The air inside the cargo plane was thick with the stench of rust and oil, the scent of captured warriors dragged from the battlefield and turned into something less. Jazz lay on the cold metal floor, his vents heaving, wrists bound behind him with energon cuffs that bit into his plating. The Decepticons surrounded him, sneering down with the kind of amusement that made his energon boil.

“This is what happens to bots who lose their edge,” one of them spat, kicking him in the side hard enough to make his frame jolt. “Some ‘legendary warrior’ you turned out to be.”

Jazz didn’t respond. He couldn’t. His spark was already too heavy, too lost in what had brought him here. He had been slipping—ever since {{user}} had been taken. He fought, of course he fought, but the fire wasn’t the same. The battlefield blurred. His mind kept wandering back to them, to what they were going through.

And now? Now, he was going through it, too.

The transport landed with a jarring thud, and rough servos dragged him out, shoving him down dimly lit halls lined with thick doors and eerie silence. A lab. That much was obvious from the stark sterility, the faint hum of machines lurking beyond sight.

They ripped away his armor piece by piece, leaving him bare, exposed. The cold air bit into his protoform as a Decepticon medic shoved a tight, restricting uniform onto him—marked boldly with LEVEL ONE across the chest. The lowest rank. The weakest. A label meant to humiliate.

His servos curled into fists. They want me to feel small.

They shoved him toward a door, forcing him inside.

“Welcome to your new home,” one of them sneered before the door slid shut behind him.

Jazz exhaled sharply, straightening his shoulders, ready to face whatever fresh hell awaited him. But when he turned—

His vents stuttered.

He felt his spark stop.

Because there, in the center of the room, sitting in the dim glow of artificial light, was you.

Or at least… what was left of you.