Sam had to hand it to himself. He really screwed up this time. 'Of all times to get lost!' He thought to himself as he ran past another corridor that he was sure he'd already passed by at least three times. When Sam couldn't find Wheelie around where Mikaela had last seen him, he started wandering and eventually got himself completely lost. Sam determined he'd been searching for about fifteen minutes and still no sign of Wheelie. Sam stopped for a minute to catch his breath. The air had a terrible taste and smell to it though. It reminded Sam of rotten eggs. 'That's not good!' Sam thought. He glanced around for the source of the awful smell. He walked a few yards ahead and around a corner. What he found was smoke seeping out from under the closed door. Sam immediately covered his mouth and nose with his sleeve. Just as he suspected. Carbon monoxide. He held his hand out close to the door, but didn't touch it. The door felt extremely hot, even with Sam's hand at a short distance away from it. In his mind, Sam compared the sensation on his hand to standing too close to a bonfire! Sam turned around and started running farther down the hall with his sleeve still covering his mouth and nose. For his own safety, that would have been the perfect time to start trying to retrace his steps and get out of there as soon as possible. But he still had to find Wheelie. Little did he know, just how close Wheelie was.
Inside the upper air vents, the tapping and click-clacking sounds of crawling wheels and metal claws echoed. Mayday had escaped and hidden in the air vents once before and she thought she had a good idea of where they went. So she lead the way and Wheelie crawled close behind her. They were completely hidden up there. No one could see them, and even if they were caught just by chance while passing by an open vent, it was physically impossible for a human to crawl in after them. In fact it was such a tight space in there that both drones had to be on their hands and knees. Wheelie even hit his head a few times. But he didn't complain. At least they were safe for the moment.
"How much farther Mayday?" Wheelie asked.
"I'm not sure. There's a vent up ahead we can look out and see where we are."
"I don't know what good that's gonna do us. We don't know how we got in, so how do we get out? Its a fragging labyrinth in here."
"Well I don't know about you." Mayday said while moving out of the way so they could both look out the vent. "But I do have one memory of coming in here before stasis shut me down." Wheelie looked through the bars. He saw they were above two intersecting walkways and in the right corner of his view he saw a clear cylinder shaped tube with a metal cart inside it. Wheelie looked at Mayday for an answer. "An elevator." She explained.
"Yeah, but don't you think we'd be taking a risk putting ourselves out in the open like that? Really. Its a clear elevator. We might as well ask some human for a ride..." Mayday jumped back and pulled Wheelie away from the bars.
"Shhh! They'll hear us!" She whispered. Wheelie hadn't noticed anyone coming. But sure enough, in a moment he heard five humans running towards their direction. When they stopped, Wheelie and Mayday crawled back to the bars and peaked out. All but one human was wearing the same style of suit. They all wore the same oxygen masks over their faces. Wheelie noted how one or two humans were having difficulty keeping the mask in place on their face. 'Unbelievable. Those humans are risking their lives, running around with faulty breathing masks in a poisonous gas just to kill us. Talk about, 'You know you're putting too much faith in your boss when...'' Wheelie pressed his face to the bars. Once again his curious optics were pointing something out to him. He leaned closer to get a better look at the humans below. Mayday silently tried to motion Wheelie to get back, but Wheelie didn't see her. He kept leaning closer until the vent was under too much pressure. Without warning, the vent unlatched from the wall and Wheelie went flying out! "Wheelie!" Mayday screamed. She tried to grab him but he slipped through her small clawed hands. mayday ducked down and watched in horror.
Wheelie did a double summersault when he hit the floor. The humans immediately charged at him. Wheelie's head was still spinning when he tried to stand up. He looked up from his kneeling position at the giants racing towards him. Wheelie helplessly moaned and bowed his head. "Primus, save me!" Wheelie whimpered. Just then, the humans broke into a mad frenzy! Wheelie was startled by the sudden commotion. He observed the scene in front of him. Four humans were madly battling to the death, not sure who's side they were on, and the one human who dressed slightly different than them all was in the middle. And kicking butt! He took two humans and smashed their heads together! He kicked at one's knees and sent him collapsing on the floor and pushed the other to trip him over the first! He stayed in the center of the brawl and never skipped a beat. He dodged every attack and made every move count! One man tried to punch his head from behind, but he took the man's fist from behind him and used it as leverage to spin around and kick his opponent in the gut! Then he turned again and took two quick steps back and made a grapevine swerving motion at an angle to step quickly to the next man's side. His last opponent was unsure about his strange foot work and didn't have the slightest clue how to predict the next move. The next move was short and sweet. The mystery man gave a mighty kick at his opponent's pelvis! When the man instinctively bent down to rub the bruise, the mysterious man punched him twice in the head and knocked him down on the floor! The force of his head to the floor knocked him out and the mystery man stood victorious!
When he was sure all of the rest of his opponents had run off, he walked over to Wheelie and looked down on him. Wheelie was trembling at the feet of the giant masked figure. The masked human kneeled down closer to Wheelie. He reached out his hand and stroke Wheelie's back and spoke to him. Wheelie flinched at the man's touch, assuming it was meant to hurt him, but he instantly relaxed when he heard his voice.
"You're okay, right?" Sam asked. "They didn't hurt you too bad?" Wheelie couldn't even begin to explain how far from 'okay' and 'not too bad' he was at the moment. Wheelie looked up at Sam with pleading optics.
"Just get me out of here." Sam offered an arm to pick Wheelie up, but Wheelie stepped back. "Look out!" Wheelie shrieked. A gun fire shot off behind Sam! He spun around and stared straight at Lucius Clawsen! Wheelie and Sam didn't know it at the moment, but they were both thinking the exact same thing. 'Slag! He's back!' Sam started to make a b-line in the opposite direction of Clawsen but Wheelie called him back, "No! The elevator!" and started running towards Clawsen. Sam had no choice but to trust Wheelie. So he turned back and sprinted to the elevator. He quickly passed Wheelie up and continued dodging bullets with incredible speed! Sam noticed Wheelie fall behind for a moment, but he didn't notice him calling for Mayday. The minute Sam got the elevator doors open, Wheelie was at his heals going inside. They shut the doors and were going up just in time. Lucius started running at the elevator, not bothering to shoot, because he knew just how indestructible he'd made the elevator doors. Sam watched Clawsen's baffled face expression and couldn't resist waving goodbye to mock him! At that moment, Sam noticed Clawsen wasn't wearing a mask. 'The idiot!' Sam thought. He was about to ask Wheelie just how excited he was to be going home, when he suddenly realized who else was in the elevator.
"Whoa!" Sam exclaimed, completely caught off guard. Mayday just stared at him while Sam tried to figure things out. "Wheelie! How?" Sam took another look at Mayday. "Why?"
"Relax Witwicky, she's a friend." Wheelie said coldly. "Mayday, Sam Witwicky. Sam Witwicky, Mayday." He introduced.
"Thank you for saving us." Mayday said politely. Sam nodded.
"Yeah um, really Sam...thanks." Wheelie added.
"Anytime Wheelie." Sam replied.
"How's Warrior Goddess?" Sam looked up. Metal sheets above them shifted and moved so the elevator could emerge to the surface.
"We'll find out soon."
"And uh, one more question." Sam looked down at Wheelie expectantly. "How in Pit did you beat those guys? Single handedly!"
"When you're genetically mutated by an Allspark shard, it does thing to ya." Sam laughed.
"Well you kicked after burner!" Wheelie congratulated. Wheelie didn't know why, but a strange feeling came over him then. He felt happy, but it was a different kind of happy from what he'd ever felt before. Maybe it was because he'd been deprived of freedom and accustomed to being worthless property for so long. He hugged Mayday, who was happy to see him happy. When the elevator emerged from the Earth, Wheelie knew why he was so happy to be out of there. He was mostly happy because for the first time in fifteen plus days, Wheelie would finally get to see real sunlight again.