around him, the pain slowly subsiding. He was still alone. Where did everyone go? There were no Autobots or Decepticons anywhere. Confused, Sideswipe transformed back into his robot mode, mindful not to put too much weight onto his aching knee joint.

As he surveyed his surroundings, he was alarmed to find that the enormous volcano was still behind him, as if he had traveled no distance at all. His optics searched all over the side of Mount St. Hilary for the golden-orange shape of the Autobot base, but it was mysteriously absent, as if it had never existed. Shocked and confused, Sideswipe backed away from the mountain and stumbled. He quickly regained his footing and turned away from the mountain, only to find himself wandering through a forest.

As he looked around, he realized that he did not recognize the unfamiliar landscape. Most of the fir trees had dropped their needles and stood barren and dying all around him. Where am I? He stumbled again, the dry, orange needles crunching underfoot. The battle no longer mattered as he struggled to understand what was happening to him. A jolt of electricity shot through his pain center and he grimaced as his right knee joint acted up again. He tried to ignore it as he slowly circled to take in the skeletal forest surrounding him, but the leg collapsed underneath him and he plunged down onto the ground, catching himself on his hands. Sideswipe hung his head. The piston in his leg had seized and he could not move his foot for the moment.

He had to find a way out of this strange place. When the pressure pain in the joint subsided Sideswipe eased his leg out straight behind him. He carefully tested his leg hydraulics then slowly flexed his foot before standing back up. He blinked then lifted his optics and was surprised to find that the dying forest had disappeared and was replaced with the battlefield he had been seeking.

In the distance, the Autobots arrived at the edge of a bluff. Sideswipe contorted his faceplate as he watched them, not believing his optics. Things were not as they should be. Optimus Prime rolled to a stop then separated from his camper and transformed into the tall red and blue form of the Autobot commander. The age-stained, beige recreational vehicle he towed split lengthwise and folded open to reveal a typical human family sharing lunch at a picnic table. A golden Labrador retriever barreled out of the camper and charged toward Optimus, who appeared unaware of his canine companion.

 “Loser,” Sunstreaker spat at him, his optics emphatically flashing bright blue.

Sunstreaker’s cutting remark stung. He shook his head in defiance and took a step toward Sunstreaker and the other Autobots. But the mechanism in his knee locked in mid-step and he stumbled. Sideswipe caught himself, but his error was not missed by his brother. Sunstreaker cocked his head in response, silently laughing at his crippled twin.

It was his leg, Sideswipe told himself, not he who was failing. He stood back upright and tried to take another step toward his twin, but metal ground against metal in the knee and a pressure spike suddenly shot through the hydraulic line from his lower leg straight up into the relief valve in his upper leg. His knee throbbing from hydraulic feedback, Sideswipe bent the joint to ease the strain and dropped his head in pain. His mind languished in self doubt. While it was Sunny’s nature to show he was the best, he never left Sideswipe behind, especially when the red warrior was injured. Closing his optics, Sideswipe wrangled with the notion that Sunny no longer accepted him because he was weak. That had to be it. Nothing else made any sense. With a crippling injury, Sideswipe realized, he would only hinder Sunny.

He had tried his best to hide the pain but it must have been clear to Sunny that the damage to his knee had gone too deep and could not be repaired. Sideswipe reeled as a wave of anguish washed over him. Sunny had left him behind to perish on his own. Separation from his twin brother tormented him more than death itself. It felt like he had been torn open and half of his core components removed. He could not function alone.

Sideswipe powered back up with a start. The deep golden-orange ceiling above came into focus and he turned his head to the side, gazing at his own soft blue optic glow reflecting off the ruddy-colored wall in shadow beside his bunk. He turned his head back to the front and covered his optics with one hand. It wasn’t real.

“You online?” Sideswipe heard Sunstreaker ask from the bunk below.

“Yeah,” Sideswipe answered, removing his hand from his face and turning onto his side. As he flexed his right knee, pain shot through the joint and he froze with an expression of pain on his faceplate.

Lying comfortably on his back, Sunstreaker’s optic covers snapped open, alerted by Sideswipe’s sudden halt in movement. “What’s the matter?” The yellow warrior inquired as he focused his attention on the bunk above him. 

At the sound of his brother’s vocalizer, Sideswipe forgot his pain. “Uh…nothing,” Sideswipe answered with a hint of hesitation. He relaxed the servo in his right leg and his expression turned to relief as the pressure in the joint released and the pain vanished.  

Sunstreaker smiled to himself. “You were dreaming again, weren’t you?”

The red warrior made a dismissive noise. “Are you kidding?” He asked sarcastically, quietly rubbing his sore knee joint. The joint had been problematic lately. He never bothered mentioning it to Ratchet after his last trip to medical bay for battle repairs and too much time had passed for him to go to Ratchet now. The last thing he was going to do was limp into medical bay complaining about an injury that he had been able to live with up until now. No, he was not going to show weakness. “You know I don’t dream.”

A minute later, first one and then two red and silver feet dangled over the edge of the upper bunk as Sideswipe carefully sat up so as to avoid aggravating the joint. Seated on his bunk, the red warrior swept his optics over himself, relieved to see that his alternate mode was still a Lamborghini.

The yellow warrior folded his golden-yellow hands neatly over his torso and stared at the Lamborghini tail lights on Sideswipe heels. He expected Sideswipe to jump down from his bunk and land beside him any moment, just like he did every morning. But instead, the two red legs carefully turned around to face Sunstreaker, and Sideswipe let himself down one foot at a time, using Sunstreaker’s bunk as a step.  

Sideswipe relaxed his frame, trying to act unfazed by his condition, as Sunny came into view. The right foot was difficult to move, just like in the dream. 

Sunstreaker watched Sideswipe’s every movement. He could read his twin like a book. “Something is wrong,” he announced after briefly meeting Sideswipe’s optics before the red Lambo turned and walked toward the other side of their room.

Sideswipe turned his head as he strode as casually as he could toward the desk and dismissed Sunstreaker’s concern with a wave of his hand. “It’s nothing. I just pinched a seal or something.”

Sideswipe rummaged through the articles strewn on the desktop then opened up one of the drawers and began looking through it. Behind him, Sunstreaker rose and sat on the edge of his bunk, spreading his long, yellow legs out in front of him. The sound of metallic feet echoed softly down the hallway from somewhere else in the Ark.

“What are you looking for?” Sunny asked.

Without turning around, Sideswipe extended out his left arm and uncurled his hand to reveal a small key. “One like this, but bigger.” Then Sideswipe put the key down on the desktop and searched through the next drawer with both hands. 

Sunstreaker stood up and strode over to take a closer look. Standing beside his red brother, he picked up the key and frowned at it. “What do you want a key for?”

Sideswipe did not answer immediately. He had found something he thought might do as a substitute and raised his right foot up on the nearby chair, gritting his dental plates as he tried the thin, wedge-shaped piece of metal in the lock of his knee joint cover plate.

Sunny winced as he watched Sideswipe force the make-shift key into the lock, sure that he was going to scratch the paint on the cover plate around the opening. But Sideswipe was more wary than that, and soon gave up after realizing that he needed the right tool after all. 

“Oh, slag!” Sideswipe emphatically sighed through his vocalizer as he removed his leg from the seat, turned and threw himself back into the chair. With his weight removed from the joint, his leg servo-mechanism relaxed. 

Sunstreaker crossed his arms. “So, just go to medical bay.”

Sideswipe tipped his head back and to one side to look up at Sunstreaker, his arms hung by his sides. “Too much hassle. I can take care of it myself.”

Sunstreaker shrugged and walked away to slump onto the couch against the far wall of the double room. 

Then Sideswipe had an idea and he sat up in his chair. “Hey, Sunny,” he half-smiled, “You know where I can find a key?”

“No,” Sunstreaker answered without expression.

Sideswipe laughed to himself as he got up. “Maintenance,” he answered with raised palms. He knew that Hoist usually picked up whatever he needed for the day’s work and left the maintenance area unattended. He could discreetly borrow some tools to fix his bothersome knee joint and return them later. No one would ever know that he was there.

A trip down to the maintenance wing did not sound interesting to Sunstreaker. “I’ll wait here,” he responded and relaxed as Sideswipe passed him to leave their quarters.

“I won’t be long,” Sideswipe stated before passing through the doorway. “This’ll be a piece of silicon wafer cake.”

***

Up on the old command deck of the enormous, defunct Autobot spaceship, protected within the armored security center, a panorama of dozens of monitors quietly displayed everyday Autobot activity throughout the Ark. Transfixed by the images before him, Red Alert scrutinized the multitude of screens meticulously, suspiciously anticipating that he would find some detail the slightest amount out of the ordinary. The red and white Autobot security director’s optics flicked anxiously up to the top left corner screen and he drummed the fingers of both hands on the edge of the desktop as he leaned in to look closer. 

The entrance to the base was quiet this early in the morning. It unnerved him that their key security point remained open and easily accessible to anyone who wanted to enter the base. He had tried in vain to persuade the others to keep the blast doors closed and make Autobots verify themselves upon entering and exiting. The other Autobots had strongly opposed the idea. They resisted the opportunity for the paranoid security director to spy on their activities more than he already did. They also did not want to be entombed in their mountainside base. Because Red Alert already knew the others did not trust him and did not recognize that he was the best Autobot to look out for their safety, the resistance he met was not a surprise, although it still frustrated him immensely when Optimus Prime also denied him the recommended security measures. 

Through the opening to the base, Red Alert noticed the first light of dawn emerging in the sky to the east. He glanced down at the chronometer on the desk and then back up at the monitor. The patrol shifts were not due to change for almost another hour. 

Panning to the right along the top row of monitors, Red Alert passed over several empty hallways and foyers before fixing his attention on the display from camera 14-B. Tracks and Mirage were casually chatting in the hallway outside of the entrance to one of the training rooms. He turned camera 15-B around to see if he could get a better angle on Mirage’s faceplate, to read his lip components, but the detail was lost at a distance. If only he could hear what they were saying, he thought. He clenched a fist and cursed Ironhide for having the audio feed from the cameras removed in the interest of preserving privacy. 

Both Mirage and Tracks were pretentious elitists. Extra attention needed to be paid to their deceptive responses and expressions. Mirage stood with one knee slightly bent and his arms crossed while Tracks stood with his back mostly turned to the camera. He could tell that Tracks was doing most of the talking because every few moments Mirage’s mouth moved and then was still again. Red Alert did not like that the two were fraternizing with each other. They were an untrustworthy pair. Back on Cybertron they were of higher social status than the other Autobots, so he always suspected they would devise some subversive plot to take over command of the Autobots. The upper classes were like that; they believed themselves to be the natural leaders of society.

Neither Autobot looked up at the camera while it watched them. After several minutes, Tracks walked toward Mirage, slapped him on the back and then the two walked together into the training room. He picked them up on the cameras inside the training room, but nothing more of interest happened as they went about using the facility equipment.

Red Alert’s optic ridges furrowed and he scanned the next row of monitors from left to right. Then motion on the screen from camera 23-A on the third row of monitors caught his attention. The security director watched intently as the door closed behind a red figure and he walked down the hallway with a slight swagger in one leg.

“Aha!” Red Alert announced to himself, pleasantly surprised by the image. “Let’s see what you’re up to today,” he mused as he programmed the computer to follow the activities of the Autobot.

A panel on the desk in front of Red Alert popped open and a large screen emerged to display Sideswipe in greater detail. As soon as the red warrior’s visage appeared in front of him, Sideswipe’s optics darted up to the camera as if he knew somehow that he was being watched at that moment. Red Alert responded with a start as the image of Sideswipe looked directly at him. But he relaxed again when, a moment later, Sideswipe looked away from the camera. 

While he followed Sideswipe through the Ark, Red Alert kept an optic on camera 23-A, which was still trained on the door to Sideswipe’s quarters. He wondered if Sunstreaker would emerge from the room, but the door remained closed.

Sideswipe stopped and discreetly poked his head in a few of the main rooms he passed. It was suspicious behavior for sure, the security director surmised, reassured of his conclusion when Sideswipe turned and looked behind himself before continuing down the hallway. He was up to something. 

Smiling to himself, Red Alert called up Prowl on the communication panel. The image of the strategist appeared a second later. He was engaged in a conversation with someone else at that moment. Prowl excused himself and turned toward the monitor.

“What is it, Red Alert?” he asked in his collected tone.

“Prowl, this is your lucky day,” Red Alert explained eagerly, chortling with excitement and repressed paranoia. 

“Oh?” the black and white strategist inquired.

“Yes. I’ve got Sideswipe on my monitor,” Red Alert stated triumphantly, to which Prowl’s optic ridges lifted.

“Just a minute, Red,” said Prowl. He turned away from the security director and asked Streetwise and Groove to step out of his office. Then he returned his full attention to the monitor. “Go on.”

Red Alert glanced sideways at the other monitor. “He’s acting suspiciously, I tell you. He’s looking to see if anyone’s watching him. This is what we’ve been waiting for!”

“Where is he?” Prowl asked calmly.

Red Alert re-checked the large monitor on the desktop. “I’d say he’s on his way down to maintenance. Strange, isn’t it? He’s going down to maintenance when Hoist is out on other jobs. I’m telling you Prowl, we’ve got him this time!” An elated smile crept onto his features at the thought of catching the mischievous red warrior.

Prowl crossed his arms and rubbed his chin pensively. It had been over a month since he had asked Red Alert to help him with this special surveillance assignment. Jazz had found a canister of diesel-grade energon in the lounge. Its source was a mystery, but Prowl was certain that Sideswipe was the perpetrator. He did not have any concrete evidence to link the red warrior to the contraband energon, but Sideswipe’s rumored ability to smuggle goods into the Ark made him a natural suspect. Red Alert’s report on Sideswipe’s trek over to the maintenance wing of the Ark was a promising lead. Prowl knew that the maintenance facility offered a plethora of hiding places for Sideswipe’s secret stash of illegal imports.

“Prowl?” Red Alert’s vocalizer interrupted the strategist’s train of thought. His optics had wandered away from the screen. He looked back to the image of Red Alert.

“What are you going to do about this?” the security director inquired with nagging eagerness.

Prowl placed his hands comfortably on his hip plates. “I’m going to get to the bottom of this. I’m going to go down to maintenance to see for myself what Sideswipe’s up to.”

“Do you want me to help?” Red Alert asked.

“No, leave it to me. You’ve done well, Red Alert. I’ll take it from here.”

With that, Prowl formally signed off and pressed a button on his desk console to close the channel with Red Alert. He rubbed his right fist into his left palm. “You might think you’ve outsmarted me for the time being, Sideswipe, but I’m going to catch you. And when I catch you, you’d better have a good explanation for this.”

***

Sideswipe crept quietly toward the maintenance bay, occasionally glancing around to make sure that he was alone. His knee joint irritated him and clouded his mind. He would be hard-pressed to come up with a quick excuse if someone caught him lurking. He was determined to get into maintenance, take what tools he needed, and get out again without being seen.

He stopped to one side of the huge maintenance bay doors and leaned against the golden-orange wall, taking the weight off his right leg while he listened carefully through the metal wall. It was quiet inside. As he stepped in front of the massive doors, they opened before him with a soft hiss. Relief, here I come!

The doors hissed shut as Sideswipe hobbled toward Hoist’s tool drawers. He glanced back at the closed entrance and relaxed. No one ever received maintenance without an appointment with Hoist. The maintenance Autobot loved his routines and scheduled his appointments around his daily activities. He let anything truly urgent be dealt with by Ratchet.

Sideswipe fingered through the contents of one shelf and then another. As he moved from a higher set of drawers to a lower set, he crouched. Something pinched in the sore joint and he lowered his right knee to the floor, one optic cover quivering, half closed from the pain. After a moment, he continued his search, sifting through two columns of tools and small parts before sliding the cover panel closed over them and moving into the seat at Hoist’s desk. 

An opened screen displayed the maintenance procedure for cleaning out the rock traps in the suction vents at the entrance to the base. Hoist would have downloaded it into a datapad before leaving for his chores. Sideswipe reclined in the chair for a moment, scanning the tool trays around the desk, deciding where to look for the right key for his knee cover plate lock. He popped open the central drawer and looked through it, but found nothing of any use so he closed it again. He pushed the chair across the floor with his good leg so that he sat in front of a stack of drawers to the left of the desk. 

He smiled as he pulled the drawers open and laid his optics on dozens of tiny drawer divisions containing a bewildering array of small tools and parts. “Bingo!” 

Sweeping his optics over the minute gadgets, he quickly located the tools he needed. He opened a cylindrical star key to reveal tooling for several multi-prong lock configurations. He would use it to take apart the stay plate underneath the cover plate so that he could get at his knee seal. It was a simple enough task to remove both plates and adjust the lay of the seal underneath. Sideswipe clutched the cylindrical body of the key device in his palm and then picked out the correct cover plate key with his thumb and index finger.

He had just sat back contentedly with the tools in the palm of his hand when the maintenance doors suddenly hissed open behind him. He flinched. He was no longer alone. There was no greeting as the metal footsteps approached the desk. He slowly turned his head to one side and caught a glimpse of black and white out of the corner of his optics.

“Oh slag!” he muttered and closed his hand around his booty.

There was no hiding himself, so he slowly spun the chair around and slouched as Prowl stopped in front of him.

“Hi, Sideswipe,” the other Autobot said with a false smile. “What are you doing down here in maintenance all by yourself?”

Sideswipe did not meet Prowl’s optics. Instead, he looked off to one side and tried to buy himself some time to come up with an excuse. He did not expect Prowl to bother him in maintenance.

Prowl leaned over and tilted his head to look into Sideswipe’s faceplate. “You weren’t down here waiting for Hoist, were you?”

Sideswipe had no alternative but to look into Prowl’s authoritative optics. He could not think of a good lie so he tried a version of the truth. “Well, to tell the truth, Prowl, I couldn’t get an appointment with Hoist today, so I thought I’d come down here and take care of something myself.” 

“Oh?” Prowl inquired. For a moment, Prowl’s interest appeared genuine and it took Sideswipe off guard. “And what kind of problem were you taking care of?” He folded his arms together and looked sternly down at the red warrior in front of him.

Sideswipe thought quickly. He was not about to be led into a conversational trap. “I, uh, accidentally jammed the drawer casing to our desk closed and need something to get it back open,” he answered, trying to appear as honest as possible. “The tools I could have used are stuck inside, so I had to come down here and find something that would un-jam it.”

Prowl adjusted his stance and scrutinized Sideswipe’s faceplate. At last he tipped his chin up and looked down at Sideswipe’s closed hand. “What have you got in your hand?”

Sideswipe tightened his fist but then reluctantly opened it.

“Hmm,” Prowl thought aloud as he picked the two tools out of Sideswipe’s hand and placed them on top of Hoist’s desk. “Those don’t look like they’ll help you, Sideswipe.”

“Well, I wasn’t finished looking-” Sideswipe began to explain but was rudely interrupted when Prowl pushed his hand against his Sideswipe’s shoulder, pushing both him and the chair back at an angle.

“Look, Sideswipe,” Prowl glared intently into the red warrior’s optics. “I’m not here to fool around with you and listen to your excuses.”

“Excuses?” Sideswipe sputtered in false disbelief.

Prowl tilted his head and narrowed his optics. “I know what you’re hiding,” he spoke through a tight jaw mechanism.

Sideswipe’s optics widened and his mouth hung open, stunned. Prowl was looking for his cache of illegal energon. He had accidentally left a canister in the lounge, where it was later found. But he was not about to give away any of his secrets, so he remained silent. 

“Tell me where it is, Sideswipe,” Prowl demanded. But Sideswipe did not say a word. Prowl let go of his shoulder. As he stood back upright, the chair snapped back to its natural position. Sideswipe straightened his posture. 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about!” The red Lamborghini chuckled to relieve the tension. “I told you-”

“You hid it here, didn’t you?” Prowl raised his voice in a challenge to Sideswipe. But when he received no answer, Prowl turned and looked around the large maintenance bay.

Sideswipe stared at Prowl as the Autobot strategist swept his gaze around the room. As Prowl turned his back to him, a smile crept onto Sideswipe’s faceplate. An instant later, the strategist’s head snapped back in Sideswipe’s direction and caught the red warrior with a smirk on his faceplate. Prowl’s optic ridges furrowed.

“Why you little slagger,” Prowl cursed at Sideswipe.

“What?” Sideswipe responded in mock shock. “I didn’t do anything. Is it a crime to smile?”

Prowl drummed his fingers against his hip plates. Sideswipe was not giving him anything to work with. “You see some humor in this,” he scowled and took a step forward so that he was uncomfortably close to the red warrior in the chair. He leaned over and put his faceplate right in Sideswipe’s. “I’ll let you know that fraternizing with the enemy would earn you the title of ‘traitor.’”

Sideswipe flicked his head sideways. Prowl backed his faceplate away but remained uncomfortably close. “What are you trading with them, Sideswipe? Our secrets? Plans?”

“I said,” Sideswipe reaffirmed with a straight face, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m not trading anything with the Decepticons.”

Prowl glared at Sideswipe for a long moment while he decided what to do with the red Lamborghini. Then he grabbed Sideswipe behind one arm. “Get up!” Prowl ordered and forced him out of the chair.

Sideswipe co-operated and stood up. Prowl spun Sideswipe around by the arm and grabbed Sideswipe’s other arm, holding both firmly together behind the red warrior’s back. Before Sideswipe could react, Prowl shackled his hands together with energy bonds. Prowl then abruptly spun Sideswipe back around by the shoulder to face him.

Sideswipe stood quietly with his optic covers closed, trying to ignore the stab of pain in his right knee joint. 

“Look at me,” Prowl commanded, to which Sideswipe opened his optics and looked at the officer in front of him. “I’m giving you a job to do.”

Sideswipe raised his optic ridges, surprised by Prowl’s statement. “I thought you were arresting me.”

“Don’t be funny with me, Sideswipe,” Prowl shot back. “I’m putting you to work with Perceptor and Wheeljack.”

Sideswipe rolled his optics and slouched. “Oh, c’mon Prowl!”

Prowl was not about to let Sideswipe off the hook for his suspected nefarious activities. He did not have reasonable grounds for locking Sideswipe in the brig or punishing him, but nothing prevented him from keeping Sideswipe busy and thereby preventing him from getting into trouble. He had patience and would wait Sideswipe out until he caught him on the surveillance cameras retrieving more illegal energon.

“They can use some help with reverse engineering the space bridge control module we retrieved,” Prowl explained, his harsh tone easing. “Sideswipe,” he said with a pleasant expression, “science can be fun.”

“Uh, yeah,” the red warrior uttered, unimpressed by the idea.

“Get going,” Prowl ordered and he pushed Sideswipe in front of him toward the door.

Sideswipe shuffled toward the door, disguising the lingering pain in his leg. Prowl followed. He held his head up despite the humiliation of being escorted through the Ark in shackles. He had nothing to say to the other Autobots they passed on the way to Perceptor’s lab.

Perceptor and Wheeljack both turned and looked at their visitors when Prowl passed through the doorway to the lab with Sideswipe in front of him. The dark grey space bridge module sat at waist height on a test bench, connected to the control console next to it. They had an array of other test equipment set up around the laboratory with a control area set in the center of everything, where the test specimen sat on a blocky pedestal.

“Hi guys,” Prowl greeted them. “I’ve brought a volunteer to help with your experiment.”

“Excellent,” Perceptor smiled.

Prowl deactivated the energy bonds. Sideswipe glanced back at Prowl then rubbed his wrists before stepping away from him.

“We sure could use some help,” Wheeljack agreed, the grey lamps on either side of his head flashing brightly as he spoke.

“Sideswipe is under orders to stay here until I personally release him,” Prowl stated as he looked between the scientist and the engineer. “Put him to good use.”

Perceptor and Wheeljack glanced at each other and then looked back at Prowl.

“Very well,” Perceptor acknowledged Prowl’s order with his characteristic British accent.

“And let me know if he causes you any trouble,” Prowl finished then shot Sideswipe a stern look.

Sideswipe did not turn to watch Prowl leave the laboratory. He was just glad that Prowl was leaving. As soon as the door closed behind the strategist, the red warrior’s cocky attitude re-emerged in his body language.

“Let’s just get this over with,” Sideswipe remarked smartly. “I’ve got more important things to do.”

Wheeljack turned to Perceptor. “I get the feeling this is going to be a long day.”

Sideswipe was bored. He was stuck in a laboratory with a couple of intellectuals. They discussed their theories and tinkered with their equipment. Nothing happened. When he finally touched something they asked him to sit on a bench, out of the way. Perceptor said they were going to find something for him to do. Sideswipe was not a scientist so he could not contribute to the analysis in any meaningful way. His only use here was as a laborer but all the big equipment was already in place.

Sideswipe’s attention wandered and he eventually reclined along the length of the bench. Wheeljack and Perceptor continued to discuss ideas and make modifications to the test equipment. They still had not found anything for him to do. In his right hand, he twirled a soldering needle that he had picked up off a nearby counter to bide his time while he stared up at the deep golden-orange ceiling above him. When he started flipping the needle above him higher and higher to see if he could hit the ceiling and catch it again, the others engaged him.

“Sideswipe?” Perceptor called to him from across the laboratory.

Sideswipe eased himself back up. “Yeah?” the Lamborghini responded.

“I need you to stand over there, by the articulating impedance reactor.”

Sideswipe contorted his faceplate “By the what?” he asked, puzzled.

“It’s the thing that looks like an imaging depositor with a dome on top,” Wheeljack explained, looking over the top of the console next to Perceptor.

The description did not help much, but he managed to figure out which piece of equipment they were talking about because only one had a dome on top. 

“Oh, of course,” he said mockingly, then went and stood by the piece of equipment. “What do you want me to do with it?” he shrugged with a quizzical expression.

“We’re gonna hit the test piece with the magnetic spectrum from this velocitron,” Wheeljack explained, patting a machine on top of the console. “If everything works out, the test piece should disappear and reappear on the other pedestal over there.” 

“We’ve routed the output from the velocitron through the space bridge controller,” Perceptor added. “You are going to control the frequency and the amplitude of the space-time signal generator.”

Sideswipe looked down at the strange device and frowned. “I am going to control the what? And the what? How do I operate this thing?”

Perceptor approached Sideswipe and showed him where the frequency and amplitude controls were. “It’s not that difficult, actually,” the red and blue Autobot scientist explained to Sideswipe. “With this dial you can turn the frequency up or down, and this slide controls the wave amplitude. You can see the output here on this monitor.” 

Sideswipe’s optics glazed over as he stared at the controls. “Okay, so you’re going to tell me exactly what to do, right?”

“Of course,” Perceptor chimed. “Just follow my instructions.” He turned to go back to the main control console then paused to make one final remark. “Oh, Sideswipe. Just one thing - whatever you do, don’t touch this switch,” he said pointing to a two-position switch. “We don’t want to involve the time component of the universal continuum.”

“Uh, sure,” Sideswipe responded. He looked down at the machine in front of him, not having the slightest idea of what he was actually controlling. But he figured it should be simple enough to follow Perceptor’s instructions.

“Okay, ready?” Wheeljack asked Perceptor.

“Any time,” the scientist answered.

Wheeljack activated the test apparatus and stepped up the power from a bank of glowing energy conductors. The power system hummed in the background as Perceptor alternated his attention between the output screen on the console and the test piece. Perceptor then held up his hand and spoke to Sideswipe while he kept his optics locked on the screen in front of him.

“Okay Sideswipe, tune the frequency to fourteen cycles per second,” he instructed.

Sideswipe looked down at the dial and turned it until the display on the monitor in front of him read fourteen. The wave output on the screen shortened in response.

“Look at how it’s oscillating. You were right about your theory. That’s pretty close to the first mode function,” Wheeljack congratulated Perceptor with enthusiasm.

Sideswipe looked over at the test specimen. A white orb of light glowed from within the material of the test piece and pulsed slowly. It was a strange sight to behold. He had never seen the Decepticon space bridge technology work like this before.

“Now let’s see what happens when we take it up to its second modal response,” Perceptor announced and looked back over at Sideswipe. “Turn the frequency up to twenty-eight cycles per second.”

Sideswipe turned the dial up until the output read twenty-eight and removed his hand from the controls. The white light intensified and pulsed even faster, but now a second beat emerged in the pulse, oscillating slower and brighter than the first.

“Ha! It’s going to work!” Wheeljack slapped Perceptor’s shoulder. “At the third modal response we’ll be moving matter!”

“Yes, well, we’re not quite there yet,” Perceptor responded in a controlled manner. “We must do this next part precisely. “Sideswipe, listen carefully.”

Sideswipe looked across the laboratory at Perceptor with no interest in the success the other two were anticipating. 

“You need to do two things in quick succession. Do you understand?” Perceptor asked. Sideswipe nodded. “Okay, first you need to turn the frequency up to forty-two cycles per second. Then you have only a few seconds to increase the amplitude to surround the test piece.”

“What happens if I don’t do it fast enough?” Sideswipe asked.

“Well, we don’t really know,” Wheeljack answered matter-of-factly. 

“Theoretically,” Perceptor chanced, “we may only move the center sphere of material out of the test specimen, leaving a void in the middle.”

“Like a donut,” Wheeljack explained. “You know, those things that Sparkplug eats.”

“Okay, so what amplitude do you want this set to?” Sideswipe asked coolly.

“Let’s see,” Perceptor thought out loud as he rubbed his chin pensively. “If you increase the amplitude to just more than double the current amplitude it should result in a diameter just over twice the size and therefore a sufficient volume to envelop the specimen.”

“So, the setting is?” Sideswipe anticipated.

“Fifty centimeters,” Perceptor answered with confidence.

Sideswipe acknowledged the setting and waited for Perceptor’s nod to go ahead. At the signal, he monitored the display as he turned the dial until it read forty-two cycles per second. The test piece now pulsed with a brilliant white light at all three frequencies. He quickly moved to the amplitude setting, but faltered when he looked at the controls. The amplitude was displayed in inches.

He only had a few seconds to change the amplitude or he would ruin the experiment. Sideswipe struggled to remember the conversion from metric to imperial units. Was it two-and-half inches per centimeter or was it the other way around? Or did you multiply the number of inches by twelve to get centimeters? He had no time to decide - or to ask a question. 

There was perhaps another second to react before the test piece would start translating. He decided to multiply the amplitude by twelve because it gave the biggest distance, which had to be right because the other numbers seemed too small. So, after calculating that the product of fifty and twelve was six hundred, he pulled the slide far to the right. The sinusoidal output on the screen immediately grew very tall and thin.  

The orb of light pulsed brightly outward from the center of the test piece, jumping in size to the diameter of each third mode pulse as it progressively grew larger. From across the lab, Perceptor and Wheeljack watched at first with surprise then with alarm as the size of the orb quickly grew much larger than they expected.

“Stop!” Perceptor yelled to Sideswipe, waving his arms around. “That’s too much!”

Sideswipe looked at Perceptor as the orb pulsed two sizes larger, engulfing him and the controls. The others disappeared in the field of blinding white light. The gyroscopic pulsing destabilized his equilibrium and he became disoriented. Something pinched in his weak knee joint and he lost his balance and collapsed. He fell to the floor, hitting his head against the pedestal on the way down, and knocked himself senseless. There he lay until the bright light subsided and the world seemed to return to normal.

Sideswipe held his head and carefully lifted himself off the floor. He slowly straightened his right leg as he stood up. The pain in his knee joint had subsided but the pressure in his leg hydraulics was still high, and his leg responded stiffly. 

“Whoa, what happened?” he asked as he stood up, still holding his head.

Across the laboratory, Perceptor and Wheeljack stared in utter disbelief at the red warrior. Neither could believe the outcome of their experiment with the space bridge technology. 

Sideswipe looked between the two stunned Autobots, perplexed by their silence. “What’s the matter with you guys?”

Perceptor fell back into his seat. “Sideswipe?” he asked in amazement. “What…?” 

Wheeljack stammered for a moment before finding his vocalizer. “I can’t believe I’m seein’ this,” he shook his head in disbelief.

Sideswipe chuckled. “What are you talking about?” He screwed up his faceplate, thinking that they were playing some sort of joke at his expense.

“You,” said Wheeljack emphatically, “are supposed to be dead.”

Sideswipe laughed off Wheeljack’s nonsensical comment. “No,” he retorted, “I’m not.” He crossed his arms and waited for the two of them to give up their game.

 “Wheeljack, what is going on?” Perceptor implored.

“I wish I knew,” Wheeljack mumbled, looking away.

Several feet in front of Sideswipe, the test piece still sat on its original pedestal. “It looks like your experiment didn’t work,” Sideswipe said as he pointed to the unmoved test piece.

Wheeljack turned back to Perceptor who was still sitting, stunned, next to him. “He must have been watching what we were doing,” Wheeljack said softly.

“Of course I was watching,” Sideswipe said with frustration. He extended both hands at the console in front of him. “I’ve been standing at these controls all along. Look, I really don’t get your joke.” Sideswipe was growing unsettled by their odd behavior. Maybe something was wrong. He remembered being caught in the orb of light, then losing his balance and hitting his head. But none of it explained Perceptor’s loss of composure or Wheeljack’s comments about his death.

Perceptor shook his head. “This isn’t possible.”

“Hey, knock it off, Perceptor. And you too, Wheeljack.” Sideswipe raised his voice, exasperated. “This isn’t funny anymore!” He rested the knuckles of one hand against the side of his hip plate and glanced furtively around the lab. “You guys are really weirding me out.” 

Wheeljack turned off the power to the test equipment. “I’m graspin’ at straws to understand what just happened here,” he explained. He approached Sideswipe and put his hand on the Lamborghini’s shoulder. Sideswipe stiffened and regarded him suspiciously, but the gesture seemed to confirm something for Wheeljack. “I’m sure glad to see you again. We all missed you.”

Realizing it was pointless to argue with the others, Sideswipe mirrored the Lancia’s gesture, putting his own hand on Wheeljack’s shoulder, and said with mock seriousness, “I missed you too, Wheeljack. Now, can we just get back to the experiment? I want to get out of here sooner rather than later. I’ve got more important stuff to do.”

Wheeljack took his hand off the Lamborghini’s shoulder, unsure of what to say.

Perceptor cautiously stood up out of his chair. Evidently the scientist’s composure was returning. “Sideswipe,” he paused nervously. “May I call you Sideswipe?”

Sideswipe rolled his optics and whispered to himself. “Ugh! I never wanted to be stuck here in the first place.”

Perceptor continued undeterred. “What did you mean by ‘get back to the experiment’?”

Sideswipe shook his finger skeptically at the scientist. “Now that’s just plain weird.” He turned back to Wheelack and smirked. “Prowl put you guys up to this, didn’t he?”

“Prowl okayed this project,” Wheeljack began hesitantly, trying to decipher what Sideswipe meant, “but we never had this result in mind.”

“This truly is beyond all of my calculations,” Perceptor added.

Sideswipe put his other hand on his hip plate. “So,” he muttered quietly to himself, “he is behind this.” He stared at the test piece in front of him as he thought about his stash of energon. Prowl could continue to suspect him of smuggling contraband items into the Ark, but unless Prowl found out where the goods were stashed he would not be able to prove anything. Prowl must have been spying on him to have known that he was in maintenance. Now it seemed that the strategist had resorted to a bizarre scheme to fool him into giving away his secrets by getting other Autobots involved. Whatever the nature of Prowl’s game, it must be elaborate because Sideswipe could not see where Wheeljack and Perceptor were leading him. As he considered the possibilities, a clever smile spread across the red Lamborghini’s lip components. “Hey guys,” he began with a cocky flick of his head, “what’s in this for you? What are the stakes?” 

Perceptor and Wheeljack exchanged grim looks.

“Our survival depends on the success of this,” Perceptor stated simply. “If we can’t get this to work, we’re finished.”

The answer surprised Sideswipe. Had Prowl threatened Perceptor and Wheeljack? Would they stop at nothing to get the location of his secret stash? Prowl’s words about being arraigned as a traitor for possessing goods traded from the enemy echoed in his mind. Prowl must have scared the others into believing that their security was being sold out for a few luxury items.

“Honestly, Prowl has you all worked up over nothing,” Sideswipe coolly dismissed their concerns. “Really, there’s nothing to worry about.” The other two did not seem interested in experiments anymore, so he returned to the bench where he had been reclining earlier, sat down and relaxed. “He’s just trying to get something on me so that he can look like a hero – like he’s doing a good job.”

“Huh?” both Perceptor and Wheeljack asked at once.

“So with that out of the way, what do I have to do to get out of this lab?” Sideswipe summarized, adjusting his leg.

“I don’t understand,” Wheeljack replied, looking to Perceptor for clarification.

“Who do you think is keeping you here?” the scientist asked.

Sideswipe paused and wondered if something had happened to the others to cause them to forget. “Prowl brought me here. He told me to help out. Don’t you remember?”

“I am not aware of any dialog with Prowl over bringing or keeping you here,” Perceptor answered. 

“When did he tell you this?” Wheeljack asked.

“As soon as I got here,” Sideswipe answered. The statement was met by a moment of stunned silence. The mystery surrounding his presence in the lab perturbed him. 

“This is getting stranger by the moment,” Wheeljack said to himself.

“You’re telling me!” Sideswipe shot back as he sat fully upright. “I don’t know what happened during your experiment, but I think it did something to your memory banks.”

His patience had expired. Whatever had happened, it was up to Perceptor and Wheeljack to figure it out. Sideswipe knew that he was fine, and that there seemed to be no further use for him in the lab. Feeling restless, he stood up but was not careful about shifting his weight onto his weak knee and it suddenly pinched again. The pain caught him off guard. His faceplate flinched and he froze momentarily.

“What’s wrong?” Wheeljack asked urgently and went over to the Lamborghini.

“It’s nothing,” Sideswipe answered through the pain as the pressure in his leg peaked.

Wheeljack helped Sideswipe to sit back down on the bench. “But you’re injured,” he said.

“Don’t worry about it, really,” Sideswipe explained, trying to mask the pain in the joint.

“I can help,” the engineer offered.

Sideswipe took a moment to consider the offer. Wheeljack could fix his knee so he would not need to sneak back into maintenance to retrieve the tools left on Hoist’s desk. “This would be off the record, right? No mentioning this to Ratchet?”

Wheeljack’s frame sagged. “How could I?”

Sideswipe supposed he could trust him. Wheeljack was not the type to go talking behind someone’s back. “Well, okay,” Sideswipe conceded and lifted his right leg up onto the bench. The stiffness was diminishing but he still had to be careful with it. “Actually, it’s my right knee joint. It keeps giving me shooting pain.”

Perceptor opened up a panel to reveal a drawer with tools in it. Wheeljack retrieved a couple of items from the drawer and went back over to Sideswipe. After questioning him about what motions caused him problems and how the pain felt, Wheeljack partially disassembled the joint and began to fix it.

“I never knew you had a problem with your knee,” Wheeljack said as he worked.

“It’s not something I wanted to make a big deal out of. Ratchet has better things to do than deal with minor stuff like this. Hoist, he’d make fixing it into an ornate project,” Sideswipe explained, shrugging. “So, I thought I’d just take care of it myself.”

“Sideswipe,” Perceptor inquired as he drew near. “When did last you see Ratchet?” 

Sideswipe stopped and thought about it for a moment. “I haven’t been to medical bay in about five weeks.”

Wheeljack and Perceptor glanced at each other, puzzled. Perceptor put a hand over his mouth as he considered everything Sideswipe was saying, and then asked Wheeljack to speak with him privately. Moving a short distance away from Sideswipe, they resumed their conversation.

“I can’t help but think that this Sideswipe is not the same individual that we knew,” the Autobot scientist conjectured. 

“I was coming to that conclusion also,” Wheeljack agreed. “But if he’s not really Sideswipe, then who is he and how did he end up here?”

Perceptor turned to look past his shoulder-mounted microscope barrel at Sideswipe. The red warrior was waiting for Wheeljack to return and finish working on his open knee joint. “I don’t know, but he does seem to be an Autobot.”

“Right,” Wheeljack stated as he looked down at the tools in his hands. “I’ll get his knee fixed up. Then we can try to figure out what we did with this space bridge control module to bring him here from… wherever he came from.”

“While you do that I’ll contact Prowl,” Perceptor added and went over to the communications console. He entered a sequence of several keystrokes into the computer, requesting Prowl’s presence in the lab. Perceptor was doubtful that the strategist knew anything about the outcome of the experiment – as Sideswipe had suggested – but it was imperative that he be informed of Sideswipe’s presence in the Ark.

Wheeljack returned to Sideswipe and quietly finished repairing the deficient joint. After the seal was re-seated, he locked it up and closed its protective cover plate.

“There you go,” Wheeljack finished and stood up. “Good as new.”

Sideswipe sprung to his feet, eager to try out his mended knee. He shifted his weight from one leg to the other, then hopped several times and, raising his right leg to the side, quickly flicked it out in a powerful roundhouse kick.

“Back to normal!” he exclaimed jubilantly.

Perceptor joined the other two Autobots. “Prowl should be here at any moment. He is most interested in this new development.”

Just then, the lab doors opened and Prowl strode into the room, flanked by Ironhide and Brawn. When they laid optics on the red warrior, all three halted in disbelief. “By the Primal Algorithm!” exclaimed Prowl.

“What the-?” Ironhide asked incredulously.

“How on Cybertron-?” added Brawn, bewildered.

“Oh c’mon,” Sideswipe complained. “What’s wrong with everybody?”

“How did this happen?” Prowl asked as he looked to Perceptor and Wheeljack for an explanation. He was clearly unsettled by Sideswipe’s presence.

Sideswipe answered before either of them could get a word in edgewise. “What do you mean ‘how did this happen?’ You’re the one who ordered me to work with these two.”

Prowl’s optic ridges lifted at Sideswipe’s remark. “I don’t know what he’s talking about,” the strategist remarked to Wheeljack and Perceptor before turning to address Sideswipe. “You bear a likeness to one of our fallen companions, Autobot. But I do not know who you are, and I certainly gave you no orders.”

Sideswipe was concerned by Prowl’s strange response but saw an opportunity to turn the situation to his benefit. “So then I am released from here?” 

“Released?” inquired Prowl, confused by the question.

“Yeah, can I go now?” Sideswipe clarified with a mischievous smile on his lip components.

Prowl looked to Wheeljack and Perceptor, who shrugged in response. 

“What’s going on here?” Prowl queried without acknowledging Sideswipe’s question.

Wheeljack replied before Perceptor. “We were trying to open up a wormhole with the space bridge control module like we have been for some time now. However, this time when we tried, Sideswipe appeared. I can’t explain it.”

“Nor can I – at the moment,” Perceptor added. 

“Wait a minute,” Sideswipe interrupted the conversation. “I didn’t appear here. I was here all along.”

“This isn’t making any sense,” Brawn said to Ironhide.

Ironhide spoke up from behind Prowl. “Are you sayin' he just appeared outta nowhere?”

“Yes, precisely,” confirmed Perceptor.

Prowl looked suspiciously at Sideswipe. “But that’s impossible.”

Wheeljack turned to Sideswipe. “Maybe,” the engineer considered, raising his index finger as he spoke, “just maybe you were at the controls all along, as you said…” He paused for effect then turned to address everyone else, “…and we opened a wormhole to a different plane of reality.”

“A parallel universe,” Perceptor echoed, considering the idea as he spoke. “Strange. I would have to double-check the calculations to verify this hypothesis.”

“Ain’t it obvious?” Ironhide interrupted in a plaintive tone. “How else could he exist?”

“Yeah,” Brawn agreed. “Our Sideswipe’s gone.”

Sideswipe chuckled to dispel the anxiety he was feeling. The idea of having been transported from one stream of reality into another was truly bizarre, especially since it seemed that in this reality he no longer existed.

Prowl was quiet as he took in the conversation and carefully considered the information. He had questions that needed answers before he would accept the parallel universe explanation. He scowled and turned to Wheeljack. “How could someone from one universe enter another? If that were so, you could have pulled any one of our doubles into this universe and someone could have met themselves. That shouldn’t be possible. No one can be in more than one place at a time.”

“Good point, Prowl,” Perceptor answered. “I’ll have to go over my calculations to determine what exactly happened.”

“He could be from another time stream,” Wheeljack added thoughtfully. “Then there’d be no paradox, of course.”

Prowl nodded cautiously. “Sideswipe, what year is it?”

Sideswipe frowned at the notion of time travel. He had not touched the time switch on the control panel. “The Earth calendar says it’s 1988.”

The others nodded. “Well, that rules out time travel,” Wheeljack confirmed. “That’s the right Earth year.”

“Until this gets sorted out-” Prowl began, but stopped when he heard several sets of heavy, metallic footsteps thundering toward the lab. “Autobots, weapons ready! Ironhide, Brawn, stand guard!” he ordered. He and the other two drew their weapons and turned around to face the lab doors.

“What’s going on?” Sideswipe asked, but before anyone could answer the large doors were flung open and the hulking forms of Grimlock, Slag and Snarl pushed through the entranceway into the lab. Prowl and his two bodyguards were forced back to avoid being knocked out of the way by the three large Dinobots.

“Stay back, Grimlock,” Prowl ordered, but the chief Dinobot stepped forward defiantly and surveyed the laboratory.

“What going on, Prowl?” Grimlock demanded loudly when he saw the red warrior. “Why you hide Sideswipe from me, Grimlock?”

“What the heck are the Dinobots doing here?” Sideswipe asked, confused.

“Grimlock’s been stirring up trouble ever since we lost Prime,” Wheeljack explained to Sideswipe.

“What?” the red warrior responded in shock. “Prime…?”

“Autobots keeping secrets from Dinobots not good, leader Grimlock,” Slag growled as he clenched his fists.

Grimlock snorted and reached for Prowl. “This not good… for little Autobots.”

“I’m warning you! Back off!” Prowl shouted as he fired an acid pellet at the Dinobot. But Grimlock was undeterred, even as the acid hissed away at his arm plating.  

Ironhide readied himself for an assault, pointing his fingertips toward the towering head Dinobot. “Let’s see if a little liquid nitrogen’ll cool off that over-heated ego of yours.”

The ends of his digits opened and dense streams of liquid nitrogen jetted out of subspace toward Grimlock. The super-cooled liquid gas lashed over Grimlock, freezing him in mid-reach. The excesses of cool vapor buffeted Slag and Snarl harmlessly.

Slag scowled at the Autobots. “We fight!” he cried and transformed into his triceratops form. His steely mouth opened, ready to hurl a searing fan of flames at Prowl and his bodyguards. Ironhide wasted no time and redirected his jets at Slag. “I’ve got enough of this left to give you a taste, too.” Streams of liquid nitrogen shot from his fingertips and quenched Slag’s fiery storm. Roiling steam boiled out of Slag’s superheated belly. His jaw seized and frost traceries etched their way across his metallic skin. Bellowing in agony, his flame-throwing ability retarded, Slag hurled his bulky tail around at Ironhide. The great mass of hardened steel connected with the red and grey Autobot and threw him with tremendous force across the lab, where he landed hard against the wall, narrowly missing Perceptor.

“No!” Perceptor called out excitedly as the fight escalated. “You’ll destroy the space bridge control module!”

“We have no choice!” Prowl hollered as he targeted Snarl and let loose a volley of acid pellets. The pellets hit their marks as the third Dinobot transformed into his robotic stegosaurus form, wreaking serious internal damage. Snarl growled with rage as the searing acid corroded and fused his joints from the inside. With Snarl momentarily incapacitated, Prowl’s attention was drawn to the triceratops glaring at him and pawing the floor. Slag had thawed out. “Brawn! Stop Slag!”

Brawn leapt onto Slag’s back, hoping to distract him before he could charge at Prowl. The stocky minibot gripped one of Slag’s brow horns in one hand and relentlessly pounded on the Dinobot’s steely hide with his free arm. Slag bucked his back end furiously but the clever minibot was seated too far forward. The enraged Dinobot could not dislodge Brawn from his mount, but the poor minibot was taking a nasty beating in the process. 

Parallel universe or not, Sideswipe could not stand by and watch his fellow Autobots get pounded by the Dinobots. “Need some help, Brawn?” he called as he dashed toward Slag.   

The red warrior leapt onto Slag’s head as Brawn, exhausted, fell to the floor. He planted a foot at the base of each of Slag’s two long brow horns and used them to steer the triceratops. “Yahoo!” Sideswipe called triumphantly as he struggled to hold onto the angry, bucking triceratops. Heaving with all this strength, he kept Slag’s head turned to the front while Brawn recovered and repositioned himself to grapple with the Dinobot from behind.

But the Autobots were only holding their ground. Snarl’s acid-scarred joints had limbered up and he was eagerly taking swings at Prowl. The strategist was nimble enough to stay clear of the Dinobot’s punishing tail. Time and again the stegosaurus whipped his barbed bludgeon at Prowl, but Prowl was always quicker and jumped clear with inches to spare. Even when Snarl’s searching tail twisted around and swept back in his direction, Prowl was ready and hit the floor, narrowly avoiding the chromed spikes as they lashed through the air.

 “Call for back-up!” Prowl hollered at Perceptor before rolling out of the way of a clubbing tail strike and then back up into a squatting position. He fired at Snarl’s face to blind the stegosaurus, but the Dinobot moved too unpredictably for him to get a clean shot at Snarl’s optics. “Get the Protectobots! I don’t care what other duties they’re performing! Just get them, now!”

Wheeljack moved to provide cover for Perceptor. Crouching, he pivoted his shoulder cannon toward Snarl and braced himself to absorb the recoil of his weapon. “Let’s see you whip that tail around after I hit you with one of my gyro-inhibitor shells!”  

He fired and the shell burst into pieces against the side of the stegosaurus. Snarl’s tail dropped heavily to the floor and he staggered unevenly on his four legs.

“Snarl not feel good,” he groaned, “feel sick.”

“Good shot, Wheeljack!” Prowl commended the engineer as Snarl collapsed onto one side and groaned from destabilized equilibrium sickness.

Wheeljack turned and aimed at Slag. 

Sideswipe saw Wheeljack preparing the second shell and called to him. “Don’t fire! You’ll hit one of us!”

At that moment, Wheeljack was surprised by a grey hand that rested upon his shoulder. He turned to see that Ironhide had finally picked himself up. The veteran’s circuits sparked from the impact with Slag’s tail, but that was not about to stop Ironhide from rejoining the battle. “Lemme handle this.” 

“He’s all yours,” Wheeljack stated, letting Ironhide pass by.

“Why, thank you,” Ironhide responded with a half-grin. As Ironhide approached Slag, he rotated the super-goo cartridge into place inside his forearms.

Prowl looked up at Grimlock, who was starting to move. “We don’t have much time! I only hope the Protectobots can get here quickly enough!”

“Hey, Ironhide!” Sideswipe called as he swung Slag around by the horns to face the old veteran. “Where do you want me to park this thing?”

“Just to there’ll do,” Ironhide directed Sideswipe as he knelt down on one knee to get a good aim. He ejected the super-sticky, viscous fluid through his fingertips at the front and back leg facing him. Sideswipe tightened his grip on the furious triceratops. The goo quickly cured, fusing Slag’s two legs to the floor. Ironhide circled the seething Dinobot and glued the other two legs to the floor with more streams of his adhesive fluid. 

With the triceratops immobilized, Brawn climbed up on his back and stood triumphantly atop the Dinobot. “All right!” Sideswipe laughed and twisted around to give the rugged minibot a high five. But the victory was short-lived as the ice cracked free of Grimlock’s thawing joints. Sideswipe and Brawn leapt down from Slag’s back and prepared to take on Grimlock.

Slag was humiliated. In a menacing display of sheer strength, he clenched his thawing jaw shut with a thunderous crunch of shattering ice. Unfazed, Ironhide stood guard opposite Slag in a stalemate with the great triceratops. The Dinobot could energize the tips of his head and nose horns to fire a blast at Ironhide, but Ironhide stood ready to blast him back with a cold rush of liquid nitrogen.

Grimlock was starting to move.

“Back! Get back everyone!” Prowl warned as he backed away himself. “Ironhide! Keep an optic on Slag!” Prowl ordered. “Don’t let him breathe fire on us once his furnace thaws out!”

Grimlock’s joints hissed and creaked. Beneath the frosty patina on his armor, Grimlock’s behemoth body was taut with concealed hydraulic tension. Silence filled the laboratory. The Autobots stood ready. The last frost faded from his metallic skin. Then, with terrible fury, Grimlock surged back into motion. He was still leaning dangerously forward and in his overbalanced, reaching posture he nearly toppled. Catching himself with his great black hands, he fixed his gaze on Prowl and crouched menacingly.

“Get him!” Sideswipe hollered, and raced to tackle the mighty Dinobot. He pulled in his hands and withdrew his pile drivers from subspace as he closed on his quarry.

Hearing Sideswipe’s war cry, Grimlock turned to watch with interest as the Lamborghini threw himself at one of the Dinobot’s legs. A second later, Brawn followed the assault and grabbed hold of Grimlock’s other leg. The minibot tried with all his might to throw Grimlock off balance, but Grimlock only chortled and kicked Brawn off as if he was no more than a nuisance. Then the Dinobot slowly drew himself up to full height as Sideswipe delivered blow after punishing blow, to no effect.

Prowl pelted Grimlock’s chest plate with his acid pellets but they too had little effect on the Dinobot leader. Grimlock, ignoring Prowl’s futile attack, focused on Sideswipe and his thundering pile drivers. He bent over, grabbed the struggling red warrior in his gigantic fist, and recklessly tossed him across the room. Sideswipe flailed wildly as he spun through air, hitting the ground hard and sliding with a crash into the side of an old circuit bank.

Prowl stopped firing to call to Grimlock. “This is madness, Grimlock!” He was worried that the Dinobot leader had harmed Sideswipe. “Break this off immediately before we destroy each other!”

“Me not destroy anyone unless me, Grimlock, want to,” Grimlock responded arrogantly. He cast a derisive glance over at Sideswipe, who was struggling to lift himself off the floor. “How he get here?”

“Keep away from me, slagger!” Sideswipe growled at Grimlock as he limped across the lab toward Prowl.

Grimlock stood up tall and looked over his shoulder at Slag. “No fight no more,” he commanded the triceratops. With anger surging in his fuel lines, Slag narrowed his optics at Ironhide, but obeyed Grimlock, the stronger Dinobot. Grimlock turned to assess Snarl over his other shoulder, but the stegosaurus still lay in a heap on the floor with his optics closed.

Prowl seized the moment and addressed the Dinobot leader. “Grimlock, this is unacceptable. You could have-”

“Me want to know how Sideswipe alive,” Grimlock pointed at the red warrior, interrupting loudly over top of Prowl.

“Shut up, Dino-dolt,” Ironhide spat back. “Prowl’s in charge and he’s talkin’.”

Grimlock clenched his fists and growled at Ironhide in return.

“Here we go again,” Wheeljack slapped his forehead and sighed through his vocalizer.

“No,” Prowl stated firmly. “This is over, now.” A troop of hurried footsteps echoed in the hallway outside Perceptor’s lab. The Protectobots had arrived.

The lab doors opened and the powder blue leader of the Protectobots appeared with his team in formation behind him. They quickly took up their positions and stood at attention, awaiting their next orders. If the Protectobots were startled by the sight of Sideswipe, they did not show it. 

“At your service, Prowl,” Hot Spot stepped toward the strategist. He saluted crisply before falling back into line.

“Thank you, Hot Spot,” Prowl nodded in acknowledgement.

“Me not finished,” Grimlock declared as he swept his hand through the air. He looked sternly down at Prowl. “Me want to know why you hide Sideswipe. Where are other Autobots? Where you put Optimus Prime?”

“Nobody’s hiding anything, Grimlock,” Prowl replied. 

Grimlock paused in confusion.

“Our experiment with the space bridge control module seems to have opened up a tear in the fabric of our universe,” Perceptor answered from across the lab. The others turned to look at the Autobot scientist, who they had forgotten about during the struggle.

“We think that Sideswipe here might have come from another universe,” Wheeljack added.

“’Nother universe?” Grimlock puzzled aloud.

Brawn laughed. “That’s why Prowl’s in charge and not you,” he stated, hooking his thumb back at Prowl. “He can understand these things.”

Angered by the jab at Grimlock, Slag struggled to transform into his robot mode, but his feet remained glued to the floor. “You not leader,” the triceratops growled disdainfully at Prowl. “Grimlock strongest. He only leader!”

“Enough!” Prowl barked at Slag.

The other Autobots jumped. They did not expect to see Prowl lose his temper.

“You no tell Slag be quiet! Me leader!” Grimlock bellowed, asserting his authority. “Me stronger and better than little Prowl.”

“Don’t argue, Grimlock!” Prowl pointed and shouted at the Dinobot leader.

Grimlock glared back at him, flexing his fists. His optics burned with resentment.

“Hot Spot!” Prowl called out sharply. The Protectobot leader stepped forward. Prowl turned to Hot Spot with a tight faceplate. “Arrest him.”

“Me leaving,” Grimlock replied sullenly, turning toward the door.

“Whoa, whoa,” Streetwise ushered the big Dinobot with his photon pistol tightly in hand. “Stop right there.”

Hot Spot moved in to back up Streetwise with his impressive fireball cannons, loaded and ready, one in each hand. “I don’t want to have to move you to the brig in a laser cage, Dinobot. But if you give me no choice…” he threatened.

Perceptor flinched at the notion that Hot Spot might open fire at close quarters. A stray shot from his cannons could easily melt sensitive lab equipment down to slag.

The other Protectobots closed in around Hot Spot and Streetwise to add weight to the warning. Blades removed his photon pistol from subspace and pointed it at the floor in front of the Dinobot’s large feet. Groove and First Aid stood at the ready. Grimlock halted. The team of five emergency responders was poised to form the Autobot juggernaut, Defensor. Grimlock could not take on Defensor and win. Choosing to avoid the humiliation of defeat, he snorted contemptuously at Hot Spot and turned his back on the Protectobot leader.

Hot Spot turned to his left. “Streetwise, Blades,” he ordered, “Stay sharp.” The two Protectobots moved in, keeping their weapons trained on Grimlock. “Groove,” he continued, “stay with First Aid.” Groove nodded and drew his photon pistol. He kept it lowered as he moved in beside First Aid. “First Aid,” he said, turning to the doctor with a nod of his head, “execute Prowl’s order.” First Aid deftly produced energy shackles from a hidden subspace compartment. Grimlock stood quietly as First Aid looked him over. Then the doctor strolled up to the Dinobot and applied the restraints under Groove’s watchful optics. Hot Spot turned back to Prowl and nodded.

“Excellent work,” Prowl commended. The firm, confident tone of an Autobot leader returned to his vocalizer. His optics snapped over to Brawn and Ironhide. “Take him to the brig,” Prowl ordered with clipped words and a flick of the head. Prowl’s two bodyguards nodded. He turned back to the Protectobots. “Blades, Streetwise, cut Slag out. Groove, First Aid, attend to Snarl.”

Blades reached around and removed the helicopter rotor blades from his back. Holding them down by his side, he flicked the rotor shaft in his hand as if opening a switchblade. The long blades whirled to life and, within seconds, were cutting the air at an intimidating speed. One of Slag’s triceratops optics rotated backward. At the sight of the large cutter, he frantically struggled to pull free. “I’ll have you out before Streetwise can decide where to start,” he taunted. Blades smirked at the other Protectobot. 

“Wanna bet?” Streetwise returned the challenge with a competitive chuckle. He spun his photon piston on his index finger like a gunslinger and dropped it into subspace. An energy saber cleverly appeared in its place. Grinning, he twirled the device between his fingers, ignited the fusion blade, and set to work on the panicky, writhing Dinobot.

Across the laboratory, Groove and First Aid administered an equilibrium-restoring remedy to Snarl. Prowl surveyed the field as Hot Spot kept a wary optic on the proceedings, one loaded fireball cannon clenched in each fist.

Satisfied that the Dinobot insurrection was quelled, Prowl approached Wheeljack. “Take Sideswipe to his quarters,” he instructed. Prowl paused as he swept a suspicious gaze over the red warrior. “Remain there until I summon you,” he commanded Sideswipe, raising his index finger in a warning gesture. Prowl turned back to face the engineer. “I want to discuss this experiment with you and Perceptor. Return here as soon as you’re ready.” Wheeljack nodded.

Sideswipe stared around the disheveled laboratory with blank optics. The world he knew had unraveled. Doubt and menace surrounded him. Thoughts jumbled in disarray. How did he get trapped in another universe? Was there no way back? Why were they building a space bridge in Perceptor’s lab? Where were all the other Autobots? What happened to Optimus Prime? Sideswipe blinked. He had to find a way out.

The blue pulse of Wheeljack’s lamps in his peripheral vision suddenly caught his attention. He had been ignoring Wheeljack. “Huh?” he asked abruptly.

Wheeljack paused and repeated himself. “I was saying that those were some good maneuvers you pulled on Slag, though I’m sure Slag would disagree.” 

“Uh… yeah, right,” Sideswipe responded.

Seeing that he was still trying to get his bearings, Wheeljack put his hand on Sideswipe’s shoulder. “I’m sure this must be as strange for you as it is for us.” He then looked down and chuckled incredulously. “I would have never guessed…” 

Sideswipe took one last look over his shoulder as Wheeljack escorted him from the lab. Prowl glanced at him as they exited. In return, Sideswipe smirked and returned him a two-fingered salute. They passed through the doorway and the scene in the lab closed off behind them. A surge passed through Sideswipe’s systems. He was glad to be out of that madhouse, and away from Prowl.

As they walked along the hallway, Sideswipe again retreated into thought. How had the strategist taken command of the Autobots? It made no sense. Prowl was a cold-hearted imposter. Prime was an impressive leader, and worthy. An Autobot of his stature did not go down easily in battle, even against a brute like Megatron. The idea that Prime had been destroyed was more absurd than his dream from earlier that morning.

“Sideswipe,” Wheeljack began.

“Yeah?” Sideswipe answered.

“What were you doing in Perceptor’s lab?” Wheeljack asked. “Before you ended up here? You said you were at the controls, but I wouldn’t normally expect you to be working on an experiment with Perceptor.”

Sideswipe smiled to himself. He considered how to explain the situation to Wheeljack without saying more than was necessary. “I, uh… well, Prowl wanted me to help you guys,” he attempted to explain. “I mean, Prowl ordered me to help the other Perceptor and Wheeljack.”

Wheeljack paused to consider Sideswipe’s minimal response then chuckled. “Yeah, I remember the sorts of things that Sides – our Sides – used to do.” They turned a corner and started down another hallway. “I miss that troublemaker. Sides was one fine Autobot.”

It was strange to hear Wheeljack speak of him in the past tense, even though Sideswipe knew that Wheeljack was referring to another ’bot. “What happened to me, or, uh, him?” he managed to ask, feeling weird about talking about himself in the third person.

The smooth whirr of a nearby servomotor distracted them, and they looked up to see a surveillance camera directed at Sideswipe. As they walked by it, the camera turned and refocused its lens on the red Lamborghini. Wheeljack put himself in front of the camera and gave it a big okay sign with one hand. Sideswipe kept walking.

“I see Red’s taken notice of you,” Wheeljack stated as he caught up with Sideswipe.

“I guessed that,” Sideswipe responded, unenthused.

The next camera along the hallway activated and turned around to watch them advancing toward it.

“Never mind him,” Wheeljack swatted the air.

“Typical Red Alert,” Sideswipe added. “At least he’s the same.” He quickly shot a glance over at Wheeljack. “You’re the same, too.”

Wheeljack was silent as they took the elevator up to the floor above. When the doors opened, and they stepped out onto A-deck, they were alone. Sideswipe expected to have passed someone on their way and twisted his faceplate as he looked down the hallway in both directions. 

“Where is everyone?” Sideswipe asked, perplexed.

“They’re probably further underground,” Wheeljack answered. “We built a bunker below the base for better protection. Most like to stay down there.” Wheeljack motioned for him to head toward his old quarters. “This way. I have to get back to the lab soon.”

Sideswipe looked at the name plates by the doors as he passed them. “You were going to tell me what happened to, uh, me.”

“Right,” the engineer stated. He stopped for a moment and opened his palms. “Where do I start?” he thought aloud, with optics downcast. “Megatron set us up. It was a trap. He planned it all.”

“What do you mean?” Sideswipe asked with furrowed optic ridges.

Wheeljack slowly shook his head and lifted his optics. “Prime and the others were trying to defend a refinery from the Decepticons, but it was a set-up. What they thought were Decepticons were drones. Megatron somehow got a hold of a nuclear weapon from the humans and detonated it over the plant.” He paused while Sideswipe processed the information.

“But–that can’t be right,” Sideswipe protested. “Megatron doesn’t have access to nuclear weapons!”

“I-I don’t know how he did it,” Wheeljack stuttered at first. “But we lost five Autobots that day.”

“Who?” he asked, staring at Wheeljack. He was afraid to hear the answer.

Wheeljack’s frame sagged and he glanced away. “Optimus,” he nodded, reassuring himself. He hesitated before continuing. It was difficult to be reminded of the fallen Autobots, especially his best friend. “Ratchet fell, too.” He glanced up at Sideswipe.

Sideswipe jerked with shock at hearing Ratchet’s name. “Ratchet? No,” he said, feeling himself pulled between disbelief and anger. But the swell of emotion quickly turned into fear. “Sunstreaker? What happened to him, Wheeljack?”

“He wasn’t on that mission,” Wheeljack replied. “He’s still with us.”

Sideswipe stared at a point on the golden-orange wall and clamped his jaw mechanism together hard on one side as he thought about his brother. Wheeljack continued to list the other casualties

“Gears and Cliffjumper,” Wheeljack sighed with remorse. “We didn’t even find a trace of them.” Sideswipe’s optics focused on a seam in the metal wall as he listened. “And, well, our Sideswipe.”

Sideswipe pressed his hand against the wall and leaned against it. He thought of Sunstreaker, alone, without him. This reality seemed less like a strange dream and more like a nightmare.

“Strangely,” Wheeljack stated, “Bluestreak survived. He was sheltered by a concrete structure. He suffered heavy blast damage, but he made it.” Wheeljack cleared his vocalizer. “That ’bot has got Lady Luck on his side.”

“Yeah,” Sideswipe responded flatly. It sounded like Bluestreak in this reality was a lot like the Bluestreak from his world. “Wow.” Bothered by the losses, it was all he could say as he took it all in.

A moment passed and Wheeljack appeared to perk up again. “C’mon,” he said and the two walked the rest of the distance along the hallway to Sideswipe’s old quarters.

Sideswipe pushed by Wheeljack and opened the door to his double room, anticipating that he would find Sunstreaker reclining on the couch where he had left him earlier that morning before going down to maintenance. He strode through the doorway, then slowed and stopped when he found the room empty and in disarray. Sunstreaker was not there. 

“Where’s Sunny?” He scanned his room, alarm spreading through his circuits. The room was a disaster area. He kicked something as he walked around the end of the couch to look into the other half of the room, and several small pieces scattered across the floor.

“We don’t see much of him anymore,” Wheeljack sighed. “He’s not the same, if you know what I mean.”

“This is not the way it was,” Sideswipe stated, disturbed by the state of his quarters. He picked up a pile of disheveled human auto magazines from the couch arm and scrunched his faceplate at them as he fingered through them. Pages had been torn out of all of them. Then he looked down at the couch arm that they had been sitting on and discovered a series of deep electro-knife gashes in the metal.

Sideswipe lifted his gaze from the couch and noticed more long gashes slashed into the wall. There was anger in each cut mark. His optics moved from the wall over to the double bunk. Two blackened objects caught his attention. He approached them, trying to make sense of the shapes. The larger, rectangular object hung by a wire and was tacked onto the side of his bunk. He carefully lifted the thin, warped plate with the tips of his fingers and made out the embossed letters of his nickname. It was his own license plate, defaced by a fearsome blast of heat. The two halves were fused together into a single piece.

Sideswipe let it go and took a step back in disbelief. The license plate clinked against the edge of the upper bunk. The other, smaller object beside it made sense now. He knew it by its shape. It was the Lamborghini emblem from his chestplate, scorched black so that the bull and lettering were no longer visible. He stumbled over to the chair and sat down. Bearing witness to his own mortality left him utterly stunned. It was incomprehensible.

“This is probably the best place to stay for the time being,” Wheeljack said from the door.

Sideswipe looked up at Wheeljack, mouth agape. “I can’t believe it.”

Wheeljack took one step into the room but stopped there. “I’m sorry, but I don’t know where Sunstreaker went.”

Sideswipe dropped his optics, reflecting on the agony that Sunstreaker must be enduring. He always hoped that