They had been working for hours.

Nightscream wished there were gravity so that he could find some out-of-the-way wall and lean against it. Being weightless was cramping his style.

The mission that had brought them all the way out here was to calibrate the radiator array on the station’s exterior so that the interior cooling system worked as intended. It was an extremely by-the-books operation with no room for any creativity or inventiveness of any sort.

Nightscream kept the toolbox and their task list in order. It was a disappointing lack of responsibility, but at the same time, he didn’t really want any. He had spent more time pointing his heat gun around, trying to invent meaning for the digits he could get to display. When that got old he used it to play out some songs that had gotten stuck in his head… until Nightbeat noticed and told him to stop draining the battery.

It wasn’t completely monotonous. Nightbeat and Siren sometimes needed his nimble fingers to get in where they couldn’t. He understood why they weren’t asking him to be more involved–this had to be done right, after all. It just felt like his presence was completely irrelevant.

What was worse was that, the entire time, he had been trying to keep a positive outlook. Sure, this was all completely unrelated to his dream of optimizing flora and fauna from other worlds to introduce new textile materials to the Cybertron, but there had to be something of value he could extract from this experience, right…?

He kicked up dust with his Magnaclamp™ and watched as the particles floated off into space instead of reuniting with the ground.

“Look alive, kid! We’re almost done!” Siren nudged him. Nightscream deferred back to the list—he was right. The only thing left for this first day was a test to confirm that they had done everything correctly. After that, they’d repeat the process several dozen times, all in different areas of the station’s exterior.

A whole week more of this? Nightscream could feel himself losing his mind already.

Somehow, Siren found it in himself to trot off excitedly. The image of someone old enough to have outlasted countless civilizations skipping around was almost funny. Nightscream supposed you didn’t get to be that old without at some point learning to deal.

“How’s this looking?” Nightbeat asked the home crew over comms.

“Spectacular,” The chief replied, voice distorted by the thick layers of metal between them.

“Okay then! Test time! Let’s go!” Siren exclaimed, hands already in place to flip a switch.

“First, the digital displays, switching on… now.” Nightbeat said, giving Siren the signal.

A few seconds later, and every heat sink’s screen flashed to life, indicating the frigidness of their inactivity in an alien system of temperature measurement.

“Switching back to full power.”

The radiators slowly warmed to a deep orange glow. All three took samples with temperature guns, and all three saw no issue. “Looks good,”

”…Are you sure? Our system is showing that they’re overheating.”

They double-checked. “Positive.”

There was a lull in conversation. They all exchanged glances as they waited for the other crew to sort themselves out.

“What’s next, chief?” Nightbeat pinged after what felt like too long.

Nightscream noticed a sudden absence of heat, prompting him to triple-check. “Uh, they all just went way down…”

“Did you hear that, chief?” Nightbeat asked.

No response.

“I repeat, command, we’ve noticed a significant drop in temperature on our end…”

”…And the floor’s getting warmer?” Nightscream added. “That can’t be good, right?”

Still no response. Nightbeat kept trying to reach them as he made way back to the entrance. The others followed, though lagged behind—at first, Nightscream struggled to pack the toolbox up quickly, then, Siren took notice and helped him.

“So how screwed are we?” Nightscream asked, having no frame of reference.

“Don’t talk like that.” Siren started, and struggled to keep his head high.

“Is this, like… our fault?”

“We don’t even know what ‘this’ is.” Nightbeat said. He had been so far ahead of them Nightscream hadn’t even realized he was listening.

“Yeah! One thing at a time, kid.”

Nightscream shuddered and hoped no one noticed his unease. His mind had already made the leap to assuming the worst. He knew better, but still—the pit in his chest was impossible to ignore.

The two had caught up to Nightbeat by the time he made it to the hatch, and they descended the airlock in an orderly fashion. After stripping themselves of the magnets, they fully reentered the station through the second hatch.

Inside was dark and hot. Siren shifted, tense and focused–oh, right, Nightscream remembered now–he was a part-time firefighter. That was… something of a relief. After requesting a flashlight from the toolbox, Nightbeat continued on as if it were a manageable climate. Was he actually unbothered, or was he trying to be a good leader? Nightscream wasn’t sure whose example to follow.

“Anyone there?” Nightbeat asked, peeking past a corner.

There were a lot of corners, Nightscream began to notice. Even for someone of his smaller Cybertronian stature a facility built with these types of organics in mind felt cramped… until one accounted for the sheer scale of it. There were hundreds of floors. They hadn’t even made it to the next level down yet, but it felt like a sort of purgatory that stretched on endlessly in every direction. The heat waves distorting the distance before fading into darkness didn’t help with reducing the feeling of waiting eternally for the Inferno.

“The entire station’s power must be out.” Nightbeat said, having now observed enough to be reasonably sure it wasn’t just the area they had entered. No intercom connected to another, no elevator arrived from a lower floor. “We aren’t far from their comms room, though.”

They all walked on in silence. Nightbeat and Siren for wont of being able to hear any possible activity, Nightscream, on the other hand, had no idea what he’d even begin to say.

He hadn’t noticed that Nightbeat and Siren had stopped dead in their tracks until his face collided with Siren’s back.

Nightbeat gently repositioned him, giving him a clear view of what had caught their attention:

A body.

A perfectly still, limp body.

On instinct, he stepped back. He didn’t need to examine it to know what it was. People didn’t just collapse in the middle of a hall like that.

Despite the heat surrounding them, Nightscream felt a stark, cold chill.

He’d seen dead insects, dead livestock, he’d even purposefully killed countless plants for the sake of his studies… but, until now, never a dead person.

Their blank eyes stared upwards. They looked young. Like him.

A sudden sound jolted him back to total awareness. It took him a second to realize what it was: the shutter as Nightbeat took photo evidence.

Nightscream was thankful he was behind them—he didn’t want them to see whatever look of horror had been plastered on his face just then. He gathered himself. “What happened to him…?”

“Hard to say…” Nightbeat replied, crouching down. “It looks like sudden dehydration, but it could be something else.”

“I dunno, Nightbeat. He does look pretty dried out.” Siren crouched, resisting the urge to poke and prod.

“Well, we’ve only found one crew member. Perhaps they had a medical condition.”

Nightscream snorted inadvertently. “What kind of medical condition causes spontaneously turning into jerky?”

His own tone surprised him. That almost sounded like his usual self. Good.

“You’d be surprised. Most organics are very fickle creatures.” Nightbeat was swift to move on, only a few feet from the comms room.

Their was practically no airflow inside the populated room, leaving it even hotter than the hallway. It became obvious why that had received no reply earlier. Much like the first one they found, little was out of place, the only unusual thing that they, somehow, had all been interrupted mid-task, never to return.

It was almost like a still-life painting. Nightscream only managed to tear his attention away when Nightbeat, who clearly had an idea of what to do in these sorts of situations, was done with his own more refined version of looking around.

“Look, Nightbeat.” Siren pointed. “He must’ve stopped phoning us cause he was trying to pull that alarm…”

“Noble, but somehow I doubt they stood a fighting chance against this. C’mon, let’s see who or what else we can find…” He said, beginning to lead the way. “See that camera, up there? I’d like to find the other end of it.”

Over the course of an hour they found more of the same. Nightscream felt increasingly nauseous with each additional body. After the dozenth or so he couldn’t bring himself to look. For some reason, he felt guilty–like they deserved to be observed. At least Nightbeat showed no loss of interest, as creepy as that was. Though the more they found, the less he had to say. Every single crew member, companion animal, and environment-boosting plant was victim of the same circumstance.

Their patrol came to halt when they happened upon a security room—the fabled other end of that camera. Nightscream parked the heavy toolbox by the entrance and took a seat on it. Neither the array of monitors nor the computer that controlled them had power, but they had some of their own. The plating on one of Siren’s arms shifted around, revealing a power adapter. Needing to bypass the foreign outlet shape, Nightbeat tore off the cable’s housing and, once Siren offered his exposed arm, took great care in connecting them.

That seemed like a great way to fry yourself, Nightscream thought. He couldn’t imagine trusting someone that much.

They computer started, thankfully, but there was no friendly UI to speak of.

Nightscream stared on as the other two took care of coaxing the computer into a usable state. He wondered what a body mod like that felt like. It seemed so practical, especially considering the massive reserves of power the average Cybertronian had compared to their less-than-sentient distant cousins. maybe he should consider getting one of his own… so far, the only mod he had was a lip ring he had since taken out and never bothered put back in.

He was brought back by the ruckus the other two were making at the success of figuring out how to launch a window manager. The monitors all flashed, showing motionless room after motionless room until they had browsed through every single one on the station.

“Well, shit.” Siren huffed.

Nightbeat kept flipping through ones they’d seen already, but the images remained unchanged. “Yes, it doesn’t look great, but it’s not the whole story… there’s got to be some rooms without cameras…”

Nightscream got to thinking: what exactly were they doing? Shouldn’t they be contacting someone? Was this situation urgent or not? It took him a moment, but he worked up the nerve to question Nightbeat and Siren’s leadership, interrupting their little discussion about which fork in the hallway they should take next.

“They can’t be helped, and we’re fine. This isn’t an emergency.” Nightbeat said, finishing the note he was writing on their findings in that room.

“Oh, okay.” Nightscream muttered. He was thankful the other two seemed unaffected, but still, it felt off, somehow. “So I’m guessing we’re not gonna finish fixing the radiators…? Or are their folks back home expecting us to?”

“Our contract specified that we are only to do so with supervision. It’s up to their homeworld to decide what to do with this place now.”

“So there’s no reason for us to be here.”

“Exactly.”

“But they’re the ones who flew us here. How are we supposed to leave?”

“Patience, Nightscream. We’ll wait for the Exitus to pick us up on their mission round-up, as scheduled. They’re already going out of their way to make it here. It’d be a shame if they made that effort only to realize we’re somewhere else.”

Nightscream rubbed his upper arm. That sounded… agonizing, frankly, to be stuck in a place like this for so long with nothing to do, surrounded by nothing but death.

And Siren.

Was it a good idea to try and rip some of that video for themselves in case anything happened to this computer? Yes. Was it such a good idea he had to pierce everyone else’s ears the instant he thought of it? Definitely not.

It became quickly apparent that their own devices were incompatible with this sort of hardware, so Nightbeat resorted to video recording as Siren flipped through the different rooms.

Nightscream watched on. He still couldn’t wrap his head around it. How did something like this even happen?

The room was painfully quiet. He couldn’t look them in the eyes, but he had to ask. “Seriously… is this our fault?”

Nightbeat hesitated to answer. “I can’t say.”

“But…?” Siren nudged.

“But most likely, no. We did everything exactly as we were told. Ergo, there’s something they didn’t tell us. Whether it was neglect, or secrecy…” Nightbeat trailed off, lost in thought, still recording. (Maybe he just thought better of putting what he was thinking on a permanent record). He put his communicator away. “Listen, Nightscream. Look at me. We’ll figure it out.”

Nightscream looked away almost immediately.

“And,” Nightbeat spoke as he disconnected Siren from the cable they’d jury-rigged to him, “even if this is somehow our doing, it definitely wasn’t on purpose. So we’d be wise to use this time ensuring we can prove our innocence.”

Prove their innocence? Who could care about anything legal at a time like this? What if someone had somehow survived? What if they needed their help? The shaky tone with which Nightscream spoke surprised himself. “…Do you think there might be anyone left?”

Nightbeat took quiet account of everything they knew so far. “…It’s possible.”

He laughed, still shaky. “You sure like non-answers.”

“No, actually, I despise them.” Nightbeat said as gestured for them all to leave. (Siren was last–he insisted on being the one to carry the toolbox now.)

“If there is anyone, shouldn’t we be looking for them?”

“That’s what we’ve been doing. That’s why I’m concerned that there’s more rooms than what we saw here. But first, we should look for video of the moment this all happened. That was only a live feed—the records get sent off somewhere else, but since the power’s out, we’ll have to literally find it as opposed to networking in. If anyone escaped, there’s a good chance we can see when and to where.”

Nightscream wasn’t sure that was the best possible plan, but it was certainly one he could go along with. Usually he liked exploring creepy, abandoned places, but something about this one was decidedly hostile. The utter silence as they moved did nothing to calm him.

Before setting out on their new mission, they went back to their temporary lodgings to collect their things and stuff it all into subspace, with the assumption that they might never return to that particular area again. Nightscream was beyond glad to be reunited with his music player. He held it in on hand, contemplating what to listen to, and his communicator in the other, wondering if he should tell his bandmates how off the rails things had gone.

He decided against it. It may have been a dreary situation, but he was perfectly intact. They might misunderstand his phrasing and worry themselves sick over nothing.

Nyx had landed a few days ago, and a photo she had sent of the view just came through. The quality wasn’t great, but it still looked better than anything in his immediate surroundings. He just replied with “nice”—it was uninspired, but at least she’d know he was still alive.

He stuffed his communicator away and donned his headphones with one ear exposed on a low volume (by his standards, at least). It’s not that he didn’t want to keep an ear out for the sound of life, but, well… he was desperate for something familiar.

When he walked out into the hall, Nightbeat gave him a disapproving glance, but did nothing. Nightscream had expected more resistance than that. Why was he captain, again?