Chapter Text
Bound at anchor, he found the ship empty at the edge of the Seething Space. Ratchet hesitated to follow.
It wasn't fear of what lay beyond; it was a sensible distrust of any location described in the texts as "an unexplored and deadly labyrinth". For a moment he entertained the fantasy that if he waited for a few minutes Drift would emerge without assistance. Then he made ready to follow him.
Drift's shuttle was a mess; solar scars and dents and what looked like plasmafire littering its surface, so Ratchet didn't feel bad getting out his laser scalpel and burning a message onto the doorway. Just in case Drift did get out of there first. He checked his leadline, hooked into his hip and tethering him to the ship. He had no intention of getting lost.
Then he pushed off the shuttle's surface and dove inside.
The outer folds of the Seething parted around him and swallowed up all sight of the ship. He was drawn deeper until the inner walls caught him.
Inside, the walls of the inner scaffolding grew in spirals and interconnected passageways, a tight lattice of mineralized cells. The living colonies of the Seething hung wetly in color-shifting fronds, gaseous folds billowing up from their surfaces. Ratchet shivered as unidentifiable liquids condensed on his plating in the sudden warm atmosphere. The surface of the Seething was sticky, resistant as he pulled his legs free to stand in the cramped space. It was a unnatural feeling, low-gravity but held fast by his feet.
He opened his comm channels and sent another ping out on Drift's personal frequency. No response. He couldn't get a read on lifesigns, the tunnels of the Seething obstructing the signal.
No way to know which way Drift had gone; he picked a direction at random and tried to get get a sense of the place. Drift had to be looking for something, once he knew what was normal he’d be able to pick out what that something might be.
The Seething was an overly portentous name for the place, he decided. It was basically just a coral reef in space—and the tiny creatures that made up the structure of the Seething weren't especially lively.
Though there were other things lurking in the tunnels, he discovered. Wee creatures that spat acid and little zippy ones that pinged through the air bouncing off the walls at high speed. Long undulating ribbons of spattering electricity and spiny calcified things that bobbed gently on the currents of the clouds. Ratchet steered clear of all of them, slogging through as best he could—
Right back to a damned corridor he'd already wandered through, his leadline leading off back the tunnel he'd just explored. Ratchet rolled his optics and unhooked himself and wound the rope back in. He didn't need to get literally knotted up in the labyrinth.
Somehow he found himself doing the same exact thing barely an hour later.
As Ratchet coiled up his leadline, he caught a flash of motion in the corner of his eye, something white with sharp edges. When he turned to look it was already gone, swallowed up in the gently shifting colors. But as he watched, one of the spiky creatures bobbed across the wall, vanishing in a kaleidoscope of colors. Huh. Some sort of camouflage? The living colonies seemed to be able to mimic the appearance of the life within the colony.
He watched more carefully on his way through the next tunnel and realized that only some of the zippy things were actually there: you could hear a whistling sound as they cut through the air for the real ones. The others were illusory. The colonies had a harder time mimicking the larger creatures, the image fragmented between so many cells of color. But he kept his optics glued on the walls and finally caught sight of Drift.
It was only for half a second, Drift's frame passing across the colony wall in a flash of sharp finials, blue optics, bent shoulders.
Ratchet froze, waiting to see if the image would come back. Preferably with some clue of where Drift was. When it failed to reappear he tried to keep moving.
Tried. Key word there.
His damn fragging feet were stuck. The colony goo had oozed out over them and glued them in place. Ratchet groaned and awkwardly bent to try and pull his feet free, accidentally planting his hand straight in the goop. Scared to end up stuck as a three-legged tripod, he pulled away with too much force and fell over backwards, feet still stuck.
"I really deserve a more dignified death, you know," Ratchet grumbled, swinging his already-sticky hand at the wall and trying to pull himself up. He missed the swing and caught his arm in the goo instead. "I refuse to die in a glorified glue-trap like a cockroach."
Probably the colony harvested energy by dissolving stuff that go stuck in its sticky secretions. That would make a lot of sense. What a fun science fact. Perceptor would have been thrilled.
He was going to figure out how to get himself free any minute. He was just going to take a few seconds to sulk first.
Drift's stupid fragging face swanned across the ceiling of the tunnel and Ratchet stuck his tongue out at it. Damn illusions. The illusion didn't vanish or splinter out, though. It just kept looking at him, perplexed.
"Ratchet?" Drift asked. "You're real?"
Ratchet stared up and through him, willing the nearest star to suffer a sudden solar plume that might incinerate him, Drift and the entire Space Reef and it's damn cockroach glue-traps. But Drift was still there and staring at him, hands pressed to his face with his optics poking out over his fingertips, overbright like he was seconds away from a emotional meltdown.
"You're real," Drift whispered into his hands. "You're real."
"Yeah, I'm real. I'm also damned uncomfortable, so would you mind helping me up and then freaking out?"
Drift choked on a laugh, then reached down to grasp Ratchet's one free arm and pull him back to his feet. Reaching into his hip compartment, Drift fetched out a switchblade. He thumbed a switch on the base and the blade warmed to cherry red. "The heat denatures the bonded cells," he explained. Then he knelt down to turn the blade onto the glue holding Ratchet down. There was a breath of heat and then the goo liquified again, freeing him. Ratchet picked up his feet a few times, just to be sure he was really free.
Drift snapped the blade closed and slipped it away again. He stepped forward and threw his arms around Ratchet's shoulders, head tucked down against his neck.
"Woah," Ratchet said. "Um, thanks for the save?"
"You're real," Drift said, patting at Ratchet's back as if ascertaining he wasn't a ghost. "I thought I was hallucinating ag—I thought I was imagining you."
"Naw, I'm here," Ratchet said. "There seems to be some sort of visual mimicry happening, where some of the colony cells capture the visuals around them and other cells halfway across the colony mimic that. Caught a glimpse of you myself."
"Right. Okay." Drift hugged Ratchet tight for a moment. "I figured there had to be something here when I found your ridiculous safety rope. Followed it right to you."
"It's not—it is not ridiculous! Do you know what happens to bots that go caving without marking where they've come from? They end up like Tailgate."
"Sure, sure," Drift said placatingly. With a sigh, he stepped back. He moved his hands about uncertainly, as if not sure where to put them, then hooked his thumbs under the edges of his hip plating. When he spoke again, he'd schooled his voice to a dull monotone. "So what are you doing here, Ratchet."
Ratchet spread his hands wide and did his best to give him a reassuring smile. "I'm here to take you home—or to tell you that you can come home, I'm not making you—look. If you want to go back, I just came out to let you know that's possible."
Drift was staring a hole in the ground by Ratchet’s feet, still not meeting his gaze. "Home."
"I mean—the Lost Light, I meant the Lost Light. Or I guess you could go back to Cybertron if you wanted."
"But I'm," Drift clicked his teeth together. He lifted one hand to his chest, covering up the red-smeared scores where his badge had been ripped off.
He'd never gotten that fixed, Ratchet noted. Apparently the hopscotch of monasteries and religious orders he'd followed Drift through to here hadn't believed it was their duty to repair itinerant travelers, because Drift looked...ragged. He was still functioning, but his weight was shifted unevenly, his movements didn't roll smooth, there was a bit of a flicker to the intensity of his optics Ratchet didn't like. And he clearly hadn't bothered to bathe at any point during his intergalactic adventures.
"Rodimus confessed," Ratchet said. "And you're not exiled any more. That's why I've come to get you back."
Drift startled. "He...what? Is he still captain?"
No point in getting into all that now. "Yeah, the quest's still on and Rod's still captain. So, do you want to go back or nah? Because I'd rather not just stand around in this place, gives me the creeps."
Drift walked away. He fucking walked away. Just shouldered past Ratchet and walked off down the tunnel, shoulders hunched, arms wrapped tight around his chest.
Ratchet staggered after him, feet stick-squelching to the floor and slowing him up. Drift took two tight corners and Ratchet was scared he'd lost him until he came into sight again, crouched small with his arms wrapped around his head. Ratchet slowed to an ungainly stop and froze, unsure of what to say.
Drift poked his head up and glared at Ratchet, optics blazing. "A year. A year and you just—" his voice sputtered off into static. His words came through in cut-off fragments. "I let—everything—gave up—no reason—"
Ratchet walked close and eased himself down to sit beside Drift, trying to ignore the feeling of the organic slime against his plating. He didn't know what to say, what he could say, so he sat and waited for Drift to get ahold of himself.
Back before he'd known Drift's story, he would have been at a complete loss as to what was going on. But forced himself to slow down and consider it and it made sense. Drift lost people and didn't get them back, that was just how his world worked. When Ratchet hadn't immediately reached out to him after his exile, he'd probably assumed Ratchet had seen his present and couldn’t forgive him. The possibility that he'd been so fragging cryptic that Ratchet had stumbled across it months later would never have occurred to him.
Ratchet reached out and wrapped a tentative arm around Drift's shoulders. Drift was shaking so hard that his arm rattled against his plating. Ratchet squeezed tighter.
"You didn't deserve that," Ratchet said. "Whatever you did, you didn't deserve what happened to you. I wish I could have found you sooner."
Eventually Drift subsided off into silence, leaning against Ratchet. "I gave up on you," he said finally.
"That's fair," Ratchet said. "I kinda deserved it."
"We're probably stuck to the ground now," Drift said.
"Well that kinda sucks all the drama out of the moment, doesn't it," Ratchet said, trying to push himself up. Sure enough, the fragging colony slime had glued his aft to the tunnel floor. "The space reef has annexed to my aft in an attempt to eat me," he pronounced, trying to use Drift's shoulder to push himself up.
Drift snorted. "That's not what it's called, Ratch. And it can't eat you, you're not digestible."
"The space reef has annexed my aft in an attempt to dissolve it into constituent minerals to build its cell walls," Ratchet pronounced grimly.
That got an actual laugh out of Drift. Ratchet took the win, undignified though it might be, and fooled around for a bit trying to steal Drift's heatblade so he could bust himself out.
"You've got a torch in your hand," Drift protested.
"Pfft, in this atmosphere? I'm not getting blown up."
"Well, why didn't you bother to bring a heatblade with you?" Drift said, holding the thing up high behind Ratchet's reach.
"Well, why didn't you bother to bring more than one?"
"Why would I have brought more than—" Drift froze, then snapped the knife closed and put his finger to his lips.
»Ratchet? Don't talk. And don't move.« his voice crackled over Ratchet's internal radio.
Ratchet was going to ask why when why floated over them. It was huge, all rippling ribbons and dangling stingers, movements slow and sinuous. It was a eerie shade of pure white, like someone had forgotten to color in a bit of the reef. It churned up the clouds as it went, the walls of the colony sparking bright where its stingers made contact. Drift watched it, stock still, until it disappeared around the corner. And then they stayed like that a little longer, waiting till it felt like the danger had really passed.
»What was that?« Ratchet asked over radio.
Drift licked his lips, then flicked the blade open again and let it warm to red. "The people from the planet where it originates called it a Sunstrike. They hunt by vibrations and heat. One of the most dangerous predators in the Seething. Didn't you research anything before you came here?" Drift leaned over and began un-sticking Ratchet.
"I read everything I could find in a reputable scientific text," Ratchet said. "Not a lot of those. And what do you mean 'planet where it originates'?"
"Well, if you'd read through the religious and historical literature, you'd know that none of the Seething natively inhabits the colonies. This was just your ordinary stellar tumbleweed, sterile except for the phototrophic colonies. Lively when near enough to a star, dormant when it drifted away. Then the hermitage took up root here."
Ratchet heaved himself to his feet, then turned back to give Drift a hand in ungluing himself. "And so people filled this place with deadly invasive species on purpose?"
"Well, the hermitage is rumored to be immortal, and somehow a local death cult sprung up around them. And then opposing factions sprung up around proving those death cultists wrong, by bringing deadly creatures from their home planets to bring down the hermitage."
"I don't even know who we're talking about," Ratchet said. "Aliens, I assume. The fleshy sort?"
"Be more respectful, we're talking about your elders," Drift said with a smile. "But yeah, basically. Aliens."
"And how'd that work out for the death-cultists and the...anti-death-cultists?"
"Well, some of them died by misadventure trying to worship within the Seething. Most of them just plain old died. This was nearly fifteen million years ago, according to most scholarship."
Ratchet offered Drift a hand up and pulled him to his feet. "So, this place really is a death trap. I know I just threw this at you last time, but do you want to go home?"
Drift pocketed his heatblade and shrugged. "Yeah, Ratch, I want to go home. But I can't go yet."
"What?"
"I'm here for a reason, you showing up doesn't change that," Drift said. "The hermitage seeded here sixteen million years ago. According to reputable scholarship, the Knights of Cybertron made contact with the hermitage, shared wisdom with them. If there's any species that can give us a clue as to what we'll find at the end of our quest, it'll be right here."
"You want to stay in the tunnels of death to look for some aliens who might have met some Cybertronians a long time ago who theoretically could have been the Knights."
"You can go back to the ship and wait for me if you like," Drift said.
"Most certainly not. I am not scared of your weird geriatric aliens." Ratchet crossed his arms. "And I'm not losing you again. Took forever to find you properly."
"Technically, you didn't find me," Drift pointed out. "I found you. Stuck like a truck with his wheels in the air."
"I would have gotten myself out of there at any minute, if you hadn't shown up and interrupted me."
"If you say so, Ratchet." Drift said. He pointed off down the tunnel. "We're heading that way, so try and keep up."
"It’s not my fault," Ratchet said, "You're lighter, you don't sink down so far into the stuff."
"If you say so, Ratchet," Drift said cheerily.
"I'd forgotten how annoying you were. Somehow. A genuine miracle, I'd managed to forget how incredibly irritating you are."
Drift led him down a series of increasingly narrowing tunnels, the walls flashing and breaking with bits of multi-colored ghost images. Ratchet tried to keep moving so the glue didn't set. From the narrow tunnels they spilled out into a broad opening where a brood of bobbing gaseous creatures filled the upper reaches. Drift kept low to avoid them and led Ratchet to the far wall, where there was an odd and irregular hole.
"You've been vandalizing the place," Ratchet said, faking disapproval.
"The old tunnel got sealed over with new growth," Drift said. "Took me forever to melt it back. Come on in, we're nearly there."
The tunnel was narrow, but after a few feet the texture transitioned from wet to smooth, coiling spirals of red growth replacing the familiar walls of the colony structures. The tunnel snaked left, then dipped downwards, or maybe upwards? Without the slime to hold him down he'd lost all sense of direction, pushing himself through the tunnels and bumping up against the walls behind Drift, who was gliding along irritatingly smoothly.
At last Drift pulled himself to a stop and turned back to Ratchet. "It's only a little bit farther. I've already cleared the path."
"How exactly are you going to talk to these aliens?" Ratchet asked.
"They talked to the Knights," Drift said. "So they have to speak somehow."
"Nothing on that in your texts? What if they can only speak Old Cybertronian? Or other languages too out of date for the universal translator to handle?"
"With Primus's blessing, we'll find a way," Drift said firmly.
“Oh, well, that’s great. In that case I retract the question, I’m sure Primus has it handled.” Ratchet looked around. "Wait." The red-walled tunnels had completely replaced the soft Seething colonies with their sticky surfaces and buzzing visual activity. If Drift had gotten this far, how had he seen Ratchet and known to go back and look for him?
"What is it, Ratch?" Drift asked.
He'd already turned back.
Way back, when they'd found the Titan under Crystal City and Chromedome had wanted to probe its mind for the answers, Drift had hesitated. The problem with pouring everything into searching for one thing is that you ran the risk of splitting yourself open. Proven wrong, proven right, what did Drift have left after the end of the quest?
"Nothing," Ratchet said. "Let's go meet your aliens." He offered Drift a hand and they floated out to the bright light together, tethered by Ratchet's leadline.
The tunnelway led out into a space that opened up to the sun. The red spirals of the tunnel laced together to form a open circle. Ratchet looked around, but there were no aliens in sight, only the towering sylvan growths. He looked aside at Drift and found him beaming, overawed open-mouthed smile as he looked around them.
"Welcome to the Hermitage, Ratchet," Drift said. "The oldest known organic individual in our known space."
"Hello, little mechanicals," The very air spoke, a strut-vibrating rumble. The interwoven trunks shook against one another and it took Ratchet a moment to long to realize that that was the source of the sound. "We've heard of heard of hearing of you, it's an honor to meet our old friends’ saplings."
"Then it's true, that our people came here, met you? You've seen them?" Drift asked.
"We don't see the ways you do, but we spoke. Shared stories. There were so many of them they filled the grove."
"Where did they go?" Drift asked.
The air hung with silence, then the soft susurration of wordless branches rubbing against one another.
"We don't know." A much smaller voice spoke.
"We don't remember."
"Oh, come the fuck on," Ratchet said. "Seriously?"
"Nothing can remember millions of years of memories with perfect clarity. Can you?"
Ratchet tightened his grip on Drift's hand. "Some things, important things? Yes."
"We are not one in the same way you are two. When the parts of us that held our memories whither, we lose the information they held. We only have the stories we told ourselves about what had happened."
"Is there anything you can remember?" Drift asked.
"They were small, like you. And they asked a great many questions we did not know the answers to, like you. They did not understand our decision to stay here instead of seeding out into the cosmos. But they told good stories."
"Do you remember when you met these Cybertronians?" Ratchet asked.
"I can't believe you," Drift said, kicking at Ratchet's leadline as he went.
Ratchet followed him up, slowly winding the leadline as they followed it back to the shuttles. "It was a reasonable question," Ratchet said.
"Just couldn't resist trying to prove me wrong," Drift grumbled.
"Hey, they said they didn't remember when they met "the knights" so it's not like I disproved your theory. It was a reasonable question! What if their "old friends" had been some Decepticons who wandered through here a few thousand years ago? Or the Circle of Light? Or some of the colonists? It's not like there's only one group of Cybertronians who've ever left the planet."
Drift didn't say anything, but at least he stopped for a bit so Ratchet could catch up as he coiled the rope up behind him.
"You know,” Ratchet said, “I thought you might stick around, hang out with the big tree aliens for awhile."
"Nope. I'm done. We can go back now." Drift crossed his arms across his chest and pouted. "I never should have tried to find the knights on my own. Shouldn't have tried to rush wisdom from Primus."
"It didn't go that badly," Ratchet said. "The place is a bit gross, sure, and it's weird as all hell, but the aliens were interesting."
He shook the leadline, trying to knock some of the liquid off. It didn't have enough weight to get stuck but it sure had managed to soak up a lot of liquid. Gross. Drift watched him with half a smile as Ratchet stooped to pick up the rope.
"You could help, you know," Ratchet said.
"Eh, I wasn't the one who decided to bring along several miles of rope for no reason."
"No reason. No reason. Did you already forget about the bit with the tree aliens where my leadline was the only thing that stopped us from floating off into the sun? Also, how were you planning on finding your way back to the ship? Divine intervention?"
"Some of us have a sense of direction," Drift said.
"Is that right? Now which of us was it who got lost in Hedonia, remind me?"
"Ratchet, stop."
"Oh, I know you remember. ‘The fastest way back to the Leading Light is surely through this underground gambling den that's a cover for the—’"
"Ratchet, drop it!"
Ratchet looked up to see Drift running at him, sword out. He looked over his shoulder, certain that something was behind him, when something stabbed him in the hand.
He dropped the leadline and and tried to pull away. But there was something stuck in him, a wriggling wormlike thing latched onto his hand. On the floor of the tunnel, a whole nest of the things were swarming up from little pockmarks on the ground.
Drift caught Ratchet around the waist as he ran, knocking him clear off his feet and into the air. Low gravity. Drift ran and Ratchet was pushed along with him as he retreated. Ratchet scrabbled at the white-hot worm trying to burrow into his hand. Too slippery to grab. He unfolded his other hand to get the laser scalpel out and sliced the writhing body off midway through. The upper part didn't lose its grip, wriggling deeper. "Drift, help!"
Drift stopped and spun, pulling out his other sword and turning to face the oncoming swarm, which were apparently swimming through the viscous walls and floors of the Seething to follow them. Drift dipped his fingers into his hip compartment and tossed Ratchet his heatblade. "Burn it off!" He yelled. "It's a Mordant, it's poisoning you!"
"Oh, great," Ratchet said.
He caught the knife and tried to get it to heat, growling in frustration as the damned thing refused to start up. Third time it finally lit white hot and Ratchet shoved the heated blade up against the severed head. The thing thrashed and shrieked and then finally detached. Ratchet kept the flare on it until it stopped moving, outer skin shriveling.
His hand was radiating pain in tight bursts that seemed to echo from palm to elbow. He was also losing fuel, bubbling up in the low gravity. Pressing his hand up against his chest didn't solve either problem, but it slowed them while he waited for Drift to finish with the swarm.
Drift was a flurry of motion, swords slicing left and right as he tried to cut off the swarming Mordants. They moved through the walls of the tunnels and then launched themselves out at him, cutting around behind him and coming in from every direction. Drift pivoted and threw himself backwards, cutting off two that had slipped past him and were heading towards Ratchet.
Ratchet pulled his legs in, all of his limbs suddenly very heavy. It was hard to keep focus on Drift, the dim lights of the colony's florescence suddenly not enough. He had one good arm...and a blaster he didn't dare fire for fear of blowing up the tunnel...surely he could think of some better way to help.
Drift glanced back over his shoulder at Ratchet, barely batting aside one of the Mordants in time. "Ratchet, stay with me," he said.
"Not going anywhere," Ratchet said, or tried to say. The words all came out as soup, voxcorder suddenly uncooperative.
Drift muttered something under his breath and released his swords. They hung there, beginning a slow rotation as Drift reached back and drew his Great Sword. The air crackled and the sword's hilt began to glow, channeling down the energy from Drift's spark.
Rathet's vision sputtered and he caught the next several moments as if watching a video with most of the frames missing. Drift raised the Great Sword with both hands and then plunged it into the floor of the tunnel. Energy split through the air and lit the clouds white. Mordants sizzled in the air and the walls of the tunnel.
Drift, holding Ratchet up against his chest, optics wide with fear. "Ratch, focus. Please. Tell me how you're feeling."
"Losing time," Ratchet said, trying to push down his panic and narrow it down to useful symptoms. "Can't focus. Snakes?"
"What are snakes, Ratchet?" Drift said soothingly. He'd unbent Ratchet's arm and was running probing fingers along his plating seams, one hand pressed tight against his weeping palm.
"Little wormy things. Thing that bit me. Are they gone?"
"They're gone," Drift said. "Ratchet, the venom is doing something to your nerve circuits. I'm going to try and flush it out of your system, but I need your help. Can you help me?"
Drift's face blinked in and out, then just out. Ratchet tried to reboot his optics and got nothing. "I've lost visuals," he said, trying to keep calm. "And HUD. I can't see anything Drift."
"Primus," Drift muttered. When he continued, his reassuring optimism had a bit of a desperate edge to it. “I’m sure that’s temporary. I remember what you taught me, I don’t need you to guide me. I just need you to pop the locks on your forearm access plates, okay? Just focus for a moment and do that."
Ratchet concentrated and, with a little difficulty, triggered the release protocol. Drift's fingers pulled the access plates open and Ratchet could feel the soft pressure as Drift clamped off the isolation valve at his inner elbow, stopping the poison from progressing further.
"Okay, that's done," Drift said. "Now we just have to flush out the system. In through the auxiliary fuel port," He muttered something under his breath, then wedged something under Ratchet's wrist-catch, gently prying it up. "Gravity," Drift said. "Fuck."
"Wass problem?" Ratchet asked. He could still feel his hand pulsing red hot, like his plating was a size too small and was squeezing his nerve circuits.
"Not a problem, I've got this. It's fine," Drift muttered, rubbing a reassuring circle with his thumb on the back of Ratchet's hand. "Just relax."
"S'not very relaxing, I don't know what you're doing." Ratchet mumbled. He kept trying to focus, but focusing was very difficult. He wasn't sure if Drift wasn't explaining things well or if he was losing time in the middle of the explanations. Something about transferring fuel in through his auxiliary fuel intake while siphoning it out of the wound at his wrist, pulling clean fuel through the circuit from wrist to elbow and back.
Drift kept muttering prayers under his breath in a way that was decidedly not soothing. Ratchet tried his best not to make any distracting noises, but his neural circuitry was firing wildly and not responding to his commands to please shut down his sensornet. Drift barely knew what he was doing, he didn't need any distractions.
"Hey, it's okay," Drift crooned, hands back around his and soothingly cool against his hot plating. "I'm sorry it hurts, I'm almost ready."
"I can handle it," Ratchet said. "You don't have to treat me like a sparkling."
"Of course." Drift said. He waited a beat, then said worriedly, "Ratchet, I think the venom is corrosive."
"What."
"You've got surface pitting where it'd hooked in. I can't tell what it's doing to the internals of your hand. You can fix this, right? Once I flush out the system so the neurological effects get diluted and get us back to your shuttle, you'll be able to fix this."
Ratchet groaned. "I don't have the specific antagonist, I don't know what the venom's made of."
"We'll handle that. Somehow," Drift said. "Little pressure, aw slag, go in the—okay, little pressure now."
Something clamped over Ratchet's palm and then over the auxiliary fuel intake. Ratchet could feel when the fuel begin to circulate. In at the auxiliary port, branching out and then shunted back down his arm when it hit the isolation valve, finally draining from the wound at his palm where Drift was had rigged up some sort of suction pump.
Drift lapsed into silence, one arm wrapped protectively around Ratchet's chest and the other holding the suction clamp against his palm. Drift was flushing the wound out with fuel from somewhere, it had to be his fuel. Not the sort of thing you should be doing during improvised field surgery. Drift would have no way of knowing when they'd flushed enough out to dilute the neurotoxin’s effects. Ratchet was going to have to talk him through it.
"Drift?"
Drift didn't reply. He pinged Ratchet on radio instead with a quick »Don't talk, there's something in the tunnel.« His arm around Ratchet's chest tightened.
»Drift?« He pinged back, waited five seconds and did it again. »Drift?«
»Don't move. It's the Sunstrike again. I think it might have sensed us.«
The what? What was...the weird ribbon creature Drift had warned him about earlier. The thing with the stingers and the predator's grace.
He tried to hold himself absolutely still in Drift's arms, a feat made easier by the fact that the leaden heaviness in his limbs had definitely transitioned into fullblown paralysis at some point. He hadn't cared much about losing HUD and visuals till just then, knowing there was something there and unable to see it. His arm felt like it was on fire and the thing hunted by heat, what if the creature could sense that and used it to home in on them?
»Drift. Talk to me?«
»Don't be scared.«
»Why, can it smell fear?«
»No. Because I'm going to keep you safe, no matter what. And I don't think it sensed us. I think it's leaving now.«
»Okay. Great. Thanks for scaring me out of my plating for no reason Drift.«
Drift didn’t ping back.
»I didn't mean that. I know there was a reason,« Ratchet sent.
The suction finally let up and Drift popped the connections out. "I think that's enough. I hope that's enough," Drift rasped. "We've got to get out of here."
"I'm not going to be able to walk," Ratchet said. "Even if you're right and this wears off, it'd be hours." Though now that he said it out loud, he noticed that talking had gotten easier at some point. And he didn't feel like he was in danger of slipping out of consciousness. Maybe it was already getting better, though his hand hadn't stopped hurting and the pain seemed to have spread all the way up to the isolation valve they’d clamped off..
"I know." Drift let Ratchet go, hands still close enough that Ratchet could feel their radiant heat above his plating as Drift waited to see if Ratchet would float away or if the floor would hold him. "I'm going to be right back. I promise."
Drift was back before Ratchet had a chance to properly "get his panic on" as Tailgate insisted on calling it. Drift pulled the heatblade out of Ratchet's good hand and set about freeing him. Ratchet had forgotten he was still holding it.
"I need my hands free in case there’s trouble," Drift said. "So this might be a little undignified. Sorry." Ratchet didn't get a chance to respond before Drift had picked him up, making use of the low gravity again to maneuver Ratchet so he had his legs around Drift's waist and his arms over his shoulders. Drift tied a length of rope around Ratchet's legs to keep him from floating off, then started to tie his wrists together.
Ratchet hissed as the rope—his rope, this was absolutely the leadline he'd been carefully coiling back up, sliced up and stolen—rubbed against his hypersensative plating.
"Sorry," Drift said again. "Where does the pain stop?"
"Elbow," Ratchet gritted out.
Drift awkwardly made the tie above Ratchet's elbows, leaving the rope practically brushing Drift's neck.
"It's a good thing it's low grav, you'd never be able to carry me like this otherwise," Ratchet said.
Drift took a step, then another. When Ratchet didn't float off, Drift picked up the pace.
The journey back to the ship proceeded in an awkward frantic rush. Drift staggered and bumped them into walls and kept knocking Ratchet's head against the tops of the tunnels. He grew less and less talkative as they went, both swords drawn and held at the ready. At first Ratchet wasn't sure if it was his imagination, but the poison definitely started to wear off as they walked. He could see a bit, blobs of light that moved as they walked.
He knew they'd passed out of the Seething when the moisture on his plating boiled off, suddenly exposed to unprotected space. Drift untied Ratchet and propelled them slowly towards one of the shuttles. It wasn't until the airlock hissed open that Ratchet was sure it was his shuttle. Drift bundled him inside and sat him on the floor, then stumbled off deeper into the shuttle.
"Here," Drift said. He wrapped the thermal blanket Ratchet had left lying on his berth around his shoulders. Drift sat down facing him, a blob of white and red against the gold of the cargo bay's interior. "I don't know what to do," Drift admitted.
"There's a hospital that treats mechanicals, two days flight," Ratchet said. "I can guide us there. But they're going to need a sample of the venom to synthesize the antagonist."
"Okay." Drift put his hand on Ratchet's shoulder and lingered for a moment. Then he climbed back to his feet and stepped up to the airlock. "Rest. I'll be back. I needed to grab my things anyway."
The airlock doors hissed open and closed and then he was gone.
Ratchet kept time on his internal chronometer.
By ten minutes he could almost see, except that the visual processing rate was still so low that everything rendered as frozen frames on a second delay. By seventeen minutes he could move his left arm again, well enough to wrap the thermal blanket back around his shoulders where it'd fallen down.
By forty minutes he could scoot himself to the cabin of the ship, though he still couldn't stand up. Once he had access to the mobile medbay he ran a pair of fuel boosters through his isolated lower arm to flush the system again—after a twelve minute delay to get back the fine motor control to get the damned cap off the booster. He also finally got a neural blocker in his arm, cutting the pain down to blissful silence. The medical readouts showed that Drift was right, the venom must have been corrosive. The walls of the fuel lines were thinning and near breakthrough in places and the wound itself was still growing, slowly. He didn't have a chem lab to analyze the compound and it didn't respond to any of the stock neutralizers he had on hand.
By two hours and fifteen minutes he was considering the possibility Drift had just cut and run. He managed to drag himself to the pilot's seat and get the solar shielding lowered, but the viewscreen was facing away from the Seething. If Drift wasn't going to come back with a sample, it would probably be best to go as soon as possible, hope the chem lab would be able to get a read off the fuel he'd flushed through.
There was the distinctive hiss of airlock doors opening and then a clatter. Ratchet tried to push himself up, but his legs still weren't cooperating. "Drift?" he yelled. "You alright?"
He had the door to the cabin propped open, so he could see when Drift stood himself up at the end of the hallway, leaning against the wall. He had what looked like an old energon canister in his hands, and he raised it up triumphantly when he saw Ratchet looking.
»Got you a live one.« Drift staggered down the hallway, one hand guiding him along. »I really hope you can fly us there.« He set the canister down on the berth with a clank.
"Drift, what happened?" Ratchet asked.
Drift flashed him an apologetic smile, dentae smeared pink with fuel. "I think I messed up," he rasped at Ratchet, before dissolving into a fit of coughing. Pink fuel dripped through his fingers onto the floor. Drift hit the floor before Ratchet could get to him, coughing subsiding a moment before his optics sputtered out and his knees folded.