Transformers: Prometheus

CHAPTER 23

“It’s Ravage,” Jack said. “It’s the Decepticons. Soundwave’s been watching us the whole time. When you grabbed Arcee, you led them right here.”

He felt like a dinosaur talking about an incoming meteor. Banachek frowned. He was still frowning. Jack wasn’t sure he’d ever actually stopped since he’d first walked into that interrogation room. Everything was falling apart, and Jack was certain it was beyond Sector Seven’s ability to save. The question was how stubbornly they'd cling to the walls of everything they knew as it came down on top of them.

Simmons drew his hand from his ear. “We’ve been infiltrated. Three men down, but it sounds like the key areas are secure: Cube chamber, NBE-1 hangar, data center, generators. All no contact. I’ve got teams scouring the place for this guy—every level, every section. You, Sergeant! What’s he look like?”

It felt like an absurd question. “Think of a giant one-eyed panther made of knives and you’re not far off,” Jack replied. “It doesn’t matter what he looks like, because they won’t find him. What matters is that if he’s inside, then Soundwave knows everything he knows.”

"Impossible!" Simmons scoffed. "Didn't you hear the Director? Nothing gets in or out! Giant robots are one thing, wavelengths are another, kid."

"Yeah? Well, Arcee told me she detected the AllSpark, and there it is. I'll bet Ravage and Soundwave have us beaten on that front."

Banachek’s gaze was on the AllSpark. He had to be thinking the same thing Jack was. They were sitting on top of an object of phenomenal power, and the tyrant who’d do anything to use it as a weapon. The moment Ravage knew about either of them, Soundwave would know, and then—

“We’re abandoning Area 50,” Banachek said.

Simmons blanched. “What?!”

“The site is compromised, Seymour, there’s nothing to be done. This is a BLACK GRANITE contingency. Right now, we need to minimize the damage. Agent Simmons, I need you to get down to the data center—get everything backed up to the offsite, then ensure the physical destruction of the database. We cannot let these beings know how much we know. Then, get Darby’s friends and family out of here.”

Simmons looked like he was going to protest—Jack could read it in his wild eyes, his shocked expression—but then he nodded and marched out. Banachek turned to Lennox: “Captain, arm up. Under no circumstances can the generators be taken offline. Get everyone who can carry a weapon and keep them online as long as you can.”

Lennox’s expression was grim, but there was an eagerness in his eyes. “Copy that,” he said, and double-timed it out of the room. “Epps! Hustle!”

Jack pointed at the window, to the AllSpark. “And what about that?”

Banachek exhaled. “That is a problem. There’s nothing on Earth that can move the Cube.”

“Then take me to Arcee,” Jack said. “She’s an archaeologist. Her people had to move that thing at some point. She has to know how.”

Banachek nodded. "This way. Quickly."

Credit to Banachek, Jack thought, when the chips were down, he didn’t waste time. Everything had just changed. Banachek was flexible enough, at least, to know it.

Jack had thought the Hoover Dam base as a hive, and now it was like someone had jabbed the hive with a sharp stick. Sector Seven had planned for this but, Jack knew what they said about plans: they never survived contact with the enemy. As he hurried down the corridors, following in Banachek’s wake, he kept seeing Ravage, hearing his voice, imagining Blackout putting his fist through the dam and bringing the whole edifice down on them all...

“Something’s wrong,” Banachek said, glancing at his phone.

“I don’t like the sound of that.”

“We’ve just lost outside comms. Internals are still working, so, it’s not us. But we’re getting nothing from the outside world. This phone,” he said, raising it as he raced along, “connects to a military satellite. There’s nothing in the world that should know I’m using it, much less take it down with anything short of a direct strike.”

Jack frowned. If you were going to launch an attack, the first thing you did was make sure the bad guys couldn’t let anyone know it was coming—or that they’d been hit. “It’s Soundwave, this is what he does. The Decepticons are coming, and they know we can hurt them. We’re going to be blind when they get here!”

Soundwave was going all-in. Either Megatron or the AllSpark or both was enough for him to put his cards on the table. And Jack doubted he was stupid enough to do it without a plan. The corridor shook. Jack stumbled, Banachek steadied himself against the wall.

“What the hell was that?” Jack asked.

“This is Banachek, talk to me,” the Director said, into his mic. He didn’t frown this time. His expression flattened out toward neutral. “We just lost a generator. We can hold NBE-1 with fifty percent capacity, but I’m willing to bet we’ll be at zero within fifteen minutes.”

Jack took a breath. “And Arcee?”

“Through here,” Banachek said, indicating a pair of heavy doors. “But Sergeant, listen—”

Jack pushed past him. Inside, his first thought was of an operating theater. The old architecture of the dam contrasted against gleaming surgical steel and lights. A dozen men in hazmat yellow were clustered around the world’s largest operating table. It took Jack a few seconds to make out the familiar angles through the cryostatic haze, the green armor bathed with frost.

“Stop!” Jack shouted. “What the hell, stop! Stop!”

Arcee wasn’t moving. For an awful second, he had the thought he’d been too late. Banachek raced to the control panel, barking at the operator there: “No! No! Stop, stop! Release the NBE!” He had the temerity to sound sincere, at least. “Cut those damn cables!”

They’d tied her down with steel cables, wrapped them around her legs and arms. Sector Seven technicians released each one, and the sound of the first set the whole chamber ringing, then the second, and her arms were free, and the third—

Arcee leaped from the operating table like a goddamn viper, screaming. The fourth cable snapped taut, and she hit the deck like a crashing helicopter—whirling, thrashing. The guards raised their weapons, stepping forward, and Jack got between them. “Don’t!”

“Stay back!” Banachek barked, but it took Jack a moment to realize he was ordering his guards to stand down. Jack turned toward Arcee, and she was screaming: “I’ll kill you! I’ll rip you all apart!”

“Arcee!” Jack called, taking a step closer. “It’s me!” Another step, raising his hands, as Arcee yanked again and again at the last chain holding her to the operating table. Christ, it was an operating table. He didn’t want to think about that. “Arcee, it’s okay! It’s me!”

He’d seen a lot of expressions flicker across her facial plating, but this was different—nothing but rage and fury, fear and terror. But she still had enough of her wits to raise her right arm, pump it like she was racking a shotgun, and shift her forearm into its blaster configuration. She swung it left and right and behind her and at everyone and everything.

“Stand down,” Banachek was shouting to his men, “Hold your fire! Get back!”

“Arcee!” Jack called, hoping she could hear him without sounding like he was shouting. “Arcee, it’s me! Soldier boy!”

Snarling, she swung her arm-cannon to bear. Straight at him. The inner barrel was spinning with an ominous hum that set Jack’s teeth on edge. He’d seen what it’d done to Frenzy. He didn’t want to think about what it’d do to him—and anyone standing behind him.

If she fired, he doubted he’d feel anything. That wouldn’t be so bad. Everything went slow, the same way it always did when the adrenaline spiked high. It was like he could see every inch of the barrel’s spin, feel each of his heartbeats. He had no idea what the fuck he could do. How he could reach her. But there was something, a thought...

Jack took a deep breath, kept his gaze locked to her optics, and tried to sing.

“I feel so extraordinary, something’s got a hold on me...”

Her cannon did not waver. Jack, aware he was suddenly sweating, swallowed.

“I get this feeling I’m in motion, a sudden sense of—”

“Liberty,” Arcee whispered, and her optics locked to him, saw him.

“Jack?”

“Yeah. It’s me.” Slowly, carefully, Jack reached for her arm-cannon and—calmly, gently—pushed it away and down, toward the floor. She let him. Her facial plates shifted in an expression he couldn’t quite read. “It’s really you.”

“It’s really me.”

He recognized the next fluctuations across her face—shock, relief, pain.

“They were hurting me. I asked them to stop. I begged them to— They wouldn’t listen to me. Freezing my limbs, shorting electricity through my protoform, leeching energon from my relays...” She frowned and, just for a second, Jack glimpsed the embers of that murderous fury. “I should kill them. I should kill them all. I should kill you for letting me believe that your species was different!”

The agony in her voice might as well have been a knife between his ribs. He kept his hand on her arm-cannon, even if there was nothing he could do to stop her. But she didn’t move one muscle or servo or whatever it was she had.

“Arcee,” Jack said. “Listen to me. I’m not going to ask if you’re okay. I know you’re not, and I know you hate those questions. I need you to trust me like you’ve never trusted me before. We’ll deal with these guys later. But right now, the Decepticons are here, and so's Megatron.”

“What?”

“Ravage has infiltrated this facility, which means the others won’t be far behind—and trust me, they’ll be bringing everyone and everything.” He ran a hand through his hair, unsure of how to put the rest of it. Arcee slumped forward.

“Jack, I can’t fight. I’m not even sure I can walk.”

“Yes you can, Arcee,” Jack said. “Yes you can. Because you’re the toughest goddamn motorcycle I’ve ever met. And,” and screw it, he thought, might as well bring out the big guns, the same way everyone else had.

“I’m gonna take you to the AllSpark.”

If there was one tactic that might break an archaeologist-turned-warrior-turned-motorcycle out of her despair, it had to be taking her to see the principal relic of her civilization. Arcee lurched along, limping and loping, as Jack led the way through the underground thoroughfares of Area 50. She’d accepted it without another word. She might’ve been too far gone to put up a fight.

The alarms were constant now, and the Sector Seven personnel were divided between evacuating the facility and preparing for war. But whatever preparation they made, whatever they had drilled for, Jack doubted it’d be enough.

He glanced at Arcee again. He wanted to help her, but had no idea how. There was the human crutch carry, sure—except she was much too tall for it and still, even now, probably too proud. But she kept pace, and did it without any hint of discomfort.

They met Lennox and Epps where they were halfway to the AllSpark cavern. Epps nodded to Jack like it’d only been five minutes since they’d last seen each other, and then make the sign of the cross when he spotted Arcee.

“Situation’s bad, Director,” Lennox said. “We can’t pin the robot cat down. Damn thing tore through the walls and ripped out half the cryo pumps.”

“Then we’re losing NBE-1,” Banachek replied, like it was nothing but a fact. “And communications?”

“Still shot to hell and back. Shortwave radio is about the best we’ve got. To make matters worse, we’ve got guys outside saying they spotted a F-22 up high.”

“Then they’ve got air support. Sergeant,” Banachek said, glancing at Jack, “I hope your NBE friend knows something about this Cube.”

They stepped into the vast AllSpark cavern. The ground shook, but Jack felt no fear—Sector Seven had built the place to last. Arcee stepped up next to him, and he couldn’t help but look up at her face. She stood in awe—optics wide, mouth open.

“It can’t be,” she whispered. “It’s been here, all this time...”

“You were supposed to come here, Arcee,” Jack said, nodding to her. “You didn’t dishonor anything or anyone. You’re here for a reason. And we need to keep the AllSpark away from the Decepticons. We can’t move it. We don’t know how. But I’m really hoping you know something.”

“I don’t... I never studied... I can’t. Only a Prime could— Oh, Jack, can’t you hear it? It’s beautiful. It’s calling to me.” She shook her head, again and again. “I’m not worthy.”

Jack shook his head, and tugged at Arcee’s hand. “Let’s put that to the test, ‘Cee. Come on.”

“Jack.”

“Arcee, come on.”

She came with him, lurching along. Then, when they were about halfway there, Arcee drew herself up to her full height, set her shoulders back, and quickened her pace. So much so that, in the space of a few meters, Jack had to jog to keep up—and then, paused, stopped, and let Arcee go.

In the shadow of the cube, she might as well have been insignificant. Arcee stepped up to it with a distinct sense of care, of observance. Like she was preparing to handle a delicate crystal sculpture and not a monolithic mass of metal. She looked left and right, taking it all in, like she was looking for something. Then, flexing her hands once, she raised her arms—

“She’s doing something,” Epps murmured. “Oh, she’s doing something.”

Arcee, her hands barely an inch away from the intricate surface of the AllSpark, closed her optics.

“Primus,” she whispered. “Please. Hear your daughter, and light her darkest hour.”

And set her hands on AllSpark.

And the AllSpark—

The AllSpark pulsed. It flared so brightly that Jack had to clamp his eyes shut lest he be blinded and, when he opened them, there was no need for the floodlights and work lamps because the AllSpark was providing all the light it needed. Every etching, every pattern, every glyph and symbol--all of it, blazing with cobalt incandescence, glowing from the inside out.

Primus, it seemed, had heard his daughter’s prayer.

The AllSpark moved. Jack had no other way to describe it. It split into a hundred smaller parts, miniature cubes—or more than that, a thousand, so many that Jack couldn’t hope to count, just many, and so many, and the multitude of miniature cubes folded back into each other. Like the AllSpark was collapsing into itself and toward Arcee. It was impossible, Jack thought, as he watched the AllSpark pack itself away. Thousands of cubes somehow becoming one. All of them occupying the same space.

It didn’t fall into Arcee’s waiting hands, so much as it was just there. Like she’d reached up and plucked the enormous artifact off the world’s largest shelf. The awe was spellbinding, dizzying. He might as well have watched Mount Everest compress itself down into something no larger than a football.

It was insane. It was impossible. It had happened. He remembered something vaguely about a lost art.

Arcee turned. In her hands, the AllSpark was inert again. And she—

She looked different. It took Jack a moment. It wasn’t just that she was standing taller, that she’d regained that familiar imperious smirk, that her optics were burning brighter. It was that she was gleaming. The scratches and scars and beaten edges of her armor, markings that seemed as much a part of her as her tribal glyphs, were simply gone.

“AllSpark secure,” she said. “Let’s get moving.”