eugenesis-text

see the mindpurge bounce against the floor and cast its beam deep into a nearby computer port; he did not
hear the infinitesimal chatter of stealth programming as the Ark’s memory banks were butchered and rewritten:
the data on the Great War was instantly erased, and the Decepticons suddenly became as eligible
for repair as the Autobots.
Optimus blinked at the gun in Nightbeat’s hand and went to speak.
Nightbeat opened fire, ripping Prime’s chest apart and hammering him to the floor. His optics blurred
to black…
…and Mount St Hilary erupted.
The Ark shivered against the blast, realigning millennia of dust-crusted hardware. Somewhere deep
inside Teletran’s wormhole-soaked intestinal tracts a severed link was reconnected, and pinpricks of light
appeared throughout the craft. Outside, search beacons explored the volcano’s interior.
Nightbeat arranged Optimus’ body as he had found it: half-hugging Megatron. There was nothing
else to be done. Thanks to him, events were playing out as they should. He tiptoed between the corpses
thinking about the caprices of time. How could something so inflexible give the impression of flexibility
How could something appear to bend and accommodate without ever conceding a single alteration
He watched the Ark coming to life all around him and turned to the wormhole, ready to leap.
But 2013 had boiled away. In its place was a plate of seething red and white, a temporal epicentre
eager to flay anything that crossed the line. Nothing could withstand its death-touch, its rage and vigour.
I can’t stay here, he thought. I know how this ends, and it doesn’t happen; it simply doesn’t happen.
Monitor screens flared up as Aunty came on-line and despatched a sensor drone to collect data on the
planet’s indigenous life forms. Nightbeat watched the copper-coloured tripod rocket towards the Oregon
State highway.
With Astrotrain in shuttle mode, Red Alert and the others had fled the celestial temple and found a
safe vantage point almost fifty miles away, on the outskirts of Yuss. The Decepticon was hiding inside the
shell of a building, pressing his hand against his head and waiting for a call from Soundwave. Red Alert was
watched the storm through his scope visor and counting down to the end.
It was, he had decided, like watching the death of a star: an ecosystem hurtling towards blackout,
sucking itself dry and collapsing under the pressure. Lightning shimmied over a gas cloud that swirled on its
axis and absorbed the lava tides. He could barely see the plateau now – or the Acid Wastes, for that matter.
The wormhole had shrunk but its influence had spread. The barren cadmium plains running from
J’nsik to Wannus were already malleable after centuries of deep-soak and star-burn. They had been stained
to the marrow by Underbase residue and nuke stew and Primus knew what else… He didn’t like to think
what the wormhole would do in the long-term.
‘Red Alert’
‘What’
‘Soundwave says the last Trident has just been shot down over the Rust Sea. We’ve won.’
‘Right now, Astrotrain, I don’t care.’
>
Why was there never enough time
Nightbeat raced back onto the bridge as maintenance drones scooped blunt bodies off the floor. He
closed his dangling chest-plate, careful not to shed any loose circuitry, and dodged the repair beams as they
scoured the floor for debris. Prowl’s body was winched into the air and steadied by anti-grav beams; a
guidance grid was tattooed onto his torso and micro-lasers moved in, fusing and welding, spreading
membranes of wet metal.
In his haste to get clear, Nightbeat had already knocked Sunstreaker’s body away from a repair beam.
He’d had to drag the golden Autobot back into the wayward spotlight, accidentally bringing him back online
in the process. Sunstreaker was too groggy to process what was happening, but it was nevertheless an
unpleasant close shave.
New-look secondary modes were flashing onto an overhead screen as he fled to a corner and patched
into Aunty. Projected flight paths carved the monitor screen into segments, and alongside his own reflection