Chapter 10 – 50 year old secrets

River People
By Madina Lake

They crawl in your head,
They dig in your bones,
If you let them, they won't let go.
They have no hope,
They have no soul.
If you let them,
They'll take yours.

Armageddon's POV

The darkness seemed like it would be eternal. The black creature was back, with the pink and grey one known as Starscream. They were on a great white desert... the moon, I realized.

The black creature was looking down on Earth, and wondered out loud what its friends were up to.

oOo

No-one's POV

On Earth, Armageddon's friends, the sticky-tape-obsessed Fyromaniac, the hyperactive Skullzy, the trigger-happy Massacre and the ever-funny Jumpy were walking down the streets of Detroit. They had nothing to do and they were bored.

When their other friend, the blood-loving Armageddon, became a giant transforming robot and went missing, and when General Fluffles (yes, they came up with another name for Grim) died, they had called in the police to search for her. Only problem was that none of the coppers believed the five teenagers from 2008.

Damn cops.

They roamed the streets now the friends barely knew anyone in this strange year of 2058. They didn't even know their way around the massive city of Detroit, which was why the roamed the streets so much, as they had come from Australia. Armageddon would know where to go, she was the TF guru. She knew everything about them.

Come to think of it, what was their home country like now?

They did all have a bloodlust, but that wasn't bad. They did like gore and battle, but that was in movies, only Massacre really liked shooting anyone, the rest of them preferred to either blow enemies to bits or hack 'em to little bloody chunks of flesh. They weren't all that bad, so why did they deserve what was coming next?

About 30 metres away from the five, Mixmaster and Scrapper were emitting smoke, having trouble as they ran, Scrapper with the Allspark under his arm, headed towards the Decepticon secret base. They were running from the Autobots, who were chasing them to get back the Allspark.

In a matter of moments, there was an explosion.

The teens were just far away enough to not be killed, but just close enough to be badly hurt. There was a sucking noise. All the air was gone for a moment. Then there was a massive roar and they were thrown forward, crashing to the hard ground. Windows smashed and the glass embedded itself in their skin. Structures were destroyed and broke various bones. Their ears and noses were bleeding freely. They were in agony.

They had been on a relatively busy street. They were the only survivors.

After what felt like an eternity in hell and utter agony, screaming sirens could be heard nearing them. Ambulance pulled up and loaded the barely conscious teens onto stretchers and into the vehicles. When the doors slammed shut, the sirens and lights were turned back on and the ambulances rushed off towards the hospital.

oOo

The incident was on the news. 'Miracle Survival', it was called commonly.

When Optimus Prime switched on the news, that story was up. The other Autobots didn't take long to gather around the TV.

"Four teenage girls were caught in a huge explosion today and miraculously survived," the reporter-bot started, the camera showing an image of Skullzy, Massacre, Jumpy and Fyromaniac lying in their respective hospital beds, all badly wounded and unconscious. "No-one knows their names or anything about them. They have been tracked down and apparently were living 50 years ago, still the same age. People believe that to simply be a glitch in the system. Sadly, even though they survived the explosion, doctors believe that they will not survive their wounds."

The story then went onto another one.

"We have to help them," Bulkhead announced, stating the obvious, "but they might not survive… what do we do?"

Ratchet was thinking hard. He remembered the gizmo someone had found… his memory had gone fuzzy around that time. The gizmo was named the Gizmo Glasses. An idea formed, "If I could duplicate four more Gizmo Glasses, they could get new bodies and survive. The injuries would have no effect if they had robot bodies. They could live if they agreed."

Optimus nodded and ordered, "Ratchet, Sari, come on, let's go to the hospital and ask them. Transform and r—"

"Hold on, Boss Bot," Bumblebee interrupted, "the rest of us are coming too."

Optimus bobbed his head and ordered again, "Autobots, transform and roll out!"

They obeyed, Sari climbing into Bumblebee as usual, and drove towards the hospital.

When they rolled up and transformed at the hospital, Sari entered and asked for her friends and was shown the way. She made her way to their room and signalled from the window to the 'Bots as to where they were.

She greeted her friends, who were all awake. Ratchet looked in through the window and talked over his comrades' greetings to the teens, "Hi girls. Did you hear from the doctors?"

They nodded.

"Yeah," Jumpy confirmed, "but we're not going to give up and go all pessimistic, now are we?"

Her friends grinned and agreed with her.

"Anyway," the medic continued, "there might be a way you could survive for sure." His spark lifted when he saw their hopeful faces, but he kept his face straight, "I could duplicate those gizmos that were found the other day. We called 'em Gizmo Glasses. If you each got one, you could convert to robot forms, become one of us."

They looked excited.

"But," he said, "I would have to make one adjustment: as soon as you got your robot forms, the connection between both would have to be severed. You alright with this?"

They nodded slowly.

"Good, I'll get started when we get back, then," Ratchet vanished from the teens' view.

Bulkhead's face appeared, "Hey, how's it been going?"

And so the 'Bots caught up with the teens, two at a time as there were two windows. The chat was casual, but everyone was deep down concerned. Ratchet was thinking intently, already planning on how he would alter the Gizmos for the connection to be severed.

Optimus tapped him on the shoulder, bringing the older back to reality with a jolt.

"Are you alright, Ratchet?" the young leader inquired, "You look sad."

"Nah," Ratchet shook his head, "I'm just thinking, that's all."

"Ok," the younger backed off, although not seeming entirely convinced.

By the time they had to go, Ratchet had the idea pretty well set out, but he needed the actual Gizmo to confirm it.

oOo

Over the next few days, the 'Bots visited the girls every day, except for Ratchet, who was working hard to get his project done in case of a Decepticon attack. It was nice for the girls to just talk casually and forget for a while that they were due to die soon, unless Ratchet got his job done.

They laughed at the most random stuff they could think of, the 'Bots had no idea and Sari was too young to know, and she really didn't want to. They talked about stuff which didn't matter at all but was very important to them, like how incredibly sexy plywood was. Jumpy even swooned and 'died' once. The 'Bots got really upset of course, as Jumpy had sneakily pulled off the wire which measured her heart rate.

When she jumped up and started laughing her head off, the 'Bots nearly had a spark attack, scolding her to not do that again, while her friends said that she was simply havin fun, like they always did.

They decided what their alt forms would be with the 'Bots, who looked it upon the net. They had it all planned out; what colours they would have, what their to-be alt forms' capabilities were, what they were going to do as soon as they had their new bodies, everything. It was fun planning it. They were eager for when Ratchet was done.

The 'Bots chatted with the girls for a couple of hours each day, before Optimus suggested they leave, as they needed their rest.

In four days since the incident, Ratchet completed the five Gizmos at roughly 2 in the afternoon. He informed Optimus and all the 'Bots sped straight to the hospital, excited.

When they arrived, Ratchet told the teens and Sari handed out the Gizmos.

The teens eagerly slid on the Gizmos and pressed the buttons. Their heart monitors went flat line. The Gizmos deployed tiny flying radars which rose into the air and scanned the area for the desired vehicles. When none were found nearby, they flew out, searching further.

Sari quickly took off the Glasses and hid them.

The 'Bots ducked down just as doctors and nurses rushed in and shoved Sari out of the room. They tried using the defribulator on the girls to try and get their hearts started again, but nothing would work.

They tried everything, but they were too late. All five teenagers were pronounced dead.

Sari went out of the hospital and waited with the 'Bots. They estimated that it would take at most 10 minutes for the teens to find them. They waited half an hour before they finally gave up and headed back to the base.

They were silent, the heavy sad air hung around them like a thick fog.

Ratchet was the most haunted. He had failed. The teens were dead.

Back at the hospital, the doctors and nurses covered up the bodies and left. Beneath the sheet, Jumpy's eyes opened.

oOo

Etrius Moore's POV

My name is Etrius Moore. I am 32 years old. I am a doctor here at Red Cross Hospital, Detroit. I am paranoid, and I have a damn good reason to be...

When I heard the story of 5 teenage girls who were apparently from 50 years ago, naturally I was suspicious. Others thought it to simply be a glitch in the system, but I disagreed.

The moment I got some spare time, I looked them up. They were indeed last seen 50 years ago, at their exact same age. But where I found the information, there were 8 children and 2 adults.

It read:

4/2/2008

I've been stressed about what's been happening at my house today, so I posted this on my blog. You might know me well enough by now that I won't tell you anyone's real name.

We live out of town, so there are open spaces and bush around our house and not many neighbours nearby. My slightly younger sister, Geraldine, was having a sleepover with some of her friends: Amy, Fran, Jess, Maddy, Sally and a new friend she had met, Sara. Sara's father, Zach, and some other guy, Mr Zone (I never learned what he was doing there, but apparently he was a policeman), had just arrived to pick Geraldine's friends up and take them to their respective homes. Of course, the teenage girls (Sara is 8) were not quite ready. There were all the normal noises of them getting ready. Then it happened.

I was in my room, surfing the net, when I suddenly noticed that it was deathly quiet. I thought that the visitors had left, but when I looked out the window, the cars were still there.

I went downstairs to the room in which the girls had slept, and saw that all their stuff was still there, so they hadn't left yet. My parents came into the room as well, and said that they had seen a bright light coming from here.

We called out, but there was no answer. We searched the house, but we couldn't find them anywhere. We rang our neighbours and they joined in the search. We couldn't find them anywhere. We even called the police, search and rescue teams, SES, etc and searched for the rest of the day, but they seemed to have disappeared into thin air.

There were no unknown cars hanging around, and no suspicious activity, so they couldn't have been kidnapped. As far as I knew, they weren't depressed or anything, so they had no motive to run away. And even if they did, they would've taken something and we would've found them by now, but everything was as it was before they vanished, and we were very thorough at searching.

When I went to bed that night, I couldn't sleep, as I was too worried and trying to think of something to explain it all. I couldn't come up with anything.

I'm still confused, even as I write this now, that same night. Any suggestions would be great! I myself can't get my head around it. How can they just disappear without a trace like that? And what was with that light my parents saw? Weird. Anyway, I'll update as soon as I can, hopefully with some answers.

Altair

------------

There was nothing after that. Strange. Why had it ended so abruptly? Oh well, it happened 50 years ago, I would probably never find out.

oOo

Altair Hailstrom's POV

50 years ago...

My name is Altair, which comes from an Arabic name meaning 'star', even though I'm not Arabic, I'm Aboriginal Australian, but over time I had to change my name. It's a very uncommon name, which is a shame, really. I'm 18 years old. I'm an orphan, living with an adopted family who are awesome.

My sister, Spectre, six of her friends, Acheron Pittman, Fyromaniac, Massacre, Jumpy and Skullzy, a new friend of theirs, Sari (who is 8), her father, Isaac, and some other guy, Captain Fanzone, all went missing exactly one week ago.

Our neighbours, random people off the street, SES, rangers, police, search and rescue teams, my parents and I had all been searching for them the day they went missing. There was absolutely no trace of them, no sign at all.

Finally, they gave up for a while. I was relieved, as all the anxiety was getting to me. I drove down to the beach, where I worked as a volunteer lifeguard.

The guys greeted me like it was a normal day, but I could still see the concern in their eyes.

The job went on through the day like normal. Whenever I was off shift, I would either chill or go surfing/swimming/whatever. I love the ocean. I've been scuba diving and snorkelling and holy cow it's awesome underwater. Maybe one day I'll do something like that for a living, maybe, I don't know, but I like saving lives, which is why I'm a lifeguard at the moment.

Around midday, while I was on lunch break and just chilling, when one of the guys said that a bunch of random guys in suits said they were looking for me. They came in and asked for a moment. My fellow lifeguard obediently left. I remembered the whole thing clearly.

One of the guys said, "We're from Sector Even, my name is Agent Johnson. We need to interview you about the disappearance and take you back to our headquarters."

"I'm working," I replied. I didn't need this. "Y'know, saving lives and stuff. You can come back later."

Something whacked me hard in the back of the head and I blacked out.

oOo

When I came to, I was in a small metal room with a bare light bulb, a table and four chairs. I tried opening the large metal door, but it was locked. "Hey!" I called out, "what's going on here?!" no-one answered me.

I sat in one of the seats and waited.

And waited.

And fucking waited.

Finally, after what must've been the most boring several hours of my life, the door opened and two guys in suits came in, including Agent Johnson. I was starving. I was tired. I was pissed off. I wanted answers.

"What's going on?" I demanded.

"We have reason to believe that the disappearance might be part of an international crisis," Johnson replied, "What do you know about aliens, kid?"

I was confused. What did aliens have to do with this? "Aliens? They're an urban myth right?"

He shook his head, "Nope. They're as real as you and me. We have reason to believe that you have had contact with them."

I snorted, "Pfft, as if. Do I look like I'm besties with ET?"

He narrowed his eyes at me, "We know you know something. Now talk."

"This isn't funny. Seriously. I do NOT know any freaking aliens."

That was actually a lie. I did know aliens, or at least something like that. I had had contact with an alien artefact a long, long time ago...

Flashback

It was late at night, the clouds veiled the moon. I wasn't able to sleep at all. Against my will, I rose up and started running, away from my home, further and further away.

Everything started to swim. Black swirled across my vision and all my other senses failed me. But I kept on running, unable to stop myself, filled with endless energy that wasn't my own. I had no control over my body anymore.

When the black cleared completely, I was standing on top of a hill. I looked up and saw something falling from the skies. It was coming towards me. I wanted to move, to get to safety. My instincts were screaming at me to get away, that the thing was dangerous, but my feet were rooted to the ground.

I could only watch in terror as the fiery thing plummeted and crashed before me. The earth was ripped up, rocks and trees went flying and I was thrown back.

I groaned, sitting up. The thing was huge, in the shape of a cube and covered with strange carvings. It was made of something I had never seen before, like some kind of dark rock, but smooth and shiny. The clouds parted, as if just for this thing, and the moon shone eerily down on the object.

I stood up slowly, cautiously. Being naturally curious, and foolish at this young age, I moved towards it. It was calling me, I could feel my heart being tugged towards it. I reached out and brushed my fingers against it.

My screams of pure agony erupted into the night sky, but they were unlike my own screams, they were like those of some wild animal of terrible monster. The object burst into light brighter than the sun and I was blinded.

My knees buckled and I fell to the ground. My skin was torn, my bones were twisted, and I was bleeding badly. I lay there, unable to move, unable to make a sound. After a while, my bones untwisted, and my skin wove back together. I grit my teeth, trying to bite back the cries of pain, as my insides began to change, began to harden and become something I had never known before. My eyes hardened as well and I could see again.

I stood up, looking fearfully at the cube which had almost ruined my life. What in the world was this thing?

End flashback

That happened over 40,000 years ago. I had not aged a day since. I changed my name to Altair because it had happened at night, even though all the magic and beauty of the night had vanished long ago.

Johnson got out a hand held metal detector, grabbed my arm and scanned it.

The metal detector started beeping.

"How do you explain that?" he asked.

I sighed, taking my arm back. There was no point lying to them now that they knew I wasn't all flesh. "I don't know them," I explained, "I've never come into contact with them. I just touched a big, metal cube and all of a sudden I can't go on planes anymore because THIS happens." Well, that was after they invented planes and metal detectors.

"Is it just there, or does it serve a purpose?" he questioned, referring to the metal beneath my skin.

Should I show them? Was it a good idea? I had already spilled the beans, I may as well show them. "Do you have a machine of some sort on you? Like a mobile phone or something?"

He got out a flip phone and handed it to me. I took it and held it in my hands, closing my eyes, concentrating. I felt sparks leaping from my hands and into the phone. I felt it move, so I opened my eyes and my hands. The flip phone changed shape until it became a creature which resembled a tiny, metal bird with golden eyes.

I held it out to them and their eyes opened wide.

"That is the purpose." I stated.

After a moment of stunned silence, Johnson commanded, "Come with us, Altair."

I stood up and followed them out of the room, curling my hands around the bird creature protectively. I had created life, and I had a weird feeling that they might take it away.

"This is actually our Australian headquarters." Johnson began, "Our real name is Sector Seven, not Sector Even. We have something we really need to show you, but it's overseas, in America."

I shrugged, "I'm totally cool with going to America. Although... how long will I be there?" I had never been overseas in my whole long life. Of course I was eager to go.

He shrugged as well, "Not long, a month maybe. We can't be sure just yet. We may have a job for you over there."

I raised an eyebrow, "Say what?"

"We've heard from your family and friends that you are a gifted mechanic. That combined with... your power and you could help us unravel a century long secret."

"What's that?"

"The Cube, an alien artefact. We've had it at Sector Seven for over 100 years and we still can't quite figure out what it is. Maybe you can help us. It'll be the discovery of the century."

I stiffened. Old fear ran through my body. But I had to face my fear after all this time.

oOo

31 hours later...

Man, I was tired.

I had agreed to go to S7's real headquarters. Then I was chucked on a plane, flown to America, blindfolded, shackled, gagged, shoved in a car, and driven for seven more hours to their base, let out, guided down a long flight of stairs, unshackled, ungagged, and had the blindfold removed.

I was pissed off, of course.

"This is Sector Seven's base," Johnson stated, making a sweeping gesture with his arms, "although we only need to show you one thing."

As I glanced around, I saw glimpses of what they had here: more guys in suits, a fragment of what once must've been a golden disk, robot limbs, and other weird stuff which looked alien. The bird, which I had named Ezra, was with me the entire time. Now it was on my shoulder and clicked quietly.

They led me through several corridors before we finally came to a massive room, at least four football fields in area. There was machinery all over the place. I went pale when I saw what was in the very centre on the room, with some sort of custom made staircases snaking all over it:

The Cube, the Allspark, the thing which made me a freak with supernatural powers.

The thing which had ruined my life.

I resisted the strong urge to run from the room, far from the thing, far from the base, back to the land where I belonged.

But I had to face my age-long phobia.

They led me up another lot of stairs to a much smaller room, which had a window for a wall and got a good view of the gigantic room. On the opposite wall were seven photos of seven different men, with a wooden sign which read 'The First Seven'.

And thus he told me all about the Allspark, though it wasn't enough to quench my curiosity, how it was found, how S7 was first founded, what they did, and how and why the dam was built. He concluded, "... so we got President Hoover to build the dam, which needed to be the biggest in the world, to protect its energy signature from anyone or... and aliens outside from detecting it."

"What type of energy?" I asked, already having an idea of what the answer was.

"Come with us," Johnson, leaving the others behind, led me into another room, which had a heavy metal door, and the guard by the door locked us in. Inside the room, there were lots of wires and stuff hanging around the place, and in the centre was a small glass box, with one metal side which had a small door and a tiny gun-like thing hanging from the roof, mounted on a small table. He put on a pair of protection goggles and passed me a pair, which I put on as well.

He got out a pager, opened the door on the box, placed it inside, locked the door and began pulling switches and levers around the room, explaining, "We were able to harvest the energy from the Cube, and focus it into that box." He pressed a final button and there was a humming noise.

The gun-thing was lowered and a pulse of pure power was sent through the pager. It jumped and changed shape until it became some strange, almost humanoid creature. The creature tried ramming into the glass a few times, but found it was in a cage. It started shooting at the glass, but it was too thick for the tiny bullets to get through. It fired missiles at its confinement, which broke the glass a little.

Johnson sighed, "It's breaking it," he picked up a remote like device connected to the box by many wires, and pressed the button.

From inside the box, there came a scream and bright flash of light. When the light faded, the pager was lying dead and smoking on its back.

I shuddered, "So that's what you wanted to show me? Bring something to life only to kill it moments later? Disgusting."

"It's just a demo to show you what we can do," he replied, "it's just a machine, it can't feel anything."

I was pissed off all of a sudden, which rarely happens, "Didn't you hear that scream? It was in agony when you killed it. Didn't you see the look in its little blue eyes? It was confused and scared, suddenly finding that air was solid, it was pissed off at us because it knew we were responsible for its imprisonment and it was trying to get out."

"Are you saying—" he began.

"That it was as alive as you and me? Just like how aliens are as real as you and me?" I interrupted, "yeah, that's exactly what I'm saying. If you're going to create life here, I advise you give it a greater purpose than a demo."

"That's why we need you here."

"What?"

"You seem to understand the N.B.E.s, non-biological extraterrestrials, and beings like them. If you stayed and helped us, we could understand much more than we already know."

I paused, thinking hard. Did I really want to help these guys? They wasted lives meaninglessly and I was against that. But I did need to learn more about the Allspark if I was going to conquer my fear. I needed to figure out how it had changed me, and why. It seemed that guys were prodding and touching it all the time, not like what had happened to me, and when I showed them my abilities they were surprised, so it must be new to them. If I stayed and helped them, maybe I could do something about the life wasting.

The pros outweighed the cons, so I nodded my head and said, "Alright, but you have to promise me one thing."

"What's that?"

"Promise me that you'll stop wasting lives. They might be machines, but they can obviously feel and think, just like you and me."

"Ok, on behalf of Sector Seven, I promise."