[rd][fic][Transformers Bayverse] Deus Ex Machina 5/?

[sakon76]

The room was dark and its view was of stars that failed to twinkle, given the lack of atmosphere between the viewer and them.

A door hushed open, then closed, a new figure waiting patiently for the stargazing mech's command.

There was a long silence. The mech by the plasteel window gazed at a blue star. His expression contorted into a silent snarl, then smoothed, contemplative.

Finally, "Bring me the boy," he growled.

The waiting soldier bowed. "As you command, Lord Megatron."


Deus Ex Machina: Round Two
by K. Stonham
released 25th August 2011


March 27th, 2012. Princeton, New Jersey.

American History was almost as boring as European History. Maybe even more so for Sam's being familiar with it. But still, he valiantly tried to keep his eyes open and mind focused on the professor's droning words. He was reminded of the teacher in that movie Bumblebee liked, Ferris Bueller's Day Off.

It helped, somewhat, that Leo was drooling next to him. They'd been trading periodic jabs with the blunt--and sometimes the sharpened--ends of pencils all term, trying to keep awake. Sam palmed his pencil in preparation.

Across the aisle, Mirage was the perfect image of an interested, absorbed student as Leo suddenly jolted awake with a snort and started coughing on his own saliva. She merely rolled her eyes at the pair of them and returned her attention forward as Leo wiped his mouth on the back of his wrist.

Mirage, Sam reflected, had the advantage of wifi. She was probably, in fact almost certainly, multitasking, messaging with Hound and/or Trailbreaker, playing games, or simply browsing the internet in search of anything that might appeal to her refined Towers tastes.

The door at the side front of the classroom opened and a dark-haired man in a suit walked in, heading for the stage. Professor Irvine finished his sentence and leaned down, exchanging a few quiet words with the man, and then a nod. He gestured toward Sam's half of the room, and the professor resumed his lecture as the man strode up the steps to... oh, of course.

He stopped right by Sam. "Mister Witwicky?" he asked.

"Yes?" Sam responded, his mind already listing out possible reasons he was being singled out in class. NEST needed him, the President wanted to talk, there was some kind of new disaster going on--

"You need to come with me. There's been an accident."

His parents.

Sam's breath caught in his throat. No, no, not them. They weren't combatants, they were supposed to be safe.

He swallowed, wide-eyed, and stood. He grabbed his books, or thought he did. His hands felt numb. "My parents?" he asked.

The man nodded, and something in Sam's chest constricted tighter, choking him.

"Sam," someone said, and Mirage was standing behind the man, "don't go with him."

The world seemed to slow down and be moving through syrup as the man turned to face Mirage. She was shorter and slighter; the man was tall and broad-shouldered. His dark suit mostly blocked her from Sam's view, but he could see her smile, and the fact that there was no mirth in her eyes. "You'll have to go through me to take him," she told the man, calm and professional.

He barked a laugh, drawing the attention of the students and the professor. "So the little human has a bodyguard," he said.

Sam's eyes widened. Shit. Shitshitshitshitshit, Decepticon here in his class! He didn't glance around, didn't dare take his attention off the pair before him, but the golden glyphs in his head informed him that there were a hundred and twenty-six possible casualties in this room alone. Sam's breathing sped up, his heart rate slowed down, and he slid a foot back in preparation to bolting.

They'd practiced this, he and Hound and Mirage, the three of them on the track team's loop, running in perfect step, leaping hurdles like there were Decepticons on their heels, for hours until Sam was boneless and almost retching. His bodyguards had brought him Gatorade and a blanket and all three of them had turned the track coaches' offers down flat. Sam wasn't in it to win medals, and Hound and Mirage were in it to protect Sam.

You don't stop, you don't hide, you run.

And you kept the civilians out of the way.

"Leave now, and you'll leave in one piece," Mirage told the Decepticon.

He snorted in derision. "You wish, Towerling," he said, and there was the sound of transforming parts.

A flash of deafening light had Sam seeing spots for precious seconds while he gasped for breath, willing the world to come back through the black and white and purple--

The Decepticon had been flung down the stairs and lay broken there, camo-mesh no longer working, a smoking, glowing hole gaping his chest open.

And Mirage sat on the steps, her back against the side of her chair as liquid light leaked out from under the fingers she pressed to her chest, soaking blue into her shirt. The cotton burned away where the energon touched.

Her right hand shifted back into its human appearance, and even that seemed a trigger as she twitched, pain on her face.

The classroom door slammed open and Hound ran in, taking the stairs five at a time. "Mirage!" He knelt by his partner, staring first at her face, then gently peeling her fingers away from her wound, examining it. He pressed her fingers back. "It's going to be all right," he said.

Mirage just looked at him and breathed a tiny laugh. "You're a terrible liar."

And, yeah, a leaking chest wound wasn't any better for Cybertronians than it was for humans. Sam's lips pressed together as he ran down his short list of options even as Hound produced what Sam knew to be a Cybertronian first aid kit out of nowhere. Clamps, clotting compounds... and there was nothing Sam could do to help because the energon his bodyguard was leaking would melt his hands before he could even hold two tube ends together.

"Madre de Dios," Leo was whispering behind him.

Sam pulled out his phone and hit two on his speed-dial. Raising his phone to his ear, he reflected briefly on the fact that seventy percent of his speed-dial numbers hadn't been created on the same planet he had.

"Optimus," he said when the line was picked up, "We need an extract. Mirage is down."

***

When a blond guy muscled his way into the classroom past all the now-shouting students and the security guards who, completely useless, had showed up after everything was over, and calmly shouldered the dead Decepticon, Leo figured he had to be on their side.

"'Bee!" Sam said, and Leo had to do a double-take.

...He didn't want to know, he decided. He really didn't.

"We have to go," Hound told Mirage. She nodded weakly, and he hefted her in his arms, carrying her down the steps like a bride, Sam in front of him. "Bumblebee, you're on point."

Oh hell no. Leo was not getting left out of this.

He ran after his roommate and his roommate's alien friends, elbowing his way through the throng that parted for the Cybertronians like water, just barely noticing how that parting looked a lot like people getting invisibly shoved out of the way. He caught up with them just outside the building--

--where a semi waited, so very illegally parked on the grass, flanked by a black SUV and a yellow muscle car.

The instant they got past the doors, a pressure grew in the air, light show flashing, and Leo remembered this, could just see the students and staff draw back and--

--wham! They were on tarmac someplace dark that smelled of sea and vehicles.

"Ratchet!"

***

If there was one thing Will hated about being the base commander, it was being woken up in the middle of some perfectly good sleep to deal with whatever emergency had come up.

The fact that Epps' expression was grim didn't bode well for Will getting back to bed any sooner than tomorrow night.

"Sitrep," he said, sitting up and rubbing a hand over his eyes. He resolutely did not look at the clock as he reached for his ACUs. He didn't want to know what time it was.

"'Cons tried to grab Sam," Epps summed up. "We've got a dead Pretender and Mirage is in surgery."

Will bit back the curse that wanted to surface. "Everyone else okay? Civilian casualties?"

"None." A small mercy. "But the shit went down in the middle of one of his classes. We got a ton of witnesses."

"All right." Will yanked his laces tight and stood, heading for the door. "What's Optimus got to say?"

***

"Red, can you get me a secure line to my parents?" Sam asked the Cray workstation. It flashed lights at him in a pretty pattern, then his phone rang. "Thanks," he said, lifting the cell to his ear. It rang twice more before someone picked up on the other end. "Mom?"

"Sammy!" He could hear her surprise. "Oh, hi! Are you okay? You're calling in the middle of the day...."

"Long story," he told her. "Are you and Dad okay?"

"Of course. He's just in the hardware store before we go to the supermarket." Sam breathed a sigh of relief. The Decepticon had been lying. "Is something wrong?"

"I just got attacked at school," he told her bluntly. "I'm fine; we got away and I'm on the island now."

"At school?!" his mother shrieked. "I thought they were supposed to be keeping you safe there!"

"They did," Sam shot back. "Mirage is the reason I'm not kidnapped. And she's in surgery for it, so they're doing their job just fine."

"Oh God." There was a moment's silence. "Are you going to be okay, Sam?"

"I'm in the safest place on Earth," Sam assured his mother. "You and Dad be careful, okay? If anything happens, call me the instant it goes wrong. And if the school calls you... tell them I'm fine and I'll be in touch. Probably."

"Probably?!" she demanded.

He grimaced. "I might need to rethink the college thing, if the Decepticons are going to keep finding me there." He sighed. "Nothing's decided yet, Mom. I'll let you know."

She sighed. "You just keep yourself safe, Sam. We love you."

"Love you too, Mom. Take care." He hung up the line and looked up at Optimus, who had come into the hangar while he was on the phone, Trailbreaker shadowing behind him. "Any word on Mirage?"

"Ratchet is optimistic," the Prime replied. He seated himself upon the ground. "Sam, Hound is understandably distracted; we need a complete description of what happened in your classroom."

In response, Sam held up a hand, letting Optimus' data cable snake into contact with his palm. Closing his eyes, he called up the memory.

***

"Is she gonna be okay?" Leo said, waiting with Hound outside the medbay.

The Cybertronian sat on one of the human-sized benches, his hands interlaced and obscuring his mouth. He raised his head briefly but didn't meet Leo's eyes. "Ratchet has a reputation as a miracle worker," he said. "She'll be all right. She has to be."

"Ratchet can fix anything," Mikaela said, suddenly arriving at the bay's closed doors. She looked rumpled and was wearing a tank top and flannel pants. Leo would've bet anything she'd been asleep ten minutes ago. She was still hot enough to make his balls give a twitch.

Hound laughed, but it sounded hollow. "That's the theory."

Mikaela stepped past them and entered a code into the door's pad. It opened for her and she went through. Not two minutes later she reappeared. "Nothing I can do," she said, waggling her fingers. "Too much energon. Ratchet said to drag you off to Trailbreaker and let you two emote together."

"Ha," Hound said, but let himself be pulled to his feet by the pair of them. "'Breaker doesn't do emo."

"Not convinced you should, either," Simmons cut in, making Leo jump as he appeared out of the shadows, dressed crisply in what looked like it had to be a black ops uniform. "Come on, tactics pow-wow happening in the big hangar. We don't wanna miss this." He spared a pale smirk for Leo. "Welcome back to the fold, rookie."

"Shut it, old man," Leo sniped back.

"Gonna stick around this time?" Simmons inquired. "Or are you going to run back to your white bread college boy world again? It'd almost break my heart, thinking you didn't want to learn from your elders and betters...."

"You don't have a heart, Simmons," Mikaela told him.

"Wounded to the quick," he replied with a hand over his heart. "Mirage will be fine," he told Hound. "She's too tough to get taken out by a punk Decepticon like that."

For the first time, Hound showed the barest glimmer of a smile. "Yeah," he admitted.

***

By the time they got to the hangar, there was already a crowd gathered, human and Autobot. Bumblebee was sitting behind Sam and Mikaela beelined for the two of them.

"Can't we just, like, dredge him?" Glen asked, gesturing at the dead Decepticon laying on the floor.

"No," Trailbreaker replied. "Decepticons--and most Autobots," he admitted, "lay some very nasty CPU boobytraps for just this situation. It's close to suicide to try to get information from a corpse."

"Hey," Mikaela breathed, hugging first Sam and then Bumblebee's hand. "You okay?" she asked.

Sam nodded. "More pissed than anything right now."

"...Adrenaline," Bumblebee opined of that.

"Probably," Sam agreed.

"Viruses?" Captain Graham was asking in the background.

"Why not just plug him into a non-sentient machine, then?" Maggie asked. "We've got a sandboxed system or two around here we could adapt."

There was utter silence from the Cybertronians.

It was broken a moment later by Bumblebee. "Why didn't I think of that?" he sound-clipped, face-palming.

"Non-sentient isolated systems," Trailbreaker said, sounding dazed by the concept. "We could have saved so many if we'd only thought of that...."

Master Sergeant Epps raised a hand. "Okay, what're we missing here?" he inquired of the robots.

"We didn't have non-sentient machines on Cybertron," Hound explained slowly. "Even our wildlife had rudimentary intelligence, let alone the AIs we seeded and worked with..."

"Wait, you mean we've come up with something you didn't?" Lennox asked, sounding incredulous.

A stifled laugh came from Optimus' vocalizer. "Apparently," he said.

***

Red Alert sat, amused, fending off Soundwave's various attacks as Major Lennox argued with the dean of Samuel's school. The satellite's efforts were only half-sparked, Red noted. It seemed as though this symbiote had been linked fairly closely to his master, and so Soundwave was feeling the backlash of his death.

"I understand that, ma'am," the major said, "but at this time Mister Witwicky, as well as his roommate and bodyguards, is in protective custody and not available to answer your questions."

"We have a class disrupted, with a student bleeding out who then vanishes from the university in Mister Witwicky's company--" the woman said.

"With all due respect, Miss Lagerlof is a professional bodyguard, and she is currently undergoing surgery. Our doctors have given a positive prognosis."

"But--"

"Furthermore," Lennox overrode the woman, "the situation was contained with, as I understand it, no property damage, and no injuries other than Miss Lagerlof, who put herself in the line of fire as was her duty."

There was silence on the other end of the line for a moment. "Your argument has merit, young man," the dean finally said.

"Thank you, ma'am," Lennox said, a smile quirking the corners of his lips.

"However," she continued, "as this is the second incident centered on Mister Witwicky within as many years, his case will be given to the board to review. We have a duty to our students not to place them in unnecessary danger, and it may be that this is not the best academic environment for him."

Lennox narrowed his eyes. "I seem to recall that you had no problem taking our money last year, using it not only for upgrades to the damaged library but also endowments for alumni."

"The danger--"

"Sam needs a degree," Lennox cut her off. "He's an appointed ambassador, and needs the respect that a degree from a solid, reputable, historical institution will give him to be able to fulfill his duties."

"Ambassador to what?" she said crisply.

Lennox's mouth thinned to a line. "As you well know, ma'am, I am not at liberty to say."

"Until you are, Major, this matter remains remanded to the board for consideration." The line went dead.

"She hung up," Lennox said, half-disbelievingly.

"You expected less?" Red Alert asked him.

"I expected more!" the human responded, sounding annoyed, and stalked off, snarling to himself.

Red sent a quick comm to Ironhide, informing him that his human friend was in need of possible distraction and defusing. Not, he admitted, that Ironhide had so calm a temper himself, but somehow the weapons master and the major seemed to provide a balance to one another.

***

The lights came on, almost blinding against the darkness that had filled the room before. Sam followed Mikaela into the bungalow, then quirked an eyebrow at the yellow Camaro that waited outside the door. In response a human form materialized in the middle of a slight blue glow and walked inside. Sam closed the door behind them.

Mikaela had headed straight for the bedroom and sat down on the edge of the bed, then flopped backwards, her eyes closed, her hair spilling darkly over the sheets. "I'd ask why does this always have to happen in the middle of the night, except it doesn't," she said as the pair of them came in the room.

Bumblebee stood on one side of the room, where Mikaela had shelves that held mostly auto manuals and issues of girl magazines. One shelf, though, held pictures of her and her dad, her and Sam, her and Bumblebee, and one of all three of them. It also held the Bumblebee plushie Leo had given Sam two Christmases ago. He'd given it in turn to Mikaela when she moved to the island, reasoning that he got Bumblebee all the time, while she only got him on weekends....

Mikaela turned on her side, still not opening her eyes. "Mmrm," she mumbled. "I'm going back to sleep."

Sam caught Bumblebee's holographic eyes. "Want us to tuck you in?"

Mikaela nodded and wormed her way further up the bed without ever opening her eyes or changing position, until her head rested on a pillow. Toeing off his shoes, Sam got onto the bed, curling up behind her. Bumblebee's faux weight shifted the bed in front of her as he laid down on Mikaela's other side. She wordlessly shifted, her ass pressing back against Sam as she moved over Bumblebee's arm, resting her head on his chest as he curled the arm around her. Bumblebee shifted his other arm back and underneath his head, looking up at the ceiling for a moment before closing his eyes, fingers stroking Mikaela's upper arm until she shifted and murmured and he stopped.

Sam looked at the two of them for a minute, his heart almost hurting with how perfect they looked and how much he wanted things to stay just like this, forever.

A thought occurred to him and shook him.

After a minute, Bumblebee opened his eyes again and looked at Sam, a questioning expression on his face. Sam shook his head before Bee could use any kind of soundclip and wake Mikaela, and doused the lights with a telekinetic wave.

Bumblebee closed his eyes again, the hologram powering down into a powersaving mode as outside he slipped into light recharge. It was impressive, Sam thought, how even that powersave mode kept up the appearance of breathing.

He looked at the two of them in the moonlight for long minutes more, then resolutely shoved his thoughts away and closed his eyes himself.

There would be time to deal with everything tomorrow.

*~*~*

Author's Note: Thanks to femme4jack for her feedback on the chapter, and my Wonderful Husband for helping me with techy bits.

Comments

[synaltern.livejournal.com]

"Wait, you mean we've come up with something you didn't?" Lennox asked, sounding incredulous.

Brilliant? Yes.

[darkdanc3r.livejournal.com]

Urk! Must not've been a very bright symbiont to attack Sam in an enclosed location where it had too little room to maneuver. Would've done better to try and get him between classes, when the press of milling students would've made disappearing into the crowd easier.

Rather enjoyed Lennox's argument with the dean of Sam's school, though, and his reaction when she hung up on him was perfect!

Also! Total kudos to figuring out a trick for retrieving data that won't get anyone killed!!

[slvrbld747.livejournal.com]

Huh, I agree, the scene with the Dean was wonderful, but I wonder how she would react to someone with a little more rank, and pull. She over-reacted, no one was hurt, and his bodyguard made sure the bad guy was taken down. For such a high falutin' school, who must have other high security risk students in attendance she took that over the top. But I wonder, is she is just trying to get more money, maybe she's used to dealing with rich parents who solve all their problems with money. The Government though doesn't have a sense of humor, and they don't like to be black mailed.

I loved this whole fic, Leo, Simmons, as funny as they were in the second movie, Mirage, and Hound are awesome separately and as a couple. I really enjoy this universe you've created, thank you for sharing it with us. :D -SB

[flybystardancer.livejournal.com]

Ooo, another awesome chapter! I loved the Cybertronian's reaction to the suggestion of using an isolated computer to hack the corpse. :D And Hound eak Trailbreaker are cute when worried. And Sam, Mikaela, and 'Bee are adorable there at the end.

[morgie.livejournal.com]

Hee. Best hope that sandbox has no wifi. It'd suck if the trap took that over. In other news, yeah. Dean /so/ needs to get smacked. ;)