CHAPTER 30

There was an insane alien war breaking out in the middle of an American city she’d never given much thought to before she found herself in it and, as Sam Witwicky raced through the streets of Mission City, dodging panicking people with a goddamn alien space cube under her arm, all she could think was: why the heck did I stop taking track?!

“Go!” Arcee barked, keeping pace, “Keep moving! Don’t stop!” Christ, no wonder she and Jack got along so well, she was like some kind of drill sergeant—

Something hit her. Sam yelped, more from shock than pain, as she bounced over the hood of a blue sedan, and the AllSpark went flying from her grip, bounced against the sidewalk, and—

A pulse of light and sound, like she’s tasting lightning, like she’s dreaming, but she’s aware she’s still awake. An impression of a power so magnificent that it left an imprint upon the particles of the universe itself (and how does she know that? ((and how does she know that?))

Her mind gropes for something that fits. She’s seven years old, at the beach. A rogue wave swamps her, covering her, and the enormity of that sensation—that flickering process, a system jarred to awakening, a mind seeking its instruments, its body—warps her perceptions like a star warps gravity.

Creation? No. That's comparing a fluttering candle to a raging fire. More. It rips through her like a supernova shockwave, or the wailing cry of her mother. It is cold, but the warmth of it plays across her nerves and neurons like a child slapping a xylophone—and in that song, in a language she doesn’t quite understand, there’s a clear lament. The loss of uncountable lives and the wish for a millennia more. Sorrow, darkness, war, the Creators. Gone.

Everything. Gone.

Sam coughed as she picked herself up. The driver of the sedan was halfway out of his car, stammering an apology, but Sam ignored him. The AllSpark lay on the sidewalk, and something glimmered in the intricate carvings, dimming down to nothing. Arcee grabbed her by the shoulder.

“What did you do?” she snapped.

“Me?”

“You dropped the AllSpark! I told you not to drop it!”

“What?” Sam shook her head. “Told me? You didn’t tell me anything! The only thing anyone has told me is that I need to run this weird cube over to that white building—and no one told me it could do that!”

Whatever the hell that was.

Arcee tilted her head, optics narrowing. Her mouthplates shifted.

“Okay, yes, that was Darby. Fine. You got me. Now, catch your breath, and get moving, because—”

Tok. The sound was familiar, and the cause of it popped against Arcee’s back, spraying liquid. Chartreuse fluid, fizzing and bubbling, ran over Arcee’s plates and down her arms and dripped against the pavement. “What on...”

Sam peered around Arcee. Had the driver thrown something at her? She was going to give the guy a piece of her mind—first he hits her with his car, then he throws something at her friend’s motorcycle, come on—when something lurched out of alley a few meters up the street.

It had four arms, and was about as wide as it was tall. If Bumblebee looked like someone had combined a Camaro with a Terminator, then this thing, covered in Mountain Dew iconography, had to have been a vending machine.

But there was something wrong about it. Sam wasn’t sure what. It stared at her, and she stared back, trying to figure it out. The Autobots had a sense of beauty about them, even in their insane angular complexity. The Decepticons, too. But this? This guy was hunched over, and his arms weren’t the same size...

And one arm, the lower right one, ended in a cannon that was packed with—

Sam blinked.

It was packed with cans of Mountain Dew.

“What,” she asked, “is that?”

Arcee muttered something that sounded like, of all things, a growl.

Sam raised her hand, looking back at the Mountain Dew bot. “Hey. It’s okay. We’re all friends here. Right?”

The vending machine raised its arm. The one that ended in a cannon. Sam took a step back, and the Mountain Dew cannon spun like one of those old school cowboy guns, and a can slotted into place with a distinct thunk.

Arcee’s reflexes were quicker. She fired once, shot the walking vending machine right in the chest, right next to the Mountain Dew logo. The vending machine collapsed, smoking.

“Arcee,” Sam began, “What the hell was that?”

“A sparkless abomination,” Arcee replied, shaking her head, and then shook her arms out. “Oh, Primus, I better not rust.”

“Did the AllSpark—”

“I don’t know. Pick it up, and get moving.”

Sam stepped over to the AllSpark and reached out, slowly, and tapped it. She flinched, because she was sure it was going to zap her, but nothing happened. She picked it up, and got a better grip on it this time.

“The extraction point isn’t far,” Arcee said. “You’re almost there, and I’ll be with you every step of the way. Let’s go, Sam.”

Sam took a breath, and got running again. By now, the streets were mostly empty, and the sounds of combat receded away behind them. She had no idea what that meant, though, the fact that they were still fighting. Did that mean the good guys were winning, or were they losing?

A shape ripped through the air above them, and Sam caught the glimpse of a sleek, silver shape in the reflections of the windows and storefronts. “Starscream!” Arcee barked. “Run!”

The Decepticon who’d blown off Bumblebee’s legs spun in mid-air, splitting into segments and pieces, wings slotting behind his shoulders like a malevolent angel, and dropped into the middle of the street. He spat something in Cybertronian, raising an arm and letting rip with his machine gun, the hail of bullets missing Arcee by sheer inches.

Arcee dove for cover behind a parked van and came up shooting. Some of the shots struck true, molten metal popping from Starscream’s chest and shoulders, but he was so much bigger than her. Sam figured he could take plenty of hits—and, the last thing she should be doing, was waiting around to see whether she was right.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

Sam dove down the next alley, AllSpark in her arms, and ran for it. She turned right, slipping for a moment, and made for the white building. As she ran for it, a pair of jets streaked overhead. For a second, she thought of Starscream, but it had to be the Air Force. Lennox’s guy had said something about needing to contact them.

Which meant they maybe had a chance.

The cavalry might have arrived, but Starscream roared out of the next street over, taking to the skies. Whether that meant Arcee was alive or dead, Sam had no clue. She just kept running. All she had to do was keep running. All she had to do to save the whole damn world was keep running. She could do that. She was a Witwicky—no sacrifice, like her dad always said, no victory.

The white building, whatever it had been, was long abandoned. Many of the windows were broken, and the white facade had become a fantastic canvas for Mission City’s graffiti artists. And, to Sam’s dismay, it had to be ten stories tall. She shouldered through the unlocked gate before she realized it could be locked, and raced inside.

It was huge, like a massive hotel lobby, and utterly empty. Sam had no idea where she was going, but figured the stairs were the best way to reach the roof. She’d just hit the stairwell when something crashed through behind her, something massive, and she heard two stomping feet, and Megatron snarled, “I know you’re here, girl! I can smell you!”

“Why the fuck does he have to make it so creepy!” Sam muttered, fighting through the stitch, and finding her second wind, bounding up the stairs two at a time at such a pace that Coach Nelson would’ve had a heart attack. It wasn’t like Megatron could even fit—

Megatron rose up through the stairwell like a raging ogre, one hand outstretched, ripping through the place she’d just been. Sam screamed, diving out of the way, Megatron’s voice booming so loud that she felt it in her bones: “Give me the cube, girl!”

“Come and get it!” Oh, God, did she really just say that?

Soon, she pushed out through the roof exit, and took a ladder to the roof. Her legs were like jelly, and her lungs were burning, but her body seemed to understand that a bit of lactic acid was nothing compared to being crushed by Megatron. And there, heading her way, were a pair of black helicopters.

Sam reached for the flare in her pocket, fumbled it, checked the instructions and, swearing, pulled and twisted and set it off. She ran with it, the bright red flare held high, the AllSpark under her arm, screaming, “Hey! Over here!”

The helicopters turned in, heading for the far side of the roof. Sam ran for it, giddy and exhausted and more than a little terrified, and aware that Megatron could be only seconds away. A crewman was there in the middle compartment, holding out his hands to grab the cube or her and Sam figured she’d give him the AllSpark first, when something shimmered at the edge of her vision, and some part of her threw her to the ground.

The helicopter came apart, hot and loud, and Sam felt the tail of it sweep inches above her as it spun to its death. She caught a glimpse of the second helicopter taking a missile, too, falling to the ground in two pieces—and Starscream, in his jet form, pulling up and away, afterburners bright.

“No,” Sam muttered. “No, no, no...”

The far side of the roof exploded, and Megatron punched his way to the rooftop itself, dragging himself through the wreckage. Now, there was only terror. Sam, unsure of what else to do, but knowing she only had to get away, that everyone was counting on her to keep the goddamn space cube out of that robot’s hands, had no idea where to go.

But the edge of the roof was the furthest place from Megatron. So, she clutched the stone statue of the pretty lady—who was she, an angel, a Greek god, someone who could surely give her some luck—and shimmied around it to put it between her and Megatron.

For all the good a single statue would do.

Megatron rose up to his full height. “Is it fear or courage that compels you, fleshling?”

The strange thing was that he sounded sincere. He sounded genuinely curious, perhaps even confused. But he didn’t sound evil, didn’t sound like he was mocking her. She tried to shimmy further, and her foot slipped. She made the mistake of looking down, and her stomach lurched into her sternum. Gravity was so much more stronger than it had been just a few seconds ago.

Megatron took a step forward, and then another. The flare, somewhere on the roof, gave him a demonic aura.

“No matter," he said. "We have a connection, you and I.”

She dug her fingernails in against the stone, gritting her teeth. “Yeah, you’re a real nice guy, huh?” She shut her eyes. “Oh, don’t look down, Sam, don’t look down...”

Megatron came closer. “Your ancestor, he was to give me that cube.” Just a few feet away, the massive Decepticon leaned down, took a knee. “To you, I extend a similar offer,” he said. “Give me the AllSpark, and I’ll let you live to be my pet.”

Another set of helicopters swept past. The wake of their rotors almost tugged Sam free from the statue. For a second, she thought she could reach them if she jumped. Megatron watched them go. They were so close, it was like she could read the expressions on his facial plates.

And he was sincere. The way he spoke, how he held himself. The worst part was that he wasn’t lying. He could’ve killed her with all the ease of swatting a fly, but it wasn't about that. True evil didn’t lie, it didn’t have to. He would offer her the hand of friendship, and then kill her if she refused.

Her and Jack and the Autobots and her parents and everyone.

She swallowed. It all came down to this, and she was so wired on adrenaline at this point that she felt like crying. Instead, she took a breath, steeled herself, and shouted, “I am never giving you this AllSpark!”

Megatron’s visage flickered, and he rose up to his full height. “Such heroic nonsense,” he said, shaking his head, and stomped at the corner of the rooftop. It shattered, collapsing, the statue breaking free, and Sam, screaming, tumbling, clutching the AllSpark in her arms, went with it.

She fell, and that was that. With the world spinning around her, and her mind eclipsed by terror, Sam Witwicky had just enough grip on herself to wonder if it would hurt. And then an impact, hard but oddly gentle, and the sense of a giant’s hand closing around her.

“I’ve got you, girl,” Optimus intoned, clutching her between his windshield segments. He’d managed to jam himself into the gap between buildings, had managed to catch her.

“Hold on to the cube,” Optimus continued, and dropped, hopping from wall to wall like the world's largest parkour artist. Sam caught a glimpse of Megatron leaping down to follow them, the two giant robots shredding the buildings like giants in a playground, every crashing impact sending bricks and glass and concrete and steel to the street below.

They’d just about reached the ground when Megatron slammed into Optimus from above and behind. The impact sent them both hurtling through the air, Optimus crying out, his massive hand cradling Sam, like he was trying to protect her no matter what, and they impact blasted Sam’s senses away from her.

Then, she was groaning, and the world was screaming. They had to have landed in a part of the city that hadn’t got the memo. Her head was throbbing, bleeding. Optimus drew his hand away from her, groaning, and Sam noticed the damage to his chest—the shattered glass, the charred and melted metal...

“Sam,” Optimus said, armor retracting from his face. There was fatigue in his voice, and pain in his optics. “You risked your life to protect the AllSpark.”

Sam nodded, squeezing it in her arms. “Yeah. No sacrifice, no victory.”

Optimus didn’t say anything. His optics wandered away from her, just for a second. The impact had shattered the road, and Sam wondered how badly it had injured him, too.

Then, his gaze returned to her.

“If I cannot defeat Megatron, then you must push the AllSpark into my chest. I will sacrifice myself to destroy it.” Nearby, she could hear Megatron rising, muttering about something being disgusting, and Optimus added, “Get behind me.”

Sam jumped down from Optimus’ chest, and the Autobot slammed one fist against the broken road, rising to his feet. “It’s just you and me, Megatron.”

And there Megatron stood, arms spread. “No, it’s just me, Prime!”

He’d been waiting. If he was hurt, then it wasn’t nearly as obvious as Optimus’ damage. Optimus was desperate, wounded and hurting, and Megatron was content to play nice, to be patient. A horrible, sinking pit opened in Sam’s gut. Clutching the AllSpark, she ducked behind a flipped car, and pressed herself to the road, like that’d help.

“At the end of this day,” Optimus said, and drew his energon sword, “one shall stand, and one shall fall.”

Megatron nodded, a dark smile splitting his features, and closed like he was greeting an old friend. Here it was, the winner takes all bout: Megatron versus Optimus, and her with the best seat in the house. One of them would die, or both of them. But, from where Sam was hiding, it sure as hell didn’t look like Optimus would be the one standing at the end of it.

“Come on, Optimus,” she whispered, and glanced down at the AllSpark. “Come on...”