It was like a game of hide and seek, Mikaela decided. Except for without the hiding. How weird it seemed that the man didn't even think to check and see if he was being followed, especially since he had been the one sneaking into the shop and checking to see if there were any goodies inside.
But why did Mikaela care if the guy was going around snooping? It wasn't like there was anything else in there. Any memory of working late nights with her dad had been vanished when she had been downloaded.
Or maybe it was because she just wanted to forget.
Whatever. Just keep playing hide and seek without the hide and don't be seen.
The man knew his way around Tranquility, it seemed, but that only meant that he wasn't a tourist. Mikaela already had his face already permanently entrenched in her processors and she wasn't about to let it go, but one thing was for sure, and that was the fact that she didn't know him.
The man parked on the curb, and Mikaela had a split second to decide. Park behind him? No. She wasn't that stupid.
She parked across from him, on the opposite side, next to some bookstore. Watched the guy in the black coat get out and then shuffle inside some old, dilapidated building that Mikaela had never seen before, even after all her years living here.
She waited. Watched the humans walk past her and see a sleek, empty car, oblivious to the fact that she was there and watching.
Hide and seek had never been this much fun.
He came out thirty minutes later, black coat pulled even tighter – if possible – around his body and that was when Mikaela could have sworn he looked right at her.
Her vision in this form was perfect. It was as if someone had shot caffeine right into her very nervous system and she was alert, awake, and ready. Practically bouncing up and down on her axels, she watched as he began to saunter across the empty street.
Ditch or stay, ditch or stay.
Mikaela's engine revved softly. He wasn't a Decepticon. He couldn't do anything too her…
He passed her and walked right into the bookstore and that was when Mikaela breathed a sigh of relief – which would have been deemed successful if she could sigh in this form – but the whole motion only proved to be utterly pointless.
The man came out of the bookstore ten minutes later holding nothing, and finally Mikaela's instincts screamed to run.
He leaned against her door, arms crossed, and that was when Mikaela got a good view of his handsome, chiseled face, a shudder passing through her whole frame.
"Arrogant little creature, thinking you could spy on me," his voice was like honey, poured out of a jar and smothered in sickening sweetness. Like the voice a Decepticon would have. Except for this person was not a Decepticon. "They always said that looks can be deceiving, but there is no mistaking that you are one of them."
How the hell did he know? How the hell could he know anything? He was just some stupid, ignorant human….
No. Don't think like a Decepticon, Mikaela thought. She knew it would lead to her downfall, just as the Decepticon insignia on her steering wheel had probably led her to be discovered.
How did he know that symbol?
Keep you mouth shut, Mikaela, and maybe that will save your…
"You think you are a real thing – a being with a soul," the man continued. "But you are not. You are a machine. You have a computer inside your head, designed to operate within a set of specific parameters. You do not have free will."
Oh, she had free will. She was, for instance, willing herself not to transform and smash the man into jelly.
"Not going to respond?"
Not going to give him the satisfaction on knowing he was right. Mikaela willed herself to be silent and prayed that someone would pass by and take it to heart that a man talking to a car must have something wrong with him, and decide to ship him off to a mental institution. Either that or call the cops. Either one would make Mikaela happy. Let him rot in jail, spewing shit to some other person.
"Now, I do hope you take my words to heart, creature, because if you really can feel or think in some way," the man shook his head. "I pity you. Nothing is more tragic than believing yourself to be something that you are not."
Mikaela expected him to turn and make some dramatic exit. It would held support her idea that he was a nut case, and nothing more. But instead she watched him reach into his long black jacket and pull out something, a microchip of some kind because it looked way to small to be a serious weapon.
Mikaela watched in frozen terror as he casually reached his hand out and placed the microchip on her hood.
Nothing happened.
"Oh, before I go I must apologize for the behavior of one of my followers yesterday evening," the man smiled. "You see, my organization is not bent on promoting violence throughout this troubled world. We seek to expose the truth to all humanity that creatures like you do not deserve a place in this world."
Mikaela wanted to laugh and point out to him that his follower was dead, but that would spoil the fun. She watched as he walked across the street, leaving his microchip or whatever it was pressed firmly against her hood.
Five seconds later, the pain came in an explosion of light.
The Decepticon's were sure to find her, with her energy blaring through the network and all. Ratchet had once told her that Cybertronians's signals were easier to find when their energon had been spilled.
She wished Ratchet was here now to tell her what the hell was going on.
Her processors felt fried. Like someone had set off a bomb and her head, resulting in one of the biggest migraines of all time.
It sucked.
She couldn't drive, either, and downside or she would have already been speeding off back to that little house in the mountains, wherever that was. But she couldn't even move – not a tire, couldn't rev her engine or open her doors or anything like that.
She was a sitting duck er…con. Waiting for Megatron and his lackeys to swoop down and pick her up, take her back where she would ultimately spend the rest of her existence as Megatron's sex toy.
Sex toy….ugh…the thought of actually bringing anything other than pain to the tyrant made her sick. He wasn't like Howard or Trent or any of her past, sex crazed boyfriends. He was like a giant, walking time bomb waiting to explode.
Sam was better. Much, much better and that point got her wondering whether or not she and Sam would ever be able to…
A sound snapped her out of her thought and that was when she saw the police car behind her, pulling up against the curb, the police officer getting out and walking over to where Mikaela was parked.
Mikaela couldn't see him as he walked around her. But she could hear him getting out something. And maybe…was that a pen writing something…oh, no.
You have got to be fucking kidding me.
He was giving her a parking ticket. A fucking parking ticket. Slapping it on her windshield like she was some damn vehicle without feeling or whatever!
She wanted to scream. Curse, scream, drive away, then scream some more. Screw the parking ticket. Screw everything.
Mikaela watched, seething so much that her core temperature heated up ten degrees, signs flashing across her processors that she was overheating and in need of energon and in need of recharge but Mikaela couldn't do all that because that stupid man, that stupid man with the damn black jacket had pretty much fried her systems and paralyzed her.
Mikaela took back her earlier statement.
Hide and seek sucked.