Immediately he began gagging and trying to throw up. Once, the tip of the worm-thing’s tail waved from a nostril, only to disappear back inside. When he finally spat it back up, its emergence was due more to it having completed its assigned task than to any successful muscular convulsions on the part of his outraged gastrointestinal system. In actuality, its factfinding mission had focused on areas considerably farther north than his stomach.
Recovering the worm-probe, the Doctor fastened it to his own body. Images began to appear in the air before the specialized Decepticon: scenes from Sam’s life, recent distractions, imaginings that would have greatly embarrassed both him and Mikaela had they not been too terrified to pay attention, recently acquired alien symbols . . .
The excited Doctor played these back repeatedly, his hyperactive commentary scarcely intelligible. “Traes itresea, voluminta, Brain kazeezei inspecta!” Multiple
limbs flailed, gesturing variously but in some kind of crazed alien amalgamation. Listening, watching, Megatron plainly approved of the result.
“Yesss—the Cube’s knowledge is eternal, even though freed from its metal membrane—into yours. Now you have become its vessel. Even an insect such as yourself must know how one obtains the contents
of a sealed container.” The implication contained in the Decepticon’s words sent a shiver down Sam’s spine. “We’re going to squeeze it from your brain. But first, of course, the stoppered vessel must be— opened.”
As he stepped back, the end of one of the Doctor’s limbs altered shape. The razor-toothed blade into which it had changed positioned itself carefully over the top of Sam’s head. Held immovable in the grasp of the Decepticon who was restraining him, Sam could only kick and scream as the Doctor lowered the surgical edge toward his skull and . . .
The Doctor paused, his attention having been distracted by a small red dot that had suddenly appeared in the center of his body. As he stared and tried to make sense of the bright crimson pinpoint of light, the dot quivered imperceptibly—just before the Decepticon blew apart, erupting in an explosively expanding sphere of metal splinters.
Accompanied by torn steel beams, crumbling chunks of reinforced concrete, and crumpling sections of metal roof and gangway, Optimus Prime descended feetfirst into the open foundry chamber, both of his cannon arms blasting away at his startled enemies.
While shells and energy pulses and missiles and everything else in the Autobot’s inventory of heavy ordnance slammed into and around them, Megatron and Starscream shot off in opposite directions in order to regroup. As they did so, a second new shape came sprinting onto the factory floor. Reaching down, it picked up Mikaela and Leo, one in each hand, and raced for the nearest exit. Separated from his friends by the ongoing battle of giants, Sam couldn’t see what was happening to them as Optimus yelled for him to run.
Once outside and clear of the last structure, Bumblebee changed back into his terrestrial guise with the two young humans safely inside him. Too shaken to faint, his senses too heightened for him to scream, Leo fell to examining the interior of the seemingly ordinary vehicle in which they were now rocketing away from the abandoned factory complex. As they roared into the greenbelt of a nearby forest, he sat up straight in the front passenger seat.
“What—no, who the hell’s this?”
Seated behind the wheel, hands at her sides, Mikaela buckled up as the car drove itself. “Your new best friend,” she explained tersely.
Unable to cover enough ground to get away, Sam found himself dodging fire just as Optimus scooped him up. Under pressure from both Megatron and Starscream, the leader of the Autobots fought his way outside and toward the surrounding forest.
Roaring back down in jet form and firing as he came, Megatron slammed into Optimus with hands as well as weapons, knocking his opponent off his feet. As he went down, Optimus reached up to grasp his adversary in an unbreakable body lock. Hitting the ground together, they rolled over and down a steep embankment, mowing down tall pine trees as they descended. Somehow Optimus managed to keep Sam safely within his grasp—until the three of them hit the bottom. With Megatron on top, the leader of the Autobots had no choice but to let the human roll free. Sam scuttled clear of the battle, banged up but very much alive and still mobile. Once Sam was in the clear, Optimus’s arms morphed into a pair of huge, metal-rending scythes, causing Megatron to back off. Crouching defensively, the Decepticon leader eyed his opposite number in disbelief.
“Prime. You risk it all—for an insect child?” Cutting arms held out in front of him, the Autobot glared back at his foe. “For a friend.”
Though confronting his principal opponent both in body and word, Optimus was not so inattentive that he failed to note Starscream slipping in behind him. Pivoting sharply, he countered the attack, grabbing hold of the enraged Starscream and spinning him around so that the contained Decepticon was between him and Megatron. An instant later the heavy chopper Decepticon arrived to join the fight.
Optimus took everything they could throw at him and still managed to hold them off. As the battle raged, Megatron could not keep from taunting his old opponent.
“Your ‘friendship’ will not sustain you. More than pleasant thoughts and feelings of satisfaction are required. Energon is our lifeblood, Prime—and the Allspark was not the only source!”
“You’re lying. As for sustaining, I’ll choose my friendship over your lies anytime.”
“Fool! There is another way. One that was hidden on this planet long ago. Think of it, Prime! Another source of sustenance for the future. Another font of life for our kind. Within him the boy unknowingly contains the means to lead us to it. Is the future of our entire race not worth a single human life? Not even one to which you have become unaccountably attached? Has your ability to crunch numbers and follow logic been so totally corrupted by the short time you have spent on this world?”
“More lies. You thrive on lies, Megatron. I know you. You speak of a single human life, but I know that you’ll never stop at one. Sooner or later all of Earth would share his fate, or be bound forever into the slavery that sustains your ego.”
“Then you will share his fate as well!” Frustrated, the furious Decepticon hurled himself forward.
Three to Optimus’s one, they charged simultaneously. Ducking, blocking, returning blows and fire, Optimus continued to hold his own even as he noticed a mesmerized Sam standing nearby, looking on from behind a wholly inadequate tree.
“Run! Go now!”
Sam reluctantly complied, but only until he reached a denser stand of vegetation. There he lingered, keeping under cover as best he could while continuing to monitor the titanic ongoing battle, unable to tear himself away. As he watched, he remembered seeing Bumblebee arrive to snatch up Mikaela and Leo and carry them off to safety. Where was the yellow-and-black fighter now? For that matter, where were the rest of the Autobots?
They were coming, and coming fast. Led by Bumblebee, Arcee, the Twins, Ironhide, Ratchet, and Side swipe were closing in on the foundry site. They would be there in minutes.
But where Autobots and Decepticons are concerned, a minute can become a very long time indeed.
As the conflict raged, the forest in which it was taking place was being shredded by the fall of massive bodies and the detonation of a host of explosive elements. Fires broke out and began to spread among the trees. Only a series of precoded warning signals broadcast by Optimus kept unknowing human authorities well clear of the scene of battle. Had they arrived to “help,” ordinary police and firefighters would instantly have become collateral damage. As for more experienced and better-qualified NEST operatives, there were none in the immediate vicinity. They were now on the move, but it was unlikely their advance forces would be able to arrive in time to affect the outcome of the clash.
A powerful kick from Megatron sent Optimus flying backward. He had hardly struck ground when he was up again. Gripping the grappling St
arscream with one powerful hand, he flung him aside as the copter Decepticon charged in, blade-arms spinning. As the infuriated Starscream rose and took aim, Optimus ducked under the chopper Deception's howling blades, picked up Starscream, and spun him around. Instead of striking their intended target, Starscream’s multiple blasts slammed into his startled blade-wielding collaborator. With his opponent momentarily stunned by the effects of his own ally’s shots, Optimus launched himself onto his enemy’s shoulders. His arm cannons so. Slicing down and in, they cut the giant’s head in two. The big Decepticon tottered, lurched once, and fell forward, leaving the leader of the Autobots ready and poised to take on his next opponent.
That would be Starscream, who, alone and confronted by Optimus, started to back off and change shape into his aerial terrestrial guise. Determined not to let him get away this time, Optimus reached out for the retreating Decepticon.
As he did so, twenty feet of pure Cybertronian metal blade punched completely through his body from back to front.
Impaled, he tried to turn. But this blade, this weapon, was too well formed, too strong, too eternally forged. It belonged to Megatron, who had risen silently behind the leader of the Autobots to run him through from behind. Stunned, unable to bend or snap the blade that had pierced him, Optimus stood almost motionless.
Damaged but not destroyed, Optimus Prime’s Spark sent out an internal distress call, redirecting all remaining energy toward healing. The injury was extensive and Optimus began to fade, subsiding into a state of suspended animation while all internal processes turned to a single task: survival.
Eyes wide, Sam screamed his anguish and helplessness from behind the tree where he had taken
cover.
Megatron held his stance for a moment and then for longer, not taking any chances, wanting to be sure. The light dimming from his eyes, Optimus Prime slowly keeled sideways like a felled redwood to smash through a cluster of pines, splintering them on his way to the ground. The sound of his falling echoed through the trees as his head landed barely ten feet from the bewildered Sam. Just before slipping into complete stasis, Optimus uttered his last command, “Run .. . boy ..
Looming behind the body, Megatron glared down at the unconscious Optimus Prime. He raised his blade for the final, killing blow, the blow that would extinguish Prime’s Spark. Now all that remained was to ...
A sleek yellow-and-black shape came sprinting toward him, dodging in and out among the trees, firing as it approached. Megatron regarded it out of pitiless eyes. One more Autobot to dispense with. One more misguided entity to reduce to its elemental components. Taking aim at Bumblebee, the leader of the Decepticons elevated his primary weapons. Off to one side, Starscream was doing the same. Caught in their withering cross fire, the brave but absurd Autobot would not survive more than a moment or two.
A pulse blast of surprising strength caught Megatron in the chest and knocked him backward. Startled, he turned sharply to his right. Not one but two of the cursed miscreants were coming at him from another direction—and they were a lot bigger than the foolhardy Bumblebee. His moment of absolute triumph now set aside, Megatron gauged the firepower and determination of Ratchet and Ironhide as they charged in his direction. And there were others behind them.
“Get him out of here!” Ratchet yelled at Bumblebee.
Swiftly shifting to terrestrial guise, the yellow-and- black Autobot skidded to a halt beside Sam. Still in shock, Sam let himself be pulled away by Mikaela as she sprang from the side of the Camaro.
“Sam, run, c’mon!” Tears were welling up in her own eyes as they swept over the prone, unmoving form of Optimus Prime. “You can’t do anything here!” Stumbling, staggering, he let her drag him into the waiting car as bursts from Megatron’s weapons detonated around them. Accelerating rapidly and using the trees for cover, Bumblebee sped them away from the fight.
Already battered by their struggle to subdue Optimus, neither Decepticon was prepared to take on half a dozen fresh Autobots. Shifting to terrestrial aerial mode, both blasted off into the sky, the injured Starscream trailing smoke. Now that Optimus had been dealt with, there would be plenty of time to finish off his inferiors.
Not that they really mattered any longer in the grand scheme of things, Megatron thought with satisfaction as he climbed toward the eastern horizon.
They gathered quietly and in disbelief around their fallen leader.
Sam could barely bring himself to speak, but at last uttered the impossible words: “Is he—is he dead?”
Ratchet’s response was surprising, if not overly reassuring. “No, at least not in the human sense of the word. He is, however, in complete stasis lock, and will remain so until his internal systems can repair the damage. If we were back on Cybertron, and I had access to the right equipment, I could speed the process. But here, now, there is little I can do. He will remain
in this state for a long time, long even as Transformers measure time.”
“Then there’s nothing we can do?” asked Sam.
“We can hope,” came the reply. But of all the things Sam had in his heart at that moment, hope was not one of them.
Hours passed, then days. It was such a simple thing, a quietly fuming Megatron thought. It was not even a large planet. Yet here he was, having to chastise his supposed assistant again for yet another failure.
The island on which he met Starscream was isolated and cold, unobserved by the humans and unwanted even by the simple life-forms that inhabited this thinly populated top of the planet. As driven snow swirled around them, he confronted the other Decepticon.
Starscream did not hesitate. There was no point. He knew all too well Megatron’s disdain for prevarication. Especially, the Decepticon thought, when it was ineffective.
“We’ve lost the boy, Master, and cannot locate his track.”
Megatron’s contempt was so great he did not even bother to strike his inferior. “I can’t even rely on you to swat a simple insect.”
While Starscream was subordinate, he did have his limits. He was emboldened by the knowledge that pointing out an irrefutable fact could not be construed as defiance.
“One insect among seven billion,” he replied forcefully. “By this time he could be anywhere. There are no signals, nothing to indicate his present whereabouts. The electrical impulses generated by human bodies are too slight to be individually identified at a distance. And the Autobots are hiding him.”
Megatron considered. “Then we will force the insects of this world to find him for us. Sometimes insects are better at locating and identifying their own kind than are superior beings.” He turned thoughtful. “Contemplate, for a moment, the potential usefulness of these absurd emotional relationships they form among themselves.”
High above, Soundwave received the orders of his Master and set to work. Scanning abilities only dreamed of by the creatures on the world below allowed him to monitor and examine millions of communications in minutes. Television, radio, even gaming instructions were noted and scrutinized for the kind of link the Decepticons sought.
Until one was found.
Unsurprisingly, it came from a cell phone. Shifting his position in emptiness, the Decepticon spy zeroed in on the contact identified as “Witwicky, J.” How easy the humans in question made the task, Soundwave reflected. Had the identifier he had been seeking been labeled “Smith, J.” or “Garcia, J.” or any one of
thousands of other far more common names, identification and isolation would have taken considerably more time. Even among the seven billion, there were a limited number of Witwickys.
Even so, the initial identifier by itself was not enough. Soundwave speedily ran a side-by-side comparison with another brief, innocuous message he held securely in internal storage banks that operated on the atomic level. Every inflection, every tone had to match precisely in order for him to pronounce the communication he had intercepted a successful match. Elation succee
ded confirmation. He was not known as Soundwave for nothing.
Once verification was complete, he positioned other tracking instruments to pinpoint the source. This took virtually no time at all.
Even though in human terms, Paris was a fairly crowded place.
After making the short call to a friend back home, Judy Witwicky set her phone down on the table. The device looked out of place against the stark white linen cloth, not to mention the fine dining ware. Nearby, the restaurant’s strolling violinist was dutifully sawing away at a classical tune that was popular
and romantic, striving Franckly for a tip while wishing that he was practicing Brian’s concerto instead of vapid late-Romantic melodies. But a job was a job, and one still had to work when the orchestra season was over.
Neither of the two Americans ensconced at the corner table were paying the bored performer any attention. 1’he Eiffel Tower in view behind them, they were concentrating on their meal. Leastwise, Ron Witwicky was concentrating on his. His spouse was more focused on her degree of consternation.
“Really, Ron,” she murmured disapprovingly while eyeing the thin trickle of oily liquid that was tracing a glistening path down one corner of his mouth. “A cheeseburger?”
Mouth half full of ground sirloin and masticated bun, he looked up and blinked. “What? Hey, it comes with French fries.” He gestured at the gastronomic gastropods artfully arrayed on a dish in front of his wife. “You think I flew across the ocean to chow down a plate a snails?”
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