"Poor Raf. Poor Knock Out." Miko sat on a park bench, hugging her knees. "I hope they're okay."
"I know," Jack said. "I can't believe all this scrap was going on while we were just . . . driving."
They watched June Darby and Agent Fowler, huddled in a close conference with Ratchet. The fact that none of the three had paused to scold them told the kids the severity of the situation.
"But Raf'll be okay, though," Jack said. "He's really smart."
"Yeah . . . and Knock Out's really mean."
"Miko!"
"In a good way! He won't let anyone hurt Raf! That's why he's my arch-nemesis."
"Your arch-nemesis mostly just insults people," Jack started, but let the conversation drop as his mother came over. "Mom? Did you find them?"
"Not yet, but Bill and I did come up with an idea. Are you kids up for a mission?"
"Yes! Of course!" Jack sat up straight and Miko nodded enthusiastically.
"Don't worry, it's not going to be dangerous—"
"Awww," Miko pouted, until Jack jabbed her with his elbow.
"Great, Mom! What's the plan?"
Nurse Darby fanned two seafoam green surgical masks like a hand of cards. "Congratulations, you two just passed medical school."
The alien wasn't transforming.
That didn't bother Bryce at first. The creature was disoriented and injured, he probably didn't know what he was doing. And it was amusing watching the battered car blundering into boxes and nosing at the walls. For a while, at least.
The Decepticon's capture had been . . . anti-climatic . . . compared to what Bryce had imagined. Disappointing, if he was honest with himself. But he reveled in his victory nonetheless.
But he had to show his superiors something more impressive than a half-totaled car. They had to see the potential that lurked beneath that scraped paint.
If it would just transform . . .
"Put a bowl of energon out," he told his subordinates. "And keep your weapons ready."
The third warehouse held miscellaneous supplies, and from them Raf fashioned a fort. It wasn't much—some overturned cots leaned stacked together in a "casual" way in a cluttered corner—but it made Raf feel safer. Not that he'd seen any guards in this building, but better safe than sorry.
Most of the goods crammed into boxes and tipping off of pallets were very old, very obsolete field gear. Raf had added a pair of binoculars to his ensemble, but the most useful find was a box of walkie-talkies. They might even have worked if the batteries hadn't corroded, oozing crusty white powder everywhere.
Raf didn't care. It was their innards he wanted. He had already cracked the plastic shells off three of them, busily twisting their wires together and securing them with electrical tape.
"Fingers crossed . . ." He pressed the little button that had once-upon-a-time been part of Miko's phone and gave a quiet but victorious smile as the rebuilt transmitter produced static and the tiny screen (also salvaged from Miko's phone) lit up.
"This was actually easier than the first build," he continued, pretending Bumblebee was sitting beside him, because it was a little lonely working solo. "It was really tricky figuring out a way for Knock Out to interact with it in vehicle mode. But with physical controls like buttons—hey, what's that?"
'That' was a screen he'd been carelessly swiping past, a record of previous calls the device had made in its short, post-phone life. One number was the garble of digits that Raf had assigned to the microphone that, last he'd seen, had been clipped to Jack's feather boa. It had been called several times, starting with their short tests of the device and ending with the extended call during Jack's—or Aston M. Swift's—speech. That wasn't surprising.
What was surprising was the second phone number, which interrupted the otherwise homogenous list twice.
Raf slowly nibbled the main entree of his MRE (which the packaging optimistically described as pizza) as he stared at the screen, thinking. Raf didn't recognize the one-of-these-things-is-not-like-the-other number, but he'd spent enough time prank-calling with Miko (or at least watching her prank-call and hesitantly suggesting, at intervals, that they stop) to recognize it as an international call to Japan.
"Weird . . . it can't be from Miko's calls, the timestamp's too recent." So it had to be Knock Out. But who would Knock Out call in Japan? And why?
'Go on, Raf,' the spectre of Miko whispered gleefully in his subconscious. 'Find oooout.'
"You're not a ghost, Miko," Raf sighed as he dialed the number.
Swindle sipped his morning energon as he leaned back in his chair and rested his feet on his desk. Despite what Knock Out had guessed, he didn't live on a military base in Japan, though he was in close enough proximity that it would have been, ahem, awkward if any Autobots had come snooping.
No, Swindle had acquired an adjacent three-story building (through perfectly legal means), gutted the interior, and made himself a comfortable, Cybertronian-scaled home. The subpar steel he'd sold to a Chinese bus company had funded the custom-built furniture, a series of small but persistent embezzlements had financed the washrack, and a deal he'd cut with the Vehicon in charge of Earth's only active energon mine—a small operation forgotten by the Decepticons and never detected by the Autobots—provided him with as much energon as he could drink. The windows were fitted with high quality blinds to discourage prying eyes, although they did prevent much natural light from coming in. Too bad; Swindle liked the warm rays of Earth's little yellow dwarf star. But safety first. Maybe he could install a skylight.
As he was contemplating the ceiling, his console buzzed with an incoming comm, one routed from the human's satellite systems. Swindle briefly glanced at the caller ID before answering.
"Hey K.O., how'd it go, babe? I pulled out all the stops for you."
"Hello?" said a hesitant young voice. "Um, this isn't . . . K.O. . . . but I know him."
Wow, Knock Out really had gotten in deep with the Autobots if he was buddying up to humans.
Not that Swindle objected to humans, they had a lot of great traits: they were grasping, self-serving, and easily bought off. Swindle had hundreds on his payroll, a few who knew he was an alien (and were well-paid to keep their mouths shut about it), a lot who'd never met him and never would. But just because he took advantage of the native workforce didn't mean Swindle was thrilled about Knock Out giving out his very confidential comm code to an unauthorized organic.
"Whoops, wrong number kiddo. Byyye."
"Wait! Knock Out's in trouble!"
"Yeah?" Swindle paused, his finger hovering over the button that would cut off the comm. Maybe there was a business opportunity here. "Put him on the line."
"I can't, the government kidnapped him! He's stuck in a warehouse and—" The kid paused, then said in halting, barely intelligible Cybertronian, "And they know what he is."
"Wow, what a crazy collection of sounds! Which I certainly don't understand. What's your name, kid?"
"Raf . . ."
"Nice to meet you, Raf. You can call me Sam. Your good buddy Sam. Knock Out's good buddy Sam. I'd love to send over a couple guys to help, but they're gonna want some compensation. That's fair, right? So just toddle over to Mommy's purse and grab her credit card—"
"I'm hiding in a warehouse in the middle of nowhere! I don't have money!" Raf's voice cracked. "I can . . . I can build you something."
"Sorry kid, I need a little more motivation than macaroni art."
"I can build tech, I can invent something, ask Ratchet if you don't believe me—"
"Let's shelve Ratchet for the moment." Swindle definitely needed to discard this phone number. He just hoped he wouldn't have to move. He had several boltholes set up across the planet, but this one was the most homey. "Why don't you tell me what you need? Guns?"
"I don't—I don't how to shoot a—"
"Okay, so you need someone to do the shooting for you. No worries! I can have mercenaries swarming the place in no time. I recommend hiring twice as many as the number of armed enemies you're facing. Just give me a physical description of anyone you don't want dead."
"I don't want anyone dead though? I just want to save Knock Out."
"Aww, an idealist. That's great. No problem, Raf, I can outfit 'em any way you want. Rubber bullets? Sure. Bean-bag guns? Sure. But," Swindle leaned back in his chair, "it's gonna cost more. Your enemies probably aren't gonna be as accommodating and it costs money to train new guys, you know?"
"No mercenaries!" Raf said, sounding both firm and frantic. "Please—Sam! I just need a ground-bridge!"
"Again with the crazy lingo. Not sure what a 'ground-bridge' is but I can tell you that I don't have access to one. But if I did , I'd charge a pretty penny to activate it. What are your coordinates? I'll run an estimate for you."
"I don't know them," Raf admitted. "I've looked at a bunch of boxes and papers but nothing has an address."
Aw, what a waste of time. "Well, let me know if you figure it out, kid. Me and K.O., we go way back. I'd be glad to help. For a price."
Agent Fowler understood that it was impolite to actually 'drive' a sentient alien vehicle, but he kinda wished he had the distraction. Instead here he was twiddling his thumbs in Ultra Magnus' cab, useless a sleigh on the Fourth of July.
"You've been quiet, Agent Fowler."
"Just thinking. Hoping this boils down to General Bryce going rogue. The way he's been behaving, it seems too risky for the higher-ups to endorse. But . . . with the Decepticons defeated, they don't need the Autobots like they used to."
"They should still honor their agreements."
"Sure they should. But there's a lot of blank space between 'should' and 'will.'" Fowler tapped his fingers on the arm rest of the driver side door. "What'll Optimus do if they straight-out refuse to hand his guy over?"
"Is that likely?"
Fowler frowned in thought as the scenery slid by. "No. I think they'll play dumb. Make excuses for Bryce if he's providing 'em something of value, 'Oh no he couldn't possibly be doing anything wrong.' But they aren't gonna risk a war for this guy. We just gotta make things too hot for him."
"Good news." After a moment Ultra Magnus added, "To answer your question. If they directly refused to hand over Knock Out, I believe Optimus would continue to negotiate, hoping for a peaceful outcome."
"That's nice, but it's not gonna give him much leverage. Maybe tell him to keep that under his helmet."
"His 'helmet' is not removable, Agent Fowler."
"Good to know."
June Darby waited patiently as Ratchet parked, pulling up beside Ultra Magnus in front of McKinley Military Base. Bill Fowler climbed down from Magnus' cab as June slid out of the ambulance. A sunset painted the sky and the first stars were just coming out.
"Well, here we are. They didn't give me any details on my big 'special assignment', but I'm guessing it's paperwork." Agent Fowler made a face. "I'll put in a good word for the Autobots if the opportunity arises, though."
"Don't worry, I'm sure you'll be back to 'bot-wrangling soon enough," June said, giving him a peck on the cheek. "You're the only one with the touch."
"Ep-ep-ep," Ratchet interrupted. "May I point out that we Autobots are wrangling you humans more often than not?"
"Don't know what you're talking about, Ratchet," Miko said cheerfully from the passenger seat. (Jack, being less likely to fiddle with Ratchet's equipment, had been assigned to ride in the back.) "We've pulled your aft outta the fire sooo many times."
"Let's say we've all sown our fair share of havoc," June said.
"Hrm."
"Except Ultra Magnus," she amended. "So, Bill—directions?"
"Right. See that little road around the back of the building?" Agent Fowler gestured. "Follow it until you see a light blue building with grey arches above the top row of windows. That's the military hospital."
"Got it." June hopped back into Ratchet's drivers seat. "Get into those scrubs, kids."
"I just hope you know what you're doing," Ratchet said, his grumble betraying concern as he drove the humans around the hospital, into the ambulance bay.
"Don't worry. The battlefield may be your turf, but this is my turf," June said, picking up a clipboard. "Follow my lead, kids. And act confident."
"Got it, Mrs. Darby!" Miko said, snapping a latex glove onto her hand dramatically (and unnecessarily.)
"Right," gulped Jack.
His mother led them down the corridors. Her walk was different, in these tiled corridors. More business-like, brisker. Doctors and nurses passed by, none of the wiser to their infiltration.
Since stealth seemed safest, Jack thought he'd have a heart attack when his mom actually stepped into the path of a fellow orderly.
"Excuse me, but I'm looking for a recent check-in, a car crash victim transferred from NYC. The name is—" She frowned at the clipboard, pursing her lips. "Well, I'd know the name if the doctors would learn to write in something other than hieroglyphics. "
"Isn't that always the way," the other nurse chuckled, shaking his head. "How recent?"
"Earlier today. A soldier from a special forces unit who took a hit around the midriff."
"Oh right, him. Can't remember his name but he's in H wing. H127 I think."
"Thanks." June Darby strode on, the slightest smile on her face.
"Jack." Miko elbowed him. "Your mom's kinda cool sometimes."
"I know," Jack grinned.
The humans had set out a bowl of energon, like he was a turbohound. Despite the insult he parked close to it because it was familiar. It glowed a lovely, luminous blue in the darkened warehouse, lending highlights to Knock Out's crimson paint.
They were still watching him from the shadows. He stared into the energon and waited for something to happen.
What happened was he fell asleep. He'd only had a few hours of rest since bridging out from Autobot base. Now it caught up with him.
His sleep wasn't peaceful. His sub-systems, struggling to keep him awake, pulled him into a half-conscious state from time to time. His optical feed flickered as a dark, cavernous silence and a glowing pool of energon bled into his already confused dreams.
The third time he woke, a human was standing on the other side of the energon, flanked by four others.
He jerked fully awake, rolling backwards. Four gun barrels swung up, at the ready. The human in the middle smiled.
"Good, you're alive."
"Bryce," Knock Out growled, tensing up. "What do you want?"
Instead of answering, the general leaned over the energon. The blue light highlighted his pale skin and gathered under the bags of his eyes. "You didn't drink anything. Aren't you hungry?"
"I thought it might be poisoned," Knock Out said. "Why don't you take a big swig to prove otherwise?"
Unfortunately the organic wasn't stupid enough to poison himself. Bryce dropped into a crouch, forearms resting on his knees and hands loosely clasped as he studied the Cybertronian.
"What a bad attitude." Bryce's smile stretched into a leer. "But I shouldn't be surprised. The Autobots said you'd be stubborn."
Knock Out's spark skipped a rotation. "What?"