Chapter Fifteen: His Fault
Her head hurts. Jerri Stephens raises a hand to her throbbing temple and winces. She feels a lump. She cracks an eye open, fully expecting to see blood somewhere. She doesn't. What she does see is smoke and rubble. Everything, the floor, her clothes, is coated in a layer of dust.
She grimaces and spits and tries to clear the grit from her mouth. She starts to climb to her feet. Her hand catches on a jagged edge. A large chunk of plaster wall falls off her lap and onto the floor.
What the hell happened?
And then something blows up.
Jerri ducks. Her ribs flare in agony. Her rifle is gone. She has no weapons and very little cover. She lifts herself on her knees to peer through a large hole torn out of the wall.
On the other side of the wall she can see blue flashes and flames and more smoke. Another flash, another whump-boom! Across the room, past line of flaming wreckage, is a ramp leading up to a massive set of hangar doors. One of them is open. She can see the night sky twinkling with stars.
Wha-boom!
Dust patters down around her. She looks to her right, to her left. Dark hallway with no sign of an exit in either direction.
Metal shrieks. There's a terrible clatter and then a car sails past the hole. It slams into the wall. Before it can even start to slide down, a bright blue beam engulfs it and it explodes into a ball of flame.
Jerri ducks back down as a wave of heat rolls above her. She peeks back out. The car is burning, the flames green.
Something is wreaking havoc in there. The hall is filled with smoke. The building groans somewhere in its guts. The ramp in the room leads to clear, fresh air.
"Shit," she says.
Jerri creeps forward. She slides one leg over the edge of the hole and then the other and crouches at the base. The room is huge, extending up almost to the ground floor above and another whole level below. She's perched on some sort of grated-metal balcony overlooking the whole thing. She sees no people, only the twisted remains of cars. They're all low-slung, sharp angles. She recognizes the glaring headlights.
Lamborghinis.
The hell is all this? she thinks.
A glint of metal catches her eye.
Ah.
A giant, silver robot is playing Godzilla. It's got one of the cars held up in the air—a shiny silver one. It swings it down like an awkward, over-sized golf club, and swats a blue one into the wall. The silver car lands on top of the pile and the robot takes aim.
Its weapon hums. The tip glows blue. A bright beam lances out and hits the cars and they go up in a massive fireball.
The balcony shakes. More debris rains down.
That idiot is going to bring this whole place down!
When she lifts her head, the robot is stomping over to the next row.
A set of stairs leads down to the floor below. The robot is facing away from her. If she moves fast, she can probably get down it without being spotted. She slinks over to it, one arm wrapped around her ribcage. She takes the first stair carefully, still in a crouch, eyes fixed on the robot. It's too busy stomping the hell out of the row to notice her. She eases down to the next one, reverse-crawling all the way down. Not once does the robot look in her direction.
She has to stop and catch her breath at the bottom. Her chest aches. Her breathing is harsh and shallow. She waits, teeth grinding together, for the pain to die down only it doesn't.
Damnit, she thinks, no time. Move it!
She heads to the left, keeping low, below the mangled wreckage. She reaches the wall. She's got a clear shot to the ramp from here. There's almost no cover, however, and it's a long sprint even without busted ribs. If the robot spots her and decides that it would rather practice with a moving target…
The back of her neck prickles. Jerri freezes. Slowly, she turns to look behind her.
A man stands not ten feet away with a gun aimed at her head. He's smiling.
"Going somewhere?" he says.
No, Sideswipe thinks.
Scorpinok skitters into the room. He's in some kind of insectoid alt-form. Six tapered, sharp legs hold up his bulk. He got two large arms up in front, each one tipped by three-pronged pincers. And arching up over his back is a tail ending in a wicked blade. He fills the door, a purple and green and black monstrosity.
"You know, you may be the most stubborn Autobot we've ever met," Scorpinok says.
Sunny's head is right behind Sideswipe; he's the only barrier between the bug and his brother. Scorpinok stops inside the door. He blocks the only way out. Even if Sideswipe can grab Sunny's head and get past the fragger without getting impaled, it still leaves his spark.
He doesn't see it anywhere in the room. The signal is so weak, it's impossible to pinpoint, even for him.
"You shouldn't be able to move with those injuries," Scorpinok says. One of his legs moves; he edges to Sideswipe's left. "And yet, here you are. Dragged yourself all the way down here. Most impressive. We could have used that spunk."
Sideswipe's right leg trembles. His fingers tingle. The streaks of color in the air have multiplied. He's on the verge of energon deprivation. Soon, he's going to slip into processor-lock. He needs to get Sunny out of here. Now.
Scorpinok seems to realize this. There's no way past him and he's not moving.
"Why are you here?" Sideswipe says. Why don't you just leave? Why can't you let Sunny leave?
"You and us are not so different," Scorpinok says, completely ignoring the question. "We're both stubborn. We both go after the things we want with what some might call fanatical ferocity. There is one difference, however."
Two metras between them. Two metras keeping the Headmaster freak from Sunny. It's not enough.
"We do not take chances," Scorpinok says.
He lunges. One of his pincers lashes out. Sideswipe ducks, tries to skip to the side only his right leg crumples beneath his weight. He hits the ground. He looks up, catches sight of one of those spear-tip legs coming straight down at him. He tucks his arms and rolls.
Spindly legs churn around him. Scorpinok's belly rushes past overhead. Then Sideswipe is clear. He skids and comes up in a clumsy crouch. But Scorpinok doesn't charge him. He's not even looking at him, not even facing him. The ion-cannons mounted on his back, at the base of his tail, swivel. They're pointing into the room, aiming for—
"Sunny!"
Scorpinok fires. The room turns white. Sideswipe is hit by a wall of seething hot air. It picks him up and throws him into a wall.
Sometimes, the universe takes what has been nothing but a giant shit-sundae of a day and, with a flourish, deposits a single, glistening cherry on top. Simmons is staring at such a cherry.
The woman hasn't noticed him yet. She's focused on the rampaging NBE across the room. Simmons can't blame her. The kid is wreaking havoc with what can only be described as glee. He's got to give her some credit, though—he's only had the gun on her for ten seconds before she stiffens and turns around.
"Up," he says.
She rises from her crouch. Her left arm is wrapped around her middle. She sways for a moment.
"Who are you?" Simmons says.
"Sarah Durnam," she says.
It's a lie. They both know it. He moves on.
"So, Sarah, care to tell me what you're doing here?"
She snorts. "What's it look like?"
The building is on fire and possible on the verge of collapse.
"You picked a hell of an exit," Simmons says.
She shrugs her right shoulder. Behind her, Hunter stomps his merry way up the last row of cars. His robot face doesn't really do expressions, but Simmons swears he can see a smile on there. He wipes his forehead on his arm.
"You work in this facility?" Simmons says.
She hesitates. She could be entirely innocent, of course. Building on fire, robot on a rampage, any sane person would stop to consider the wisdom of admitting they did. Probably. But when Sarah does it, what Simmons sees is a big, fat, "No."
Simmons glances over at Hunter and makes a few, quick calculations in his head.
"Okay," he says, "here's the deal. You've got about a minute before he's done over there. He's not in a good mood, but he'll probably listen to me if I tell him not to step on you—I make no guaranties. So why don't you tell me who you are and what, exactly, you're doing here?"
For a long moment the woman just stares at him. She sighs.
"My name is Jerri Stephens," she says. "I'm a technical coordinator and field specialist hired by Epsilon Holdings which, as far as I know, is a front company for an organization known as 'Machination.'"
The silence is broken by the whump-boom of Hunter shooting things.
"Okay," Simmons says because he can't think of anything better.
Field specialist and technical coordinator. In Simmons's line of work, these are the polite names for a jack-of-all-trades, a saboteur, a clean-up operator and occasional hit-man; a mercenary.
"It's gonna be hard to pick up your paycheck now," he says.
Stephens shrugs.
"How much do you know about their operations?" Simmons says.
"A bit. I picked up more information here and there."
"Uh huh. How much?"
"Depends on what you're offering," Stephens says.
It takes serious work to keep his expression neutral. "Legal immunity, provided you give us your full cooperation."
"And non-legal?"
This time, he can't quite keep the smirk off his face.
"And non-legal," he says.
She seems to consider this. She looks around the room, watches a Headmaster unit fly through the air and crash into a wall. She's holding her ribs tight. Her shoulders are tensed. Finally, she nods.
"Deal," she says.
Simmons lowers the gun. He doesn't put it away. Stephens eases back to lean on a piece of wreckage that isn't on fire.
"So what happened to you?" Simmons says.
Stephens looks down at herself.
"I got kicked by a robot," she says.
Simmons winces.
"What's with all that stuff?" Stephens says, jerking her chin to the pile behind him.
She would be, of course, referring to the salvaged goodies Simmons has managed to scrounge together.
"Oh, that," he says. He flutters a hand. "Don't worry about that. It's just…"
A door slams open. A group of three men rush in from underneath the balcony, pushing some sort of wheeled cart. They're six feet into the room when the man in the lead stops. The two men pushing the cart run into him. A silver canister drops off the cart and clatters to the floor.
"Whoa, whoa," Simmons says. The gun comes up. "Stop right there."
Simmons watches Stephens out of the corner of his eye. This is the perfect time to bolt, the perfect time to try to disarm him. But she doesn't. She turns to face the three, and Simmons notices that she's grabbed a charred, metal pipe.
Classy, he thinks.
"Hands in the air," Stephens says.
Only one of them complies. The other two—the guy in the lead and the left-hand cart pusher—don't move. The guy on the left reaches for something.
"Bad idea, pal," Simmons says, aiming the gun right at him. "Let's get those hands up, huh?"
"What's going on?" a mechanized voice says.
Simmons glances over without turning his head.
"Hey kid," he says. "Perfect timing."
Hunter leans in over his head; fifteen feet of gleaming robot. He's got char marks up his arms, shimmery, pink spatter on his hands and face. The burning wreckage glints off his silver armor. His face is made out of sharp corners and hard angles and two, blazing blue eyes.
Simmons will never admit it, but he's pretty sure that if he were on the receiving end of that glare, he'd have shit his pants.
The three Machination cronies look like they already did. Their faces drain of color. The one in the back, the one reaching for something, steps away. His hands lift into the air.
"Who are you? What are you doing?" Hunter says. Simmons can hear his voice, the kid's human voice running just above a deeper tone, a strange sort of buzzing.
The guy in the lead swallows. He wears some kind of navy blue surgical scrubs.
Simmons wipes the sweat from his eyes and tries to ignore the way the floor trembles. Hunter crouches. He places one hand on the ground and leans over until he fills the space beneath the balcony.
"You're Machination," he says.
Lead guy tries to back away and hits the cart.
"Please," he says, "please, we—"
Hunter punches the floor. Simmons jumps. One of the trio stumbles and almost falls.
"You. You did this," he jabs a thumb at his chest, "to me."
The kid bends down until his face is a foot from the lead guy. The man bends over backward, halfway lying on the cart with his hands raised as if to ward the Headmaster off.
"Do you have any idea what you did?" Hunter says. "Do you have any idea what it was like? Do you?"
"Please. We… we were just f-following orders," the man says.
"Following orders. You didn't even stop to ask if maybe it wasn't such a good idea, did you? Before you tore me apart. Because that just didn't occur to you, did it?"
Simmons finds himself edging away. The cart-pushers both back up. They press themselves against the wall.
"Hey," Simmons says. The kid gives no indication he's heard him. He's practically crawling over the first guy. "Kid."
He reaches over and taps the closest part of the kid's robot body he can touch. He thinks he sees the dark circle of eye behind the glowing, plastic covers flick in his direction.
"My guys are gonna find this place. We're gonna catch these scumbags, huh? All of them. So why don't you ease off a bit, okay?"
For three seconds, no one moves. Stephens is to Simmons's left; she's got an odd look on her face, her head cocked to one side as she stares at the kid.
Hydraulics hiss. Hunter edges back to crouch on his heels. He says nothing. He doesn't even look at Simmons.
Simmons eyeballs the three men and jerks his chin toward the ramp at the other end of the room.
"Out," he says.
They scurry past, giving Hunter a wide berth. Stephens waits another minute and then tosses her pipe to the side.
"Thank you," the kid says.
"Eh," Simmons says. "One of us has to be the morality pet and it sure as hell ain't gonna be me."
Hunter snorts.
Simmons claps his hands together. "So. From the looks of it, I'd say we've done what we set out to do. You've torn the hell out of their toys and the building is probably going to collapse. Why don't we load up and get the hell—
Two things happen at once: Hunter's head whips to the left; he makes a weird sound and starts to stand.
Ka-WHUMP!
The floor bucks. Simmons feels a wave blast through the room and through him. He hits the ground before he registers falling.
He coughs and shakes his head. Stephens is using the front end of a smashed Lamborghini to pull herself to her feet. Her face is white. She moves carefully, as if something inside her might break. Simmons rolls over and starts to get up when he notices Hunter.
The kid stands still. He's facing the hallway. He's not moving, not making a sound. The air is filled with a low, tense humming.
"What was that?" Simmons says.
"Weapons fire," Hunter says. "That was Cybertronian weapons fire."
Sideswipe stands in the hall of Ark-22. The corridor is filled with smoke. The sound is muted: blaring alarms, shouting, and an odd buzzing in his head. He hits his audios a few times but it doesn't clear; the buzzing sticks.
The dust settles. Someone is standing there. A mech. Sunstreaker. His face is blank. He's just staring and staring at Sideswipe. His missile launchers sit on his shoulders. One of the tubes glows hot.
Sideswipe can't move. He can't think over the noise in his head. Because Sunny's mask slips. For one, small sliver of time Sideswipe can see his terror and bewilderment. Then time moves and it's gone and Sideswipe is so sick of it.
He's in the shuttle bay. He can't look up, won't look up at the blur of gold on the edge of his vision. He can hear the security team readying his brother for transport. He's leaving. Sunny is being sent away.
Ironhide places a hand on Sideswipe's shoulder.
"I'm sorry, kid," he says.
Sideswipe doesn't answer. He's too tired. He's tired of all of it, tired of cleaning up Sunny's messes, tired of being there all the time, tired of watching everything he does, everything he says because he doesn't want to set his twin off.
He's sick of waiting for things to get better. Because deep down, he knows they never will. The two of them will never be okay. Sunstreaker will never be okay.
The shuttle engines power up. There are no windows. He can't look in one last time to see his brother and he's glad. He doesn't want Sunny to be able to look back and see him. Because for the first time in a long while, Sideswipe feels relief.
The room is on fire. He's staring at the wall. He knows it's on fire because he can see the flicker of the light, he can feel the heat on his back. It's wrong. He knows that. He should be doing something, he needs to be doing something but he can't think of what it is.
He's too tired. He hurts too much. It's so much easier to lie there and try to forget about it. Except for the buzzing in his audios. He can't tell where it's coming from. He grumbles and swats at it and it just gets louder.
Something is very wrong.
His chest hurts. It's a weird pain, a deep pain. He's never felt anything like it. It's a dark, smothering tendril of ice brushing against his spark.
A scrape; something chitters. A large shadow moves on the wall.
"Hmm. You're still alive."
The dark thing inside shudders. Sideswipe looks up.
Scorpinok looms over him. His left pincer holds something small and black, something with a pointed fin sticking out the side of it—
Sunstreaker.
The pedestal is gone. All that remains is a heap of scorched metal and burning energon. All that remains is Sunny's head; his blackened, mangled head and—his spark, where—
Sideswipe can't sense it.
No.
It's not there.
It is here. It has to be!
All he feels is that cold numbness coiling around inside. All he feels is the heaviness in his limbs and a distant, roaring ache.
No. That's not possible. It's not.
"Ah well," Scorpinok says. He tosses Sunny's head over his shoulder. "That's easily remedied."
Sunny's head hits the ground. Sideswipe sees it hit, sees it bounce, sees it roll. His brother's burnt, dark, dead head clangs across the floor.
Scorpinok rears above him. Even without a real face, he's still smirking.
It's his fault. Scorpinok did this. He took Sunny. He hurt him. It's his fault.
Kill him.
The Headmaster's pincer comes down. Sideswipe moves. It pounds into the ground right behind him, the shock races through the floor. He's already on his feet, coming around. He grabs the sides of Scorpinok's head and wrenches him close.
"I'm going to kill you," he says.
He buries his fist in the freak's face. Scorpinok stumbles back. Sideswipe charges after him.
Weapons fire. It has a distinctive energy reading, something no human weapon can match.
"What," Simmons says, "like an NBE?"
"Yeah," Hunter says.
But how? he thinks. Who?
The entire room is shakes. Hunter hears a crack. A piece of the ceiling breaks off and smashes to the floor. The whole thing sways. It's slight—he doubts Simmons even feels it—but he can sense it the same way he can tell the percentage of smoke versus oxygen in the air and the way he notices that Simmons's heart rate has jumped.
"While you two are standing around chatting, I'm going to get out of here," someone says.
There's a woman next to his left leg. She's covered in dust. The black helmet over her head has been knocked askew and he can see her blonde hair. It's the guard from the hall.
"How did you…?" he says.
"Never mind that," Simmons says. "Stephens is right. The whole place might come down on top of us any second."
"What about—"
"Probably a weapons storage went up. These guys run around with high-tech explosives, you set the building on fire, their stash goes boom. I say we bail."
"Yeah," Hunter says. He forces himself to turn away.
"Great," Simmons says. "You got trunk space, right?"
"Why?"
Which is when he sees the mound of junk next to the wall. Circuitry, armor plating, what looks like pieces of a missile launcher, all piled together into a scrapheap of Headmaster parts. Simmons grins at him.
"No," Hunter says.
The grin falls.
"Why not?" Simmons says.
"We don't have time for you to go loading up on souvenirs."
"These aren't souvenirs. This is national security. This is helping our country, our planet defend itself against an alien threat—"
"Simmons, no."
"—that you seem oblivious to. Now, if you want to go and jeopardize—"
"I'm not jeopardizing anything."
"—the lives of billions of civilians—"
"You're blowing this out of proportion. You just want—"
"—be my guest. But I have a duty, young man—"
"Duty. Right. That's what you call scavenging—"
"I have a duty to the people of this planet—"
"To yourself."
"To the planet."
"Right. Because you're saving the world—"
"Oh yeah, kid. This coming from you? That's rich."
"No. Don't even try to pull that card. I know you, Simmons—"
"You don't know jack shit."
"—and you're not going to bullshit your way into—"
"Good god," the woman says.
Hunter shuts up.
She stands there, her eyes squinted, her upper lip pulled back in disgust.
"Are you two done?" she says.
He feels all of six years old. He's actually glad the robotic face moves because inside, his real cheeks burn.
Simmons lifts his eyebrows and says, "Well, kid?"
Arrogant, self-righteous, son of a bitch, Hunter thinks.
He transforms. Fifteen seconds of crumpling, folding limbs and his world goes black. For two seconds, everything goes dark. Then the visor over his eyes lights up and he can see outside. It's always disorienting at first. He can see in multiple directions at once and his brain has to adjust. The sensors embedded in his armor all activate and he's hyperaware of everything: the heat coming off the wreckage around him, the motion of the floor, the way the ceiling undulates, and the two, faint bio-electrical signals next to him.
"Kid?" Simmons says.
"What?" Hunter says.
"Oh good, you're not dead."
"Fuck you."
A hand grabs the door handle on the drivers side.
"Alright, open up," Simmons says.
Through his tires, Hunter can feel more than hear steel groaning and the floor sagging. Something thuds way down in the guts of the building.
How hot does energon burn?
Weight in the passengers side. Stephens eases herself in. Her muscles are tensed and she's breathing fast and shallow.
"Are you alright?" Hunter says.
"No," she says. She has one leg in. She sits there, perched halfway in the door. She grunts and the breath hisses between her teeth.
"What happened?" he says.
"I got kicked by a robot."
"Oh," Hunter says. He stops.
What.
"What robot?" he says. "Where? When?"
She tenses again. Her pulse spikes.
"Does it matter?" she says.
Which is the wrong thing to say.
"Stephens, was it?" Hunter says. "Please. What robot?"
She sighs. "Big, mean, red. He came charging down an elevator shaft. I ran but I got cornered so I shot him. He didn't stay down. Then I got kicked into a wall and woke up in the infirmary."
Oh god. No way. It can't—there's no way…
"Did the robot have a black helmet? Two, stubby horns?"
Please say no. Please don't let it be him. Let it be another Autobot, let it be a Decepticon, Hunter thinks. Because if she says yes, if it's who he knows it has to be… there's only one reason he would fight his way into this place and it isn't to rescue Hunter.
"I don't know about horns," Stephens says. "I didn't stop to look. But its head was black, yeah."
Oh christ. It's Sideswipe. It has to be him. He was here, might still be here, which means—
"Stephens," he says. His voice sounds weird, even to him. "Where was he going? What was he doing?"
"Tearing through personnel, mostly. But they were between him and the other one, the head. He was focused on that."
The head. The head. Hunter has seen him. Oh god, he'd seen him when they brought him in. Wired into a pedestal, face all mangled, eyes dark and dead.
Sunstreaker. Sunstreaker is here and Sideswipe came for him and Hunter blew the building up.
The sounds through the floor—the vibrations he thought was the building dying, they're something else.
"Okay," Simmons says. He's got an armload of parts. "If you just—"
"Out," Hunter says.
Simmons stops. His eyebrows come together.
"Excuse me?" he says.
"Get out," Hunter says. Stephens is crouched in his door. He drops down on his tires and she stumbles away.
"Whoa kid! What the hell?"
Hunter transforms. Pieces fly out and jumble back together as he climbs to his feet. Before his robot eyes come on, he's already looking deeper into the building, past the wall, to where the explosion came from. He's not sure what he's looking for. Anything that could be Sideswipe. And sound, any energy trace, any—
"Hey!" Simmons says.
"What?" Hunter says.
Simmons takes a step back.
"You wanna calm down and tell me what's going on?" the agent says. "Because you just threw Stephens out—"
Hunter looks to find her clinging to one of the Headmaster husks and says, "Sorry."
Her face is pale, she's hugging her middle, but she nods.
"Hunter," Simmons says. He's put down his armload of trinkets. If Hunter didn't know any better, he'd swear the man looks worried.
"What's got into you?" he says.
"It's Sideswipe," Hunter says.
Simmons blinks. "What about him?"
"He's here. He's right here, right now."
"So?"
Hunter pulls himself from the frantic search and back to reality.
"What do you mean, 'so?'" he says.
"I mean, 'what does it matter?'" Simmons says. "He left us to rot. Let's return the favor and vamos."
"No, you don't get it. It's not just Sideswipe. Sunstreaker's here, too."
"In case you haven't noticed, we were in a big rush to get out before the ceiling comes down and kills us all. You remember that, right? You don't have time for heroics right now."
"Simmons, where do you think they got the design for the Headmasters? They're based on Sunstreaker. This body is built like him. I was in his head. I was with him when they caught us, when they…"
For the first time in ever, Simmons looks at him not with a smirk, not with smugness, and not with mockery in his eyes. He runs a hand through his hair and sighs.
"Ah," he says.
"I can't leave him here," Hunter says. "I can't."
"You think he's still alive?"
Hunter pauses. Sunstreaker's head had looked horrible. His eyes had been fixed and unmoving. He'd looked dead. He'd felt dead.
"It doesn't matter," Hunter says.
Simmons doesn't say anything.
"Look," Hunter says. "I'm not asking permission. I'm not asking you to wait for me. Go. Both of you, get out of here. Go back to the FBI or whoever the hell it is you really work for, and let them know about this place. You already know about Epsilon Holdings. Track them down and get rid of them. But I'm going back for Sunstreaker, okay?"
"Okay," Simmons says.
Stephens's eyes look a little glazed. But she looks up when Hunter turns to her.
"I'm sorry," he says. "For… you know. Just get out of here, alright?"
She nods again.
"Go, kid," Simmons says.
Then Hunter turns around and tears through the wall, out into the hall, to descend back into the inferno.
Next chapter: I'm Sorry.