eugenesis-text

‘You can come out now,’ Nightbeat said.
Sygnet emerged from behind a partition looking sheepish. ‘You don’t understand,’ he said gingerly.
‘I’m a Decepticon. Galvatron’s my leader. At least I didn’t join the fight on his side…’
Nightbeat looked away, uninterested. ‘I didn’t say a word.’
Wheeljack stood up slowly and unsteadily, his fist shaking. ‘I still have it,’ he mumbled, unfolding his
fingers. The Inhibitor Chip nestled somewhere between the grip-groves of his palm. He started a second
extraction and almost snapped a micro-tweezer when Siren raced back into the lab.
‘Fastlane just picked up a message on a coded frequency!’
Nightbeat looked up. ‘Prowl’
‘No. I don’t think it’s a Transformer.’
‘But you just said—’
‘His name’s Death’s Head. He’scalling from the Ark.’
‘What did you tell him’
‘We haven’t responded yet. He’s saying the Autobots are dead.’
Drilled into his office and protected by partitions, Prowl longed to be forgotten, to be surgically
removed from the here and now. After all, he thought, the wound would heal, the skin would bind. The
world would be a better place without him.
He’d locked the door as if blocking the only passage of air, and now, trapped inside, he waited for the
oxygen to run out. According to his chronometer, his troops had come back on line 43.8 minutes ago, yet
not one of them had passed his office or sought him out. Kup and the others had been gone for over two
hours now. Had no one noticed their absence He felt like the only Transformer on the planet. He wished
he were.
He’d been sliced in two by the icy scalpel of conscience. Half of him longed for discovery, longed for
Getaway of Red Alert or X or Y to kick down the door and scream the bad news; the other half wanted
everyone to simply forget about a robot called Kup and the four recruits he’d dragged away.
An ugly thought tied knots in his stomach: what if everyone was in on it What if there was a
conspiracy designed to keep him in the dark All those secret plans to mount a rescue team and recover
Rodimus’ body behind his back!
And yet… he’d survived the Crisis Act (though the episode had been buried in a pit of vibrant
horrors he dared not confront), so some Autobots still believed in him. 108, to be exact, although he was
forever ready to revise that number downward, closer to that crucial midway point beyond which a
majority became a minority. But in the absence of a friend or a confidant, he had to rely on a stone-cold
statistic for emotional support. Stats didn’t let you down.
He wondered where Kup and his team were now. Wherever it was, it wasn’t safe. Nowhere was safe,
anymore. Cybertron was an occupied state.
He should have stopped them. He should have raised the alarm.
December 30 th 2012, and five innocent Autobots had been condemned to death because he’d failed
to act, because he’d allowed spite and bitterness to muddy his mind.
Perhaps there was still time. Hope offered blissful distraction. Yes, he would raise the alarm, he would
alert the others. Maybe he could still salvage the situation and save himself…
He recoiled as Getaway crashed through the door.
‘Kup’s gone!’
The roofless MARB skittered through the air, choking on low-thrust while a six-pack of grav-pads
flashed like wet saucers. Even the moonlight carried weight, gilding the Cybertronian canvas with its lunar
brushwork. Everything was marked for regeneration, for knockdown and rebuild, scratch-out and re-do.
Quintesson-controlled nuke-winds turned entire cities into radioactive rubble; eye-watering eco-pesticides
did the rest, boiling them down into oceans of warm, bubbling putty.
In the cockpit, sectioned off by a low-slung partition, Kup hugged the curve of a yellowing
windscreen. Four Autobots sat in the back, their limbs bunched and cropped. Rad hugged his knees as if