Chapter Fourteen: Headmaster
The first thing Jerri is aware of is a high-pitched noise. She can't make sense of it. She can hear other things, too, if she focuses: sharp bursts of noise, a clatter, voices. She tries to open her eyes and finds they won't work. Her hand moves sluggishly. It takes another three tries for her to open one eye and she's blinded by light.
"Ungh," she says.
Movement next to her. A warm hand lies on her shoulder.
"Miss Stephens?" a woman says. "Are you awake?"
Jerri manages to drag her hand up to shield her eyes this time. She sees a pink blob hovering over her.
"Miss Stephens?"
"Yeah," she croaks. Her throat is dry. She feels like she might puke.
The blob moves over her head. She can hear soft beeping. When she looks down toward her feet, she sees more shapes rushing by.
A hand grabs her wrist and pulls it away from her face. Fingers touch her cheek and guide her head towards the fuzzy shape—it's a face, she realizes. A smaller light shines right into her eyes.
"Agh, fuck!" Jerri says.
"Sorry," the woman says. "Your pupils are responding normally. That's good. I see no sign of a concussion."
What? Jerri thinks.
"Do you know what day it is?" the woman says.
"Thursday?"
The woman nods. "Excellent. How many fingers am I holding up?"
She has to squint. The blurriness is starting to fade. She counts to three.
"Very good," the woman says. She stops and looks across Jerri's bed. "No! I told you—oh, hold on. Miss Stephens? I'll be right back."
Then she's gone, shouting orders at someone. Jerri lays there and tries to piece together just where the hell she is.
She remembers… remembers… the locker room. After the delivery—a robot and a man. Washing her face, an explosion. She'd gone into the hall, toward the stairs because these people did not pay her enough to put up with this bullshit anymore.
Then a red robot. She ran, ducked into a room only it was filled with Machination guards. The robot followed. She'd shot it and it had gone down and then—
"Oh, son of a bitch," she says.
It had kicked her. The damn robot had punted her into a wall.
Her eyes adjust. She can see people scurrying around the room. Other beds next to her are filled with the wounded. As she watches, a group of nurses or doctors—two guys in navy blue scrubs—trot past with a stretcher between them. They're heading out of the room.
She's lying underneath a blanket. She's not wearing any clothes. Her chest is heavily wrapped in bandages. There's an IV in her left hand and an oxygen tube hooked into her nose.
She starts to sit up and falls back to the bed, gasping.
Ribs, she thinks. Shit, I think they're broken.
The guy across from her is unconscious. A team of nurses is getting him packed up. Almost all of the beds show the same story. That shrill noise cuts through the air.
That's an alarm.
Jerri finally manages to swing her legs over the side of the bed. She pushes herself upright, her left arm wrapped around her middle where it hurts the most. Bare feet brush the cold floor.
The staff seems to be working down the line. Six patients separate her from them. She can wait, let them pack her up and ship her out of here. It'd be stupid to go gallivanting off with broken ribs. Another kick by a robot and they could puncture a lung and then she would probably die.
She stands up, reaches out to steady herself on the bed rail as she drags the hospital blanket with her. She pulls off the air tube and the IV. There's a counter on the far side of the room with heaps of clothing on it. It takes a minute for her to get over there. It takes even longer to find a shirt that isn't cut down the middle or soaked in blood or both. She rummages out a pair of pants and belts it with someone's bootlace. The shoes take longer and she has to settle for a pair two sizes too big.
She spots a stack of discarded gear in the corner. Another stretcher team comes huffing up the aisle. She waits until they're past before following them. She digs out an armored vest and manages to ease it on. She grabs a helmet and a gun, slings it over the shoulder that doesn't ache, and follows.
The lights are on in the hallway—barely. The stretcher-bearers take a left. Jerri looks to the right. It's quieter down that way.
I should have done this months ago, she thinks.
She turns right.
Simmons isn't sure they're going to make it. He doubles over, braced against his knees as his lungs spasm and try to leap out of his throat. He shakes. His throat is raw and gritty. The acrid taste of smoke clings to his tongue.
He gags, spits, and stands there, panting. His eyes water. The smoke is so thick he can't see more than a few feet.
Where the hell is the damned exit?
He's seen no one else. This could be a good thing or a very bad thing.
"Come on, kid," he says. "Wake up already. I don't think I can haul your ass around much longer."
He gets no reply. Simmons wipes his mouth and reaches for the kid's arms again.
A crunch down the hall. Simmons pauses.
Silence.
The smoke swirls in the dim, flickering light. Simmons bends down and squints, trying to see underneath the rolling cloud. There's nothing.
"Huh," he says.
Simmons begins to drag Hunter. The kid weighs a ton. He scrapes along the ground.
A distant patter catches his ear. Simmons stops. He waits a moment and then eases the kid to the floor.
He can't see through the soup that is the air. Not at his height. He crouches, reaching out to brace himself. The floor shudders.
What is that?
He kneels, presses his face to the ground. A machine-gun staccato bounces through the tile and into his cheek. The smoke shifts and he catches a glimpse of something far off, something shiny, something vast, all of it headed toward him.
"Oh shit," he says.
He climbs back to his feet and hooks both hands underneath Hunter's armpits, careful not to jab out one of his eyes on the pointy fins jutting out of the kid's shoulders. He starts to shuffle backward.
The thing is getting closer. He can feel the vibrations through his shoes. He can hear it, too, tapping and hissing hydraulics.
"Don't even bother running," a deep voice says. "There's nowhere for you to go."
The fuck?
It's an NBE. Simmons knows the slight, buzzing tones of their voices. It's a giant goddamn NBE barreling at him full steam and it's laughing.
He doesn't see the piece of ceiling tile until it's too late. He steps on it and feels his foot slide out from beneath him. The next second, he hits the floor. Pain flares up his right hip and jolts his lungs. He starts to hack. He rolls over, onto his hands and knees. His left shoulder protests. He ignores it.
The footsteps slow. He thinks he sees the thing's monstrous bulk outlined in the smoke.
He reaches to his belt, snaps the holster off the gun. He's got six, maybe seven rounds left. It's not enough. If he can hit the eyes, take out its sight, then maybe, maybe they have a chance.
But not by groveling in the middle of the hallway. He grabs Hunter and drags him to the side, toward the wall, where Simmons can at least brace himself. Only his back doesn't hit the wall. It hits nothing at all.
Simmons flails. He almost drops his gun. His right side has slipped through a gap between the doors of an elevator.
"No way," he says.
Something glows in the murk. An orange band some twenty feet up into the air. The NBE is right there.
Simmons puts his back against the edge of one of the doors and grabs the other with both hands. He pushes.
The NBE chitters at him.
His arms shake. His left shoulder is a mess of throbbing ache.
"Come on you bastard," he says. "Move!"
"And just what do you think you're doing?" the NBE says.
The door budges six inches. He's out of time. Simmons sticks his head in. It's dark. The elevator isn't there. He's staring into an empty shaft. They're on sub-level two. That's a drop of maybe ten, twelve feet. It's take his chances or find out what the NBE thinks is so funny.
Simmons latches onto Hunter's foot and drags it through the gap.
"Oh no you don't," the NBE says.
It rushes him. Its bulk fills the hall like a jumbo jet.
Simmons lifts the kid's shoulders. He shoves him across the floor. His legs dangle over the edge. The walls quiver.
He feels the shift in weight as gravity takes over. Hunter is pulled away from him. He disappears into the dark. Simmons has no time to think about it. He catches a glimpse of something big and purple leaping out of the smoke at him.
Simmons jumps. A rush of air ruffles his hair. The purple thing just misses taking his head off. Simmons falls. He starts to windmill. He wants to land in a roll, try to—
Bam!
His feet slam into the ground. Simmons falls over, flops onto his back. He groans.
What? he thinks.
He's on a hard, cold surface. A metal spiral lifts up from the floor into the gloom above. It's a cable. He's landed on top of the elevator. The floor of sub-level two is only three feet over his head. He can hop up and touch it.
The faint light spilling down the shaft disappears.
Simmons ducks just as a purple, three-fingered pincher jabs right between the doors. Metal squeals as one of them is torn off. The pincer withdraws and then the NBE sticks its head in.
Its eyes are covered by that orange band. It's got two, three-foot long horns growing out the sides of its head, also bright orange.
"There you are," it says. "We told you, you couldn't get away."
The pincers gouge at the sides, at the wall, tear right through them. Simmons covers his head as debris rains down.
It's going to bring the entire elevator shaft down on us!
Air brushes his bare leg. He crouches down as the walls tremble. Another draft, this time on his face. Simmons feels along the floor until he finds it: torn metal, a jagged edge, and beyond that, empty space. There's a gigantic hole on the other side of the shaft.
It's pitch black. For all he knows, it could be a chasm dropping straight into hell. But the elevator is sitting on something.
Whump!
A large piece of the wall crashes next to him. He sits down, sticks his legs out, into the void. He starts to slither out.
God, I hope there's a set of stairs somewhere down there.
He's about to push off when he realizes that the noise has stopped. He looks up. The shadow is gone. Dim light filters through the hole around the doors.
What the…?
A groan. Simmons tears his gaze away from the hole and over to the pointy lump that is Hunter.
"Kid?" he says.
"Ugh," the kid says. "Simmons?"
Simmons laughs weakly. "Yeah. You okay?"
"Why does my head hurt?"
He hears the kid start to move. The pointy lump starts to sit up. Seconds later, a blue light comes on over his eyes and Simmons can see the kid squinting at him.
"Where the hell are we?" Hunter says.
"Elevator shaft. It's a long story."
Hunter cocks his head to the side. He looks past Simmons and into the void.
"You hear that?" he says.
That's when Simmons catches the soft scraping noise coming from the third sub-level. He's suddenly very aware that he's got his legs sticking out into empty, black space. He pulls them in.
"I think we should go," he says.
Hunter is already scrambling up, leaping for the torn floor above them.
Sideswipe staggers and hits a wall. There are no lights down here. The corridor is solid black. The air is hot. He recognizes the stink of energon burning.
Someone had an accident, he thinks and starts to laugh. Only it comes out a thin wheeze.
One hand holds his chest together. The other keeps him from sliding down the wall and to the floor. His joints grate. His feet drag. Something inside chokes and sputters. Liquid bubbles out of the gash and dribbles down his front, along his legs, spatters to the ground. He can feel it.
Sunny tugs at him. He's got to start walking. He can't stay here. He has to move, has to follow, has to find his brother because that pull is getting weaker, getting sicker.
Sideswipe pushes away from the wall and stumbles forward.
He's not sure how long he's been down there, in the dark. He keeps seeing streaks of pink and green, small, flashing dots of white or yellow. It's his processor starting to glitch.
Debris crunches underfoot. The building around him groans. It's dying. It doesn't have much time.
Hold on, Sunny. I'm almost there. You just… just…
A sound. Up ahead, a low hum. He looks up.
The hallway is glowing. Sideswipe sways where he stands and squints at it.
About four metras ahead, faint, pink color tints the walls.
What the…?
He knows that color, that pale shade of shimmering pink. It's what's leaking out of his chest. It's the trail he's left on the floor.
Energon? But—
He doesn't remember crossing the space between them. One moment he's standing there, the next, he catches himself on a doorway and half-falls into a room.
It's large and empty save for the single item in the center. The dim glow hides the details, but Sideswipe can still see dark smears on the floor, scuff marks along the walls, spatters of dried energon. And there, in the very center, is a pedestal with glowing lines of energon running up, into Sunstreaker's head.
"Sunny," he says.
His brother's face is mangled: the framework around his eyes is missing, the optics bare; half of the plating has been ripped from his face, exposing the wiring within; his lower jaw is gone.
He's alive. It's just a whisper of life, but it's there and he's here and for the first time in vorns, Sunny is right there and he's so, so alive.
Sideswipe drags himself forward; halfway across the room his right leg locks up. It doesn't matter. The pain and the aching fatigue don't matter. His fingers trace along the side of Sunny's face. Sideswipe smiles.
"You certainly are persistent."
Sideswipe freezes.
No.
He turns. Standing in the hall, bulk filling up most of the door, is Scorpinok.
Hunter is running as fast as he dares. It's too gloomy, the air too thick for him to see more than a few feet, targeting display or no. He can see energy signatures again. The building isn't a black hole anymore, but the dots on the screen over his eyes show people and not debris.
Simmons is once again in his arms. He looks terrible. He's got his tank top hooked up over the lower half of his face. His skin is waxy, his eyes are bloodshot, and he keeps coughing.
Hunter doesn't like the way it sounds. It's a deep, wet hack and Simmons's whole body spasms. He's got to get him to fresh air. Fast.
"Shit," Simmons says after the fit has passed.
"You okay?"
The man waves a hand at him. His face is turned away.
"So…" Hunter says. He waits for Simmons to lift his head. "We're getting close to the Headmaster hangar. There's a lot of energy signatures in there and I don't think they're gonna be happy to see me. Are you in any shape—"
"I'll be fine," Simmons says. His voice is harsh. He clears his throat; it doesn't help much. "I can cover my own ass."
Hunter nods, realizes Simmons isn't looking at him, and says, "Right."
Which is when a guard materializes out of the smoke. Hunter jumps, tries to stop, and hits something lying on the ground. His feet shoot out under him.
"Aaah!"
He hits the ground. Simmons comes down on top of him. Bullets fly where his head had been less than a second before. Simmons has enough sense to roll out of the way. The guard tracks down. Hunter doesn't give him the chance to finish. He kicks out and catches the guard's left knee.
The guard goes down. Instantly, Hunter is on top of him, ripping the gun away. The guy reaches up to claw at his eyes. Hunter leans back and jabs down. The butt of the rifle catches the guard on the side of his head and the man goes limp.
Panting to his right; Simmons crawls over. Hunter hands him the rifle.
"Someone'll have heard that," Simmons says.
Hunter nods.
"Kinda small, ain't he?" Simmons says. The guard's face is turned away. Simmons reaches down and pulls it towards him. He freezes. "Oh."
"Is that…?" Hunter says.
It's a woman. A few tendrils of blonde hair spill out around the edges of her helmet.
"Huh," Simmons says. "Evil organization bent on world domination and at least they're an equal opportunity employer."
He stands up and shoulders the rifle. He looks down the hall and then back over his shoulder. "You coming?"
"Wait," Hunter says. "We're just gonna leave her?"
For a long moment, Simmons stares. Then he says, "Is this your morality thing or is this because she's a she?"
"That… that has nothing to do with it."
"Uh huh."
"It doesn't."
Simmons rolls his eyes. "Whatever you say, Romeo."
"Damnit, Simmons, it's not—"
Simmons walks away. Hunter grinds his teeth. He scoops the blonde up and heads after him.
Simmons waits for the ambush. He waits for the alarmed shouts and sounds of running feet, waits for the bullets to start flying, only it never happens. He's standing outside of a familiar door. The hall is quiet. His throat feels gritty and his lungs give a funny lurch. He chokes back the cough.
He can hear a lot of noise just beyond the door: voices, the rumble of heavy machinery, car engines. It's the sound of someone rushing to cover their ass.
Hunter sidles up next to him, the guard draped in his arms. Simmons almost says something but the look on the kid's face stops him. Hunter sets the woman on the floor. When he stands up, he's got a strained expression on his face.
"Kid?" Simmons says.
"They're moving the Headmasters," Hunter says.
"Yeah. I figured that. What do you wanna do?"
Hunter lifts a hand and makes a shushing motion. He's staring intently at the wall. Simmons checks the hallway again. Still empty. He looks at the guard.
She's got the same armored vest as the others, she had the same weapon as the others. She's wearing the same shirt and pants—though they look baggy. She's got a shoelace tied around her waist as a makeshift belt. The side of her face has an impressive lump on it. It's starting to bruise. Despite that, she looks kind of familiar. He's sure he's seen her—
A change in the noise inside the room and Simmons looks up. Hunter's eyes are narrowed to slits behind his visor. His jaw is clenched. Simmons opens his mouth to ask what he's doing when someone starts shooting.
Simmons ducks and spins around, the rifle off his shoulder and aimed at the door.
Shouting—screaming—and then he hears a strange, grinding whir.
"Come on," Hunter says.
The bullets are not coming through the wall. They're shooting at something inside that room. He glances at the kid who seems to be trying to burn a hole through the wallwith his eyes.
Thumps, getting louder. They sound like footsteps—very, very big ones. Simmons starts to back up.
The wall explodes. Simmons throws his arms over his head and stumbles back as pieces fly past. A large, black thing punches through. Simmons lifts the rifle and takes aim. His finger starts to tighten on the trigger.
"Don't!" Hunter says.
"What?" Simmons says. "Why? What is that?"
The black thing sweeps to the left, gouging out more drywall. Light spills in from the hangar beyond and Simmons catches a glimpse of the Headmaster units all lined up in rows, half-loaded transport trucks lining the far wall. And there, lurking just inside that ragged hole is something silver and gleaming.
Hunter grins.
It's a hand, Simmons thinks. That thing is a giant, goddamn metal hand and it's connected—
"NBE," he says.
Hunter snorts a laugh.
"Kind of," he says.
That's when it finally dawns on Simmons. "This is… you connect to it."
The kid, that robot body of his, it connects to the NBE body. The boy that can turn into a robot that can turn into a car.
The other hand reaches in, through the hole to join the first.
"You might not want to watch this," the kid says. "It's kind of freaky."
"Like hell," Simmons says.
"Suit yourself."
Even with some inkling of what's going to happen, Simmons still jumps when the kid's arms rotate out of their sockets. His legs twist up and pivot at the hips.
Simmons winces. "Doesn't that hurt?"
"Not really. It feels weird, kind of—"
But then his head folds down over his collar bone and his chest slides up, over his head. His knees pop out backwards. His arms twist around and shrink into themselves, bringing together the strange, window-shutter panels on his forearms and shoulders to form large, pointed fins. Within seconds, Simmons finds himself staring like a slack-jawed idiot at a robotic head.
Two clear, triangular pieces light up blue, the same color as the kid's visor. It's got eyes. They're the size of Simmons's hand.
"Stay here," Hunter says. His voice is louder and a touch deeper. "I'll be right back."
The hands reach around and pick up the head-who-is-Hunter. They pull it backwards, through the hole, and slide it into place on the neck. Simmons hears a rapid clicking and a deep thump and then the head swivels up all on its own.
Headmaster, Simmons thinks. Of course.
Hunter, now a fifteen foot, silver NBE, turns around. Simmons watches the right hand shift back and transform into what can only be a weapon. Gunfire flashes off the shiny plating on his arm as he lifts it. The air fills with a loud buzzing—the unmistakable sound of alien weaponry charging.
The kid takes a step and disappears from view. Simmons is left standing in a smoke-filled hallway next to an unconscious woman with a rifle hanging from his hands. He looks to the woman, to the hole, to the balcony inside.
"'Stay here,'" he says.
Panicked screaming. Something goes crunch! Something else goes boom! The floor shudders.
"The hell I will," Simmons says and plunges through the hole.
Better late than never?
Next chapter: His Fault