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"How's our guest today?" General Sanchez said after entering the security hub.

Ashanti nodded at one of the monitors on the bank in front of her and the two airmen stationed there. "I don't think I've ever seen a more pathetic-looking son of a bitch, sir."

On the screen, Starscream sat in a decommissioned missile silo far away from Groom Lake, leaning against the wall with a thousand-yard stare.

"Understandable, I guess. He's just found out that yet another piece of intel he gave us didn't pan out. Looks like Megatron is rushing to scrap every project Starscream had any knowledge of."

"Yeah, I can see how that would grind a person down after a while. He's still insisting that he wants to do everything in his power to help us take Megatron down, though. He does seem to genuinely want to get rid of the guy, but I doubt we can trust him any farther than that."

"Me, too. To be fair, though, we did find evidence of 'Con activity at all the sites he told us about," The general shrugged. "Well, his replacement arms are almost finished, so that should cheer him up. They won't have the sharp claws or missiles his original arms had, but at least he'll be whole again. That should give him a little incentive to keep working with us."

"Sounds good, sir. I have to admit, I have trouble looking at him without laughing."

"Same here." Sanchez grinned. "How about the Vehicons?"

Ashanti nodded at a set of screens on the left, which showed the fourteen Decepticon troops who'd surrendered a few months ago, in several other triple-max security sites. Their standard black and purple paint jobs had been augmented with differently colored markings to help everyone tell which one was which.

"They haven't given us any trouble at all. Now that they don't have to worry about Megs or Screamy punishing them for failure anymore, they seem pretty mellow. Or maybe they just don't know quite what to do with themselves." She flicked a grin at Sanchez. "All of them have told us that Screamy was pretty abusive; smacked them around all the time, and every now and then he'd waste one of 'em right in front of all the others when things weren't going his way. So when Megs ordered them to chase him down and kill him, they gave it one hundred-fifty percent."

"Ha. Guess we'll have to keep them far away from him, then, or one of them will finish the job just out of spite." Sanchez turned to one of the other monitors. "Congrats on picking up the last of the Pretenders, by the way."

"Thank you, sir. It was another easy one; he surrendered without a fight." Only four of the Pretenders who'd infiltrated Groom Lake had put up a fight, and Ashanti had taken each of them out herself. "I still have my suspicions, but the defectors have been model prisoners ever since we captured them. Especially the one using the name Rosalina Mendoza; we still haven't found any evidence that she killed a human and took her place. Same goes for the rest, but this one..."

On one of the screens, Mendoza's husband, Lucas Conrad, joined her at the small table in the center of the room. Four guards stood nearby, holding EMP rifles, covering the Pretender from every angle.

Ashanti pointed at the screen. "Derek, would you turn up the volume on that one, please?"

"Sure thing, Colonel." The airman dialed up the volume on the microphone above the table.

"About as well as can be expected," Mendoza said. She was still in her robot form, as per the rules Sanchez had laid down when the Pretenders began giving themselves up. They had to remain in their true forms so they would be easy to identify. Taking human form would imply an attempt to escape or sabotage, and would be dealt with accordingly.

"How's Bobby doing?" Mendoza continued, referring to her and Conrad's adopted son.

"He's okay, under the circumstances." Conrad pressed his lips together and took a breath. "He misses his mommy."

Mendoza's glowing red eyes opened wider and her lips quivered. "I miss him, too. Damn. I'm so sorry about all of this. I should've told you what I really am. I should've told you a long time ago."

"Come on, we've been over this before. How would you have even brought it up? 'Honey, guess what? I'm an alien robot disguised as a human.' I wouldn't have bought it. And if you'd transformed to prove it, I would've freaked the hell out."

"I know. Still, I should've..." She looked at the table. "I don't know. I guess part of it is that I lived as a human for so long, I kind of forgot what I am." She looked at her hand and brushed her fingertips over the wedding ring she still wore. "When Cybertron fell, I realized the war was utterly pointless. There was no reason to continue fighting, and barely any reason to go on living. Then a few of us found this planet, and I found you. You and Bobby made me want to live again."

Slowly, hesitantly, Conrad reached out and slipped his hand under hers, brushing his thumb over her ring.

She smiled and let herself relax, slumping forward a bit, clearly relieved that she wasn't being rejected. "Everything you've gone through because of me--I'll make it up to you, I swear. All we wanted was to live in peace, but now that I have a home and you and Bobby, I have something worth fighting for. I won't let the Decepticons hurt either of you."

General Sanchez's phone beeped. He took it out of his pocket, glanced at the screen, and grimaced. "Oh, Christ." He looked up at Ashanti. "Get your team together, Colonel."

"What's up?"

He held the phone out to her. On the screen was an image of a smirking robotic face with glowing purple optics. The shape of the head reminded her a bit of Maleficent. She'd seen the face before, in video logs Arcee had shared with Groom Lake.

She groaned. "Oh, that's just fantastic."

"Yeah." Sanchez turned toward the door, took a deep breath, and let it out slowly. "Airachnid."

#

"Wow, it's cold here. I should've brought my jacket." Jack shivered and grimaced as torrential rain splattered against his faceplate. "Can't wait to meet up with everyone else and put my armor on."

"Yeah, it's quite a switch from what we're used to." Arcee kept her speed at the posted limit for now. To avoid attracting attention from the locals as well as their quarry, Ratchet had ground-bridged the team into separate locations well outside the small town near the crime scene. It'd been a bit of a shock, going so suddenly from the hot, dry, pleasant climate around the Autobot base to the cold, wet, wooded region near the west coast.

"I can't believe the weather. It's only September, but it looks and feels like winter." Jack shook his head. "Actually, I can't remember a winter in Jasper ever being this cold."

Arcee ran an internet search while scanning for vehicles and life forms. "Hmm. This whole region is basically a rain forest, so I guess that explains the climate."

Jack shivered again. "By the time we meet up with the others, I'll be able to cut glass with my nipples."

Arcee laughed despite the seriousness of the situation. "Don't get me all revved-up while we're on a mission."

He grinned and patted her flank. "Hey, if it keeps us warm, it's all good."

"Ha ha. Okay, let's try to keep our minds on the job, smooth operator." She detected a lone vehicle ahead, coming up fast. Or, rather, she and Jack were closing in because of its ridiculously low velocity. "There's an RV ahead, not even running at the speed limit. I'll see if I can get around it once we reach a long enough stretch of straight road."

"Okay." Jack, shivering harder, looked around slowly at the mountains looming over them. "The horizon's so close. Kind of unnerving." He shrugged. "Must be pretty when the sun's shining."

"Yeah. I'm looking at some photos, and the places where you can see the ocean make for some lovely sunsets. From the data I've found, though, the weather ranges from dreary to freezing most of the year."

"Charming. I'm definitely keeping this whole area off my list of places to retire."

Retire... Once again, Arcee was suddenly reminded of humans' all too brief life spans. Before she could stop herself, she imagined Jack a short time in the future, not even a single century, his body withering and failing and finally, simply...shutting down.

What the hell am I doing? It wasn't the first time she'd asked herself that question. There were times when her relationship with Jack weirded her out--usually for only a split-second, but still. He was so soft, so fragile, so tiny. Weapon hits and impacts that a Cybertronian could more or less shrug off, would kill him in an instant. And even if that never happened, sooner or later she would lose him anyway, simply because humans weren't built to last.

I'm setting myself up for a monumental heartbreak. Not that she could avoid it at this point. Ending their relationship would only hurt both of them. And once she'd taken that step a few months ago--that first kiss, her first realization of her feelings for him, both of them saying those three words to each other for the first time...

Yeah. I can't just change my mind now, even if I wanted to. And I sure as hell don't want to.

She reminded herself of the conversation she'd overheard between Optimus and Ratchet a few weeks ago. Ratchet had passed by one of the storage rooms that Jack, Miko, and Raf sometimes used when spending the night at the base, and had spotted Arcee and Jack sharing a private moment, him standing in front of her, her sitting and leaning over far enough to press her lips gently against his...

Ratchet must've commented to Optimus about it. While walking into the hub, she'd heard Optimus say, "Have you ever seen her smile so often before she met Jack? I think she has been happier in the past few months than she was in hundreds of years previously."

And he was right. She couldn't remember feeling this good, this frequently. Even if she never found a way to take their relationship to a more intimate physical level, as Jack had said a few hours ago, just being in love was enough.

But is a few decades of happiness worth the thousands of years of sorrow that will follow?

She held in a sigh. Don't think about it. Just...don't.

"Hey, Arcee," Jack said, intruding on her thoughts. "I'm kind of curious about something."

"Let 'er rip," she said, grateful for the distraction.

"There was a moment in the base, when you and Ratchet were talking about the synthetic energon. I caught the look that crossed your face for just a second. You seemed worried about something."

"Oh. That. Yeah. It's because our energon supply is almost depleted. That's why he's so desperate to perfect the formula, or at least figure out a way to use the stuff to power our weapons."

"Oh, yeah. It's a shame that hardly any of the information we got from Starscream turned out to be accurate. You guys really could've used those energon stores."

"Right. Heh, I never thought I'd hear myself say this, but I think Starscream sincerely believed his intel was reliable. The look on his face each time he found out that the energon mines and storage sites were either empty or had been blown up..."

"I guess we should've expected it, though. I mean, if your second in command defected to your enemy, the smartest thing to do would be to change all your passwords and relocate all your assets because he knows where everything is."

"Exactly. Oh, well, Starscream could still be useful."

"I hope so." He fell silent when the RV came into view. After a moment, he said, "About the energon. That's, like, your blood, right?"

"It's our power source, but it flows through our bodies in a manner similar to blood. The difference is, human blood never needs to be replenished except in cases of illness or injury; energon does."

"So if you use it up and can't replace it..."

"We shut down. Permanently."

Jack shivered again. "And it also powers your weapons."

"Right."

"So...each time you fire your built-in guns, you're using up your life force?"

"Only small fractions of it, but yeah. It was never a big deal before, since we always had more than enough energon. We could simply top it off whenever we needed to. But now the only stockpile we have is dwindling, so...well, I guess that's another reason why I'm glad that Groom Lake built all those upscaled human weapons for us."

"Me, too." Jack grinned. "Besides, seeing you dual-wielding those huge shotguns is hotter than hell."

His grin looked a bit forced, but Arcee was grateful for his attempt to steer the conversation away from the dark turn it had taken.

"Well, if you're lucky, you'll see plenty of it today."

"Can't wait, honey."

Suddenly, a panel in the side of the RV up ahead opened and something spilled out onto the pavement.

"What--?" Arcee swerved into the oncoming lane to avoid the sludge.

"Goddamn," Jack blurted. "They...they emptied their toilet tank! Right in front of us!"

"Marvelous." Arcee sighed. "Welcome to Oregon, I guess."

#

"Huh," Jack said as he and Arcee cruised into the town. "There's a porn shop right down the street from a school. Wonder what that says about this place?"

"Well, considering my admittedly limited experience with porn, I'd put it on the same level as an RV dumping its shit three car lengths in front of us."

"Sounds about right." Jack took a slow look around as she eased into the left lane and stopped at the traffic light ahead. He shivered again and took his hands off her handlebars to rub his palms together until the light turned green. "I'm getting some bad vibes. Not just because Airachnid might be here. Just...something about this town. Can't put my finger on it, but this feels like a bad place."

"Let's hope we don't have to stay here very long, then." Arcee accelerated enough to keep up with the traffic. After passing three more traffic lights and coming up on a fourth, she switched on her left-turn signal and waited for the light to turn green. "Maybe it's just that small-town sort of vibe. This place is a bit like Jasper, only with hills and valleys, trees, and cold, pissing rain."

"Eh, I dunno. I never got that kind of vibe from Jasper." Jack looked around again. "Everybody's driving SUVs and huge trucks." His eyes narrowed. "Oh, boy. Check out the bumper sticker on that Chevy in front of us."

Arcee scanned it. "Huh. 'My wife, yes. My dog, maybe. My gun--NEVER!' Guess I haven't learned enough about the natives to understand what that means."

"It reminds me of several guys I went to school with. Their parents moved there from places like this. They drove trucks on lift kits with huge tires, just like half the trucks around us now. One of 'em even had that same bumper sticker." Jack shook his head as Arcee turned left and cruised uphill. "No wonder I'm getting some bad juju off this place."

"Speaking of guys you went to school with," she said with a chuckle, "this should cheer you up. I'm still keeping up with current events in Jasper, and found out that one of Vince's buddies was recently caught tooting rails in one of the school restrooms."

Jack burst out laughing. "Which one? Archie Robertson?"

"Bingo."

"Ha! I've been expecting that to happen. That warms the cockles of my heart."

"Glad I could help." After traveling several blocks, Arcee made another left turn.

Jack shook his head. "The streets here are short. Don't any of them go through the whole town?"

"Nope. There's a few main streets that run through maybe two-thirds of the place, but sooner or later they either merge into another street or dead end."

"How much farther to the rendezvous point?"

"From here, it's a right turn onto Southwest Boulevard, another right onto California Avenue, and then a long stretch of windy road leading into a whole lot of nothing." She called up a GPS display on her console, showing the route she'd plotted. This town's layout wrapped around a miles-wide patch of trees where the decapitated corpses had been found.

"A forest. Just like old times, eh?"

"That bitch does seem to like woodlands."

"Any sign of her, by the way?"

"I haven't detected her yet." Arcee displayed a set of blips representing Bumblebee and Bulkhead and their human colleagues. "Optimus is too big to fit in between those trees without tearing everything up, but he's patrolling the streets around the forest. Bee's the only one small enough to maneuver in there, though Bulk can get around if he stays in vehicle mode. Ashanti's team is setting up camp so they'll look like just another investigative team doing a follow-up."

"Okay." Jack rubbed his hands together again and flexed his fingers, trying to work some feeling back into them. "Hope they've got a pot of hot coffee ready when we get there."

Arcee chuckled. Once they'd passed out of sight of the last house on California Avenue, she scanned for signs of other humans--specifically, cops waiting for speeders to pass by. After finding none, she increased her velocity. "Let's see if I can get you there before your nipples get any harder."

#

"Found anything yet?" Jack looked around again as he headed for the nearest tent, holding his arms against his sides and shivering.

His mom, already wearing her black armor, held a mug of coffee out to him. "Ashanti's team has just started searching, but so far nothing's turned up. Well, except the blood stains from the bodies. The trees keep a lot of the rain from reaching the ground, so it didn't get washed away."

"Thanks," Jack said, accepting the mug and taking a long sip. He noticed her worried expression and said, "Those will be the last trophies Airachnid ever takes. Arcee will make sure of that."

"From what you've both told me about Airachnid, I hope you'll forgive me if I worry anyway." She shook her head slowly. "To think she nearly killed you and I had no idea what was going on--"

"Take it easy, June." Arcee transformed into her robot mode. "Jack won't be getting near the action, just like all the other missions we've done with Ashanti's team."

"What if the action comes to him? For all we know, Airachnid might already be watching us."

"That's what the ground bridge is for." Arcee turned and met Jack's gaze. "You know the drill, babe. If Airachnid gets anywhere near you, you hit the panic button and Ratchet will fire up the bridge."

"Right," he muttered, not meaning it and not really caring whether he sounded sincere. There was no way in hell he would bail out on Arcee.

"I know that tone, young man." June planted her fists on her hips and leaned toward him. "They may be letting you provide tactical support, but I'm still your mother and you're still underage. If things get dicey, you run like hell. Understood?"

"Sure." He glanced around, making a show of looking at the tents so he wouldn't have to look her in the eye, and took another sip of his coffee. "So, which one's the observation tent?"

His mom sighed and pointed off to the left. "Your console and monitors have already been set up. You'll find your armor and EMP rifle in there, too."

"Good. I should go put it on before I catch pneumonia. I'll be right back." He jogged over to the tent, stepped inside, and looked around. It was empty, but a heater had been left running near his console. His armor was resting on a long folding table beside his station.

He peeled off his rain-soaked sweater and shirt, looked around, shrugged and piled them under the table. He stripped his equally waterlogged pants off and dropped them beside his shirts.

Crap, the rain even soaked through my underpants. He didn't have a fresh pair waiting for him, though, so he had to live with it.

He squatted in front of the heater for a few minutes, trying to dry off his skin before putting the armor on. He glanced down at his legs and brushed his fingertips over the "seams" in his thighs, where his real legs ended and the prosthetic ones began. He'd had several months to get used to the artificial legs and the dulled sensations in them, and had reached the point where he forgot they weren't real most of the time.

He could've used makeup appliances to hide the seams, but hadn't bothered. Arcee was the only person who ever saw that much of his body. Besides, he wanted to keep them visible to remind him of what could happen when he got too close to the action.

The tent entrance parted and he looked over his shoulder and found Arcee poking her head inside. "Oh, sorry if I'm taking too long. I just needed to warm up." He stood and reached out for his armor.

"I just figured I should take a peek before I head out. I see what you mean about your nipples, by the way." She wiggled her brow plates. "Rowr."

He blushed but made a kissy face at her.

She laughed, then turned serious. "I also wanted you to have this." She held her left hand out. In her palm was an assault rifle that, while rather large by human standards, looked like a toy in her hand.

He walked over to her, picked it up, and raised his eyebrows. "This is loaded with live ammo. It's kind of against the rules for me to have this."

"I don't care about that." Arcee pointed at the gun. "It's loaded with the new ammo that's proven effective against Decepticons. If Airachnid gets too close, get the hell out of here--but if she gets between you and the ground bridge, don't hesitate. Aim for her optics."

He stared at her and his face turned pale.

She gazed into his eyes. "I know you don't want to be a killer, but just this once, please make an exception. If Airachnid finds you, she'll probably toy with you for a while, then kill you when she gets bored. So don't hesitate, don't even think about it, just react." She pointed at the EMP rifle beside his armor. "If she finds you, emp the shit out of her. Zap her several times, just to be sure. Then you finish her off with the hard ammo. Got it?"

He nodded slowly. "Yeah. Yeah, I can do that." He managed to chuckle. "Hell, I tried to blow her up the last time we met, so...yeah. I can handle this."

"Good." Arcee let the tension drain from her body. "Well, I should join the search."

"Right. I'll gear up and watch your back from here." He placed the rifle on the table and reached out to her. She leaned closer and touched her forehead to his. He put his hands on her cheeks. "I love you."

"I love you." She kissed him, letting him hold his mouth against hers for a long moment before pulling back.

"Good hunting." He caressed her cheek, smiled, and turned to pick up his armor.

#

The plan was simple--find Airachnid, knock her out with EMPs, and then Arcee would do what needed to be done.

Jack held in a sigh. There was no way in hell it'd be that easy.

Minutes passed, then an hour, with nothing happening. Jack chugged the last of his coffee and tapped his gloved fingers on the side of the mug, watching the feeds from Arcee's and Bee's optics and the squad's helmet cams, and listening to their chatter. Occasionally, his mom radioed him from the med-team's tent, and every now and then Bulkhead grumbled about not being able to fit into the areas that Arcee could squeeze through.

To pass the time, the airmen guarding each tent had started up a game of "Would you Rather...?"

"Okay," one of the guards outside Jack's tent said, "would you rather have quarters shoot out of your nose every time you sneeze, or have soft cheese pour out of your ears every hour, on the hour?"

After a long pause, the other airman said, "What the fuck is wrong with you?"

"Hold on--I heard something out there. Off to the right."

Uh-oh. Jack checked his monitors and found nothing but trees.

A sudden crackling-snapping sound erupted outside and the airman cried out.

The sound came again, and the other airman screamed and hit the ground with a thud.

It happened twice more, father away, and then Jack's mom shouted, "What the hell?"

That sound again--and his mom let out a truncated scream.

Jack's heart pounded. "Mom?" He grabbed his helmet, jammed it on and secured it. "Mom, are you okay?"

"Jack?" Arcee said, and the motion on her monitor froze as she stopped in her tracks. "What's going on? Is Airachnid there?"

He checked the cameras around the camp. "I don't see her on any of my screens."

The tent's flap whipped aside and Jack spun toward the motion. In the entrance stood a man with an odd, high-tech rifle and an all too familiar armored uniform.

"MECH!" Jack lunged for the rifle beside his console.

Something that looked like a lightning bolt spat from the man's gun and drilled Jack in the chest.

He screamed. As he fell, Arcee's voice came from the console, so loud that it made the speakers crackle.

"Jack? Oh, no, Jack!" Thudding, crunching sounds--her feet pounding the ground as she burst into a sprint. "Jack!"