When Alise started to come to, she realized she was in a car before she opened her eyes. She felt movement underneath her and a seat belt around her. At first she thought it was Bee she was sitting in, but she quickly dismissed the hope. It was too cold and uninviting and hard for it to be him. Suddenly, the events of the night came rushing back to her. She suddenly felt unreal, as if all the reality had been taken from her and that she was just there. Bee, she remembered. A flood of emotions hit her like a tidal wave and her heart started to beat rapidly from the memory of him in pain, unable to escape and her not being able to do much more to help than throw a few kicks and punches. She slowly opened one of her eyes, but she didn't move.
Light was shining in through one of the car windows, telling Alise it was already morning. For some reason, she was uncharacteristically sensitive to the light, and her head began to ache. Bearing through the pain, she nonchalantly glanced out the window and saw nothing but sand. It vaguely reminded her of home, but then she remembered that she didn't have a home anymore. She had hoped that Simmons was just trying to get inside her head, but the more she thought about it, the more it made sense. She wouldn't be welcomed back. She was now the enemy and traitor of her friends and family. She was dead to them.
She was in the back of one of the black vans that took them last night, she was sure of it. The interior was the same, and the so was the tension in the air. Knowing, however, that she couldn't pretend to be asleep forever, she opened her other eye, and slowly turned her head in the direction opposite the window. The first person she saw was Mikaela, who was staring ahead, tears lightly streaming down her face. Next to her was Sam, who was staring out of the window on his side of the van. The two looked dirty and defeated. The movement of her moving her head caught Mikaela's eye, and she quickly looked over at her. She left out a relieved sigh.
"Welcome back," she said quietly to Alise, breaking the silence in the car. Alise saw that two other men were in the car with them, one driving the van and the other in the passenger seat. They both looked back to see that she was indeed awake and they turned back around. Alise was glad that neither of them were Simmons or his goon from the night before. Sam also looked over at her, and gave her a gentle, yet sad smile. Alise sat up straight, and her head pierced in protest, making her fiercely cringe. She placed a hand on her head softly.
"Thanks," she said softly, but even that action made her head pound. "I feel like I got hit by a bus."
Sam chuckled once, darkly. "You got tazed. You took down three guys before you did, though. Congrats." There was slight edge to Sam's voice, and she knew he was probably angry that he couldn't do more to help like she was. He paused for a moment and then sighed. "We saw you from the car. When you hit the ground, Bee went nuts. Started thrashing around wildly, and kept trying to wait you up. We think he thought you were..." Sam didn't continue his statement. "We did too for a bit there. I don't think it helped that they kinda just dragged you off by your ankles in front of him. They took you right over a rock, and you hit your head."
Alise felt like she was going to be sick. Oh god, she thought to herself. He thinks I'm... She didn't continue her thought.
"Where is he?" she asked desperately. Sam turned his head back towards the floor of the car. She looked to Mikaela, who let loose a few more small tears before she shook her head.
"We don't know," she said quietly. Fear and anger boiled inside of Alise. No, no, NO! she screamed in her head. She kicked the seat in front of her, causing the man sitting in it to jump a little.
The man turned to face the backseat. "What are you-" the man started but Alise cut him off.
"Where is he?" she growled at the man. She sounded menacing, but the man continued to stare her down.
"Who are you taking about?" he asked her, no expression crossing his face.
"The robot you kidnapped last night! Where the HELL is he!" she yelled at the man. He merely shrugged.
"I'm not allowed to disclose that." Something snapped in Alise.
"My ASS!" she yelled at him. She began toprofusely curse the man out in Spanish, a habit she undoubtedly picked up from Camilla. The man had no idea what she was saying, but he got the point she was trying to get across. She hated them. Mikaela and Sam watched as Alise did this, but they didn't say anything. Instead, they joined her by glaring at the man, who now felt slightly uncomfortable at having three pairs of glaring eyes and a medley of creative Spanish profanities being thrown at him. After a moment, Alise stopped, slightly out of breath, but she continued her death glare. The man turned around and looked out the front window.
After about ten more minutes of driving, the van stopped at a small clearing, which in the middle of it, was a helicopter. Another black van was also present. The two men got out first, and opened the doors on either side. The driver took Sam, and the man Alise had cursed out was grabbed her and Mikaela. None of them put up a fight.
As they were walked to the helicopter, the doors to the other van opened also. Two suited men also exited that vehicle and opened the back doors. Out came a pretty blond girl and a large dark-skinned man, both of whom were also lead towards the helicopter. The five were placed into the helicopter and strapped in, helmets and microphones placed on their heads. Alise couldn't hear much out of the helmets, but she did hear the helicopter's pilot saying to his co-pilot about how he needed make this trip quick. Apparently, he had a convention in a nearby city for international delegates he needed to go to.
Before they took off, switches were flipped on, on the tops of their helmets. Now they could talk to each other and hear what they were saying. Then they took off.
After about 5 minutes of flying, Sam cleared his throat. "So..." he said awkwardly, not speaking to anyone in particular.
"What'd they get you for?" the blond asked him conversationally.
"I bought a car. Turned out to be an alien robot."
"Wow," the dark-skinned man next to her said. Sam nodded once.
"Who knew?"
They flew for a little while longer, and soon enough, they landed. At the Hoover Dam. Almost immediately after they exited the helicopter, they were put into another black van, which by this point, Alise was tired of. They were driven to one of the bridges of the dam and the three couldn't help but look over the side. Alise was astonished by how large it was, but she knew she probably would have been more excited to see it if she wasn't there by force.
They were escorted a little further up the bridge of the dam, where they were met up with multiple men. There was a suited, white-haired official-looking man, two soldiers, one dark-skinned and one white, both in uniform, and two others who Alise never wanted to see again. Agent Simmons and his goon. Behind them were more soldiers, but they were wearing different uniforms than their comrades in front of them. Simmons had a black eye and bandage on his nose. Alise smiled to herself, remembering she was the one who gave it to him.
"Team attention! Present arms!" the one soldier yelled as the official looking man walked up to them. All the soldiers saluted the man.
"At ease," the man said. He turned to the men up front. "Captain, Sergeant. Got your intel. Excellent work."
However, as they went on, they got a little quieter and much to Alise's frustration, she couldn't hear them anymore. Simmons and the other man came up to them. Simmons didn't look at Alise, and she didn't care. The distain she felt for him was immeasurable.
"Hey, kid," Simmons said to Sam. There was a new tone in his voice, one that wasn't used last night. It was somewhat kinder and it confused Alise. "I think we got off to a bad start, huh? You must be hungry? You want a latte? HoHo? Double venti-macchiato?"
"Where's my car?" Sam said bluntly. Simmons face dropped a little and he sighed. Where's my Bee? Alise also asked him, but she didn't let the question leave her mouth.
"Son, I need you to listen to me very carefully," Simmons's sidekick said to Sam, trying to sound reasonable. "People can die here. We need to know everything you know. We need to know it now."
"Okay," Sam said, soundly like he would cooperate. Alise looked at him, eyes wide, but then his tone changed. "But first, I'll take my car, my parents. Maybe you should write that down. Oh, and her juvie record," he gestured to Mikaela. "That's got to be gone. Like, forever. And her," he pointed to Alise, "you're not sending her anywhere she doesn't wanna go." Alise and Mikaela both looked at Sam, with disbelieving smiles on their faces. They also looked to each other.
The sidekick sighed. "Come with me. We'll talk about your car."
As they were walking, Mikaela said, "Thank you," to Sam and Alise did the same.
Sam smiled and said, "Sure." Simmons scoffed from behind them.
"The man's an extortionist," he said, and then the two men lead the motley crew down into the deep walls of the Hoover Dam. When they reached the bottom floor, Alise was hit with a blast of cold air and the smell of smoke and oil. It was hostile environment and Alise stayed close to Mikaela and Sam, not wanting to be there. She only hoped they weren't keeping Bee down here. So this is Sector 7, Alise thought to herself grimly.
"All right, here's the situation," Simmons continued. "You've all had direct contact with the NBEs."
"NBEs?" one of the lead soldiers asked. Alise believed he was the Captain.
"Non-Biological Extraterrestrials. Try and keep up with the acronyms." Alise felt the need to smack Simmons for the comment and she knew Captain felt the same way when she saw him roll his eyes at the man. She smirked. "What you're about to see is totally classified."
They walked further into the large hanger-like room and what Alise saw gave her chills. Before her was a large mechanical man, frozen in ice. The white smoke that had been used on her and Bee earlier was being continually sprayed on him, and as Alise looked, she saw it wasn't just any robot. It was the one that Optimus had shown her, Sam, and Mikaela. It was Megatron.
"Dear God... what is this?" the suited official asked, a gasped just like the rest of the newcomers in the room.
"We think that when he made his approach over the North Pole, our gravitation field screwed up his telemetry and he crashed into the ice, probably a few thousand years ago," the sidekick asked. "We shipped him here to this facility in 1934."
"We call him NBE-1," Simmons added.
"I don't mean to correct you on all that you think you know," Sam injected, "but that's Megatron. He's the leader of the Decepticons."
"He's been in cryo-stasis since 1935," the sidekick said, turning to Sam. "Your great-great-grandfather made one of the greatest discoveries in the history of mankind."
"Fact is, you're looking at the source of the modern age," Simmons continued. "The microchip, lasers, cars, space flight: all reverse-engineered by studying him. NBE-1..." He turned to Sam and sneered. "That's what we call IT!"
"And you didn't think that the United States Military might need to know that you're keeping a hostile alien robot frozen in the basement?" the suited official asked accusingly.
"Until these events we had no credible threats to national security," the sidekick said.
"Well, you got one now!" the man yelled.
"So why Earth?" the Captain asked.
"It's the All Spark," Sam answered.
"All Spark? What is that?" the official asked him.
"Well, they came here looking for some sort of cube-looking thing. Anyway, Mr. NBE-1 here, aka MEGATRON..." Sam turned to glare at Simmons, "That's what they call HIM... who's pretty much the harbinger of death, wants to use the cube to transform human technology to take over the universe. That's their plan."
"And you're sure about that?" the Captain asked.
"Yeah."
Alise looked over to see that Simmons and his sidekick were exchanging a look. She turned on them.
"You guys know where it is, don't you?" she asked accusingly.
Simmons glared at her, and then looked at the rest of the party who heard her and turned around to face them. "Follow me," Simmons said. They walked on and enter a small room. "You're about to see our crown jewel."
Alise looked in wonder out the room's window. In front of her, was a massive stone cube, undoubtedly larger than a building. It was glowing and had strange marking written all over it. The minute she sight her eyes on it, she knew it had to be the All Spark. It was so unearthly, and Alise felt as though she could feel its power from the inside of the room.
"Carbon dating puts the Cube here around 10,000 BC," the sidekick started. "The first Seven didn't find it until 1913. They knew it was alien because of the matching hieroglyphics on the Cube as well as NBE One. President Hoover had the dam built around it. Four football fields thick of concrete. A perfect way to hide its energy from being detected by anyone... or any alien species on the outside."
"Wait, back up," the blonde girl said, speaking for the first time in a while. "You said the dam hides the Cube's energy. What kind exactly?"
"Good question," Simmons said. He turned to a door inside the room and opened it. "Please step inside. They have to lock us in." The party entered the metal box of room. Alise looked around. In the middle of the room was a clear glass box, and she noticed that the box was destroyed from the inside. She then looked at the walls of the room. Some of them had horrid scratch marks on them.
"What's that?" the Sergeant said, pointing at the ruined wall. "Freddy Krueger been up in here or something?"
"Oh, no, man," the man who came in with the blonde said. "Freddy Krueger have four blades, man. That's only three. That's Wolverine!" He laughed at his own observation. "Right? That's Wolverine!"
Simmons looked unamused. "That's very funny," he said sarcastically. Everyone gathered around the clear box in the center of the room. Alise stood between the blonde and the Sergeant. "Anybody have any mechanical devices? BlackBerry? Key alarm? Cell phone?"
The blonde pulled out her phone. "I got a phone," she said.
Simmons smiled, "Ooh. Nokias are real nasty. You've gotta respect the Japanese. They know the way of the samurai..." He the phone and started to open the box.
"Nokia's from Finland," she heard the blonde whisper to the official next to her.
The official nodded. "Yes, but he's, you know, a little strange. He's a little strange."
Alise heard the Sergeant next to her whisper, "Damn, this guy is nuts," to himself.
Alise smiled and whispered to him. "Try hitting him. It worked for me."
The Sergeant looked at her, a little surprised that she heard him, but he grinned at her. "So I take it you gave him the..." He trailed off, but motioned around his one of his eyes.
She smirked. "Maybe."
He chuckled quietly. "Nice shot."
Alise tried to suppress her amusement.
"We're able to take the Cube radiation and funnel it into that box," the sidekick said, and Simmons pulled a switch. There was a great flash of light that Alise saw being transferred from the cube to the box and it shocked the phone. After a moment, the light stopped, but the phone continued to just sit there. Then all of a sudden, the phone morphed into a little mechanical creature and started to scratch and thrash against the box. It had red eyes, and was making hissing noises at the group.
"Mean little sucker, huh?" Simmons commented, seeing the shocked looks of the people in the room.
"That thing is freaky!" the blonde commented, astounded.
"Kinda like the itty-bitty Energizer Bunny from hell, huh?"
Suddenly, a gun appeared on the tiny machine, and he started firing machine-gun like rounds at the box. The glass of the clear box held the bullets back, but began to crack.
"He's breaking the box."
Simmons sighed and hit the switch again, and this time the light hit the machine again, but it fired it to a crisp. The group exchanged looked with one another. The party then exited the metal room.
The party was walking through the hanger where Megatron was frozen when suddenly, a beeping sound started to go off and lights started to flash. The party looked around, the soldiers tensing for action, and the civilians looking around confused.
The official spoke first. "Gentlemen, they know the Cube is here," he said calmly, but the rest of the room already seemed to know that.
"Banachek. What's going on?" Simmons asked to the sidekick.
He looked at a little device he was carrying on him. "Well, the NBE One hangar has lost power..."
"What?" Simmons interjected, but Banachek continued.
"... and the backup generator is just not gonna cut it."
The Captain, Sergeant, and the soldiers started to looked around the room. "Do you have an arms room?" the Captain asked quickly. Banachek told him where, and they ran to arm themselves.
There was a medley of shouting and yelling that filled the room. People were yelling out what was failing and that Megatron was starting to melt. There was a sinking feeling in Alise's gut and she felt a little dizzy.
"Sam!" she yelled. Sam and Mikaela, who was standing next to him, turned around and she ran to them. "Sam, we have to find Bee! Now! He'll know what to do with the cube!"
Sam nodded and the three ran over to Simmons who was fanatically shouting out orders.
"You got to take me to my car," Sam told him. "You have to take me to my car. He's gonna know what to do with the Cube."
"Your car? It's confiscated," Simmons yelled at Sam. By this time, the brigade of soldiers arrived back, fully armed.
"Then unconfiscate it!"
"We do not know what will happen if we let it near this thing!"
"You don't know," Sam said.
Simmons looked pointedly at him. "Maybe you know, but I don't know."
"You just wanna sit here and wait and see what happens?" Sam yelled. They were losing time.
"I have people's lives at stake here, young man."
Suddenly, the Captain appeared next to Simmons and he pointed his fully loaded gun at him. Alise now could read his nametag. His name was Lennox.
"Take him to his car!" Lennox yelled at Simmons. Suddenly, there was a standoff. The agents of Sector 7 and the soldiers all raised their weapons at one another. Guns were cocked and aimed.
"Whoa whoa whoa..." Banachek tried to calm the group down, but Simmons spoke up.
"Drop your weapon, solider. There's an alien war going on and you're gonna shot me?" he asked pointedly.
"You know, we didn't ask to be here," Lennox spat.
"I'm ordering you under S-Seven executive jurisdiction-"
"S-7 don't exist!" the Sergeant yelled at Simmons. Alise could read his nametag now too. His read Epps.
"Right," Lennox agreed snidely, "and we don't take orders from people that don't exist."
Simmons glared at him. "I'm gonna count to five, okay..."
"Well, I'm gonna count to three." Lennox cocked his gun menacingly and aimed it closer to Simmons's chest.
"Simmons?" they heard from behind them. They all turned around to see the official standing them, who was watching the scene quietly.
"Yes, sir?" Simmons said smugly, thinking the official was going to be his white knight. He was mistaken.
"I'd do what he says. Losing's really not an option for these guys."
Simmons exhaled sharply and threw his hands in the air. "All right, okay! Hey, you want to lay the fate of the world on the kid's Camaro? That's cool."
Lennox let Simmons up and he started to quickly lead them down a dark hallway. Every nerve on Alise's body knew they were getting closer to Bee, and she couldn't help but wish they would all walk faster. However, Alise's heart stopped, because right before they walked through a set of doors at the end of the hallway, Alise heard a high pitched screech of pain.
Hi everyone! Sorry to leave you hanging! Next chapter will be up soon! Hope you all enjoyed! Review and tell me what you think!
As always, I own nothing.
~Mel