Ratchet bites down slowly on his tongue for a moment, dragging air into his vents before he lets it out in a warm, shaky rush. This gets easier every time he does it, somehow. Parts of it, anyway.

"Might as well, since he's here," Ratchet says, his voice oddly colorless. "His name's Pharma. Autobot medic. We went to school together." He stops briefly, optics sliding away. "He was stationed at Delphi, on Messatine. DJD territory. We found out he'd been killing patients to harvest organs for the DJD in exchange for them not murdering everyone inside wholesale, but eventually he figured he'd get caught and cooked a virus. Tried to kill everybody on the planet with it, only a few were left when Drift and Pipes and I showed up." Ratchet's optics stray to Drift's berth again, his mouth a thin line and his expression unreadable.

"We all caught it, I went after Pharma to get the antidote and knocked him most of the way off the roof, and he tried to shoot me to death. Drift somehow managed to haul the three-quarters rusted mess of himself up the ladder after us and chopped Pharma's hands off at the wrists right before he fired, let him fall. So I took them."

His optics flick back to Bee, a sort of brittle humor edging his mouth.

"So, what have you been up to?"