Chapter Sixteen: I'm Sorry
Simmons puffs his cheeks out and blows a sigh. Hunter's footsteps pound down the hall and then disappear. He shakes his head.
"Damn," he says.
The air has taken on an ominous, dark gray tint. The wide expanse of the room is filled with twisted, broken car frames, many of them still burning. Simmons rubs his forearm across his eyes and forehead. Sweat trickles between his shoulder blades. Way deep down in the bowels of the place something roars. The walls tremble.
"Good luck, kid," he says.
Stephens huddles against a Headmaster frame. Her eyes are closed and her face is scrunched up in pain. He crouches down next to her.
"Can you stand?" Simmons says.
"I think so," she says.
"Sorry about him. He can be impulsive."
Stephens grunts. Simmons grabs her by the elbow and helps hoist her up.
"Shit," she says.
She sways into him. The ramp is still a few hundred feet away. Stephens doesn't look like she can manage that walk on her own. Simmons eyeballs the stockpile of parts.
"Damnit," he says.
And then he spots the shiny canister lying a few feet away. It's got handles. He darts over, scoops it up, and hurries back.
"Come on," he says.
He sidles up next to her, ducks below her left arm and pulls it over his shoulder. She takes a few steps and stops. She looks down at the canister bumping into her right hip. When she looks over at Simmons, her face is blank in a very disapproving kind of way.
"Yeah, yeah," he says. "Let's just get out of here."
She rolls her eyes.
Originally, the room had been filled with neat, orderly rows of fake-car death machines. Hunter changed that. Every ten feet or so they have to go around a chewed up Headmaster. They burn hot. Sweat drips into Simmons's eyes but he has no time to stop and wipe it away. By the time they've made it halfway across his lungs are hitching and Stephens's feet drag.
They've got about one hundred feet to go when the tickling in Simmons's chest becomes unbearable. His lungs spasm. He lets go of Stephens and spins away. He coughs deep and spits up a glob of dark phlegm. He takes a moment to try to get himself to breathe normally.
And then the floor dips.
Simmons looks at Stephens. Stephens looks at Simmons.
They run. Beneath their feet the ground tilts. Smaller pieces of wreckage slither along the concrete. The ramp is only fifty feet away. Simmons is wheezing. Stephens is making harsh, gasping moans as she clutches at her ribs and they don't stop, they don't slow down. A bigger piece scrapes by less than a foot from Simmons.
The cement quivers. Simmons hears a pop and a sharp crack!
Up the ramp he can see the night sky. Twinkling stars and the wail of sirens and a faint whiff of cool, fresh air.
The building roars. The air vibrates with a cacophony of shrieking metal and a god-awful tearing noise that Simmons knows is the sound of hundreds of tons of concrete and steel shredding and chewing itself apart. The sound quakes in his bones.
His feet hit the ramp and carry him up. Stephens staggers behind as a blast of searing air billows around them. He reaches back, grabs a fistful of her shirt to make sure she's still there and together, they stumble out onto flat ground and keep running.
Hunter's not sure what he's looking for. He's not sure whether the targeting program keeps fritzing out because of the fire, or because he's in the basement of Machination and likely surrounded by all kind of weird-ass weaponry. He can't pinpoint Sideswipe. Screwball energy signatures keep popping up and then disappearing the second he looks at them. None of which are Sideswipe. Or Sunstreaker.
He can't actually see the hallway; there's too much smoke. But he doesn't need eyes to navigate. What he sees is black smoke. What he knows is that he's got eight feet of clearance on either side, and another ten above his head. He knows that there's a great, big hole punched into the wall fifteen feet further down the hall. It's the elevator Simmons had tossed him down. The doors are gone. The sides are gouged out. There's enough room for him to slip through.
The cement vibrates under his feet. Something is going on in the floor below his—sub-basement three, the deepest level in this pit.
Shit, he thinks. That's gotta be weapons fire. Who the hell is Sideswipe shooting at?
He feels a rush of cold run through him; it has nothing to do with the temperature.
The elevator shaft is dark. Super-heated air billows out of the gaping hole. The cables inside make an odd, twanging sound. The shaft has turned into an immense oven—the cables sag like overcooked spaghetti.
Holy shit.
He's nowhere near the energon storage room. So unless the fire spread all the way over here—and it hasn't, he'd see it—something else is causing that. Something else is blasting up hot air.
Can I even get down there?
He can actually feel the difference in temperature when he sticks his hand in. It doesn't hurt him. He doesn't have skin to burn. His body just notes the heat and wires the information to his brain.
Sideswipe is down there. Sunstreaker must be down there, too.
"Shit," Hunter says.
He places both hands on the opening and leans in. There's another hole busted out of the opposite side, above the elevator. Hunter has a pretty good idea what might have made it.
This is stupid, he thinks. This is so, so stupid.
But he doesn't turn back. Even as a portion of his brain yammers to run, run, run like hell, Hunter steps into the shaft. His foot sinks into the top of the elevator.
He doesn't catch fire. He doesn't blow up. His visor doesn't start screaming warnings at him.
Hunter scurries across and ducks through the hole and drops into sub-basement three. To his left: dark hallway. To his right: flickers of fire and noise. Someone screams.
If Hunter had hair, it's be standing up. His feet won't move. He stands there, rooted to the spot.
It's Sideswipe. That was his voice. He's screaming.
Oh god.
He takes a step. Then another. The noise gets louder. Crashing, banging, sounds of pain, the sounds of a fight. Hunter wants to stop, he wants to turn around, but he finds himself unable. He's drawn onward, his stomach twisting up.
An open door just ahead. Inside is flame and something large and dark. Something that chitters. Something that moves all wrong, not on two legs, not like a person. He catches a glimpse of purple and black and green, an arching tail, and two, massive pincers.
He's seen this thing before. Dread slams into him, punches out his stomach, and he can't move.
The thing circles something else, something that snarls in Cybertronian. A smaller form kneels on the floor. Red and black and silver, armor all torn up.
Sideswipe.
A soft noise leaves Hunter's throat before he can stop himself. The bug's head whips around.
"You!" it says.
That voice—he's heard it before, too, from a head dangling from a ceiling. He'd been drugged, unable to feel his limbs and his vision kept swimming, but he'd seen it, he'd heard it. That voice all laced with static, garbled words telling the men holding him that he could still be of use. This thing. This is Machination.
"You little wretch," it says. Its legs churn as is spins around to face him. "We are going to rip that ungrateful head right out of that body!"
Oh god.
Hunter backs away. The monster advances on him, tail arched up. The fire light glitters along the bladed tip. Sideswipe is still in there. He hasn't moved. He stares at Hunter but he hasn't moved and that bug is coming at him and oh shit, oh shit, he's gonna—
Hunter's visor lights up red. The ground quakes. The bug stops. The air fills with a terrible roar.
"No!" the bug says. It looks up.
A chunk of ceiling comes down right on top of it. The entire hall vibrates. Sideswipe isn't moving, isn't doing anything. Hunter senses vast movement overhead. The building is coming down.
"Sideswipe!" he says.
Then Sideswipe is up, scrambling away, arms stretched out toward something small and black on the floor. And then the ceiling collapses.
Sideswipe hits a wall. He doesn't feel the impact because Scorpinok is right there. One of his spindly legs lifts. Sideswipe ducks as the appendage harpoons the wall where his head had been. He scrambles underneath the monstrosity. Scorpinok snarls and pivots to the side.
He's fast. He's way too fast.
Sideswipe's body is shutting down. His legs are dead weights, his arms all but useless. His coolant keeps choking up. He's bleeding energon through his insides and out, onto the floor. As he comes to his feet and tries to backpedal his foot hits a patch of it and slides out from under him. He lands flat on his back.
"Hold still!" Scorpinok says.
His tail comes up. Sideswipe rolls. He's not fast enough. The blade slams into his left shoulder. Armor tears. But he wrenches himself free. He manages to stumble away, his arm dangling.
No! Not now!
Sunny. He has to be here. He can't be gone and Sideswipe needs to find him and to do that he has to smear this thing's face all over the room and he has to get up, get up!
"There," Scorpinok says. "That's not so hard, is it?"
Move it! Move it you stupid fragger!
His arms won't move. His legs won't move. His vision swims.
No, no, not like this.
A soft noise, not even a word. Scorpinok stops.
"You!" he says.
A familiar frame stands out in the hall, silver armor shining. Sideswipe knows that frame; he knows those stupid head fins.
"Sunny?" Sideswipe says. When did you change your coloring?
"You little wretch," Scorpinok says. "We are going to rip that ungrateful head right out of that body!"
Sunny backs up.
No, Sunny, run! Get out of here! You can't fight him!
The air shakes.
"No!" Scorpinok says.
Sunny, go! I'll get you!
"Sideswipe!"
His head, his head, he needs to get his brother's head. Not the silver one, but the other one. Sideswipe is up and after it. Something flashes green out of the corner of his vision. Sunny is running at him. Sideswipe hits the floor. His fingers brush his twin's head. The building comes down.
Sideswipe can't see. He looks to the left, to the right, up, and down. Everything is dark. There's a massive weight on his left arm and his legs. He can hear a low groaning and creaking. The air is hot. It reeks of burning.
Am I dead? he thinks.
His arm really hurts. He tries to move it, tries to clench his fingers but his arm doesn't move. His legs won't, either. He starts to sit up and bangs his head. Sideswipe falls back.
The slag?
A low rumbling sound in the distance. He can make out a muffled wailing, rising and falling. He thinks he knows that sound. He's sure he could place it if he really tried. But right now, he needs to know why he can't move.
He manages to twist around. His other hand traces along his unmoving one until it hits something smooth and solid. It extends as far as he can reach in all directions. It's pinned his arm just below the elbow.
What happened?
He remembers pain. He remembers rage. He remembers getting slammed into a wall and an ugly face leering at him. Scorpinok. He'd done something, hurt—
"Sunny!" Sideswipe says.
Sunny. He's here. He needs to find him. He has to get him out.
He pulls his arm. He's got to get up, got to find his brother. The arm doesn't budge. It's got a slab of concrete crushing it into the ground. Sideswipe pulls again, thrashes, tries to wrench himself free.
Slaggit!
His legs. If he can bring those up…
He can move his right leg, bend it at the knee, drag it up. His thighs scrape together. Armor screeches against the debris around him. His foot catches on something and it takes a second to wiggle it out.
Sunny. He's here.
Sideswipe has to get him.
The second leg is easier to slide out. He's lying in a small space, a pocket of air just big enough for him to wriggle around and plant both feet on the slab holding his arm.
He's got to get free because he's got to find his brother.
Sideswipe pushes. His elbow creaks. His legs shake. He can feel warm, tingling liquid running along his waist and chest. He doesn't' stop. The slab groans. Something overhead shifts. Small pieces patter down around him.
He doesn't stop.
"Come on," he says.
He kicks the slab once, twice, three times. A shaft of metal screeches and the whole pile drops a few centi-metras over his head. He jerks his arm back and forth. His whole body shakes. He can feel cables pulling taut in his arm, quivering, fraying.
"Come on!"
The slab shifts. Something breaks away and hits the side of his face. A final tug, a hideous screech, and Sideswipe's arm tears free. He falls back.
Sunstreaker.
He's got to get up and find Sunny. He rolls onto his hands and knees in a cramped crouch.
He's here. Find him.
Sideswipe starts to dig.
Someone is kicking him in the head. Hunter opens his eyes.
What the hell?
He can't see anything. He's lying on his side. His legs are curled up, his arms tucked close to his chest. Something presses down on his neck. Hunter tries to sit up. Pain lances through his head and spikes behind his eyes.
"Ah!" he says.
The banging against his head stops.
Where am I? What happened?
He can move. Not much, not before his hands scrape concrete and metal, but it's enough to reach up and feel the beam lying on his neck.
Oh shit.
The building has collapsed. He's lying in the deepest basement and it's collapsed. He's been buried alive.
"Sunny?" a voice says.
What the—
"Sideswipe?" Hunter says.
A pause.
"Sideswipe, it's Hunter! Are you… where are you?"
He tries to move again, tries to duck out. But the beam shifts and Hunter chokes back a yelp. He feels along the thing, trying to find the end or a gap he can squeeze his head through. Both sides disappear into the wreckage around him. He can slip a hand over the top; his fingers brush the back of his head. He's lying on his side with his face twisted around and pressed into the floor.
"Sideswipe?" he says.
A scuffling sound. Then, "Hunter. Oh."
"I… I'm stuck," Hunter says. "Are you there? Do you think you can reach me?"
But Sideswipe doesn't answer. The scraping noise starts up again, further away this time.
"Hello? Sideswipe?"
No answer.
"Shit."
Okay, he thinks. Don't freak out. Just stay calm. Sideswipe is over there. He was talking, so he's not dead. He didn't sound like he was freaked out or anything. You need to stay calm.
The beam lies right where Hunter connects to the body. The locks holding him in place strain. If he panics, if he starts to thrash around, he could break his neck. He's trapped underneath a collapsed building that's probably still on fire and Sideswipe is ignoring him or he's passed out and—
Stop it.
His body is free. He can move all of his limbs. He's only pinned at the neck.
"Oh," Hunter says.
He's a Headmaster. He can detach his head.
Duh.
Of course, if that's the only thing holding the debris up, then the second the locks release the weight of it all could tear through and break his neck anyway. Hunter lies there and listens to scraping and the groans and moans of the building shifting and settling around him. He realizes that he can wait there for someone to dig him out and hope that they don't shoot him and take him back for dissection, or he can take his chances.
Hunter triggers the release. A set of rapid clicks as his head unlocks and the whole thing screeches and good god, he can feel that in his teeth. Then he drops away, clatters to the floor. He rocks back and forth between the head finds and stares up at the ceiling of his little air pocket.
"Whoa," he says.
His optic covers are on. They fill the space with dim, blue light. It's a mess. He's surrounded in twisted metal and chunks of concrete and broken pipes. The air is hot and filled with the smell of burning wire and dust and the odd tang of energon. He can just see the glint of armor beyond a large, steel beam.
There's a slab of concrete over the beam. Hunter can make out a dark line where it ends. If his body can lift that without bringing the whole thing down, it can get through. He focuses. The armor shifts. Two black hands appear in the gap. Hydraulics hiss and his joints creak and the slab shifts. Dust falls. Something nearby crashes. The body freezes. When nothing else drops, it starts to move again, sliding the slab over to one side. When there's enough room, it slips through.
It's one of the creepiest things Hunter has ever seen. A giant, silver body slithering through a gap in the dark. No head, just arms and a torso and legs. It crouches down over him, squatting like a frog. Hunter lies between its feet. It reaches down and picks him up and turns him. A moment later, and he's nestled between shoulders once again.
"Sideswipe?" he says.
No answer.
The scritching, scratching hasn't stopped. It comes from Hunter's left. He spots a gap in all the junk big enough to stick his head through. He looks up. His visor shows nothing. He can hear sirens—really, really faint ones. There are people up there.
The gap turns out to be a crevasse. He's got just enough room to slide in.
Hunter has never been claustrophobic. He's never understood how anyone could get freaked out by small spaces. But now, as he shimmies his way past sparking wires, his armor scraping on ragged edges, through puddles he doesn't dare identify, over and under broken steel, all the while listening to the eerie groans and deep thrums and the occasional, distant roar of something else tumbling down, he begins to.
"Sideswipe!"
The noise doesn't stop. It's louder, now. He can see a black hole up ahead. The sound of metal scraping floats through it. Another minute of twisting and climbing and he's there.
The hole is too small to fit all of him. He pokes his head through.
Movement. A dark shape squats about five feet away, pressed on all sides by the debris. Light glints off armor. It's turned away, bent low over something Hunter can't see. The right arm moves, the left is still, tucked close to his chest. In the dim light, the armor looks purple, but there's no mistaking that black helm and the stubby horns.
"Sideswipe," Hunter says.
The Autobot doesn't answer. He doesn't turn around or even stop whatever it is he's doing.
"Hey," Hunter says.
The red mech doesn't acknowledge him. He mutters something too low for Hunter to hear.
The edges of the hole look loose. Hunter reaches up and pushes at a piece. Rubble clatters as it slides away. Sideswipe doesn't look up. Hunter gets his head and shoulders through and then something sticks.
"Goddamnit," he says.
He twists and pulls. Armor rasps. He kicks his legs and suddenly he's free. He tumbles down and crashes against Sideswipe.
Sideswipe snarls. He spins around, his right arm cocked back. Hunter scrambles away, his hands raised in front of him.
"No, no!" he says. "It's me!"
Sideswipe stops. In that hot, stinking hole, time itself freezes.
Oh my god.
Sideswipe's face is a mess. The glowing panels over his eyes are gone. The left eye is a mangled hole filled with tangled wire. Pieces of his armor have been torn off. What's left, is covered in patches of dark gray. His entire front is a shining smear of energon. Hunter can see inside his chest.
"Sideswipe," he says. "What…?"
His left arm is dislocated. The panels are peeled back around the edges, exposing wire and the joint itself. His forearm looks like it came through a meat grinder; strips of it hang off and the rest of it is a crushed mess. But that's not what makes Hunter's stomach lurch.
He's got Sunstreaker's head cradled against his chest. Hunter thinks it's Sunstreaker's head, anyway. He can make out one of the fins. The rest of it is a charred lump.
"God," he says. "What happened?"
Sideswipe's remaining optic whirs as he focuses on Hunter. His snarl disappears.
"Oh," he says. "It's you."
Hunter can't speak. His brain won't form words. He just stares and reminds himself that he doesn't have a stomach and he's physically incapable of throwing up.
"Good," Sideswipe says. His voice sounds weird, light, totally detached. "Good. You can help."
He turns away. The scraping starts again. Hunter swallows. The muscles catch in his throat.
"Sideswipe," he says. It's almost painful getting that word out. "Hey… Sideswipe."
The 'bot doesn't look up. He's muttering. This time Hunter is close enough to hear, but Sideswipe isn't speaking in English. Hunter catches what he thinks is Sunstreaker's name, over and over, like a chant.
He digs. Sideswipe's fingers scrabble over a solid piece of wall covered in energon. It's coming from him. The tips of his fingers are shorn off.
Hunter is going to puke. His throat tightens. He has to turn away and swallow a few times and try not to listen to Sideswipe calling his brother's name over and over and over.
Oh god, he thinks. Oh my god.
A few minutes later, when Hunter can open his eyes without shuddering, he turns back at Sideswipe pawing at the rubble. Hunter licks his lips. He reaches up to put a hand on the 'bot's shoulder and hesitates.
"Sideswipe?" he says.
"What?"
"What… what are you doing?"
In that same, detached tone, he says, "Getting Sunny."
Hunter's gaze flicks to the lump nestled in the crook of his arm. He looks away.
"Sideswipe, you're already holding him."
Sideswipe shakes his head. "Not his spark. It's still out there. I've gotta get it so we can go."
Hunter scans the wall and everything beyond it. There's nothing. There's no trace of an energy signature of any kind.
"There's nothing there," Hunter says.
The awful scraping stops. Sideswipe stares down.
"You don't understand," he says. "We're split-spark twins. He's part of me. I would know if… if…"
The floor trembles. Wreckage slides overhead and Hunter ducks as a small piece clips his shoulder. The shaking goes on for another half a minute and stops.
"We've got to get out of here," Hunter says.
Sideswipe shakes his head. "No. Not without Sunny."
Again, Hunter's eyes are drawn to Sideswipe's left arm. The mech himself doesn't sound so good. Something inside him grinds and sputters. Energon oozes down his front.
"Sideswipe, look at what you're holding. There's no way Sunstreaker could… could still be…"
He can't say "alive." He can't finish the sentence.
For the first time, Sideswipe seems to notice the thing in his arms. He reaches down and brushes it with torn fingertips.
"No," he says. He hunches down, curls around the lump. "You're just a human. You don't get it. I can save him. I can fix this. I can…"
"I'm sorry," Hunter says. "I really, really am. He—your brother tried to help me. He didn't deserve this."
Sideswipe doesn't say anything.
Hunter chews on his lip. He scans the wreckage again. Still nothing.
"If there were anything out there, I would help you. I would help him even if it meant digging the whole place up. But there's nothing out there. Please, you have to go."
He lays a hand on Sideswipe's shoulder.
"No!" Sideswipe says.
His fist smashes into Hunter's face. Hunter smacks into the wall and slides down into a sprawl. Noise fills the air. Sideswipe yells in Cybertronian. Hunter manages to open his eyes. He sees a flurry of movement.
Sideswipe attacks the wall. His fist slams into the concrete slab. It cracks and jolts back. The ceiling groans. Hunter rolls to the side to avoid being skewered by a piece of rebar.
"Sideswipe! Stop it!"
The mech ignores him. He falls back and kicks the wall, screaming.
Hunter staggers to his feet. The floor lurches beneath him. Sideswipe stumbles but it doesn't faze him. He just gets up and starts clawing. Hunter lunges. He hits the mech and they both go down. Sideswipe's elbow whips around and smashes into the side of Hunter's head.
The tunnel he crawled out of implodes. A cloud of dust billows into their alcove.
"Sideswipe, you have to stop!"
But Sideswipe is beyond listening. He scrambles up. Hunter grabs one of his legs and pulls him back down. He rolls over and tries to grab his arm or his legs, something to pin him. Sideswipe thrashes and almost bucks him off. His chest makes an awful screech. Energon bubbles out of the corner of his mouth.
"Stop it!" Hunter says. "You're gonna kill yourself!"
Sideswipe wrenches his arm free. Hunter tries to grab it but the 'bot twists his legs and Hunter falls away. Instantly, Sideswipe is on him. His hand clamps onto Hunter's face and he begins to squeeze.
"Agh! Stop!"
His own fingers scrabble over Sideswipe's arm. He can feel the pressure in his real body. Warnings flash over his eyes. The armor over his cyborg chest buckles. Sideswipe presses down with monstrous strength.
He claws at Sideswipe's face. The mech doesn't seem to feel it. Rubble shifts beneath him, energon drips down onto his own face and chest. All the while Sideswipe snarls and squeezes and if Hunter doesn't do something right now he's going to die.
His hand brushes a length of metal. Hunter fumbles and then grabs it and whips it through the air as hard as he can.
The pipe slams into the side of Sideswipe's helm. The demon grip on Hunter's face slackens. Hunter shoves the hand away and hits the mech again. Sideswipe lets out an agonized wheeze and slumps against him.
Hunter lays there and trembles. The pipe clatters to the ground. He lifts a shaking hand and pushes Sideswipe off of him. Hunter sits up.
Sideswipe doesn't move. Hunter bends down. He can hear the gurgle of struggling machinery inside him.
He sits back.
Oh god, this is so fucked up.
Sideswipe clutches his brother's head. Not once did he let go. Even unconscious, he's got it in a death grip.
Cool air brushes the side of his face. He pulls his legs out from beneath Sideswipe and curls in on himself. He closes his eyes.
He hopes Simmons made it out because all he wants to do is pass out and hope that when he wakes up, none of the last month will have happened. He'll wake up back at home with his boring life and boring job and he's pretty sure he won't mind.
Another waft of air. He sighs and draws himself into a tighter ball.
Wait a minute.
Air. Not hot air but cool air and it's moving.
Hunter looks up. The ceiling is a mish-mash of garbage heap. But right there, in the corner above the energon-coated slab, is a crack.
"Oh no way," he says.
Hunter rolls to his feet. It's not a big crack—he's going to have to move stuff around if he wants to get through—but there's a current flowing through it. He spots a beam lying a few feet in it. Hunter grabs it and pulls. Nothing happens. He wraps both hands around it and gingerly lifts up his feet. It holds. He drops back down. He eyeballs Sideswipe.
Fort-five minutes. That's how long it takes Hunter to drag himself and Sideswipe through five stories of material squashed into a three-story basement. Forty-five minutes clawing his way through wreckage and melted slag. The last ten feet, water began to drip down on him, slicking his handholds and turning the dust into paste. And still he kept climbing, Sideswipe tethered to him by a length of wire and cable he'd braided together.
Five feet from the surface, Hunter stops. He can hear the sirens, the low thrum of helicopter rotors, a cacophony of voices and diesel engines. He can only imagine what it looks like up there.
"Shit," he says.
He's got to keep going. He's got to get Sideswipe out—somewhere in there he's started making really weird noises, a kind of gurgling and sputtering that Hunter doesn't like. The gray patches on his armor have spread. Hunter can't leave him to go get help. He's going to have to get him top-side, now, and there's no way he's going to do it without being spotted.
Oh god, he thinks.
He shimmies his way through the last of it. He can tell the second his fingers break through. Then he's pushing up his arm, pulling the rest of him out. His head breaks the surface.
Into pandemonium. All around him are the jagged remains of concrete and metal and glass. The sky is lit with flashing lights. A swarm of helicopters circle overhead. He counts three fire hoses, all on full blast, dousing the wreckage. Smoke billows out from gaps and holes. The air stinks of electrical fire and burning energon.
No one notices him at first. It's not until he's got his second arm out and is lifting his torso up that the first person screams. He doesn't see who it is—there are too many people swarming the site. He does see when the nearest group of firefighters catches sight of him.
He freezes. So do they. For three seconds, no one does anything.
"Uh," he says.
A cop opens fire. The next thing he knows, people are running and screaming. Bullets slam into his armor. Hunter crouches down and shields his face as best he can. None of the bullets really do any damage—robot armor and all. But Sideswipe isn't going to be so lucky.
Hunter drags his legs out and pulls at the line on his waist. He reaches in and grabs Sideswipe under his arms—he's still got Sunstreaker's head in a death grip. He stays low, angling himself between the people with guns and the wounded Autobot.
Police officers duck down behind their cars. He sees one of them with a shotgun. A helicopter darts overhead.
There's a highway to the north. He's surrounded by industrial buildings. If he can get Sideswipe to one of those, he might be able to hide him, at least until he can find something to drag him off with, a truck or a—
A diesel engine growls. He starts to turn towards it when the black cab of a semi truck plows into the closest cop car. It spins away, the officers ducking to the side. The semi has a large flatbed hooked up to the back. Its tires squeal as it cuts a sharp turn, the trailer sliding out behind it.
The hell?
It screeches to a stop. The door opens. A man covered head-to-toe in fine, gray powder leans out and flashes him a startling, white grin.
"What took you so long?" he says.
"Simmons?" Hunter says. "What, how…?"
Simmons shrugs. "I figured I'd have to haul your ass out of here, so I decided to borrow one of these."
The man seems impervious to the gunfire pinging off his stolen truck. He looks back at the cops and says, "You seem fine, though, so let's pack up your little friend and get the hell outta here, huh?"
Hunter has no time to gawk. He can see the blonde woman, Stephens, in the passenger seat. She's got her gun sticking out of the window and is taking pot shots at the cops.
Sideswipe's armor sparks where rounds hit him. He doesn't stir.
The trailer has no walls. It's an oversized, tow truck bed. Hunter manages to push Sideswipe up, onto it. He finds hooked chains along the sides and straps the 'bot down as best he can.
Helicopters swoop in low, their spotlights dance over him. Hunter ducks back down and shuffles over to the driver's side.
"Where to?" Simmons says.
"Chicago," he says. "I can cover us, just get him out of here, okay?"
"Yeah, yeah," Simmons says. He wrenches the truck into gear. The engine grinds, the exhaust belches black exhaust and it pulls forward. More gunfire slams into it, punches through the windshield.
"Hey!" Hunter says. He stands up and waves his arms. "Over here!"
With spotlights shining off of him and cops shooting at him, with Machination burning behind him, Hunter transforms. Less than minute later, he's a silver Lamborghini facing down a small army of police and fire trucks. Two big, armored trucks—SWAT, maybe—make a beeline for him. He settles himself on his tires and guns it. The back panels on Hunter's frame slide apart. His missile launchers unfold. He takes careful aim and fires. Hot air washes over his roof and hood and the missile streaks overhead and hits the pavement ten feet in front of them. The two vehicles swerve. Hunter plows right between them, through the smoke, skirting the edge of the crater he's just blown into the asphalt.
Then he's clear. He spots Simmons and Sideswipe at the edge of the lot. The helicopters circle like buzzards. He takes off after them.
Note: this thing will now be updated on Thursdays. Thank you so much to the indefatigable KayDeeBlu for pointing out what I do wrong (and suggesting how I might fix it). And another massive thank you to Starfire201 and lildevchick for your amazingly tenacious support.
Next chapter: Brother