Ever since the discovery of the second body, everyone in the hospital has been on high alert. I don't blame them. I would be terrified too if it wasn't my job to keep everyone calm. I needed to figure out who was committing these murders since they were obviously trying to send a message. I figured it was directed towards me, but how did they know I was the one trying to find a cure for the plague?

It had to be an inside job, otherwise that meant we were being watched by someone not related to the hospital. The Decepticons, maybe? But why would they do such a thing? Harming medical staff was a war crime! Then again, they didn't really care what was a crime and what wasn't. They lost their will to uphold honor long ago.

I had a couple of the other medics help me transport the scout's corpse into a secured room where the plague couldn't spread. It was a shame that I couldn't do much more than scan and analyze the body. If I touched it, I risked transferring the plague to myself and putting everyone in the hospital in danger. Thankfully, we had the technology that could give me the information I wanted without having to open up the scout in order to take a look inside.

I spent most of my time analyzing and running tests on the scout's energon. Other medics picked up my patients for me. They understood the seriousness of the situation and knew I was probably the only one who could figure it out. Though, I wasn't too sure myself. I had dealt with Cosmic Rust patients before, but this was completely different. This virus infected a bot's energon. After doing a scan that let me look at the scout's inner systems, I was shocked to discover that the infected energon had slowly begun eating away at their systems. That explained why energon leaked from a victim's optics when they were infected and though I hated to say it, Twinblast was my first experience with that.

His memory still haunted me sometimes.

While I still didn't have a name for this plague, I at least had a small list of symptoms and physical effects on the body. It was a rapidly invasive virus that infected the energon within a bot's body first and then slowly ate them apart from the inside out. I wasn't sure how long that process took, but the scout could not have possibly entered that stage yet. From my scans, they had only been dead for two days, which means their frame should still be intact. That led me to believe that he was killed by some other force before the virus took over his body. If the virus could survive in a corpse with no life, then that was a huge problem. If bots were exposed to multiple infected corpses without knowing any better, they themselves could get infected and spread it to everyone around them. This plague could wipe out thousands in just a few days!

***

The day after the discovery of the corpse outside, everything seemed to settle down a bit. Or, at least I thought. I went about my usual business checking supply levels, helping with patients, and occasionally studying the samples of infected energon I had collected. About halfway through my day, when I was helping a patient refuel, I noticed another patient sitting alone on a med berth across the room from me. He had a couple wounds that looked fresh and a few of them were actively leaking energon. That was strange. Why wasn't he being taken care of? Once I was sure my patient could handle refueling by himself, I went over to investigate.

"Excuse me, has anyone helped you yet?" I asked the mech, giving his wounds a quick look. There were deep puncture wounds in his side and his chassis, which meant they should've been treated right away. A wound that deep could cause irreparable damage if left untreated.

The mech looked up at me and I noticed that his optics were glazed over. That wasn't good. That wasn't good at all. "Yeah... He said he would be right back, but.. it's been like... uh.. I don't know how long.." He slurred, his helm falling forwards a bit.

He was becoming less aware of his surroundings and what was going on, which immediately prompted me to respond. I held him upright so he didn't fall over and cursed under my breath. "Okay, just sit tight. I'm going to take care of you. Stay with me, okay?" I muttered under my breath, quickly grabbing an I.V and putting it in the mech's arm. I needed to work fast or else he would go into shock, which was already in the process of happening. How long had he been waiting for? It made me angry to think that a medic would leave their patient for such an extended amount of time, especially one with injuries this severe! I would have to have a word with this medic when I was done. "Stay with me, I've got you!"

I refuse to let this mech die because of someone else's carelessness.