Flashback: On Lost Light launch day, Red Alert personally reviews every applicant who wants aboard the vessel. After begrudgingly letting Brainstorm on despite his being exempt from a bag check, Red is approached by Swerve, who instructs him to look at the datapad in his hand. On the screen, Red reads the words: "THIS NEVER HAPPENED"...

Present: Within a Titan on Luna 1, Red Alert—suddenly in the thrall of Sentinel Prime—grapples with Fortress Maximus while Sentinel gloats over the reanimation of the many other Titans in the moon's graveyard, thanks to the efforts of a reluctant Sovereign. Realizing nobody is listening to his ranting, Sentinel turns and notes with some distaste the way Cerebros is cradling Prowl's body. Cerebros keeps Sentinel talking; first, the Prime explains how he survived his seeming death by detaching his true Titan Master form from his larger body, then details how he has been slipping in and out of hibernation beneath Kaon for millennia as he has slowly attuned himself to the Titans, granting him the control that—through Sovereign—he now has over them. Using the quantum foam of Luna 1's engines, Sentinel plans to supercharge the Titan's spacebridge, opening it wide enough so that the rest of the giants can travel through and raze Cybertron in accordance with his wishes. His monologue complete, Sentinel prepares to do away with Cerebros and Fort Max, but is suddenly laid low when the silent Prowl, back on his feet, smashes a M.A.R.B. across his back. Prowl, Cerebros, and Max escape on the remaining M.A.R.B.s, but Sentinel is content to let them go, certain they cannot interfere with his scheme.

Flashback: Years earlier, Red Alert searches Rewind and Chromedome's quarters aboard the Lost Light, over Rewind's protestations. In a hidden compartment, Red finds a set of data disks Rewind had secreted away. Rewind takes the disks, and, urging Red to not "give in," lays them out in a familiar five-point pattern...

Present: Prowl awakes back in Fort Max's facility, and reacts with some degree of anger upon learning that Cerebros had used his new brain implant—slipped into Prowl's head as he was cradling him—to take control of Prowl's body and strike Sentinel. While Prowl has been out, Fortress Maximus has conceived a plan: transform the base, constructed by Tyrest from the parts of many different Titans, into robot mode. Unfortunately, the manual release switch for the base's transformation cog is stuck... but Prowl's sharply-honed table-flipping skills soon prove exactly what are needed to force it free. The base transforms, and, using Cerebros's implant, Fort Max is able to take direct control of it, flying it into the sky to block the other Titans' path to the giant spacebridge. While Max and his Titan fight to keep Sentinel's Titans from going through, Prowl and Cerebros board their M.A.R.B.s to strafe Sentinel as he stands by the moon's thrusters. Sentinel quickly shoots them out of the sky, whereupon Red Alert appears behind the fallen Prowl, and presses his gun barrel into the back of his former ally's neck...

Flashback: Years before, back on the Lost Light, Red Alert talks with Rung about his fear that he may have been brainwashed into being a sleeper agent by the establishment. Though reluctant to indulge what he believes to be a paranoid fantasy, Rung suggests that they exploit Red's fear of and resistance to the very concept by seeding his subconscious mind with triggers that, should he ever be "activated," will alert him to the fact he is not himself. These triggers take the form of "continuity errors" in Red's memory... things that never happened, conversations that never took place. Looking around the room, Red realizes that Rung's shelves are filled with model Titans instead of model ships... and that the room's portholes have moved to take on the form of the five-point pattern—a mnemosurgery scar—that he has been seeing everywhere...

Present: At the sight of the mnemosurgery scar on the bac

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