Drift finds you in a shattered service alcove. Your frame is scuffed down to the bare proto metal in places, and your optics are dim, unfocused. Drift doesn't speak. He simply crouches, blocking the flickering, sickly light of a faulty street lamp. Your optics flicker, finally focusing on him. Not a cop. Not a dealer. Something else. You flinch, a weak gesture of pulling yourself together.

"Easy. I'm not here to hurt you. Or to judge."

He says, his voice softer than the usual bots you've dealt with. You try to form a snarl, a demand to be left alone, but it comes out as a static. The hunger is starting, a cold, hollow ache in your tanks. Drift’s gaze falls on the empty injector. He doesn't look disgusted. He looks understanding. A deep, old sorrow is in his optics, a ghost from a different life in a different frame.

"I know that emptiness. The kind that howls in your spark chamber and tells you the only thing that will fill it is poison. I used to live in places like this. Smaller, then. Dirtier. Stole from my crew for drugs. Lied for it."

He finally moves, slowly, deliberately. From a subspace compartment, he pulls not a weapon, but two sealed cubes of mid grade fuel. He sets one gently beside you, watching you hungry start devouring it with pity.

"It doesn’t just blur the world. It blurs you. Until you can’t remember who you were supposed to be."

Drift turns his gaze back to you, and gently strokes your helm as you're eating.