Transformers: Prometheus

CHAPTER 3

They drove for about twenty minutes, to the outskirts of suburbia, and up into the hills. Well, it drove. The motorcycle that was also a robot with the voice of a woman whom Jack hadn’t met before today. Jack didn’t know what to do or say, so, he clung to the handlebars and let the motorcycle go where it wanted.

Eventually, the motorcycle turned left, off the road and onto a dirt track, heading deep into a section of Californian national forest. The motorcycle’s headlights revealed nothing but the track and the massive trees, leviathans in the dark. Not for the first time, Jack wondered if the robot-motorcycle-woman was going to kill him. Except, were it (she?) wanting to do that, it (she?) could’ve done it earlier.

Unless it (she?) absolutely wanted to ensure there were no witnesses. But he had to trust the motorcycle. Maybe even wanted to. It (she?) certainly seemed friendlier than the one-eyed robot panther had.

Or the helicopter.

The motorcycle slowed to a stop. “Alright,” she said, voice buzzing from somewhere inside the vehicle. “Here’s our stop. Hop off.”

Jack hopped off. The motorcycle rolled forwards, and began to split to pieces. An arm lifted the rest of the bike off the ground, a pair of legs spinning into place, and the robot leapt to her feet in a handstand flip that would’ve made an Olympic gymnast envious. The robot turned about, the last few pieces of her motorcycle form sliding into place on her—what was that, body, shoulders, chassis?

Jack took a breath. The robot’s electric-blue eyes were like two stars in the gloom.

“Sadie?” Jack started.

“No. The name’s Arcee, but Sadie draws much less suspicion. You must have questions.”

“Questions? Sure. How about ‘what the hell are you?’”

“I’m an autonomous robotic organism from the planet Cybertron,” Arcee said, as if it was perfectly reasonable, as if it wasn’t a fundamental paradigm shift for him, for all of humanity. “Call me an Autobot.”

Whatever that was, she looked much closer to a motorcycle that’d decided to try standing up than any robot he’d ever seen—and much closer to humanoid than human.

Just like the helicopter. The same design hallmarks, the same general look.

They were the same. But this one was talking to him, and that counted for something.

“Right, okay,” Jack said. “And that thing, that one-eyed cat—what the fuck was that thing?”

“That thing, as you put it, is Ravage. A mechanimal. Albeit one so far modified from his original purpose that he’s become one of the Decepticons’ best infiltrators.”

“Decepti-what?”

“Think of me as a good robot,” Arcee said, waving at her chest, “and the Decepticons as bad robots. That will suffice for now.”

“Well, that seems right. You haven’t threatened to rip my arm off yet.”

“Ravage spoke to you, did he? That’s rare.”

Somehow, that didn’t do anything to make Jack feel better. He glanced at his arm again, the ruins of his jacket sleeve and the red marks of Ravage’s teeth. He could’ve ripped his arm off like it was nothing. The fact he’d chosen not to felt more concerning than the threat of it.

“And this Ravage,” Jack began. “He was looking for me?”

“I imagine he’s been stalking you for some time, waiting for the opportune moment to strike.”

“And you’ve been hunting him?”

Arcee shook her head. It was an oddly human expression. “I’ve been following you.”

“Well, thanks.” He scanned the trees, old instincts firing up, looking for any sign of that malevolent red eye... “Where’s Ravage now? Did you kill him?”

“Were it so easy,” Arcee remarked. “No, he escaped. I imagine he has gone to ground so he might communicate with his master and,” she added, with a slight smirk, “see to his wounds.”

“His master?”

“Soundwave.”

“Is he nearby?”

“By your frame of reference, no. But by mine? Yes.”

“Which means...”

Arcee tilted her head back. “He’s in orbit.”

“In orbit? You mean...” Jack turned his gaze to the clear night sky. He couldn’t see anything amiss, yet the stars had never felt more threatening. “How many of these Decepticons are there?”

“Three. That I’m aware of, at least. Ravage, Soundwave, and the third you already know—Blackout.”

The screams echoed through the trees, and he could smell the burning fuel. The footfalls of a titan, immune to anything they could throw at it. The obsidian giant, the nightmare helicopter, loomed out of his memories. Impossibly huge, impossibly murderous. Striding through SOCCENT, laying waste with clinical precision—

Jack squeezed his eyes shut, then opened them again.

“SOCCENT,” Jack whispered. “The base attack. That was— That was one of them? A Decepticon?”

Arcee had to be, what, nine feet tall? In his memories, Blackout was a colossus next to her. He swiped at his eyes. Weeping in front of the giant robot warrior seemed like a bad idea. Was it grief or joy? He didn’t know, but he wasn’t crazy.

It didn’t make him feel better.

“It was,” Arcee said softly. “Blackout is Megatron’s finest hunter. He was looking for something. Something of such importance that he allowed himself to be seen.” Arcee’s optics set on him again. “I have to know what it is.”

Jack shrugged. “I have no idea what he was there for. He just landed, and attacked, and killed everyone. If he had demands, I never heard them.”

“If we do not find whatever it is he is seeking, then he will strike again. Sergeant Darby, I need your help.”

Jack collapsed atop a tree stump, shaking his head.

“I’m not a Sergeant anymore, Arcee. I’m not some hero. All I did was survive. And everyone thinks I’m crazy for it.”

“Be that as it may,” she said, taking a knee. “But fate rarely calls upon us at a moment of our choosing.”

“I don’t want to fight anymore. I’ve seen Blackout, what he can do. How can we fight something like that?”

“The bigger they are, the harder they fall,” Arcee said. “I’m not asking you to fight, soldier boy. I need your help to figure out what Blackout was looking for—the rest, you can leave to me, if you so wish. But you are the only survivor. Ravage came to find you. There must be something we’re missing.”

“And if he came to find me,” Jack said, thinking, “then I doubt they’ll stop. If Ravage tells his boss that you stopped him...”

“Then their methods may not be so subtle next time.”

Jack took a deep breath, and let it out. Just like all the shock and trauma videos said to do. It never quite helped as much as everyone thought it would.

“Okay,” he said, hopping to his feet. “Alright, Arcee. It’s a deal.”

She nodded, rising to her full height. “Then first, we will need to go to ground. While Soundwave cannot monitor the whole telecommunication output of your world if he wishes to remain hidden, Ravage’s intelligence will point him here. Once hidden, we can begin—”

“Wait,” Jack said, realizing something. “No, I can’t. We have to go back for my mother.”

Arcee crossed her arms. “Excuse me?”

“She’s my mom, Arcee. If Ravage is so good at his job, then he has to know where I live. And if he knows that, then he knows my mom is there. If they can’t find me, they’ll go right after her. I’m not going to let that happen, Arcee.”

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, soldier boy, but I can’t seat more than one.”

“She won’t need to come with us. Look, this alien war or whatever means a lot to you, I get it. But my mom means more than that to me—if you want my help with your war, you help me get my mom out of the line of fire.”

Arcee tilted her head to the left, as if considering it.

“Fine,” she said. “Let’s roll.”

They had time, but Jack did not know how much. The way Arcee put it, Soundwave was in orbit, probably hooked into “one of your primitive satellites.” It would take him time to surreptitiously reach a spot from where he could monitor Jasper more closely—that is, if he wasn’t watching them already.

It was interesting, that. And reassuring. If this Soundwave had to move covertly, without arousing immediate notice or general suspicion from whoever was monitoring the skies, then perhaps these Decepticons weren’t as all-powerful as Blackout had appeared. Perhaps they could be beaten, Jack thought. The first step to defeating an enemy was acknowledging that no enemy was invincible.

That, his memories insisted, or this Soundwave needs to remain concealed and Blackout had no such concerns. But then, hadn’t Arcee implied that the massive helicopter had taken a risk in being seen? These Transformers, these robots in disguise—the disguise had to be vital, or they wouldn’t bother with it.

When it came to fighting, avoiding combat at all was the best approach—but exterminators didn’t hide from ants, did they?

Arcee pulled up outside Jack’s home. He hopped off and, after a moment, turned to face her. If it weren’t the middle of the night, he’d be worried about someone seeing him talking to himself—or, to be more precise, his motorcycle.

“Alright,” Jack said. “I’ll go in and get mom. If you wouldn’t mind staying here...”

“Where else am I going to go, soldier boy?”

“Point taken. Back in five.”

As he approached the front door, he couldn’t shake the feeling that Blackout would step over his house, or that Ravage would pounce upon him from the shadows. His palms were sweaty as he unlocked the front door and stepped inside. Everything was dark, but everything was as neat and tidy as his mom liked it.

Still.

He went straight for the master bedroom. He knocked on the door, found no response, and stepped inside. His mom was there, asleep. For a second, he’d almost thought she wouldn’t be there.

Jack stepped over, quietly, and kneeled down by the bedside table. “Hey, mom?”

She stirred, opened one eye.

“Jack?” A quick glance at the alarm clock. “It’s 2AM.”

“I know, mom. You trust me, right?”

She opened her other eye, and there was a brief flicker of something in the both of them. A deep concern. She knew just as he did that nothing good came of someone saying that. Hell, she’d probably taught him that.

“Jack, what’s wrong?”

“Do you have somewhere you can stay? Not here, not anywhere you’d need to use a credit card.”

“Excuse me?”

“It’s important, mom. You have to get out of the house. I don’t know for how long. A week, maybe more.”

She sat up. “Jack, what’s going on?”

“You have to get out of the house,” he repeated. “You still talk with Laura, right? Does she have a spare room? Or even just a couch. Something, anything.”

“I— Sure, maybe. But Jack—”

“Okay. You have to go right now. Don’t take your phone, don’t call anyone, don’t tell anyone where you’re going.”

Her expression fell. “Jack,” she said. “Hey, you’re slipping again. Just try and get some sleep, okay?” The concern in her voice was so very real.

“Mom, please. I know you think I’m crazy, I know everyone does. But please, please—I saw something tonight, something I can’t explain. And you have to get out of this house right now.”

Her eyes wavered from his face, and fell to the tatters of his sleeve. “What happened to your jacket?” She reached out and took his arm, examining the marks on his arm. “Did something bite you?”

“That’s what I’m talking about. I was attacked. It has to do with what happened at SOCCENT, the helicopter. They’re going to come back, and you can’t be here when they do.”

“Who’s they?”

Jack shook his head, unsure of what to say.

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” he said.

His mom studied the souvenir Ravage had left him with for a little longer. Then, her expression grave, she said, “Let me pack some things.”

Credit to his mother, she knew how to pack light. “Wait,” she said, as they passed the birdcage, the four birds slumbering soundly beneath their blanket. “The birds. I can’t leave the birds.”

Jack glanced at the window, to where Arcee was parked on the side of the road. All missions had snags, and this was one of them. No plans survived contact with the enemy—or, in this case, non-predatory birds.

“Can we transport them on a motorbike?”

“We’re not taking my car?”

“No, we can’t risk it. If they know where we live, they might know your car.”

“What do you mean, ‘a motorbike?’”

Jack pointed to the window, at Arcee. He almost expected her to flash her headlights in response. “That one.”

His mom stared, glanced at him, then back to the motorcycle.

“Since when did you buy a motorcycle? Since when can you ride a motorcycle? Jackson Darby, you couldn’t even ride a pushbike.”

“Maggie let me have it for a hundred dollars,” he said. “And I guess they teach you all kinds of things in the Army, huh? Mom, the birds—how do we transport them?”

“There’s a cage for veterinary emergencies,” she replied. “If we keep the blanket over the cage, they should be okay. But the engine on that thing might scare them to death, Jack.”

There was an ache in Jack’s chest then. The thought of getting his mom out of danger at the cost of the birds was almost enough to have him call the evacuation off. He gritted his teeth. “They’ll be fine, she can run real quiet. Hey, get the birds ready, I need to go check on the bike. Y’know, make sure we can all fit.”

If his mom thought he was acting any weirder than usual, she didn’t tell him so. Outside, Jack double-timed it over to Arcee. “That,” she remarked, “was longer than five minutes.”

“Okay. But I’m sorry, I have a request.”

“Lay it on me, soldier boy.”

“We have four more to transport.”

“I’m sorry, what?” Jack swore the mirror closest to him tilted like a goddamn eyebrow.

“Birds,” he said. “Just four little birds. Parakeets. They’re in a cage, but your engine might be a bit... loud. Can you run silent?”

Before tonight, he never would have worried about whether he could offend a motorcycle. How could this be real?

“Sure,” Arcee said, “but we’ll be in trouble if I have to do anything except drive from A to B.”

“We’ll make it work,” Jack replied, spotting his mom stepping out from the front door with a backpack on and the birdcage clutched in her arms. “Or think of it this way,” he muttered, “I’ll owe you one.”

Arcee made a sound that might’ve been a single note of laughter, or the first throaty gasp of an engine kicking to life. “Two, by my count.”