eugenesis-text

EPILOGUE
All My Bastard Children
Delphi slumped like rotten fruit, melting at the edges and oxidising in the Canyon sun.
Pickup teams dragged Quintesson bodies outside, away from the pools of oil and the stale smoke on
the ceilings. The corpses left fragments on the floor as they were wheelbarrowed towards daylight.
Thoo Transformers who had escaped Kledji lined up outside the science lab and shuffled towards a
compulsory medical. Wheeljack and Sygnet checked necks, administered energon boosts and made notes.
Occasionally, a Grade A would break the silence by asking direct questions: What did they put in my neck or
Why can’t I transform or Can I be cured Wheeljack would answer the first two with a burst of jargon; the
third he would deflect by reaching for a new scalpel or pretending to be surprised by stats on a screen.
Outside, Autobots and Decepticons squinted and sighed and prodded the ground, looking for anyone
who could be saved. In-between their duties, in-between the stoop and haul of clear up and body-search,
they checked their audio-trenches for damage. Cybertronian fatalities were grouped by allegiance and laid
out in the sun, ready for identification. Some of the dead were nothing more than a mangled spinal strut, a
faceplate, a skullcap. Those that were still functional were delivered to Delphi’s door, where Ratchet and
Fulcrum stood like sentries. The doctors probed hairline scars and body-punctures with messianic concern.
Once they had given a diagnosis, the patient was stretchered to the medi-vault.
On higher ground, Throwback and Chromedome dragged Bluestreak’s body away from what was left
of the Ark. Curled at the bottom of its own titanic crater, the spacecraft was essentially a vortex of burnt
metal. It had become an installation: a bolt of modern art, an apology of waste metal bent out of shape by
nuke-heat and flash-burn.
‘Are you sure this is him’ asked Chromedome, sliding his hands under a piece of frazzled metal.
‘Because Cloudraker will hit the roof if we drag another chair into the medilab.’
‘It’s him all right,’ said Throwback, pointing to a mouth and nose among the parietal damage. ‘You
know, sometimes I wonder what it takes to kill us. Bluestreak’s been flayed alive and yet he’ll still pull
through. What did we do to deserve such unnatural endurance’