My wrists are at about 94% now, which means I can write again! Although lifting too many heavy things in one day still bothers me, unfortunately... However, that has nothing to do with writing, and I am pleased to announce the arrival of the first chapter of the next book in the Secrets saga, which I have spent the past week writing. This is unedited and will be fixed later, I promise, so point out anything that's wrong... I finished it just before midnight tonight and wanted to send it out into the world. If this results in some glares and/or pitchforks/torches, so be it...
For those still waiting patiently for a Human Experiment update, it is coming. I promise! In fact, if it's not out by the end of the month, feel free to roast me...
DISCLAIMER: I don't own Transformers. If I did, well, the fourth movie wouldn't exist. At least not in the manner it did...
Chapter One
What We Don't Know
Another college application done. Katrina sighed and set aside her pen, glancing out the window at the setting sun. Her fingers flexed, cramped from writing for so long. Have I already missed dinner? "Morse?" When she did not receive a response that teen stood, stretched, and looked around her room. A soft beep came from her bed. Morse waved a leg to catch his friend's attention, scuttling closer to the edge. Katrina move to scoop him up before he tumbled to the floor. Despite Ratchet's frequent attempts to convince the small mech to upgrade his frame, Morse insisted that he preferred his current size. After all, he could hide a lot easier than even Wheelie or Brains, the other two mini-bots currently staying with the Autobots. His transform mode continued to change depending on the latest technology, and no matter what phone Simmons tried bribing Katrina with, she refused to switch back to Earth technology. She also had no problem reminding the man that her friend had once been a phone, Simmons's own phone, no less.
"You forgot dinner again." Morse's voice whispered through her thoughts, tinged with annoyance and shame. "I should have reminded you."
"Sorry, Morse," she sighed, lifting her hand to let him climb onto her shoulder. "I'll do better tomorrow, I promise." Katrina laughed. "It's not your job, anyway. I'm surprised Dutch didn't fetch us. Let's go find out where Uncle Simmons is."
"Would you like to call him?" Morse asked, a not-so-innocent question, having witnessed her frustration many times when searching for someone – sometimes anyone – in the massive house Simmons had bought upon becoming a multimillionaire bestselling author. Despite having lived there for almost two years, Katrina still found herself taking the wrong turn or walking into an unused room more often than she would like to admit.
"Not this time," Katrina said. "The dining room isn't that far from here."
Morse chirped and snuggled against her neck as she made her way out of the room. Someone came to clean once a week, but Katrina still felt she could smell the dust that lingered in dark corners and rooms that rarely saw the light of day. She sighed, wishing Barricade would return from his latest trip. Not that she blamed him for leaving so often. In a city, surrounded by people, he could not transform, could not even speak with her without producing a hologram, for fear someone might find a teenage girl holding a conversation with an empty police car odd. Although, these days, it might not be as strange as previously thought. After the events four years ago, humans had slowly come to accept the Autobots' presence in their midst with, if not complete trust, then something much less than pure distrust. The continued threat of the Decepticons might have something to do with humanity's continued interest in maintaining the peace with their more benevolent alien visitors. Not to mention their human allies.
Katrina wondered how Sam was getting along. He had just graduated – she had called him to wish him the best, but he had been distracted by his new girlfriend and barely said anything. Wheelie and Brains had extracted the phone from his hand and spent the next half hour giving her more details about the couple's life together than she wanted, before Sam realized what was going on and hung up without even saying goodbye.
Morse heard the faint sigh she released and pressed against her neck, reminding his friend of his presence. She tilted her head to the side, hair brushing against his chassis, and smiled. "Sorry, Morse, just thinking again. Do you think Sam got a job yet?"
"Doubt it." Morse said.
"Well, you're a vote of confidence." Katrina chuckled, swinging into the dining room and flipping the light switch. Light bounced and danced down from the crystal chandelier to illuminate the long oak table and the matching chairs that dominated the center of a plush red rug which Katrina sunk her toes into, never quite able to believe the softness. However, she did not feel like hanging around in the empty room, with no sign of the meal she may have missed completely. Turning, she flipped the switch and headed for the kitchen.
The kitchen, too, was empty, and showed no sign of having been used recently. Nor was there anything new in the fridge, just leftovers from a few days ago and a half-empty carton of rice from a local Chinese take-out. Katrina frowned. Simmons had definitely mentioned during breakfast that they would be eating a real dinner at home tonight, provided she didn't disturb the interview; there should be leftovers of some sort. Unless…
"Morse, when was the interview today?"
"This morning," Morse replied. "It should be over by now."
"Definitely." Katrina made a mental note to look it up on YouTube later, if only to laugh at the disaster her uncle had no doubt created. Becoming a famous author had gone straight to the man's already enlarged ego – he was more arrogant than ever. But he did genuinely care for her well-being, she knew that for sure, even if he failed to show it often. A faint smile tugging on her mouth, Katrina headed for round rotunda at the top of the house, where Simmons sometimes went to enjoy the evening view from his balcony.
Upon entering the room, she found nothing out of place. The lattice doors to his small balcony were locked, and only a small briefcase-shaped object sat on the table near the doors. There were paintings sitting on easels, waiting to be framed and hung, and still some staging set up with various construction tools and paint cans resting on it. The house wasn't quite done being renovated.
As she turned to leave the room, Morse hopped down and dashed across the floor, climbing his way to the top of the side table before Katrina could stop him. His legs tapped the briefcase until Katrina came to look at it. On second look, it did not appear to be a briefcase at all, more a thick metal box with a seam running around the middle. Opening it up, she found two slots with cellphones resting in it, and a middle control panel with a number of buttons and a dark display panel.
"What is it, Morse?"
Morse jabbed a leg into a port on a cellphone, eyes dimming for a moment before they brightened again and he pulled back. "Phone line encrypter."
"Why would he need that?" Katrina frowned. "What would be so secret he would want to encrypt a telephone call about?"
"Autobots," Morse said.
"You don't think..." Karina didn't finish her sentence, simply snatched up her friend and dashed out of the rotunda, heading for Simmons's study, on the other side of the house at the end of a particularly twisty section of intersecting hallways. The door hung ajar, and she burst in to find the room empty. "Something's wrong, Morse," she said, checking the door again – not even locked. Simmons never left his study open and unlocked. Katrina turned her attention to the room, flipping the wall switch to dispel the shadows.
Simmons's desk, as always, somehow managed to exist in the two states at once – appearing both neat and disheveled. To a casual observer, nothing might seem out of place, but Katrina knew him better. Whatever he was up to, he had been in a hurry – there were even folders resting in a neat pile on his keyboard, something he would never tolerate normally.
"What were you looking for?" Katrina flipped through a few of the folders. A chill ran down her back as she realized that many of them were related to the Cybertronians. Others had something to do with the moon landing mission, which made no sense, but perhaps he had been researching something else before something piqued his interest in alien life again. She smirked, remembering a recent conversation in which he had insisted he had fully recovered from his 'addiction', then sobered. What changed your mind? Are the Autobots in trouble? Without Barricade or Jazz around, and with Morse's limited ability to transmit messages – one downfall of his small frame – she had no way of contacting anyone. Unless she tried Sam again. Katrina sighed. "Morse, would you call Sam for me, please?" At the very least, perhaps she could speak with Wheelie or Brains, one of them might know something useful. If only she had asked Frenzy to stay with her, like he sometimes did, but it had been a while since he had gone a trip with Barricade and it had been more than obvious that he wanted to get out of the stuffy confines of the house for a while.
Morse beeped from her hand, having transformed into his altmode. "It's ringing."
She held him to her ear, waiting for someone to pick up. No one did, and when it went to voicemail a second time, Katrina lowered her hand with a sigh. "Try Uncle Simmons. And Dutch."
Morse made both calls simultaneously, waiting for one or the other to pick up. Neither did.
"What's going on?" Katrina thought back to her single-minded focus on the college applications, and considered shredding them. Maybe if she had been a little more aware of things around her, she might have noticed something wrong, rather than being so intent on being a normal high school senior. Leaning against the desk, she realized just how cut off she was from the Autobots. No way to contact them, no way of knowing what was going on.
A loud bong rang through the house, and Katrina winced. Trust Simmons to have his doorbell as loud and as obnoxious as possible. She waited a moment for the sound to stop, then realized that if she waited for the old man who served as a butler to answer the door, she might be listening to the doorbell for the next hour. And since Simmons wasn't around, Dutch would not be about to answer it.
"Come on, Morse." She raced out of the study, making her way for the front door. She had almost made it down the last stretch of hall when she heard a loud explosion and the entire house shook. Katrina skidded to a stop, imagining the damage to the front of the house. "Simmons won't be happy about that."
"RUN!" Morse's voice shouted in her head, providing the nudge her legs needed to start moving in the opposite direction of the front door, as fast as was humanly possible. The nearest exit would be the kitchen's back entrance, where deliveries were supposed to come. Katrina skidded on the hall carpet as she tried to take a sharp turn, bare feet complaining about a mild rug burn that she had no time to tend to. She burst through the kitchen, slipped across the linoleum and crashed through the back door, almost knocking it from its hinges in her haste. It took mere seconds to cross the green grass of the tiny backyard, then she hit the sidewalk. Pedestrians shouted after her when she bumped past them in her haste, but fortunately the crowds were not too thick and she paid them no heed, merely muttering a curse now and then when her bare feet stepped on something other than smooth concrete.
She tripped, dropping Morse as she reached to brace herself against the landing, and Morse transformed without thinking, running to his friend. A few passersby shrieked and pointed, but before anyone could approach Katrina or call for help in dealing with the strange, spider-like creature that a normal phone had turned into, the girl had vanished down the street, creature in hand.
Where should I go? Katrina didn't want anyone to get hurt because of her, but at the same time, in the middle of a city, a crowd would be the best place to get lost in. However, with the scanning technologies Cybertronians possessed, they could track her even within a crowd. She needed to get help. But the police would be no good, she had no friends she would be willing to put at risk for harboring her – and few who would offer such a service, anyway – no family save for Simmons, now that his mom had happily retired to some place warm and sunny, no way to contact her guardian who would be horrified to return and find their home damaged and deserted.
Out of the city, then. Katrina dug in her pocket and found a few bills. Not much, but perhaps enough to a taxi to the suburbs. She looked around for a suitable ride and dove into the backseat, all but tossing the bills at the driver.
"I need to get out of the city," she begged.
The drive looked at her askance, then at the hundred and some odd dollars she had handed over, and hit the gas before she had even finished buckling her seatbelt. No longer running, Katrina took a few deep breaths to calm her aching lungs. Her gaze darted from the street ahead, to the sidewalks on either side, then behind her before moving forward again. Body poised to react at the first sign of pursuit, she almost missed Morse tapping against her neck for attention.
"What is it?" she asked aloud, before realizing her mistake.
The driver glanced back, thinking she had spoken to him, caught sight of Morse, and frowned. "What's that?"
"A robot," Katrina said, moving a protective hand up to Morse. "Haven't you seen one before?"
"It's not one of those aliens from outer space, is it?" he asked suspiciously. "I don't want anything to do with that lot."
"Not all of them are bad-"
"Don't matter to me, I don't trust creatures like that." He squinted again, then a loud honk from the car behind him got him to turn around and continue driving. "It's just a robot?"
"Yes," Katrina said. "Created here, on Earth." Which was true enough, since the AllSpark's power had brought an Earth phone to life to form Morse.
That seemed to satisfy him, and the rest of the trip was made in peaceful silence, though Katrina's heart rate still remained high as she departed the taxi. She thanked the driver, then headed deeper into the suburbs, taking the fastest route to the open country, where she might have an easier time hiding and casualties would be less likely. Her guardian would have a more difficult time finding her, but Katrina would find some way to contact him. After all, someone had answer their phone if she called often enough. Katrina tried not to think of reasons why no one had answered her first attempts.
A whistle caught Katrina's attention, and she glanced in the direction it came from before catching herself. The group of teenage boys grinned at her, and Katrina realized what a picture she must be, dressed in grey sweats, bare feet cut and bleeding, her hair a windswept disaster. She glared at them, and moved on. When they made an attempt to follow her, she quickened her pace, then came to a sudden stop and whirled around.
"Back off." Her voice rang with an air of command, mimicking the tone she had heard Prime use before when dressing down the twins.
Pausing, the group shared a look of surprise, then grinned at each other and kept coming, one reaching toward a pocket. Morse let out a shrill of protest and Katrina took the hint, tossing her friend like a projectile at the armed boy. He stared at the small spider-like form clinging to his shirt for a moment, then screamed as Morse's sharp legs stabbed through the fabric and into his skin. Grabbing the mech's body, the boy tried to drag him off, but Morse's body was made of stronger materials than the phone he had originated from, courtesy of the AllSpark's power, and Morse held his position tight. The boy's companions stopped in their tracks, watching Katrina uneasily in case she had more painful things to throw.
"Back off." Katrina repeated, reaching into a pocket, and they turned and ran. She watched them for a moment, then turned to the boy still struggling with Morse. "Stop moving." He froze, twitching a bit from the pain, which had drawn his face into a tight mask. "Morse."
Pinging sounds accompanied the mech as he jumped from his position, landing in Katrina's waiting hands. Screaming, the boy drew his blade and dove forward. In one smooth move, Katrina dropped, avoiding the blade as she swept a leg out and knocked the boy off his feet. He hit the ground with a loud thump and a grunt of pain, dropping the knife, which Katrina snatched at once.
"Nice blade," she said. "I'll keep it for now. If you or anyone else you know bothers me while I am traveling through these parts, I'll return it to you, wrapped neatly in your ribs. Understand?"
The boy scowled, but nodded.
"I am going to walk away now, and you will lie there until I'm out of sight, or my little friend won't be as gentle with you as he was before." Katrina waited for any sign of protest, but the boy lay still and silent, staring at her, and she turned and marched away, the knife gripped tightly in her hand. Not much of a weapon, but it at least made her feel a little safer than she had been before, however false that security was.
"Did I do well?"
"Yes," Katrina said, reaching up to pat Morse. "Are you hurt?"
"They are not strong enough to hurt me."
Katrina felt a surge of relief. Despite the relative peace she had been living in, she still sometimes had flashbacks to other times, less peaceful, including the time she had thought she had lost Morse forever... Shuddering, she shoved that memory back down into the dark place where such memories were kept and continued walking.
"Where are we going?" Morse asked.
"Away from the city." After that, I'm not sure where. Katrina had no map, no compass, Morse had limited access to the internet, but any trace of activity online might be monitored by Soundwave. Katrina closed her eyes for a moment, remembering the look in the silver mech's eyes when Frenzy chose to join her instead of leaving with his creator. Does he hold a grudge for that? From what she had heard, the mech rarely showed any sort of emotion.
"We should find the Autobots."
That made sense, since whatever had broken into Simmons' home had certainly not been on the good side. "Keep calling Simmons, Dutch, Sam, anyone you can think of. Oh, have you tried the Witwickys?"
"No." A soft ringing sound came from the mech as he placed the call to their house phone. It struck the answering machine. "Sorry, we can't take your call right now. Please leave a message or try our cell number..." Morse recorded the number, then hung up before the message tone beeped. He tried the cell next. "Katrina." His body morphed into a cell phone shape as Katrina reached to grab him.
"Hello? Who is this? If you're selling something, we're not-"
"Hi Mrs. Witwicky, it's Katrina."
"Katrina! Hello, dear, how are you doing? You haven't called in ages. Is everything okay? That crazy agent man taking care of you? Tell him I'll take my baseball bat to him again if he isn't-"
Katrina cut her off before the rambling could continue. "Mrs. Witwitcky-"
"Judy, dear, how many times must I remind you?"
Gritting her teeth, Katrina started for a third time. "M-I mean, Judy, have you heard from Sam recently?"
"He just left." The sudden panic in the woman's voice made Katrina's stomach twist. "Is something wrong? Is he hurt?"
"I don't know. What do you mean, he left?"
"He went to talk to his girlfriend – apparently they had a fight." Mrs. Witwitcky still sounded far more stressed than she should have been. Granted, the woman tended to be high-strung, but Katrina's suspicion ticked up a few more notches.
"Where are you? I thought Sam moved to D.C."
"On a road trip." Hesitation filled the woman's voice. "He asked us to get out of D.C. as fast as we could, so we're leaving now. He wouldn't say why."
Katrina scowled. "Something to do with the Autobots?"
"I don't know. He looked worried." Mrs. Witwicky sighed. "I know he's a grown man now, but he's still my baby, you know? I just want him to be happy with his girl and die of old age."
Nodding, even though the woman couldn't see the movement, Katrina wondered if she could get more information from the woman, and decided it would probably be futile.
"If you see Sam, please tell him to call us. Just to let us know he's okay."
"I will," Katrina promised, and signaled Morse to hang up. "Call Sam." She listened to the ringing and hoped the call would go through this time.