Instability

by Steelfeathers

Post-ROTF. On board the air craft carrier headed back to Diego Garcia, Sam has a slight mental breakdown.

9. Finding Fathers, Losing Friends

Time is relative, according to Einstein. Or at least, that's what Sam thought he remembered from his speed-read of a college astronomy text book. He couldn't remember much from that mental breakdown incident-- most of the knowledge stuffed into his brain had vanished alongside the Cybertronian symbols-- but one of the things he did remember involved the theory that time is only as long or as short as you make it.

Before, Sam had laughed at that. As far as he could tell, an hour was an hour no matter how you looked at it. But when faced with the final day he had to spend with the most important humans in his life, every minute became as precious as gold-- and as fleeting as popcorn on movie night. If only it hadn't taken losing almost everthing that mattered in his life to make him see that Einstein wasn't a crack pot after all.

From the moment he woke up (at 7am, unable to bear wasting one more second on sleep) he had his whole day planned out. It was a simple plan, really-- corral his parents and Mikaela all into the same room (pre-stocked with lots of junk food), lock the door, swallow the key, and refuse to come out until a marine broke down the door. Well, maybe everything but the swallowing the key part. He supposed he could just hide it, instead.

Yet as he quietly slipped out of bed, carefull not to jostle a still sleeping Mikaela, he ran across the first pot hole in his fool-proof plan. Once out in the lighted hallway, it would be impossible to resist reading the sharpie message tattooed into his cast. The night before, when losing his girlfriend had seemed days away (though still a knife of restless agony in his gut), he would have devoured it with his eyes in an instant. But now....

Now, he couldn't bear to read it. He wanted to savor her last written words to him, the way he had wanted to keep Bumblebee's text messages when he'd been convinced that he would never see his best friend again. Even if the words adorning his cast merely formed one long rant about how dorky he was, they would still serve-- like a message in a bottle-- to link him to Mikaela, no matter how great the distance between them. If he could have described it, Sam would have compared it to a homeless kid getting a christmas present with a giant bow on top. The only present they had ever recieved. Perhaps they would carry it around with them for days, simply basking in the glow of having one at all. They might never open it, in fact, so fearful were they of the magic finally ending.

For the moment, Sam settled for wrapping his Bumblebee blanket around the cast, though it was too bulky a solution to use in the long term. Stealing softly from the room, Sam left Mikaela to sleep and went to change his clothes. It was difficult to keep the writing on his cast covered while changing his shirt and washing his face in the tiny sink, but somehow he managed it (though not without soaking the blanket). Dressed in clean clothes, hair brushed, teeth brushed, he no longer felt quite so much like something found sleeping in a cardboard box outside. Rewrapping the soggy blanket around his arm once more, he set off towards the infirmary, carrying the bundled appendage in his other arm like an exceedingly grungy pillow. Hopefully they would have a stash of those shower coverings made to keep bandages dry that he could use as a slip cover.

Though he'd feared that no one would be staffing the infirmary at such an hour, the lights were on within and the door swung open easily at his touch. Not quite brave enough to venture into the labyrinth beyond unannounced, he stuck his head around the doorway and called, "Wilma, I'm home!"

Mirroring his posture, a pony-tailed head leaned back into view around the door of the office, glanced at him, and stared.

"Oh, Sam!" the doctor from the night before (Judy? Jewel? Linda?) called back in surprise. The head disappeared, and a moment later she stepped out of the office into the infirmary proper, waving him in.

At the sight of her rumpled lab coat, a pang of guilt warbled through his chest. "Sorry. Am I interrupting you?"

He hoped not. She was cute, and she looked like she could use a nap. But then again, he had an emergency on his hands. Her eyes went to the blanket around his arm, and she raised a questioning eyebrow. Not quite bold enough to own up to his obsessive need to save a few Sharpie scribbles, he could only give a roundabout shrug in response, hoping that would be enough of an answer.

When she saw that he had no plans to elaborate, she shook her head in answer to his question and motioned for him to follow her to the office.

"You're not interrupting, Sam. I'm just going through some paper work."

"Don't like the slop they serve for breakfast in the mess hall?"

She turned her head to give him a patient smile. "I normally work the graveyard shift, Sam, but right now we're a little understaffed, so most of the time I end up staying longer than I'm assigned to. When you came in I was wrapping everything up and preparing to go to bed," her smile faded, expression becoming quizzical, almost worried, "I expected to see you hours ago, actually."

Sam twitched, and for a moment paused in his stride as he rounded the office door. Apparently, Mikaela wasn't the only one with hidden talents. All women must have had untapped potential as mind-readers; there was no other way she could have known about his spacey, borderline psychotic dilemma of needing to keep his cast covered.

But then she went on, "The pain meds should have worn off long ago, and you left the additional ones I gave you on the bed. So unless you have a stash of illegal narcotics somewhere-- which I doubt, seeing as how you're far too lucid to be doped up-- you ought to be screaming in pain right now."

Brushing the remains of sleep from his mind like cobwebs, he frowned, pulling his bundled arm a little more tightly to his chest. Had she really given him more happy pills to take with him? Kicking his brain into high gear, he combed his memory of the night before and came up with a fuzzy snapshot of an orange pill bottle being pressed into his hand-- and then being promptly abandoned in favor of spamming a moody Bumblebee. Oops.

But then the implications of his own actions hit him, and he slowed to a stop. He had felt the medication wearing off at the end of his chat (knock-down, drag-out, verbal fight) with Optimus, and then had begun to wobble deliriously with the resurgent pain right before he launched himself at the guard aiming to kill at Bumblebee (--stay away from him!--). Whatever Rachet had drugged him with must have packed some serious pain-killing power; the broken bones in his arms still ached, occasionally flaring with a stab of pain, but the agony no longer had his head between its jaws. More like it had shrunken and was now reduced to nibbling at his ankles.

Seriously-- powerful.

Sam paused before her desk, waiting to gather his thoughts while she rooted around in one of the drawers.

"Well, I did get a shot of something really good--" she jerked her head up, eyes widening in surprise before sharpening to narrowed slits of flint. Sam blanched at her look, sorely tempted to kick himself for blurting out the exact words to make him seem like a heroin junky. "No, wait! It's not what you think! This...other doctor, he gave me something for my arm. A 'pain reliever combined with a mild sedative', I think he called it."

The look of hardened fury marring her features didn't change. She shut the drawer with a snap, dropping a haphazardly stuffed folder onto the desk.

"Sam, I would think you were old enough not to let any random guy shoot you up with something that could possibly be illegal or even deadly. If you need something for the pain, you come to one of us-- as in, a licensed medical professional."

Sam took a prudent step back, holding up a hand to ward off another tongue lashing."Woah, hold on! A couple things, okay? One-- I'm not dead, so I don't think it was deadly. Two, I think this 'guy' probably has the equivalent of a medical license where he comes from, and three, I didn't really have any say in the matter. He just did it."

Too late he realized that he shouldn't have referred, even indirectly, to the alien vistor. He remembered Mikaela saying something about Rachet coming to find him to check his arm, and the doctor hadn't seemed too surprised when Mikaela mentioned the robot the night before, but there was always the chance that she hadn't heard them discussing the aliens, hadn't seen Rachet during his quest, and had no idea there were things from beyond the stars squatting in the cargo bay. In which case he was screwed.

Her gaze softened, but only a little. More in gruding acceptance than in relief, however.

"You're talking about that neon robot, right? The one with no concept of personal space?"

A relieved grin broke out over his own face. Crisis avoided.

"Yep. That's the one. He's, like, their medic or something."

"And what prompted this administration of unapproved drugs?"

Gulp. "Uh....I, um, I kinda got into a fight."

"A fight." It wasn't a question; the flat quality to her voice made it a threat.

"Well..." he made a wishy-washy motion with his hand, then fumbled to catch a corner of the blanket that sagged free of its static cling and started to unravel the entire cast shield. "Not really a fight. More like a disagreement over how to handle a tense situation-- but that's cool, because no one hit anyone else and the whole thing ended without any black eyes. But I must have stressed my arm, because it started hurting like hell--"

"Oh dear." She scrubbed a hand across her face, straightening and gathering up the folder. As she strode around the desk towards him, he glimpsed his own name printed onto the tab. "Well, we better go x-ray your arm again to make sure nothing was knocked out of alignment. Come on."

Sam started to protest, started to point out that his arm wasn't blazing with pain, which must have meant that everything was still in place, but decided it probably would result in less bodily injury if he just went along with it.

Once more he sat himself in the hard plastic chair before the portable machine, suited up with a giant lead bib to keep him from turning into a three-headed mutant from the radiation, and lined his plastered arm up under the scanner. Despite his feeble protest, she's insisted on the removal of the blanket, so he endured the entire process with his eyes clamped shut. The machine whirred, spat out a burst of invisible energy at his arm, then fell silent, processing. Hearing the rustling of the doctor's lab coat as she moved to check the results, he called, "Can I have my security blanket back now?"

Her voice came back puzzled. "No. The machine must be on the fritz-- this one didn't come out. Hold on, I'll have to do another scan."

Again the machine clunked and buzzed, and though he knew-- intellectually-- that he should have felt nothing, the flesh still prickled beneath his cast.

With a click and a sighing noise, the machine switched off. "Okay. Now I'm done."

"Great!" He rose from his chair, groping around blindly. "Um, where did you put that blanket again?"

"Here. This will work better at supporting your arm."

Sam opened his mouth to object that he didn't want support-- he had wandered down in the first place looking for some sort of water-proof hair net for casts-- but his objections died in his throat as she slipped his arm through a thick fold of fabric and hooked a strap over his head.

"There."

Cautiously he cracked open one eye, then gazed in relief at the cobalt blue sling craddling his arm to his chest. Perfect.

He glanced up to offer a few embarassed thanks (so obvious, why didn't I think of that?), but found the doctor scowling in puzzlement at the x-ray, holding it up to the light for a better view.

"Something up?"

"This is....very strange."

Alarm bells began to go off inside his head, though the fact that his arm didn't have him writhing around on the floor mitigated some of the instinctual fear that came with doctors saying anything was 'strange'. He sidled up behind her, studying the misty image of his bones over her shoulder.

"What? It looks like an arm to me."

Striding forward, she slipped the x-ray into the crack of the small light board against the wall, flipping the switch to start it up. Ultra white light flooded through the images, causing them to glow. Without a word, she picked up his folder once more, pulled out another x-ray, and stuck it up beside the first.

"This is you from last night," she pointed to the image drawn from the folder, indicating the dark lines where his bones had fractured. "See how clear these breaks are? Like they were drawn with a marker?"

"Yeah...." He still couldn't see where this was going, but her lack of a direct answer sent his heart doing a quick-step inside his rib cage.

"And this is you right now," her finger moved over the one taken moments before, circling the two identical breaks in the air. "See the haziness between the edges of the broken bones?"

He squinted at the images, leaning in for a closer look. The marker edge had attained a certain level of fuzziness, but nothing that would have drawn his attention. He shrugged. "Yeah? So?"

"This fog-like substance is actually thousands of microscopic bone bridges being formed between the two broken halves to reconnect them. Sam," she turned to face him completely, her eyebrows drawing together over the bridge of her nose. "This x-ray shows what a broken bone should look like after at least a week of healing. You've only had that cast on for less than twelve hours."

A shiver of ghostly premonition slithered down his spine, but he restrained it from spreading to the rest of his body by holding onto a logical contradiction.

"Maybe this one is messed up too. You said the other one was," he pointed out reasonably.

But the doctor only shook her head.

"Not likely. This is actually a very clear image, as far as x-rays go. The other one didn't come out at all." She reached around behind the machine, extracting another tinted sheet of plastic. At the sight of it, his good hand went numb and unable to take it from her grasp. He could only stare, dumbfounded, as she held it out for his inspection.

"Maybe your machine is on the fritz?" he heard himself ask.

"Quite possibly. Only interference from another radiation source could make the image come out this way, though. They must be testing a new piece of technology near here," she frowned, obviously not very convinced by her own words.

Sam couldn't nod. He couldn't swallow.

The x-ray still showed his arm. Barely. The image had become skewed, as though it were a reflection in a pond rent by violent ripples. Swirls and eddies of white, like the catacombs of spiders, stretched from one edge to another, obscuring the view of his bones. But none of that caused the floor to drop out from under his feet. None of that sent tremors scurrying down his limbs. No, the true cause of his sudden fear had nothing to do with what the doctor had seen, but what she hadn't seen.

How was she to know that interlaced through the curls of white fog glimmered complex whorls of alien runes?

NNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN

"Okay, Sam. Get a grip. Come back to reality, plant your feet on the ground, think it through. Right."

Spring up from the bed, pace restlessly across the floor. Three steps, turn, repeat.

"This is NOT like what happened last time. Nothing like it at all."

Stop at the door, stare at it for a moment before realizing it is a door, turn and shuffle back to the bed.

"For one thing, I'm not having random spaz moments. There, see? Already not the same. And for another thing, those weren't the same symbols."

Turn to sit on the bed. Flop diagonally across its length, bang head on pillow. Snatch up pillow, wad it into a ball, chuck it across the room. Stand, pace, repeat.

"Not the same symbols. Not the same symbols. Whatever that allspark shard did to me stopped happening after I died and had that freaky dream. I found the Matrix, saved Optimus, done. End of story. No more freaky knowledge, no more symbols."

And just because he could think of nothing better to do, Sam went and fetched his pillow from where he had tossed it into a wall and pitched it back onto his bed.

"So this can't be about me. Whatever that was, it must have come from the Autotbots. I mean, Simmons even said they give off ungodly amounts of alien radiation, so the ship must be saturated with it by now. Makes sense that the machine would pick up on it at some point."

He moved to stand in front of the mirror and played with spiking up his hair for a moment, then stepped closer, braced his hands on the tiny sink, and peered deep into the pupil of each eye. Not even his paranoid mind could imagine that he saw anything but his own reflection printed on their concave surfaces.

"Besides, it only did it that one time. The other two scans came out clean, no problems at all. So it can't be me."

He felt the skin of his face, patted the top of his head, held two fingers to his neck and counted his heart beats, even put his nose to one shoulder and sniffed for BO. Nothing out of the ordinary, except perhaps for needing a shower.

"They scanned me before I even got on the ship. I'm clean-- well, mostly. We're all stewing in their radiation most of the time, so there's usually at least some leftovers to pick up on. That must be it-- I've got enough of it dripping off me that it interrupted the machine. There's nothing freaky going on inside me. Nothing."

He paused, listening to the mocking voices of the walls echo 'nothing' into the silence.

No matter how much he strove to deny it, nothing did not bend broken bones. If he said it aloud enough times, he could probably convince himself that the symbols on the x-ray had been caused by the close proximity of so many aliens leeching radiation into the very walls. (Non-harmful radiation, but still). Miraculous healing could not be as easily ignored.

"There's no wonder drug to fix bones," he whispered past unmoving lips, tugging at his sling. This time, he had no urge whatsoever to pull it aside. Any romance had been killed by unadulterated panic. "Not on earth, at least."

He paused, catching the whiff of an idea, and repeated, "Not on earth."

---and suddenly, listening to his own words reverberate around the inside of his skull, the answer washed over him like a cool, relieving spring.

"Duh! Rachet!" He danced away across the floor, chanting happily 'Rachet--Rachet--Rachet!'. "Alien medical wizard probably pumped me full of a bone-healing wonder drug! Thank you, thank you, thank you! Ha-Ha!"

He tried to jump into the air and click his heels, failed spectacularly, and hopped around on one foot when he stumbled to keep from falling. It all made sense, now-- an overwhelming alien presence had caused the x-ray to fritz, and Rachet's amazing powers of all things medically related had sped up the healing of his arm. He wasn't having a freaky, alien-artifact-related relapse after all. At the moment he felt so giddy he almost ran from the room, waltzed into the cargo bay, and kissed the annoying neon robot right on the lips. Being the confirmed source for his bout of healing almost made up for spilling the beans and antagonizing his parents. Almost.

Striding (skipping) back to his bed, he gathered up his coat and slung it over one shoulder. Whistling slightly (though he was pants at whistling), he all but glided from the room, feeling lighter than he had in days. He wasn't having a relapse. He wasn't going crazy again. Life was good. Now everything would go back to normal; he would kiss the girl, sweep her off her feet, and ride into the sunset where they would live happily ever af--

He froze in the hallway, sputtering whistle dying on his lips.

Every shred of happy-go-lucky giddiness faded and died, drying into sizzling little embers. Not having his brain be hijacked again by freaky alien symbols was fantastic, but it meant diddly-squat when compared with the larger picture. Like a mouse infestation verus an elephant infestation; the elephants were much more adept at wrecking everything in sight. According to Thatcher, he only had until tomorrow morning to say goodbye. Only one day, 24 hours.

In that moment, bending over with the pain twisting like a spear through his gut, he suddenly realized how very grateful he was to Optimus for trying to keep the knowledge from him until the last possible instant. He wouldn't have been able to deal with such pain-- greater by several orders of magnitude than the pain of a broken arm-- for a whole week. It would have destroyed him. He abruptly sympathized with those people forced to bear up under the news that someone they loved only had a few months left to live. How do you cram a lifetime of laughter and love into a few weeks? A few days? A few hours?

Sam knew he needed to get started on his plan to lock them all in the same room immediately. It would be a selfish thing to do, but he felt that he had every right to be selfish, considering. But his promise to Mikaela held him back with a faint glimmer of hope. He was only human, and as a human he couldn't help but want to bring her with him, no matter how much she might have ended up hating him for it years later. There had to be a way, a loop hole, buried deep within military regulations that would give them reason to grant her security clearance. Something to do with the fact that she'd been through every part of mess alongside him, even if she wasn't the one the Decepticons would do anything to hunt down and kill. Maybe if he dug deep enough he could make the case that she needed protection too?

Sorrowful longing not to lose a single moment with his family and his girlfriend directed him to head straight to breakfast (where they would undoubtably be, looking for him), hug them senseless, and proceed to glue himself to them for the rest of the day. And night. But a siren song of hope called him to use at least an hour of two of his remaining time (--too long, no time to spare--) in search of a way to force them to let Mikaela come along.

The offices, he knew from his time with the shrink, were on the third level. So hesitantly, reluctantly, he turned in that direction. Slowly he picked up speed as he moved further and further away from the mess hall until he was thundering down the hallways, crashing through doors and leaping up three steps at a time. When he reached the third level he slowed to a crawl, knowing he had to be sneaky not to get caught in someone's office and thrown out. He tried the knobs of every door he came to, but most of the dinky little offices (unoccupied, their worker bees gobbling down their food) revealed a distressing lack of books, regulation books or otherwise. Where was a stickler for the rules when you needed one?

Finally, the fifth unlocked door he came to eased open into a dark, cramped office indentical in almost every way to all the others on the hall. Except this particular office boasted of a bookshelf along one wall, packed full of books the size of paving slabs and binders with rings as big around as plates. Not a single one of them looked remotely interesting. Jackpot.

Sneaking a glance down the hallway on either side, Sam slipped into the room and closed the door behind him, flicking on the lights. He moved immediately towards the books, thought better of leaving an unprotected door at his back, and pushed the swivel chair tucked beneath the desk under the handle. He'd seen people do the same thing in movies-- though he had no idea how the technique was supposed to work, when the hero needed it a wedged chair had stopped everything from ax murderers to summoned demons. He supposed it would do at least as well at a holding a pencil-pusher at bay.

Now to find a hand book on military regulations. Most of the binders shouldering each other out of the way on the shelves were unlabeled, and he was forced to flip through them to get an idea of what they were about. Emergency protocols. Navigation systems. Weapons maintenance. Personel records. Ship's logs.

As he carefully replaced each dead end back where he had extracted it from the shelf, a niggle of fear began to worm its way through his mind. This wasn't just some harmless prank that would rouse a few chuckles and scolding fingers; for all he knew, some of the information contained within the books and binders could have been top secret, and here was zero-clearance Sam riffling through them without a second thought. If he was caught, he could be charged with all sorts of mind-numbingly terrible things, up to and including spying, since technically he was no longer an American citizen. The bare possibility would have reduced a lesser man to sobbing whimpers, but at the moment Sam felt so completely fed up with all the manure that had been dumped on him in the past few days that he almost felt brave enough to give the President the finger if need be. So rather than dashing from the room in fear, he gamely continued with his search, bouyed by the fact that the door had been unlocked and therefore shouldn't contain anything too sensitive.

At last he hit paydirt. It figured that the heaviest book on the shelf, one that could have served as a counterweight for a crane, contained those things-- such as basic military regulations-- that Sam needed.

With one last apprehensive glance towards the door, he hauled the book to the desk and went to sit down, remembered that he'd used the chair to bar the door, and sat against one wall instead. Bracing himself up with a lungful of stale air, he cracked open the enormous volume and began to read.

After an incalculable span of time spent hunched over the paper and ink monolith putting his legs to sleep, Sam started to suspect that if he read the book in his lap cover to cover he would find exactly what he sought. The problem, however, stemmed from the fact that a book with pages numbering into the two thousands could not be read at a single stretch, or even in a single day. And merely skimming the onion-skin pages yielded nothing of value.

Oh, sure. There were numerous references to security clearance-- the different levels, what each meant, what could be accessed at various times by various people, how clearance worked in emergency situations, how to screen someone for clearance. When he saw the headings over the last two he cheered silently, confident that contained beneath them would be a veritable 'Here's how to solve the Mikaela problem' paragraph, written especially for desperate boyfriends. Not only was he convinced that the situation in general could be classified as an 'emergency', the topic of security screening should have listed special circumstances for the granting of clearance. But after reading both and finding no solution, he grudgingly admitted that the writer probably hadn't thought of including 'alien attack' under the emergency heading. And the tips on granting clearance only listed common tricks a spy/ serial killer would use to make his record appear squeaky clean. Again, useless.

Just as he folded the book shut in preparation of hunting down another, the door handle rattled.

The super spy double-oh-zero, as the twins had labeled him, would have immediately leapt up, put the book back, and found somewhere to hide where the returning desk jockey would never find him until he leapt out and gave the guy a Vulcan nerve pinch. But regular old Sam only froze, heart leaping into a sprint, and continued sitting with the evidence of his trespassing open on his lap. His eyes glued themself to the door knob, and he prayed that he had only imagined it twist before. No such luck.

The handle twisted again, accompanied this time by a fist banging on the other side of the door.

"Hey! Matrix boy! You in there?"

The voice jarred him from his deer-in-the-headlights impression. He leapt to his feet, book tumbling unceremoniously to the floor, and bee-lined for the desk, wondering if the knee space were big enough to hide him. But before he could reach his intended cover, the door burst inward and rebounded from the wall, sending the chair skittering across the room.

Simmons poked his head around the corner and pinned him with a cold stare.

"Alright, you little felon. You're not supposed to be in here."

Deciding it would probably work to his favor to play up the innocent card and follow the advice of career burgulars (who insisted that looking like you belonged there was the best method for getting away scot free), Sam only shrugged, stuffing his free hand deep into his pocket.

"Well that's funny, because the door was unlocked. Weird, huh? It's almost like they're inviting you to come right on in!" As he spoke, he carefully nudged the rule book out of sight with the toe of one shoe.

But the ex-agent only sneered. "You're not as stupid as you try to pretend you are. We both know you shouldn't be snooping around in here."

Simmons stepped farther into the room, looking slightly nervous himself as he glanced around the tiny office. Almost as if he didn't want to be caught there, either. Sam's instincts usually led him down the right path (--drew him to a beat up camaro with racing stripes--), so he changed tactics at their insistence.

"I'm pretty sure they wouldn't be too happy to find you down here, either. I mean, hey, I've got everything going for me right now-- I'm a kid, I have a broken arm, and I have a bunch of big alien friends who would probably break me out of prison if they chucked me in there," he jerked his chin at the sallow faced man, "So who do you think would come out of it worse if you went skipping up to them and told them you found me in here, me or you?"

But to his consternation, Simmons only turned to face him straight on, smiling crookedly. "You like playing hard ball, heh? Too bad you forgot that I have it in with the man-- I used to work for them, remember?"

"Yeah, and they fired you because you're an obsessive jerk, leaving you with no where to go but back to your mom and a job working in her sandwich shop. No offense."

Simmon's left eye twitched. Ouch. Sam -- 1, Bumblebee-torturing nutcase -- 0.

"I told you--" the ex-agent pointed a righteous finger at Sam, "--my mother lives with me, not the other way around!" And he glanced out the door, as though fearful that someone were eavesdropping in the hallway. Lowering his voice, but not his finger, he continued, "But if you're going to be so immature about it, I guess I can reach deep into the goodness of my heart and not report you to the highest authoriy."

"Gee, thanks," Sam rolled his eyes, moving towards the still open door. Now that he had called Simmons' bluff it was time to make his dramatic exit. He could always come back later to find that other book. But the ex-agent moved to block him, rubbing his hands with glee. Not Good.

"Not so fast, Sammy. I may be merciful enough not to report you to the highest authority, but I will report you to your mother."

Sam froze. In his quest to find a loop hole for Mikaela, all thoughts of his parents had been driven to the back of his mind.

"....You wouldn't."

"I can, and I will. She's the one who sent me after you in the first place," he shivered dramatically, "That woman is about nine different types of scary."

"Hey! You leave her out of this! I only insult you, not your mother." Then, "Wait. What did she threaten you with to get you down here?"

Simmons rolled his eyes at Sam in a parody of his earlier gesture, though the motion was so extreme it was a wonder the beady little things didn't get stuck that way. He turned back towards the door, waving for Sam to follow him.

"Let's just say she threatened to make me less of a man if I didn't come bring you down to lunch before they start unloading the ship."

Hearing that his mom had threatened the loopy, thong-wearing psycho enough to make him shake in his boots like a little girl heartened Sam considerably, causing a goofy grin to break out over his face. But at the word 'lunch' it faltered-- he glanced at his watch, twitching with horror when he realized that he'd wasted almost five of his precious 24 hours without even realizing it. And he still had not come up with a solution.

When his mind caught up with the rest of Simmon's words he blinked, letting his watch arm fall and coming to a stop.

"Hold up. Unloading the ship? Are we making a pit stop or something?"

Simmons paused, hand on the doorframe, and leaned out into the hall to check for any lingering witnesses. Finding none, he twisted his head to look at Sam over his shoulder, his expression conveying exasperation and something that might have been compassion. But the touch of sympathy traced along his features must have been a trick of the light, for it faded the next moment into a disdainful sneer.

"You seem to have a very bad habit of not paying attention, Sammy-boy. Or didn't your 'big alien friends' tell you that they recieved an urgent call from NEST a few hours ago and they're making us all get out at the next port?"

"A call? About what? Why do we have to leave early?"

But Simmons only turned away from him with a small chuckle, ducking out into the hallway.

"I guess you're not as buddy-buddy with them as you thought you were, matrix boy!"

Simmons -- 1, Sam -- 1.

The expertly placed blow struck home, causing Sam to flinch. His secret fear, the one he kept hidden deep inside under lock and key, had always been that the aliens only tolerated his presence to humor him. At times they confided in him, sure, but more often than not they spoke over his head in their own language, purposefully excluding him from the conversation. And maybe Bee felt some genuine affection for him (though probably no where near as much as Sam did for the alien), but how long would it be before the novelty of having a human pet around would begin to wear off? How long before they got tired of risking their lives for a short-lived organic that burped and sweat and did all sorts of disgusting things, one that had neither their strength nor their intelligence? Perhaps in the moment, when he carried the Allspark or held the key to saving their leader, they thought him interesting, but what would happen when they came to realize that he was really as ignorant and uninteresting as dirt? Would they cast him aside outright, or would he slowly be locked out of the group, included out of duty rather than friendship like that little pet that looked so cute as a baby but grew up to be ugly and annoying?

Would there come a time when Bee no longer wanted to be his friend?

Sam didn't realize he had stopped walking until Simmons ducked his head back around the door and whistled. "Yo! Sammy-boy! Let's go already!"

"Go stick your head in a toilet and flush twice," Sam advised sagely, numbly following the ex-agent out the door. Swallowing back the beginnings of an immature sulk, he forced himself to admit that he had no right to expect the Autobots to inform him of every little detail of their doings. The adult reasoning didn't stop him from shriveling a little on the inside at the news, though.

"Ouch. I'm mortally wounded," Simmons sniped back, "Can't think up a better come back, Sammy-boy?"

Sam practiced breathing evenly, forcing away the walls that tried to tunnel in on him (--no more time, no more time--). "How about you call me Sam and I call you by your real name?" he suggested.

"You don't know my first name."

Sam nodded. "True. But I didn't say 'first' name. See, your real name is 'ass-hole'."

"Oh no. He called me an asshole. I'm so upset," Simmons dead-panned, leading him away from the third level (away from the only glimmer of hope) and along the often trod route to the mess hall.

"No, it works," Sam insisted (how much longer? Six hours? Three? One?), "Because your bosses totally made you their bitch."

Sam-- 2, Simmons-- 1.

He hadn't realized that he'd begun walking ahead of the ex-agent until a hand smacked him in the back of the head. Hard.

"You watch your mouth, kid!"

"Or what? I have a thirty-foot-tall robot and I'm not afraid to use it."

"Or I'll sic your mother on you."

"She hates your guts."

"Yeah, but that room mate of yours worships me. I'm sure I could use him to make your life living hell."

Just 'room mate'. No 'ex-' attached as a prefix. Once more his gut folded itself into painful little knots at the reminder of all he was leaving behind. Inane little questions began to flood his mind at the mention of college life: would he be able to go back to school in India, or would he have to stay on base all the time? Would he take a few of those online courses? Would he be forced to study politics and dipolmacy, the two subjects that he had almost flunked in school? Would there be any kids his age to hang out with (once he stopped pouting in his room)? Were there any kids at all? Did anyone stay there all the time, or would he be a one-man human island in a sea of barbed wire and aliens?

Sam thought about pointing out that Leo could only be used as a pestering device until they made landfall, but he didn't want Simmons to come back with a quip about exactly how many hours he had left with his family. He wanted to pretend he had forever and not spend every second with them staring intently at his watch, wishing he could make it run backwards. So instead he merely shrugged, letting the chain of banter drop.

Apparently, Simmons had sensed the direction of his thoughts. For a moment the taller man's eyes softened with the same disturbing touch of sympathy as his gaze slid across to take in Sam's stony profile. But when Sam turned to meet his stare it vanished again, morphing into a leer.

"So are you going to just stand there, or are you going to go eat lunch with your hotty girlfriend?"

Sam started, suddenly realizing that they had made it all the way back to the mess hall and stood facing the open doorway. They must have occupied the same spot for a while-- the crewmen that passed by going into lunch flung strange looks in their direction. He forced away the thought that the evil ex-agent had stood with him in silence while his mind had gibbered and paced in anxious little circles around the inside his skull. There was no way someone who had ordered Bumblebee tortured could do something even remotely approaching nice. Simmons must have been taken over by a body snatcher. He would have to remember to ask Bee if he'd encountered any body snatchers before.

"Yeah. I think I'll go do that, thanks."

Sam struck out boldly for the mess hall, horrified to find the ex-agent keeping pace with him. At his look of imminent doom, Simmons snorted explosively.

"Despite what your puny little mind may concieve, I do not, in fact, run on genius alone."

Stiffening his spine and deciding to be the better person, Sam let the invitation for argument fizzle away in silence, stepping up and loading his tray with food. None of it looked appetizing, and he felt more apt to vomit from nerves than to stuff his face, but he still took generous helpings of everything. Make the most of his free meal pass, and all.

Tray filled, cup overflowing with Coke, he turned to search out his parents, hoping that Mikaela was sitting nearby so he didn't have to drag her over by the seat of her pants (although that presented some interesting possibilities-- stop it!). But for once the stars were aligned in his favor, and he found them reserving a table for themselves by sheer force of personality, accompanied at times by little threatening growls to scare off those who would have sat in the empty seat. His seat, right beside Mikaela.

Forcing himself not to run, he weaved his way through the lunchtime crush of people towards them, smiling infectously as they spotted his approach.

His mother stood up, waving to him. He would have waved back except for the encumbering tray, so he settled for smiling wider and gesturing that his arms were full. But when she cupped a hand around her mouth and yelled, he realized she wasn't motioning only to him.

"Sam! There you are, honey! Tell Simon to get his narrow little butt over here!"

Simmons, who had ended up behind him in the tangle of people, paled considerably. Sam's smile turned predatory.

"Hey, Simon. I think she wants to talk to you."

A pleading gaze met his. "Come on, take pity on a guy!"

Sam only snorted with laughter, striking out for the three people that meant the most to him in the world. "Not a chance."

Before he could even put his plate down, his parents and Mikaela had him crushed into three simultaneous hugs. He couldn't work up the will to be embarassed, not when he was suddenly struggling not to cry (--no time left, blink and they're gone--). His mother rocked him back and forth as much as she was able with two other people holding onto him, wailing into his shoulder, "Oh my little booty boy! What am I going to do without you?" His father, more restrained, pulled him into a hard hug before releasing him to his mother, clamping one hand around his mom-less shoulder and squeezing tightly.

Mikaela feathered a kiss to his cheek, slipping her hand into his. "Think you have enough food, Sam?"

"Well, you know," he ground out, face still smushed up against his mother in a way that distorted the words, "I need a lot if I'm going to try to feed an army."

At the mention of food his mother pulled back, holding him at arms length and examining him with a critical (tear-filled) eye.

"It's a good thing you have a healthy appetite. You'll need your strength if you're going to be running around after pyramid-wrecking robots all day."

Everyone slowly filtered back to their places, obviously unwilling to let go, and Sam flopped into his designated spot. His eyes flicked to Simmons, who turned in preparation to bolt.

"Is that what Simon told you, mom? Cause if he did, he's a liar. I'm going with the Autobots to protect all of us from the Decepticons, not to chase after them. That's Optimus and the others' job. I'm just the housewife."

Roused at the distorted name of the ex-agent, his mother sat up straighter in her chair and honed in on the retreating back with precision aim. It must have been a mom thing, being able to pin-point guilt at a hundred paces.

"You get back here, Mr. Sneaky!" she yelled to him. Sam covered his mouth to contain his laughter as Simmons froze in his tracks, shoulders hitching a little higher, and slowly turned to face his mother with a plastic grin on his face. Sam realized he had been wrong. Simmons wasn't a government bitch-- he was Judy Witwicky's bitch. He dug his fingers more securely into his upper lip, chest heaving, and noticed Mikaela covering her own bout of giggles by pretending to search through her purse. He'd have to weasel the story of what, exactly, she had threatened the ex-agent with out of her some day--

---and every bubble of laughter abruptly died in his throat, grin dissapating as quickly as it had come. There wouldn't be 'some day' to hear the doubtlessly amusing story. He only had this day, whatever few hours were left of it.

Simmons slowly turned around to face their table, grinning toothily at his mother, eye twitching once more.

"Ah. Mrs. Witwicky! What can I do for you?"

"You weren't very nice to us when we met, especially since your guys trampled my garden and carted off my dog!"

"And arrested us. Don't forget that," Sam pointed out helpfully, trying to pretend that nothing was wrong, that the floor wasn't tilting underneath of him again.

"And arrested us," she added. "But I'm a big enough person to forgive you, and I wanted to thank you for finding my Sam."

Oh yeah. The eye was definitely twitching now, and the adjacent corner of his lip jumped on the twitching bandwagon along with it, hand in hand with his eyebrow. Sam wondered idly if the man were about to have a seizure. It had to be a blow to the ego for him to hear his mother deigning to forgive him for an action he had neither apologized for nor (to Sam's mind) regretted. (--so many regrets, so many things left undone, so many things left unsaid-- no more time--).

"Thank you for the sentiment," he spat from between gritted teeth, grin still held in place with ferrocious determination. "But if you'll excuse me, I think I'll be going now--"

Eyes still focused on his mother, Simmons turned to leave-- and collided with a 6 foot 2 marine, slopping orange juice, eggs and syrup all down the other man's front.

Perfect, absolute silence reigned in the mess hall as globs of food dripped slowly down the marine's gray t-shirt. Swallowing, Simmons took a prudent step back, then another, holding his tray before him like a shield.

"Wow. That's, uh, really nasty looking, all those condiments smeared together like that.....I really, really, did not mean to do that."

Slowly, the marine lowered his head and looked at the technicolor stickiness bathing his muscular chest. Ever cautious, the ex-agent shuffled back another few feet, putting Sam's table in between them.

"You know what?" He dropped his tray on the table with a clatter and stuffed a hand down his pocket, fishing. "I have a few ones right here you can use to get that dry-cleaned--"

With a zen-like measure of contemplation, the marine scraped a hunk of eggs from his shirt and held it in his hand. No one moved. No one breathed. For a moment Sam felt almost giddy, realizing that Simmons had managed to spill his food all over the biggest, meanest looking guy in the room. This would be interesting to watch.

Then, in a motion too swift to be seen, the marine drew back his hand and hurled the icky mound at Simmons. His mother, only just catching on to the fact that something was happening, sat up straighter in her chair and turned her head-- right into the path of the oncoming projectile. The oozing glob smacked her full in the face, splattering ketchup into her hair.

At the sight of his wife spitting out bits of egg, his father thrust back his own chair and stood up.

"Hey! Watch where you're throwing that-- you hit my Judy!"

And to Sam's astonishment, he lobed a pastry from his own tray at the bulky marine. With reflexes honed in combat his target ducked to the side, allowing the tumbling cinnamon roll to splat against the side of another soldier's face.

Once more a dead silence took hold. But then the newly sticky soldier stood up, violently pushing his tray over the table into someone else's lap, and with a thunderous roar of noise the entire room erupted into hollering chaos.

"FOOOOD FIGHT!"

Sam pulled Mikaela under the table just as the epic battle commenced, and soon the air was thick with flying breakfast foods. Lazer bolts of streaming ketchup and squirted syrup arched overhead, interspersed with mini flak clouds of exploding egg, sausage bullets, and cinnamon roll bombs. Puddles of liquid splashed across the floor-- orange, pink, yellow, steaming brown-- turning the battle field into a sugar and caffine bath. Scrambling to avoid being mowed down in the onslaught, Simmons tried to drop to his hands and knees to crawl under the table with them. But a soldier, embroiled in the epic mess-hall siege, latched onto his foot and dragged him back out into the open to be thoroughly drenched in perishables. Sam laughed uncontrollably, face hurting from his wide, amazed grin, knowing that Simmons wouldn't last a minute.

Mikaela grabbed him by the front of his shirt and pulled him in for an awkward kiss around the legs of the table. Pulling back far too quickly for his liking, she leaned her forehead against his.

"We don't have much time left, Sam," she intoned dramatically, though he sensed the double meaning to her words, "So lets go out with a bang!"

He leaned in for another kiss. "Ladies first."

And Mikaela put her hand over his face and thrust him out into the fray, laughing even as she tossed him to the storming pack of wildly entertained soldiers (wolves).

A hand grabbed the front of his shirt as his torso slipped out from under the table, yanking him to his feet. Leo. His ex-room mate was hardly recognizable; something sticky and dripping slowly down his nose plastered the chia pet mop of hair to his head, and his arms and face now sported ketchup war paint.

"We got a war to win, soldier!" He shouted at Sam, pushing him forward into the crush of writhing, shouting, laughing bodies. And despite the fact that he was swiftly covered by all manner of things he would rather not name, Sam found himself laughing as well. He snatched up an untouched bowl of hash browns from another table and dumped it over his father's head, screeching in protest as he recieved a thick squirt of ketchup in retaliation. He reached for the strong, calloused hand (--a gentle hand tucking him into bed and smoothing his hair-- fisting into his shirt on the desert floor, not letting go-- 'I'm not leaving you! I'm not leaving you!'--) and squeezed-- goodbye, dad-- reaching around with his other hand to stuff a pasty down the neck of his father's shirt, his father grabbing him in a head lock to do the same to him.

His mother, despite her earlier shock, had recovered in time to comandeer the entire McDonand's sized syrup dispenser and was liberally spraying anyone who came near, shrieking like a banshee, laughing through her protests of what a mess they were making of the place.

He dodged a reflexive stream she shot in his direction, catching her up in a hug and lifting her up off her feet. She was light, so light that he easily twirled her through the air a few times before she squirted syrup down the front of his shirt to make him put her down. And then he hugged her in earnest, basking in the familiar smell of her hair even through the choking grease of potatoes, sausage and bacon. Strawberries, that was it. Strawberries to match her redish hair (--arms lifting him, resting him against a warm shoulder, nose burried in her hair while he cried from a skinned knee-- strawberries hidden beneath sweat, red covered by egyptian dust, arms holding him once more-- 'I almost lost you, I almost lost my son...'--). He swept her off her feet and whirled her around again, bridal style, through the raining hail of food, through the falling shards of memory, and kissed her on the cheek-- I love you too, mom.

Then, determined to enjoy the one last spontaneous outbreak of random madness he would ever enjoy with his family, ever be able to savor without fearing for their lives and his, he leapt back into battle, searching out Mikaela. He owed her for betraying him and shoving him from their table-shaped bolt hole. But this time, it would not be to say goodbye. Maybe see you later, but not goodbye. Because no matter what he had to do, no matter how long he had to search, he would find a way back to her.

For now, he was content to spend another few minutes basking in laughter and joy and love (with a side of flying sausage biscuit).

It would have to be enough.

NNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN

At last the announcement came over the ship-wide intercomm that they were within 15 miles of the harbor, instructing various work crews to begin preparing the ship and the flight deck for the arrival of the launch boat that would ferry them to shore.

After the epic food fight had finally wound down (and after a few flustered officers had burst onto the scene and shouted the soldiers in the room to attention), Sam had briefly parted from his family to go grab a shower and a change of clothes, dumping his food-covered ones in the trashcan rather than waste time trying to find a washing machine. Then, showered and dressed, he had stood surveying his room, wondering if he should pack, before remembering that he didn't have anything to pack in the first place, save for what he already carried on his body. So he had simply flicked off the lights and left the room, planning to never again return.

His parents and Mikaela met him in the lounge. Though they all lumped up together on the sofa, no one moved to switch on the TV. Instead, they talked-- everything from sports to music, cars to tree species came up as topics, though no one mentioned politics, robots, aliens, or life in general. At some point Leo wandered in, coming to say goodbye to Sam with a manly handshake and replying to his raised eyebrow that Mikaela had filled him in on what was going on. For once, he didn't have anything clever or provocative to say.

Almost two hours slipped by without a whisper to mark their passing, two hours that came and went in two minutes, leaving him staring into Mikaela's eyes as the nasily death knell squawked over the intercomm. Thirty minutes until boarding.

As soon as the last repetition of the message died away, their phones all began to ring at once. Each one bore the same, impersonal text message to pack up their things and be on the flight deck, ready to leave, in twenty minutes. Sam turned off his phone and threw it over the back of the sofa, declaring that the launch boat wouldn't be ready to leave for thirty minutes and he therefore planned to remain right where he was for thirty minutes. No one raised a protest.

Even more quickly than the previous two hours had fled, all too soon thirty minutes were swept away in the onward-- and ever accelerating-- march of time. His parents left to make the journey to the flight deck, leaving Sam and Mikaela alone for two minutes of overtime. They made good use of it, engaging in the most intense two-minute make out session Sam had ever experienced. But then Mikaela's phone began to ring again, and after Sam reluctantly grabbed his blackberry they left the lounge hand and hand.

Half way to the flight deck Mikaela stopped suddenly, paling. Sam pulled up beside her, alarmed when she tugged her hand from his and turned back the way they came.

"Mikaela? What's going on?"

"I left something in my room, Sam," she called back to him, already hurrying away down the corridor, "Don't worry-- I'll meet you up on deck."

Once she vanished out of sight he swore violently, cursing whatever article of clothing or whatnot had been stupid enough to leave itself in her room and therefore deprive him of a few more minutes of her company. Reluctantly, he turned back and began trudging towards the deck again, much more slowly this time.

Alone with his thoughts (never a good thing), the fluttering panic once more beat its leathery wings against the cage of his chest. He was out of time and out of ideas. Once Mikaela had boarded her flight back to the US she was out of reach. He needed to think of something, only his brain refused to cooperate and grind through much thinking at all. Instead of worrying about the future, his parents, or Mikaela, he found his mind slipping back to the incident that morning in the infirmary and the disturbing presence of alien runes on the x-ray of his arm.

He focused on the limb swaddled in plaster and held to his side by a sling, judging the sensations it gave off. First: ow. Next: still ow, but not as powerful as it should have been. To his relief, he couldn't detect any trace of the tingling, crawling, drifting sensation that had accompanied his brief contact with the allspark shard and the subsequent 'episodes' that overcame him. But the fact that the feeling wasn't there yet did little to assuage his fear-- if he were having a relapse, it might creep over him when he least expected it.

Though he groaned at the thought of seeking out Rachet and asking the robot to scan him (who knew what humilitating things the robot would spout....or what disasterous things....), he grudgingly admitted that it would be better to find out now if his mind still harbored remnants of the Allspark than stress over it for days and still find out later. So stealing himself for the inevitable, good or bad, he detoured to the right and jogged away from the deck, towards the cargo bay. If by any chance Rachet had not yet made it topside, he didn't want to go all the way to the deck only to discover that he needed to come back down again.

Drawling, boisterous shouts drifted down the hallway from the cargo bay, but pushing open the door he found only Mudflap and Skids within. Naturally the object of his search couldn't have the decency to appear when needed.

"Moron! That chain goes over here!"

"Youse just being bossy. It's fine da way it is."

The two Autobots scampered and cavorted around a large, open-sided trailer, shoving and kicking each other out of the way as each attempted to chain down a tarp-covered pile of scrap metal. Approaching slowly so as not to be caught up in the scuffle, Sam swallowed the urge to retch at the sight of the designation SR-71 stamped in flaking white on one of the black metal plates. Jetfire. Or what was left of him.

His skin crawled as he realized he stood looking at a piecemeal corpse, and he forcefully shook all thoughts of dismembered human bodies from his head (--so much blood, bones snapping like twigs--). It wasn't the same. The hunks of metal before him were not rotting, oozing flesh. But no matter how many times he chanted to himself that Jetfire was long dead, he could not entirely rid himself from the fear that the moment their backs were turned the pile would begin to shift and rise up, zombie-like, gurgling out incomprehensible demands for his stolen heart.

Slamming a mental door on the horror-filled image, Sam turned to go-- and stopped, the outline of a plan forming in his mind. He knew from experience that each of the Autobots possesed the ability to conduct even the most basic medical scans. While the Twin's probably could not monitor the flow of blood through his heart as Rachet could, they should at least be able to pick up on any Allspark radiation lingering around him. After all, Sector 7 had had to build the Hover dam on top of the thing just to keep any passing aliens from sensing it. And a definite plus to using the Twins instead of Rachet was that they probably had enough warped human decorum not to go blurting out random (and embarassing) tidbits of data. He hoped.

Slowly pivoting on his heel, he cleared his throat to announce his presence and waited until the two Autobots paused in their struggles and turned their gleaming blue optics in his direction. Why they felt the need to pretend not to realize he was there until he gave a signal was beyond him.

"Hey guys! I could use your help!"

Eager for any reason not to work, the twins immediately abandoned their mangled pursuit and trotted over to him.

"Oh now he wants our help," Mudflap sneered, though his loping gait did not slow.

"You got us in trouble, man! Why should we do anythin for you?" Skids tossed in, gathering close to his twin in Sam's personal space bubble. Aliens of any shape or description, even when acting as self-styled urban dwellers, seemed to have no concept that crowding over the invisible three-foot line made humans uncomfortable.

At any other time, Sam would have found the twin's grasp of Earthen idioms and laid back personalities to be refreshing, and would have happily engaged in a round of banter. But at the moment, too disturbed by the sight of Jetfire's parts being haphazardly loaded onto a trailer-- too preoccupied with fretting over the possibility of once more being taken over by the Allspark-- he refused to play along.

He passed a shaking hand over his eyes and took a step away from the technicolor robots, giving himself some breathing-- and thinking-- room. "One, because it gives you an excuse not to work for a few minutes. And two, I know you're curious about what I want. So go on-- ask."

Picking up on his nail-spitting mood, they leaned away and traded glances over his head. But rather than walk away and leave him to stew in his own funk (and laugh as he jumped up and down in frustration), they turned back to him, suddenly serious, and crouched closer.

"Whatchu want?" Mudflap whispered secretively. And snickered. Okay, so maybe not so serious.

Sam glanced over his shoulder to make sure no one would walk into the room just as he began speaking, then replied, "I need to you scan me."

Mudflap pulled back slightly in confusion, optics spiralling closed, and flicked his gaze once more to his brother.

"Scan you? What fo?"

"I need to know if I have any radiation from the Allspark shard lingering around me. Until I saw you guys I was going to ask Rachet, but...he's not very discreet," Sam gave a helpless little shrug.

Skids shuffled closer, the rings around his optics whirling in preparation.

"We gotcha covered, dude. Anythin to get old Hachet," the green Autobot promised with all the solemnity of a prankster, initiating the scan.

As with Bumblebee and Optimus, Sam felt nothing as the alien receptors broadcast data collecting waves deep into his body. The only indication he had that Skids was doing something other trying to stare a hole in him to freak him out was the brief hiccup in the sound of his internal workings-- the high pitched, though normally unnoticed, drone of processors and servos paused, dropping momentarily to a thrumming bass, then ascended back up the scale and resumed its normal tone. Skids pulled away from him, the motion stiff with shock, and Sam felt his muscles seize in response. Not good.

"Holy Primus!" Skids whispered in fearful awe, "You got Allspark energy practically drippin off ya, man! It's everywhere!"

Mudflap leaned in closer as though to take a look for himself, then like his brother he too jerked sharply away from the human. "Man, youse just covered up with it! How'd ya get like that?"

All the air vanished from Sam's lungs. He couldn't breathe.

His darkest fears had been true the whole time. Some wonder drug didn't cause his bones to knit-- the allspark did. Symbols didn't appear on the x-ray because of the close proximity of the Autobots-- they appeared because he himself served as a cesspool of alien radiation. Allspark radiation. It was happening again.

Breath flooded into his chest with a gasp, and he started to hyperventilate. Even though he knew asking again could do nothing to change the answer, he still found himself rasping, "R-really?"

Neither of the Autobots answered, only exchanging another set of pointed glances, and his stomach plummeted even further, wondering if the situation could possibly get even worse. He didn't see how it could, but then again things always seemed to go from bad to worse when aliens were involved, the bursting-from-people's-chests kind or otherwise.

But then the thrumming tension in the room, pulling tighter and tighter like a rubber band, suddenly snapped-- the twins sputtered, masks of seriousness slipping, and broke out into peals of mechanized laughter. Sam could only stare.

"Nah! Just messin witcha!" Mudflap informed the slack-jawed human, bumping fists with his twin.

Skids pointed to his own head with a large finger. "You shoulda seen yo face! Best Polaroid moment eva!"

Stomach still hanging somewhere beneath his feet, for a moment Sam could only glance mutely between them. But then, as his mind slowly churned through the revelation that they had made a joke at his expense, his panicked gaze darkened into a glower. The howling only ascended in volume-- Skids launched himself into a backwards roll, skipping happily away from the human, as Mudflap spun in place with his legs pulled to his chest like a little kid. If not for the fact that he was being laughed at, the spectacle of watching immortal alien killing machines falling over themselves with simulated giggles would have been either wildly amusing or vaguely distrubing. As it was, Sam settled for upping the wattage of his glare a notch.

"Yeah, great," he muttered, "Thanks guys."

"Ooo, wait!" Mudflap called, suddenly sitting up and reining in his hilarity. "Ya may not be slathered up wit Allspark, but you got these little threads of somethin driftin around in there."

Sam replied with a dignified display of his middle finger, showing just how little he was impressed with the second attempt to scare him shitless. That would be the last time he asked for their help with anything remotely important. He turned to leave, but Mudflap reached out, catching him by the sleeve.

"Fo real this time, Sam-mah-man. You oughta get old Hachet to take a look at ya--"

"Which he did, just last night," Bumblebee interrupted, appearing behind Sam and latching onto Mudflap's hand, somehow causing the red Autobot to yelp in pain and snatch his arm back.

"OUCH! What's yo problem, Stumblebee?!"

As soon as Mudflap withdrew his arm the yellow scout stepped away, drawing close to Sam. A flicker of motion rippled a lower portion of his forearm armor. Sam narrowed his eyes at the spot, though whatever had been there folded itself out of sight again before he could make out what it was. But for a sliver of an instant, he thought he had seen a dagger-like blade extending from the inside of Bee's wrist. Though of course that was stupid, because Sam knew the yellow scout didn't have any knives. Or at least if he did, Sam had never seen them (--bumblebees can't sting--).

"Don't touch m-- don't touch him," the scout said softly, blue optics blazing impossibly bright.

That caught Sam's attention. When speaking with his own voice rather than through radio snippets, Bumblebee mantained virtually flawless grammer and, unlike the twins, never stuttered. As far as he knew, unless they did it on purpose, the robotic visitors couldn't stutter. Something must have really upset him to cause his thought relays to skip that noticably.

"Fine, fine. Chill, dude. Seriously," Mudflap soothed, holding up his hands (--one finger sporting a tiny slit--) in a placating gesture, "I was jus tryin to help!"

Bumblebee's hand twitched towards Sam, but he curled it back away from the human before it could brush his skin.

::'I don't need no body--!'::

"Bee?" Sam questioned in bewilderment. The yellow robot shut down his radio.

"As I have said," Bumblebee informed Mudflap and a watching Skids, seemingly ignoring Sam, "Rachet examined him last night. Your concern is misplaced."

Mudflap scuttled crab-like a few paces away from the larger Autobot. "Geez! You got some bolts screwed in too tight, Stumblebee!"

Visibly relaxing at Mudflap's retreat, Bumblebee stepped away from Sam and lunged forward to his hands and knees, transforming as he went. By the time he touched the floor he was no longer a robot, but a sleek, powerful Camaro. He revved his engine.

A reel of metallic warbles and clicks from the newly disguised robot sent both of the twins scrambling back to Jetfire's remains.

"We're going! Don't get yo drive train ina twist!" they shouted back.

Sam stared after them in amazement. Mudflap and Skids normally ignored or laughed at anyone besides Optimus or Ironhide-- and even Ironhide sometimes became the target of a defiant raspberry. He wondered what Bee had said in Cybertronian that made them start falling over themselves to get back to work.

The Camaro turned with a crunching of wheels on concrete, inching towards him hesitantly with the same tightly-leashed intensity he had sensed the night before. Like a cross between a puppy desperate for affection and... something he could not identify, something so powerfully breathtaking (--twin flares of blue light, bright as angel dust, compelling as a demon's snare--) that it could not be named. Yet once more the sense of the incanny evaporated in an instant, leaving nothing but a cheerful yellow camaro that seemed anything but cheerful as it reluctantly slid into reverse and backed away again. It turned, angling for the recessed chambers formed by the maze of crates, and pulled up alongside him. Electric tension sizzled and throbbed across the empty air between them, raising the hairs on the back of his neck. Now he knew he was going insane. There was no reason for him to feel pulled to the camaro like a sock obeying the call of static cling. No reason, because the feeling wasn't real. It was a phantom sensation from his messed up mind. Nothing more.

All too soon the invisible tugging faded as well, leaving him stupidly leaning towards the Camaro, feeling light-headed and high. He shook his head and leaned away again, taking a step back. And he did not hear a faint, subsonic whimper in response. He did not. Even if the sound of it was so lonely it made him want to wrap his arms around himself.

"Sam," his guardian called his name, breaking him free of his stupor. Sam tried to smile in response, feeling completely mental. God, it was a car. Get a grip, Sam.

"Yeah?"

The engine rumbled, a restrained growl. "You were supposed to be up on deck nearly seven minutes ago. I suggest you leave."

Without waiting for a response, the camaro dropped into gear and rolled away, turning out of view behind a stack of crates. Light flashed from the window, and it was gone.

And Sam was left staring after it, feeling that he had just been given the cold shoulder by a robot. He swallowed thickly for a minute, reminding himself that the scout was probably busy helping to load things onto the launch boat and his tone had probably come out sharper than he meant it. But that didn't stop little painful barbs from lodging themselves in his heart at the memory of the flat, icy words (--'I suggest you leave'--). As an alien, he couldn't be expected to always appreciate how the inflection of his voice would be interpretted. It was silly for him to feel offended. And rejected. Of course it was (--only human, only-- '...someone to live for...'-- friendship from need, not love-- only human-- what can a human offer a god?--).

Almost three minutes passed before he could remember how to walk. And even then he still couldn't remember how to breathe.

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The first thing he noticed emerging into the bright Indian glare was the heat. It was hot. Not just ordinary August heat, the kind that made dogs slither into porch shadows to pant and sucked up energy to power air-conditionings. This was the kind of heat that flattened everything in its path more efficiently than a steam roller, wilting trees and turning sidewalks into griddles.

Immediately drenched with sweat the moment he set foot on deck, Sam shaded his eyes with a hand and squinted at the white hot sky. Living here would probably do the Decepticon's work for them-- he already felt close to keeling over, and it had only been less than five minutes.

The launch boat coming to pick them up was late. It figured. Soldiers stood milling about in the shadows of the parked jets, talking and taking long swigs from water bottles. Seemingly obliviously to the heat (and to the blinding glares thrown from every curve of their bodies) Rachet and Ironhide sat side by side in full view of the sun, as silent as normal vehicles. He suspected they were communicating through an internal radio or something.

Turning a full rotation, he finally spotted his mother and Mikaela sitting in the shade a little distance away from the soldiers. His father was not with them. They waved, and he made a series of elaborate gestures seen previously only in asylums to inquire as to the whereabouts of their missing member. His mother eventually jabbed a finger in the direction of the observation tower.

As it was a few hours past noon, the tower cast a deep shadow over the deck immediately to one side of it, the very side the farthest distance away from the assembled Autobots and humans. His heart lurched painfully, wondering why his father had ventured so far away to find shade.

Wiping the sweat from his forehead with his sleeve, he meandered in that direction, hoping he wouldn't have to talk his father back from the edge or something. But as he slowly rounded the corner, a flash of red and blue stilled him in his tracks. Holding his breath, he carefully retreated back out of sight, waited a beat, and peered back around the edge when no one shouted at him to go away.

There was his father, just as his mother had said (well, pointed). And across from him, legs folded in front of his massive body in a relaxed posture, sat Optimus Prime. His armor didn't gleam as it normally would even enshrouded in shadow-- now, in the daylight, he could see the uncounted number of scratches and abrasions that had not been visible the night before. Large patches of red and blue had worn away, though not in a manner that suggested flaking paint. He doubted they used paint to begin with, especially since he had observed them changing color at will. No, the missing color could be better compared to missing skin that had been rubbed or torn away. The very thought had him swallowing bile.

At first it seemed that Optimus was still trying to convince his father that never seeing his son again was really for the best, but observing his father pointing a finger at the alien leader (who towered over him even when sitting, optics mutted to a soft glow), his stance wide and assertive, Sam was forced to reconsider. Especially when he realized that it was his father, not Optimus, doing the lecturing.

"--I have something I need to say, and you're going to sit there and listen even if I have to hold you down myself. Diplomacy can go hang."

Optimus merely inclinded his head, optics dimming even further, though the idea of his human father being able to keep the alien from doing anything was laughable. Apparently, Optimus planned to listen.

His father sucked in a few deep breaths through his nose to settle himself, then began again in a much leveler voice.

"You may think I'm trying to make you change you mind, but I'm not. --As if it would do any good, you already have me in checkmate as it is." He threw up his hands angrily, twisting to pace a few steps to the side, then returning to stand before Optimus. Breathing deeply again.

"Anyway, that's not what I want. As much as I hate it, I'm not so stupid as to think I could protect him from those monsters on my own," he tossed a disdainful hand at the silent robot, "You certainly would be much better at it. Hell, with you guys he at least has a chance of surviving to see his next birthday!"

Here Optimus leaned forward with a quiet intentness.

"I swear to you, if it is within my power to grant it, your son will live to see many more decades yet."

But his father merely flapped a hand as though swatting away a fly.

"Yeah, yeah. You said that. That thrice-bound oath thing and all. But what if you decide you don't want to play by those rules anymore?"

Optimus stiffened away from the human, and Sam held his breath in fluttering anticipation. He, too, had wondered the same thing. And he also wondered if what the alien told his father would be different from what he had told Sam himself.

"There is no tangible proof I can give you to assure you of my word," Optimus began slowly, "But many who know me can attest to the fact that I will and have moved planets to keep it. --And I speak only partially in metaphor," his tone turned wry, and Sam wondered if only he could hear the dry humor in robot's next words. "If you wish, I can provide a list of character references for you pursuance."

His father waved away the offer, pacing back and forth again with his hands on his hips, staring at the metal decking. He stopped, opened his mouth to speak. Closed it again and rubbed a hand over his face, the back of his neck.

"Look," he said at last, "I may not have much of a choice here, but let's get one thing straight. My son is something special. Real special. I may not have told him much, and maybe I should have, but he is. So you better take real good care of him. I don't just mean keep him from getting squashed-- that's just surviving. I want my son to live."

He turned to look Optimus squarely in the face, brown organic eyes meeting shimmering blue optics, and stepped closer, pointing his finger at the metal chest before him.

"I'm giving up my son-- my son-- to save his life. I may hate it, I may want to kick and scream and tell you to jump off a cliff, but I can't, so I'll only say this: I can't be a father to my son anymore, so you had better be like a father to him in my place!"

He paused. Though Sam couldn't see his face, the sound he made drawing in a breath almost verged on open weeping.

"So you'd better be the best damn father in the whole universe for the best son in the whole universe. You'd better threaten his girlfriends and listen to him rambling even when you have no idea what he's talking about, a-and give him Christmas presents he thinks he's too old for but really wants anyway. You'd better hug him when he doesn't want you to but really needs you to. You'd better give him a good kick in the ass when he does something stupid, and tell him you're proud of him when he does something great. You'd better protect him from the scary things that live in closets and under beds as well as those things made of metal and wielding guns. You'd better love him even when you want to hate him, and make sure he knows it even when he hates you."

He broke off, voice wobbling dangerously, and he sucked in another trembling breath. Optimus didn't speak, gaze unwavering, though it seemed to Sam that his optics blazed just a little brighter. Sam lifted his shoulder to rub his face against his shirt. It was only sweat. He wasn't crying. He wasn't. (--daddy!--)

"I don't care who you are," his father began again, tone hard as granite even though his voice emerged raw, "I don't care how old you are, how smart you are, how big you are, how strong you are, if you're a leader or a grunt, or even if you're an alien or not-- you better do right by my son." Here his voice broke entirely, cut through with tightly restrained sobs, "You better do right by my son-- because he's yours now, and good fathers take care of their sons."

Optimus sat in silence for a long moment, optics humming with a gentle blue light. When at last he spoke, the words came slowly, washing over Sam like a vow. And he knew-- knew in that primal way that could be neither explained nor denied-- that it was a vow that would not be broken.

"I have already failed one son. I will not fail another."

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When the launch boat finally arrived, the lazy barbeque picnic air erupted into a flurry of frenzied activity. The two boats were secured together by a series of thick chains, and a movable staircase on wheels was rolled into position to create a pathway to the much shorter boat dipping and rolling in the carrier's shallows. The two Autobots accompanying the humans on the first trip to shore-- Ironhide and Rachet-- jumped lithely over the side to the deck below, forgoing the use of stairs. When the chains were unwound and the launch boat prepared to make the journey back to shore, Sam jumped on of the deck hands in a panic, telling them that they needed to wait for the others-- to which he was told that the total weight of all the Autobots plus Jetfire's remains was far too heavy to carry in one trip. After that he went to sit with his parents and Mikaela, feeling stupid.

Trying to brace his family (and himself) for the coming separation, he refused to hold their hands or throw his arms around them like he was tempted to do. Not only were Lennox and Epps there to serve as witness, he didn't want Rachet and Ironhide thinking him weak. No matter what Optimus had promised his father, he knew he wasn't one of them and never would be. He was a preiphery concern, no more. And if he wanted to keep from becoming a nuisance, he knew he needed to be able to take care of himself.

He also knew that if he allowed himself to hold them now he would never be able to let go.

They passed the three miles to shore in silence. Well, at least their little insultated group did. The soldiers talked and laughed freely, obviously excited to get back to base. Watching them, Sam felt green and choked back an urge to vomit that had nothing to do with sea sickness. He couldn't look at his parents. Or Mikaela. So he traced the lines of Ironhide's chrome regardless of the glare and told himself that he was not going to cry.

The same distant haze that overcame him before school plays and while totting Allsparks descended as the boat pulled into port. He moved as if in a fog-- looking but not seeing, moving where directed like a mindless sheep. Time had accelerated again, and now he could only see what was happening through split-second freeze frames.

Gangplank pulled into place, stepping onto solid ground. An unfamiliar hand on his shoulder, steering him through the bustling port. A glimpse of suited agents forming a ring around them, herding them together, keeping all others at bay. A line of black SUVs, like the ones that had taken him from his house over a year ago (had it only been a year?). A glimpse of Mikaela's face, of Mikaela's eyes and something like love in their depths, and then they were loaded into different SUVs-- he in one, his parents and Mikaela in another. The door sealed him inside with a muffled thump of air, like sealing him into a refridgerator, the air conditioning going full blast. Better than the Indian heat, but at the moment, through the fog, he couldn't seem to care either way.

Shift into drive, pull away. Watch the other black boat go a different direction. They were already gone, and he hadn't even noticed the parting. He thought it should have been more dramatic-- with lightning, volcanoes, and violin interludes. Nope, none of that. Just pile into different SUVs and drive away.

Another blink, and the agents with him were pulling him back out into the heat, hustling him across a vast expanse of asphalt that he dimly recognized as a runway. A cargo plane-- a C-17, he dredged up from his memory-- waited with its mouth open to swallow the Autobots whole. But they guided him away from the C-17 and to another, much smaller plane and up another set of stairs.

Blink again, and he was sitting in a seat with the seat belt on, across the isle and back a few rows from Galloway, who was reading a newspaper. Though the plane could have held almost ten, there were only three of them occupying the passenger compartment-- one stuffy politician with his head stuck up his own butt, one suited agent who gave him a kind smile, and one 18-year-old world-saving wonder who had suddenly lost his powers.

At last time began to slow again, fog clearing from his mind. But once it had gone he wished it would come back-- everything was too sharp, too painful, like shards of broken glass. He leaned forward, elbows to knees, and buried his face in his palms, not carrying if anyone saw him cry. But he didn't cry. His eyes only felt dry and tired, as though he needed to collapse in bed and hibernate for a few months.

When he looked up again, the unfamiliar agent smiled and motioned for Sam to join him in the chair facing him across a small plastic table. The benefit of a private aircraft, he mused as he stood and crossed the isle, was that the small number of people allowed for an unorthodox arrangement of seats.

The man stood up at his approach, holding out a strong hand.

"Hi, Sam," he said with a smile, "I'm Dave. Nice to meet you."

After looking at the outstretched limb for a moment before remembering what to do, he shook hands with the agent and tried to smile in return. He like the man already-- first he called him 'Sam', not 'Samuel', and second he'd introduced himself by his first name. The only adults he'd ever seen do that were really cool teachers and shrinks. Since this guy was waay too muscular to be a shrink (and he packed a gun), he assumed it was the former.

After trading grips, Dave sank back down into his chair, motioning for Sam to do the same.

"You're probably wondering who I am besides 'Dave', so I might as well tell you that I'm your case worker, so to speak." Sam opened his mouth, and the gun-carrying agent lifted a finger to forestall him. "And no, not the kind of case worker that oversees foster children. Yes, I do know about the Autobots. And no, I am not here to shoot, harass, torture or otherwise embarass you or your friends. I'm more like your official link to the outside world, and you should probably know that I have both the secretary of state and Optimus Prime on speed-dial."

Sam could only lean back in his seat in amazement.

"Woah...are you, like, psychic or something? Because you just answered every question I had and every question I could think of without me having to say anything. Just, wow."

Dave smiled modestly. "They don't pay me the big bucks for nothing."

"Wait," Sam sat up straighter in his chair, "You have Optimus on speed dial?! I didn't even know he had a phone!"

"He doesn't have a phone, but he does have an arrangement where I can dial in a telephone number from anywhere in the world and he will pick up. --Or not, if he's in a pissy mood."

Sam's liking and respect grew by leaps and bounds. "I can understand the Secretary of State part, but why Optimus?"

"As an employer, he's very difficult to get into contact with any other way."

"....employer?"

He inclined his head, smiling slightly again. "Everyone agreed that there would probably have been a conflict of interests if, as your link to the human world, I worked for the United States."

"No, I get that part," Sam waved it away, "I mean, he can pay you?" And the corollary, "He has money?!"

"Of course. Did you think he goes all over the world hunting Decepticons with us for free?" he laughed.

Feeling suddenly mischevious, Sam leaned forward and whispered, "How much does he make?"

"Sorry, Sam. Confidentiality was part of my contract. If you want to know that, you'll have to ask him." He laughed again as Sam swore in frustration. "But in any case, perhaps it is time we move on to more serious topics."

Sam's momentarily light heart sunk like a stone, his mood sinking with. "Yeah," he shook himself, sitting up straight. It was time to be an adult now. Human 'link' or not, he knew he would need to be able to function on his own from that time forward. He couldn't expect to be able to go crying to the Autobots (or Bee) whenever something went wrong. They had imporant things to do. He was just baggage, though he was determined to be the most inobtrusive baggage possible. "Let's get started."

As it turned out, there was a lot more that he needed to know than he had been able to dream up in the day since he'd found out that he would be rooming with the Autobots. Permanently. Most were boring routine things like having finger and retinal scans taken and being issued a security clearance card and password, as well as rules and procedures he would need to abide by, the actual layout of the base (though Dave couldn't give him a paper map to help out with that one, in case it fell into the wrong hands).

When the issue of clothing and other personal items came up, he was dismayed to learn that they would not be able to bring him any of his things from home-- in fact, not even his parents would be going back to his house. Both they and Mikaela were going straight into the witness protection program and being moved to undisclosed locations. "Because the Decepticons know where your house is-- and probably hers too. If anyone attempted to go back there for your clothes or videogames, not only might they themselves be in danger, they might inadvertantly lead the Decepticons back to base. Sorry, Sam, but we can't risk that."

He was also shocked to learn that his father's demands had been near prophetic-- although he was no longer technically a minor, the ultimate authority over him went to Optimus, and while he was still in school (yes, he would be learning through a combination of online courses and tutors on base, and no, he could study whatever he wished, though politics was necessarily a requirement given his position) he would recieve an 'allowance' of sorts for personal spending and to buy him food and clothes and to pay for college. He almost collapsed into a fit of giggles at the mental image of Optimus cracking open his wallet and doling out money. It was either that or collapse in a seizure. Apparently, the alien leader was fairly rich.

The only answers Dave could not give him pertained to his future after getting a college degree. Sam had panicked, thinking that he would be forced to join the military, to which Dave had laughed. "You're no longer an American citizen, Sam. So even if they wanted to force you to join-- which they can't, given that there is no draft in place-- you wouldn't be joining the American military in the first place. And I don't think the Autobots are looking for human recruits." But beyond that, no one seemed to have much of an idea of what to do with him after he had a diploma in his hot little hands. Sam felt even more useless than before, realizing he might actually be stuck around doing nothing of any value.

All too soon the pilot announced that they would be landing in five minutes. Sam buckled his seat belt, watching Galloway fold up his newspaper and set it aside. The man had not said a single word to him the whole time, though he'd been present for the conversation. Not that Sam particularly wanted to chat with him, but still.

Suddenly snagging on an idea, Sam turned back to Dave, forcing down his eagerness in an attempt not to give too much away.

"Actually..." he drew the other man's attention away from the window, working to sound disinterested, "I was wondering what someone would have to do, hypothetically, to get someone else clearance to come to the base."

Dave raised an eyebrow. "Hypothetically."

Stupid, stupid, stupid! Sam could have kicked himself for being so obvious. He worked to smooth out his dismayed expression, giving a casual shrug. "Yeah, just wondering. Do you have any idea how someone would go about it?"

"Well," he tapped the tips of his fingers together pensively, "You have to keep in mind that I'm not in charge of security, and therefore I have no say over who gets to come on base. If...someone....were truly determined to bring someone else on base, it would be in that first someone's best interest to talk to Captain Lennox."

Lennox, of course! Sam repressed a groan of self-annoyance, wondering if he were that fatally stupid. If the truth had come along and smacked him in the face earlier, he could have saved himself all that time snooping around in a dusty office by simply talking to the military commander. Suddenly filled with a new sense of purpose, he refused to consider the possibility that Lennox might say no. Now that he had an angle of approach, it had to work. It just had to. He only had a little over a day left before Mikaela's plane left.

"I guess that would be the smart thing for that someone to do, then," he smiled back, in thanks. Though still pretending to be ignoring them as the plane came in for a landing, Galloway snorted. Dave rolled his eyes-- to Sam's intense amusement-- then held his gaze and gave him a deliberate wink.

The pilot came over the intercomm as they touched down. "Welcome, gentlemen, to NEST base of operations."

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One constant he noticed between the port and the large island was the heat. Still there, still oppressive, soaking his shirt with sweat and showing no sign of letting up. He missed snow already.

One huge difference, however, was that most of the island was beautiful. Tropical paradise beautiful. The beauty extended just as far as the beginning of the overground base and stopped short, because the base itself (what he could see of it, since most nestled deep down into the bedrock beneath them) was as gray and dismal as asphalt, barbed wire, concrete and corrugated roofs could be. Despite his spectacular imaginings, it mostly resembled every other base he'd visited or seen in pictures-- a maze of warehouses and hangers edged in double rows of barbed wire and riddled with security cameras and motion sensors. All in all, not very high tech. And to his growing apprehension, not very fortified, either.

The two C-17s had already landed and were spewing out their cargo of Autobots and soldiers onto the runway. His heart unknotted slightly when Bumblebee backed out as well-- irrational though it was, he hadn't been able to help fearing that the yellow scout had somehow been left behind.

Several armed soliders came to flank them as they strode brisky towards one of the unmarked hangers. Sam leaned close to Dave, though he only came up to his shoulder, and whispered, "I thought this place was supposed to be ultra high-tech with enough security to stop a tidal wave? There are only two rows of barbed wire!"

"Here, on the surface, perhaps," he whispered in return, "But it wouldn't be very smart to go displaying all our anti-Decepticon technology for everyone to see, now would it? Any one who happens to look at us will only see another base, and not a very large one at that."

"And the best way to protect something is to hide it in plain sight," Sam mumbled to himself as they passed through a gate and were herded through a thick steel door set into one of the concrete slab hangers.

To his shock, the room beyond was empty.

"What?" he breathed in confusion, but Dave only took him by the arm and gently led him forward, stopping near where all the other soldiers and agents had gathered in one big clump.

One of the soldiers hefted his gun to his left shoulder to free his hand. He reached out--- and tapped on the air.

"A hologram," Dave whispered to him, "Courtesy of the Autobots."

The floor beneath them jerked, groaned, and suddenly they were descending through the floor as though through quicksand. A hand hooked itself under his arm as he cried out in shock and tried to stumble to the side.

"Let me guess," he squeaked as the floor came up to his chest. It was more like passing through air than passing through concrete-- he felt nothing at all as it rose to swallow the buttons of his shirt in quick sucession. "Another hologram?"

"Yes. We're riding an elevator of sorts."

"Oh, great." The floor came up to his chin, his nose. "Fun times."

And then he was through it, looking back at a transparent image of the floor from below. It was like looking up at the surface from underwater, though this barrier did not shimmer and dance with ripples and light.

But when he looked down, all thoughts of the perfect hologram were driven from his mind. He realized that making a patch of air resemble concrete was only a drop in the bucket compared with what the Autobots could do when they put their minds to it. He was distantly aware of his mouth dropping open and of a smattering of chuckles around him in response. But he couldn't tear either his mind or his eyes away from the sight of the vast, cavernous room before him as the elevator slowed its descent and clunked into place without jostling them in the least.

"Welcome to NEST, Sam," Dave said in his ear. Some part of his mind reminded him to pull his tongue back into his mouth before he tripped over it.

The main chamber the elevator dumped them into could have easily allowed a transformer twice Optimus' height to stretch its arms without grazing the ceiling. A series of metal grate stairs and catwalks formed platforms at different heights around the room, presumably to allow the two races to talk on equal footing. Every square inch of space-- and not just floor space-- had been crammed with technology he had never seen and could think of no name for, only some of which might have been computers. A cool blue glowed filled the room from the hundreds of screens and spiralling holographic displays. Countless humans, soldiers and civilians alike, scurried down the winding isles, giving reports, monitoring readouts, examining data, and occasionally bringing coffee. No one appeared to notice their entrance. No human, that is.

Perfectly at ease with the constant stream of creatures milling about their feet, two Autobots worked their way across the room toward their group. The electric blue robot in the front-- Jolt, he remembered-- waved in greeting and recieved a cluster of waves and shouts in return as the soldiers accompanying Sam and Dave began to disperse. An unfamiliar, and vaguely dangerous looking, silver robot trailed behind him. His emotionless visor turned in their direction, though he offered no wave.

"Hey, guys!" Jolt greeted easily, going down on one knee before them, "Optimus and the others got back just before you did, if you were wondering."

"And we should be with them now," The silver one interjected in a hard voice, somehow still appearing to be bored despite the ostentatious lack of a face.

Jolt turned and bleeped at him in a 'get lost' way, then turned back to the pair, focusing his intense gaze on Sam.

"So, you're the one everyone's been gossiping about." He brought his head even closer to Sam's, pushing so far into his space bubble that Sam was convinced it would pop at any moment. He blinked, momentarily stunned and fascinated, to find that Jolt's optics didn't match. One glowed the classic Autobot blue, but the other one gleamed emerald green, sparking here and there with sudden arcs of electricity. Sam took a prudent step back, remembering the sheer amout of electric current Jolt had discharged in Egypt. The robot was a walking battery. "We've all been very anxious to meet you, Sam," he caught the way Sam slid his gaze to the silver Autobot and added, "Even Sideswipe. He just won't admit to admiring anyone other than himself."

Sideswipe stiffened, and at first Sam thought it was in indignation, but then the Autobot relaxed again and hissed out a few notes of static to Jolt. Jolt cycled air through his vents in a sigh.

"It seems we're being summoned by Optimus. Unfortunately, necessary things like introductions and tours will have to wait until we get this settled."

"Wait," Sam shook his head to clear the cobwebs from it, remembering back to almost three hours ago (--'got a call from NEST'--). "The thing he's calling you all for-- is that what you guys radioed us on the ship about? Is it some kind of emergency?"

Sideswipe spoke over anything Jolt might have said, replying, "It might very well end up one if we don't investigate it. Let's go, Jolt."

Jolt sighed again, rising to his feet. "Oh well. Duty calls. I'll see you later, Sam."

And to Sam's complete amazement and embarassment, Jolt ducked into a low, alien bow, Sideswipe mirroring the gesture beyond him. He had never, ever seen the Autobots bow. Maybe the new arrivals did to Optimus, but he'd never been around to see that before. He hoped it was only a Cybertronian custom for greeting new people.

As Jolt turned to go, Sam lunged after him, inspired by a sudden idea. Maybe he didn't have to be useless, after all. "Wait, hold up! I'm coming too!"

Sideswipe turned and snapped something brutal sounding at Jolt, but Jolt merely clicked back with equanimity and then went silent for a moment, optics briefly darkening. When he straightened, he turned to look down at Sam.

"Sideswipe may not like it, but since Prime gave the okay you can come along. Let's go!"

Without pausing to ask for premission, the blue Autobot leaned down and scooped him off his feet. Sam swallowed back a cry of alarm, reaching out to grip the blue wrist instead to steady himself. He doubted the Autobot would be clumsy enough to let him fall, but fifteen feet in the air he wasn't taking chances. Similar to how Mudflap and Skids and handled him but with a more notable degree of respect, Jolt settled him into the crook of his arm and trotted off after Sideswipe in the same rolling, dancing, crouching motion that took them within inches of shaving someone's head yet never even spilled a cup of coffee. Turning back to the swiftly disappearing Dave with a shrug, he marveled at the situational processing power of the aliens. Their reflexes must have been at least a hundred times that of a human.

NEST, he soon realized, was huge. The underground complex spiraled out in an endless series of tunnels, rooms, and larger chambers like the one through which they had entered, forming a buzzing warren of restless activity that seemed to extend out in every direction-- including down. On the short plane ride from the mainland, Dave had informed him that they were still digging, expanding-- buildings structures that would have been thought impossible without Autobot input. He wondered briefly just how deeply they had dug and if they had even gone beneath the ocean floor-- then, thinking of all the ramifications of having a virtual underground alien city (can you say 'cheesy sci fi horror flick'?), he decided that he really didn't want to know.

Jolt's space-devouring strides sent them hurtling down corridor after corridor faster than should have been possible, though the alien fluidity of his motion prevented Sam from being rattled in his perch like a jackhammer. Somehow, in less than thirty seconds, the Autobot had reached his destination, slowing to a stately walk as he entered another lofty chamber followed by a surly Sideswipe.

Compared with the new room Sam found himself in, the place where the elevator set them down had been no more than a lobby, about as high-tech and secretive as a coffee shop. Save for the catwalks that were also present in the room as in most other places around the base, the technology packed into every corner had a distinctly alien feel to it-- it seemed more organic than human made devices. A mosaic of different sized screens dominated one wall, the largest of the bunch measuring around twenty feet in length. At the moment they all showed the same image-- a desk-top background of soothing blue and green curves, overlaid with a few unlabeled icons. The word 'Microsoft' winked cheerfully up from the corner of every screen, directly below a black outline of the classically red Autobot symbol. Sam knew he had definitely entered bizarro land.

Though here too humans filled the room, they were for once out numbered by aliens. Arranged before the wall of screens stood the Autobots, all having converted back into bipedal mode for the meeting. Optimus stood towards the back of the group as the tallest. His head twisted in their direction as they entered, optics focusing briefly on Sam as he gave a feeble wave. As if the motion from their leader were a signal of some sort, several other armored heads turned to take in their arrival. One or two waved, though most did nothing but turn again to regard the waiting screens. Some didn't even acknowledge their presence. His heart contracted painfully as he realized that Bumblebee numbered among the group regarding them as part of the wallpaper.

Most of the gathered Autobots he recognized, though there were a few he had never seen before. Optimus, Rachet, Ironhide, Bumblebee, Mudflap, and Skids were givens. Arcee, he noticed with a shiver of knowing dread, was the only one from Egypt not among their number. He had lost track of the three combiners during the battle.

Also among them stood a bulky, dark green robot who gave Sam a friendly salute, to which the human offered a wane smile in return....were those leaves sticking out from the cracks between his armor?

Near the very front, a spindly white robot scarcely large than a human stood twittering nervously, its needle-like fingers clicking together in discordant harmony. Or at least, it appeared nervous on first glance. Looking closer, he realized the robot seemed to be absorbed in its own little world, muttering to itself and moving its forelimbs spasmodically the way some people would mime typing or playing the piano in their sleep. Note to self-- stay away from the creepy white dude.

"Jolt. Sideswipe...Sam," Optmus acknowledged. By unspoken command, Jolt gingerly lifted Sam from his arms and set him carfully on one of the catwalks beside a cluster of uniformed officers before moving to join the other Autobots. Sam furiously convinced himself that he had only imagined the feel of large fingers petting the back of his head just before the robot pulled away. There was no way he had just been scratched behind the ears like a dog. His liking for Jolt cooled considerably.

Optimus turned to face forward once more, looking down at the ant-sized human operating the console under the wall of screens.

"We're ready."

At once, the microsoft background vanished in a wash of light as another window popped up to take its place. A black-and-white image spread to fill the screen, showing-- of all things-- a grainy, distorted view of oncoming traffic, as seen from the point of view of a street light. Overlaid across the image blinked the word 'Pause', beneath which was printed a chronometer set at 05:42:13:57. 5 o'clock, and judging from the amount of cars lined up nose to tail, it was rush hour.

A woman standing near him on the catwalk-- to his surprise dressed in jeans and a paint-stained plaid shirt-- stepped forward and began to speak.

"What you see here is a recording caught by a traffic camera in Lagos, Nigeria. The dispatchers didn't know what to make of it at first, so it took a while before our software picked up on the alert. Right now, we're not even sure what to make of it, so we hope you guys will have a better idea of what this thing is than we do at the moment. Jeff, start 'er up."

The steadily blinking 'Pause' vanished, though the video did not immediately leap into motion. A moment passed before the cars lurched and began to trickle forward. Just as suddenly they froze again, the video jerking to a stop, then began to move once more as though nothing had occured. Move, stop, move. Sam realized that the camera had recorded in stop motion, taking snapshots of the traffic at a set interval. At first he saw nothing out of the ordinary but gray splotches of cars inching their way forward, appearing at the top of the screen and vanishing as they made it to the bottom. But then a ripple of motion disturbed one of the cars at the very back of the pack, though he couldn't see quite what was happening due to other vehicles blocking the camera's line of sight. A beat up oldsmobile drove into view, going much faster than all the other cars around it, and changed lanes to pass in front of a Toyota-- and vanished. The Toyota fish-tailed to the side as though struck by some invisble force, dropping back out of view. A split second later, the same Toyota appeared farther along in the stream of traffic, closer to the camera. It drifted back into the right lane from nothing but air, as though in switching lanes it had passed from one dimension into another. It weaved around a few more cars, vanished again, and a Lexus popped into existance farther down the road in front of a truck, immediately changing lanes once more. Just before it vanished off screen, Sam could have sworn he saw the Lexus leap into the air over the car in front of it, but then the view was lost and the strobbing apparition departed as quickly as it had come, leaving behind nothing but an uninterrupted flow of ordinary cars drifting through the twilight gray.

"It's like a mirage," Sam gasped quietly in awe.

The clip stopped, rewound, and paused over an image of the toyota shimmering into existance. The trunk of the car simply wasn't there. Slowly the recording ground forward, and bit by bit the back end of the car extracted itself from the air. No ripple in the fabric of the universe, no strobbing lights. One minute it wasn't there, and the next it was. Though the fact that the original Toyota had been knocked out of the way by an invisible force suggested that something had been there all along, even if they couldn't see it.

The woman turned to Optmus. "Well? What do you make of it?"

An outburst of several Autobots all speaking in Cybertronian at once echoed around the room. Sam had never seen them this agitated; they turned to one another, clicking, warbling, hissing, but no one seemed to have a definite answer. Even Optimus rumbled at Ironhide in a heated discussion. After almost two minutes of furious alien chatter, Optimus emitted a short blip of thrumming static that caused all noise to immediately cease. He turned back to the woman, switching to english.

"I'm afraid we don't have much of an answer for you. None of us has ever encountered an Autobot, or Decepticon, able to render themselves completely invisble and change their alternate form three times in a matter of seconds."

The spindy white robot spoke up, and to Sam's surprise his voice emerged a mellow tenor, far different from the squealing chatter the human had expected from his experience with Frenzy. "There were many experiments back on Cybertron with this kind of technology. I myself worked on several. But as far as I know, we were never able to develop, much less implement, any workable technology that would grant one of our race that level of stealth."

"Have there been any reports of destruction in or around Lagos?" Optimus asked.

But the woman only shook her head. "No. No explosions, no big fires, no reports of metal monsters roaming the streets. Heck, the usual number of murders even went down rather than up."

"That does not rule out the possibility that it may be a Decepticon with common sense," Ironhide rumbled, cannons clicking and whirling.

"It could still be an Autobot, though perhaps one whose communication systems were damaged upon landing," the unfamiliar green alien put in.

"In any case," Optimus asserted when it looked as though the two heavily armored robots would begin to argue, "We need to send a team to investigate, whether to pick up a new ally or to dispatch a foe."

The white robot made a negative screeching noise, twisting to face Optimus. "You saw for yourself its capacity for stealth, Prime. Any team working in the area would almost certainly drive it into hiding, far beyond the reach of our scanners."

"Then what would you suggest?"

"A single individual would have a much greater chance of being able to take it by surprise. Sending a human would theoretcially be ideal-- a Decepticon, if that is truly what it is, would be unlikely to suspect a threat from a human."

This recommendation sparked another round of furtive alien arguments. The sound of the robotic language made Sam feel like his head had gotten stuck inside the modem box of a super computer. After only a few seconds the spatted bleeps of conversation died back down again and Optimus took up point.

"And if this 'mirage' is a Decepticon, any human sent to track it would be in mortal danger, above and beyond the normal risks of being part of a team. Because this time, he or she would be alone," he turned away from the screens to face the group of assembled Autobots. "I will send one of my soldiers to Lagos, instead. Bumblebee?"

Sam's heart leapt into his throat as the yellow scout raised his optics without hesitation to meet his leader's gaze. "'...lean on me...when you need me, I'll be there...'"

"No, wait!" Sam cried in sudden panic, lunging forward to grasp the rail of the catwalk. "Why Bumblebee? Why does he need to be the one to go?"

He tried to catch his guardian's gaze, but the scout once more pretended not to notice his existence. Sam hoped it was from anxiety and not from a true desire to have the human drop off the face of the earth.

"You have seen for yourself Bumblebee's talents for tracking, Sam," Optimus replied, studying the image on screen rather than turning to face him, "He is also the only one of my soldiers with the requisite capacity for stealth to avoid being detected in his search for this 'mirage'. Anyone else would be sure to fail."

Sam gripped the railing until his knuckles turned white and the bones in his hands creaked. Images flooded through his mind at the thought of gentle Bee facing off against an invisible specter, showing him glimpse after nightmarish glimpse of the yellow scout falling under a hail of unseen blows, struggling to rise and being knocked down again, phantom blades slicing through his armor like the skin of a ripe tomato, ghostly claws peeling open his chest as he struggled against the air--

Optimus wanted to send him out alone to track down the unknown enemy. And Bumblebee had agreed to go. Objectively, theoretically, it made unquestionable sense-- a lone hunter, especially one as sneaky as Bee, would have a very good chance of being able to take the mirage by surprise. But the terrible thing with fangs that crouched in his chest roared NO! at the idea, screaming that that was his friend Optimus was trying to send off into danger, and under no circumstances could he allow that to happen. Using logic wouldn't work-- he himself knew that logic was not in his corner this time. But how?

When the idea took shape in his mind he shuddered away from it, feeling sick with himself. But it was the only thing that had a chance of working. He had to go for the jugular.

He couldn't look at Optimus, not with the horrible, monsterous words forming in his mind and oozing like sludge into his mouth. He didn't want to say it. He almost would have preferred to cut out his own tongue first. But protecting Bumblebee was important enough that he was willing to ignore all Optimus had done for him, ignore the terrible lacerations covering his metal body and the stiffness of his movements, ignore the fact that the great leader had already laid down his life once for him. Maybe he was a monster. But then again, maybe only a monster had the power to save bumblebee.

"And you're sure he'll be okay? He'll be safe?" Sam almost choked on his own words, so thick and vile were they as they rolled off his tongue. And still Optimus had no idea what waited to be said.

"Yes, Sam. Bumblebee knows what he's doing. He'll be safe."

(--evil, evil monster!--stop!) But he couldn't stop. He knew he was a monster, he knew he was lower than pond scum, but it had to be done.

His tongue unstuck itself from the roof of his mouth.

"Is that what you said last time?" he heard himself ask. "I would have thought three weeks would be long enough for you to learn otherwise."

He knew the silver bullet had hit its mark when Optimus jerked back as though struck. Sam couldn't meet his eyes. Instead he stared at the twisted red and blue armor, burning every unhealed battle wound into his mind and sobbing with shame on the inside. He wasn't pond scum-- he was one of the maggots that wriggled around in pond scum. But he wouldn't take back the spiteful words, not if they could keep Bumblebee from the mirage's clutches. Logic wouldn't work, but playing the alien's emotions like a fiddle might.

To his shock, it was Bumblebee himself who replied to his rhetorical questions. For the first time the scout turned to face the human, but the look in his optics had Sam cringing away. No longer did the blue glow see warm and friendly. Now, it cut him like ice.

"I am well equiped to handle a single transformer," Bumblebee said stiffly. "I do not need a human questioning my abilities."

Too late did Sam realize that his words betrayed not only Optimus' trust, but Bumblebee's as well. Too late his heart reminded him that it was not his secret to tell, not his memories to bring up in front of a room full of Autobots that would doubtlessly remember the scout's capture. He fully understood Bumblebee's anger, even expected it, but that didn't change how deepy the cold, cruel tone to the word 'human' cut into his soul. Bee had always called him Sam. Always. Only now, he didn't deserve it.

Without another word, the yellow scout turned to leave. Even feeling as fragile as blown glass, even burning with shame and regret, his heart still contracted with fear at the thought of his friend tracking down the unknown Decepticon all alone.

"Let me go with you!" Sam cried before he could stop himself, sprinting for the stairs leading down from the catwalk. "Please! I can help!"

Bumblebee stopped but didn't turn to face him.

His voice came back hollow, dead. (..oh bee...forgive me...). "No, you can't."

"You'll probably need someone to talk to the other humans-- you know, scope things out, see if anyone saw something--"

"What I need is for you to stay here."

He started down the steps, ignoring the warning in the scout's tone. "I can't do you any good here--"

"There is nothing you could possibly do to help me."

Sam stumbled to a halt, iron bands tightening around his chest.

"But...me and you, we're a team! R-right? We have to stick together!" (please, no....)

Bee curled into himself a little, but the final blow came as flat and unhesitant as ever.

"I do not want you to come with me."

The words stung him like a whip, lashing straight through to his soul. His heart stilled, and he slumped against the railing, suddenly boneless (--not real, never real-- how pathetic, thinking you could be worthy of an angel--)

"Oh." He sat straight down on the steps, directing his gaze towards his shoes. Something rose up in his chest and clogged his throat. He couldn't breathe. "Well, I guess...that's it, then." He wheezed, struggling with himself, trying to force out a wish for good luck or even just a tiny goodbye. But he couldn't get anything past the thick, painful knot choking him from the inside.

Distantly he heard Bumblebee continue out the door without saying another word, without even turning around. And another little piece of him died.

Without even realizing it, he had destroyed their friendship. The best thing that had ever happened to him was gone, and now his guardian angel no longer wanted to be around him. Didn't even want to look at him. The knot twisted tighter. He gripped desperately at his hair, shaking.

Vaguely he was aware of things happening around him, of people talking and planning as though nothing had happened. As though his world hadn't just come to an end. And to make it even worse, he had hurt Optimus. The broken little pieces of him shiveled even further at the sharp-edged memory of the compassionate, wounded alien drawing back from him as if from a poisonous snake, flinching from the deadly sting of his words. He had only wanted to protect his friend.

Now, he had no friends at all.

But still he couldn't cry. He felt more wretched than he had in his entire life, sick with himself to the point of needing to throw up, but still no tears would come.

At some point the meeting must have ended, because when a large finger touched his back the room was empty save for a few humans busy at various consoles and the electric blue Jolt peering at him through the vertical bars holding up the hand rail. The finger smoothed down his back in a way he supposed was meant to be comforting, but it only reminded him of Bumblebee's tender ministrations and how the scout didn't even want to look at the slimey human anymore, much less touch him. He leaned away from the contact, pulling himself to his feet.

"Hey. You okay?" Jolt asked softly. Sam twisted away to massage the inside corners of his eyelids, grateful that he didn't have to deal with hysterical human tears making him look pathetic on top of everything else.

"Yeah. I'm fine," he replied, in a voice not his own.

The Autobot didn't seem to believe him, but he accepted the statement without objection.

"Well, I'd thought we could do a tour after the meeting, but you look like you might just want to be alone right now. Come on, I'll show you your room!"

And he held out a blue hand at Sam's feet, wiggling his fingers invitingly. Sam brushed past the outstretched appendage and continued on down the steps.

"No thanks, I think I'll walk," he declined hoarsely.

"It's a long walk."

"Then I guess I'm taking a long walk."

Seeming reluctant, Jolt drew back his hand and straightened to his full height.

"Well, come on then."

Sam followed the Autobot out of the cavernous command center and down several long halls, occasionally having to pause at a steel blast door to confirm his identity before being admitted within. He knew he should have been trying to memorize the route, but he couldn't find the will to make the effort. Though the corridors were brightly lit and filled with voices and the continuous hum of life, he still somehow felt that he was being lead to a prison cell so deep beneath the earth that no one would ever find him.

Jolt pulled to a stop outside of the first human-sized blast door Sam had seen.

"Obviously, I can't go with you past here," the Autobot said apologetically, a bright arc of electricity cracking between his fingers. "This is the humans-only section. Gives you guys some privacy from us, since we can't get in after you. When you go in there, take the second hallway to the right. Your room is the third door on the left."

"Thank, Jolt," Sam replied dully, putting his hand to the panel set in the door to let it scan his finger prints and DNA. The security system recognized him with a wabrle of affirmation, letting the door slide into the wall. But Jolt stopped him before he could slip through.

"Don't worry about Bumblebee, Sam," the blue Autobot urged him, "He sometimes lashes out when he gets upset."

"Yeah," he replied thickly. Not really an answer-- he couldn't agree to 'not worry'. He might as well have tried to detach his legs. And he doubted that Bee was merely 'upset'. He was furious....and betrayed (--'the most loyal being I have ever encountered--'). Sam knew he had broken the yellow scout's trust, and his heart tore itself little pieces at the knowledge that it wasn't a forgivable offense (--'I do not want you to come with me'-- ever...).

With nothing more to say, he slipped through the door and let it slide closed behind him, never looking back. He wanted to like Jolt, he really did, but he didn't want to accept the comforting consolation prize-- like a kid being given a stuffed bear when her mom died. It was no replacement, and he hated the unspoken implication that it should be.

His feet led him down the path Jolt had described, leaving him standing before a smooth white door with no handle. Once more he pressed his hand to the indicated pad, and the door slid open with a woosh of air. The comparison to Star Trek was too obvious to miss, but he couldn't find any humor in it at the moment.

The room beyond was plain, yet not as barren as he had feared. Four white walls framed a decent sized space, a hard looking couch dividing the rectangular room into a living room area and a bedroom area. The floor was carpeted, thankfully, and a set of shelves already held at least two dozen books-- and several playstation games for the game console set up near the small TV. There was a door set into the side wall, and opening it he found he had his own bathroom, complete with a shower.

Retreating back into the main room, he began to root through drawers and open cabinets, finding much more than he had expected to find. There was no closet, but a wardrobe held several outfits (including a suit, to his discomfort-- he hoped he never had occasion to wear it), running shoes, tennis shoes, sandals and dress shoes. There were also additional blankets neatly folded on the shelf above. The dresser held even more clothes, as well as all those items that didn't need to be stored hanging up-- jeans, t-shirts, belts, sweaters (wouldn't ever need those, not with the Indian heat), collared shirts, slacks, socks, underwear, and even a brown hoody. Under the table beside the bed he even found a few board games, though unless he tripped over someone to play with they would be pretty useless.

Straightening, he turned to examine the bed. As a teenager, his first instinct was to sprawl bonelessly across it to test its sprawl-ability, then bounce on it like a little kid to try to touch the ceiling. But any thoughts of throwing himself onto the smoothly made covers evaporated at the sight of the small box tied with a ribbon sitting innocently on the pillow. He picked it up, and a small piece of folded paper fluttered to the ground.

Turning to sit on the edge of the bed, he leaned over and picked up the tiny note, weighing the gift in his other hand. It was small, and rather light. Nothing rattled when he shook it, meaning that it could have held anything from a bandana to air. Setting it beside him with a sigh, he unfolded the note.

'Just a little something to brighten your day. --B

P.S.: You'll probably kick me for saying this, but welcome home.'

The sight of the typed words caused the slip of paper to burn against his skin like a branding iron. A human must have come in and left it for him on the bed, probably before they had even left the aircraft carrier. And probably before that morning, when Bee had seemed mysteriously pissed at him. His friend probably regretted giving him whatever it was now.

His eyes burned and he scrubbed at them furiously, crumpling the note in his hand. Shooting up from the bed, he moved at an urgent clip across the room, desperate to be rid of the tiny box with its little bow and friendly message, unable to stand holding it, looking at it, for one more second. Its very presence reacted like ammonia to his guilt's bleach, sending up noxious fumes that threatened to choke him. Stalking to the desk, he flung both the gift and the crumpled slip of paper in the waste basket with such force that it tipped over on its side. He righted it, then thought better of leaving the two items in plain sight and carted the whole thing into the bathroom, setting it on the tile floor and leaving it there. He hurried back out into the main room, closing the door behind him on the sight of the mournful wastebasket adrift in a sea of white tile.

Returning to the desk, he pulled open drawers until he found a notepad and a pencil, then threw himself into the chair and settled down to plan.

Five minutes later he still had not come up with a mode of attack for approaching Lennox, though he had created several doodles of bombs being dropped on Megatron's head. Throwing down his pen, he looked at his sling and seriously contemplated reading Mikaela's note. He could really use some words of wisdom, or at least a humorous pick-me-up.

But then he thought of the endless years stretching ahead of him, thought of the possibility that he might be deprived not only of his girlfriend but also of his best friend, and decided that the message, too, was a gift better left unopened. At least for the moment. He didn't know if he would ever have the strength to open Bumblebee's gift, not knowing if it was meant to cheer a friend or consol a pet (--don't need a human--don't need a human--)

Because somehow, without even realizing it, he had become nothing more than an annoying bug once more (--'I suggest you leave'--'human'-- disgusting, unworthy--).

And that hurt the most of all.

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Author's note: I know that many of you out there probably hate my guts right now. I hate myself a little too. But before anyone starts breaking out the flamethrowers, keep in mind that you have trusted me this far-- trust me just a little while longer. Besides, I warned everyone that there would be double helpings of angst all around, and this is just the tip of the iceberg. Though keep in mind that this story is far from over--- there are many more twists and turns, ups and downs coming before I reach the end.

As you've seen in this chapter, I have begun to introduce other transformers, mostly from the G1 universe. (Can you guess who made an appearance in this chapter? It's not as obvious as you'd think....two of them will take you by surprise). While I will not be creating any OC's, the fact that I have never watched G1-- and the fact that I'm trying to update everything for the movie universe-- might make them seem a little OOCish.

Lastly, Deserthermit has been kind enough to make a few pieces of artwork for this story (*squee!!*) and I would be delighted to post any other pictures people feel inspired to make both on my profile and my story.

Here are the links:

1) An unfinished illustration for 'Wanderings': rabid-werewolf(dot)deviantart(dot)com/art/Wanderings-130696878
2) My favorite transformer (guess who!): rabid-werewolf(dot)deviantart(dot)com/art/Mirage-130694690