CHAPTER 4
About fifteen minutes later, Jack watched from atop Arcee as his mother tried to explain the situation to her friend Laura. They turned in his direction, his mom still talking, and Jack threw them both a casual wave, like it was normal for this to be happening. To be dropping his mother off after midnight. With no warning. With her birds. Via a motorcycle. Without a helmet.
“Note to self,” Jack said, as the front door closed, “Get a motorcycle helmet.” He looked down at Arcee’s dashboard—all digital and cutting edge. “Will my mom be safe here?”
“Don’t ask me. You picked it, soldier boy.” The lights of her dash pulsed in time with her words.
“Well, it turns out my battlefield experience doesn’t include giant man-hunting robo-cats.” Jack sighed. “Your expert opinion, please.”
Arcee rumbled. “Given what I know of Ravage, my estimation is that your mother shall be safe. Providing she doesn’t call you. If she remains here, and makes no attempt to contact you, then Soundwave should not be alerted to her presence.”
“Okay,” Jack said. It wasn’t much, but it’d have to do. “Good. Let’s go, Arcee.”
Arcee pulled out into the street. It was weird to be in the driver’s seat, to have his hands on the handlebars and throttle, and yet be aware that he wasn’t in control. Jack tried to put it from his mind. Arcee had to be a better driver than he was. The quiet streets of moonlit suburbia streaked past.
As of right now, he had a mission. Figure out why the Decepticons had an interest in him—and then, after that, see if they could be stopped. It was one hell of an operation and, when it came to planning an operation, the previous Secretary of Defense had said that there were two big problems—known unknowns and unknown unknowns. Gaps in your knowledge and capabilities that you were aware of, and gaps that you were not. Riding on the back of an alien motorcycle, Jack figured it was time to see just how big the two gaps might be.
“Arcee, I’m thinking that we should establish some ground rules.”
“That would be prudent.”
“So, let me guess—the first rule of robot fight club is that you do not talk about robot fight club.”
“Correct.”
“Okay,” Jack said. “Why?”
“Beyond that your governments would attempt to use us as part of your internecine conflicts? Beyond the fact that they would likely strip me down for parts? My kind has encountered organic species before.”
“I don’t know about that.” For some reason, he felt slighted. “I mean, you seem pretty personable for a motorcycle.”
“And you seem pretty personable—for an organic,” Arcee fired back. “I’ve seen enough of your world to know that I would not bet my spark on the benevolence of your people.”
Arcee drove for a time. “Hey,” Jack began, “just how long have you been on Earth anyway?”
“Four years, nine months, and twenty-seven days.”
“You make it sound like a prison sentence.”
“Back to the topic at hand,” Arcee said, “The reason we do not discuss ‘robot fight club’ is also because it will make it easier for Soundwave to locate us.”
“And how does he do that?”
“Like I said, soldier boy: telecommunications, wireless transmissions, and whatever visuals he can acquire from orbit.”
Jack nodded. It was why he’d left his phone behind, too. Arcee had said that Ravage could pass its “scent” to his master—whatever that meant.
“So, Soundwave plus Ravage. Two threats. One in the air, one on the ground.”
“Not quite,” Arcee said. “Ravage is Soundwave’s top lieutenant, but he has two other lackeys: Frenzy and Rumble. But their personalities are ill-suited for extended reconnaissance.”
“So, what are they? His muscle?”
“Essentially. Constructicons who signed on with the Decepticon cause. What they lack in skill, they make up in brute force.” Arcee’s engine hummed as she swapped gears. “And then there’s Laserbeak, of course.”
Which made, what, five? Jack made a note. “What’s their deal?”
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“Spy. Recon and sabotage. Another mechanimal. Like one of those, what did you call them, parakeets. Just bigger and much more sadistic.”
Jack nodded. “Right. Okay. Was this guy running a zoo back on... Cybertron, was it?”
“You’re very funny,” Arcee remarked dryly.
“What’re you’re odds like in a fight?”
“Against any one of them—please, don't insult me. But any number of opponents above two, and I wouldn’t want to them to pick the battlefield.”
Jack plotted it out in his mind. It really was a good thing that Arcee could handle the driving. An enemy AWACS in the air, one recon asset on the ground. Two heavies held in reserve, and a fourth of unclear disposition. Plus Blackout, the MH-53 with the highest recorded kill count in history.
Not a fight they could win.
“Alright, that’s our strategic situation,” Jack said. “How about tactical?”
“We can sense each other over long distances, but not with enough clarity to determine even an approximate location.”
“Okay, great.”
“Our vehicle modes conceal our energon signatures better than our robot modes. If we don’t alert Soundwave to our presence, we only stand a risk of being discovered if we end up within the visual range of a Decepticon. And even then, only if we’re burning energon.”
“Which is a bit of a problem, given that you guys can seem to be anything—cats, helicopters, motorcycles, satellites, giant birds.”
“Not anything,” Arcee said, as if he was an idiot. “Mass-shifting is a lost art.”
Despite himself, Jack grinned. He almost felt free. “‘It doesn’t work like that,’” he said, putting on an Austrian accent. “‘Only an object of equal size.’”
Excepting the hum of her engine, Arcee was silent.
“I’m sorry, what’s with the accent?”
“You haven’t seen Terminator?”
“Not since the Second Battle of Perihex, why?”
He snorted, chuckling: “It’s a movie, Arcee.”
“It’s irrelevant,” Arcee shot back. “Now, we should figure out where we’re heading, before Soundwave terminates us.”
“Any ideas?”
“No. You?”
“We need somewhere to catch our breath,” Jack said, thinking.
“Somewhere you haven’t been recently. We can’t know how long Ravage has been observing you for, so, let’s assume it’s been ever since the attack.”
“Right.” Jack thought for a little longer as Arcee weaved around another late-night motorist who must’ve been going too slow for her liking. Yeah, he really needed to get a helmet. Getting the police on their tail because he wasn’t wearing one would be just perfect. Somewhere to go. Somewhere to rest. Somewhere to try and get some intel...
“I’ve got just the place.”
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Maggie stared at Jack through the gap in her front door. Her blonde hair was in disarray. “Jack,” she asked, yawning. “What the hell? Is that your bike?”
There was nowhere else to go. Glen had been the more obvious choice, but if there was one place in LA that Ravage might’ve tracked Jack to, it would be there. But Jack hadn’t been to Maggie’s family home, not for years, and not since returning to LA. It wasn’t perfect, but short of camping under an overpass, it had to be the best possible option.
“Long story,” Jack replied. “But kind of. I know this is sudden, Maggie, but I need a place to stay.”
“Your mum kick you out or something? Jack...”
“No. Uh, I think if we look at it objectively, I kicked her out.”
“What’re you talking about?”
“I can explain in the morning,” Jack said. “I just need somewhere to put—” He caught himself, hoped Maggie didn’t notice. “My bike. My completely normal bike.”
“Please don’t tell me you killed that Sadie girl and took her bike. I always figured I’d end up being an unwitting accomplice to something, sure—but to something Glen did.”
“Like I said, long story. But I promise no crimes have been conducted. Speaking of Glen, actually—can we get him over here tomorrow morning?”
“Tomorrow morning? Jack, it is tomorrow morning. I— Yes? Probably?”
“Cool. Because he’ll want to hear this, too. He’ll lose his mind. Just don’t use your phone to do it. Someone might be listening.”
“Jack.” Maggie’s blue eyes flitted over to Arcee. “What’s going on, mate? Like, don’t take this the wrong way, but this is all sounding pretty... odd.”
“It’s been a pretty odd night. I’ll sleep on it, and we’ll all talk about it in the morning. If you still think I’m delusional, then I’ll head down to the hospital and check myself in. You can even drag me there if that’s what it takes. I just wouldn’t be here if I didn’t think it was important, Mags.”
Maggie watched him for another moment. “I will drag your butt down there, Jack. But that’s a problem for Tomorrow Maggie. Let me get the garage open, but the couch is a real BYO blankets situation. And I’ll be checking the rego on that bike.”
And that, Jack thought, might be a problem—but one for Tomorrow Jack. Maggie shut the door and, shortly afterward, the garage door began to rise. Jack went back to the driveway, took Arcee by the throttle, and began to walk her toward the lights of the garage. It felt oddly like he was taking her by the hand—that was, if she wasn’t a nine-foot tall robot.
“This is undignified,” Arcee muttered.
“Hey, relax,” Jack replied, out of the corner of his mouth. “I won’t tell a soul.”
“Good. Because let me make one thing clear, Sergeant—were you to do so, you’d quickly find that you could no more evade my wrath than you could your own shadow.”
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It felt rude to leave Arcee in the garage, but it wasn’t like she could hang out in the house itself, and she appeared to resent the idea of hospitality in the first place. Extend the olive branch, and she’d sharpen it into a spear. She wasn’t a motorcycle, not really—but she wasn’t human, either.
Autobots. Decepticons. A secret war waged for reasons which it appeared Arcee didn’t know. Had he not seen Ravage and heard him talk, not seen the astounding way Arcee could shift her body from motorcycle to robot and back again, he’d not believe it. First contact with alien life, and it was unlike anything he could imagine.
He lay there for however long, looking at the ceiling. Maggie was true to her word and hadn’t provided blankets, and he was a bit too tall for her couch, but he’d slept in worse places. Shadows danced across the ceiling, branches and headlights, and Jack saw Blackout and Ravage and death, and nothing that connected him to it. Nothing that explained why the true first contact with these machines consisted of a massacre.
Still, the thoughts were further away than they’d ever been. For the first time in three months, Jack Darby thought there was the possibility of hope. It’d recede away, it always did, but he breathed it in while he could.
Eventually, he slept—and there were no nightmares.