Alien 5
Alien
Chapter 5
[Transformers, 2007 movie] The defeat of Megatron and the defense of earth has left everyone the chance to relax a little. Now, if only that was all that was out there...
Characters/Pairings: Sam, Mikaela and Autobots, OCs. Gen, but features a little Sam/Mikaela for canon reasons.
Ratings and Warnings: OC-heavy, a very little violence and language, psuedoscience, PG-13/T for safety.
Previous Chapters:
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
FFnet Link
Alien: Chapter 5
Author's Notes: This chapter changed as of August 8th, 2007. Thank you very, very much, Epona Harper, for giving me well-deserved concrit. It helps me improve!
oOoOoOo
The eight scientists were alternating between hanging around doing nothing much and busying themselves setting up their lab when the first samples were brought in.
The footage, they had all agreed, wasn’t helpful in specifics; nobody could get enough detail out of it to identify anything other than branches moving freakishly fast. The first batch of samples-fifty of them, all neatly encapsulated in sample jars-was the first real look at the infected material.
“It’s not moving,” noted the zoologist as they all approached the cart they had been wheeled in on.
“Figs,” said the athletic botanist, Evan Fitzgerald, somewhat cryptically. “Caprifigs.”
“You’re right,” said Irene Gray, eyes fixed keenly on the samples. “They’re all figs.”
“Like the fruit?” asked Louise Brant, one of the lab assistants.
The third botanist, the older gentleman, William Curtis, started talking. “Yes. Not exactly the same plant, but in the same genus-Ficus.”
“Not a fruit,” muttered Evan.
“What do you mean by that?” asked Kristine, pushing her blonde hair away from her eyes and frowning.
“I’ll help you,” said the second biologist, Keats Anders, quietly.
“What you would think of as the fig itself, the part you eat, is actually called a syconium,” Evan continued. “The flowers and fruiting bodies are inside of the flower, where they’re fertilized by fig wasps, which get in through the ostiole-”
“I’ll get started looking at fig wasps,” said Kristine. “It sounds like a good place for me to begin-you know, what with how they were moving around and all.”
“Have you worked with figs before?” asked Irene.
“A little,” he frowned. “I know enough to say that these are all caprifigs. That narrows it down some-family Moraceae, genus Ficus, subfamily Caprinae.”
“I’m going to go do basic research,” said William, frowning slightly. “I haven’t worked with figs since some basics back in school.”
“I want to start mapping out which species have been infected,” Irene said. “I want to figure out how much it has spread, find out how universal this is. Would one of you help me?” she asked, turning to face the two lab assistants.
“I will,” said one of them-George Tanaka. His voice was slightly nervous.
Evan was looking a little distant, caught up in his own thoughts. “I’ll start general experimenting, then,” he said thoughtfully. “Would you be willing to help me, Mrs.-Brant, right?”
“It’s Brant alright, honey, but just call me Louise,” the woman said, looking far more amused than she should. “Plus, I think you outrank me right now.”
The soldier who had wheeled the samples in-his nametag identified him as a D. Cahler-looked at the one scientist left with nothing to do. “Mr. Martinez?” he asked. “The zoologist?”
“Yes, that’s me. And it’s Toni, please.”
“Solarity mentioned that there were the dead bodies of several animals located in the forest floor, and that they may be of interest to you.”
“Solarity? -ah.” He winced slightly. “That would be one of the robots, then, yes. Um, that would be great. If you don’t mind me asking, why do you know about them…?”
“I was there when they-two of the robot-things-landed,” the soldier shrugged. “So I was tapped to go along with the rest of the convoy to Brazil, because I already knew about the whole thing with the Autobots and the Decepticons-interesting linguistics going on there-meaning they wouldn’t have to add any more breaches of security onto everything.”
“Right…”
oOo
Sam and Mikaela walked out of the restricted area and into chaos.
There were soldiers scurrying about everywhere, directing waves of people in varying directions; their orders were being interpreted by translators, strategically placed every hundred feet or so.
They found themselves next to a couple, slightly older looking, who seemed equally overwhelmed.
“It’s crazy, isn’t it?” the man shout-said to him; it was far too loud for normal voices to be heard. “How they just rounded us up with no explanation other than it was for our own safety… I’m telling ya, I never would’ve done it if it wasn’t the good old U.S. of A government.”
“What brings y’all out here?” asked the woman. “We were with the eco-tourism group, but I don’t remember seeing you.”
“‘Eco-terrorism?’” Mikaela mouthed to Sam; he shrugged in reply.
“It was a-road trip,” said Sam, maybe sounding a little too insistent.
“How nice!” the woman responded. “That’s just so cute, you two little lovebirds.”
The two teenagers exchanged glances. “We’ve-got to go now,” said Sam slowly. “We’ve got to go find someone to talk to about-”
“-contacting our parents,” cut in Mikaela smoothly.
“Of course! I’m impressed with your responsibility.”
“You two go ahead, then! I hope we do see you around.”
oOo
“So you’re evacuating everyone from the area, and moving them in here,” said Mikaela. “Why?”
John Keller looked up from his dinner. “Issues of infection,” he said. “We don’t know what caused that, or if it’s likely to hit another village, or if it can be spread. This way, the situation is easier to monitor and, through that, control.”
“Oh.”
The three of them, along with another four scientists, were in a small area that had been turned into, more or less, a general-use room for the higher-ranking people: officers, scientists, and Sam and Mikaela, mostly. The building also housed the labs and some bedrooms, mostly, again, for the higher-ranking officials.
Another full building-the large one they had all met in, at first-had been adopted for sole usage by the Autobots; it was large enough that even Optimus could sit comfortably in his transformed state. The soldiers had claimed a third building, and the evacuated civilians another three beyond that.
“So what happens if it turns out it is catching?” asked Sam.
“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” said the Secretary of Defense firmly.
“Ah,” said Sam.
As they had been talking, the mouthy blonde scientist had walked over; once she reached the table, she hooked her leg around a chair, pulling it out before sitting in it.
The two teenagers looked at her askance; Keller simply nodded a greeting. “How did things go today?” he asked.
“As if you haven’t read the reports,” she shot back. “We’ve figured out it’s figs, but we don’t know much beyond that.”
“Wait, figs?” asked Sam. “Like the fruit?”
“Apparently, they’re not fruit, they’re sycoriums, or something. Syconiums-that’s it. Anyways, I’m looking at fig wasps.”
“Fig wasps?” It was Mikaela asking the question this time.
“Little tiny fly-type things that live inside figs and may or may not be responsible for sending the jungle into homicidal killing fits. It’s not looking very likely, right now, but we’ve got some isolated, and then fig samples with and without the wasps, and some introduced samples. The presence of multiple species of fig makes that more unlikely, but still…”
“I’m pretty sure I only understood a quarter of what you just said,” said Sam. “I’m familiar with the words, but the combination of, say, ‘jungle’ and ‘homicidal killing fits’ keeps on sending my mind listing off at right angles.”
“You dealt okay with ‘giant alien robot cars,’ said Mikaela cheerfully.
“Are you joking? I freaked out.”
oOo
After dinner, Sam and Mikaela snuck over to the Autobots’ building.
“Hey, Bee!” Sam said, flopping down next to the robots’ foot. “Where’s Ratchet? And Solarity, looks like.”
“They went to get more samples, and to check out some sort of weird signal we got,” he shrugged. “Nothing major. It was probably a malfunction from a satellite-that’s my guess-or something twitched around by solar radiation. Still, somebody needed to head out anyway-the science group voiced a request for it. They want to check if it’s nocturnal.”
The robots were all in their bipedal forms, scattered throughout the single large room that made up the building; they were mostly concentrated at one end, although Landslide had stuck himself as far in one corner as he could get, facing the wall, and was sitting there leaking righteous angst. Ironhide was doing something to one of his cannons, probably cleaning it-he was looking slightly aggrieved, and he kept on shooting moderately annoyed glances at Prime, who was sitting with his eyes ‘off,’ something Sam and Mikaela had come to recognize as the Autobot version of Sleep. Gyro, the little red, silver and black one, was sitting still as well, though his eyes were the dimmed version that meant his attention was on something else-an unvocalized conversation, or he was browsing the Internet, or something similar; every so often he would laugh slightly, apparently at nothing.
“You free?” asked Sam.
“Sure. Why are you two here?”
“Nothing, we just wanted to talk. What’s it like here?”
“Nice to be out of car-form, for a change. But there’s not much to do, while we’re waiting around all day… It looked like Ironhide and Solarity were going to start fighting over who got to go collect samples. You?”
“Hey, we didn’t tell you about what we got told during dinner! What do you remember about what that woman said, Mikaela?”
oOo
Solarity wasn’t an expert at Earth-related matters, but he thought that something was wrong.
The two of them-Ratchet and himself-were pushing their way through the dense jungle. Ratchet had grumbled most of the trip, but had fallen silent a while ago. Solarity was inclined to agree with his complaints-the forest floor was too rough and crowded for Ratchet’s alt-form, and his own could only manage above the forest canopy, but it was by no means easy going; vegetation kept on getting stuck in their joints, and trees kept on getting in their way. Plus, he got the distinct impression that they were leaving a swathe of destruction behind them, which just generally rankled. Solarity didn’t like feeling like a damned Decepticon, for one, or the idea that anything with half-working visuals could follow them easily.
And, again, he really thought that there was something wrong with this forest.
Preliminary research had seemed to imply that tropical rainforests were crowded with life, even by the standards of an organic planet as heavily populated as Earth. This place, however… It wasn’t barren, by any stretch of the imagination, but all there seemed to be was vegetation, no animals at all-not even insects hiding in the thick leaf litter, or in the trees, and he had checked, after he hadn’t noticed anything with more casual searches.
At least none of the plants were moving. What he’d seen the day he’d rescued Maria and her mother, Raquel, had been…disturbing.
All this silence wasn’t helping, but he couldn’t bring himself to break it by saying something to Ratchet-the thought of missing something because he was distracted was worse than the tension, at the moment.
Still. This was damned creepy. It didn’t help that he was, just slightly, what the humans had termed ‘claustrophobic.’ He was made for flying, for open air, not this dense, crowded, humid, strangely empty, totally silent snarl of vegetation.
Sudden movement, a sharp rustle of bushes to the left of him, made him snap around, cannons out, but there didn’t seem to be anything. That didn’t help; the forest itself wouldn’t show up in any of his sensors unless it was actively moving; then he might get a visual, and a Decepticon could possibly have cloaking abilities.
Ratchet had caught it too, his own weapons out; the two slowly circled so that they were roughly back-to-back. There was another vague rustle, at the very end of Solarity’s ability to hear it, and he turned sharply to look at it; again, there was nothing there.
…and then there was. It was eerie; the Transformer that had appeared was showing up on visual filters only, showing a complete blank for everything else until he dropped the shielding he had up.
Solarity could only hope that he was the only one, because if there was someone else waiting behind them, completely hidden by the same (highly advanced) programming this one had, they were screwed.
Only the fact that the new-comer had his arms in the most inoffensive position possible-crossed and slightly lowered, but held a little ways away from the body-kept him from shooting him. He could feel Ratchet shifting a little beside him, and knew he was as bothered by this situation as he was himself.
“Who are you?” Ratchet demanded, his own weapons fully out. “Name your alliance, and be convincing.”
The newcomer spoke a string of Cybertronian words: his own name and his previous commander’s name, and his position. His voice was flat and near-emotionless, even with the pitch changes of spoken Cybertronian.
“Who are your teammates?” broke in Solarity.
“Were. Another member of the team betrayed us. An attempted attack was intercepted and the rest of the team lost. Among the dead, other than the leader, are…” He listed off five more names. “I was the only survivor. I came to earth as per Optimus Prime’s request.”
Next to him, Ratchet’s eyes flickered slightly with the exchange of data.
“Gyro confirms his story,” said Ratchet finally. “And the visual matches.”
Hesitantly, Solarity dropped his cannon, but didn’t put it away; the forest still had him pretty spooked.
Still. “It wasn’t so much a request as an invitation, wasn’t it?” he said. The other Autobot remained silent. After a minute, he flicked one of his wing-blades slightly to the side, the Cybertronian equivalent of a shrug.
…and then he swore as it banged into a tree, loosening a vine enough that it slid into the joint. “Aaagh. Fuckit. Stupid human forest, was better off in Middle of Nowhere, Space…”
“Stop moving it!” hissed Ratchet, sounding aggrieved. “You’re going to jam something permanently. Let me see it.” He fiddled around a little before eventually drawing the piece of creeper out. “There.”
“This is a potentially hazardous and un-ideal location,” observed the newcomer.
Ratchet scowled.
“There’s something weird going on here, and we’re helping the humans,” explained Solarity. “Apparently, one of their native species has changed its behaviors in extreme and unexpected ways… And what’s your name, anyways? Code-name, that is. None of the organics here can manage Cybertronian. They’ve got no vocal range.”
“Coldfront,” he said simply, after a moment of reflection.
“Right. Here, I’m Solarity and that’s Ratchet. There’s a handful more of us back at the-well, base, for lack of a better word. First there’s the leader, Optimus Prime…”
oOo
The sky had been clear, but clouds were beginning to wisp back over the expanse of black emptiness and stars. It was going to rain.
A single bat flitted overhead. Something had cleared the forest here, shoved its way through it-it would have had to have been a large something-and revealed a normally-hidden pool of stagnant water. Usually, there would have been insects.
There were none, and there were no other bats. There were no birds, no snakes, no rodents. No fish in the stagnant pool. No animals at all. No movement at all, except for the sway of the forest in the breeze.
It didn’t stop swaying even once the wind died, though, and now it was tossing as if there was a gale blowing through.
The bat died hungry, pierced through by a thin tendril that arced upwards and into him and then went suddenly limp, falling back into the jungle with its prize. Other tendrils snaked their way towards it, pierced it until it was shot through with a web of greenery.
Slowly, what was left of the bat began to fall apart. That was normal; there were a lot of bats, and so bats died a lot, and when they did they slowly decomposed back into the jungle floor.
The growth of the vines slowed, then stopped. Delicate feeding rootlets wove their way through and around every cell in the bats body. Something began to push against the fragile skin, and grew uncontested through the gaping holes of the bat’s eyes, mouth, nose, ears.
It would be days, but it would bear fruit eventually, in the nutrient-rich broth of decomposition.
oOo
Around 10 the next morning, the casual chatter and at-ease relaxation of the Autobots was interrupted by Sam and Mikaela bumping their way into the room with a small ladder.
They were followed by one of the scientists-Irene Gray, the brown-haired, middle-aged botanist. She was chewing on a pen and trying to type and walk at the same time, holding a laptop that was advanced (by earth standards) clutched in one hand while the other pecked at the keys.
The few greetings that had sprung up at the two teenagers’ entrance died down, and the extra attention riveted itself to the newcomer.
She looked up, eyes slow to focus. “Hello,” she said vaguely, then turned back to her keyboard. After a few minutes she frowned, then slipped a pair of glasses out of her front pocket, putting them on.
The botanist wandered her way through the tangle of Autobot limbs, ending up next to the ladder, facing the blank, beige-ish wall.
The entire room was still focused on what she was doing.
The laptop was deposited on one of the ladder steps; the scientist herself was a few rungs off the floor. The pen was slipped out of her mouth and into one of her jeans pockets; a black marker was taken out of another pocket to replace it.
She studied the wall, and then she started writing on it.
oOo
Two hours later, Irene’s section of wall was looking considerably fuller.
She capped the marker with a slight pop!, then stretched, yawning, before starting to climb back down the ladder. She turned to find herself the center of attention for two humans and three Autobots, the latter making her jump slightly.
The two groups stared at each other silently for a few minutes.
“…What were you doing?” said Sam finally.
“Arranging the data in a visually sensible manner,” said Irene brightly.
“She’s crazy,” said a darkly disapproving voice behind him. Sam jumped. “Despite that,” continued the speaker-William Curtis, the older botanist-“she’s highly effective, so we put up with her.”
“And you’re so kind for doing so,” drawled the woman. “I never did fit in with stodgy academia.”
“Is this a usual human interaction?” said Solarity quietly, leaning closer to Bumblebee.
“I don’t know,” he replied, equally quietly. “I don’t think so.”
The two scientists were now eyeing each other. “Here’s the data you requested,” said William finally.
“You’re too kind, Professor Curtis,” said Irene.
“You taught her?” asked Mikaela.
“She was one of my first students, and one of my last. It’s not a coincidence. Now, I’m going to go get some lunch, before you eat up the rest of my free time waiting for the others to finish setting up their control boxes. I’ll see you later, Irene, and I want your report on the danger of this spreading sent to the rest of us when it’s finished.”
“Yes, whatever you say. Hmmm. It is lunch time, though. Would one of you mind getting me some coffee and maybe something to eat?”
oOo
Sam had finished his lunch and Mikaela was still picking at what remained of hers when she suddenly spoke up. “Wait,” she said slowly, looking up at Bumblebee. “Who’s that over there?”
“Ah,” he said. “That would be the strange signal we picked up yesterday. His name is Coldfront.”
“Like the weather pattern?” said Sam. “How did you come up with your codenames, anyways?”
“We pick them,” said Bumblebee, shrugging his doors.
“Can we meet him?” asked Mikaela.
“He’s-sleeping.” Sam and Mikaela had both learned to interpret that as the Cybertronian equivalent to something-not quite the same, but the general idea close enough that they used the human term. “You’ll probably meet him later. He’s very… Something. Business-like? Not much of a personality.”
Sam had the strong impression that Bee didn’t actually like the Autobot that much, but didn’t really have anything against him-unlike his relationship with Landslide. If he was as ‘businesslike’ as Bee had said, than it was probably just that they were very different personalities. Bumblebee tended more towards the casual, fun-loving side of things.
“Oh.”
“There really are a lot of you showing up recently…” Mikaela said musingly.
“Yeah, it is kind of funny. Just one of those coincidences, I guess.”
“And it could be worse! There could be a plague of Decepticons.”
“Huh,” said Irene, who had wandered over, half a sandwich and a cup of coffee in her hands. “Decepticons. The ‘decepti’ bit is clearly meant to bring to mind ‘deception,’ but ‘con’ is an altered pronunciation of the prefix ‘com,’ meaning with or together. Not the meaning that you’d expect.”
Half the room gave her an odd look.
“Or at least, that’s what one of the soldiers who’s helping out in the main lab says. I think his name’s Cahler, or something like that.” She had a smile that was verging on a smirk on her face. “Thanks for getting me lunch, Sam.”
And then she walked off again.
“Makes Maggie and Glen look almost normal,” said Mikaela reflectively.
oOo
Irene looked over her diagram and winced slightly.
The first step had been to draw out the family tree. The second step had been to outline affected plants in red.
Most of the local caprifigs were red.
That was bad.
She was preoccupied enough that she didn’t notice that her mug was slipping sideways-at least, until she spilled hot-enough-to-scald coffee down her arm, making her yelp and try to jerk to the side-not a good idea on a rickety ladder.
Irene had the brief sensation of falling before she was caught.
“Guh,” she said, the wind getting forced out of her lungs. “Oof. Uh, thanks?”
She looked up (and up!) at the form that had caught her-it wasn’t someone that she had been introduced to before.
“Thank you?” she squeaked. Damn. So much for composure.
“You are welcome,” said the looming black figure, voice almost a monotone, essentially emotionless. He seemed to ooze potential threat and a sense of barely-contained fighting energy.
The hand shifted underneath her until she was essentially being gripped by the creature, instead of simply resting in her palm. She was set down safely, if not gently-she thumped into the ground pretty solidly, another pained noise escaping her mouth. Above her, the figure seemed to frown.
“My apologies,” he said. “I had not meant to hurt you. I am new to earth, and still-adapting.”
“It’s no problem,” she said cheerfully. “You did save me from what would have been a pretty nasty fall, and that was entirely my own fault. If anyone’s to blame, it’s me. I’m Irene, it’s nice to meet you.”
She was no expert at robot body language, but this one seemed slightly surprised-the eyes had dimmed a little, briefly, and he’d drawn back-again, just a little. Something around the face had shifted.
“…I am Coldfront,” he said finally.
oOo
Irene was still seated on the ladder with her laptop, tapping determinedly away at it, only pausing to look up to reference the chart on the wall, when one of the lab assistants, Louise Brant, burst into the room, slowing only briefly at the sudden attention of the giant robots.
“Ms. Gray!” said the woman. “You’re needed in the lab. We’ve got a cause.”
“What?” she said, looking up, eyes suddenly sharp and intense. “Really? What is it?”
“Cordyceps,” the woman said, looking just slightly unnerved. The eyes of several of the Autobots dimmed; they were probably looking the word up online.
“Cordyceps, Cordyceps,” Irene muttered. “I don’t think I’m familiar with it.”
“Mr. Curtis said you might say that, then said to ask you if you remembered the ‘mind-fungus.’”
“Fuck,” said Irene, almost conversationally, climbing down the ladder before heading in the direction of the lab at a dead run.
“Mind-fungus?” said Sam.
“The Cordyceps are a genus of fungus, found world-wide, that parasitize live insects. They’ve been shown to exert a primitive form of mind-control,” offered Solarity.
“Ewww,” said Mikaela, looking seriously disturbed. “Wait, I thought we were dealing with figs? Not insects. Unless it’s the fig-hornets again?”
“No, it’s just the figs. That’s the problem,” said Louise, who had paused to catch her breath. She sounded grim.
oOo
Sam and Mikaela walked through the temporary lab’s door and into chaos.
Closest to them was John Keller, who was shouting into a cell phone, trying to be heard over the noise that filled the rest of the room.
“-arles Cleve. That’s c as in cat, l as in law, e as in elephant, v as in veronica and e as in elephant again. He’s a mycologist. …No, that’s not a made-up science. And yes he’s not in the on-call science records, I already told you that, he’s too specialized. …We need him now. Find him. …No, I don’t want another of your goddamned opinions! Just find him and get him to Brazil!”
On the other side of the room, two of the scientists-Kristine and William Curtis-where in a loud shouting match; Keats Anders, the quiet biologist, seemed to be trying to calm them down. George Tanaka, the lab assistant who had seemed slightly nervous before (although he was perfectly calm now) was helping Evan, the athletic botanist, lift a sealed glass aquarium with a fig plant in it; it was one of the many now covering the counter-tops. They were being directed by Louise. Irene and the zoologist, Toni Martinez, were in one corner; the botanist was dictating notes, and Toni was scribbling them down furiously. A handful of soldiers were in the room as well, trying to get information and orders on containment of possibly threatening samples from the harried Keats.
“Oh my God,” said Mikaela. Sam was inclined to agree with her analysis, and was about to say as much before there was a loud explosion behind them, from another building.
‘Decepticons,’ mouthed Mikaela at Sam, and they both took off at a dead run, ignoring Keller, who was helplessly gesturing at both of them to stay where they were, damn it, incapable of saying anything more while still arguing with the government lackey he had ended up talking to.
The building housing the Autobots had no smoking holes in the side-or not in one side, at least. Sam was moderately surprised.
He followed Mikaela as she shouldered through the door and into a frozen tableau.
Ratchet and Solarity each had a grip on the arms of a new Transformer-not Coldfront, an even newer one-and Bumblebee and Ironhide both had their guns out and trained on the newcomer’s face and chest. Prime was poised for action, and Gyro, surprisingly, had sprouted a dangerous-looking collection of blades; for once, he wasn’t laughing, or even smiling. Landslide was tense, guns of his own ready for action and eyes narrowed, one of Prime’s hands on his shoulder apparently the only thing keeping him from going for the new robot’s throat. Coldfront had his own guns aimed firmly at the mech’s back, looking cool and dangerous.
The new Transformer himself was steely gray, his features more inhuman than those of the Autobots’. He wasn’t struggling, staying loose and unresponsive in the grip of his captors. The still-smoking crater in the floor had clearly been the source of the explosion; surprisingly, it looked like it had been caused by Landslide, not Ironhide.
Slowly, Bumblebee was inching towards the two teenagers, shifting himself in-between the captive Transformer and the humans.
“Who are you?” said Optimus Prime, voice commanding.
“Nimbus,” said the voice, the word shivering slightly with some repressed emotion. The word was followed by a brief spurt of Cybertronian neither of the humans could even fully hear.
“And what are you doing here?” The questioning continued.
“I was replying to your message,” said the robot carefully.
“Why would a Decepticon want to live peacefully with organics?” snapped Landslide, voice taught and angry.
“I’m not a Decepticon.”
The room was quiet enough that Sam could hear the creak of metal as Bee shifted slightly.
“You’re of Decepticon design,” said Optimus, voice carefully blank.
“I won’t deny it.” There was more silence.
Landslide growled wordlessly, then spoke. “Just tell whatever lies you’re going to spill so we can get on with it,” he snarled.
“I was once a Decepticon,” said Nimbus, voice quiet and unemotional except for that deep undercurrent of-something. “I… Came to realize the error of my ways, and forcibly left the Decepticon forces.” There was a quiet finality to his carefully-chosen words.
“Are you willing to have our medic verify that?” asked Optimus. In response, the newcomer bent down, armored plates shifting to expose the back of his neck; Sam and Mikaela were baffled.
Ratchet moved away from his arm to be replaced by Coldfront; he bent over the mech, until he was obscured from Sam’s view entirely. There were a few clanks, then silence.
“He’s telling the truth or he doesn’t know he’s lying,” said Ratchet finally, straightening. He was frowning. “But I don’t like this-five new Autobots and not a whiff of Decepticons? And one’s definitely been allied with the Decepticons before.”
Optimus Prime looked at the imprisoned robot for a few more seconds.
“Release him,” he said finally. Landslide gave a snort of disgust, but Coldfront and Solarity both took a careful step away from the Autobot. The ex-Decepticon.
“You can tell Autobots from Decepticons by their form?” said Sam, looking up at Bee as he asked the question.
“Yes,” he replied, sounding slightly startled. “You can’t?”
“Well, they’re maybe a little-spikier…”
“We can’t read human subtleties, and they can’t read ours,” said Ratchet grumpily. “But to answer your question, Sam, you can’t, not always. Some are definite, like Nimbus there, but types designed for a certain aesthetic and, more to the point, ‘bots designed for spying, will run more along ‘neutral’ lines. There’s not any design recognized as specific to the Autobots, I believe.”
“And what did you do?” continued Mikaela. “When you bent over him. Nimbus, that is.”
“There are signs of lying or deception that get burned into the-short-term memory, for lack of a better word, for a few minutes after it’s happened. You can see the after-burn of the program running, basically. You can observe it to decipher truthfulness. Of course, if someone doesn’t want to show you the back of their heads… It takes a little training to recognize, on top of that.”
“Oh…” said Sam. “Weird.”
Gyro was laughing again.
Again, the door was banged open and allowed to fall shut. “What is going on?” demanded Keller, who was followed into the room by full squadron of armed soldiers, looking around the room at the ever-increasing number of Autobots, the two humans behind Bumblebee, the presence of a smoking crater and the still-clearly-evident guns (and blades) on most of the Autobots.
“There was a slight misunderstanding,” said Gyro brightly from the corner.
Optimus sighed. “This is Nimbus, an ex-Decepticon. There was some confusion arising from that, but we believe he is safe and fully reformed. He will be watched until we’re sure, of course. The situation has been dealt with, and Landslide will be reprimanded for acting so out of turn.” The tan robot was sulking determinedly in the corner, even sulkier than normal.
“An ex-Decepticon, you say?” said John Keller sharply.
“It’s been known to happen,” said Ironhide doubtfully.
Bumblebee had slipped back out of his face-mask and put the gun away, and was now eyeing the newcomer with interest and a slight amount of caution. It was nothing compared to the soldiers surrounding the Secretary of Defense, who were looking positively terror-stricken. Sam guessed that they had been witness to the final battle between the Decepticons and the Autobots, and all that that had involved.
He, himself, was fairly leery of the idea of anyone who had been connected to the Decepticons being trusted. Of course, his girlfriend had had a criminal record and he had been personally involved in a case of grave insubordination and threatened murder against a secret government agency and its members… And that wasn’t involving the time his involvement has sicced giant robots on them.
Was it really insubordination if it had been allowed to happen by the Secretary of Defense?
Still, he wasn’t going to trust the situation entirely. He believed in Optimus Prime and the Autobots, but he died a whole lot easier than they did. He would squish if he got stepped on.
The tense situation was interrupted by Keller’s cell phone ringing. “Hello?” he said, picking it up. “Good. Finally. And you’re sure it’s him? Yes, that sounds right. I want him flown- You’ve already got him on the plane? Excellent. Thank you. No, it’s a relief to work with someone who’s competent. Good.”
He hung up, looking like some of his burden had lifted. “We’ve got a mycologist!” he exclaimed.
“Myco-what’sit?” asked Sam.
Chapter 5
[Transformers, 2007 movie] The defeat of Megatron and the defense of earth has left everyone the chance to relax a little. Now, if only that was all that was out there...
Characters/Pairings: Sam, Mikaela and Autobots, OCs. Gen, but features a little Sam/Mikaela for canon reasons.
Ratings and Warnings: OC-heavy, a very little violence and language, psuedoscience, PG-13/T for safety.
Previous Chapters:
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
FFnet Link
Alien: Chapter 5
Author's Notes: This chapter changed as of August 8th, 2007. Thank you very, very much, Epona Harper, for giving me well-deserved concrit. It helps me improve!
oOoOoOo
The eight scientists were alternating between hanging around doing nothing much and busying themselves setting up their lab when the first samples were brought in.
The footage, they had all agreed, wasn’t helpful in specifics; nobody could get enough detail out of it to identify anything other than branches moving freakishly fast. The first batch of samples-fifty of them, all neatly encapsulated in sample jars-was the first real look at the infected material.
“It’s not moving,” noted the zoologist as they all approached the cart they had been wheeled in on.
“Figs,” said the athletic botanist, Evan Fitzgerald, somewhat cryptically. “Caprifigs.”
“You’re right,” said Irene Gray, eyes fixed keenly on the samples. “They’re all figs.”
“Like the fruit?” asked Louise Brant, one of the lab assistants.
The third botanist, the older gentleman, William Curtis, started talking. “Yes. Not exactly the same plant, but in the same genus-Ficus.”
“Not a fruit,” muttered Evan.
“What do you mean by that?” asked Kristine, pushing her blonde hair away from her eyes and frowning.
“I’ll help you,” said the second biologist, Keats Anders, quietly.
“What you would think of as the fig itself, the part you eat, is actually called a syconium,” Evan continued. “The flowers and fruiting bodies are inside of the flower, where they’re fertilized by fig wasps, which get in through the ostiole-”
“I’ll get started looking at fig wasps,” said Kristine. “It sounds like a good place for me to begin-you know, what with how they were moving around and all.”
“Have you worked with figs before?” asked Irene.
“A little,” he frowned. “I know enough to say that these are all caprifigs. That narrows it down some-family Moraceae, genus Ficus, subfamily Caprinae.”
“I’m going to go do basic research,” said William, frowning slightly. “I haven’t worked with figs since some basics back in school.”
“I want to start mapping out which species have been infected,” Irene said. “I want to figure out how much it has spread, find out how universal this is. Would one of you help me?” she asked, turning to face the two lab assistants.
“I will,” said one of them-George Tanaka. His voice was slightly nervous.
Evan was looking a little distant, caught up in his own thoughts. “I’ll start general experimenting, then,” he said thoughtfully. “Would you be willing to help me, Mrs.-Brant, right?”
“It’s Brant alright, honey, but just call me Louise,” the woman said, looking far more amused than she should. “Plus, I think you outrank me right now.”
The soldier who had wheeled the samples in-his nametag identified him as a D. Cahler-looked at the one scientist left with nothing to do. “Mr. Martinez?” he asked. “The zoologist?”
“Yes, that’s me. And it’s Toni, please.”
“Solarity mentioned that there were the dead bodies of several animals located in the forest floor, and that they may be of interest to you.”
“Solarity? -ah.” He winced slightly. “That would be one of the robots, then, yes. Um, that would be great. If you don’t mind me asking, why do you know about them…?”
“I was there when they-two of the robot-things-landed,” the soldier shrugged. “So I was tapped to go along with the rest of the convoy to Brazil, because I already knew about the whole thing with the Autobots and the Decepticons-interesting linguistics going on there-meaning they wouldn’t have to add any more breaches of security onto everything.”
“Right…”
oOo
Sam and Mikaela walked out of the restricted area and into chaos.
There were soldiers scurrying about everywhere, directing waves of people in varying directions; their orders were being interpreted by translators, strategically placed every hundred feet or so.
They found themselves next to a couple, slightly older looking, who seemed equally overwhelmed.
“It’s crazy, isn’t it?” the man shout-said to him; it was far too loud for normal voices to be heard. “How they just rounded us up with no explanation other than it was for our own safety… I’m telling ya, I never would’ve done it if it wasn’t the good old U.S. of A government.”
“What brings y’all out here?” asked the woman. “We were with the eco-tourism group, but I don’t remember seeing you.”
“‘Eco-terrorism?’” Mikaela mouthed to Sam; he shrugged in reply.
“It was a-road trip,” said Sam, maybe sounding a little too insistent.
“How nice!” the woman responded. “That’s just so cute, you two little lovebirds.”
The two teenagers exchanged glances. “We’ve-got to go now,” said Sam slowly. “We’ve got to go find someone to talk to about-”
“-contacting our parents,” cut in Mikaela smoothly.
“Of course! I’m impressed with your responsibility.”
“You two go ahead, then! I hope we do see you around.”
oOo
“So you’re evacuating everyone from the area, and moving them in here,” said Mikaela. “Why?”
John Keller looked up from his dinner. “Issues of infection,” he said. “We don’t know what caused that, or if it’s likely to hit another village, or if it can be spread. This way, the situation is easier to monitor and, through that, control.”
“Oh.”
The three of them, along with another four scientists, were in a small area that had been turned into, more or less, a general-use room for the higher-ranking people: officers, scientists, and Sam and Mikaela, mostly. The building also housed the labs and some bedrooms, mostly, again, for the higher-ranking officials.
Another full building-the large one they had all met in, at first-had been adopted for sole usage by the Autobots; it was large enough that even Optimus could sit comfortably in his transformed state. The soldiers had claimed a third building, and the evacuated civilians another three beyond that.
“So what happens if it turns out it is catching?” asked Sam.
“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” said the Secretary of Defense firmly.
“Ah,” said Sam.
As they had been talking, the mouthy blonde scientist had walked over; once she reached the table, she hooked her leg around a chair, pulling it out before sitting in it.
The two teenagers looked at her askance; Keller simply nodded a greeting. “How did things go today?” he asked.
“As if you haven’t read the reports,” she shot back. “We’ve figured out it’s figs, but we don’t know much beyond that.”
“Wait, figs?” asked Sam. “Like the fruit?”
“Apparently, they’re not fruit, they’re sycoriums, or something. Syconiums-that’s it. Anyways, I’m looking at fig wasps.”
“Fig wasps?” It was Mikaela asking the question this time.
“Little tiny fly-type things that live inside figs and may or may not be responsible for sending the jungle into homicidal killing fits. It’s not looking very likely, right now, but we’ve got some isolated, and then fig samples with and without the wasps, and some introduced samples. The presence of multiple species of fig makes that more unlikely, but still…”
“I’m pretty sure I only understood a quarter of what you just said,” said Sam. “I’m familiar with the words, but the combination of, say, ‘jungle’ and ‘homicidal killing fits’ keeps on sending my mind listing off at right angles.”
“You dealt okay with ‘giant alien robot cars,’ said Mikaela cheerfully.
“Are you joking? I freaked out.”
oOo
After dinner, Sam and Mikaela snuck over to the Autobots’ building.
“Hey, Bee!” Sam said, flopping down next to the robots’ foot. “Where’s Ratchet? And Solarity, looks like.”
“They went to get more samples, and to check out some sort of weird signal we got,” he shrugged. “Nothing major. It was probably a malfunction from a satellite-that’s my guess-or something twitched around by solar radiation. Still, somebody needed to head out anyway-the science group voiced a request for it. They want to check if it’s nocturnal.”
The robots were all in their bipedal forms, scattered throughout the single large room that made up the building; they were mostly concentrated at one end, although Landslide had stuck himself as far in one corner as he could get, facing the wall, and was sitting there leaking righteous angst. Ironhide was doing something to one of his cannons, probably cleaning it-he was looking slightly aggrieved, and he kept on shooting moderately annoyed glances at Prime, who was sitting with his eyes ‘off,’ something Sam and Mikaela had come to recognize as the Autobot version of Sleep. Gyro, the little red, silver and black one, was sitting still as well, though his eyes were the dimmed version that meant his attention was on something else-an unvocalized conversation, or he was browsing the Internet, or something similar; every so often he would laugh slightly, apparently at nothing.
“You free?” asked Sam.
“Sure. Why are you two here?”
“Nothing, we just wanted to talk. What’s it like here?”
“Nice to be out of car-form, for a change. But there’s not much to do, while we’re waiting around all day… It looked like Ironhide and Solarity were going to start fighting over who got to go collect samples. You?”
“Hey, we didn’t tell you about what we got told during dinner! What do you remember about what that woman said, Mikaela?”
oOo
Solarity wasn’t an expert at Earth-related matters, but he thought that something was wrong.
The two of them-Ratchet and himself-were pushing their way through the dense jungle. Ratchet had grumbled most of the trip, but had fallen silent a while ago. Solarity was inclined to agree with his complaints-the forest floor was too rough and crowded for Ratchet’s alt-form, and his own could only manage above the forest canopy, but it was by no means easy going; vegetation kept on getting stuck in their joints, and trees kept on getting in their way. Plus, he got the distinct impression that they were leaving a swathe of destruction behind them, which just generally rankled. Solarity didn’t like feeling like a damned Decepticon, for one, or the idea that anything with half-working visuals could follow them easily.
And, again, he really thought that there was something wrong with this forest.
Preliminary research had seemed to imply that tropical rainforests were crowded with life, even by the standards of an organic planet as heavily populated as Earth. This place, however… It wasn’t barren, by any stretch of the imagination, but all there seemed to be was vegetation, no animals at all-not even insects hiding in the thick leaf litter, or in the trees, and he had checked, after he hadn’t noticed anything with more casual searches.
At least none of the plants were moving. What he’d seen the day he’d rescued Maria and her mother, Raquel, had been…disturbing.
All this silence wasn’t helping, but he couldn’t bring himself to break it by saying something to Ratchet-the thought of missing something because he was distracted was worse than the tension, at the moment.
Still. This was damned creepy. It didn’t help that he was, just slightly, what the humans had termed ‘claustrophobic.’ He was made for flying, for open air, not this dense, crowded, humid, strangely empty, totally silent snarl of vegetation.
Sudden movement, a sharp rustle of bushes to the left of him, made him snap around, cannons out, but there didn’t seem to be anything. That didn’t help; the forest itself wouldn’t show up in any of his sensors unless it was actively moving; then he might get a visual, and a Decepticon could possibly have cloaking abilities.
Ratchet had caught it too, his own weapons out; the two slowly circled so that they were roughly back-to-back. There was another vague rustle, at the very end of Solarity’s ability to hear it, and he turned sharply to look at it; again, there was nothing there.
…and then there was. It was eerie; the Transformer that had appeared was showing up on visual filters only, showing a complete blank for everything else until he dropped the shielding he had up.
Solarity could only hope that he was the only one, because if there was someone else waiting behind them, completely hidden by the same (highly advanced) programming this one had, they were screwed.
Only the fact that the new-comer had his arms in the most inoffensive position possible-crossed and slightly lowered, but held a little ways away from the body-kept him from shooting him. He could feel Ratchet shifting a little beside him, and knew he was as bothered by this situation as he was himself.
“Who are you?” Ratchet demanded, his own weapons fully out. “Name your alliance, and be convincing.”
The newcomer spoke a string of Cybertronian words: his own name and his previous commander’s name, and his position. His voice was flat and near-emotionless, even with the pitch changes of spoken Cybertronian.
“Who are your teammates?” broke in Solarity.
“Were. Another member of the team betrayed us. An attempted attack was intercepted and the rest of the team lost. Among the dead, other than the leader, are…” He listed off five more names. “I was the only survivor. I came to earth as per Optimus Prime’s request.”
Next to him, Ratchet’s eyes flickered slightly with the exchange of data.
“Gyro confirms his story,” said Ratchet finally. “And the visual matches.”
Hesitantly, Solarity dropped his cannon, but didn’t put it away; the forest still had him pretty spooked.
Still. “It wasn’t so much a request as an invitation, wasn’t it?” he said. The other Autobot remained silent. After a minute, he flicked one of his wing-blades slightly to the side, the Cybertronian equivalent of a shrug.
…and then he swore as it banged into a tree, loosening a vine enough that it slid into the joint. “Aaagh. Fuckit. Stupid human forest, was better off in Middle of Nowhere, Space…”
“Stop moving it!” hissed Ratchet, sounding aggrieved. “You’re going to jam something permanently. Let me see it.” He fiddled around a little before eventually drawing the piece of creeper out. “There.”
“This is a potentially hazardous and un-ideal location,” observed the newcomer.
Ratchet scowled.
“There’s something weird going on here, and we’re helping the humans,” explained Solarity. “Apparently, one of their native species has changed its behaviors in extreme and unexpected ways… And what’s your name, anyways? Code-name, that is. None of the organics here can manage Cybertronian. They’ve got no vocal range.”
“Coldfront,” he said simply, after a moment of reflection.
“Right. Here, I’m Solarity and that’s Ratchet. There’s a handful more of us back at the-well, base, for lack of a better word. First there’s the leader, Optimus Prime…”
oOo
The sky had been clear, but clouds were beginning to wisp back over the expanse of black emptiness and stars. It was going to rain.
A single bat flitted overhead. Something had cleared the forest here, shoved its way through it-it would have had to have been a large something-and revealed a normally-hidden pool of stagnant water. Usually, there would have been insects.
There were none, and there were no other bats. There were no birds, no snakes, no rodents. No fish in the stagnant pool. No animals at all. No movement at all, except for the sway of the forest in the breeze.
It didn’t stop swaying even once the wind died, though, and now it was tossing as if there was a gale blowing through.
The bat died hungry, pierced through by a thin tendril that arced upwards and into him and then went suddenly limp, falling back into the jungle with its prize. Other tendrils snaked their way towards it, pierced it until it was shot through with a web of greenery.
Slowly, what was left of the bat began to fall apart. That was normal; there were a lot of bats, and so bats died a lot, and when they did they slowly decomposed back into the jungle floor.
The growth of the vines slowed, then stopped. Delicate feeding rootlets wove their way through and around every cell in the bats body. Something began to push against the fragile skin, and grew uncontested through the gaping holes of the bat’s eyes, mouth, nose, ears.
It would be days, but it would bear fruit eventually, in the nutrient-rich broth of decomposition.
oOo
Around 10 the next morning, the casual chatter and at-ease relaxation of the Autobots was interrupted by Sam and Mikaela bumping their way into the room with a small ladder.
They were followed by one of the scientists-Irene Gray, the brown-haired, middle-aged botanist. She was chewing on a pen and trying to type and walk at the same time, holding a laptop that was advanced (by earth standards) clutched in one hand while the other pecked at the keys.
The few greetings that had sprung up at the two teenagers’ entrance died down, and the extra attention riveted itself to the newcomer.
She looked up, eyes slow to focus. “Hello,” she said vaguely, then turned back to her keyboard. After a few minutes she frowned, then slipped a pair of glasses out of her front pocket, putting them on.
The botanist wandered her way through the tangle of Autobot limbs, ending up next to the ladder, facing the blank, beige-ish wall.
The entire room was still focused on what she was doing.
The laptop was deposited on one of the ladder steps; the scientist herself was a few rungs off the floor. The pen was slipped out of her mouth and into one of her jeans pockets; a black marker was taken out of another pocket to replace it.
She studied the wall, and then she started writing on it.
oOo
Two hours later, Irene’s section of wall was looking considerably fuller.
She capped the marker with a slight pop!, then stretched, yawning, before starting to climb back down the ladder. She turned to find herself the center of attention for two humans and three Autobots, the latter making her jump slightly.
The two groups stared at each other silently for a few minutes.
“…What were you doing?” said Sam finally.
“Arranging the data in a visually sensible manner,” said Irene brightly.
“She’s crazy,” said a darkly disapproving voice behind him. Sam jumped. “Despite that,” continued the speaker-William Curtis, the older botanist-“she’s highly effective, so we put up with her.”
“And you’re so kind for doing so,” drawled the woman. “I never did fit in with stodgy academia.”
“Is this a usual human interaction?” said Solarity quietly, leaning closer to Bumblebee.
“I don’t know,” he replied, equally quietly. “I don’t think so.”
The two scientists were now eyeing each other. “Here’s the data you requested,” said William finally.
“You’re too kind, Professor Curtis,” said Irene.
“You taught her?” asked Mikaela.
“She was one of my first students, and one of my last. It’s not a coincidence. Now, I’m going to go get some lunch, before you eat up the rest of my free time waiting for the others to finish setting up their control boxes. I’ll see you later, Irene, and I want your report on the danger of this spreading sent to the rest of us when it’s finished.”
“Yes, whatever you say. Hmmm. It is lunch time, though. Would one of you mind getting me some coffee and maybe something to eat?”
oOo
Sam had finished his lunch and Mikaela was still picking at what remained of hers when she suddenly spoke up. “Wait,” she said slowly, looking up at Bumblebee. “Who’s that over there?”
“Ah,” he said. “That would be the strange signal we picked up yesterday. His name is Coldfront.”
“Like the weather pattern?” said Sam. “How did you come up with your codenames, anyways?”
“We pick them,” said Bumblebee, shrugging his doors.
“Can we meet him?” asked Mikaela.
“He’s-sleeping.” Sam and Mikaela had both learned to interpret that as the Cybertronian equivalent to something-not quite the same, but the general idea close enough that they used the human term. “You’ll probably meet him later. He’s very… Something. Business-like? Not much of a personality.”
Sam had the strong impression that Bee didn’t actually like the Autobot that much, but didn’t really have anything against him-unlike his relationship with Landslide. If he was as ‘businesslike’ as Bee had said, than it was probably just that they were very different personalities. Bumblebee tended more towards the casual, fun-loving side of things.
“Oh.”
“There really are a lot of you showing up recently…” Mikaela said musingly.
“Yeah, it is kind of funny. Just one of those coincidences, I guess.”
“And it could be worse! There could be a plague of Decepticons.”
“Huh,” said Irene, who had wandered over, half a sandwich and a cup of coffee in her hands. “Decepticons. The ‘decepti’ bit is clearly meant to bring to mind ‘deception,’ but ‘con’ is an altered pronunciation of the prefix ‘com,’ meaning with or together. Not the meaning that you’d expect.”
Half the room gave her an odd look.
“Or at least, that’s what one of the soldiers who’s helping out in the main lab says. I think his name’s Cahler, or something like that.” She had a smile that was verging on a smirk on her face. “Thanks for getting me lunch, Sam.”
And then she walked off again.
“Makes Maggie and Glen look almost normal,” said Mikaela reflectively.
oOo
Irene looked over her diagram and winced slightly.
The first step had been to draw out the family tree. The second step had been to outline affected plants in red.
Most of the local caprifigs were red.
That was bad.
She was preoccupied enough that she didn’t notice that her mug was slipping sideways-at least, until she spilled hot-enough-to-scald coffee down her arm, making her yelp and try to jerk to the side-not a good idea on a rickety ladder.
Irene had the brief sensation of falling before she was caught.
“Guh,” she said, the wind getting forced out of her lungs. “Oof. Uh, thanks?”
She looked up (and up!) at the form that had caught her-it wasn’t someone that she had been introduced to before.
“Thank you?” she squeaked. Damn. So much for composure.
“You are welcome,” said the looming black figure, voice almost a monotone, essentially emotionless. He seemed to ooze potential threat and a sense of barely-contained fighting energy.
The hand shifted underneath her until she was essentially being gripped by the creature, instead of simply resting in her palm. She was set down safely, if not gently-she thumped into the ground pretty solidly, another pained noise escaping her mouth. Above her, the figure seemed to frown.
“My apologies,” he said. “I had not meant to hurt you. I am new to earth, and still-adapting.”
“It’s no problem,” she said cheerfully. “You did save me from what would have been a pretty nasty fall, and that was entirely my own fault. If anyone’s to blame, it’s me. I’m Irene, it’s nice to meet you.”
She was no expert at robot body language, but this one seemed slightly surprised-the eyes had dimmed a little, briefly, and he’d drawn back-again, just a little. Something around the face had shifted.
“…I am Coldfront,” he said finally.
oOo
Irene was still seated on the ladder with her laptop, tapping determinedly away at it, only pausing to look up to reference the chart on the wall, when one of the lab assistants, Louise Brant, burst into the room, slowing only briefly at the sudden attention of the giant robots.
“Ms. Gray!” said the woman. “You’re needed in the lab. We’ve got a cause.”
“What?” she said, looking up, eyes suddenly sharp and intense. “Really? What is it?”
“Cordyceps,” the woman said, looking just slightly unnerved. The eyes of several of the Autobots dimmed; they were probably looking the word up online.
“Cordyceps, Cordyceps,” Irene muttered. “I don’t think I’m familiar with it.”
“Mr. Curtis said you might say that, then said to ask you if you remembered the ‘mind-fungus.’”
“Fuck,” said Irene, almost conversationally, climbing down the ladder before heading in the direction of the lab at a dead run.
“Mind-fungus?” said Sam.
“The Cordyceps are a genus of fungus, found world-wide, that parasitize live insects. They’ve been shown to exert a primitive form of mind-control,” offered Solarity.
“Ewww,” said Mikaela, looking seriously disturbed. “Wait, I thought we were dealing with figs? Not insects. Unless it’s the fig-hornets again?”
“No, it’s just the figs. That’s the problem,” said Louise, who had paused to catch her breath. She sounded grim.
oOo
Sam and Mikaela walked through the temporary lab’s door and into chaos.
Closest to them was John Keller, who was shouting into a cell phone, trying to be heard over the noise that filled the rest of the room.
“-arles Cleve. That’s c as in cat, l as in law, e as in elephant, v as in veronica and e as in elephant again. He’s a mycologist. …No, that’s not a made-up science. And yes he’s not in the on-call science records, I already told you that, he’s too specialized. …We need him now. Find him. …No, I don’t want another of your goddamned opinions! Just find him and get him to Brazil!”
On the other side of the room, two of the scientists-Kristine and William Curtis-where in a loud shouting match; Keats Anders, the quiet biologist, seemed to be trying to calm them down. George Tanaka, the lab assistant who had seemed slightly nervous before (although he was perfectly calm now) was helping Evan, the athletic botanist, lift a sealed glass aquarium with a fig plant in it; it was one of the many now covering the counter-tops. They were being directed by Louise. Irene and the zoologist, Toni Martinez, were in one corner; the botanist was dictating notes, and Toni was scribbling them down furiously. A handful of soldiers were in the room as well, trying to get information and orders on containment of possibly threatening samples from the harried Keats.
“Oh my God,” said Mikaela. Sam was inclined to agree with her analysis, and was about to say as much before there was a loud explosion behind them, from another building.
‘Decepticons,’ mouthed Mikaela at Sam, and they both took off at a dead run, ignoring Keller, who was helplessly gesturing at both of them to stay where they were, damn it, incapable of saying anything more while still arguing with the government lackey he had ended up talking to.
The building housing the Autobots had no smoking holes in the side-or not in one side, at least. Sam was moderately surprised.
He followed Mikaela as she shouldered through the door and into a frozen tableau.
Ratchet and Solarity each had a grip on the arms of a new Transformer-not Coldfront, an even newer one-and Bumblebee and Ironhide both had their guns out and trained on the newcomer’s face and chest. Prime was poised for action, and Gyro, surprisingly, had sprouted a dangerous-looking collection of blades; for once, he wasn’t laughing, or even smiling. Landslide was tense, guns of his own ready for action and eyes narrowed, one of Prime’s hands on his shoulder apparently the only thing keeping him from going for the new robot’s throat. Coldfront had his own guns aimed firmly at the mech’s back, looking cool and dangerous.
The new Transformer himself was steely gray, his features more inhuman than those of the Autobots’. He wasn’t struggling, staying loose and unresponsive in the grip of his captors. The still-smoking crater in the floor had clearly been the source of the explosion; surprisingly, it looked like it had been caused by Landslide, not Ironhide.
Slowly, Bumblebee was inching towards the two teenagers, shifting himself in-between the captive Transformer and the humans.
“Who are you?” said Optimus Prime, voice commanding.
“Nimbus,” said the voice, the word shivering slightly with some repressed emotion. The word was followed by a brief spurt of Cybertronian neither of the humans could even fully hear.
“And what are you doing here?” The questioning continued.
“I was replying to your message,” said the robot carefully.
“Why would a Decepticon want to live peacefully with organics?” snapped Landslide, voice taught and angry.
“I’m not a Decepticon.”
The room was quiet enough that Sam could hear the creak of metal as Bee shifted slightly.
“You’re of Decepticon design,” said Optimus, voice carefully blank.
“I won’t deny it.” There was more silence.
Landslide growled wordlessly, then spoke. “Just tell whatever lies you’re going to spill so we can get on with it,” he snarled.
“I was once a Decepticon,” said Nimbus, voice quiet and unemotional except for that deep undercurrent of-something. “I… Came to realize the error of my ways, and forcibly left the Decepticon forces.” There was a quiet finality to his carefully-chosen words.
“Are you willing to have our medic verify that?” asked Optimus. In response, the newcomer bent down, armored plates shifting to expose the back of his neck; Sam and Mikaela were baffled.
Ratchet moved away from his arm to be replaced by Coldfront; he bent over the mech, until he was obscured from Sam’s view entirely. There were a few clanks, then silence.
“He’s telling the truth or he doesn’t know he’s lying,” said Ratchet finally, straightening. He was frowning. “But I don’t like this-five new Autobots and not a whiff of Decepticons? And one’s definitely been allied with the Decepticons before.”
Optimus Prime looked at the imprisoned robot for a few more seconds.
“Release him,” he said finally. Landslide gave a snort of disgust, but Coldfront and Solarity both took a careful step away from the Autobot. The ex-Decepticon.
“You can tell Autobots from Decepticons by their form?” said Sam, looking up at Bee as he asked the question.
“Yes,” he replied, sounding slightly startled. “You can’t?”
“Well, they’re maybe a little-spikier…”
“We can’t read human subtleties, and they can’t read ours,” said Ratchet grumpily. “But to answer your question, Sam, you can’t, not always. Some are definite, like Nimbus there, but types designed for a certain aesthetic and, more to the point, ‘bots designed for spying, will run more along ‘neutral’ lines. There’s not any design recognized as specific to the Autobots, I believe.”
“And what did you do?” continued Mikaela. “When you bent over him. Nimbus, that is.”
“There are signs of lying or deception that get burned into the-short-term memory, for lack of a better word, for a few minutes after it’s happened. You can see the after-burn of the program running, basically. You can observe it to decipher truthfulness. Of course, if someone doesn’t want to show you the back of their heads… It takes a little training to recognize, on top of that.”
“Oh…” said Sam. “Weird.”
Gyro was laughing again.
Again, the door was banged open and allowed to fall shut. “What is going on?” demanded Keller, who was followed into the room by full squadron of armed soldiers, looking around the room at the ever-increasing number of Autobots, the two humans behind Bumblebee, the presence of a smoking crater and the still-clearly-evident guns (and blades) on most of the Autobots.
“There was a slight misunderstanding,” said Gyro brightly from the corner.
Optimus sighed. “This is Nimbus, an ex-Decepticon. There was some confusion arising from that, but we believe he is safe and fully reformed. He will be watched until we’re sure, of course. The situation has been dealt with, and Landslide will be reprimanded for acting so out of turn.” The tan robot was sulking determinedly in the corner, even sulkier than normal.
“An ex-Decepticon, you say?” said John Keller sharply.
“It’s been known to happen,” said Ironhide doubtfully.
Bumblebee had slipped back out of his face-mask and put the gun away, and was now eyeing the newcomer with interest and a slight amount of caution. It was nothing compared to the soldiers surrounding the Secretary of Defense, who were looking positively terror-stricken. Sam guessed that they had been witness to the final battle between the Decepticons and the Autobots, and all that that had involved.
He, himself, was fairly leery of the idea of anyone who had been connected to the Decepticons being trusted. Of course, his girlfriend had had a criminal record and he had been personally involved in a case of grave insubordination and threatened murder against a secret government agency and its members… And that wasn’t involving the time his involvement has sicced giant robots on them.
Was it really insubordination if it had been allowed to happen by the Secretary of Defense?
Still, he wasn’t going to trust the situation entirely. He believed in Optimus Prime and the Autobots, but he died a whole lot easier than they did. He would squish if he got stepped on.
The tense situation was interrupted by Keller’s cell phone ringing. “Hello?” he said, picking it up. “Good. Finally. And you’re sure it’s him? Yes, that sounds right. I want him flown- You’ve already got him on the plane? Excellent. Thank you. No, it’s a relief to work with someone who’s competent. Good.”
He hung up, looking like some of his burden had lifted. “We’ve got a mycologist!” he exclaimed.
“Myco-what’sit?” asked Sam.