Something is wrong. You can feel it, as your spark hammers in its chamber and your processor keeps focusing on tiny things that are wrong, or out of place.

Its in the air, a sense of wrongness, of fraught unease.

But you can't see anything wrong, and eventually you chalk it up to nerves and exhaustion.

Ever since Optimus disappeared, the Autobots have been scrambling and overworked and stretched thin, so you're all more than a little jumpy.

When you hear the scrabbling sounds in the vents, you don't think anything of it. It's just your overtired processor, after all. You need to stay alert for real threats, not imaginary ones.

The soft growling above you makes you pause, but you can't see anything through the thin vent grates.

And when you leave your office to return to your hab-suite, to recharge and hopefully be rid of these hallucinations, the sounds follow you.

Unfortunately, your exhausted processor forgets that the sounds are coming from the vents, and just before you drift into recharge, something large and heavy drops on you, drooling all over your chassis.

You wake with a start, and you lock optics with your attacker.

It's Optimus, but... His chassis has been ripped open, his optics are purple and his intake is leaking energon, but his frame is covered in splatters of neon coloured energon.

Several exposed sparks orbit each other inside Optimus' exposed chassis, and you realise with a growing sense of dread that he's become a Sparkeater.

What you don't piece together however, is that instead of attacking you while your processor was running a mile a klick, Optimus simply stared at you with wide optics, and when you do register that fact, he sits back on his haunches, still crushing your legs with his weight.

Optimus is far bigger and heavier than you, so you can't squirm away, even when his long glossa extends, licking a line of Energon down your faceplate and letting out a soft, pained whimper as he nestles against your chassis.