Transformers: Prometheus

CHAPTER 12

Where the hell were you supposed to stash the corpse of an alien robot? Jack had no idea, but figured Maggie probably knew best. So, he sent Bumblebee on ahead to deliver the trailer before he headed back to Sam’s place, and told himself that he was in for one awkward conversation later that evening—or, as it was, that morning.

By the time he had taken Arcee on about half a dozen laps of the Rivera & Sons parking lot, Jack began to feel confident that he knew what he was doing. He had a feel for her handling and her acceleration (and, frowning, Jack tried not to think of it as anything other than that), and it wasn’t like he’d be doing much more than driving the thirty or so minutes back to Maggie’s place.

“Alright,” he said. “Let’s go.”

He eased the throttle back, and—

“Ow,” Arcee snapped.

Jack blanched. He’d just started to stammer out an apology when, he heard what might’ve been a single note of laughter.

“Got you, soldier boy.”

He leaned back in his seat, looking up at the stars. “God, Arcee, you just about gave me a heart attack.” He chuckled, feeling wonderfully stupid in that moment. “Of all the times for you to go and develop a sense of humor... Maybe not the first time we go for a drive?”

“I’d say that makes it the perfect time,” she replied, without a hint of apology or humility. Then, “But seriously, easy on the throttle.”

Jack nodded. “You’ve got it.”

He eased the throttle back again, and took Arcee out of the parking lot, down a winding road, and onto the westbound stretch of the freeway, heading back toward denser suburbia. He opened the throttle to fifty-five miles per hour, keeping to the speed limit, and expected her to say something, but she didn’t. It was weird. Almost lonely. Just him and the after-midnight freeway and the few others who shared the road at this hour.

He focused on the road but, in the back of his mind, he found himself thinking of a history lesson from middle school. Old Mister Fielder had been teaching them about knights, and how they had shared a deep bond between warrior and steed, as if they, human and animal, rider and mount, could intuit the other’s thoughts. Even so, he had said, many knights probably only saw their horses as tools.

As Jack turned off the freeway, he wondered: would the bond have been different, had the steeds stood on two legs and fought beside their riders?

“Jack,” Maggie said, standing in the doorway as he cut Arcee’s engine. “Why is there an unmarked trailer in my driveway?”

Jack set Arcee’s kickstand and hopped off, removed his helmet. “Okay,” he began, “Don’t freak out, but—”

“That’s not exactly reassuring, mate.”

Jack just nodded a few times. “Yeah. Hey, is Glen here?”

“No, he went home a bit before midnight, why?”

“Let’s just say that I wouldn’t show him what’s in that trailer.”

Maggie’s eyes widened. “Oh my God, Jack. What’ve you got in there? What’ve you done?”

Jack thought it through. He had to find some way of describing the contents of the trailer without using the phrase ‘dead space robot.’

“Alright,” he began, “Let me explain...”

She did. He started as simply as he could, with the quest for Archibald Witwicky’s journal, and it’s apparent alien writing. She knew that much. Well, the good news was, they found a Witwicky, and she had the journal in question which, yes, contained a set of alien writing and which Arcee translated. So far, so good.

“But here’s where things get weird,” Jack continued. “There’s another Autobot, Bumblebee, who has been hanging out with Sam. Sam seems to think that he was being hunted by the cops.”

“For, what, speeding?” Maggie asked. “Driving without a driver?”

“I don’t know.” He figured he’d leave out the awkward parts surrounding their meeting. “But when Arcee translated the runes, she got, uh, very intense.” As if, Jack thought, she had any other general mood. “It was a message from someone called Megatron. Witwicky had been in his presence.”

“In the Arctic?”

“Has to be. Everything lines up. He might still be buried there, frozen. Which is a good thing, because he sounds like a galactic tyrant. Arcee called him a ‘Lord High Protector.’ So, my guess is that he led some military coup on their home planet. Sounds like he started the war.”

“And he won?”

“I don’t think so,” Jack said. “It sounds like everyone lost.”

Maggie puffed out a breath. “Wow. Okay. But I’m not seeing what this has to do with the trailer.”

“Well, Arcee figured she should call for reinforcements. We knew Soundwave would see it, so, we set a trap. There were three Decepticons—Frenzy, Rumble, and Ravage. The last two escaped, but the third...”

Maggie’s eyes widened. She was figuring it out.

“Well, the third,” Jack said, powering on. “The third Decepticon, Frenzy, is in the back of that trailer.”

“I’m sorry, what?”

“He’s dead, Maggie! Very dead!”

“Oh my God, Jack, please, please, please, tell me you don’t really have a dead alien robot in my driveway.”

Jack nodded. “In a stolen trailer, yeah.”

“I just— Does my doormat say 'dead robot storage', mate?”

“We just need to hide him for a few days while we figure out what to do,” Jack replied. “That’s all. Arcee and Bumblebee weren’t big on leaving the body where it could be found. And I kinda agree. Can you imagine if anyone got their hands on this tech? It was the only way for us to get it out of there without anyone noticing.”

Maggie shook her head, again and again, and started to pace back and forth.

“I can’t believe it wasn’t Glen,” she muttered. “I can’t believe it wasn’t Glen. I don’t know what this is, but I’m pretty sure I’m an accessory to more than a few crimes right now.”

Jack watched her pace. “Just a few days, Mags, that’s all. If we get the trailer back there before Monday, I doubt anyone will even notice.”

Maggie paced for a little bit longer, shaking her head.

“Christ. Okay. I know a guy who can get the trailer somewhere safe. But you’re going to get out there and pull the plates, and I’m going to lock it up so no one looks inside. But we need to figure out what to do with that thing within a week—the trailer and the dead robot.”

Jack nodded, exhaling. “Thanks, Mags.”

“You owe me,” she replied. “I don’t know what. Something of my choosing. I’ll collect on it later.” Then, she turned her gaze on Arcee: “And don’t you have something to say, too, Arcee?”

Apparently, not. The motorcycle remained silent.

“She’s pretty banged up,” Jack replied. “I wouldn’t count on her saying anything for a bit. They just about ripped her arm off.”

“Jesus, mate. Are you okay, Arcee?”

“I’m fine,” Arcee said.

“Of course,” Jack replied, “we can always count on her defensive streak.”

Maggie stepped closer to Arcee, frowning, eying something below her. “You’re leaking something. Looks like oil. Smells like it, too.”

“My repair systems can handle it.”

“She wasn’t leaking anything before we got here,” Jack said. “Might’ve been the drive, or the transformation process.”

“Which isn’t a great sign,” Maggie said. “Well, I can take a look. I’ll just get my tools—”

Arcee’s engine roared to life.

“Touch me, human, and you’ll pull back a stump.”

“Whoa,” Jack said, stepping between them. “Easy. Arcee, Maggie’s a mechanic. You can trust her.”

“I think I’ve gone far enough on the trust thing tonight, soldier boy. And either way, she doesn’t know the first thing about sealing an energon relay.”

"You're not leaking energon."

"I don't care. She knows nothing about Cybertronian engineering or our elemental metal."

“Fine,” Maggie said, crossing her arms. “Do the thing. Turn into a robot. Show off that engineering. If you’re so ‘fine.’”

“With pleasure.”

Nothing happened. Arcee muttered something in Cybertronian. Probably a curse.

“Yeah, look, Arcee,” Maggie said, crouching down to her level. “I don’t know the first thing about giant robot techno-physiology or whatever. But what I do know is, when I’ve seen you stand up, you’re made up of motorcycle parts, and I’ve worked on everything from single cylinder bikes to high performance inline fours.”

She glanced at Arcee’s engine block. “And I’d say you’re rocking a four-stroke, liquid-cooled, four-cylinder, dual overhead system. Kinda thing that lets you hit two-hundred miles an hour. You might not be factory spec, but I’m pretty sure I can fix up whatever’s gone wrong in there.”

Arcee didn’t reply. Maggie remained where she was.

“And, listen, if you don’t want my help—that’s fine, I won’t put the acid on ya. But you’re also not much use to us if you’re stuck as a motorcycle.” She rapped her knuckles against Arcee’s fairing. “And if I end up not knowing what I’m doing, well, you can rip on me all you want. Fair’s fair.”

Still, the silence.

“There’s not much you could really do to stop me, Arcee,” Maggie said. “Jack’s my mate, and you’ve drawn him into some weird alien war. I can’t really let you leave my garage without getting checked out. But you’re going to be my patient, so, I’d really like your informed consent on this. But if you’d rather me keep my hands to myself, no worries. I'll respect your decision.”

Still nothing. Jack was almost impressed. If he was going to try and convince a mountain to collapse or Arcee to give anyone even an inch, he’d prefer to argue with the mountain—at least it might have a random chance of getting hit by an earthquake and falling apart.

Arcee didn’t crack.

But she did sigh. “Fine.”

“Thank you, Arcee,” Maggie replied.

“But soldier boy remains outside.”

“Wait, what?” Jack asked.

“You heard the patient,” Maggie said. “Ladies only.” She scooped up a screwdriver from the shelf next to her and forced it into Jack’s palm. “Besides, you’ve got a license plate to pull.”

Somehow, unscrewing the license plate felt like the worst thing Jack had done all night. He kept thinking someone would drive past and ask him what he was doing, and he’d say a friend had asked him to do it, and the cops would show up, and it’d all be on the one night where Arcee was stuck as a motorcycle. But at that hour, the streets were deserted.

He left the plate on the kitchen bench, and waited on the couch. In the garage, he heard Maggie working, and the muted two-tone noise of her conversation with Arcee. It felt wrong to go to sleep while they were both up. It felt like he was waiting in a hospital lobby, for the surgeon to come through the doors and deliver the news, good or bad. She was fine. She had to be fine.

But what if she wasn’t?

Bumblebee had gone back to Sam’s. Hopefully, her parents hadn’t noticed that her car had gone for a drive without her. Jack figured he’d need to pay her a visit over the weekend. Ravage and Rumble had escaped and, with that, Soundwave would know there was another Autobot around, this one in the form of a vintage Camaro. But Frenzy was down. They were all in it together now, and the odds had tilted ever so slightly in their favor.

And soon, perhaps they’d tilt further still. Jack made a mental note to ask Arcee how long she expected it to take until her message reached any Autobots, and how long it’d take them to arrive. Days, weeks, months? Longer? He wondered about his mom. Hoped she was doing okay.

Yet he still wasn’t any closer to figuring out why Blackout had struck when he did. Jack lay there on the couch, plotting data points and trying to connect the dots.

Why was Megatron’s best hunter skulking around the Middle East? Arcee wanted to know what Jack knew, and it was nothing. Ravage had wanted the same thing. Being the only survivor was important. But no matter how he arranged everything in his head, it felt like there was a gap the size of Qatar in everything he knew—an unknown unknown. Something he was so unaware of that he couldn’t even consider it.

But it was funny, really, how quickly the human mind adapted. To combat. To meeting alien life. To talking casually about things like Cybertron, and Autobots, and Megatron...

Maggie and Arcee were still talking. Well, that was good. For what felt like the first time in months, Jack smiled to himself. Even if a part of him wanted to be in there, to know what they were discussing. He got comfortable on the couch, shut his eyes for a beat, told himself he’d just rest them for a second—and everything caught up to him, and turned out the lights before he could do anything about it.