Midge wasn't alone for long, but she only managed to work herself into a few strained sobs. Escorted by three different agents, she felt like Hannibal Lector. They were on each side of her, one on her left, the other in the front passenger seat. They said nothing, shades hiding their eyes, and drove until the Sun began to break over the skyline.
They make no secret of their hostility toward her in their aloof, yet harsh treatment.
"Move," the one beside her barked when his legs, spread as to cover most of the middle seat, brushed Midge's.
Twenty minutes later, she was being herded through a tall office building and placed in an empty helicopter waiting on the roof. The suits buckled her up, then turned around and left her to her own devices, making her scoff. They were underestimating her again, and she'd use that to her advantage when push came to shove. It was a struggle to get done, but she was able to pull up her legs and slip her bound wrists over her feet, bringing them to her front.
"Hey! Watch it."
Her brother's voice had never sounded so sweet to her ears. Something inside her that was bent out of shape straightened out upon seeing him safe. He and Mikaela were uncuffed, held forcefully by well-dressed individuals who pushed them toward the helicopter.
"Midge, what the hell happened to you?" he said, wide eyes taking her whole form in. The two of them were forced into the seats across from her, another soldier coming from the left to take the last seat on that side.
The seats on her left and right filled up. To her left sat a large, black man wearing a football jersey she couldn't place, and to her right, a pretty, pale woman in business casual. She felt out of place between them, looking like what the cat dragged in if Sam's earlier reaction was anything to go by. They were soon taking off, each of them equipped with headsets to communicate and to protect their ears.
"Same thing that happened to you." Glossing over things was her way of coping with trauma, especially with unfamiliar company. Rather than relive the horrid memories, she wished she could put the incident in the past. Though she certainly hadn't fooled him, he didn't press further. It was some time before anyone spoke next.
"What'd they get you for?" The Australian accent coming from the woman's mouth was a bit of a shock, enough to pique Midge's interest. Her easy smile was contagious and, coupled with her exotic accent, gave the others a modicum of relaxation.
"Uh, I bought a car. Turned out to be an alien robot." Sam shrugged and shook his head, asking rhetorically, "Who knew?"
"What about you?" She nodded to Midge's smaller form. "Are you the dangerous one?" By her amused smile, she must have thought it humorous to poke fun at Midge's feeble appearance.
The redhead did not feel the same, but everybody got a freebie. That, and she wanted people to underestimate her. It often worked in her favor.
She shrugged, allowing her soft waves to fall around her shoulders. "The army must think so." It only made sense that a bunch of soldiers twice her size were afraid of her acting out again. They were all brawn. Without two brain cells to rub together, they would never understand that she was trying to help Bumblebee. "That alien robot and I have a... complicated relationship."
Sam looked at her incredulously. Was he jealous that she was taking his car from him? Was that why he had talked so much about Douglas the last few days?
"So it's complicated now, is it? That's certainly a level up from being strangers a few days ago. You know you aren't allowed to fall in love with my car, right?"
It was just like him to say such a thing. What an immature thought: ordering another's emotions to be or not be based on your own. Moronic, she would call it.
"Oh sure, let me just turn off my emotions. Yeah, right! You do not control me or my associations." She wanted to pinch her nose or rub her temples but she didn't want him to see how much he hurt her, was still hurting her. "And who said anything about love?"
She had, privately, but he didn't need to know that. She hadn't accepted it yet. Sam wasn't inside her head, couldn't know about the confessions she made to herself in the privacy of her own mind, confessions she wasn't ready to face in the daylight.
It started with physical attraction, something that drew her to Bumblebee, like the butterflies in her stomach or the blush on her cheeks. The unexplained feeling that made you look at a guy a little longer than necessary, or smile at someone you didn't know. Inexplicable interest would turn into attraction that then would become infatuation, then eventually, love. She wasn't sure where she was on that spectrum yet, so how could Sam be so positive?
"Yeah, well, it's pretty obvious, Midge." He crossed his arms, feigning that he didn't care, that her words didn't sting. "You act like I haven't known you for 17 years!"
She would have smacked him upside the head if the situation were any different. Sam, her little brother, thought he could forbid her from falling in love with someone! It was almost funny that he thought he had power over her, but instead of laughing she was growling. Realizing how childish she seemed, she bit it off and returned to silence, not wanting Sam to get one over on her.
Midge was supposed to be the older sibling, but she wasn't acting like it. She had thought she was above this, but her brother always knew how to bring it out of her.
"Siblings, eh?" the Aussie asked, but it didn't sound like a question.
The Hoover Dam was an incredible monument to their American roots and all the good that could come from the government in times of need. The dam was impressive, the thickness of it wide enough for a two-lane highway to run across it.
The sound of rushing water was fleeting but all around, like a shell to her ear, though she couldn't see any of it. It was all inside the structure. Where they stood atop the wall, there was nothing to see but tan cement stretching across the almost quarter mile-wide gap. No matter how nice she found it, it didn't change her feeling toward the agents that escorted the five of them to the only visible entrance.
Unfortunately, an unexpected hurdle stood in Midge, Sam, and Mikaela's way.
"Hey kid." Simmons stood with his arms crossed over his chest. A black beret sat atop his curls and on his nose, a pair of aviators to match. He looked around, avoiding their gazes. The anger she saw in his twitching brow and phony smile were held back in order to complete his orders. "I think we got off to a bad start, huh? You must be hungry. You want a latte? HoHo? Double venti macchiato?"
Sam stopped him from going on, asking succinctly, "Where's my car?"
As was the theme of the day, another man with shades and a suit butting into the conversation. His skin was lightly tanned. His mustache was well-groomed and so was what hair was left on his head. He spoke with a southern twang. "Son, I need you to listen to me very carefully. People can die here. We need to know everything you know. We need to know it now."
Sam nodded, looking every bit the patriotic teen ready to serve his country. He was, however, also a little twerp and would squeeze every drop out of the men who scorned him. He was like Midge in that way.
"Okay. But first, I'll take my car, my parents, the keys to these cuffs. Maybe you should write that down." He lifted Midge's hands by the chain and shook them pointedly, then looked at the women on either side of him. "Oh, and their records. Those have got to be gone. Like, forever." The girls broke into grins, excited for a prospective fresh start.
Bannachek, as she heard him called by a passing soldier, looked Midge up and down, as if weighing in his mind whether he could drop her or not if she became violent. He must settle on a positive answer, because he gestured for her hands and used a small key to free her.
Simmons stared at her brother, almost stunned that his boss was considering going along with the teen's whims.
"Come with me. We'll talk about your car," Bannachek decided, leading Sam inside. Mikaela and Midge followed, but the latter stopped a moment, turning back to the curly-haired agent.
"Can I get that latte with an extra shot of espresso?" she asked, if only to annoy him further. She doubted she would get anything, hiding her tittering under her hand as she stalked away.
They met up with numerous military men along the way, all of them belonging to the same unit under Captain William Lennox and his second, Robert Epps. The duo they met in the helicopter, Maggie and Glen, walked along beside Midge and the two teens.
A few extra guards joined them, half part of the Secretary of Defense, John Keller's, personal entourage. It wasn't surprising that he would get involved in a National Security matter, but she was no less stunned to see him joining their group. "Alright, here's the situation. You've all had direct contact with the NBEs."
"NBEs?" Midge asked, an eyebrow raised in his direction.
"Non-Biological Extraterrestrials. Try and keep up with the acronyms." Simmons continued on while he spoke, leading them through a cinder-block tunnel, surfaces shining with moisture. The inside was dark as the sunlight from the entrance faded away.
Just as the redhead thought it would become pitch black, a glimmer of brightness appeared at the other end. As they approached the illuminated innards of the dam, Bannachek turned his head to them briefly. "What you're about to see is totally classified."
It was colder than she expected, something frigid dancing in the air. The dampness in there helped the chill penetrate into her bones and made her shiver.
The lab inside was built in a semi-circle, centered on one large entity in the middle of a contraption. Like a figurine, he was suspended and held in position by various metal arms in place at his sides.
The blue light bathing the immense Cybertronian made him look even colder than he was. Encased in frost, he was likely frozen inside and out. There was no spark behind his empty optics. The lights were off and nobody was home. But even without the red hue of his eyes, he looked exactly the same as the Decepticon Optimus showed them in the hologram: Massive. Sharp. Wicked.
The nasty-looking thing had to be Megatron, or her name wasn't Margaret Witwicky.
"Dear God. What is this?" Keller stopped in his tracks, gaping up at the monster with horrified awe.
"We think when he made his approach over the north pole, our gravitational field screwed up his telemetry." Whether Bannachek provided commentary for her benefit or the others', Midge listened anyway. Observing. Analyzing. "He crashed in the ice, probably a few thousand years ago. We shipped him here to this facility in 1934."
That was only a few years before Archibald Witwicky had passed away, but almost forty years after he initially discovered the extraterrestrial in ice. Why did it take so long, she wondered.
Simmons' raspy voice cut through the echo in the dam. "We call him NBE One."
Standing beneath the gigantic Cybertronian, each of them tipped their heads back to look at his form. Sam opened his mouth, digging his hole even deeper. "Well, sir, I don't mean to correct you on everything you think you know, but, I mean, that's Megatron." With his arms over his chest, he jutted his chin out at the oversized silver mech. It prompted the two Sector Seven officers to turn, facing the teenage boy. "He's the leader of the Decepticons."
"He's been in cryostasis since 1935," said Bannachek. The brunette locked eyes with Midge, then her brother. "Your great-great-grandfather made one of the greatest discoveries in the history of mankind."
Their gazes flip to the black-haired man, gray hairs decorating his temples. "Fact is, you're looking at the source of the modern age, the microchip, lasers, spaceflight, cars, all reverse-engineered by studying him." Simmons steps closer, his face nearing Sam's, getting much too close for comfort. Midge watched him like a hawk, daring him to pull something on her little brother. "NBE One. That's what we call it," he said into Sam's ear.
Keller's drawl had become clipped, shortened but still Southern as he questioned Bannachek. "And you didn't think the United States military might need to know that you're keeping a hostile alien robot frozen in the basement?"
"Until these events, we had no credible threat to national security," the brunette replied with a flat tone and a stoic expression.
"Well, you got one now."
Lennox, his eyes still glued to Megatron's form, gripped his fist tightly as gears turned in his head. "So why Earth?"
"It's the All Spark," Sam answered, eyes still glued to the massive being frozen in place above their heads.
"All Spark?" The Secretary of Defense probed, eyes narrowing. "What is that?"
"Well, yeah, they came here looking for some sort of cube-looking thing." Sam's voice hardened, spitting at the curly-haired man that stood entirely too close, "Anyway Mr. NBE One here, AKA Megatron, that's what they call him, who's pretty much the harbinger of death, wants to use the Cube to transform human technology to take over the universe. That's their plan."
Midge nodded along, hoping at least some of the big-wigs they were stuck with would see the truth. Lennox was the most open-minded, or so it seemed. She just hoped they would make the right choice when the time came.
Simmons, ever the skeptic, had to clarify. "And you're sure about that?"
"He's not just sure, he's right," Midge said, backing up her brother. The uncertain looks exchanged by Simmons and Bannachek caught her notice, the woman's perceptive nature getting the better of the two agents. "You guys know where it is, don't you?"
Though calculatingly reluctant, the man in the suit nodded his head firmly. "Follow me."
The room he lead them to overlooked an even bigger observatory. Three likely bulletproof windows gave them the view of the whole operation that was going to work on the massive hexahedron. The chamber was as damp as the last, it's ceiling much higher to allow for the immense size of the All Spark.
It wasn't at all what she expected. It was less like the Rubik's Cube she'd pictured and more like the Kaaba in Mecca. It's size dwarfed even the sub-zero Megatron's gigantic structure. If she had to come up with an estimate, she'd put it at 50 feet tall, minimum.
"Carbon dating puts the Cube here around 10,000 BC. The first Seven didn't find it until 1913." Midge figured Bannachek was referencing the seven framed portraits on the wall, which she had no interest in further examining. Some old guys who didn't know what they were dealing with held no new information for her, and that was all she was interested in. Her brother was clearly not letting this go, and she was also quite attached to her world as well as her new friend. "They knew it was alien because of the matching hieroglyphics on the Cube as well as NBE One. President Hoover had the dam built around it. Four football fields thick of concrete. A perfect way to hide its energy from being detected by anyone or any alien species on the outside."
"Hold on, you're saying the Cube has some kind of... detectable radiation that it's emitting? I mean, is it safe?" Had they been irradiated already and why weren't they told earlier, she wanted to ask, but closed her lips before it could slip out.
"Took the words straight out of my mouth." Maggie, evidently the new advisor to Secretary Keller, said, sending a small smile in the other woman's direction. She turned back to Bannachek to question him. "And what kind of energy is it, exactly?"
"Please step inside. They have to lock us in."
The room was small, made of steel and concrete. As Bannachek said, the man in the white coat closed the large door with a creak and engaged its equally-sized lock. Midge was too distracted eyeing the slashes on the wall closely to listen to the others' banter. She imagined the likeliest thing to make such marks would be a smaller version of the metallic monster she'd fought the other night.
Simmons cleared his throat, making Midge hear his next words involuntarily, her concentration broken. "Anybody have any mechanical devices? BlackBerry? Key alarm? Cell phone?"
Midge makes a show of searching herself, like everyone else did. She even turned out her flimsy pockets, realizing she'd left her cell on the workbench in the garage. She was in such a rush last night that she forgot it completely.
Glen fished a device from his pocket, tossing it to the agent. "I got a phone."
The scientists hand out goggles to everyone, organizing around a clear box in the center of the room. Simmons flung open its metal door, unfolding the mobile and placing it inside. "Oof. Nokias are real nasty. You've gotta respect the Japanese. They know the way of the samurai."
While the redhead wasn't sure about the company's origin, one thing she was certain of was that it wasn't from Japan.
There are even more claw marks on the inside of the box, she noted, taking stock of the robotic arm inside the box. This whole thing smelled of Cybertronian tech. She made sure her goggles were tightly affixed when the curly-haired agent flipped the switch that turned the whole thing on. The arm came to life, getting close but not touching the phone. As he continued to the other switches around the room, he spoke.
"We're able to take the Cube radiation and funnel it into that box." Simmons pointed at said box and with one more flipped lever, the thing lit up. A beam of energy struck the cell phone and the All Spark gleamed with immeasurable power outside the window.
For a moment, the Nokia just shook. It vibrated so hard that it became airborne. The grating metal sound that hit Midge's ears clued her in on exactly what it was doing, as she had heard it many times before.
The little monster transformed. Like a Swiss army knife, it unfolded into numerous blades and tools, racing around the small space on its servos. It ran straight at her, slamming itself into the thick, impact-resistant acrylic shield between them.
"Mean little sucker, huh?" Simmons remarked, the edges of his mouth curling smugly.
"That thing is freaky!" Maggie shrieked, flinching back with her jaw slackened.
Midge saw the mutated cell phone as very similar to the being she faced the night before. Though it had come from a larger Decepticon, the cell phone was small and vicious, just like the other.
"Kind of like the itty-bitty Energizer Bunny from hell, huh?"
"Nothing I haven't dealt with before," she said, keeping her voice low but not threatening. She raised a brow at Lennox, watching the thing's reaction when he tapped the glass. The little mobile had a Gatling gun form in its chest. It fired wildly, leaving pin-sized marks in the acrylic. It even let loose a few miniature missiles, the small explosions leaving smoke in the air.
It almost broke the plastic when it ran headfirst at Maggie and Keller and the agents decided to terminate the creature. Was the gibberish coming out of its mouth Cybertronian, or truly just nonsense?
Bannachek pulled the modified trigger in his hands, causing a bolt of electricity to smite the small machine, only leaving behind the smoking, blackened skeleton of a creature.
Why did it appear to be a Decepticon? Were all new Cybertronian beings violent by nature? And why was it so cute?
She was drawn out of her thoughts by the flickering lights and trembling walls. There's no mistaking the booming sounds from outside: Something was attacking, and only one group wanted the All Spark as bad as they did.
The Decepticons had arrived.