Disclaimer: Transformers and all related intellectual property belong to Has/Tak and IDW Comics. I make nothing from this.
Rated M for violence and thematic elements, but mostly for swearing.
Ariadne's Thread
"It is our choices that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities." –J.K. Rowling
Chapter One: Monstrosity
Timothy Carter itches to shoot something. It's 2:18 in the morning. The highway is slick with rain but the left two lanes are clear and there's no reason for the prick behind him to be tailgating. He's about three feet from Tim's bumper. It's close enough for Tim to feel the tingling on his plating and it's driving him nuts.
He's already going ninety miles an hour. Advanced robotic shell or no, if he goes any faster he could lose control and slide off the road and wrap himself around a light pole.
Goddamn son of a bitch, he thinks.
Tim would probably survive it. It takes a lot to really hurt him these days. His outer body? Not so much.
The hell is everyone?
The inside of his head is quiet. The voices are gone. His teammates, headquarters, even the Hub's voice are silent. It's weird. Especially the last one. Tim isn't used to being alone in his head anymore.
((Guys?)) he sends out along his comm line. ((Come on, someone answer me. It's Carter. Hello? Anyone?))
No response. The frequency is dead.
The guy behind him inches up. He's two feet away. Tim considers slowing down and letting the punk eat it. But he can't raise anyone. Can't call for backup. And he can't afford to trash this body.
He can see the other car as they pass beneath a streetlight. He's got cameras embedded in his metal skin, wired right into his brain. Tim recognizes it: a Lamborghini Aventador, just like him. This one is red, though, to Tim's yellow.
The windows are tinted. Tim can't see the driver's features, just a vague silhouette.
Is this some sort of rich asshole secret-handshake kind of thing? he thinks.
The rich asshole inches up.
Tim can shoot him. He's got a rack of missile launchers folded into the back of his car form. It'd take a second to shove a rocket right through Rich Boy's windshield. It's a nice thought. Tim can see it happening. But he's pretty sure blowing up a car on a freeway through downtown Chicago is a bad move, likely to get him noticed and by the wrong people.
Rich Boy's turn signal comes on. He pulls to the left and creeps along Tim's side. Water from the road pelts Tim's undercarriage. Rich Boy levels off. They're both going ninety-two. The passenger side window rolls down.
Oh, what now?
The driver stares. It's some kid with dark, spiky hair. He just sits there, eyes fixed on Tim. He doesn't look away, doesn't glance at the road ahead. Just stares, face blank. And then his head swivels forward with no change in expression. The window rolls back up.
The fuck? Tim thinks. The asshole hadn't even blinked. Not once. Creepy bastard.
The red Lamborghini throttles its engine. It jumps forward, pulls out ahead. The right turn signal comes on and it cuts in front of Tim.
Oh come one!
Red lights flare. The asshole slams his brakes.
"Shit!" Tim says.
He twists to the left. Red fills his vision. He's going to hit. He can't avoid it. He's going to cream the other car and he's going to wreck himself and then he'll be fucked because no one's answering his comms and he's not sure there is anyone to answer them—
Something small and shiny drops out from the red car and onto the street. It clatters beneath Tim. A flash of brilliant white and Tim burns.
He screams.
Pain rips through him, tears at every nerve ending. He can't see. He can't hear. All he knows is the agony.
And then nothing.
Wet. Wet undercarriage. Rain pattering on his frame. Water dripping, running down his tires. The night air is cool. Tim is curled up in the dark. His eyes are open. He blinks them to be sure. They're open but there's no light. He stares into the dark interior of his robotic shell. A foot of machinery and armor separate Tim's human face from the outside. He blinks again.
Why can't I see?
He tries to move his arms. Nothing happens. His real arms—the human-sized ones, anyway—are twisted up somewhere around his ears, locked into the frame of the car. He knows that. But the other ones, the big, robot arms that make up a good portion of the underside of the car, they're not responding.
Oh shit, he thinks.
He's stuck. He's stuck in the shell and it's not working and why in god's name can't he see?
His ears work just fine. Enough to catch the shush of tires on wet pavement.
What? he thinks.
They're big tires, four of them, coming toward him. A car, maybe. Except that he can't hear an engine.
Come on, come on! The visor needs to come back on. He needs to see outside.
The red car. It dropped something, that silver thing. It dropped it beneath Tim and now he can't see or move and there's something next to him, only he can't hear it anymore and shit, this can't be good. He needs to get the hell out of here. He needs to freaking see—
The visor over his eyes comes on. Soft blue light washes over his face, lights the small space his cyborg body is tucked into. It links into the cameras.
The highway is dark. The streetlights are off. He's stretched halfway across two lanes, pointed in the wrong direction. The streets are quiet.
The red Lamborghini is six inches from his right side.
"Motherfucker!" Tim says.
The red car jerks back. It moves without the rumble of an engine. Tim's limbs turn to slush.
Oh god, no.
It's not a car. It's not—
The back half breaks apart. What should be an engine cover splits down the middle. Two halves shift forward and flare out. Something rises out of the back of the car. It's about three feet long, a spinning barrel of gleaming silver. The air hums.
"Oh fuck," Tim says.
He tries throwing himself forward. His body won't respond. His tires lock up. He needs to go, needs to run.
He knows that sound.
He's staring down the barrel of an enormous, alien cannon. The red car isn't a car at all. He's going to die here, on a highway in goddamn Illinois if he doesn't get his ass in gear and move.
His tires lurch. He rocks back.
Go! Go!
The red car—the alien—snarls something at him. It isn't in English.
Go! Go, goddamnit!
His back wheels spin. Water sprays behind him. Red darts forward, as if to hit him. His front wheels catch. Another blast of sound from Red but Tim doesn't care.
He can see. He can move.
He can run.
He floors it. He's headed in the wrong direction. Three lanes of empty asphalt and he can see headlights in the distance, headlights behind as Red comes after him.
The radar hardwired into his brain tries desperately to read his thought patterns. Only nothing happens. The plastic visor over his eyes doesn't change. The cameras work, he can see the road. But that's all. He can't connect.
His comm-link, radar, targeting systems, everything. They're all dead.
Fear slithers in his guts.
The silver thing; whatever Red hit him with, it's knocked out all of his communications.
Oh god.
Ahead and to the left a lane veers away. It's an off-ramp. Tim twists. The rain coats the road; his tires leave the pavement. The world blurs as he spins. When it stops, he's looking down the ramp. A squeal and a flash of red as the alien whips after him.
Tim takes off.
He reaches the bottom of the ramp, catches a flash of pale blue. A truck horn honks. He cuts to the right; his left side comes off the ground. The truck blares past, inches from smearing him all over the road.
Shit!
No time. He floors it.
There's no other traffic. Headlights veer onto the road behind him. Red is coming. Tim speeds up.
He can't access his GPS. He has no idea where he is. He's coming up to a cross street. He turns right again, jolting up and over the sidewalk. An alley to the left. His sides scrape the walls. A dumpster sits at the end. Tim doesn't stop, he doesn't slow. He plows right into it. The dumpster crumples. It goes flying out into the street. Tim hears a crash, see's the smashed hood of some white car as he flies past.
Go, go, go!
Headlights behind him again. Red isn't even bothering to fake the sound of an engine.
Tim cuts left. Another cross-street, another turn. He clips the side of a light pole. A handful of cars on the road. Tim screeches onto the sidewalk and cuts around. The traffic light ahead is red. He ignores it.
To the right he sees a glimmer of reflected light. He can smell water. It's a river.
Before Red can find him again he turns, cuts down another alley, twists around to slip behind the backside of a strip mall. The left side is lined by a chain-link fence with dirty white, plastic strips woven through it. Grass grows up through the cracks in the pavement. He hits the end of it and turns left.
He's on the border of a residential area. The nearest lawn is cluttered with junk, the grass long and wild. The owner has parked a pickup truck on the road. Tim creeps up, lights off, and parks behind it. He waits.
Less than a minute later and light filters through the fence, moving slow. If Tim had breath, he'd be holding it. The light moves along the fence. He can't hear a thing. No low growl of an engine. Just a shadow moving in the alley.
A red nose edges out into the street. The car stops.
Come on, he thinks. Keep going. Keep going.
Thirty seconds pass. Red doesn't move. Tim thinks he can feel his armor tingling. Inside the shell, his face is damp. His eyes sting.
Red slips out. It turns right, toward the main street, away from Tim.
Tim almost sags in relief.
The alien waits at the road and then takes off to the left. Half a second later and it's gone.
Oh, thank god.
He's got to get out of here, out of Chicago, out of Illinois. He's got to find the others. He's got to figure out how to reboot his comms, his radar.
Tim backs out. He keeps to the side streets, past dark houses and empty porches. He finally hits the main road again and turns right, backtracking on himself.
Three minutes later and he spots the glimmer of water again. He turns toward it. The strip-malls disappear, replaced with bigger buildings, warehouses. Up ahead he sees what he thinks used to be a grain silo. It's a tall building. All the windows are busted out. The sides are sprayed with graffiti. It's right on the river's edge.
Next to it is a bridge. Tim pulls off the road and into the dirt lot which had to be the parking lot. The edge is lined with old concrete dividers, but there's a gap in between them. A dirt path runs through them and slips beneath the bridge. There are no lights under there. The spot is hidden from the street. It's perfect.
Tim parks beneath the echoing roar of cars. The water swooshes softly below.
He digs through his mind. He knows he's got a diagnostics program in here somewhere. If he can find it, get it going, maybe he can fix himself. Maybe he can bring up the internet, a map, get the hell out of this place.
He hears a quiet crunching. His rear cameras catch a flash of something shiny.
What?
A set of lights blast on. Tim yelps as his rear optics blow out.
Red.
Tim slams himself forward. It's too late. Something smacks into him. He skids and slams his brakes. Dust flies up. Movement as the red car spins around, lining up for another shot.
"Fuck!" Tim says.
He tries to reverse, only the dirt lot ends in grass and then slopes down, into the water.
He jumps forward. Red clips his back bumper.
The path, the path, he has to get to the path.
A humming in the air and Tim feels it in his teeth. A beam of hot blue shoots past him, inches from his nose. The heat blisters his armor. It hits the path ahead in a burst of steam and chewed up earth. Tim skids to a stop.
Just as Red crashes into him again. He spins. The world blurs.
When his vision comes back he finds himself staring at the river again. Tires crunch in the dirt. And then silence.
Goddamnit!
He scoots forward and turns. Red sits on the access path, hood facing him. Its cannon is out, pointed at him. It just sits there.
"What the fuck!" Tim says. "What do you want?"
The red alien doesn't respond.
"Come on, you bastard!" he says.
Nothing.
The fuck is it doing?
Tim turns his wheels to the left. The gun on the back of the red car twitches.
"Oh, come on!" Tim says.
Silence.
"Okay. That's it."
A whirring grind rattles through him. His door panels pop off and rotate up as pieces of his undercarriage realign themselves into fingers. His front half splits down the middle and he's already reaching out with fully formed hands to lift himself as his legs shift into place. The last thing to appear—always the last—is his head, sliding up from the back of the Lamborghini. For the first time in a week, Tim stands on two legs as a giant, yellow robot.
His right arm changes, splitting apart and jumbling out to form a gun of his own. He points it at the car. A red cross-hair pops onto his visor. His weapon systems are working.
Red hasn't moved.
"Well, come on then," he says.
For a long moment, the other robot doesn't respond. It just sits there, silent. Then it shifts. The gun folds back in. The outer frame breaks apart as the thing changes itself and climbs to its feet.
The robot is about Tim's height, maybe fifteen feet tall. It's bulkier than him; it's got larger arms. It's mostly red and silver, with some splashes of black thrown in around the head, hands, and groin. It has a helmet with a pair of stubby horns on the sides. It almost looks silly, except that the whole thing is thick and solid, all sharp angles.
It just stands there, staring at him. It hasn't drawn any more weapons.
"What are you looking at?" Tim says.
The robot tilts its head to the side and says, "You don't recognize me, do you?"
Tim snorts. It sounds strange, synthesized.
"Should I?" he says.
It's hard to tell on the alien face, but Tim thinks the thing scowls at him. Tim eyes the dirt path leading to the road.
"What do you want?" he says.
The robot smiles.
"You're one of those 'Headmasters,' right?" it says. Before Tim can answer, it says, "I need to ask you a few questions."
"The hell you do," Tim says. His gun whines. He takes aim.
"Hey, calm down," the robot says, holding its hands up and to the side. It wiggles its fingers. "See? No weapons."
"Yeah right," he says.
The red robot is still smiling. "Listen, I just came to talk to you. Now you can calm down and we can get this over with or you can try—and I emphasize that point—to shoot me and run off. You'll miss and I'll have to track you down again and when I find you, Timothy, I will not be happy."
"What did you say?"
The robot stares at him for a second and says, "You want me to repeat that whole thing again?"
"How do you know my name?" Tim says.
Red's smile turns into a grin. "Oh. That. I had a chat with Gordon. You remember Gordon, don't you? He's one of you, another Headmaster?"
"What the hell does that mean? Where—"
"You lost contact with everyone, didn't you." It isn't a question. "About three days ago you woke up in a scrap yard or on the side of the road and you haven't been able to reach anyone. You figured you'd hang around here, try to find one of the others. Only you haven't had any luck. You're all alone."
"How… who are you?"
"Answer my question and I'll answer yours."
Tim glances behind the robot. The dirt road isn't that far. He figures he'd have a fifty-fifty chance of getting past the red bastard. But he can't navigate, can't even tell where he is.
"What was the question?" Tim says.
"You came here from Tampa," Red says. "No, don't bother arguing. I've already been there. Nothing but a burnt-out husk. Whoever you work for made sure nothing was left."
What? Tim thinks. But—
"I know, I know. 'It can't be true! They wouldn't abandon me'!" The high-pitched mockery is even worse on a synthesized voice and Tim can't stop himself from shuddering. "It's gone. Kaput. Zip. Nada. Now, I know there's a back-up facility, another headquarters. I need to know where that is."
What the hell is it talking about? The warehouse burned down? What's going on?
"Who the hell are you?" Tim says.
"Uh uh. Not until you answer me."
Something has happened, something bad. And he has no idea what it is. His memories are screwed up. The last two weeks are a fragmented blur.
The robot knows, he thinks. It's standing there; its arms have dropped back down to its sides. So far it's made no move towards him. Still, something is off. Something isn't right.
"Why are you alone?" Tim says.
The robot's expression doesn't change. Tim still senses a shift. Maybe it's the way the thing's head lowers. Or maybe it's the way the shoulders tense. Suddenly, even though it's smiling at him, the robot looks a lot more menacing.
"Come on, Timothy," it says. "It's not that hard. Just tell me where the other headquarters is and you walk away."
Tim looks around, tries to spot another low shadow, another of the robots. Because these things don't travel alone. They don't do this. They hide. They skulk around in the shadows.
How the hell does it know about Machination? How did it find me? How did it find the others? What—
Something clicks.
"You said you talked to Gordon," Tim says.
"Yeah."
"What happened to him?"
Something cold flickers in the alien's eyes. It lunges at him. Tim unfolds the missile launchers over his shoulders and fires all three at once. Red tucks to his right and rolls. Tim backs away, firing his rifle the whole time.
The missiles detonate. The world turns white. The blast rocks through his body. Half a second later, his eyes come back on. All he sees is smoke and dust and gravel pattering to the ground. He tracks to the left and down.
Movement!
Tim's rifle jerks down but it's too late. Red is already coming up and even as Tim backpedals, the robot grabs his arm. Its other hand clamps over Tim's face. Tim is pulled forward as his face is pushed back. Everything tilts. He freezes. Then he hits the ground.
"Aaah!"
Red is on top of him. Its hand lifts up and Tim catches a glimpse of silver. The robot grabs him again, twists his head around. Tim kicks, feels his foot hit something. He squirms. A terrible force latches onto his head and begins to squeeze.
"Oh god! Stop! Please!"
The pressure lets up, but only a little.
"You listen to me, you pathetic little meat-bag," the robot says, its face inches away. "I will rip the head right off this cheap imitation and I will squeeze until your fleshy bits ooze out if you don't shut the slag up and hold still."
Through the haze of pain and fear, Tim can hear the very real threat in the robot's voice. It wastes no time. Something jabs into the back of his head. He thinks he screams. His body convulses. He can hear himself rattling. Within the robotic shell of a head, his cyborg body spasms. Even though the robot holds him to the dirt, it doesn't stop his limbs from flailing, his back from arching.
He feels a sudden, sharp pain. A metallic taste fills his mouth. He's bitten his tongue.
That isn't the worst part. He's no longer alone in his mind. Another presence, strange and alien. He can feel it in there, digging around through his memories. It doesn't say anything, not even when Tim screams, while he begs it to stop. It reaches in and a memory surfaces. Tim can see it, a movie playing in his mind.
—He's propped up on the bed, the stumps of his right leg and arm swaddled in bandages. Machines blipped around him. Oprah was on; some special about gastro-bypass surgery. He lay there, listening to the fat chicks complaining about how miserable their lives were and started to laugh. He couldn't stop. Not even when the nurses came in and grabbed a syringe and—
—He could hear cars. It was the first thing he noticed, that distant sound of engines and a whooshing. A highway? Birds, now. Little birds. He tried to open his eyes but something was wrong. He couldn't see. He started to panic, tried to reach up only to find that his arms weren't working and for one, terrible moment, he thought he was back in that truck. But then the diagnostics program kicked in and he remembered: the implants. Dante. His new body. He tried—
((Too far.))
"Oh god! Stop! Please, stop!"
—Dante. The warehouse. The air was thick here. Heavy in his lungs. His shirt stuck to his chest and all he'd done was lay there. Mr. Dante said something as they wheeled him across the pavement towards the large building. He looked up at the man's eyes, shaded by that ridiculous, over-sized cowboy hat—
((No.))
—Inside. It was cooler here. Louder, too. Mechanical sounds. Squealing whirs, a rhythmic thumping somewhere else. Mr. Dante was talking.
"…and at this rate, we can produce one of these bodies every three days," the older man said. "Of course, these are just the first wave—the prototypes, if you will. You'll be starting with one of them. There will be upgrades later, but for now, well, we'll see how it goes."—
((No.))
—His mouth was dry. It was the first thing he noticed. His teeth hurt, too. So did his jaw. His eyes. Everything hurt. And the lights—
((Where is it?))
—His first steps. He almost started to cry but Mr. Dante was standing right there and he didn't want to look like an idiot. He stood on two feet. He could feel them as if they were his own legs.
"How's it feel, son?"
He'd looked up at Mr. Dante and grinned—
((Slaggit.))
—the yellow robot head dangled there, suspended from the ceiling by cables. Plating had been removed and he could see little wires and blinking lights inside. There was something that looked like a camera lens where an eyeball would be, and as he walked by it, the lens turned toward him. It retracted a little, as if trying to focus. There were wires coming out the side of its gaping mouth. Tim thought it looked like the thing was eating spaghetti.
"Right this way, Mr. Carter," the assistant—was his name Beckart?—said.
An alcove opened up in the wall next to the suspended head. Pieces folded out. Beckarm smiled at him and waved him over.
The robot made a strange sound. Tim couldn't tell if it was supposed to be a growl or a whine—
—nearing their target. Two cars ahead. They hadn't been spotted yet. The—
—shit! Where did that bastard go? Where—
"—know at first it's a bit disorienting, but you learn to ignore it."
The Voice was always there, overlapping his mind. He could feel the thing's anger and pain. Its humiliation.
"It's all a façade anyway," Gordon said. "Just some clever programming. Makes them seem alive. But these are automatons. It's all just a trick your mind plays on you. We all learn how to block that out. Now—"
—driving. The target had disappeared off the grid. A sudden pain and his world went white and—
—Christ, it hurt! Worse than anything in his life, worse than anything he could think of. Another voice, too, and some part of him knew it was the robot—
An emotion bubbles up in the back of Tim's mind. Only it's not his mind and it's not his emotion. It burns.
—woke up on the side of the road. His panic. Confusion. He tried the uplink but nothing happened. He couldn't raise anyone. He had to keep himself together. He couldn't freak out—
—dark out. He was getting tired. He'd spent all day driving around, looking for something, someone familiar, calling over and over but no one was responding—
—stumbled out of the alcove in the wall and he ached. Beckman was there to catch him. He groaned and raised shaking hands to his face to feel the metallic covers where his ears should have been.
"How are you feeling?" Berkman said.
"Ugh," he said. He glanced over to where two guys in white lab coats were fussing over the yellow head. It was leaking a shining pink substance from one of the open panels. Though it was physically silent, he could still somehow hear it, in his head, screaming—
Tim's mind goes blank. The Thing in his head withdraws and Tim collapses. He knows he's whimpering but he can't stop. His limbs tremble. He's aware of the robot somewhere to his left. He can't see it. He can't see anything. He knows it isn't in his mind anymore and that's all that matters. He tries to pull his arms and legs in but he's shaking too badly and they won't move.
Far off, he can hear sirens. The rush of cars on the bridge above has disappeared and he thinks he can make out voices, human voices, though he can't understand the words. Still nothing from the robot and Tim forces his hands to come up, palms against the ground. He pushes. His arms shake and it takes two attempts before he can lift himself far enough to pull one leg up. He stops there, fans whir inside his body as it tries to cool itself. Funny, he didn't even notice that he was overheating. He can feeling something on his human skin, on his face. A warm liquid dribbles down around his eyes and nose. But even as he kneels there, he can feel it stop, can feel his tongue knit back together. It's part of the "upgrades" they'd installed when they gave him his life back.
Tim hears a hiss and turns his head. The image comes in fuzzy—his eyes don't want to work—but it's enough for him to recognize the barrel of a gun hovering an inch from his face.
Tim freezes.
"Wha… what are you doing?" he says. His voice sounds raw, broken. Half of it comes out as static.
"I think that's pretty obvious," the red robot says. It doesn't sound much better.
Tim tries to stand but ends up slipping, flopping over to land on his ass. He kicks, scoots back a few feet until his hands plunge into the river.
"You said you'd let me go!"
"I said I'd let you walk," the robot says. Its voice is steady, a flat monotone. The gun on its arm, however, trembles. "I didn't say how far."
The sirens are getting louder. He can definitely hear voices now. People standing up on the road, leaning out over the side of the bridge. The robot seems to notice this at the same time and it looks back, toward the path.
Tim takes his chance. He throws himself up to his feet. His punch misses. He slams into the robot. They both hit the ground and Red reaches up. Its hand snags over one of the sensor fins on the side of Tim's head. Tim flails. Red lifts an arm to protect its face, but Tim isn't aiming for that. He grabs the gun on its arm with both hands and wrenches to the side. The robot shifts. Something wedges up near his waist. It's the thing's foot. The next thing he knows, Tim catapults through the air, ass over end.
He hits the ground and rolls, coming to a stop on his back. He moans.
A scuffle and a crunch as the robot climbs to its feet. Tim manages to roll himself onto his side just in time to see Red pluck the dangling weapon from its forearm. Wires snap and spark and the robot lifts the crumpled gun and inspects it. Then it scowls; it tosses the thing over its shoulder. Tim hears a splash as it hits the water. The robot looks back to him. Panels along its arms slide apart and jumble out, shifting down until the robot's forearms form a solid mass.
Oh shit.
It walks at him, eyes all pale, and Tim knows that if it catches him with those arms just once, it will all be over. He scrambles, stumbles to his feet. He throws himself into his transformation sequence.
The robot lunges. Tim isn't finished—that doesn't stop him from tearing forward, wheels spinning in the dirt. Panels slide over his torso. The world goes dark. Then the screen over his eyeballs lights up. Tim accelerates, fishtailing on the loose path. His rear cameras are blown, he can't see behind him, and he's glad of it, because he doesn't want to see the expression on the robot's face. He reaches the concrete dividers, flies by the building and the piles of gravel and dirt, and finds the driveway.
A smattering of pedestrians scatter as he comes roaring out onto the street, all except for some kid who just stands there and gapes like a retard. Tim cuts a hard right. He sees a jumble of limbs as the kid throws himself back.
He slides. He catches himself and floors it as people shout around him. The road is jammed with cars. Red and blue lights flash ahead. They won't catch him. It only takes a second to hit the first cross-street and Tim almost curbs himself on the left turn, swerving out of incoming traffic and into the right lane.
There's still no sign of the robot. No headlights. No alien shrieks. Just people honking as he tears past. He's going about seventy miles-per-hour; the lights pass by in a blur. Another cross street. He doesn't even slow. He needs to get away, find someplace open, public, where the robot won't come after him.
Up ahead is a dark swathe of trees. It's a park, right in the middle of a stand of houses. Tim veers to the right, into the park. If he can just stay—
He catches a flash of pale blue. He senses something large and dark and fast above him.
Oh— Tim thinks.
Something hits him hard. He registers the impact, the crunch, the hot lance of agony and—
Sideswipe lifts his foot from the twisted wreckage and gives it a few shakes. Fluids spatter onto the road. He grimaces.
There's only one more pseudo-signal left. One more of Sunny's ghosts for him to track down. One more monstrosity to take care of. One more lead. His last chance to find his brother.
Author's Note: Bet you never thought you'd see this sequel. And it only took three years to finish. A very heartfelt thank you to KayDeeBlu who slogged through and beta'd this thing for me. Seriously. She's a trooper (and made of at least 75% awesome sauce).
Next week: Chapter Two-Don't Panic.
(Geek bonus: Sideswipe's theme song for this fic is "In the House In a Heart Beat" from the 28 Days Later soundtrack.)