A/N: Mild trigger warning for descriptions of violence, blood, suggestive terror, etc.

9. The Intruder

As soon as Wheeljack traveled far enough out of the mountains, Allison's cell phone reconnected to her service carrier and all the messages she missed came pouring back in. Unsurprisingly, her dad had been worried that he hadn't heard from her in a couple days, so it was a decent distraction from the oppressive silence that descended upon her from such a trapped position. She lied of course, told him she was just really busy with work.

Emails, spam, and anything breaking in the news helped pass the time and keep her busy, so she kept her nose in her phone. After her last attempt at forcing a reaction out of Wheeljack, he seemed clearly uninterested in talking, so she bit her tongue and kept her mouth shut. She could sort through her emotions later when she was alone, because Wheeljack was a terrible therapist. There were no instructions or magic fix to help get back to normal life after what Allison had experienced, but she had no choice.

The only time she spoke was to tell Wheeljack exactly where to go, and it was hard to tell if he already knew and was just playing dumb. It didn't really matter, because he would be aware of her location now. It was at that point she was anxious to be done with the whole thing and put it behind her. She got her closure, so she should be happy, right?

Instinctively Allison reached for the door handle when Wheeljack stopped, only for her hand to bump into smooth nothingness. She forgot, he didn't have a real door, and for a moment Wheeljack paused and she almost thought he was about to say something. That was until finally he wordlessly opened up for her, and thinking it best to make a clean break at this point Allison stood outside and quickly walked to her front door. It wasn't quite like a walk of shame, but it felt like it, knowing that his eyes, wherever they were, watched her retreat. She could feel it on the back of her neck like it was burning.

And so, that chapter of her childhood was finally closed. The silence of Allison's apartment had never been so deafening. Briefly she wasn't sure what she was supposed to do with herself as she wandered into her kitchen. Without really thinking she threw the bag of granola immediately into the trash. Perhaps it was a little act of silent protest. One last childish defiance for good measure. Her eyes caught the blinking clock on her stove, and that's when she suddenly remembered the blackout from weeks before; the blackout that Wheeljack had caused, prompting her to seek him out in the first place. For some reason, she'd never corrected the clock.

Like a punch to the gut, Allison was hit with a sudden tightening internally that she doubled over. Bracing herself on her kitchen table, she finally allowed herself to feel something that had been cloistered up inside her body for decades. It was like a festering illness, lying dormant inside her just waiting for the right trigger, and evidently it was that damn clock. It represented a time where she was still blissfully ignorant, before she knew things she had no business knowing. Part of her wanted to go back to that place, to bury that weight back inside her where it could sit undisturbed, but she was forever changed now.

Allison was impressed with herself thus far, that she'd managed to mostly keep her emotions in check, but finally she allowed herself the luxury of crying. She hated how weak it made her feel, because suddenly she felt like the most powerless person in the world, alone with some secret knowledge that she would have to hold onto for the rest of time. She could tell no one, so instead she grieved alone; she grieved the person she used to be who had worked so hard to move past what happened to her as a child. She grieved what the Allison of decades ago had hoped for, but would never have, because none of that had ever been possible. Sobbing alone on her kitchen floor was really the only thing she could do at that moment, so she let the tears fall unbidden.

Eventually even that was too exhausting, and her head was starting to pound again. Grimacing, Allison pulled herself off the floor, wondering if she should be concerned about the possibility of brain trauma regardless of what Ratchet said. She wasn't even sure if she trusted them at this point. Feeling too exhausted, all Allison wanted to do was sleep, so after fumbling with the buttons on her stove to reset the time she stumbled to her bedroom to take a much-needed shower and find some aspirin. There was still blood in her hair and she was starting to feel grimey, so all she wanted was to wash the last two days off. Surely after some sleep she would be more clear-headed in the morning.

Sleep came easy, though that was probably the brain damage. She didn't dream, which was a pleasant change. Returning to the mundane task of work, eat, sleep and more work was familiar. She chatted with her dad about his upcoming guest lecturer trip across the country, as if nothing had happened. She tried so hard not to think about Wheeljack; to think of any of them. There were moments where she wished he was standing in front of her so she could scream at him, but that wouldn't be productive and would only feel briefly satisfying. So she had to try and pretend none of it existed while being aware that was a lie. Walking to the train station was uneventful, though she continued to watch the cars as they passed. Now that she knew better there was the possibility she would see something trying to stay hidden.

Maybe Allison should have been grateful that the most eventful thing to happen in days was the chaos at work when no one could figure out who had checked in the gigantic stereo in the back room. Allison had never seen such a thing, so it had to have been some sort of commercial brand; maybe for DJ's or some sort of large dance club. It took up almost the entire back wall in the store room. Allison hadn't worked the evening before it simply appeared in the workshop, so as far as she was concerned it was everyone else's problem to figure out who hadn't done the paperwork properly.

Since no one could figure out where it had come from, no one could start work on it until the boss came in the next morning, so it sat there while Allison closed the shop for the night. Before she did her usual routine checks she sat in the office rifling through customer contacts to see if any company names stood out that would be missing a giant stereo. There was a weird energy in the air that night and Allison couldn't quite explain it. Something just felt off, and the whole time she was in the office she had this eerie sense that she was being watched. It was so quiet she was starting to get annoyed with the sound of her own breathing. Then the music started playing.

It was so sudden, and so loud Allison almost thought something had exploded. Instinctively she dropped what she was holding and clamped her hands over her ears, the thudding pulse of the bass threatening to make her burst from within. It took several seconds to realize she was hearing rock music and that it was coming through the mystery stereo. She recognized the song, an old early 80's tune that her dad used to listen to, but it was infinitely less appealing when played at full volume. Stumbling out of the office, she fumbled with several buttons through sheer disoriented confusion before finally managing to turn it off. The silence was oppressive.

It took several more seconds for Allison to realize she was hearing her own heartbeat as she stood there staring perplexed at the stereo for entirely too long. She guessed it was obvious why it needed repair. Looking around, she found several dials that looked like they pertained to volume, so she cranked them all the way to the left in the zero position. It would be incredibly unlucky if the thing were to turn on in the middle of the night when no one was there. If it stayed on any longer she was afraid it would bring the whole building down.

Now that she was rattled, Allison decided that she wanted to get through her closing tasks as soon as possible and get home. It was getting dark out, and she could hear rain finally starting to cut into the evening's silence as it began pattering against the windows. She was in the midst of collecting trash when the music started again. At full volume.

This time she froze, something telling her that this was not quite right as a cold fear rippled down her body. Someone had to be playing a prank with some kind of Bluetooth remote, or wireless activation, there was no other explanation. She ran back to the stereo and slapped at the buttons in a panic to turn it off again.

Several more minutes went by as she stared at it. The face of the stereo was nondescript. It was an attractive navy blue offset with silver and black accents, with just about everything one would expect on a stereo. It had two unusually large antennae affixed to the back edges, which was sort of odd by modern standards. There was no branding or writing of any kind, just a sleek looking emblem on an edge that looked like it represented some sort of street brand, or maybe some DJ or club's logo. It was angular and smooth, sort of like a face.

Reflexively, it made Allison think of Wheeljack again, and that made her annoyed enough to turn her back to the stereo once again to finish up her closing duties. She hadn't been thinking about him all day, which pissed her off more than it should have. Allison actually thought she was starting to feel close to normal until—

Stopping in the doorway to the office, something suddenly struck her that she hadn't immediately noticed. It was a delayed reaction to something that hit her peripheral and something was nagging at her that she couldn't quite shake. When it reached the forefront of her logical thinking she stilled, her breath catching as she realized the anomaly that didn't make sense.

The stereo wasn't plugged in.

By the time it started to rain, Bumblebee's joints were getting cramped from the fixed position he'd been in for hours. He found himself in a parking lot beneath the highway that cut through the city, just one of many. Allison hadn't told him specifically where she worked, but Bumblebee knew what to do with details. It only took a little creative digging into public records to figure out specifically which repair shop she worked at, because there were only so many in the city where someone named Allison would be found.

Bumblebee kept his distance, several blocks away, but on the path he knew Allison took, because he'd watched her walk along the road hours prior. Tucked away in the row of cars, she wouldn't have been able to see him unless she really looked. He had to be careful about his movements, because Allison had been incredibly observant about the coloring of his armor panels considering her fixation with his name. He wouldn't have been surprised if she recognized him immediately, and he didn't want to inadvertently cause any problems.

So he kept watch, monitoring local emergency feeds and radio signals for any odd activity. Either the Decepticons weren't around, or they'd gotten incredibly clever at hiding their traces. That made it even more critical that he be in this very spot, especially considering he was dismayed to learn when Allison walked to work this morning that the energon signature on her had returned. So Ratchet and Wheeljack had been wrong , and Allison probably had no idea she was practically a beacon to any Cybertronian who happened to come by, friendly or otherwise. That alone made his inner circuits churn with anxiety, because he didn't like being able to sense her in that way without her knowing.

It was almost starting to get boring as Bumblebee rested back on his wheels, so while the rain began to pick up he observed the humans around him. He noted that not a lot of them used the thing they called umbrellas, which was odd, considering how often it rained in this region. It was a busy area where humans shopped for various luxuries and other goods, sometimes popping in and out of places they called cafes. Part of him wondered what it was like to consume such a broadly diverse range of different kinds of substances, but he certainly didn't envy how their small organic bodies had to process them. As the evening dragged on, many of the places shuttered their windows and went dark, while other places started to light up. These were where Bumblebee understood humans liked to get intoxicated on fluids comparable to high-grade energon. There were mostly adults that walked these streets, and many of them spent a lot of time looking at their small cellular phone devices barely paying attention to where they were going. It was their more immediate form of communication, as they didn't have the ability to speak to one another through internal com channels.

By the time the streets cleared out, Bumblebee was starting to wonder if Allison had slipped past him somehow in the later hours of the evening. Humans were creatures of habit, so that seemed unlikely. Surely she would come back the same way she traveled before. He was so focused on sorting through any and all resounding radio chatter looking for something he missed, so he almost didn't notice the sudden click in his own internal com as someone entered his periphery.

"I'm bored. What are we waiting for?"

"Sideswipe?!"

"What, you think I'm not going to follow you when you leave the base with one of the ugliest mugs I've ever seen? Especially when you've been hiding something from me?" Unfortunately Bumblebee noticed far too late the bright red luxury sports car that had made itself comfortable several rows behind him. He was never that careless, so how Sideswipe slipped past him was an infuriating mystery.

"From us." The additional voice that entered the conversation confirmed exactly what Bumblebee assumed would happen, and that would be Sideswipe roping his brother into this. The near-identical yellow car was several spaces to Sideswipe's left.

"I should have known. Sunstreaker you should know better. This doesn't concern you. Go. Home." Two very rare, flashy sports cars were going to draw far more attention than Bumblebee liked… though admittedly he was starting to have doubts. If things did in fact go south, having two of the strongest Autobot fighters with him was not a bad idea. He'd just been hoping things didn't get messy, not to mention perilous. The twins weren't exactly known for being delicate about their surroundings when it came to battle, and this was not a Cybertronian city.

"I don't know, I think this concerns us a lot actually. What are you out here waiting for in the middle of this… city?" Sunstreaker did little to hide his disdain. "And in the rain, no less."

"I'm looking for Decepticons." It was a half-truth, but it was enough.

"That's it?" Sideswipe confirmed, though the lilt of his tone made it obvious he didn't believe him.

"That's it." Bumblebee lied.

"Well why didn't you say so? What's the point of being secretive about that? I love killing 'Cons." Sideswipe's reply could have indicated he bought it, but the scout knew that was a vain hope.

Bumblebee was trying to multi-task, simultaneously keeping his sensors open while entertaining this conversation and trying to think of how to respond. There was no point in hiding anything now. The twins weren't going anywhere, because they certainly didn't take any of Bumblebee's attempts at authority seriously.

"Fine. Just don't break anything." Bumblebee could still keep an optic on Allison easy enough without telling them anything. They could be there as back-up should any Decepticons actually arrive. It was a win-win. He could figure out what to do if Allison got caught in the middle of it once it came to that. If it came to that. "And don't draw…" Something flared at the edge of Bumblebee's more heightened sensor range, and he immediately lost his train of thought. He poked at it, throwing out another pulse to try and catch it again. "—Wait…" There it was again, this time strong, and unmistakable. It was a full blown Decepticon presence, active. And it was close. "ON ME."

Without waiting, Bumblebee peeled out of the parking lot and into the street towards the source. There was a briefly startled flutter of confusion on their com link before it went dark, meaning both Sideswipe and Sunstreaker had switched their focus to the more serious hunt at hand. They would be full of plenty of witty, poorly-timed jokes later, but now they knew what was at stake for all their complaining and bluster. Bumblebee knew the signal had come from the direction Allison traveled in, meaning they could be staring down the barrel of a full-blown announcement of their presence on this planet. He just hoped they weren't too late.

The face.

Allison wasn't sure how she knew, but something told her she was in danger, and it was time to go. She tried to relax her shoulders as much as possible, evening out her breathing as she walked back into the office at a reasonable pace. She didn't want to give away the fact that she was fearful. Maybe if she didn't provoke it, it wouldn't move.

There was no way for her to be fully certain, but somehow she knew it was Decepticon. No wonder it had felt like something was watching her all evening. She wondered how the hell they had found her, and why, unless…

Slowly, and with as little urgency as possible Allison gathered her things, realizing that she hadn't done her usual checks around the workshop. Why she was concerned about work at a time like this was beyond her comprehension. Her gut instinct and animal brain were telling her to run, because she was being hunted. Where was she going to go? Was she even safe at home? Was there something even worse waiting for her outside? She still had to get home, and it was late so there wouldn't be any foot traffic at this hour. She was alone.

One thing at a time, and first, she needed to get out of the building. Trying to appear as casual as possible was difficult, considering her heart was about to pound its way out of her ears.

The problem was, she had to pass by the offending stereo again in order to get out of the building. The back door was still jammed and she didn't want to risk it. Things probably couldn't have gotten worse as she stood there for a tick considering the best course of action. That was until the power went out and she was plunged into darkness.

So Allison stood there in the pitch black, frozen in fear, and the thought faintly occurred to her that this would have been a terrible time for Wheeljack to go on a supply run. The absurdity of his possible timing almost made her laugh, if not for the fact that she was now in the dark and possibly in more danger now than she was before. That's what finally convinced her to make a break for the exit, darting out of the back office room glancing to her right just long enough for a spike of fear to rip through her whole body. The stereo was gone.

There was no time to think about that now, because the front door suddenly seemed twice as far away as it normally did. Allison was so focused on getting outside, that she didn't see the hazard before it was too late. She made it two steps out of the office before something large and massive struck her from the right, effectively throwing her bodily back into the room she'd come from.

Allison was so stunned from the impact, that for a split-second she couldn't move. It felt like she'd been hit by a wrecking ball; a solid wall of something that she bounced off of, causing her to slide gracelessly all the way back into the office she'd come from. For a second she was afraid she'd hit her head again, but somehow that had been avoided. The more pressing fear was the sudden comprehension of every instinct in her body telling her that she was now trapped. The move had been intentional; sound strategy to corral your prey into a corner where they can't escape. That meant, someone knew the back door was a problem. Managing to lift her body enough to look through the doorway she'd just sailed through confirmed as much, and her whole body froze in terror.

The first thing she saw was the sudden addition of light: harsh, red and angry hovering high above her in the dark like a panel. It floated towards the direction of the doorway from the blackness of the outer room, followed by the thudding mechanized steps of something that sounded heavy and threatening. The bright, glaring—visor?—had Allison transfixed like a deer caught in headlights, and she almost wondered for a panicked second if she was hallucinating some sort of uncanny vision. Whatever was coming towards her was simultaneously smaller than she would have expected, but still large enough to take up the entire span of the wide doorway separating her from it.

It was almost comical how the massive shape maneuvered through the doorway, and this was the moment Allison realized it was much taller than she previously realized. Even hunched over, the oppressive robotic figure hit the ceiling while never taking its wide gaze off of her. Allison tried to rapidly file through her options, the worst of which was figuring a way to get around it which seemed nearly impossible. The alternative was stalling it long enough to try to force the back door open and she had no idea how she would do that.

Neither option seemed feasible as the—Decepticon—crept closer. She could barely make out the blue and silver coloring that had been the stereo, the two oddly shaped antennae rising off either shoulder. The angular face was now affixed to this body, and her prior assessment of it being kind of cool now felt incredibly stupid and irresponsible.

Allison knew she needed to move, her eyes darting around for anything she could use as a weapon and coming up short, but at this point she needed to do something or else she was dead. She finally managed to scramble to her feet, stumbling back into the wall, only to find that the Decepticon was staring at her with an eerie, unsettling grin.

"This home of yours gets any smaller and I'll end up with a permanent cramp in my neck." The voice was higher pitched, almost mocking. "How 'bout we open the place up by knocking down a few walls?" The threat was unmistakable as Allison finally decided to bolt. At precisely the same moment something happened to his arm. A clean succession of moving servos and rotating plates preceded the massive crash that enveloped the space she'd just occupied seconds before. She barely had time to throw a panicked glance over her shoulder to see what looked like a massive pilon stuck in the wall, connected to the Decepticon's arm like some sort of freak appendage.

Undeterred, she felt the moving air behind her as her assailant launched after her, the crunch of broken wall exploding as he yanked his arm free. In a fast panic Allison pulled a section of wire shelving over as she passed, the action pulling her around in time to see that she was nearly face-to-face with this new monstrosity just as a wide assortment of electronic parts and pieces crashed on top of him. Invulnerable, a massive shoulder took the brunt of the shelf's impact, carelessly knocking it sideways while swinging his other arm around from below in an arcing motion. Allison didn't have time to get out of the way before it was too late—he moved so fast—as this other hand clamped around her throat like a vice, carrying her several massive steps backward before hoisting her high into the air.

As if to punctuate the sudden silence, filled only with the sounds of her desperate gagging as she tried to pry his hand off her, his other long arm jolted down. The massive crunch from the giant crushing mechanism that it extended into was palpable in the air, sending a vibration running down her spine through the hand currently squeezing the breath out of her.

"To be honest, I've just been itching to do this. I've been waiting for a while now, and I gotta' say, I'm not impressed. The big boss sent me to sniff out the weird signal here, and imagine my surprise to find out it's one lousy organic." He squeezed, as if to emphasize his displeasure, and Allison thought her neck was about to break as the flesh of her throat constricted, completely cutting off air. "Now that we're acquainted, I'm thinkin' we just pack you nice and tight into an envelope and mail you, express delivery. How does that sound?"

Allison's eyes bulged as a thousand thoughts flooded through her mind in an instant. Did they detect the energon? Was it back? How many of them knew about it? Were they here? Was this how she died? She punched uselessly at his arm, simultaneously trying not to hang from his grip fearing her spine would snap like a twig. He seemed completely unfazed by the myriad of weak smacks against his oversized forearm. After agonizing seconds, his head tilted sideways to study her while the searing visor covering his eyes burned into her teary vision.

"What the Pit is so special about you anyway?" He muttered, the previously high-pitched voice dropping low by several octaves and it made Allison's insides squirm. "It's not often I get sent to chase up vermin." She tried to scream but the action was in vain, kicking hard once she felt the solid form of his face suddenly press against her stomach. Reflexively she tried to jerk away as she was pulled in, her voice dying in her throat as she tried to make her disgust known. The action felt more like a predator appraising their catch, menacing and deadly, and she tried to push at him to get the sickeningly intimate feeling of his face against her to stop. She had no leverage while being held in the air, and could only hang like a flailing doll while the heat of whatever air he was venting burned through her clothing. He was smelling her. "You. Smell. Like. Energon."

His countenance was already menacing, but something about him now seemed positively aroused, the scent of energon clearly driving a lust for violence that had been previously dampened. Allison knew at that moment she was dead. Static was already starting to creep into her vision from the corners, her face growing sickly hot as she fought for air. With a manic, gleeful giggle, she was suddenly thrown, hard, her back hitting the solid surface of a table against the far wall. Immediately she was wracked with coughing, trying desperately to suck in air while blind to what was happening around her. Allison was weak; too weak to fight him off when he was suddenly on top of her, massive body blocking the view of the ceiling as he crowded her against the table. She lashed out, trying desperately to kick him, in the face, chest, anywhere she could reach but she was simply too small. "I'm nobody!" She cried hoarsely, yelping when he fisted the front of her clothing, cackling.

"No, you're less than nobody. But you got something in you that the boss man wants I guess, and for now that makes you somebody—GAAH." While her Decepticon attacker was busy monologuing, Allison's eyes quickly caught sight of something and she took a risk that could very well be her last. Laying there on the table, plugged in and searing of heat, was the damn soldering iron.

Grabbing it with a free hand just as she was about to get yanked forward, she plunged it into the first thing she laid eyes on. It was the relatively unprotected space of the robot's neck where there was no plating, but only bundles of cable and other flexible anatomy. The reaction was immediate. The howl of pain was intense, as he let go and reeled backwards, steps crunching hard on the ground as he pawed in blind confusion at the offending intrusion in his neck. His head kept crashing into the ceiling, leaving torn gashes in the fiberglass tiles. Allison could smell burnt wiring and smoke, and she only had a split second to use to her advantage as she rolled awkwardly off the table in a heap and bolted. The relatively soft clatter of the soldering iron being thrown against the room followed seconds later as she darted through a doorway and around another corner. Her only choice was the busted back exit.

"ALRIGHT, NOW I'M PISSED!"

Where she was going to go exactly, Allison had no idea. She had no clue what was waiting for her outside. The Decepticon kept mentioning a big boss, so there was no guarantee said big boss was not waiting for her to be driven out. People could get hurt, and she didn't want that on her conscience.

She could hear the cacophony of crashing behind her, followed by the rhythmic stomping of massive footsteps following her escape. She lost track of where he was, as the sounds of destruction seemingly came from everywhere at once, until suddenly the wall behind her shattered as something massive plunged through. It was his arm, or whatever his arm had become. The broken plaster and brick projectiles sailed over Allison's head as she stumbled forward, just barely catching herself to continue running. It was getting hard to listen for danger with the roar of blood in her ears, and she barely heard the sound of her panicked, gasping breaths as her body hit the solid Exit door that would be her only way out.

Panic. The door didn't budge, as she pounded on the release bar multiple times in vain. Wailing in defeat, she tried pressing her shoulder against it but she was too exhausted and she couldn't get leverage on the floor. The sounds of chaos were growing louder behind her and she stepped back, kicking as hard as she could. That same second she fretfully glanced sideways and caught sight of the eerie, Cheshire glow of a red visor hovering in the darkness as it came around the corner with a cackle. The release bar made a mockingly pleasant click as the door finally crashed open. By this point the sing-song taunting felt close enough to brush against the back of her neck. A wall of cold air and rain hit her like a microburst, and she leapt out into the alleyway before forcing the door closed. She knew it was pointless to hope that it would slow him down, so she wasted no time in deciding to run to her left towards the street.

It was only two steps against the wet pavement before the entire side wall of her building exploded in front of her. What followed was a massive shape that swooped directly into her path to cut off her escape. Without the confines of the building now, she could plainly see how big he was, puffed out like an angry, blue and silver beast about to pounce. He was smaller than Bumblebee by a fair margin, but still big enough.

The red visor-like eye was searing, the feral rage on his face unmistakable as remnants of smoke still curled around his head from his neck. In the relative light of the back alleys she could see him for what he was, and it was a nightmare. His massive hands were raised, poised to reach out and snatch her as soon as she tried to move. Rain evaporated into steam as it pelted his body, surrounding him in something like a fog.

"Did nobody teach you monkeys never to run from predators?" The sentence almost came out like a hiss; feral and angry. It was at this moment Allison's completely illogical animal brain took over and she turned to run. It didn't matter where, because she was about to die.

Seconds later her head was snapped backwards and she was yanked off her feet as something wrapped around her face: a massive hand, and her knees hit the wet pavement with an excruciatingly painful crack that made her cry out hoarsely. The world spun as she was forced further down onto the ground, the grip on her head squeezing as her cheek bit into the gratingly cold surface of the soaked concrete. Allison went limp as she felt the Decepticon's weight over her, pinning her down.

"It just makes me wanna chase ya…" the voice was low and almost distant, like he was getting completely lost in a violent instinct that Allison would never understand. She only managed a gasp, waiting with bated breath for some sort of killing blow that never came. What was probably seconds felt like an eternity as Allison lay there gasping for air, hearing only the distant sound of something approaching fast from behind. Maybe the big boss had come after all.

There was a rushed clattering of motion followed by a confusing burst of movement above her body as the weight of the Decepticon was suddenly gone.

/