Chapter 7

Strange

"Under the radar, out of the system, caught in the spotlight, that's my existence"

"Hey Sam."

"Holy shit, man! Don't sneak up on me like that! What are you even doing here?" Sam flinched and spun at the voice beside him. He cursed and bent to pick up his keys, hiding his blush. He had been more consistently awkward in the last two days than he had been throughout his entire senior year. Which said a lot.

Gabriel just laughed and picked up Sam's keys for him. "I was standing here the whole time. I'm sorry you don't notice people standing in plain sight beside your dorm room. And I told you I was gonna be studying here. I thought you knew that meant living in a dorm. Since, you know, you now do it."

Sam snatched the keys and jammed them into the door. "I meant, what are you doing standing beside my door? And I'm a little preoccupied, all right? No need to be snippy because you aren't the center of my attention." He was the snippy one right then, but he didn't care because he was fucking exhausted. He hadn't slept in going on forty-eight hours, hadn't eaten in more than that (what he had eaten and thrown up on the plane didn't count) and he now had to deal with his roommate Leo. He just wanted to curl up in Bee's backseat and ignore the world but he had class in an hour. He was just so very excited. Bursting with joy.

Leo was just pulling himself out of the bathroom when Sam pushed in, looking like he had just been run over with a tall grinning blond boy hot on his heels. Sam shoved past his roommate non-too gently and slammed the bathroom door shut. The blond boy flopped down on Sam's bed like he belonged there and raised a brow at Leo like he was the outsider. "Hey. Who are you?"

Before he could answer, another boy waltzed into the room. Wasn't it great how people he didn't know were just wandering into his dorm room this morning? Leo was suddenly very glad the he had brought his clothes with him in the bathroom because this could have been even more awkward. This new guy was blond too, but he had black streaks in his spiky hair. His clothes were more than enough to draw anyone's attention, with the yellow tank top, black skinny jeans, black and yellow Converse and, oddly enough, a leather studded collar. There was a tattoo on his shoulder, a stylized red face that seemed vaguely familiar to him. He had seen it on Sam at some point and online somewhere. It was enough to really make Leo wonder.

The blond on the bed tilted his head. "Bee?" When the other boy nodded, apparently unwilling to speak, he continued, "Sam's in the bathroom. He looked beat. I suggest you make sure he hasn't drowned himself in the shower. You know, by accident." The boy with the choker grinned, showing off pearly whites before letting himself into the bathroom where Sam promptly started screaming.

Leo winced. That was a really high-pitched scream.

The other boy in the room heaved himself off the bed and headed toward the door. He stopped in front of Leo. "I'm Gabriel. I live across the hall. Nice to meet you," and then he was gone.

0o0

To say Sam was surprised to see Bumblebee in his bathroom was an understatement. To say he was surprised that Bee had shown up, on the other hand, was something completely different. Bee was his best friend and his just-maybe-something-better (don't think like that, you've got Mikaela. Do I?) and Sam could always count on him. Just not when he's getting ready to take a shower.

And maybe his startled girly shriek was over the top but it did surprise Bee into actually laughing, which made Sam pretty damn proud of himself. His guardian rarely used his real voice so Sam was always happy to hear it. "You should be nice to me. I am your owner, after all. I can always pour paint stripper on you and no one will say anything. Maybe I'll even repaint you a nice, boring brown. How's that sound?" Now it was Bee's turn to wear a horrified expression. The human didn't laugh though, just turning and grabbing the shirt he had managed to pull off in his moment of privacy and leaned against the bathroom sink, his back to the mirror. He couldn't look at himself, didn't want to see the dark circles under his eyes or see how much weight he had lost. Absentmindedly, he wrapped the shirt around his hands, covering up the marks that had burned themselves there at Mission City. They were tiny glyphs, unnoticeable and unassuming at the base of his thumbs. The only two glyphs he could easily read branding him as something he didn't want to acknowledge. The sight of the marks jolted him back to the only other who bears them. "So, Prime's desperate, huh?"

Bee's bright blue eyes darkened at the mention of earlier and whatever had lead up to the theft of the All Spark. He used his voice because, no matter how gravelly and painful it was, he needed to get this point across. "He may be desperate, but that's not why he called on you. He called you because he knew you could get the job done. Prime took a gamble and lost. Now we're all on the defensive while he pulls together a new plan. Until then, I'm to guard you."

"Just like old times?"

"Something like that." There was a chill in his voice and ice in his eyes that Sam hated.

"Look, Bumblebee, about graduation-"

"It never happened. Now, I have to go, there are perimeter sweeps that need to be done." He turned sharply on his heel, his hand hesitating on the handle. "Bee," Sam said, because he needed to get this out. "You understand why I did it, right? I'm just a kid." More like he wished he still was, because normal kids don't get crap like this thrown at them in college.

He watched the spiky golden head drop and the military straight posture slouch. Bee looked defeated when he looked back at Sam. "So am I, Sam. So am I."

Sam had nothing to say to that and watched as his best friend disappeared out the door. He balled up the shirt he was still holding and threw it. Why did he have to make such a valid point? He stepped into the shower, pants and all, and turned the water to scalding. He just didn't want to think for a while.

And he still had his first day of classes to get through.

0o0

Gabriel grabbed his schedule from his room, dropping a quick hello to the girl he was rooming with and headed to the library. While he hadn't yet had any of his classes and no reading list, he figured it would be the first place to look for Striker. He was right; she was in the parking lot, sleeping away. Lucky thing, he hadn't gotten any sleep last night because of that hateful prank she played on him while they were on the road. Now was the time for payback.

"Touch my paint and die, Gabe."

"I thought you were asleep or whatever it is you do."

The car's engine just growled louder. "It's called recharge and please, as if I would be so defenseless out in the open with the likes of you prowling around. That was just a power conservation mode."

Gabe crossed him arms and pouted, "You're no fun."

"You do realize that you look absolutely insane, talking to a car like this, right?"

"You could always be nice and pull up your holo. That would make the whole thing make sense."

There was an irritated sounding splutter in the engine as she said, "Not really, but I can see the tantrum coming on, so fine." The driver's side door opened and a tall black girl wearing an oversized long sleeved shirt, shorts and thick-soled combat boots stepped out. That same vicious looking scar was across her face and her bright blue eyes glinted steely beneath her bangs. Gabriel could already tell that it was going to be one of those days.

"Someone's in a mood."

"That same someone is hoping for you to shut up for the next hour. While I normally enjoy your company, today is not a good day. My patches are aching, I can't fly for fear of injuring myself more in this state, my presence has finally been noticed so they summoned me and I've had a persistent feeling that something very, very bad is going to happen today. So, I was hoping that if you did show up, you could keep your mouth sealed tight and let me work through this giant processor ache." Her long fingered hands came up to rub at her temples and Gabriel just stared, wide-eyed. How the hell had she managed to say all of that in one breath?

He opened his mouth and her eyes flashed up to his, almost pleading, only almost because this was still his friend Wren even if he called her Striker now and there was the vicious little thing called pride that she had in spades, and snapped his mouth shut. He could give her this. He nodded and held his arm out to her like the Southern gentleman his mama had raised him to be. Striker gave him this pained sort of smile and took his arm, allowing him to lead her up the stairs to the double doors of the huge library. She would be fine in here during his classes.

She was the first to break the silence after they had settled down. It was nearly time for Gabe's first class and he was getting ready to leave when she said, "I'm leaving in a little while. The summons was for today. I'm supposed to be meeting with the rest of the Autobots, so none of us will be around for a while. I'll be back before your last class, though."

"Alright. I'd give you a hug goodbye but you remind me of a porcupine right now, so I'll just say have fun. Bye," he grinned, waved, and ran because his class was on the other side of campus and he was almost late.

0o0

"Space. Time," the professor made a dramatic pause and took a bite of his apple, "Gravity," then dropped it so that it bounced off the toe of his obnoxious Italian leather loafers. One of the girls on the front row leaned forward and caught it. "Finish that for me," he winked and the girl and her friends giggled. Sam's eye twitched. He was already sick of this guy- Colon, his schedule said. "We're going on a journey, you and I, today. All you eager, nubile young minds on the very cusp of adulthood. And I shall be your consort, your guide, your… chaperone into the very heart of darkness." Sam's hand twitched, nearly dropping his pencil. Dramatic much, dude? "Welcome to Astronomy 101. For what do we know about the stars? Virgo, the virgin. Orion, the great hunter." His hand twitched again, but he paid it no mind. It had been doing that a lot lately and he had more important things to worry about, like that name. That one, familiar name, Orion, that held almost as much history as the thing in his head and as much importance. His stomach convulsed and he was very glad he hadn't eaten in hours or he'd be blowing chunks. That was Sam's last warning. His hands reached for the huge Astronomy textbook on his desk and started flipping through it. His movements were jerky and his eyes were rolling back. Why were these twitches so familiar feeling? This morning, he remembered, with his keys. His hand had jerked and his keys were falling before Gabe even opened his mouth. Even last night, he hadn't been able to focus and random spasms kept going through him.

A hand landed on his shoulder on one side and another on the back of his neck. "Sam. Sam." It was Leo shaking him and Sam hadn't realized that he was shaking and his eyes were still rolling back. He couldn't feel it. He was probably having a mini seizure. It was Gabriel on his other side with a hand to his neck murmuring something quietly in broken English. Meaningless words of comfort with Spanish mixed in and since when did Gabe know Spanish? "-Energy equals mass…"

Of course, such blatantly wrong facts triggered a total meltdown. Sam's hand shot up and Leo slouched down, looking around frantically. "What are you doing? Put your hand down. Put your hand down. Put your hand down!"

"Young man, there are no questions until I have reached the climax of my lecture."

"I just finished your book and there's only one problem- Einstein's wrong." The rest of the class laughed but Sam paid no mind. The Primes were speaking, feeding him information about space voyages and echoes and- "Energy does equal mass times the velocity of light in this dimension, but what about the other seventeen, nobody talks about the other seventeen. Clear example-" Sam wasn't sure how he got up there on the stage beside the chalk board but he was surely going to use it. He spun it to the clean side, picked up the chalk and tuned out again. "Break down the elemental components of energon, assume a constant decay rate for each of the-" he broke off again, nearly snapped his chalk. The fact that he could argue back with the Primes in their native tongue-glossa?- and understand not only it, but all the technical jargon was astounding. (The what? No, it had to be more than thirteen. Convergences don't come in uneven numbers.) "Fourteen galactic convergences it took the Sentinel Prime to receive an-" he nearly chocked on his tongue. Definitely a mini seizure, "echo of its signal, you wind up with a formula for inter-dimensional energy increase that mass and light alone can't possibly explain." Sam stood back from the equation he had written, full of letters with only a few number that had nearly taken up the whole board. He turned to the silent class. "Come one guys, I can't be the only one in the class who…"

"Young man, I will not be punk'd in front of the dean. No, this is my universe here. I am the alpha and the omega. Get out of my class!"

Sam's shoulders slumped as the equation on the board melted back into the Cybertronian that he had written it in. It was all everyone else in the class could see and now they all thought him absolutely insane. Even the dean. Even himself. He all but ran out, grabbing his textbook and papers from his desk. The door hadn't quite closed before he heard the professor spin the chalk board and say, "Anyone else want to have some sort of a mental breakdown?"

Sam dug his phone out of his pocket as someone bumped into him and scattered all his papers on the steps. He'd have left them there and kept running but the symbols on the pages caught his eye. Cybertronian. When had he written this? None of it looked familiar but it was still the same repetitive pattern over and over. He dialed Mikaela as he bent to pick up his papers. "Yes, Samuel?"

"Hello? Mikaeala?"

"I can't believe you're gonna stand me up on our first web chat date." Ouch. Looks like that was what he forgot and what had his stomach tying itself in knots throughout that whole party. That was gonna make this whole thing sound like an excuse. Well, it kinda was now, but it wasn't meant to be. She just needed to be informed. "Something just happened to me, okay?"

"What, you finally went through puberty?"

"No, no, no, stop laughing. This is serious, okay. Remember when I was telling you about my great-great-grandfather Archibald Witwicky? Remember? Watch it, watch it! No! Remember how I was telling you how- can you stop? Watch the foot! Watch your foot!" He finally managed to get all his paper off the steps and out from under rude people's feet. He ignored the stares and stood again, rushing to his dorm. "Mikaela, okay, my great-great-grandfather went on this Artic mission, right? And he saw Megatron. Megatron zapped him and he started seeing these crazy symbols. Oaky, well, now I'm seeing them too. I just read a 903 page Astronomy book in 32.6 seconds." He had counted? They had counted. "I had a meltdown in the middle of my class. I am seeing symbols ever since…" he trailed off because she didn't need to know how long this had really been going on. No one needed to know about the notebooks he had filled with gibberish and symbols and conversations he had had with the Primes that even he couldn't read.

"Since when?" her voice was softer now, curious.

"Ever since I touched the Cube splinter. Do you have it?" Quick partial lie and a good redirection. Great job lying to your girlfriend, Sam.

"Yeah, I have it. It's in the shop, safe. It's fine."

"Mikaeala, do not touch it, okay? Don't touch it."

"I'm not gonna touch it. Sam, It's fine. It's locked away. No one knows where it is." There was a pause and she said, "Hold on." There was a clink as she set the phone down and shuffling sounds followed by her dog's barking, electronic squealing, screaming and- was that the sound of her blowtorch? Metal banged on metal and he could hear her heavy breathing on the other end and Sam said, "What the hell was that?"

"I'll tell you later, just not on an open phone line, okay? I'm gonna get on a plane right now and be there later this afternoon. Just be careful, Sam."

Sam hung up the phone, confused and worried. He shifted his papers and book in his arms and took off running again. He really should have been on the track team.