Starscream prowled the halls of the Nemesis, bored, annoyed. Critically low stores of energon had led to Megatron temporarily cancelling most patrol flights, refusing to allow Starscream and the others out without cause – in which case, cause seemed to mean either 'attacking the Autobots' or 'botching another attempt to gather more energon' – in an attempt to conserve energy. Starscream understood the reasoning; keeping tons of metal airborne took amounts of energy they couldn't afford right now, but a Seeker forced to the ground tended to be twitchy. And the Nemesis wasn't just on the ground, it was underwater, leaving nothing for Starscream to do to work off the tension in his wings. So he paced, up and down the long halls of the Decepticon ship.

And paused, as he realized he didn't recognize this particular stretch of hallway. He shrugged it off quickly, though, it wasn't like he routinely explored the less-used spaces of the ship, he didn't know every nook and cranny. Most likely it was storage space, some area he'd never needed to enter.

He growled to himself as he stomped along. If Megatron would just die, like he should, Starscream could claim his rightful position and implement competent plans. The Decepticons would never have been shamefully half-starved, scrounging for each and every cube they could grab, if Starscream led them.

So caught up was he in his dreams of power and glory that at first he didn't realize exactly how long this hallway was. He stopped dead in his tracks, shaking himself out of a fantasy of one null-ray pressed directly between Megatron's optics. He'd been walking straight the whole time. There hadn't been any branching halls or doorways. Purple metal to his left, purple metal to his right. Ahead, more hallway, dimming off into the distance, as far as he could see.

He spun sharply.

Directly behind him, the room he'd left minutes ago.

Turning again, he found only flat, solid wall. Sensors along the middle of his back flickered off and on again, in a tingle of phantom sensation. He hadn't imagined all that. He'd been moving, his chronometer had registered time passing. He hadn't been blankly staring at a wall.

Had he?

"Screamer?"

Jolted from his bemusement, Starscream found Skywarp next to him, looking concerned.

"What?" he snapped, a little too harshly.

Skywarp frowned. "Are you feeling all right? You've been standing there looking at the wall."

"I'm fine." Starscream pushed the other mech out of his way, heading for the door. "I just want to get out and fly as soon as possible."

"I hear you," Skywarp answered behind him. "I think we're all going a little stir-crazy."

He couldn't put it out of his mind, though. That hallway had been there, he hadn't been imagining things, and stir-crazy or not he wasn't hallucinating.

His suspicions deepened when Thundercracker approached him the next day, uncharacteristically nervous. "Have you noticed anything… unusual around here lately?"

"Unusual how?" Starscream asked, immediately thinking of his trip down a hallway that didn't exist.

"Never mind," Thundercracker murmured, shaking his head, "It's nothing."

After the blue mech had turned the corner, Starscream followed. He tried, at least. He stood, frozen, unable to move so much as a finger. His systems strained, trying to push against an invisible force.

He panicked and activated the thrusters in his feet, yelping when the force bounced him off the floor a few inches. When he regained his balance he leaned heavily against the wall, intakes cycling air in an effort to calm himself down. Once he worked up the courage, he tried again to step forward, cautiously moving without meeting any obstacles. He was fine.

All systems checked out. Self-scans picked up no viruses, no malfunctions. He was in perfect physical health. He hadn't been able to move.

Starscream watched carefully over the next three days, but nothing unusual happened to him. However, Thundercracker kept glancing into corners, acting like he'd seen something out of the corner of his optics that was gone when he actually looked. Skywarp grumbled about sensors on his wings picking up touches when no one was around.

Megatron was irritable, though that could be chalked up to him being himself.

He'd started an argument with his second, when he'd caught Starscream researching human legends about sea monsters, ancient human gods of the ocean, and the like. Megatron had explicitly ordered him to stop looking at those topics, without giving a reason.

As Starscream stormed away, he nearly ran into Soundwave, who was in the middle of the hall, looking as though he was listening to something.

"You hear something?" the Seeker asked.

"Tapping," Soundwave said in his harmonic monotone.

Starscream forced back a shiver. "That's an outside wall. Is there something out there?"'

"Negative," was the response. "No signals on radar. Logical explanation: pressure shifts." He left without another word.

Starscream headed for his quarters, disturbed. All these strange things happening, and he was willing to bet there was more going on that he didn't know about. Halfway to his destination, he froze. This time he was quite capable of moving, but given the sight ahead of him, he didn't want to.

The hallway was twisting.

It writhed and folded in on itself in ways that physics deemed impossible, yet his mind still interpreted it as straight. The metal wasn't warped, and he got the eerie feeling that should he continue walking, he'd twist without bending as well.

Then, it dissolved. All that was before him was the inky darkness of deep ocean. He switched to night vision in an attempt to see something, anything, and nearly switched it right back off. Everything was a pure, flat green, except for an enormous silhouette in the distance off to his left. It was asleep, but it was waiting. He didn't know where he got the information, but it echoed through his mind. It was ancient, older than Earth, older than Starscream. Older than Cybertron?

He offlined his optics completely at the horrifying sight, distantly registering a high, thin keening. Alien words formed themselves in the cry, neither human nor Cybertronian, sounds that grated against his audios. He slowly realized the voice was his own, and the noise slid from alien chant into simple screaming.

He woke with a shock, jerking upright in his own berth. No one was there. Nothing was there. Something was there, with a feeling like a storm front with no safe landing in sight. It owned the ocean, he knew somehow, and the only reason the Decepticon ship remained intact was because they were below its notice. He hoped desperately that they stayed beneath its notice, because to interest it would be… bad.

He accessed the human's internet the next time he thought Megatron wouldn't notice, searching for anything that sounded similar to the description of the thing he'd seen with his night vision.

A match.

He stared at a human's pitiful attempt to draw the being he'd seen. Below the picture was an equally pitiful rendering of the words he'd heard in that awful chant, alien sounds transliterated as best as possible into English letters.

Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn.

Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn. - "In his house at R'lyeh dead Cthulhu waits dreaming."

Transformers belongs to Hasbro, Call of Cthulhu is by H.P. Lovecraft.

As always, thanks for reading! - Illogically