She blinked. “What?”
“They’ll come looking for me, not you. They don’t know anything about you. It’s safer for you if it stays that way. Just keep your head down, okay?”
“She’s not coming?” said Wheelie.
“No. That would be stupid,” he said firmly. “Carly, no time for a whole big goodbye thing. Just go. Hurry.” Either he felt nothing or he was forcing himself to turn off all his emotion for her sake.
He started to back up.
Carly ran alongside, yanked on the passenger side door, and pulled it open. She clambered in as Sam said in confusion, “What’re you—?”
“I’m a big girl, Sam. I can make my own decisions. I don’t need you making them for me. Just shut up and drive,” she said.
“No way,” he said firmly. “No way in hell.”
She looked at him challengingly and said the one thing she knew would work: “Dylan wouldn’t leave me behind.”
He stared at her. Then he slammed it into reverse as he said, “Dirty pool, Carly. That’s dirty pool.”
“I thought you liked it when she did stuff that was dirty,” said Wheelie.
“Shut up!” they shouted in unison, and Wheelie withdrew and sank onto the floor of the back of the car.
VIRGINIA
i
Sam gave Carly a quick rundown on what had happened at the office even as he drove as if his life depended on it. She gasped when she heard of the death of Jerry Wang and was visibly trembling when he described to her the lethal game of tag he’d had with a Decepticon.
“Laserbeak,” said Wheelie. “Nasty customer even for one of us … I mean, one of them. You’re lucky you didn’t end up in eight separate pieces, scattered all over the—”
“We really need less talking from you,” Carly said sharply, and he withdrew once again.
Sam steered the Datsun onto I-66 West and opened her up, praying that the engine wouldn’t stall out in protest. “Look, Carly, it’s not too late to—”
“You’re not dropping me off anywhere,” she interrupted. “I’m not bailing on you, okay? I’m not bailing. I’m not leaving you. I’m not …” She hesitated and then said, “I’m not her. Okay? You understand?”
Sam caught his breath. Then he let it out slowly and said, “Yeah. I understand.”
“Good. So what’s the plan? I mean, there is a plan, right?” she said in a hopeful voice. “Something beyond ‘Mother of God, the Decepticons are coming, let’s get the hell out of here.’ ”
“Yeah. There’s a plan. We’re going to the HQ for NEST.”
“Who?”
“NEST stands for Nonbiological Extraterrestrial Species Treaty. It’s a military alliance that was created to handle … stuff like this. They’re just outside D.C.”
“Okay.” She nodded. “So if, or when, these creatures show up in force, it won’t be a lot of people running around screaming and all manner of things blowing sky high. There’s actually contingency plans in place to deal with it.”
“Lots of plans, yes.”
She visibly relaxed. “Good.”
Sam paused and then added, “But in the interest of full disclosure, the odds are pretty good that there will also be a lot of people running around screaming and all manner of things blowing sky high.”
She tensed up again.
ii
Minutes later, when the car rolled up to a rather mundane-looking gated facility, Carly started to wonder if this wasn’t all some sort of joke. Or worse: Maybe he was trying to make himself look like a dynamic man of action, bringing her along on an adventure, so that he wouldn’t feel so threatened by Dylan. Because she had a definite idea of what a military base should look like, having been to quite a few in her time. And this most definitely was not it.
Sam barely managed to get the car to screech to a halt just short of crashing into the gates. Two guards immediately emerged, their weapons half raised.
Sam hurriedly rolled the window down. “Open the gate! We’ve gotta talk to Colonel Lennox! We’re reporting a Decepticon! The Decepticons are back!”
“Sam, where are we?” she said nervously.
One of the guards, looking not the least in the mood for an elaborate prank being staged by a jealous boyfriend, said warningly, “Sir, this is Health and Human Services—”
“Right, packing M4s; don’t give me that. Lemme talk to Optimus,” Sam said.
“Sir, you’ve made some mistake,” the other guard said. “Step from the vehicle, please.”
Carly really didn’t like the way this was shaping up. She hated the thoughts going through her head. She despised the notion that it would even occur to her that Sam was staging this whole business just to try to add some excitement to his crushingly mundane life. But the thing she liked least of all was the idea of being arrested while trying to assault the department of Health and Human Services. Hell, these days you risked being detained just by attempting to board an airplane if you happened to have a four-ounce container of Liquid Prell in your bag. Who knew what they’d do to you if you tried to crash security in an actual government building? And what was her defense going to be? Her boyfriend thought there were giant robots in there? She might never be heard from again.
“Sam,” she said, trying to keep the lack of confidence out of her tone. “Are you sure you’re at the right place?”
“Trust me,” he said, and then turned back to the guard. “I’m Sam Witwicky. Don’t you know who I am?”
“Sir, if you don’t have the right paperwork, we don’t care if you’re the president’s daughter,” said the guard. “You’re not getting by on our watch.”
“What part of ‘Decepticons are back’ do you not understand?” At which point, thoroughly out of patience, Sam hit the gas and sped forward.
He didn’t get very far as fortified roadblocks—the type designed to prevent car bombs from approaching buildings—snapped into place to halt his advance. They came up both in front of him and behind, sandwiching him in place.
Abruptly alarms started blaring, and Carly was sure that they were connected to some sort of security breach alert. As it turned out, she wasn’t entirely wrong.
“We’ve got an Energon reading!” one of the guards shouted.
All attempts at politeness vanished from the nearer guard. “Get out of the car! Now!”
They didn’t wait for Sam and Carly to comply. As other guards came charging out of the darkness of the evening, the first two yanked the doors open and bodily pulled the two young people out of the Datsun. One of the guards peered in through the back window. Wheelie was shaking so hard that Carly could hear the metal of his body clattering. Brains was busy chewing on the buckle of one of the seat belts.
“Got aliens inside the vehicle!”
“Freeze! One move and you’re dead!”
Sam tried to shout above the rising ruckus. “Just tell Bumblebee! Is Bee in there?” The guard who was busy pushing him to the ground had his radio out, informing unseen persons what was transpiring, and Sam tossed off a shout into the radio: “Anyone hear me? This is Sam Witwicky!”
Then Sam grunted as they wrestled him to the ground. They hadn’t done so with Carly since she had offered no resistance, but they were keeping her arms pinned behind her so forcefully that she was afraid they were going to wrench them out of the sockets. Sam, meanwhile, was still struggling as fiercely as he could. One of the soldiers had his knee firmly in his back to immobilize him while another was pulling out zip ties from his belt to bind his wrists.
The gates burst open, and a tall yellow robot stepped into view. He pushed the guards aside as gently as he could, but for him “gently” was a relative term, and the guards went flying even at his lightest touch. The robot ignored them and instead put out his hand so that Sam could haul himself to his feet. The remaining guards stepped back, forming a semicircle, but none dared come near Sam as the robot loomed over him protectively. Then the robot cast a single glance toward the soldiers who were
still holding Carly. Immediately they got the message, silent as it was, and released her.
She should have known. She really should have known, and inwardly she berated herself for doubting Sam even for an instant.
Carly couldn’t help herself. Even after all this time, she gaped at the behemoth because it just wasn’t easy getting used to it. “Hello, Bumblebee,” she said. “Long time, no see.”
Sam wasn’t quite so convivial. It was humiliating being knocked around like that, plus considering all that he had accomplished, it certainly didn’t seem the proper treatment for a hero. Brushing off the dirt from his chest and shoulders, he said scoldingly to the Autobot, “What’s with you, huh? I know your black ops stuff’s important, but we never see you anymore. You can’t even spend one night in the garage? Just hang?”
Bumblebee continued to be the least verbal of the Autobots, his vocal apparatus having never fully recovered from having been damaged in battle. Typically, when he did endeavor to communicate, it was either with indecipherable squawks or through his radio. Now, though, he just looked sullen and apologetic, staring at the ground rather than directly at Sam. Carly wasn’t sure, but it looked like he was scuffling one of his feet.
Sam picked up easily on the visual cues but wasn’t the least mollified. “Yeah, I hope you feel bad! You should feel bad. Look at this thing I’m driving now,” and he pointed at the Datsun. “I feel bad every day.”
Through the open gates came running another soldier, one who, by the way the others reacted, was clearly in charge. “Stand down, everybody stand down,” he called out somewhat unnecessarily since no one was aiming a rifle at Sam any longer or trying to slam him around. Then he approached the two civilians. “Sam? And …?” He paused and then came up with, “Carly?”
“Have we met?” she said, confused.
“Colonel Lennox.” He shook her hand briskly. “No, we haven’t. But you’re in Sam’s file. Also, Bumblebee’s mentioned you.”
“Has he?”
Bumblebee’s radio suddenly switched on. There was a brief crunch of static, and then Joe Cocker’s voice filled the night air, crooning, “You are so … beautiful …”
She smiled. “Flatterer.”
“Fine, fine, allis forgiven, you big lug nut,” said Sam. Then, looking around, he called out, “Okay, so … everybody raise your hand if a flying psycho-ninja copier tried to kill you today.” He held up his hand and waited. “No? Me? Only me?” Then, having proved his point, he flipped the envelope to Lennox. “Okay, G.I. Joe, let’s go somewhere a little more private so that we don’t have to talk about the end of the world while standing in the middle of the street.”
iii
Charlotte Mearing, the director of national intelligence, was her typical icy-calm self. Once upon a time, she had had to concentrate on controlling every aspect of her demeanor so as to appear utterly unflappable. She’d learned her lesson the one time, while training in Quantico, when she’d attended a party, let her hair down, and wound up in a romantic entanglement with another spy in training. It had been short, intense, passionate—and by any measure a total disaster. She’d ended it before it could derail her focus and clamped down her emotions for good. By this point in her career, it had become so second nature that she was beginning to wonder whether she was professionally detached or if she had just stopped feeling anything at all.
She certainly knew that she was amused by the astounded looks on the faces of various top army brass, aides, key politicians, and the like. They were standing on one of the upper catwalks of NEST’s main facility room. It was cavernous, ringed with observation windows and various rampways enabling scientists and technicians to reach the highest points. The NEST emblem—a circle with a skull in the middle and three protruding triangles, each of which had a lightning bolt embedded in it—adorned a vault door at the far end. The door was partway open, and five pillars—one of them longer than the others and all of them covered with cryptic alien symbols—were being loaded into it.
Of particular interest to everyone watching, however, was the central figure. It was a gigantic Autobot, larger even than Optimus Prime. It was mostly silver but had red trim laced throughout its body. It was suspended on huge girders that almost resembled a throne.
A voice sounded over the public address system, warning loudly, “We are ten minutes to attempted contact. All NEST officials, clear the floor.”
Mearing was in the middle of bringing the observers up to speed. Referring to the pillars, she said, “It’s some kind of Autobot technology. They say he was the Robert Oppenheimer of their civilization. We’re locking them up until we understand more …”
Her voice trailed off. She couldn’t quite believe what she was seeing.
“I’ll be right back,” she told the group, keeping her tone as casual as ever. She walked quickly away from them and toward the three people who had caught her attention.
One of them was Lennox. Seeing him around there wasn’t particularly unusual. Seeing the other people he was talking to—a young man and woman, presumably a couple since she had her arm looped through his—was, however, unusual. Also a problem. The kind of problem that could wind up with certain people in jail.
As she drew closer, she recognized the young man, although not the woman. But it didn’t matter who they were. They sure as hell were not supposed to be here.
Lennox was staring at some sorts of papers that the young man had handed him. “Excuse me,” she said sharply, interrupting their conversation. “What’s going on?”
The young woman glanced her way, but the young man ignored her, apparently feeling it more imperative to continue whatever narrative he was in the middle of than to acknowledge her presence. That was a dangerous move on his part. “He recognized me,” he said to Lennox. “Said I need to warn you. Something about the dark side of the moon.”
“Honey,” said the young woman, “it’s called the far side, actually.”
“Yeah, I know.” He looked mildly annoyed at the correction.
“He mentioned the moon?” Lennox said, unable to hide his concern. The man continued to have no poker face at all.
The young woman spoke up again. “But why would Decepticons want to kill humans? I thought their war was with the Autobots.”
“I’d say they’re after what we just found,” Lennox said.
Mearing considered grabbing one of the guard’s guns and shooting all three of them. It would be really easy. They weren’t even moving. The cold fury of security breach burning behind her eyes, she said sharply, “Excuse me, Colonel Lennox!”
Lennox turned and said, “Director Mearing, this is Sam Witwicky. He’s the civilian who—”
“I know his name, Colonel. I want to know who gave him clearance.”
“How about Optimus Prime when he landed in suburbia looking for my house?” Sam snapped back at her.
Her lips thinned, making her look like a bespectacled piranha. “Disrespect of a federal officer. Hmm. Maybe that’ll get you somewhere.” She turned her attention to the young woman. “And who’s this?”
“Carly, my girlfriend,” said Sam.
She stared blankly at the two of them. “Which makes this … what? A date?”
Apparently this Carly was no more easily intimidated than her boyfriend. “Let’s see,” she said with a toss of her hair. “I was home, cooking dinner. Normal night. Next thing I know there’s ten machine guns to my head.”
“Carly knows all about the Autobots, Director,” said Lennox “I can vouch for her.”
“Well, thank you, Colonel,” she said, dripping with sarcasm. “Now let’s find someone to vouch for you.”
Sam Witwicky actually made the ill-advised move of stepping right up to Mearing and practically snarling in her face. “How ’bout we talk about the Decepticon that tried to murder me today?”
Mearing fired a look at Lennox that quite clearly said, Rein him in. Now.
Lennox gently but firmly pulled on Sam’s shoulder, wi
thdrawing him a few critical inches away form Mearing. “Um, Sam,” he said in a low, warning voice, “This is the U.S. intelligence director. She can authorize bad things to happen for the rest of your life.”
“Well, that sounds illegal,” Sam said defiantly.
“Do tell,” said Mearing.
For a long moment he met her gaze and then wisely lowered his.
First smart thing he’s done, she thought.
Lennox, meanwhile, handed over the collection of papers and photographs that he’d been poring over. “A software engineer at Sam’s office was murdered. He was involved with NASA’s moon mapping probe.”
“Are we trusting national security to teenagers?” she said icily. “Did I miss a policy paper? Are we doing that now?” She let that hang there for a moment and then turned the full force of her patriotic indignation on Sam Witwicky. “I don’t care who you are or what you’ve ever done for your country. You speak a word about what you see in here, you will do time for treason. Do you understand?”
Without backing down in the slightest, Sam said, “I’ll take my orders from the Autobots, thanks. I know them. I don’t know you.”
She brought her face toward him, looking him squarely in the eye. “You will,” she said intensely. Then she turned away from him, thinking, I have got to brush up on my patriotic indignation skills.
iv
Sam put his hands to his ears as the Klaxon blared throughout the cavernous facility and spotlights were brought up to illuminate the girder throne far below. The huge vault at the far end had been closed, and the ominous skull emblem of NEST glowered at the proceedings.
Carly and he had been escorted to the observation deck on the east side of the chamber. There were armed soldiers all around, although Sam suspected they had been assigned there by Mearing mostly to make a point. No one really thought that either he or Carly presented any sort of danger. Hell, Sam Witwicky was the first friend that the Autobots had developed when they arrived on Earth a few years back. If he couldn’t be trusted to care about their best interests, who could?