AN: Some background. Mike Bailey works at Cosmo Scope Research Center doing work similar to what Rad's father did in the series. Hannah Bailey also works there in the IT department.

Disclaimer: I own nothing.

Chapter 10

Humans, Highwire thought disparagingly, were rather idiotic as whole. Unfortunately, the White family seemed to be an exception to that rule, though Shadrach didn't use that intelligence often enough for it to be of any use. What was the elder White thinking, allowing Rad to be taken from him by a stranger whose face he couldn't see?

After extracting himself from the burning building, Highwire made it to the trees just seconds before Shadrach came storming out the rear exit dragging Mrs. Bailey and Rad along with him. Highwire had breathed a short lived proverbial sigh of relief that his charge was safe. His relief died a quick death when Rad was handed off to an emergency worker whose face was completely obscured by the human's variation of a battle mask. His last sight of Rad before the boy vanished behind one of the emergency vehicles was of Rad still coughing heavily.

Highwire had been on alert then, not liking how quickly the masked stranger had latched onto Rad. His main instinct was to reach Rad immediately, secrecy be damned, but he was struck by a moment of indecisiveness. It lasted only a moment, until he heard Shadrach's voice rising above the chaos, shouting Rad's name.

Indecisiveness gone, Highwire tore off west through the woods hoping Rad would have found some way to mark his path.

***

It didn't take Rad long to figure out just who was under that breathing mask and visor. When his coughing had begun to subside enough for him to regain a sense of his surroundings he realized he was being led down in-between two houses about ten doors down from his own. His father was leading him toward the research center. The mountain it sat on was riddled with cave and hideaways, and was remote enough that they were unlikely to come across any would be rescuers after they passed the town limits.

Jason didn't even flinch when Rad's elbow impacted with his gut. The fireman's coat he still wore cushioned the blow. The brat was struggling, but he wasn't strong enough to break his hold on the boy's arm.

"Let go of me," Rad growled.

Jason scowled and threw Rad up against the wooden fence that separated the houses. He ripped off his helmet and face mask. "Don't talk to me like that, brat," he hissed.

Rad flinched but met Jason's stare head on. "My name is Bradley," he threw back.

"I don't care," Jason growled pinning Rad against the fence. "Now, we're going to go up that mountain to this nice little spot I've got all picked out. And you're going to be a good son and listen to your father, got it?"

Rad resisted the surprisingly strong urge to spit in Jason's face. "Go to hell."

"Close enough," Jason frowned. "And if you even think about screaming—"

"You'll snap my neck and be done with it," Rad finished for him.

"Good boy, now get moving," Jason ordered, releasing his grip on Rad's shoulders and stepping back.

Rad pushed away from the fence and turned in the direction of the mountain. In his pocket he felt Lazerbeak shift. The bird wasn't going to be any use to him if he couldn't get it out of his pocket without his father seeing. Using Lazerbeak as a taser would have to be a last resort. Luckily the little robot had other functions that would be just as useful at the moment.

Mentally visualizing Lazerbeak, he reached down under the guise of brushing the dust off his pants. He felt Lazerbeak through the fabric. His fingers quickly found the panel he was searching for. Rad tapped it three times in rapid succession.

The bird shuddered as the signal was activated.

Rad took his place in front of his father, and walked solemnly toward the mountain.

***

A frenzied search of the immediate area revealed no sign of Rad. While Hannah and Mike cornered a sheriff's deputy to report Rad's disappearance, Shad hung back. Grabbing Carlos's shoulder, he steered the younger boy out of the crowd of morbid onlookers and into old Mrs. Jones's deserted driveway.

"Do you have anyway of contacting Autobots?" Shad asked lowly.

Carlos shook his head. "Not without Sureshock, my Minicon. He's not here."

"What about Alexis?"

"Yeah, if Grindor's with her."

"Ok, how do we get in touch with her?" Shad demanded.

"Call?" Carlos suggested.

Shad sighed. "What's her phone number?" he clarified.

Carlos blinked back at him. "Rad knows it."

Shad froze, allowing his mind to finally catch up with his eyes. Carlos was trembling a little, barely noticeable, and his eyes seemed impossibly wide. "Ok kid, why don't you sit down," Shad told him, looking around for somewhere for Carlos to sit. There was a half flight of stairs leading up to Mrs. Jones's side door. Good enough, Shad decided as he settled Carlos on the middle step.

"Carlos, I need you take a deep breath and calm down, ok?" Shad said as soothingly as he could. Carlos nodded and complied. "Alright," Shad began after the trembling receded. "Do you know Alexis's phone number?"

Carlos nodded. "Two, four, eight, nine, two, five, oh, eight, eight, one," he rattled off quickly as Shad punched the numbers into his cell phone.

"Stay here," he ordered, bounding up the stairs hoping to find a signal for his phone. Standing on the railing he managed to find a weak but usable signal.

"Carlos!" The feminine yell startled Shad, but he managed to avoid falling off his precarious perch by wrapping an arm around a wooden support beam. Still clinging to the beam he looked over his shoulder to see a redhead tearing up the driveway, dragging a clunky electric scooter with her. "Carlos, what's going on?" she demanded, leaving the scooter standing on it's own without bothering to put down the kickstand.

So, this was Alexis and Grindor.

Shad leapt off the railing and landed with a heavy thump, startling Alexis. She stopped short in front of Carlos, fixing a glare on Shad that might have worried him if she were six inches taller and fifty pounds heavier.

"Who are you?" she demanded, reminding Shad of an angry kitten.

"Rad's brother, and you and your friend are…?" he let the sentence hang, nodding toward Grindor.

Alexis's eyes narrowed but before she could form a denial Carlos interrupted. "He knows, Alexis."

She frowned. "How—"

"There's no time. Rad's missing and we need to call the Autobots," said Carlos, recovering quickly. He stood shakily. "Grindor, can you get in touch with Red Alert? He's supposed to be on patrol in town tonight."

"Bebbeapbeap," the scooter replied.

"What have I missed?" Alexis asked.

"Rad's dad is in town. We think he grabbed him in the scramble after the house caught fire," Carlos replied quickly.

"Oh," said Alexis, seeming to understand.

"Beaeaep! Beapbeep beeap beap."

"That was quick," said Alexis.

"What was quick?" Shad demanded.

"Grindor says that Lazerbeak's distress signal is active. Red Alert and Highwire are already on their way to cut them off," Carlos translated, after taking a steadying breath.

"And if Dad sees them coming and decides to cut his losses?"

"Dad?" Alexis asked.

"He won't see Highwire coming, and with the fire Red Alert won't look too out of place," Carlos insisted. "Right, Alexis?"

Alexis didn't answer. She looked between Shad and the fire trucks with a thoughtful look. "What does your dad look like?"

****

Rad stumbled on some loose stones near the tree line.

"Watch it," Jason growled, hauling Rad back up by the scruff of his shirt. "I'm not carrying you if you break an ankle."

"There's a surprise," Rad muttered.

"What was that?" Jason demanded.

"Nothing, Dad," Rad replied. "How'd you set the fire anyway?"

"Does this look like twenty questions?"

"You're passing up a chance to brag about your accomplishments?"

"You're interested in my 'accomplishments'?" Jason threw back with a disbelieving snort.

"More curious than interested," Rad corrected.

"I planted a timed incendiary device in the towel closet while everyone was out today," Jason admitted. "A shame, it was a nice place... Never pegged you for a reader."

"It passes the time."

Jason frowned at his response. Moments passed as they continued walking.

"How'd Shadrach get here so fast?" Jason asked.

"He was already here when we found out you were out."

"Why?"

"I've been having a bad week."

Jason snorted. "No kidding."

Out of the corner of his eye Rad saw a blue blur streaking silently through the trees. "Not as bad as yours is going to be," he murmured.

***

"He reminded me of Rad. I didn't make the connection then, but now…" Alexis frowned. In her defense, the man she'd seen at the firehouse hadn't looked all that much like Rad. The coloring was right. Blonde hair, the same blue eyes, but the resemblance had ended there.

His expression though, how many times had she seen that same look on Rad's face? Both eyebrows raised in an attempt at wide eyed innocence, lips pressed together defiantly, daring her to question him.

"I should've seen this coming," Shad growled.

Carlos and Alexis shared a look. "Did you have any reason to think he'd try anything like this?" Alexis asked.

"Knowing my father as well as I do? Yeah. This is something he'd try," said Shad.

"Well, it's going to be alright now. Once Highwire and Red Alert catch up with them, Rad'll be fine," said Alexis.

Shad frowned. He didn't look reassured.

"They won't let anything happen to him," Alexis asserted. "They always look after us."

"Beapbeeap," Grindor spoke up.

"What did he say?" Shad asked, pinching the bridge of his nose.

"Our ride's here?" Alexis repeated questioningly.

"Beap. Beaapbeap bea," said Grindor, nodding.

"Optimus wants us at the base. Hot Shot and Sideswipe are waiting for us on Maypole," Alexis translated.

Shad shook his head. "We can't leave. The Baileys are already going nuts, if we disappear too…"

He had a point, Alexis conceded.

"Beap beapbepbeap."

"What?!" Alexis asked, shocked.

"What'd he say?" Shad asked. He looked from Alexis's shocked expression to Grindor and back again.

It was Carlos who answered. "He said that we're supposed to bring the Baileys with us."

***

It wasn't spectacular or particularly impressive, but it worked.

Highwire, once close enough, tackled Jason from behind while shouting at Rad to run for the stream. Rad wasted no time in tearing off through the woods, eager to put as much distance between himself and his father as possible, while Highwire remained behind, holding the struggling man down.

Rad covered the four hundred yards to the stream in less than a minute. Years of playing in these woods gave him an edge in that he had no problems leaping fallen trees, ducking low branches, and skirting thick clumps of briars.

He skittered to a stop just before the stream, the leaves on the forest floor sliding under his feet. He looked about, unsure of what to do next. A revving motor drew his attention to the opposite shore where he spotted Red Alert coming through the woods. Upon reaching the water Red Alert forded the stream, pulled up alongside Rad, and threw a door open. "Hurry."

Once Rad was safely seated Red Alert took off, his tires kicking up mud and rocks in his wake.

***

With a painful jab of his elbow, Jason threw off his attacker. He rose to his feet and spun around in time to be thrown back to the ground by powerful push. He landed flat on his back, his head bouncing against the hard ground making his ears ring. Ignoring it, he threw himself back to his feet to stare down his attacker. His rage was only mildly tempered by his confusion.

Before him stood what looked like a blue robot. He briefly considered that it might be someone wearing a bizarre costume, but the thing's torso was too narrow. It's arms and legs were oddly placed, welded to the side of the torso in away impossible for a human.

The creature stared back at him, tilting it's head to the side. It beeped threateningly at him and before his eyes shifted into a bike before speeding off without the aid of a rider.

What the hell?

***

Hannah hadn't known what to think when Shad had come up to them while they were frantically trying to get in touch with Tom, the local police having already dismissed their fears that Rad had been abducted. When Shad insisted that they needed to leave, she nearly snapped at him. Only the look on his face, mirrored by Carlos and Alexis, stopped her. Whatever was going on, they knew something she didn't. Placing as much trust in them as they could given the circumstance, she and Mike followed them.

As they passed Carlos's house, he and Alexis broke away. "We need to get Sureshock," Carlos had said by way of explanation. "We'll catch a ride with Sideswipe. You go ahead with Hot Shot." Then he and Alexis had disappeared into his backyard. Shad had continued on, leading them south along August Street.

They turned left onto Maypole, finding two cars parked on the usually deserted street. As Shad approached the yellow sports car, the front passenger and back seat doors open on their own. Shad slid into the front seat and motioned them toward the back. Hannah got in first, and then scooted over to make room for Mike. Once they were both settled the door swung shut and the car shifted into gear and drove off.

She and Mike had shared a look, both wondering what was going on. First Shad's eerie calm in the face of Rad's abduction, followed by his and the children's strange behavior back at the house. Then their insistence that she and Mike come with them, no questions asked. The names, or codenames, they'd mentioned hadn't escaped her notice either. Thinking back to what Rad had been saying as they fled the house, she realized that 'high wire' was probably someone's name as well. And now there was some pretty advanced technology in the form of one—or more likely two considering the other car still waiting on Maypole—remotely driven cars.

What did this mean when it was all added together? There was clearly more going on than she and Mike had realized. Was Rad involved in something? He'd come home with cuts and bruises a time or two that he'd refused to explain. Mike had written it off as Rad being an accident prone pubescent while she'd suspected bullying. There was that time a few months ago when Rad had come home past curfew and hid in his room for the rest of the night. Since he'd clearly been upset, they'd left him alone for the night deciding that it would be better to talk to him after he'd had a full night's sleep. But the following morning he'd seemed fine and refused to talk about it. Now she beginning to wish they'd pushed the issue more.

"Any word from the others?" Shad asked, seeming to address to the car's dashboard.

"Red Alert's checked in. He's got Rad and is en route to the base," the dashboard responded.

A radio or some other communications device must be built into the car, Hannah thought to herself.

"What's Rad's condition?" Shad asked.

"Good. No injuries that Red Alert can detect," was the response. "He'll do a more thorough exam at the base."

Shad nodded, though Hannah didn't see any cameras that would allow the man on the other end of the radio to see what was going on in the car. Then again, she didn't see anything that could be a communications device either.

She looked to Mike to see what he thought of all of this. His eyes were darting about the car's interior, clearly working something out in his head. What that was, she had no idea.

***

This was insanity, Mike Bailey thought. Clearly he'd been watching too much sci-fi. There had to be some logical explanation for what was going on that didn't involve what his stressed mind was coming up with.

Still, on some level there was a tiny bit of credibility to that train of thought. The unexplained tremors, the strange readings they'd been picking up from the valley, the unidentified objects they'd seen on radar. It was enough to start the conspiracy theorist at the lab abuzz, spouting anything from military experiments to alien invasion.

Then there were the hallucinations a few months back, during the carnival. Some children claimed to have seen advanced robots that transformed into tiny cars. Nobody paid much attention to it since they were only children, though nobody could account for the robots that had been seen marching in the parade— the robotics lab claimed ignorance as to their origins. Then two of his co-workers had backed up the children's claims, but both were now seeking psychiatric help so their reliability was somewhat in question as well. There'd been damage to a giant balloon and a ball cannon that the local authorities had blamed on vandalism. Three local boys had claimed differently, saying a giant, yellow robot had done it. Two of those boys, Billy and Fred, were friends with Rad.

Finally, there was that night not so long ago when he'd overheard Rad talking to someone in the garage. Thinking Carlos had snuck over again, he'd gone to the door to shoo Carlos off since it had been almost ten in the evening. Peering through the partially closed garage door, he'd seen only Rad in the garage. Rad had been sprawled out on his back, staring at the ceiling, talking to his bike. The bike that had mysteriously appeared one day shortly after the earthquake that had marked the beginning of the weirdness. Rad had claimed that he'd bought it second hand from a friend. Mike had stood there for awhile listening as Rad spoke to the bike like it was his trusted confidant. Rad had spoke of his excitement about Shad and Tony's planned visit to High Desert in the fall, of how Alexis was dreading her grandmother's yearly stay, and very briefly of his crush on Carlos. Rad'd even addressed the bike by name. 'Highwire' he'd called it. He went on to discuss their plans for the following day, when they'd meet up with the others at 'the base'.

Mike had assumed that Rad was speaking of a playfort or something. Maybe he and his friends had built a tree house somewhere that they'd christened 'the base'. Now he wasn't so sure about that.

His mind was reassessing all of these events, coming up with a multitude of theories. Each was discarded almost immediately, being too insane.

Because his mind was telling him that this car wasn't being remotely controlled, and whoever Shad was talking to wasn't on the other end of a radio.

***

He'd run the half-mile from where he lost the boy back to his hideout. Quickly, he pulled off the heavy overcoat and pants. Jason only took a moment to appreciate the cool air of the cave against his sweat soaked skin. He gathered the up his meager supplies and slipped out.

Bradley couldn't know for sure where his hideout was, but he knew enough to point searchers in the right direction. And Jason wouldn't put it past his son's new friends to be able to find him here if he stayed. They'd tracked down Bradley quick enough, finding him might be just as easy for them. His fallback hideout wasn't ideal, but it would have to do.

With all of his supplies in a sack, he hurried from the cave and began to climb.

***

The journey to the base was uneventful. The Baileys sat quietly in the back, clutching each other's hand. Shad sat in the front, as calmly as he could given the current circumstances. Other than that apparently the Baileys were about to be let in on the Autobots' secret and the fact that he hadn't confirmed with his own eyes that Rad was unharmed, he had no reason to be tense.

"We're almost there," Hot Shot announced.

Shad sighed. That was his cue. He maneuvered himself around so that he could face the Baileys and took a breath. "Whatever you see, don't freak. We're perfectly safe with them."

"Them?" Hannah questioned as they turned the final bend. Then she gasped.

"Good lord," Mike Bailey breathed.

AN: R&R. About the Baileys. Hannah is sort of what I picture Alexis being like when she grows up. Logical and reason driven. If it can't be proven, it doesn't exist. Mike is more like Rad. He acknowledges the logic in certain things but it doesn't blind him from all the possibilities.