As Sam and Simmons continued their heated exchange, Tom Banacheck stepped forward, pulling a pair of oversized aviators from his pocket and sliding them on.
"Listen to me, kid," Banacheck said, his voice dropping to a gravelly serious tone. "Right now, every soul on this planet is in mortal danger. I'm not exaggerating, and I'm not trying to scare you. You need to tell us everything you know. Right now."
"Fine, no problem," Sam agreed quickly, then paused, his eyes narrowing. "But first, you give me back my car and my parents. I want it in writing. Total immunity."
He glanced at Mikaela. "And her record. Everything. Wiped clean. Permanently."
Mikaela flashed him a grateful, surprised smile.
Banacheck looked at Simmons, who gave a curt, reluctant nod.
"Kid, you're a regular extortionist," Simmons muttered, turning on his heel. "Follow me. We'll talk about your car and your... conditions."
Sam beamed, grabbing Mikaela's hand as they hurried after him. Mikaela paused only to snag her backpack before catching up.
With the passengers gone, the two Pave Hawk helicopters on the pad began their post-flight protocols. Their main rotors folded back, and the auxiliary power units hummed to life. Ground crews moved in, attaching tow-bars to the nose wheels. Guided by ground handlers with laser rangefinders, electric tugs began pulling the massive birds forward.
Soon, the helicopters were swallowed by a hidden hangar door at the base of Hoover Dam.
"Let's go get some rack time," the pilot from the lead Pave Hawk called out to his colleague. They had been in the air for over ten hours; they wouldn't be flying again until they'd had a full rotation of sleep and the birds had been refueled and inspected.
Within minutes, the ground crew cleared out. The heavy blast doors hissed shut, leaving the hangar in absolute silence.
Time stretched on in the darkness.
Suddenly, a sharp clack echoed through the bay—the sound of metal testing its limits. A second later, the frame of one of the Pave Hawks buckled and shifted. The rotors split and retracted as the chassis expanded, unfolding into an eight-meter-tall mechanical giant.
"Hoo... finally inside."
Skygnaw's voice carried a note of profound relief. His optics pulsed with a predatory red light as he surveyed his surroundings.
He had waited at Belkox Base in vehicle form, betting that the military would need transport. The "mechanical failures" plaguing the rest of the fleet had been no accident; his pet, Black Panther, had seen to that. In the world of high-stakes infiltration, making yourself the only option was better than relying on luck.
This was Skygnaw's first time shifting to humanoid form since scanning the new Pave Hawk data. Because both his previous form and this one were flight-based, his appearance hadn't changed drastically, though he felt the shift in his center of gravity. Two wicked, straight-edged blades were holstered at his hips. They served as the main rotors in vehicle mode, and while they looked like the twin Daishō blades used by the Autobot Drift, Skygnaw knew they were mostly aesthetic in this form—unlike Drift, whose transformation logic was tied to his weaponry.
Skygnaw's internal systems pinged, processing the electromagnetic feedback from his active scans. A 3D holographic map flickered into his mind.
"Only one level?" Skygnaw muttered, surprised.
He had always assumed Sector Seven's headquarters was a multi-story subterranean complex. Instead, it was a singular, massive floor—though its scale was staggering. It covered the area of a dozen football stadiums, carved directly into the mountain rock surrounding Hoover Dam. It was a sprawling, irregular quadrilateral of reinforced concrete and hollowed-out canyon.
He locked onto the unique energy signature of the AllSpark. A path was instantly calculated.
"Six hundred meters..."
Skygnaw's chest plates shifted open, and Black Panther leaped silently to the floor. The mechanical beast didn't make a sound, sensing its master's need for stealth.
At the rear of the hangar lay a massive transit tunnel, wide enough to accommodate the heavy semi-trucks that moved equipment through the base. Skygnaw engaged his stealth module, his form shimmering and vanishing into the background radiation of the room.
Black Panther took the lead, a shadow within shadows, as they slipped into the tunnel.
The base architecture reminded Skygnaw of Starscream's hidden outpost in the Konas Canyon—brutal, functional tunnels connecting massive nodes. He moved with practiced silence, his massive footfalls dampened by his internal stabilizers.
He rounded a corner and froze, pressing his back against the rough-hewn stone wall. A group of scientists in white lab coats and masks walked past, chatting about pressure seals and nitrogen levels. They walked within three feet of the invisible Cybertronian, completely oblivious to the god-like machine watching them from the dark.
Step by step, Skygnaw closed the distance to the AllSpark.
The Inner Sanctum.
"Ladies and gentlemen, the situation is this..."
Simmons led the group—Keller, Sam, Maggie, Mikaela, and Lennox—into the heart of the facility. Even the base officers following them looked uneasy; few had the clearance to enter this deep.
They reached a set of massive armored doors that ground open to reveal a sprawling, chilled chamber filled with humming machinery.
"Step inside, everyone!" Simmons called out. "Several of you have already had contact with NBEs, so—"
"Wait," Maggie interrupted. "NBEs? What is that?"
Simmons glanced back. "Non-Biological Extraterrestrials."
"Right..." Maggie nodded, her expression grim but not surprised.
"What you are about to see," Simmons continued, his voice dropping to a whisper, "is the highest level of classified material in existence."
They entered a cryogenic vault. In the center, mounted on a towering platform, stood a gargantuan silver robot nearly ten meters tall. A massive refrigeration array hung over its head, pouring out clouds of super-cooled gas that turned into a thick shroud of frost. Men in environmental suits climbed the scaffolding, spraying liquid nitrogen directly onto the machine's joints.
The sight was overwhelming. Even for those who knew what was coming, the sheer scale of the thing was terrifying. Secretary Keller stood paralyzed, his breath hitching.
"My God... what is this?"
Sam and Mikaela were the only ones who didn't look shocked; they looked sick.
"Sam," Mikaela whispered, tugging at his sleeve. "Does he look like...?"
Sam nodded slowly. "Yeah. It's him."
The giant was identical to the holographic image Optimus Prime had projected for them.
Simmons, enjoying the shock he'd caused, began his rehearsed lecture. "We believe that when he flew over the North Pole, our planet's gravity interfered with his navigation system. He lost his orientation, his power failed in the extreme cold, and he crashed into the ice. That was over a century ago. We moved him here in 1934."
"We call him NBE-1. The first ever discovered."
"Sir, excuse me," Sam interrupted, his voice steady. "I'm not trying to be a jerk, but his name is Megatron. Not NBE-1."
"Megatron?"
"Yeah. He's the leader of the Decepticons."
"Decepticons? What's that?" Simmons asked, realizing the boy knew significantly more than the CIA's entire database.
Sam shook his head, refusing to say more. He had made his deal, but until he saw Bumblebee safe and free, he wasn't handing over another scrap of intel.
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