Chapter Seven: Target
Agent Simmons sits on a rusty swing. His skin is pale and kind of ashen. Cars pass by every now and then, close enough for Hunter to look in and see the drivers, but no one stops to ask why a grown man is hanging out on a swing-set in the middle of a park, alone, at night.
Neither of them has said anything since they left Sideswipe. Hunter, because he doesn't know what to say, and Simmons, because he looks like he's feeling too crappy to care. He keeps reaching up to rub his left shoulder. His chin is tucked to his chest, hiding most of his face in shadows, but his expression is drawn. His breathing is shallow.
Hunter wants to ask if he's all right. But a glance is enough to answer that and there's nothing he can do anyway, so he sits there, silently, watching the sensor grid for a flicker of Sideswipe.
It's been twenty minutes. He hasn't heard so much as a word from the red mech.
Simmons sniffs and raises his head. He rests it on the swing's chain. He blinks a few times. His face is even worse than at the hotel, all puffy, the bruises a sick purple spreading under his eyes.
"So you wanna tell me what we're doing here?" the agent says.
Hunter tries not to fidget.
"Waiting," he says.
"Yeah, I see that. I meant the rest of it. More specifically, I meant 'we' as in 'me.'"
"I think we should wait for Sideswipe."
The corner of Simmons's mouth twists up into a pained smile. "Huh. Well it was worth a shot."
He falls silent. He just sits there, staring off into the distance. He almost looks amused.
"Who are you?" Hunter says.
Simmons quirks an eyebrow at him. He huffs a short bark of laughter. "Seriously? You people go through all this and—"
"Not that," Hunter says. "I mean, I know who you are. I meant…"
Simmons raises his eyebrows.
"You're taking all of this pretty well," Hunter says.
Simmons shrugs his right shoulder. And then winces. "I've seen a lot of strange things. Though you, you might just take the cake."
Hunter rocks back on his tires. "Can you please just drop that, already?"
"Whatever," Simmons says. He's still got that half-smile, half-sneer on his face.
Jerk, Hunter thinks.
"What's with the human face, anyway?" Simmons says.
Hunter sighs in his head.
"They call it a 'Headmaster,'" he says. Though Simmons slumped posture doesn't change, his eyes fix on Hunter. "I don't know a lot about it. I was kidnapped a month ago by these people, 'Machination.' They did this to me. I woke up and I was… I was like this."
Simmons makes a noise in his throat. He shifts a little and winces. He rubs his shoulder again.
"Are… is there something I can do to help with that?" Hunter says.
The agent's grin becomes more of a grimace. "Not unless you got a couple of Oxycodone in your glove compartment."
"No. Sorry."
The man gives a half-hearted eyebrow shrug and breathes out through his nose.
He's way too calm.
Simmons hasn't complained. He didn't freak out or yell or do anything that Hunter would have done were he in the agent's shoes. When they'd stopped at the park, they'd sat in the dark for a few minutes and then Agent Simmons had asked if he could get out, get "some fresh air." It wasn't like the guy could get far if he had tried to run off. And it was weird having someone sit in him. So Hunter had opened the door and turned on his headlights so Simmons could see where he was going.
Hunter doesn't think it's the pain. There's something about him, something he can't quite put his finger on. The agent keeps looking at him with a strange glint in his eyes, with a kind of hard expression.
He's not scared.
"How much longer are we gonna stay here?" Simmons says.
Hunter checks the grid again. Still no sign of Sideswipe. He opens up the mech's comm line.
((Sideswipe?))
He waits. Cars whoosh by. Somewhere in the distance, a police siren whoops twice. Simmons scratches his nose and rocks back. The swing chains rattle.
((Sideswipe?))
((What?)) Sideswipe says.
((Where are you?))
There's another long silence. Hunter can just pick up some of the background noise—traffic and something else. Then, ((I'm busy. What is it?))
((How much longer are you gonna be?))
Sideswipe makes a noise very close to a sigh. ((I'm not sure. Why?))
((Simmons doesn't look so good. I think we need to take him to a hospital or something.))
((You stay right where you are,)) he snaps. Then, ((We need him, Hunter. Someone wants him, I'm guessing Machination, which means he's got something. I scanned him before I handed him over. He should be fine. Just… just stay there, okay? I won't be long.))
((Yeah. Okay,)) Hunter says.
The line goes dead. Hunter looks to Simmons, still staring at him, and tries not to sink on his tires. It was very faint and he'd barely caught it, but he's pretty sure the background noise he heard over Sideswipe's comm line had been people screaming.
Wind gusts through the trees. The road is dark and silent. Three cars have driven past and none of them have stopped. Sideswipe watches from his spot amongst the vegetation some hundred and fifty metras away. He's crouched down, one knee sinking into the soft ground. He hasn't moved in thirty kliks.
The humans are still screaming. They get louder whenever the wind kicks up and the vehicle starts to sway. He can't find it in himself to care.
Hunter, you'd better not be doing anything stupid, he thinks.
Headlights on the road. The distant sound of an engine drawing closer. Sideswipe powers down as much as he can without locking himself into recharge.
Two vehicles—large, dark, and identical—come up the road. He waits. They start to slow even before they get to the clearing he's so carefully staged. They pull over and stop. They idle there for another klik, lights off, everything silent, making no move to do anything though they must be able to see what's just off the road. He starts to wonder about that when a tingling wave washes over him.
Sideswipe scowls.
A sensor sweep. Some meat-bag in one of those SUV's has Cybertronian technology.
The doors on the lead vehicle open. Several humans pile out and move to surround their convoy. They jog in a low crouch—more of a scurry—covered in dark armor, all of them carrying weapons Sideswipe knows are not from this planet.
Slag.
They pause. He can just make out the dim sounds of low voices, too far to understand. Then a smaller group breaks off and starts to head down the slope, toward the woods. They move slowly, ignoring the shouts from their comrades above. Either they can't hear them through the helmets they wear, or they don't care. Or, more realistically, they're too worried about what might be waiting for them just out of sight.
Sideswipe turns his attention from them and over to the vehicles. They've got license plates in the front. Thirty nano-kliks of hacking later reveals a dead-end. They're fakes.
He tenses.
The forward team reaches the tree. Sideswipe had picked the tallest one he could find. The grill of the SWAT van is still half a human height above their heads. One of them calls something up to the men trapped inside. They shout something back. Another of the ground team turns and makes some kind of hand signal toward the road. The lights on the second SUV turn on and it pulls out into the road.
Sideswipe finds himself facing a dilemma. Stay put and see where the armed humans go, or follow the second vehicle, the one no one came out of? It takes him three nano-kliks to decide; he doesn't need more drones to question. He needs to find their boss. And the fleeing SUV? This could be his ticket.
Hang on Sunny, he thinks. I'm on my way.
Jerri Stephens has just sat down and popped open a can of Pepsi, when her cell phone rings. She pulls it out, takes one look at the screen, and considers throwing it against the wall.
She sighs and flips it open.
"Yes?" she says.
"Ms. Stephens? It's Dr. Berkman."
Jerri rolls her eyes. "I know. What do you want?"
"I see you made it back all right. Everything went well, I take it? Good. Listen, we have another job for you."
The man barely pauses long enough to inhale. Jerri glares at the far wall.
"What do you mean?" she says. She'd taken care of the crony as ordered. And then she'd hauled his sorry carcass all the way back so the rest of the geek squad could start stripping their equipment out of it.
"It seems Mr. Thurston—"
Ah. That had been the crony's name.
"—well, it appears he might have failed," Berkman says. "I'm looking at the reports and it seemed the man he, ah, terminated was in the passenger seat. But he wasn't the target. They apparently switched seats before leaving the site. The passenger was just a field agent, someone named Salazar."
Somehow, I'm not surprised, Jerri thinks.
"Anyway, I dispatched a team to pick up Agent Simmons but… we lost them."
"'Lost them'?" Jerri says. The muscles in her neck pull tight. A dull ache begins to form at the base of her skull. "What do you mean, 'lost them'?"
"They were attacked."
At first, Jerri isn't sure how to respond. "Attacked." Not "detained." Not "taken into custody." But attacked. It's a very specific word with very specific connotations, none of which she likes.
Oh hell.
"That's not the main problem, however," the egghead says after a sufficiently dramatic pause. "We've recovered the team. There were a few casualties, some of them, ah, extensive. Unfortunately, the target was taken. Now, I know you just got back and you must be tired, but we'd really appreciate it if—"
"Look," Jerri cuts in. "I signed up for three gigs, the third of which I have delivered to your lab. As soon as I make sure my accounts are in order, I intend to leave."
"Yes, I'm aware of the, but—"
"No, Dr. Berkman."
"Please, I really—"
"No. I'm going now."
"Ms. Stephens, be reasonable. We can… what? I—yes. Of course."
Jerri pauses halfway through flipping the phone shut. There's rustling and then a new voice comes on. She recognizes the drawl immediately.
"Ms. Stephens?"
She brings the phone back up to her ear and sinks into the chair. She can picture the man on the other line: heavy-set, face creased with smile lines. She'd met him once: he'd shaken her hand and welcomed her "on board." His palms had been wide and dry. He'd been wearing some ridiculous, over-sized cowboy hat.
"Hello, Mr. Dante," she says.
"We've got a proposition for you, if you're willing to hear us out, of course."
Jerri takes a deep breath, counts to three, and says, "I'm listening."
It's getting light out. The night sky fades to the east, out over the pond and the trees. Simmons tries not to shiver. It's not cold out—it's Texas, for crying out loud—but he's been sitting on that swing, motionless, for hours.
His shoulder aches. Every time he moves, every jostle sends a new stab of throbbing pain down his arm. His face feels worse. Whatever healing his body might have started has been obliterated. Simmons blames that damned metal bench on the SWAT van. Or maybe it had been some asshole's knee. His memory is hazy, with the swerving and the shooting and the giant, alien robots.
He's tired. His adrenaline ran out hours ago. The only thing keeping him upright at this point is the pain and sheer stubbornness.
Why are we still sitting here?
This is plain and simple bad protocol. At first, he'd thought it'd been the precursor to interrogation. Let the victim stew in his own misery for a while, soften him up. But his abductor, that kid—because that's what he was. It wasn't just the face, oh no. Every single little thing he did smacked of a kind of adolescent awkwardness. The kid hadn't said a word. Hadn't started questioning him, hadn't tried to bully or buy him. Nothing. Just sat there, headlights illuminating the playground.
Maybe it's an alien thing, he wonders.
He shifts and tries not to grimace. The seat isn't made for adults. His ass has gone numb. He's starting to get that light-headed feeling of spending too much time getting shot at, and not enough time sleeping. He reaches up and runs a hand over his face. His vision blurs for a second.
Damn, he thinks. I am getting old.
"So," the kid says.
Simmons looks to the yellow car. Here it comes.
The kid hesitates—Simmons thinks the pause is a hesitation—and says, "You've gotta be getting hungry."
Simmons blinks.
Another pause. He wouldn't be surprised to see the thing fidget. The driver's side door lifts up.
"Come on," the kid says.
Simmons knows how to get information out of people. He knows what questions to ask and when. He also knows when to keep his mouth shut and go with it.
He stands, winces as half a dozen vertebrae pop back into place, and starts toward the car.
The sun has barely come up and already, the streets are clogged with traffic. Sideswipe sits four cars behind his target. The street-lights ahead are green and yet no one moves.
I hate this planet, he thinks.
((Hunter,)) he comms.
No response.
For the last twenty kliks he's been trying to reach the human, and for the last twenty kliks he hasn't gotten anything. Either the squishy is ignoring him, or his comm is off. Neither of those scenarios bode well.
Slaggit, human, where are you?
He'd better not have done something stupid. Sideswipe can't afford to chase him down again. Sunny can't afford to wait that long.
The SUV flashes its turn signal. It's pulling into the lot for some sort of industrial business center—three stories tall with trimmed vegetation out front.
Sideswipe watches them go around the side of the building and disappear into the back. He keeps driving. Three blocks later, he turns around. When he gets back it's to find the vehicle still there, the engines off and ticking, the inside empty. He pulls into the driveway for the neighboring building and parks.
Oh, this keeps on getting better.
A scan shows nothing. As in absolutely nothing. According to his sensors, there shouldn't be anything there but an empty slab of slag. And yet, he's staring at three stories of shoddy human construction.
A sensor block. More Cybertronian technology. He picks up a communication network, but it, too, is shielded. He can't hack it from the outside.
Sideswipe tries the comm again, curses when Hunter fails to respond, and settles in to wait.
I really hope this doesn't come back to bite me in the ass, Hunter thinks.
The Walgreen's parking lot is half empty. That still leaves a few people milling around outside, all of them dressed normally, presentable, and most of them stare at Simmons passing by on the way to the doors. He doesn't seem to mind, doesn't even seem to notice their glances.
It's weird, how calm he is. About everything. The man is unshakable. Hunter had broken into his room, Machination henchmen had dragged him away, and then Sideswipe had smashed in the front of their truck and peeled off the top like a can of soup and scooped the man out. And he just saunters along like nothing's going on.
Speaking of Sideswipe…
Hunters comm is off. He considers turning it back on and letting the 'bot know where they are.
"He needed some painkillers," Hunter would say. "It was a quick stop. I couldn't make him sit there all day."
He doesn't, though. He doesn't know how the mech will react. Probably not well. With any luck, he can get Simmons something to eat and get back to the park before Sideswipe notices anything is wrong.
Hunter scans the store again and sighs in his head. Eighteen people are inside and he can't tell one from the other. He settles down on his tires. An old lady passing by on the sidewalk stops and blinks.
Oops.
She shakes her head and starts walking again and Hunter resigns himself to holding still and waiting.
Please don't come back to bite me in the ass.
People are staring. He must look like hell. A quick glance into one of those isle mirrors confirms it. Simmons prods his mottled face with the fingers of his good hand.
Jesus Christ, he thinks.
He looks like he just stumbled out of a bar fight. His face is the worst; he hasn't been able to breathe through his nose since last night. His eyelids are puffy and he's walking around with a perpetual squint. The stitches seem to be holding, which is the only good thing. His clothes are rumpled, one sleeve is torn, and his tie is a total loss.
He smoothes himself down as best he can and tucks the ends of his shirt in. The sleeves he rolls up, which hides most of the tear. The tie gets stuffed into his pocket.
There. Presentable. Which he's going to need it if he wants anyone to take him seriously. First thing's first, however.
He grabs the first Ibuprofen bottle he sees and tears open the box. He pops the seal, fishes out three pills, and tosses them back, dry.
"Gleh," he says and tries not to gag.
There's a cooler on the way to the register. He grabs a bottle of water and gulps down half of it as he heads to the front of the store. He notices at least two employees relax as he takes his place in line.
The abduction squad—the kid had called them "Machination"—had left his wallet in his pants pocket. Either a stupid oversight, or it hadn't mattered to them. So when the cashier starts to ring him up a few minutes later—pausing to eyeball the shredded box—he reaches in and pulls out his badge and smiles calmly at her.
"Hi," he says. "I was wondering if I could use your phone?"
Starfire201 and lildevchick, you guys are awesome. Like, with a capital "A". And so is KayDeeBlu for telling me when parts are confusing (or boring). So I can clarify (or remove) them.
Next chapter: What Did You Do