Autobot-7712

Javelin hesitated. That was new.

Her optics brightened for just a moment. A genuine flicker of light.

She tried to laugh. It came out as a grind of gears. “Because I was tired. Not of fighting. Of… this. Of the dust. Of the waiting. Of being a number.” She looked at him. “You understand. You’re Zero.” autobot-7712

“You left,” he said, kneeling beside her. His medical training was nonexistent, but even he could see the damage. Her core energon lines were leaking—a slow, fatal drip. “Why did you leave?”

“You were a dockmaster’s assistant,” he said. “You recalibrated the loading clamps on Bay 7. You once saved a full shipment of high-grade energon by patching a leak with your own emergency sealant. Your designation was Petal. And you laughed when I made a mess.” Javelin hesitated

He went alone. That was his choice. Sunder and Runnel watched him go from the trench lip, their optics unreadable.

The terrain was worse than usual. A dust storm had rolled in overnight, reducing visibility to twenty meters. His magnetized feet crunched over shattered metal and something softer he did not look at. His blaster was useless in this weather—he could not see far enough to shoot anything. So he walked. A genuine flicker of light

The name hit his processor like a short-circuit.