Chapter Text
If Sam had had to guess what he'd find in Ratchet's sneaky laboratory, he would not have guessed a dead, middle-aged man who looked like he'd gotten into a fight with a flamethrower floating in a massive test tube like a morbid pickle.
Sitting on his knees, Sam stared at the man, unable to pull his gaze away despite the extreme injuries. Slowly, he shuffled closer and hesitantly pressed two fingertips to the glass. A cold chill spread from his fingers down his back, and he shuddered.
He should leave. Jazz was still leaking, and Sam needed to get back to him with the metal mesh.
And yet… he paused, body rooted to the floor, his gaze lingering on the man in the tank.
These sorts of injuries didn't look like they'd been caused by the Autobots. Instead, they reminded Sam of the wounds people would get when venturing through bomb-ridden areas where a single misstep signaled catastrophic injuries, if not death. So why would the Autobots keep and preserve the body? Random corpses hidden in secret laboratories were never a good sign.
Sam considered the other four tanks sitting on the countertop, their insides hidden, and was struck with a powerful sense of deja vu. Hadn't four been the number in his mind the day the Autobots kidnapped him? Hidden in one of MECH's safe houses, pacing back and forth, the number four had rattled through his head.
Sam had already peeked in the first one, so now only four tanks remained. Did they also hold dead bodies? Or were they hiding other secrets?
Could Sam afford to leave without investigating?
But could he leave Jazz?
Sam bit his lip hard enough to taste copper. His initial bubbling panic had begun to settle, leaving his mind clearer to consider the situation of the spontaneous leak. If it were a minor leak, Jazz could wait a few more minutes. If it were a major one, metal mesh wouldn't do much. And in stasis, Jazz couldn't leak to death, though he would make a mess that would leave Ratchet furious.
However, when was the next time Sam could snoop through Ratchet's secret laboratory? The bots never left him alone, and Sam couldn't see them willingly showing him their secretly stored bodies.
Damn it.
Sam was a horrible person.
"I'll be fast," he promised to the air. He already wasted 30 seconds deliberating. He wouldn't take more than two minutes, tops, for this.
Pulling his legs close, Sam quickly got to his feet.
"Check the tanks, then leave. Press the buttons, then go," Sam told himself as he approached the next capsule. "Be fast, then back to Jazz with the mesh." He jammed his finger against the button, lighting up the insides.
Tank 2 contained a young woman, her rigid body contorted in the throes of agony. An unnatural, rictus grin remained even in death, and her arched back and tense muscles made Sam wince in sympathy.
Another woman floated in tank 3. Black and purple bruises mottled her skin, along with countless tiny cuts. Sam leaned closer to the cold glass, his warm breath fogging against it. His chest panged at the woman's twisted fingers, several of which were missing fingernails. A messily stitched bullet hole on her chest indicated the cause of death.
In tank 4, a young man floated, only a few years older than Sam. Malnutrition and starvation had left him looking skeletal, the outlines of bones protruding from stretched skin. However, his lower half was utterly mangled, legs crushed and twisted nearly beyond recognition.
Sam's throat swelled, and he struggled to swallow down his rising emotion. These poor people. Each had died in agony, experiencing a horrific death no one should have to experience. They deserved a quiet, respectful burial. So why were they stored on the Autobot's ship?
Sam eyed the final tank. A small part of him was tempted to leave. He had seen more than he wanted to and could potentially interrogate Jazz or Prowl for answers later. But the larger, louder part loudly argued that Sam couldn't leave until he'd seen it all. Whoever floated in this tank deserved it. To be remembered.
Resolve sealed, Sam pressed the button.
It was a relief not to see another dead body, and instead, a small bot.
"Oh, hello," said Sam.
He took a hesitant step closer. The mech was small, very small… sparkling small. Sam thought he had met all the sparklings on the Ark. Why hadn't he seen this one before? Unless he had? The sparkling felt oddly familiar, recognition lurking at the back of Sam's head, but he couldn't place where he'd seen it before.
Despite Sam calling out, the sparkling made no noise of recognition or movement. Not even a twitch of its legs. Was it sick? Please let it be sick instead of dead.
If the sparkling was sick, it made sense that it would be in the Med Bay, where Ratchet could look it over. However, why would it be tucked alone in the back room, unattended, too, while Jazz regularly had medics looking him over?
"My name is Sam. What's yours?" he said, taking another step closer. "Do you need help?"
Silently, he begged the little bot to speak, move, anything that was a sign of life.
"I want to help you. Is there anything wronnnn…" Sam's voice trailed off into a shrill noise as he finally saw the extent of the damage.
The front panels had been pried away, splitting apart the sparkling's chest to reveal the tiny inner machinery. More concerning was the gaping, empty hole in the middle of the sparkling's chest, a hollow socket devoid of light. Sam was still a novice when it came to Autobot internals, but that was where their spark chamber was located. It was supposed to have a strange, glowy ball of light—not look like its beating heart had been ripped out.
Bile coated the back of Sam's throat. The sparkling was clearly dead. Unlike Jazz in stasis, there was no hum of an engine or biolights flickering underneath the armor. The glassy eyes stared blankly, and the face was slack.
"No," Sam whispered. Strangely, he felt more devastated about this tiny, dead bot than the other humans. Maybe it was because the bot was a child, or because, looking at it, Sam couldn't help but be reminded of the other sparklings on the Ark. If Will, Charlie, Raf, or Alexis died, would their tiny metal bodies be preserved, alone in a test tube?
Sam's hands shook as his fingertips brushed along the tank's slick glass. Unlike the other tanks, a faint warmth radiated out.
The human bodies were creepy and more than a little concerning; however, the sparkling corpse rubbed Sam the wrong way. Why would Ratchet have the corpse of a sparkling preserved in his lab? All the Autobots professed to love sparklings; they were their children, their babies! What monster left a baby's dead body rotting in a back room? Was it to be an experiment, used then discarded?
"I'm so sorry," Sam told the poor, dead sparkling.
It was a small little thing, likely only a little taller than Raf, making it the second smallest sparkling. Door wings poked out behind its back, oversized compared to the rest of its frame. Wheels with silvery rims sat along its calves and shoulders. Most of its head was covered in a helmet shape, but two little horns, not unlike Jazz's, protruded from the top. Painted a glossy green with black accents, the frame appeared sleek and fast. A speedster capable of moving quickly, racing through courses while surprise attacking enemies. Sam could imagine the little one equipped with swords and a blaster just like… his video game avatar.
Sam blinked. Then he scanned the dead sparkling again.
He'd spent hours playing the dumb game Prowl had made, and spent more time than wise designing his bot avatar. Nearly everything, from the shade of green to the door wings, was a perfect replica. There were slight changes, like the horns or the placement of the accent stripes, but it felt like a cosplay rendition of a beloved character—not perfect but close enough that you instantly knew.
Sam's mouth dried out as the world shrunk to him and the sparkling. Why was there a replica of Sam's video game avatar lying in Ratchet's med bay? Maybe it wasn't dead. Maybe it was supposed to be like this. The hole in its chest didn't hint at violence. There was no dented metal or signs of leaks. In most respects, it appeared to be a perfectly normal video game duplicate sparkling.
Sam rocked back on his heels. He'd never asked how sparklings were made. Prowl had explained about the existence of the AllSpark and its tragic loss, but if it was lost somewhere on Earth, then how were there sparklings? Did they spawn like video game characters, randomly booping into existence?
Sam had to be the odd, deformed sparkling. Born as a human instead of a bot like Will…
His thought process trailed off, mind latching onto something he hadn't honestly thought about before, dismissing it due to the stress of his situation.
Will not Wheel.
Staring blankly at the dead-but-not-dead sparkling, Sam's mind whirled. Previously ignored oddities now flashed in his head like headlights.
Will was a human name.
Will, Raf, Alexis, Charlie—each was a distinctively human name and unlike the names of any of the other bots. Why did they have human names? They wouldn't have been born or created with them, and some of the Autobots, like Starscream, carried apparent disdain for humanity. Why would he call his sparkling by a human name when it was a bot?
Unless they weren't bots… not really.
Legs wobbling, Sam fell onto his butt, his eyes glazed over, but unable to look away from the sparkling. He had to be wrong. Will and the other sparklings couldn't actually be humans. "It's impossible," he whispered to himself.
He forced himself to think back to months ago, during the conversation when Jazz had told him he was a sparkling. Jazz had explained what a spark was, even allowing Sam a brief glimpse of his, which left Sam's mind woozy. The spark was what made a bot themselves.
But Sam had argued, hadn't he? He didn't have a robot body, so he couldn't be Cybertronian. He couldn't be one of them. What was it that Jazz had said?
"It's not 'bout your frame. It's about your spark."
Sparks were what made sparklings not their frames (or in Sam's case, his human body). Sam had thought that was the end of that, but what was to stop the Autobots from moving sparks or changing them somehow so they were in the "right" frame? Pluck one part out and put it where you wanted it? Hadn't he seen Ratchet do that, swapping out Jazz's parts like they were parts of a doll?
Those were bits and pieces, like organs or limbs. Not entire bodies.
Still, the Autobots could transform their entire bodies into something different, folding and flipping into alt modes. What if that's how they viewed it?
Sam's head swiveled towards the bodies contained in the tanks.
Four bodies.
And there were four sparklings.
"No," he told himself firmly, shaking his head hard. When it didn't convince his rising panic, he dug his fingernails into the flesh of his thigh. No, he had to be overthinking this. His mind was probably cracking due to stress over Jazz's injury, so he was grasping at insane conspiracy theories.
There was no concrete proof that they wanted to change him. No evidence other than an eerie sparkling body, empty and waiting for a spark. A body that looked just like the one he designed.
A strange comment, dismissed due to the insanity of the situation, floated to the front of his brain.
Skywarp, all smiles, asking, "Soooo have you decided what type of alt you're going to be?"
Then, when Sam responded in confusion, Thundercracker explained, "He means, what do you want to turn into?"
Humans didn't transform. Bots did.
Another memory, even earlier as Sideswipe teasingly drips paint onto Sam's hair, "I really think you should choose red as your color once it's time forrrr HEY!"
Time for what? Time to be changed? To be forced into a robot shape with an alt mode, paint, and a gaping, empty hole for his spark to be shoved into.
Distantly, Sam realized he was hyperventilating, body shuddering as his lungs struggled to take in air. His chest, compressed like it was already shoved into that waiting body, metal closing around him, locking him inside. Trapped.
His fists clenched his t-shirt, the knuckles pressing into his sternum with bruising force. Stomach clenching, Sam struggled to hold back bile, feeling it burn as he swallowed it down.
He was wrong. He had to be wrong.
The plan couldn't have always been to shove him into a metal body, locking him away in darkness, changing his very self into a version they preferred.
A low keen threaded from him. Oh, please let him be wrong.
Suddenly, he scrambled away from the still sparkling and dead humans, feet screeching as they slid against the counter. The tiny sparkling that had looked small and hurt now reminded him of a predator lurking motionless, waiting for the perfect opportunity to lunge. That hole in its chest would expand until it could swallow Sam, constricting him—trapping him in a tight metal prison.
He had to get away.
Tears blurred Sam's vision as he practically threw himself off the table to climb down to the floor. As soon as his feet hit solid ground, he was running, sprinting away, far away from that sparkling body waiting to claim him.
It couldn't be true. It couldn't.
Oh, please let it not be true.