Work Text:
Check the ship’s scanners.
Once again, there is nothing out of the ordinary.
No celestial bodies have phantomatically appeared on your small vessel’s trajectory, no enemy ships in sight, no dangers ahead.
Just you, your small cargo ship, the vastity of the cosmos and a mission to accomplish.
Is the autopilot still functioning?
Check it.
Yes, it is still running right and smoothly.
Very well, very well indeed… but don’t allow yourself to relax yet.
The engines?
What’s their status?
Still going strong and with plenty of fuel to spare.
Check again?
Yes, still good.
You’d rather offline than get stranded in the middle of nowhere, at risk of being intercepted by either the decepticons or some other untrustworthy alien creature or collide with an asteroid.
After all, one can never truly know when and if things will go south…
That’s why you should check again that no malicious spy had lighten up while you weren’t looking. Better make sure that there are no issues.
Still good?
Very well…
One more time maybe?
Your helm aches, deep inside your brain module, as if someone was twisting a scalpel in there.
How come it hurts?
Issue an internal scan of your frame, be quick!
Wait, don’t panic: your brain module is just overheating, can’t you hear the almost deafening sound of your vents whirring at maximum speed?
No?
How long have you been staring at these monitors?
When was the last time you recharged?
Check in your memory files.
Uh, three cycles ago… Well, that’s not good… no wonder your brain module feels as if it’s going to crack itself open like an old pipe...
You need to recharge, to offline for a bit in order to allow your systems to defrag properly while regaining some energy.
But the ship?
Are you sure you can allow yourself to rest?
What if something bad happens while you’re resting?
There is no one here but you, which means you can only count on your abilities in case things go south…
No, no, no Red Alert.
You’re tired, you need to recharge, end of the discussion.
You need it, otherwise you’ll risk collapsing when things really go bad.
Because you never know when something wrong will happen.
Come on: big vents, relax your struts and let’s start a deep safety sweep of the ship before calling it a day.
First, check the autopilot.
Is it working?
Yes, it’s still working.
Are you sure it’s still on?
Yes, the large blue lever in the middle of the console that’s really hard to miss is still pushed forward. There is no need to touch it and light try to nudge it even more forward, just to be sure.
Okay, maybe do touch it and lightly push at it.
Still engaged?
Yes, it is.
Good, you can stop pushing. You don’t want to break the lever.
But is the autopilot following the right route?
Yes, don’t worry about it.
Are you sure though?
Yes, double checked, even triple checked and more.
Good.
Look again at the ship’s monitors.
Anything close by that you haven’t noticed before?
Nope, and staring for multiple klicks at the blue screen isn’t changing anything.
Onto the next part now:
Check the control room, someone may be hiding in there.
Look around slowly, then fast, then slow again.
Check under the pilot’s chair, under the command console and behind it.
Check the security system, someone may have hacked it while you weren’t looking.
Re-check it just in case, what if you have just deactivated it by mistake?
Check-it again just to be sure that it’s still working.
Check again, one more time never hurts.
Check the ship’s cameras, one for each room.
You can never have enough cameras, even though you know you’re the only living creature on board, you still have to check every time before you need to go recharge. It’s one of the focal parts of this security sweep.
Check again just to be sure that what you saw in that corner of your hab was just an ill-shaped shadow.
It was.
Check the cameras again just to be sure you haven’t deactivated them the first time.
They still work, thank Primus.
Next, the motion sensors scattered all over the ship.
They don’t detect anyone but you, which is good. Just what you should expect, because in this vessel there isn’t anyone but you.
That’s right, you. Alone. No need to worry.
No need to feel afraid, don’t listen to that voice that’s yelling in your processor that you aren’t safe. You know it’s not real.
It’s just the processor ache.
You’re fine, the ship is fine, its fuel levels are fine and the engines are running smoothly.
You won’t end up stranded in space.
Everything is exactly how it should be.
Fine.
Still, the more you try to make sure that everything is still regular, the more you can feel that gnawing feeling that something is deeply wrong aggressively poking at the back of your mind, making your plates shake and cling shut against your frame like a cage, making your spark shake and feel funny and now your body is locking up and your limbs feel heavy and what if someone is watching you now?
Quickly, check again the security system.
No life signals on the ship aside from your own.
That’s good.
Did you really check it well?
One more time won’t hurt.
Focus, focus, focus.
You’ll never be able to go recharge if you keep fretting like this, and you really do need some rest once in a while.
Not resting your processor makes you feel jittery and see and hear things that aren’t real, or at least more often than usual, and you can’t afford to also deal with that.
You are tired and you need to rest and frag this security system! It’s never reliable anyways.
Just online all the ship’s lights and start manually checking yourself every room.
The vessel is small anyways. You’re its only passenger.
But wait!
Intensely scan the control room with your own proximity sensors before leaving it!
What if someone is hiding in the shadows, waiting for you to leave the room to snatch the controls and change the route to some kind of hostile alien planet?
Why is going to recharge so complicated and dangerous?
Good, you still aren’t picking any life signals but your own. Now you can leave.
Turn off the light in that room and close the door.
Wait, open the door! Quick!
What if you missed something?
Still nothing.
Okay, close the door and lock it to be sure.
Did you really lock it though?
Check it, test the door.
Push at it!
Is it opening?
No?
Good.
But what if you have accidentally opened it right now?
Test the door again; unlock and lock it.
Do it again.
Okay, that’s enough.
You can now look at the main and only corridor: void of any decorations on its grey walls.
On your right, the door for your room. Which is right next to the door for the small washrack.
On your left, the door for a small but functional fuelling room and living area.
Opposite to you there is the door connected to the cargo bay.
All the doors seem locked, just like you should have left them.
Good, relax, everything is fine, please make your inspection quick. Your helm still hurts.
Check the living area’s door fist, make sure that nobody has tampered with it while you were busy with the controls.
Everything seems fine.
Now you can open it, please close it as soon as you are inside.
The lights?
Are on.
The camera on the ceiling?
Looks functional and undamaged.
The energon dispenser?
How much fuel is in there?
Did you clean it after taking your last ration?
It’s still there, it’s still half-full and yes, it’s clean.
Everything is fine, you can do this.
Now focus on the cabinets lining the wall next to it, open them one by one, shine a light inside if necessary.
Yes, it is necessary.
Aside from some clean cups for energon, they are empty. Good, no stowaways inside.
Stowaways? Frag, could you even get stowaways? You’ve been on this ship for cycles; you’ve already opened these cabinets so many times.
Once again, there are no life signals but your own…
…
Check again the cabinets to be sure.
Again.
Did you really check them though?
Okay, that’s enough. No surprise travel partners in there.
Focus on the sink.
Is it clean?
Yes, it is.
Is it off?
Yes, yes, yes, yes, you can stop pushing the off button.
Look at the table and the seats.
Fine and clean.
The sofa?
Empty, even under.
A storage drawer?
Empty.
Are you sure though?
Just like with the cabinets, open it again just to be sure. Maybe you missed something.
What if you have scraplets on board?
Maybe your scans are broken and you can’t detect them.
Maybe they boarded the ship with you and are now hiding and using the ill-functioning ship’s security system to elude you, waiting for when you’ll go to recharge and strike and crawl inside your frame and consume your body and you’ll never wake up and-
No no no no!
Focus focus focus!
Relax your frame and ignore the buzzing of your horns.
Don’t let it get you.
You’re fine, there are no scraplets or some other kind of weird space parasite.
See?
Nothing in the drawer.
It’s fine, you’re fine.
Step out of the room, close the light and lock the door.
Check if it’s really locked, just to be sure.
But did you really close the light?
Maybe you should open the door again and check.
Do it.
Flick the light on and off and then lock the door again.
One more time.
Okay, stop stop stop.
You don’t need to check a fourth time.
The door it’s closed, the light is off, there is no one here but you.
You’re tired, your helm still hurts, please move to the next room already.
Oh, who are you kidding!
Check again or the doubt will rust you alive and make you run here anyways. And really step away from the door once you’re done.
You should intensely stare at the rest of the corridor just in case something has changed while you weren’t there.
Not because you fear that something may have crawled out of that loose panel close to your hab’s door; you’ve already checked what’s behind it and there are only electrical wires.
No suspicious tunnels that lead to the belly of the vessel and may be inhabited by a spy you’re unknowingly ferrying back to an autobot starship.
That would be impossible… and if even there is a spy in the ship, the tunnel coming out of that loose panel would be too narrow for them to crawl through.
Or it wouldn’t be, if the spy were a cassette… Or someone with an outlier ability that can make them small!
Does someone like that even exists?
Oh, wait! It does! It does!
What’s his name?
Check your memory systems and sort through those identikit files of your fellow autoboots you’ve made and that Inferno thought were a bit too much and that you were just being overly paranoid when you compiled them.
Take that Inferno!
No wait, don’t take that Inferno.
You don’t think that his intention with that comment was to be rude and mocking because he thinks you’re crazy and need help.
He doesn’t think that.
Hey hey hey, don’t get distracted!
The outlier! Who is it?
Search your files!
Ah-AH! Deepcover!
What if he is on board?!
What if he is a spy?!
What if- oh, yeah, he is a spy.
For the autoboots.
Not an enemy, not a cassette, and probably not here.
Probably.
Do yourself a favour and go back to the control rooms to launch another check for spark signatures.
No life signatures but your own, of course.
Just like all the other hundreds of times you’ve issued them.
You should really go recharge; not because you’re starting to notice how delirious you’ve been acting, not because the pains in your helm have become a dull throb in the back of your mind, but because the more you worry, the more it’ll hinder your processor’s capacities and then it’ll become an endless cycle after which you’ll actually go crazy.
Which you aren’t right now.
Focus on your ventilation systems.
Can you hear how much your fans are spinning?
It’s because the worry is making your processor’s temperature rise and now your horns are shining bright because you feel uneasy, you feel that something is still wrong but you don’t know what.
Even though you’ve almost reached your destination and spent many cycles in here alone you still fear that something bad and irreparable will happen.
You KNOW that it’ll happen.
Which is why you need to keep checking the ship.
So offline your optics.
Take a deep invent, and now exvent.
Repeat.
One more time.
Okay, that’s enough.
Now you can go back on checking the rooms.
Remember: the sooner you finish, the sooner you’ll be able to go recharge.
Leave the control room and offline the light.
Press the button to offline it manually a couple more times just to be sure that’s really offline.
Close the door and activate the locking system.
Check that it’s really locked.
Check again.
One more time.
Good, now it should be locked.
Look at the corridor.
Is the light still on?
Yes, good.
Look at the living area’s door, does it seem closed?
Go check just to be sure.
It doesn’t open when you approach it.
Test the door once by pulling at it.
It doesn’t budge.
It’s still locked from when you inspected the room mere minutes ago.
Head towards the cargo bay’s door and unlock it.
The lights are on, good.
Stand on the doorway and give it a first visual inspection.
Are the fifty crates of energon cubes that you’re ferrying to the autobot spaceship Sailer still neatly stacked and kept still by ropes bolted to the floor, so that in case of turbulence they won’t sway and topple over?
Seems like it.
Are there any other objects that SHOULDN’T be there?
Doesn’t seem so.
Do your audials detect anything abnormal?
Any whine coming from the engines?
No, they don’t.
Enter the room and lock the door behind you.
Walk towards the pile, but keep an eye on your surroundings. The cargo bay is small compared to the one of a real transport ship, but you still need to be careful.
For what?
For everything that could happen, you never know when things will go south.
Count the crates.
Fifty.
Count them again.
Still fifty
Are you sure you counted them right?
Forty-nine.
Forty-nine?!
How is it possible?
Quick! Check again!!
Fifty.
One more time just to be sure.
Still fifty.
Okay, that’s enough counting.
Test the ropes’ strength by tugging at them.
You have fifty different ropes wrapped around the fifty crates and bolted to the floor and you need to try each and every one of them.
Do it once.
Do it twice.
One more time.
Make sure you haven’t accidentally loosened one while you were testing them.
Stop!
Stay still.
Something black has just moved in the corner of your optics. There, close to the grate that leads to the ship’s engines.
Don’t panic.
What if something is really crawling in there?
That grate is large enough for a cybertronian to walk through… Oh, why couldn’t they just install a door there?!
Don’t panic.
What if it destroys something and you remain stranded in space, alone and unable to send a distress signal?
Please, don’t panic.
You knew someone was on board!
Please, don’t panic. Not again.
Don’t freeze in place.
Tune up your audials and walk towards the grate.
You can do it, stop clamping your plates so close to your frame or you’ll damage something.
Resist the urge to transform and wheel away.
Remember: you’re never safer in your alt-mode.
Just faster.
Focus focus focus!
Do you your sound sensors pick up anything different? No?
You can never be too sure.
Look at the grate, test the grate’s strength.
Are the bolts holding it still there?
Test the bolts. They seem to be holding pretty well, no sign of tampering.
That’s good.
Shine a light trough the grate.
Everything seems normal.
Calm down.
If you don’t, your proximity sensors won’t be able to give you a clear reading of your surroundings.
What if someone is taking advantage of this?
What if someone is just behind you?
You should turn around, avert your optics from the darkness and the tubing and the cables running along the coverings of the engines’ mechanisms, away from those little white lights that are now appearing and disappearing in your peripheral vision and now you can feel you fuel pump in your throat and you want to cry for the absurdity of it all.
Shutter your optics.
You can do this.
Do what?
What was the plan?
You can’t take this anymore!
You can feel your horns buzzing and lighting up and making your helm feel warm because your processor’s temp is rising again and oh how much it aches!
You can feel your vents whirr madly and your spark pulsing so fast in your spark chamber that you fear it may tear trough your chassis and fly to the Well.
You can’t move, your limbs are frozen in place.
Your own proximity sensors are giving unreadable results and you don’t know if someone is really there with you or not.
Open back up your optics, you may be in danger!
You have to turn around!
You knew it.
Someone is standing in front of you: a dark and imposing frame towering in the middle of the room, its bright red optics are unnaturally blown wide open and staring right back at you.
You didn’t hear it come, but now it’s there.
It’s there for you.
Quick!
Stop screaming!
Do something!
Don’t back against the grate!
You’re a security officer dammit!
Don’t be so useless!
Remember your training!
Unsubspace your blaster and shoot at that thing!
It can’t be an ally!
Kill it before it can hurt you!
Come on, stop shacking!
Don’t hit the walls!
Kill it before it can reach you!
Shoot again!
Again!
Again!
Again!
Why aren’t you even able to aim straight?!
You are useless!
You can’t do anything right!
Forget it!
Run run run!
The cargo bay is unsalvageable anyways!
TRANSFORM AND GET OUT OF HERE!
And go where?
The door is locked!
Who locked it?!
You’re doomed now!!
Frag it, break it open!
Use your blaster and shoot it down!
Alt-mode again, quick!
Book it for the first room that you find!
Anywhere is better than staying with the enemy!
Your hab!
You have to hide somewhere!
Oh, but there are no spaces big enough for you to hide! Not even in alt-mode!
You're doomed!
This is your end!
Inferno was right!
You should have never insisted on going on a solo mission!
You should have never trusted the ship’s security system!
You’re not cut out for this!
You’re not cut out for the war!
You tried to defend yourself and it did nothing!
At this point just deactivate all your sensors and wait for it to come while remaining in car-mode.
Out with the visual input!
Out with the audials!
Out with the proximity sensors!
Deactivate everything!
You don’t want to feel it when it’ll tear out your spark and eat it and shred your frame and mangle you so much that there won’t even be anything left for spare parts!
…
It’s not coming.
Ush!
Wait a bit more, maybe he’s searching the ship.
But for what?
For you?
You’re literally in the middle of the room…
Nothing is happening.
Should you get out of the room to check?
No way, no way.
You’re not getting out of this hab.
But is the door even closed?
Did you close it when you drove in here?
Oh frag…
Don’t online your optics to check!
Don’t. Even. Think. About. It.
What if it’s already in here, looming right over your shaky frame and waiting for you to acknowledge it?
Oh Primus, oh Primus!
Your proximity sensors are offline but you still can almost feel it!
You can already envision those bright red optics staring down at you, stripping your frame layer by layer as it imagines how to tear you apart!
No no no Red!
Don’t you dare open your optics!
Don’t you dare scream or drive away!
No! Don’t let it win!
But what if-
Oh, forget it!
Frag it all, this is eating you alive!
You feel more afraid of not knowing anyways.
Alright, you can take a peek… just not with your optics.
Don’t get into root-mode.
The alt-mode feels safer, even though it isn’t.
Nothing is safe.
Don’t try to use your proximity sensors either: the results feel faulty.
Dial up your audials instead, that way you’ll be able to pinpoint its position based on the sound of its systems.
Good idea Red Alert!
Urgh!
Bad idea!
Bad idea!
Bad idea!
What even is this awful grating noise?!
It’s as if someone is using a saw metal directly against your helm!
It’s so loud that you can’t even hear your own systems!
It’s awful!
It hurts your processor even more!
Dial it down!
Dial it down!
Dial it down!
Offline your audials!
Anything to make it stop!
Oh Red Alert, what have you done?
Despite muting your surroundings, the sound is still there!
It’s so loud that it feels as if someone is carving directly in your brain module!
You can barely hear yourself think!
Why is this happening to you?
Why?
It’s been at it for a while now, the sound.
It doesn’t feel frightening or alarming anymore.
Just a very annoying white noise that makes you miss the whirr of the ship’s system.
It had taken you oh so many cycles to finally stop to get twitchy at every chuff or whirr or clang of this old vessel’s machinery… Having it replaced with such nuisance feels like some kind of cruel joke.
Now you’ll have to get used to this all over again!
A new change, and you hate changes!
Where is this noise coming from anyways?
You can’t tell.
Dial up your audials a bit.
The sound’s volume doesn’t change, and you still can’t tell if it’s coming from the cargo bay, this hab, or if it’s just in your helm.
Oh.
Oh!
Oh…
This has already happened before, hasn’t it?
Yes… your audials or whatever is connected to them must be glitching again.
Well, it’s not unusual to hear things and sounds that aren’t there. It happens to anyone from time to time… right?
Keep telling yourself that Red Alert, and maybe you’ll actually start to believe it.
Forget it for now.
Don’t let your thoughts stray towards how pathetic what you’ve just told yourself sound.
Chin up!
Oh wait, you’re still in your alt-mode. Then, hood up!
Don’t actually open your hood.
Please, close it.
You’re embarrassing yourself in a room with no one but you.
Or is it?
Calm down calm down, don’t start to shake all over again.
Take a big invent… and now exvent.
Good.
Do it again.
Don’t worry about your processor right now, it feels so hot and hurting because you’re tired because yes, you still need to recharge.
For now, just wait for the sound to pass so that you’ll be able to fully focus on the main threat: the thing in the cargo bay.
Because it’s still there, right?
It hasn’t moved to the controls room while you were being deafened by this awful sound, hijacked the ship and-
Focus focus focus!
Get a look at your short memory recordings. Try to do something useful for once and identify your stowaway.
After all, you knew you couldn’t trust the ship’s security systems.
Deep down you knew that something like this would have happened.
You knew it!
As always, your senses are the only things you can rely on.
Ah-ah!
You’ve found the file!
Well, that’s… odd, to say the least.
No dancing lights inside the grate.
No one menacingly looming in front of you and staring into your spark and back.
From your recording, you hear yourself scream at nothing. You see yourself shoot at nothing, break the cargo bay’s door and sprint away.
No weird sound either.
That’s odd… Even the one that was plaguing your helm moments before is now gone…
Honestly, you don’t know how you should feel: Disappointed? Relieved? Annoyed?
And then it dawns on you.
It has always been in your helm, hasn’t it?
Nothing was real.
Nothing, except your paranoia-fuelled actions and the damages you’ve caused.
The broken door, the holes in the cargo bay’s walls, and how close you were to hitting one of the crates full of highly explosive energon.
Oh Primus, you could have blown up the vessel!
You could have died for real this time!
And for what?!
A visual glitch?
A malfunction of your processor?
What kind of security officer are you?!
You’re not worthy of your title!
Why the frag do you feel like crying now?!
Why are your throat cables tightening and now you’re sobbing and you have to get a grip Red Alert!
Stupid wimpy coward.
You can’t even admit to yourself that you need help. This isn’t even the first time you see weird stuff. But it never felt so real….
It was unnerving at first, not helping your paranoia, but manageable.
Now, you feel scared.
Scared of how vivid it felt to you, scared of how you reacted and-
Oh Primus!
What if someone was in here, traveling with you, and you accidentally injured them!
It would have been a disaster!
You’re lucky you’re alone right now, on a very easy mission that you insisted so much to take par to.
You’re not cut out for this.
You should have just listened to Inferno and leave the pilot’s chair to someone more trustworthy.
Because clearly, you can’t be trusted alone.
Yeah, cry Red Alert.
That’s the only thing you can do now.