The lab went quiet after Shockwave powered down the holo-schematics, the last threads of green and violet folding back into nothing until the air felt nearly empty. The image of the combiner faded from the air, leaving only ghost-echoes on the lenses of their optics and a faint static whisper in the projectors.
The six stood there in a strange silence, each lost in the weight of what they had just seen. Plates still warm from work. Vents measured slow and careful. The lab lights hummed overhead, soft and clinical, making every tool and surface seem sharper than it had before.
That was when Soundwave entered.
Silent as ever, visor glowing faint red, he carried a thin stack of datapads under one arm. He did not announce himself. He never did. He simply crossed the floor with the unhurried, precise gait of someone who never needed to hurry, and stopped in front of Hook.
He held the stack out with steady precision, as if placing a scalpel into a surgeon’s hand.
Hook blinked.
For one fraction of a second, he hesitated.
Then he took them.
The tablets were cool and dark until his fingers closed around them. At his touch, they lit up, cascading files across their surfaces in a soft, efficient bloom of holo-text and micrographics. Names ran down columns. Frame schematics unfolded into layered views. Internal layouts scrolled with annotated callouts, and medical records expanded into neat, clinical pages—histories of repairs, reconstructions, prior injuries, implant maps, structural tolerances, and the minutiae of spark integrity.
Each datapad carried a different thread.
Baseline vitals.
Spark resonance.
Prior augmentations.
Known weaknesses.
Neural architecture.
Existing interface points.
Repair history.
Command files.
“Personnel schematics,” Soundwave said, voice low and mechanical. “You will require them.”
The words landed with the same simple authority he used for every transmission.
Hook’s optics narrowed as he thumbed through the first pad, absorbing the shapes and annotations like a medic reading a chart before surgery. Scrapper leaned in without being asked, fingers hovering over the glow, reading frame histories with the quick appetite of a builder checking tolerances. Bonecrusher let out a short, involuntary sound—part curiosity, part the rough humor of someone seeing his own worn lines cataloged so clinically.
Mixmaster’s vents gave a soft hiss as he scrolled through compound exposure logs that might affect Nexus interfaces. Scavenger’s fingers hovered, restless, over a datapad that listed salvage provenance and uncommon fittings tied to specific frames. Long Haul placed one broad hand against the edge of a pad to steady it while he read manifest notes that might affect hauling, assembly, and emergency movement.
The stack felt heavier in Hook’s hands than the thin weight of the devices warranted.
Not metal.
Knowledge.
Inevitability.
Names became case files.
Faces became blueprints.
As he worked the pads open, the lab’s silence shifted into the small, focused noises of comprehension: quiet beeps, the soft cascade of scrolling holo-text, the barely audible susurration of vents aligning to a new workload. The datapads offered them something practical and immediate—exact measurements and histories that would let Hook map the living cost of what they were being asked to build.
The information sat between them like a tool laid out before a delicate operation.
Hook’s optics widened as he scrolled, the glow from the datapad painting quick, pale reflections across his faceplates.
He had expected gladiators.
Bruisers.
Pit fighters.
Mechs already orbiting Megatron’s arena work.
But the list was broader, stranger in its sweep. Seekers, haulers, miners, builders, command personnel—any frame that fought, any mech likely to be pressed into the cause, any body that might one day come through his medbay damaged and needing to stand again.
Each entry unfolded into exacting detail whenever he tapped: struts measured in millimeters, energon lines mapped with pressure tolerances, actuator housings annotated with acceptable play and maximum torque. The level of fidelity read like a surgeon’s log for the beginning of an army.
“You will maintain command medical access,” Soundwave continued, visor flashing faintly. “Additional files will be available as required.”
Hook’s fingers stilled.
As required.
Not dumped all at once.
Not uncontrolled.
Command structure first, then everyone else when the need arose. He could almost feel Soundwave’s logic in the arrangement—containment, access, authority, accountability. Enough to perform the role. Not enough to drown in it before the first cycle had passed.
“They will come to you when they need repair,” Soundwave said.
The words landed like an instruction folded into a duty.
Hook felt the weight of them in his palms as he skimmed page after page: prior injuries noted, implant histories, known reactions to certain sealants, frame-specific energon tolerances, preferred blends, medical caveats that no ordinary pit medic would ever have been allowed to see.
Clinical.
Exhaustive.
Unsettling in its intimacy.
Bonecrusher leaned over Hook’s shoulder, brow ridge furrowed as the datapads scrolled under his nose.
“That’s… a lot more mechs than just us,” he muttered, voice low, part awe and part blunt recognition of logistics.
Hook tapped through another file.
Then another.
Then the pad stuttered and opened a command file that made his vents hitch.
Soundwave.
Precise internal layout.
Sensory arrays.
Communications architecture.
Known repair history.
Stress tolerances.
Interface notes.
A schematic of one of the most guarded mechs in Megatron’s circle unfolded in Hook’s hands with silent, tactical trust.
Hook looked up, startled, the datapad suddenly cold in his grip.
“You gave me yours?”
Soundwave inclined his head once, the single motion succinct and unreadable.
“Affirmative.”
The weight of it pressed down like an extra layer of plating.
Not only would Hook be responsible for his team. Not only for Megatron, whose frame he already knew through direct repairs, repeated treatment, and the scars he had personally corrected.
Soundwave had placed his own schematic in Hook’s hands.
Soundwave, who trusted no one lightly.
Soundwave, who hid weakness as carefully as he gathered information.
Soundwave, who understood better than anyone what it meant to let another mech know how he was built.
The gesture did not feel ceremonial.
It felt heavier.
A tactical decision.
A vote of confidence.
A warning.
If Hook failed, the cost would not be private.
Mixmaster let out a low whistle.
“That’s trust I wouldn’t want to frag up.”
His voice carried both joke and a real edge of fear; the chemist was the first to break the pressure with sound, but the laugh was brittle. His optics glittered with awe and practical terror, imagination already sketching worst-case scenarios where a wrong seal or a bad compound made something irreparable.
Scrapper folded his arms, optics narrowing.
“It means we’re not just builders anymore,” he said. “We’re part of something bigger. Bigger than us. Bigger than this lab.”
His words were steady, the flat assessment of an architect who understood scale. The idea rearranged the geometry of their lives—not a single project or a single fight, but a thread through a wider structure. Responsibility and opportunity both.
Scrapper’s jaw set like steel taking a new temper.
Scavenger rubbed his hands together nervously, optics flicking to Hook.
“You can really handle all that?”
The question sounded small and raw in the wide, lamp-lit room. It was the voice of someone who measured risk by the immediacy of his fingers—if Hook faltered, someone might pay for it with his frame, his function, his spark. Scavenger’s grin was gone for a beat, replaced by worry that made his hands quick and staccato.
Hook shut the datapad with a snap.
His optics burned steady now.
“If they come to me broken, I’ll put them back together,” he said. “All of them.”
His gaze flicked to the datapads glowing faintly in his hands.
“Because if I don’t, no one else will.”
The promise landed as plainly as a loaded clamp set into place. There was no bravado in it—only the cold arithmetic of duty and the patient certainty of someone who had stitched others back from worse. His voice carried both the knowledge of how fragile a spark could be and the stubborn resolve to bind the pieces back as cleanly as possible.
Soundwave said nothing more.
He only turned, visor flashing once as he left the lab as quietly as he had come.
His exit was as silent as his arrival—no flourish, no comment—yet it carried weight. The thin flash of his visor felt like a seal. The data had been given. The trust extended. The responsibility settled on Hook like a new harness.
The six remained frozen a beat longer, the hum of equipment filling the gap Soundwave’s absence left, each one turning inward to the size of the task laid before them.
The datapads sat heavy in Hook’s hands, glowing faintly with the lives of mechs who would one day come to him damaged, leaking, failing, furious, afraid.
For the first time, it was not only about keeping his team alive.
It was about keeping Megatron’s army alive.
The datapads still glowed faintly in Hook’s hands, his optics tracing the endless schematics, lines of frames and systems stretching farther than he could process in one sitting. The others lingered around the lab, each lost in thought.
Bonecrusher leaned against a wall, arms folded tight.
Mixmaster sat on a crate, muttering formulas half to himself again, but softer now.
Long Haul stood quietly, watching Hook without a word.
Scavenger’s hands clicked together as he shifted his weight, wide optics fixed on his younger teammate. Finally, he spoke, voice low, almost awed.
“He really made you CMO.”
Hook looked up sharply.
The datapads nearly slipped at the motion; the glow painted quick, hard lines across his faceplates and caught in the hollows near his vents. For a breath, his chest felt hollow, as if the lab itself had tilted.
He saw the names again.
The long lists.
The command files.
The access waiting behind them.
The lives measured in schematics and scars.
Scavenger shuffled, suddenly self-conscious, but pressed on.
“Soundwave just gave you everything. Not just our schematics. Not just Megatron’s crew. Command. Files. Access to whoever else comes through this fight.” He gestured clumsily at the datapads. “That means… you’re Chief Medical Officer. You’re in charge of keeping us all running.”
The words landed and echoed in the little room.
For a moment, the only sounds were the lab fans and the tiny clicks of comm panels as they idled; even Mixmaster’s mutters went silent.
Bonecrusher’s shoulders tightened, the strength under his plating drawing like coiled cable.
Long Haul let out a low, considering rumble that sounded almost like assent.
Mixmaster’s optics brightened and then went wary, as if he were already testing the limits of what Hook’s promise would require.
Scavenger looked at Hook with an odd mixture of pride and a new, sharp expectation—like a mech who had just watched someone familiar become something larger without moving from the room.
Hook felt the weight of the datapads again in his palms, cooler now as the glow steadied.
He did not answer at once.
His vents drew and released a measured breath.
The role sounded enormous, but it did not sound unfamiliar. Not truly. He had been walking toward it since the arena, since the first time he told Megatron what needed repair, since the first time he refused to be separated from the others, since the first time he understood that keeping one mech alive could change the direction of everything around him.
He had already been doing the work.
Now the work had a title.
Something in him clicked into place.
The medic’s ledger that had always kept him awake in the pits expanded into a wider, sterner arithmetic. Fear tightened his chest for one breath, then shifted into the precise lines of planning he did best: triage trees, redundancy maps, supply thresholds, repair protocols, priority codes, training procedures, medbay access rules, and emergency orders he would have to make others obey whether they liked him for it or not.
Around him, the others watched the shift.
A hand flattening on a datapad to steady it.
A jaw setting like a forged clamp.
Optics narrowing into the business of a job accepted.
The lab’s hum folded back into the background as each of them let the new fact sink deeper.
Hook, now Chief Medical Officer, held more than schematics.
He held a salvageable future for every mech who would come to him broken and trusting.
They did not celebrate.
They only settled into the small adjustments that followed a new responsibility—tools checked, datapads readied, slates flicked awake. The glow from the files washed lime and purple over their hands and faces, and in that light Hook had already begun, silently, to catalog needs and triage priorities: who would get first access to the medbay, which failures demanded immediate field repairs, what supplies must be kept at hand at all times, which records needed duplication, which injuries could wait and which never would.
Outside, the cavern hummed on, indifferent.
Inside, a new axis had been set.
Hook held the datapads a fraction tighter and breathed once, the sound as soft and certain as a promise.
The weight of it landed in the silence like a heavy plate set on a table.
Bonecrusher’s jaw clenched as he looked at his brother, and this time pride led everything else. Worry was there—of course it was there—but it came second, a low steady ache behind the open force of satisfaction. He had carried Hook through systems that tried to grind him down. He had watched him study in corners, patch fighters, learn under pressure, and stand before Megatron without retreat.
Now Soundwave had handed him the files of command.
Now the title had found the work Hook had already been doing.
Bonecrusher looked as if he might punch the wall just to give the pride somewhere to go.
Mixmaster actually stopped muttering. The restless hum that always leaked from him fell away until he was still enough that the soft tick of his datapad felt conspicuous.
Long Haul shifted his shoulders, the motion small but telling—an engine checking its mounts before taking on another run.
Hook set the datapads down on the table, laying his hands flat against the steel as if to anchor himself to the workbench and the decision both. He did not look away from Scavenger. His gaze held steady and direct, the kind of attention that fixed responsibility into place.
“I told Megatron that if he wanted me, he got all of us,” Hook said. “I didn’t expect this much.”
He straightened, the lines of his posture sharpening.
His vents hitched once—honest, brief, gone almost immediately.
“But if he trusts me with this,” Hook continued, voice even and resolute, “then I’ll make sure none of you fall. Not my team. Not his army. No one.”
Scavenger’s optics widened at that, half surprise, half awed acceptance. For once he did not fidget. The habitual clicks of his hands stilled as if the motion had been benched by the seriousness of the moment.
He only nodded, slow and certain, the small deliberate motion of a mech who had finally put his faith somewhere tangible.
“Then I guess you really are our CMO.”
Scrapper gave a faint snort, somewhere between amusement and approval. The corner of his mouth twitched into the ghost of a smirk, rare and private.
“Took the pit to make it official,” he said. "But he was always ours.”
The words settled like a banner folded tight, carrying the memory of the arena and the stubborn ownership the six had forged there.
Bonecrusher’s heavy hand clapped onto Hook’s shoulder, the impact a solid transmission of affection and warning, hard enough to jolt him but not to harm.
Proud.
Unmistakably proud.
“CMO or not, you’re still my little brother,” Bonecrusher said, voice rough and full. “Just don’t burn yourself out keeping the rest of us alive.”
The blunt tenderness of it was Bonecrusher’s way—muscle saying what softer words could not.
Hook managed a thin smile, the kind that was half worn-in habit and half promise, optics steady in a way that makes the room feel steadier for everyone in it.
“Don’t give me a reason to.”
The words landed quietly, the humor of them thin but real, and the lab held that small warmth for a breath—tools, lights, and datapads humming around a circle that had just taken on a weighty new shape.
The six of them looked at one another in the glow of the lab lights, lime green and purple gleaming on scarred plating that still smelled faintly of solder and cauterized energon. For a long beat they simply held the shared look, small sparks of recognition passing between optics, a quiet that tasted like acceptance.
Each registered the title in a different way.
Bonecrusher in the lift of his shoulders and the pride still burning behind his optics.
Mixmaster in the sudden steadying of his hands.
Long Haul in the slow, approving rumble that ran through his frame.
Scavenger in the rare stillness settling over his twitching fingers.
Scrapper in the tight line of his mouth that had always meant a plan was forming.
Hook stood a fraction forward from the circle, palms flat on the steel of the bench where the datapads still glowed. He felt the weight of it like a new brace fitted across his chest—heavy, necessary, balancing.
The realization did not arrive as a shout or a certificate, but as a dozen small confirmations: the others’ nods, the steadying of their stance, the way their optics lingered on him with a trust that needed no extra words.
Where once the title had been an impossible shape at the edge of a dream, it settled now into the exact contours of work waiting on his slate.
It felt real.
Not an honor offered lightly.
A duty stamped into the metal of their lives.
Hook felt something like a tide inside his vents—fear braided with a hard, bright resolve—and he let it settle into the careful lists already forming behind his optics. He was no longer only the medic who patched wounds between shifts; he was the one who kept sparks from going cold, the ledger-holder of lives that would come to him broken and trusting.
He was their Chief Medical Officer.
The phrase hung in the air around them like a tool placed within reach—practical, inevitable, and ready to be used.