TTWI: IMPORTANT DETAIL: I will be making a few changes to some details of the movie. Not the plot much or anything, just a few details. So if somethin' throws ya off, yeah…
I wanted to try something out with this thing. Nothing crazy, but I temporarily gave Samantha direct 'thoughts' or whatever. I think they only lasted a couple chapters, I didn't like them very much.
If something I wrote is confusing or incorrect, let me know. I'll try to fix it, and I apologize in advance. I feel like I'm too vague sometimes. (Or am I the only one thinking that?)
Disclaimer (Ugh): I don't own AOE or nothin...just my OC I guess.
And just in case, 'these' are Samantha's thoughts.
A hiss slipped past Samantha's lips as she opened her eyes, only to shut them again. 'Ugh...Too bright…' She reached up to rub her eyes and sighed. 'Wait. What?' She squinted open her right eye and looked down at her hands.
For possibly the first time in two months, she had woken up...unrestrained. Well, she was still held down on that metal table by her waist, but other than that and her collar...Nothing.
Her eyes were still ultra sensitive to light, but she mustered the strength to look up and around. Surprisingly, a woman in a black suit was standing near the table. She didn't don the usual white uniforms required of most people that worked in KSI's dissection rooms, and that was when Sam realized they weren't in her usual dissection room. It was no wonder she wasn't freezing to death.
Samantha shielded her eyes with her thin hands and let an almost imperceptible smile grace her face. She'd recognize that ponytail anywhere. "What's goin' on, Su," she croaked groggily.
Su's ponytail whipped to the side as she turned around. She opened her mouth to "greet" Samantha, but Sam only shook her head. Su opted to simply answer the question. "I'm not sure. I only heard that Joshua is going to send you with Mr. A-"
"NO!" Samantha's eyes bulged. She was glad her hands were hiding her oncoming tears. "Su, you can't let me go with him, you can't! Look what he did to me the other day!" She froze. "What if he ends up taking me back t-"
"Calm down!" Su hissed. She would have placed her hand over Samantha's mouth, but the woman was aware that Sam already struggled to breathe. "You won't see Mr. Attinger. You will be sent on a mission with his team-"
A gloved hand tapped Su's shoulder. "Ms. Yueming?" It was a worker who spoke. Su hid her annoyance at his mispronunciation of her name. "I'm, uh, going to have to ask you to step away momentarily. You can't be near the table during wake-ups."
That was one of the terms used in KSI to refer to Samantha's electrocutions. Some used "wake-ups" due to the fact that it was how Sam had initially been revived. (Joshua had been extremely peeved at having missed the opportunity to go all "Victor Frankenstein" upon Sam's revival)
"A missed opportunity," he had said. "I wish I could do that one over."
Su stepped back with a pitiful expression as the worker pulled a lever. Sam clamped her hands over her mouth.
Su's high heels clicked as she paced back and forth until she was allowed to return to Sam's side. Samantha's scarred hands trembled as she pulled them away from her mouth. "S-so where 'm I goin'…?" she mumbled, lips numb.
Before Su could answer, Joshua walked up behind Su with several men a few yards behind him. "Let's just say you're going on a test run." He had a hard time looking into Sam's reddish eyes. Her whole face was scarred and burnt. Not to mention she looked like a skeleton.
"As you know," Joshua began, "I made a deal with-"
"That asshole," Samantha rasped.
Joshua shrugged. "Whatever you want…" He cleared his throat. "I had two options once KSI gained ownership of you, you know, to keep the deal...stable. Either pay him upfront…" He paused. "Or let him borrow you."
Samantha rolled her sunken eyes, not mentioning the fact that Harold had already had a deal placed on the table by Lockdown. It had to do with the Seed, so telling Joshua about it would only encourage the man to take Lockdown's proposition.
She looked away and looked at her twitching, bone thin fingers in disgust. "Wasting time with that asshole would probably be less unbearable if you fed me once in awhile…"
Joshua shook his head. "I won't give you anything until you give me something."
"And what the hell would that be?!" Samantha didn't know why she was asking. She knew the answer would be-
"Information." Joshua waited, but Samantha said nothing. He shrugged and beckoned to the men behind him. "Well, if you won't say anything…"
"Why?!" Samantha exploded, voice cracking. Her head rolled to glare at Joshua. "Why do you want to know what I am so badly?"
Joshua held his hand up, and the group of workers stepped back. "You know why." He looked up, trying to recall something he had read a long while back. "People saw you do something extraordinary ten years ago."
Sam stared up boredly at the ceiling. "What, did I kill someone?"
Joshua's expression remained neutral. "You saved an Autobot."
"As if."
Joshua came closer and fixed Samantha in his stern gaze. "People saw you go into an alley and come out as something else. Now if I could recreate-, build something like what you are…"
Sam clenched her fists in frustration. Why was it that those memories always evaded her? She remembered her life as it had been about fifteen years ago, but any memories about anything more recent than that had been wiped out.
The only chance she had of ever escaping KSI would come once she remembered something, but it seemed her brain was determined to screw Samantha over. She could simply reveal herself, except she was sworn not to. Moreover, she didn't know how much the humans knew about her, so she couldn't just go and reveal all of her powers in hopes of getting the right one. They'd likely think she was bullshitting them.
She also couldn't just give them that knowledge. This company was already building Transformer prototypes. If they managed to build… well, another her, the planet was doomed. WMD's were already too big an issue.
Joshua glanced at his assistant, who gave him a stern glare in return. "Fine," he relented, accepting Sam's silence for the moment. "But I still have to send you out."
Sam blinked. "Out?"
"Yes, out."
"Why?"
Joshua dragged out a long and exasperated sigh. With it went most of his patience. All of Samantha's questioning was really getting to him. "Let's just say Harold has plans for you."
Sam squinted at him, hoping to veil her anxiety with suspicion. "Wha' kinda plans?"
With a wave of his hand, Joshua dismissed his assistant before placing his hands in his pockets. "If Harold told you to do something, in terms of… fighting... would you do it?"
More squinting on Samantha's end. "I'd have no reason to."
Joshua's hand reached up to briefly rub the bridge of his nose. "A, so he won't electrocute your ass to the point of making you faint." He received a glare. "And B, what if it involved gaining your freedom?"
A raspy scoff. "If I could trust you to actually follow through, I'd be willing to listen."
Joshua's head bobbed up and down like a buoy in a calm tide. "Good."
"I'm with Cemetery Wind, we are on the move. Repeat, on the move."
James Savoy tugged Samantha along, pulling at the wire connecting her collar to a battery. He gave it a sudden jerk, making her gag.
"W-what if I don't wanna be on the move?" Sam challenged. This was her first time being placed under James Savoy's authority. Wondering if he would abuse her as much as Harold did, she was prepared to be less than compliant in order to find out.
She blew a raspberry in an attempt to get her hair out of her mouth. The turning blades of the helicopters were making her hair resemble a palm tree.
'I bet I look like a real life Medusa. Too bad I can't turn whoever I look at into stone.'
James yanked open the door and stepped aside to let her crawl in. Samantha would rather get in on her own than wait to get shoved inside.
She sat on the stiff, cold seat, ignoring her seat belt as well as the man seated beside her. James made a few adjustments to the wire before taking up a spot in the front passenger seat.
Samantha's black hoodie made her near invisible in the dark interior of the vehicle. She was almost completely covered from head to toe. Black gloves, black hood, black everything. Except for her face. She caught James watching her in the rear view mirror.
"The hell happened to you?" he muttered.
She averted her eyes. "That asshole is what happened to me." She scratched her cheek. Or, more like her cheekbones. The young woman jumped slightly as a pair of black sunglasses landed on her lap.
"Make sure you keep those on. Don't want the Yeagers seeing a face like yours. We'll spare them the nightmares." He chuckled.
Samantha shakily put them on with a frown. "Is that why you're wearin' some?" James showed her the remote in his hand before using it. The black sunglasses concealed Samantha's squinted eyes as the pain in her chest spread throughout her body.
"Don't forget who's in charge here."
Samantha kept her head ducked for most of the ride, but peered out the tinted windows once in awhile. Her punishments came once every couple minutes, as mandated, and she knew she couldn't try to escape. The damn doors had that "safety lock" so that she couldn't open it from the inside, and she couldn't even consider breaking the windows. Not with her sticks-for-arms.
The sun rose in the sky as the ride dragged on. Besides her scheduled "zappings", it was slightly less unpleasant than her usual day in KSI headquarters, albeit a lot more boring. Especially to Samantha, who would fidget constantly and let her mind wander randomly in order to alleviate her boredom.
As easily bored as she could be, drifting through the fields and watching clouds of dust trail behind them granted her a refreshing feeling she hadn't felt in months. Years if what Joshua said about her was true. If she had been able to open her window, even an inch, she would have.
Samantha was in the middle of flicking her small flashlight on and off when she caught sight of a large billboard jutting out of the cornfield next to the road. Her left eyebrow arched in confusion, and her easily derailed thoughts took yet another drastic turn.
'Why in the world is there a billboard out here? Who thought it would be a good idea to put a billboard in the middle of nowhere?'
She didn't bother to read what it said.
It eventually dawned on her that, unfortunately, they weren't on their way to a barn, or farm, to simply talk to the "Yeagers", as James had said. Not that she pitied the humans. She simply didn't want to witness the death of another Autobot, if he was there.
No, they weren't going to simply talk. They were on a hunt. Like they had been with Ratchet. Samantha still hadn't found a good reason behind her attachment to the deceased Autobot. Even if she had known him once, she didn't remember anything at all about him anymore. And as cliche as it sounded, she didn't like being attached to anything, or anyone.
As a robot herself, she had seen many generations of loved ones come and go throughout her life of several thousand years. She had learned the hard way, the painful way, that it was best to simply not form any type of relation with any "organic" life form.
A sudden bump put a stop to her thinking, and she realized that they had reached their destination. It was a nice place, with an insanely long dirt road. She had heard that the house had recently been foreclosed, however.
She (very) briefly wondered about the life the Yeagers led. In a second, her mind had moved to a different topic; the mission. All she knew was that someone had called that "Remember Chicago" number, and reported a concern about a certain truck…
"We're on property," James reported. Samantha was aware that Harold was listening on the other end through Savoy's earpiece.
Her sensitive hearing caught a high pitched call from outside. Most likely from the daughter; Tessa Yeager. "Dad!"
Samantha shook her head. 'Way to make yourself more vulnerable.'
The SUV Sam and James were in led all the others. Sam noticed a man with dark hair; whether brown or black she couldn't tell through the dark windows. That had to be Cade. She also spotted his daughter, not much younger looking than Sam herself. Definitely blonde. It looked unnatural.
The man walked up and stood his ground as the vehicle Sam was in jerked to a stop. At that angle, Samantha spotted yet another man, with sandy blonde curls framing his slightly reddening face. He didn't seem to be trying to hide the red splotch on his forehead.
James gave them all a signal, gave Samantha a stern glare, and stepped out. Samantha stayed put, flexing her fingers anxiously. A few moments later, a cool breeze rushed over her, and the smell of… not car invaded the air around her.
She looked up slowly to find James waiting for her with the door wide open. Her sunglasses concealed her wide eyes. She definitely hadn't expected to be let out on this mission. The pain in her chest grew along with her excitement.
She tentatively placed a foot on the ground, and then the second. She relished the feeling of her shoes sinking half an inch into the lush green grass. She wished she was barefoot. "Whoa…"
The last time she had been outside was a couple of days ago, when she "visited" Lockdown with "that asshole" (as she had recently dubbed Harold). Before that, however, she had spent virtually every day of every week of every month strapped to a metal table.
The vast Arctic couldn't hope compare to the warm, sunny, open field she was standing in at that moment.
James made it very clear to her, wordlessly, that she was still under his control. He handed the "battery/leash thing" over to one of his men before walking over to Cade. A helicopter droned noisily overhead, sending a rustle across the grass as it sped across the clear sky.
"Mr. Yeager, my name's James Savoy. I'm a federal agent. My men and I are trying to track down a-" He paused. "-abandoned truck."
He smiled a smile Sam couldn't see, but she grimaced at his honeyed tone.
"S'a nice spread you got here," James commented, looking around. "Too bad she's for sale."
"Well thanks," Cade replied, barely shaking his head. "She's not."
Samantha stared ahead blankly in confusion at his response, but didn't make a sound.
Cade stepped closer to James, slipping on his jacket. He pointed to an old Chevy C-10 slumped in front of his house. Well, technically it wasn't even his anymore. "That the truck you mean?"
James shook his head. " 'Fraid not." A pause. "You know, Mr. Yeager, we received a call from someone concerned about this truck."
Samantha heard a quiet "oh no" from the man hiding behind the tree. Obviously, no one else heard it.
'And here we go with the scare tactics. Sounds like the presidential candidates from the debates a few years ago.'
Sam noticed the man holding her battery look down at his watch, and she braced herself for the upcoming pain. She caught Cade's daughter staring at her. Sam bristled.
"That wasn't you?" James wasn't even facing Cade anymore. Sam rolled her eyes. Everyone knew damn well that call wasn't from Cade. If it had been, then he'd definitely had a change of heart.
"Only thing I'm concerned about is you bein' on my property without permission," Cade uttered, his voice dropping.
James replied with something between a scoff and a laugh.
"You know we have a rule about people messin' with people from Texas." Cade took slow steps toward James. "And I don't know what truck you're talkin' about."
James whirled and got up in Cade's face. "The kind that cost American lives."
The statement reminded Sam of what James had told Ratchet before getting him killed. "I lost a sister in Chicago. You'll get no sympathy from me." She hadn't known James was who had said it at the time.
James turned to his team. "Search the property!" he ordered.
"What do you mean, 'search the property'? You don't have a warrant!"
James once again turned to Cade and pointed at his own face. "My face, is my warrant."
Samantha's yelp caught in her throat as she was tugged toward the barn. Her eyes darted around to spot the man that had hidden behind the tree walking backwards defensively. "Wait, but if you guys do find a truck we get a reward, right?" he asked loudly with his hands up.
Samantha wished she could tell him how wrong he was. For a second, at least. Then her guilt wore off. It was clear to her that he had been the one who called. She supposed it was his job to deal with it.
Samantha was led closer to the barn and further away from the house, but her ears still picked up the whine from the drones as they were released into the air.
"Open, open, open," someone called as they barged into the barn.
"Short wall, short wall."
"Five in, five in."
Samantha's eyes wandered as she took in her surroundings. Her eyes snapped back down when she heard a robotic sounding voice speak up.
"Intruder alert! Back away from the premises!"
Samantha gaped at the metal guard dog as it rolled away from them, its metal jaws moving up and down as it tried to bark. She grinned down at it, trying not to laugh while trying to figure out what it was.
"What the hell is that?" someone asked, voicing Sam's thoughts.
"Just some dumb inventor," somebody replied.
Samantha bit back a smile and shook her head. "Just some dumb inventor," she mimicked quietly to herself.
An almost inaudible creak reached her ears, and she blinked. No one else seemed to have heard it.
Men in black had infested the barn, looking for any sign of the truck.
"Clear."
"Clear."
"Clear right."
"Clear."
Some of the men were standing on a large wooden platform in the middle of the barn. One of them was shining a flashlight through the cracks in the wooden beams.
"Let's go," the man holding Sam ordered, throwing in the towel. "There's nothin' here."
Samantha wished she could stay and inspect further. Something was underneath that wooden platform. She was sure of it.
She was glad that the man holding her super long leash was one of the few men who didn't fully exit the barn. Samantha didn't move, and let the long cable unravel as the man moved further and further away from her.
The man stopped on the other end of the wooden platform and glanced back at her. She pretended to be looking around at everything, trying to seem busy. Perhaps if the man thought she was simply taking it all in, he'd leave her be for a couple minutes.
And he did.
She saw him shrug out of the corner of her eye, and look away. She cheered internally and looked down at the cable. There were still a few yards left. For a millisecond, she was grateful her leash was so long. As silently as she could, she crawled onto the wooden stage on all fours.
Pushing a few things aside slowly, she bent down and peered through one of the cracks in the wood. It was dark in there, that was for sure, but she did have her small flashlight, and she intended to use it. She shone it through another hole in the planks.
There was something there. It barely moved once every so often, but it moved alright. It was a steady, repeated motion.
Breathing.
Her strained breaths caught its attention, and when two pale blue lights faced her, she froze.
'Holy shit. An Autobot's hiding here. How hasn't he been found? These idiots easily found Ratchet using his heat signature, in a huge boat, but they haven't spotted this one? Through some flimsy planks of wood?!'
The Autobot stared back up at her, but Samantha quietly crept backward and climbed off the platform. She was so captivated by what she had just seen, that she almost hadn't heard what had been going on outside. The man gripping her leash was unknowingly stepping closer to the barn door, giving Samantha the chance to peek outside.
"...a live, armed missile in the trash."
"Live? I carried that to the trash! You told me that was a dud, dude!" The man with the head injury looked around somewhat sheepishly. "I could be dead. Right?"
"Look. Okay, yes, I found a truck, alright?" Cade admitted, looking at James nervously. "I towed it back for the parts. I left it here last night. This morning it's gone! When? Where? I don't know. I swear to God, that's as much as I know about 'im!"
Samantha felt her skin crawl (though it always did that) as she barely made out Harold's voice through James' earpiece.
"He said, 'him'. He knows who the son of a bitch is!"
James raised his hand to his earpiece and turned around. "Mr. Yeager."
"What?" Cade sounded exasperated.
"Excuse me." James removed his reflective sunglasses. "You just said 'him'."
Cade didn't respond.
"Take 'em down!"
"What?"
The following events all happened in a flash to Samantha. One second everyone was standing around, and the next everyone was being grabbed and thrown to the ground. With all the commotion, Samantha couldn't make out much of what was being said, or who was saying what.
"Ow! Let me go!" Samantha's eyes flicked to the house to see Tessa being grabbed by the man who had sat next to her on their way over.
Cade pointed at himself. "They don't know about the truck! I know!" He turned back to look at his daughter. "Just let her go!"
Samantha was tugged forward as the Yeager's home became a flashpoint.
She was being led closer and closer to James, and she wasn't sure why. Heck, she hadn't been sure about anything ever since she had been woken up.
Tessa clawed at her assailant. "Get off!"
Cade was also grabbed, but he still attempted to fight back. "Let her go! They don't know about the truck!"
Sam had almost reached James. He called looked around and called out to his men. "A' right! Load up! Search the perimeter!"
"Lucas, you called, didn't you?" Tessa screeched, red faced.
Lucas was busy kneeling down with his hands up in the air. "No! I don't know any of these scary guys!"
Tessa flailed her arms, but the arms of the man holding her remained latched around her waist. "My God, you're manhandling a woman! I'll kick your ass!" she growled. Samantha's eyebrow quirked with humor at that.
Cade momentarily wrenched free and ran toward Tessa. "Let her go!" The words had barely left his mouth when he was tackled again. More people piled up on him this time. Like football, but fucking insane.
Tears rolled down Tessa's face, and her voice had become hoarse. "Daddy!"
Cade's arms were secured behind his back and his face was shoved into the ground. "You're not going anywhere!" an agent threatened.
Samantha scoffed. 'How much lamer can these guys get?' She had learned to tolerate her constant struggle for air, and the sensitivity of her wounds, but the non-threatening air about the Cemetery Wind Team she couldn't tolerate.
Distracted, she hadn't noticed James standing before her. Intensity burned in his stormy eyes as he narrowed them at her. His question was firm, and sounded more like a statement. "Would it bother you to witness at least one of these people's deaths."
The question surprised her, but her answer was terse and instinctual. "No." Samantha's eye twitched as Tessa's cries for Cade reached her ears.
James glare deepened. "Positive?"
The sun caught Samantha's reddish eyes as she turned her gaze to the man with the head injury. "You're not taking me anywhere!" He grunted as he struggled against the men holding him. "I'm an American!" In an instant his face was buried in dirt.
That only seemed to increase Samantha's indifference toward Cemetery Wind's current targets. "Yep." She hid her amusement at the sound of popping the 'p'. Her amusement vanished as she heard Harold's gruff voice coming through James' earpiece.
"Savoy. Use the girl."
James turned away for a moment. "Which one?"
"Both."
Sam blinked.
James didn't face her yet. "You sure about this?"
"She won't talk, and it isn't likely we'll be able to force her hand. If Joshua can't build his own super soldiers, we can at least make her our own."
Samantha's gut pleaded her to back away, but her mind warned her not to. 'If you back off they're just going to lock you up all over again. If they think they've still got a hold of ya, they won't be as careful.'
James pulled a gun from inside his jacket, leaving Sam to briefly wonder why he hadn't kept in his holster. All traces of curiosity left her face when he held it out.
To her.
TTWI: SHEESH, man, I took long. I'm sorry, but if you can't tell, I had like zero inspiration. I'd add/delete like ONE word per day. My writer's block was that bad. But yeah, with my crappy ending, I'm sure it was obvious.
I don't want to beg for reviews, and I'm not going to die if I don't get many. I don't care as long as y'all are enjoying this thing. The biggest reason I'd appreciate reviews is because I'd like to hear, from you guys, what you guys want to see.
If I know what you'd like, it would make writing chapters much easier. Even better for you guys, since you'd get to (kinda) shape the story. I know I sound like a lazy, desperate whatever, but it truly helps.
Hope ya forgive me for taking so damn long, and again, if there's something in this thing that bothers you, or is incorrect, let me know. I'll see what I can do.