Autobot-7712

“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.”

“7712,” she said. Her voice was a whisper. “You found me.”

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.”

He sat there in the dust, the storm howling around the transport’s broken frame. His mission clock ticked. He had two options: drag her back to Outpost Theta-9 for a court-martial and summary execution, or leave her here to fade alone. autobot-7712

And then the light went out.

Petal. A small, bright-yellow femme who had worked in the same docking bay, back before the War. She had been the one who recalibrated the cargo clamps when they drifted. She had laughed—actually laughed—when he accidentally triggered the emergency purge and sprayed coolant all over her finish. He had not thought of her in vorns. He had assumed she was dead. Most of the dock crew were.

Her optics brightened for just a moment. A genuine flicker of light. “You were a dockmaster’s assistant,” he said

He wanted to ask why him. But he knew why. He was expendable. A logistics unit. If he stepped on a mine, Command would mark him as “lost” and send a replacement hauler in two megacycles.

But he remembered. And that, he decided, was the only victory left.

“They already did,” she whispered. “I’m not Petal anymore. I’m Unit-512. A malfunctioning piece of equipment.” Your designation was Petal

“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?”

But every time he passed the eastern edge of the outpost, where the dust was thickest, he would slow for just a step. And in his processor, he would hear a laugh—a bright, clean sound from a time before the War.

7712’s job was simple. Every third cycle, he walked the eastern supply trench, checked the pressure seals on the reserve energon cubes, and reported back. It was a two-klick round trip through terrain that had been bombed so many times it no longer resembled a planet’s surface—just sharp-edged craters and fine gray dust that got into every joint.