“A deal … to move their whole planet?”
“Yup. Bring it right here. A neighboring world.”
“That’s insane,” she said, facing him. “You can’t just … just drop another planetary body next to ours. It has mass, for God’s sake! Its own gravity! Think, Dylan! Think of the effect the moon has on the tides! And that’s just a … a ball of rock. Another planetary body within range of us … it’ll wind up tearing our world apart!”
He waved dismissively. “I’m sure they’ve got it all worked out.”
“You’re crazier than they are!”
“They’re not crazy at all,” he said. “They’re organized. They’re spreading hundreds more pillars across the earth so they can launch them into orbit by morning. That,” he said, smugly pleased with his knowledge of these matters, “that’s the control one. It needs to stay anchored by the earth’s magnetic core.” Then he hesitated. “I think it’s magnetic. Or kinetic. It’s something.” He shrugged. “When you’re born rich, you’re just not into science. Anyways … tomorrow morning? Bang!” It was appalling how enthused he seemed about it.
From a distance, she could hear the howling of police sirens. There was no doubt in her mind why that was. The Decepticons had been spotted. No surprise there. They were impossible to miss.
Dylan was grinning, watching the approaching flashing lights with as much eagerness as if he were sitting in the bleachers at a baseball game. “Yeah. Those guys are gonna make a big difference.”
“You want this to happen!” Carly said.
Suddenly Dylan snapped. It was as if his personality had undergone a complete transformation in a matter of seconds as he shouted, “No, I want a world of happy children, laughing, singing, nibbling on fields of cotton candy, but that’s not what I’m dealing with right now!” She was taken aback, and just as quickly as he had flared up, he reined himself in once more. The same cocky smile returned, and he continued with a forced calm that didn’t match his expression. “I want to survive. I want forty more years. Every slave labor force needs a hierarchy. They’ll need human leaders—”
“And a CEO,” she said drily.
He wagged a scolding finger at her as if admonishing a child. “Duchess! Don’t jinx it for me. We had a good long run, we really did. But we don’t own this planet. We’ve just been renting.”
Suddenly the building shook.
For the first time, Dylan showed genuine alarm. Explosions had begun in the distance, but they were coming closer and closer, one set of buildings after another erupting in flame. There was so much smoke billowing upward that at first it was hard for Carly to make out what was happening, but then she saw it.
Decepticon battle cruisers were hurtling down from above, threading their way through Chicago’s concrete canyons, firing everywhere, seemingly at random. They weren’t selecting targets. They were just firing everywhere, both at things that were in their way and at things that weren’t.
Pedestrians were running desperately to get out of the way, but it wasn’t as if there was a safe haven. Buildings were blasted apart at their foundations, crumbling into vast piles of rubble. Cars were struck with stray blasts and promptly erupted, causing massive fires to start rolling down the streets. From North Columbus down to LaSalle, as far as Carly could see, Chicago was under an assault that seemed to be ripped straight out of War of the Worlds. And this time germs weren’t going to be sufficient to take down the aliens.
She grabbed Dylan by the shirtfront and screamed in his face, “Didn’t tell you about this part, did they? You inhuman monster! You—!”
His hand swung fast, taking her across the face, knocking her off her feet. She stumbled back, landing hard on her backside, and Dylan was shouting, “Hey! You think I’m in every meeting?” His hands were clenched into fists. And they were trembling. “Look, I’m safe! They said I’m safe, which means if you stick with me, you are, too. You have to stand on the side of progress if you want to be a part of history! Even if it means you stand alone.”
At that moment, she truly wanted to leave him alone in every sense of the word by bolting toward the edge of the roof and throwing herself off. That gave her a nice mental picture: swan diving while Dylan was left behind, shouting after her, cursing her name. It would give her the final word, of sorts.
Because she was positive that Dylan was deluding himself in accepting the word of the Decepticons. He had to be. He was just a means to an end to them, and there was no way he was going to come out of this alive. Which meant she wasn’t going to, either. At least she could choose the manner of her death.
But she didn’t.
She didn’t because of one thought that kept going through her mind:
Sam will come for me. He’ll save me. Somehow.
It was ridiculous. In her own way, she supposed she was as insane as Dylan was. Yet it was that firm belief that kept her right where she was and prevented her from ending up a splotch on the sidewalk far below.
As the city of Chicago was hammered with death on all sides, Carly dared to dream of life with Sam, as thoroughly unlikely as that was.
INDIANA
From the moment Sam had hit the road with Epps behind the wheel of his sporty Mustang—which Sam half expected to turn into a robot—the ex-soldier made phone call after phone call. Three dozen phone numbers he went through, and most of them didn’t answer, and some of them did and offered apologies …
… but half a dozen of them were in a position, both healthwise and geographywise, to say yes.
“How the hell many mercs do you know, anyway?” Sam said at one point.
“How many mercs do you think I know that are giant robots?”
“Uh … none?”
“Right. So however many mercs I do know, it’s not enough. But we’ll make do with what we’ve got.”
The rendezvous point was a rest stop just north of Indianapolis. They pulled in, and Epps killed the engine. Sam looked around. There were a couple of cars there, but they were filled with families that were sound asleep, using the rest stop to grab some shut-eye and break up a lengthy trip. “Where are they?” he said.
“They’ll be here. When they’re ready for you to see ’em, you will.”
Epps exited the car, going into the station to use the restroom and returning with an assortment of candy bars and soda he’d gotten out of the vending machines. When he returned, Sam went to the restroom as well, splashed water on his face, and returned to the car. It was four in the morning, and he was functioning on a combination of adrenaline, Kit Kats, and Red Bull. Presuming he survived this, he was going to crash and sleep for about a week and a half.
He prayed that Carly would be at his side.
She had to be.
“It was my fault.”
Epps, who had been about to eat another square of chocolate, turned and looked at him. He didn’t seem any the worse for wear after having driven all night. He was geared up for whatever they were going to have to face. “Dude, there’s plenty of blame to go around. Way I see it, you have the least reason to—”
“No, you don’t get it. I had this … this thing,” and he pointed to his wrist. “A spiderlike Decepticon that could also make itself look like a watch. Gould put it on me, and if I didn’t do what it wanted, then it would bite into me or even shock me. It could’ve turned my nervous system into Swiss cheese.”
“Ouch.”
“Not to mention that Carly’s life depended upon my doing what they said.”
“Okay. But I’m still not seeing …”
“Don’t you get it?” Sam said, feeling mortified but compelled to tell someone what was eating away at him. “The Decepticons were tracking me the whole time. I led them straight to the space center. They wouldn’t have known where the Autobots were and wouldn’t have been there to—”
“Whoa, whoa … slow down, chief. You didn’t lead them there.”
“But—”
“I checked around immediately after the … afte
r the incident. That F-22 was there since the previous day.”
“Are you sure?”
“Positive. And don’t think I didn’t ream some people out for that. No one questioned it being there. Everyone just assumed that everyone else knew about it. Considering we’re dealing with beings that can shift into alternate forms, that’s exactly the kinda crap that should be setting off bells everywhere. Point is, they were there ahead of you.”
“How, though?”
“You said it yourself. They’ve got eyes and ears everywhere. They could have found out any one of a dozen ways. Hell, for all we know, they had someone staked out at every major facility in the country equipped with rocket science, hoping to get lucky.”
“Lucky?”
“Well, lucky for them. Sorry.” He shrugged. “Probably wasn’t the best word for me to use.”
Sam waved it off. “No sweat. You didn’t mean anything by it. And besides, if it weren’t for you, I’d probably still be back in Florida trying to bum a ride, so—”
Then he jumped as a hand rapped firmly on the door.
Someone was standing outside, a large, bulky man with a face so pockmarked and scarred that it looked like a road map of a life of warfare. Behind him there were other hard-to-see figures. They seemed to have emerged from the darkness like shadows come to life.
“Took your sweet time,” said the scarred man. He scowled at Sam. “Who’s he? Your boyfriend?”
“Sam,” Epps said, “this is Hardcore Eddie. And over there”—Epps gestured toward the shadowed figures—“is Tiny … and that’s Stackhouse … and that’s … is that you, Rakishi?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s Rakishi. And standing over there by himself because he’s got this whole go-it-alone thing is Ames.”
“Okay, well … I’m Sam Witwicky. My girlfriend is the one Dylan Gould grabbed and took with him to Chicago.”
Rakishi spoke up with a deep and impressive voice. “He’s a dead man.”
“No,” Sam said angrily. “I made a promise. He’s my dead man.”
Hardcore Eddie nodded approvingly. “Kid’s starting to grow on me. Okay, then: Let’s go to Chicago and blow some stuff up.”
Moments later Epps’s Mustang, followed by three low-slung, nondescript vehicles that Sam would’ve sworn just a few minutes ago weren’t there, pulled out of the rest stop and started rolling down the highway.
Every single one of the drivers was an experienced mercenary, and they also happened to be among the best wheelmen in their singular line of work. Hyperaware of their surroundings at all times, they would have staked their lives on the notion that they were not being followed.
They would have lost that bet.
CHICAGO
Normally, on a regular morning, I-65 heading into Chicago was choked with traffic, filled with people on their normal morning commute. Southbound, on the other hand, was fairly light.
This morning was, as Sam might have said when he was a kid, Opposite Day. On this day, the southbound traffic was so heavy that it was scarcely moving. Northbound, on the other hand, wasn’t simply light; it was nonexistent. Nothing was headed toward Chicago.
It was easy to see why even from less than a mile out.
Epps, Tiny, Stackhouse, Hardcore Eddie, Ames, Rakishi, and Sam had all pulled over and emerged from their cars. They simply stood there, staring, and even the hardened mercs appeared stunned into silence by what they were looking at.
Large portions of Chicago had simply been blown away. The skyline had literally been decimated; at least a tenth of it was no longer there. A vast cloud of blackened smoke hung over the city, and there was some sort of huge shape that was visible in the lower sections of the smoke. Sam wasn’t sure, but he suspected it was some sort of Decepticon vessel. An airship, maybe, or a base from which Decepticons could launch smaller attack ships. It could be the equivalent of a floating aircraft carrier.
And oddest of all, the city was glowing. It was as if it were suffused with some sort of energy, or perhaps energy that was starting to build up to something. Had the Decepticons nuked the place? Sam got a mental picture of Carly dying from radiation poisoning, her skin covered with sores, her eyes glazing over …
He closed his eyes a moment but then gave up when he realized that it would do nothing to block out the images in his mind.
“You ever get the feeling there’s something you don’t want to know about?” said Epps.
“You have no idea,” Sam said.
Stackhouse seemed to be checking something on what looked to be a palm-sized computer. Meanwhile, Tiny had removed some manner of device with a flat wand attached to it and was waving it in the air. Sam tapped Epps to get his attention and then pointed to Tiny. “He trying to cast a spell?”
“Taking readings. What’ve ya got, Tiny?”
“No rads. Or at least nothing beyond what’s normal these days,” Tiny said.
“No communications, either,” Stackhouse informed them. “We can stay in touch with shortwave, unit to unit, but forget about cellphones.”
Epps shook his head at the prospect of what they were facing. “My God. We came here to find one guy … in the middle of that?”
“We going into that, Epps?” Tiny sounded dubious about it.
“No one’s going in,” Epps said flatly.
“Are you kidding?” Sam couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “I thought you guys were mercs! I thought you were badass! This is just … it’s a city that’s been messed up by war! You’ve never been to places like that?”
“We’ve been to plenty of places like that, runt,” Hardcore Eddie said. “But we got prep time, we got access to way more equipment than what we have with us, and—oh, yeah—we got a paycheck.”
“Eddie’s right,” Ames said. “Don’t mind doing no pro bono for old time’s sake to help out Epps, but this? With a week or two to plan, maybe …”
“Well, we don’t have a week or two! The damned planet may not have a week or two!” Sam said angrily. “You’re not going in? Fine! I am. With or without you, I’ll find her.”
He started to stalk away, but Epps grabbed him firmly by the arm. Sam tried to pull away, but Epps’s grip was solid iron. “You’ll get yourself killed. That what you want? Come all this way for that?”
“She’s here because of me!”
“If she’s in there—if she’s even alive—there’s no way you’re ever gonna reach her. I’m sorry, but it’s all over.”
Sam relaxed, and in response Epps did, too, easing up on his grip. It was exactly what Sam was waiting for, and when he yanked free, Epps was caught off guard.
He started running toward Chicago. He was hoping that Epps would simply shrug and say that if he wanted to throw his life away, he was welcome to do so. Instead, Epps immediately went in pursuit. Sam tried to put on as much speed as he could, but within thirty seconds he was gasping for breath and could tell from what he was hearing that Epps wasn’t even breathing hard.
And suddenly from behind them, Hardcore Eddie shouted, “Incoming!”
A Decepticon fighter was howling through the air in their direction. Sam hoped for a moment that it hadn’t spotted them, that it was just hurtling past on its way to somewhere else. That notion was quickly dashed when the fighter angled straight down toward them and opened fire with a strafing run. The mercs, Sam, and Epps scattered in all directions, and it was just Sam’s luck—or maybe it was by design—that the fighter appeared to be zeroing in on him. It chewed up ground behind him, and he knew that it was catching up. It was only a matter of seconds before it overtook him, and there was nowhere for him to hide.
And suddenly the fighter exploded, blown right out of the air.
The concussive force knocked Sam off his feet, and he fell flat onto the highway. He threw his arms over his head to protect it as huge chunks of the fighter bounced all around him. He saw the head of a Decepticon, the pilot, go rolling past, and—with the sound of the explosion still ringing in
his ears—he looked around to see where the blast that had destroyed the fighter had come from.
He couldn’t believe it.
Optimus Prime was standing ten feet away, smoke still wafting from the discharge of his arm cannon. Arrayed behind him were all of the Autobots, the ones who were supposed to have been blown to cinders.
The mercs were gaping at them, exchanging glances as if to ask one another, You ever see anything like this?
“Perhaps your leaders will now understand,” Optimus said. “Decepticons will never leave your planet alone. And we needed them to believe we had gone.”
It took Sam long moments to recover his breath. “They … they were watching me.” He pointed to his wrist even though the miniature spy was long gone. “I couldn’t tell you …”
“You told me enough for me to know that something was wrong.”
“But your ship … They blew it up …”
Roadbuster strode forward with his characteristic swagger. “Designed the damn thing, didn’t we? First booster rocket to separate … that was our splashdown escape pod!”
“Thing was a bucket of bolts anyway,” Topspin said dismissively.
Roadbuster agreed. “Never woulda made it outta the atmosphere.”
Optimus looked toward the city. There were explosions in the distance, and Sam watched with dismay as another building collapsed. He prayed that there was nobody in it but was afraid he was wrong. God, what if it was the one that Carly was in?
Why? Why the hell are they doing this?
“If they’re destroying the city,” Optimus said, answering the unspoken question, “it’s to make a fortress so no one can see what they’re up to inside.”
“Then I think I know how to get a look,” Sam said. He turned and pointed to the fallen alien ship. There were chunks of it all over the place, but a considerable portion of it was still in one piece. “Can we sneak in with that thing?”
Without hesitation, Roadbuster called out, “Get to work, boys! I want this enemy ding-wing shipshape top-tight ready!”