Soundless.
That was what creeped him out.

Whatever it was where he was now it was completely void of sounds other than those he produced himself. This cosmic silence around him was... hell.
Most of his long existence Soundwave had spent watching and listening others talk, transmit, act - live! ... and die.

He cruelly replayed the scene of his one true master's death at a hand of some lowly autobot - not even a Prime! - and made himself look it through as it unfolded before his optics.
Rage shook through Soundwave circuits as he watched his lord's lifeless cask slide off the deck and begin its deceptively slow descend. He surged after it, transforming on the way and quickly caught up with it, but Megatron slipped through his wings without even slowing down.

The steel plates were red-hot from the friction with the athmosphere, but Soundwave remained cold and couldn't perceive the heat.

Eleven more times did the spy catch up with his master's corpse, transformed and tried to stop its fall. Eleven more times he failed. As Megatron's chassis collided with the planetary surface, Soundwave reached him the last time. The explosion didn't hurt them. Megatron could feel pain no more, and Soundwave was _elsewhere_.

He was unaware how much time he had spent in the crater, talking to his fallen comrade. He stopped recording and he wasn't sure his internal clock was correct anymore.

When he looked up, Nemesis was already gone. The navy con was still seething rage.

How dared he?! How dared he die?! Megatron of all cons! Killed off like some nonsense eradicon, nearly stabbed in the back. With an oversized knife that wasn't even ACTIVE!
Rage made Soundwave erupt in a sonic burst, ripping apart the blasted silence of this netherworld. There wasn't even an echo.

He calmed down eventually. He had to. Laserbeak pinged him - she was alright it seemed, though it had taken her time to recover from the shock of bridging here. If he lost it, she would panic. Logically, he had to calm down.
He would address this... predicament... like a sane and sound 'con he was.
Soundwave turned his back to Megatron's cask and sat down for some probability calculations.
/Possibility 1. I have perished in the bridges cross-stream and this... horror is my post-mortem hallucination./
Laserbeake pinged him ironically.
/ Yes, you are right. We would hardly be together as you surely would join the Allspark, Laserbeak. However, you may be just another hallucination of mine/

A slight power shock the drone passed him ensured no hallucination was taking place
/...or I am too deep into it for the matter of reality to be of significance./

Soundwave turned to look at Megatron. The warlord was as lifeless as few clicks ago.

/Probability 2. I fell victim to a fellow prank, I may be hooked up to the neuro-cortical patch right now, with all of them laughing at my turmoil./
Laserbeak pinged him sceptically.
"You should have done a better job with environment modelling! This here is too pristine to be true!" - he yelled.

Laserbeak pinged him sympathetically.
/I am not in denial, Laserbeak. There is nothing to deny/

Laserbeak's silence was screaming.

/Probability 3. The crossing streams shifted my phase. And I have no phase shifter to shift it back. And there is no adaptable control... Except, I still would be visible, if that had been the case./

Soundwave waited a little, but the drone was silent. The spy ran his fingers across Laserbeak's back and the drone vibrated slightly, responding to the touch. Still with him, then. Good.

/Probability 4. I did shift... but not a phase. The bridges sucked me in and brought me back... to the same place... in a different place.
If this is what a parallel universe is, I want no part in it./

Laserbeak pinged him suggestively.
/Yes, we will recon. After we're done with the basics. It's not like we have any urgent business now/
He turned to look at Megatron. The warlord was as lifeless as few clicks ago.

/Probability 5... scrap it, this is absolutely improbable./

He assessed his resources: energon circuits 64% full, Laserbeak's - 72%. Built-in bridging devices - seemed operational. However, he needed coördinates to bridge and those were eluding him. He decided not to waste energon on a test run.

He couldn't position himself and define the coordinates, but perhaps he could find some familiar landmark, something he had on his maps... then he'd bridge the hell out of here.

/Laserbeak, eject. Operation:Recon. /

The drone detached and flew up. While he waited, Soundwave set to scan the frequencies.