eugenesis-text

‘I heard the commotion about an hour ago,’ he said, ‘and the next thing I know Search and Rescue
are shorting the lights and locking me in. I was hooked up for one of Perceptor’s tests. What happened out
there’
‘A Quintesson squad ransacked the place,’ said Quark. ‘They – hmm. They, er…’
‘Murdered everyone,’ finished Rev-Tone. ‘Except Red Alert. And you.’
‘What about First Aid What about Pipes and Hookjaw and Warpath and Retro and Pipeline and—’
‘Let’s find Prowl and the others,’ said Quark quietly. ‘C’mon, Throwback.’
They walked into the foyer and heard raised but muffled voices. Prowl and Kup were silhouetted
behind the smoked glass of a consultancy room, throwing exaggerated shapes against the dimpled plexi.
‘What’s with all the activity’ asked Rev-Tone, flagging down Perceptor. ‘We seem to be the only
ones not working or arguing.’
‘Prowl thinks the Quintessons will come back for Rodimus. He wants to stay put and fight them off.’
‘Are you serious We spent hours fortifying Autobase and look what happened there!’
Kup’s voice leapt in volume as he opened the office door and stormed into the foyer:
‘We sat and waited last time, Prowl, and half the Resistance were wiped out! When they come back
for Rodimus they’ll have more men and more firepower – and we’ll be sitting here, cowering, having
boxed ourselves into a defensive position – again!’
Prowl appeared in the doorway. ‘WELL WHAT WOULD YOU HAVE ME DO!’
Kup stared at Prowl’s twisted face, sensed the onlookers and walked away.
Nightbeat pinched the bridge of his nose and used the facial camouflage to study Optimus Prime.
Recast in muddied shades of infrared, Optimus seemed distant and half-realised.
‘What do we do now’ Nightbeat had innocently asked, tender and hollowed after emptying himself
of every secret. He felt strangely de-energised. Three hours with Optimus Prime and he’d mapped out his
soul, complete with Places of Interest and a colour-coded key; now it was impossible to fold away, to crease
and reseal. How embarrassing; how utterly unlike him. And yet, in a way, he was glad that he had
articulated the sadness inside. If anyone should be privy to the roots and nuances of his depression, it should
be Optimus Prime.
They’d hardly spoken since the conversational dust had settled. Optimus was trying to break free,
rolling his shoulders against the ceiling and scratching at the seams.
A cone of metal fell on Nightbeat’s boot, and with it a mote-thick rod of daylight. He looked up to
see that Prime’s upper body had disappeared through a hole in the ceiling.
‘Guess what’ said Optimus. ‘There’s another hole up here. A big one. Some freak conjunction of
wreckage has walled off another space.’
Nightbeat squeezed his shoulders through the ceiling to share the view. It was as if they had
burrowed into an aircraft hangar. A dozen shafts of sunlight crossed the void and pooled around their heads.
Moments later the two Autobots were climbing into the outside world. They headed back to the
Expressway, treading carefully over ground they now knew to be tenuously thin. Nightbeat balked at the
acres of scrap. ‘Where do we start’
‘I know what you’re thinking, but it’s too dangerous. They could be buried anywhere, and the
surface layer is too unstable. Besides, the three of them were running out of the tunnel when it collapsed –
they may have been retrieved by the Quintessons.’
‘Wonderful. So they’re either dead or buried alive.’
Optimus scanned a horizon that was fenced in by tower blocks, coolant ‘scrapers, habitation domes
and the municipal execution chamber (a Straxian relic). ‘Standing here is achieving nothing. Iacon is still
that way, yes’
‘Yes… we haven’t changed the geography too much in four million years.’
‘No, it’s just – at this time of day the moons should be over there.’ He shook away the thought.
‘Anyway, if we cut through the Testex Quadrant we can reach Iacon in a matter of hours.’
‘I dunno, Prime. The Quintesson back there said Autobase was in ruins. Lying or not, it’s not worth
the risk. I don’t want to rush into occupied territory.’
‘If not Autobase, then where’