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The gale bit through Dead End's jeans like the lash of a whip. The rocks were slick with half-melted frost. On her next step she stumbled, going down; her ankle skidded sideways. She'd feel it for days, she knew—
"I am such a moron," she spat through frozen lips.
Several paces ahead, Perceptor's footfalls paused; so did the rustle of his cane on the leaf litter.
Dead End sat up, gasping through clenched teeth. In the last weak light of day, the cloud of her breath glistened for an instant before dispersing.
"I'm coming." Her voice was as weak as it was defiant. "Don't wait up for me."
"I don't intend to," said Perceptor, and he turned on his heel. His silhouette melted into the trees' long shadows; the scratch of his cane on the path faded.
She sat for a moment on the rocks, the meltwater trickling over her Doc Martens into the stream. "Who comes out here, anyway?" she muttered. "What kind of idiot—"
And yet here she was.
Bruised, shivering, and willing herself not to be hurt, Dead End clambered to her feet.
Nightfall. The woods, black and sprawling.
In the shadow of the bridge, Perceptor knelt in frothing water, baptizing plastic vials. Chunks of ice bobbed and swirled on the eddies, nudging his rubber-clad thighs, as if to say: Nature was here first.
"Take the samples," said Perceptor, "as I pass them to you."
The mud smelled sharp and sickly; Dead End's nose wrinkled. "This better not kill me."
"It won't," said Perceptor, in an almost insultingly neutral tone. "The cyanobacteria can't tolerate cold."
"Neither can I," muttered Dead End. Still, she sprawled on her belly on the bridge, reaching down. "Clobber owes me for this. I could've picked up a shift at work—"
She waited, the wind toying with her scarf. Waited and watched.
Even through his heavy gloves, Perceptor's fingers were sickeningly clever. Dead End watched, an annoyance as biting as the cold rising in her: what, she wondered, gave him the right to such confidence?
With a tiny pop, Perceptor capped the first vial. He reached up, groping sightlessly for her hand. "You are wearing gloves, aren't you?"
"Uh—mittens." She'd knitted them herself, in a fit of late-night frustration. "You sure this stuff isn't going to eat through—"
And then their fingers brushed, and he pressed the vial into her palm. The damp rubber of his glove snagged on her curled fingers. (She set her jaw, blinking away the chill.)
"Label that," said Perceptor, "Site 3A, November 19th—"
"I know what day it is." The damp soaked through her mitten; her fingers burned and itched. Dead End fumbled in her jacket for flashlight and pen.
The night was thick with little noises: the crackle of damp ice; the sigh of the bridge's cobblestones settling; and somewhere, the low rumble of Clemency's outlying streets, and the hum of factory engines—
In the flashlight's pooling glow, Perceptor looked faintly ridiculous. A smear of mud gleamed on his hollow cheek; his cowlick glittered, stiff with fresh ice. (Dead End found herself longing to flatten it.) "Your poor attitude is not getting us out of here any faster."
"Wouldn't have guessed," said Dead End, feeling a nasty smile tug at her lips. "Go ahead. Pass me some more toxic sludge."
As Perceptor capped the last vial, Dead End put her phone away with a low hiss of breath. "Typical. We're idiots. And we're stranded."
Perceptor's eyes narrowed (and they were blue as ice in moonlight, unfocused and calm). "Your roommate won't be driving us to campus?"
"You don't want to ride with Astrotrain," said Dead End. "He breaks traffic laws they haven't invented yet."
"I suppose we're walking."
"Guess we are," she said, clambering from the bridge to hand Perceptor his cane. (She would not, she told herself, adjust his collar.) "A whole six miles of trying not to kill each other."
"I have no plans," said Perceptor coolly, "to kill you, Dead End. Although I may reconsider after six miles—"
And again Dead End smiled, a private smile.
For long minutes they did not speak. Dead End limped after Perceptor, her lungs burning in the gale and her ankle aching; he did not offer his arm, and she did not ask.
The hill soared against the horizon, the observatory winking against the colorless sky. Clemency glittered like scattered jewels through the trees.
Perceptor's silence seemed to dare her to speak. "You're sure this isn't a waste of time."
It wasn't quite a question.
"I do not waste time," Perceptor called back to her. "I do precisely what I mean to."
And Dead End hid her startled grin in her scarf, though Perceptor's blind eyes could not see it (and in any event he was several paces ahead).
They trudged onward, through the cold. Perceptor's company was silent and purposeful: the best kind.
At the rotting husk of a wooden fence Perceptor faltered, groping in the dark. Quickening her stride, Dead End caught up—surprised at herself—and offered a hand.
"You're going to—" Her breath stirred his hair. They stood too close. "What, take this to Starscream's office?"
"To begin with," said Perceptor, and his cold fingers closed on her arm. "And then I will take it to anyone who listens."
"Fat chance," muttered Dead End, and with a little grunt she lifted him over the fence. For a moment, a dizzying moment, his gangly body was pressed against her chest, his weight solid and real in her arms. "Nobody listens in this town—"
"Plainly untrue." Perceptor broke free of her. Dropped lightly to the ground. "You're here." And then, as Dead End scaled the fence: "Be more careful with the samples."
She whistled, low and slow, as she dismounted. "It beats another night slinging Slushies at 7/11."
He glanced back, picking up his pace again. She thought, in the dark, she caught a curt smile.
"I hate them too," she added, in an undertone meant more for herself than for Perceptor. Still her heart beat raggedly, and the wind seared her cheeks as she pressed on.
After the woods, Perceptor's lab was stifling: it smelled of nail polish and something Dead End couldn't identify, and the varnish-yellow light made her eyes ache.
"We're looking for a surge in phosphorus," said Perceptor over the gentle whir of the machines. "It's a common industrial pollutant, and levels have been high all autumn. If Quintesson's runoff is entering the water table—"
Dead End fumbled with the embossing labeler. It clicked, spitting out a crooked black label; she ran her fingertip over it, feeling the crags. "Then the cyanobacteria eat it and we all choke on neurotoxic bacteria crap. Got it."
Perceptor loaded the next sample, slim fingers working over the label. "You aren't going to ask me to speak English? Clobber—"
Dead End shrugged. "It's not rocket science."
It was just past midnight. A floor-waxer hummed, somewhere down the hall.
Slowly Perceptor nodded. The ice crystals in his dark hair were melting, glistening in the sour light. "You're correct. It isn't. Most dissertation work isn't."
"You're not," said Dead End, "going to jerk yourself off about how smart you are?"
And Perceptor pressed the switch, and the whole lab seemed to rumble. "I don't need to." His lips pursed; a dimple formed in his cheek, Dead End noted with an odd rush of warmth. "This wasn't my original dissertation project."
"Was the first one too hard?" Dead End's ankle was beginning to complain again; her Doc Marten dug into the aching joint. She sank against the desk with a short sharp breath.
"If you're tired," said Perceptor, "there's a couch around the corner." He inclined his head. "I often sleep there."
"Hey. Too personal," said Dead End gruffly, and the image of Perceptor—his eyes crusted with sleep, his hair tousled—flickered in her mind's eye. "Just my ankle. I won't be skating on it any time soon—thanks—"
"You skate?" said Perceptor, in an unreadably flat tone.
The floor-waxer was drawing closer. Dead End grimaced. "Get me an ice pack while that sample runs."
She was on the couch, huddled beneath a spicy-smelling blanket, when Perceptor returned with a plastic bag of ice wrapped in paper towels. "You didn't have to come—"
"You've got that right," said Dead End. Still she took the ice pack, easing off her boot; at the pain, like a vise around her swollen ankle, she gasped and swore. "I might never walk again."
She'd expected Perceptor to fuss over her cuts and scrapes; to her pleased surprise, he made no move toward her. "My original dissertation project was a study of a rare species of parasitic worm."
"Sounds boring."
"Helminthology is frequently underrated," said Perceptor with a nod. "But their hosts died off en masse this September—"
"When Quintesson set up shop by the river." Dead End groaned, pressing the ice pack against her throbbing calf. "I remember. That little moron Hot Rod fell in—"
"It set me back eight months," said Perceptor, in a tone that suggested this was on par with Hot Rod's chemical burns. "Starscream isn't enforcing the old regulations. He's in bed with Quintesson—"
"Or he's lazy," said Dead End. "Or greedy. Or this is his—" She made air quotes with her free hand. "Economic revitalization plan. Who cares why?"
And that seemed all that needed to be said. Dead End kneaded her calf with fingers red and stiff from the cold; Perceptor turned back to his bench, and soon enough his screenreader cut through the silence with a string of bland numbers.
Perceptor's smile was taut. (And self-satisfied, thought Dead End, and she decided she liked that.) "There we go. Come and get me, Quintesson."
She stirred from dreams of parasitic worms and burned skin, from dreams of tousled hair and blank blue eyes, to find sunlight the color of weak tea creeping through the lab window. Perceptor was dozing on the couch beside her, his cane propped between his legs.
She'd reached for him in her sleep, Dead End realized, and with a blunt little shudder she pulled away.
"I'm such a moron," she mumbled as her shower water trickled hot over her bruises. The bathroom reverberated with Astrotrain's shock-rock guitar riffs, and the old plumbing squeaked and hissed. So Dead End was scarcely alone with her thoughts.
"Moron," she muttered again, watching the dirt swirl down the drain. "Shithead. Sentimental jackass—"
A ghostly light filtered from the empty streets into Maccadam's; snow heaped on the windows, and the damp floor squeaked under Dead End's boots. It was almost Thanksgiving, and the undergraduates had by and large left town. So the bar felt devoid of life.
Dead End lingered on the threshold, gritting her teeth, willing herself not to spot Perceptor. To have an excuse to walk the long miles home, alone—
"Dead End." Perceptor had a way of saying her name: as if he'd known her for a thousand years and never made up his mind whether he liked her.
"Uh—I made it." She elbowed through a knot of aging punks, settling into Perceptor's booth near the bar.
"You're late," said Perceptor. "We were discussing—"
"Planning," said a fresh-faced undergraduate she knew vaguely as Whirl. "Hot Rod's got some killer ideas—"
"Yeah," said Hot Rod, whose burn scars were healing well. "If we can get Optimus Prime on board—"
"You won't," said Dead End with a snort. "He's too big and important for us."
And she relished watching Whirl's face fall; and she relished even more Perceptor's grim, resigned nod. She'd been right.
"Nothing happens in this town without Optimus," said Hot Rod, mulishly.
"It may have to," retorted Perceptor between sips of his drink. His cheeks were pink still from the cold, and his thin frame buried under sweaters. "I wouldn't count on getting any help. From anyone."
"Not even Megatron?" said Clobber, setting down a tray of drinks and dropping heavily into the booth. "He pushed through that environmental bill back in—whatsit—"
For a moment Dead End pitied Clobber: her good-naturedness, her faith.
"After the factory explosion," said Perceptor, nodding—and in his face Dead End saw her own feelings mirrored. "I wouldn't count on him. The Decepticons haven't been a force for change in years."
"If they ever were," muttered Dead End, and all heads turned to her. "Nothing. I didn't say anything."
"The only resistance we can rely on," said Perceptor, "is our own."
The languid chords of a country song drifted through the smoky room; with a crack like a shot, someone missed a pool strike, and the cue sailed in a neat arc through the air and smashed a glass. (Whirl yelped.)
"Go team," said Dead End, to an audience of stunned faces. "Well, we're screwed. Anyone want a smoke?"
She'd expected Hot Rod; she'd expected Clobber. But it was Perceptor who joined her beneath the fire escape, his cane crunching on the salt-strewn concrete.
Dead End swallowed. "Didn't know you smoked."
"I don't. It's terrible for you in every respect." Perceptor settled against the wall, slinging one long leg over the other. "You had opinions about the Decepticons."
"I have opinions about everything," Dead End hedged, taking a long drag. Maccadam's neon sign shimmered, winking like a distant star through the hazy dark. The alley stank of old beer and soy sauce.
"You certainly do," said Perceptor, and his tone was curt as ever. "You spoke as if from experience—"
The intimacy of it was as bracing as the wind. She stood entirely too close to him: smelling the dustiness of his sweaters; feeling the warmth of him, soothing her numb fingertips. It occurred to Dead End that he could smell her cigarette and her spicy perfume at this distance; he could feel her.
She shivered. "I grew up in Clemency."
She'd not meant to tell him; silently she cursed, her lips moving unseen.
"Ah," said Perceptor, neutrally. As if it didn't surprise him.
"Foster kid," she said, as casually as she could. "Four brothers."
From the door drifted Maccadam's booming laughter, warmth, and light. Yet neither of them made any move to leave.
"Drag Strip and Motormaster are doing time," she said, and she felt Perceptor shift almost imperceptibly at her side. (Good, she thought. Let him feel something.) "The morons tried to carjack one of Starscream's guys."
She breathed deep, savoring the heat in her lungs. Exhaled a plume of smoke.
"You had four brothers," said Perceptor. "Not two."
"Breakdown's in Nevada." She closed her eyes, as if by blocking Perceptor out it would seem less dangerous to say. "Moved out there for work. Met some idiot in Vegas. Now they're married. I give them five years."
And Perceptor laughed. She'd never heard him laugh before: he sounded painfully human and strikingly young.
"I don't know," she said, "what happened to Wildrider. He just left." She shrugged, grimacing into the dark. Fiddling with the end of her scarf. "Not my problem."
"What," said Perceptor, "does this have to do with Megatron?"
A reasonable question. She might've asked the same, in his place.
"He tried to fix the system," said Dead End at long last, and to her horror she sounded fierce and defiant and sad. "Dumbass didn't realize you can't fix the system."
"You believed in him," said Perceptor.
"I don't believe in anything." And Dead End stubbed out her cigarette with too much force. "Sharing time's over."
She might have kissed him, there in the dark, with a mouth that tasted of cigarettes. She might have pinned Perceptor against the wall, might have drunk up the smell of him and kissed his breath away—
—and the force of her desire made her gasp and grimace—
—but instead, Dead End turned and slouched back into the light. "Hey, Maccadam. Get me something that'll kill my last brain cell."
And then—after what seemed no time at all—they were hiccupping and stumbling, out in the filthy gray snow.
"Maccadam's got my keys," mumbled Hot Rod. "Can anyone drive?"
"Death to the oppressors," sang out Whirl, reeling. Clobber and Hot Rod caught him as he fell backward, in a cloud of flailing limbs and mushrooming snow.
"Not death," said Perceptor; even drunk he was precise, though flushed and tousled. "Bankruptcy."
Whirl and Clobber exchanged bleary looks. "Bankruptcy," tried Clobber, "to the oppressor—"
Dead End snorted, despite herself.
From the fog-shrouded window of a Dunkin' Donuts, they watched the first bus wheeze its way up the hill. The morning smelled of burnt coffee and the peculiar sharpness of melting snow.
Dead End nibbled a sickly-sweet cruller. "Go, then. Get out."
And with a sleepy huff, Clobber shook Hot Rod and Whirl awake. "Anybody got some change? I left my bus pass at the bar—"
Hot Rod's retort faded into the clamor of the shop. Dead End rubbed her temples, leaning against the cool window. Longing, more than anything, for sullen solitude.
"Well," said Perceptor at her shoulder, "we might be doomed."
"Glad you see things my way." She bit off a strip of cruller, chewing thoughtfully.
The door clattered, spraying slush across the shop floor, and Hot Rod, Whirl, and Clobber piled into the street. Their voices, muffled by the window, cut through the gray stillness.
"That's no excuse," said Perceptor, "not to try." His five-o-clock shadow was coming in, she noticed, and his eyebags gave him a bleary look. Dead End was seized by the urge to ruffle his hair; she resisted.
"And you lost me again."
"We have the data." She caught a whiff of her own cigarette smoke on his sweater as he shifted on his stool. "No one else is going to speak up—"
"—yeah, yeah. Revitalizing the economy," said Dead End through the last of her cruller, watching Whirl lope after the bus. "Suppose we don't do anything. Starscream gets his business. A bunch of worms die. The river gets pumped full of crap—"
"You're better than that," said Perceptor. And then, coolly: "Well, you may not be. I am."
In the November chill he was warm and vital; his unfocused eyes caught the light, blue as a winter sky.
"You're such an idiot, Perceptor," she muttered, and she wondered if he liked how she said his name.
"I'll try not to take offense at that," said Perceptor. "You make it very difficult."
"Good." She balled up her napkin, tossing it idly to herself. Willing herself not to meet his gaze, to flush—though he'd never know either way. "Since we're on the same side."
"Yes," said Perceptor. "We are."
Her first and second calls to Astrotrain went to voicemail; Dead End tried and failed to be disappointed.
So they walked home through the stark streets of Clemency, winding their way up the hill. Dead End cursed on every step, kicking slush off her Doc Martens.
"Is your ankle still hurting?" said Perceptor after a minute. "I could call you a cab."
"It's fine," said Dead End, with a prickle of surprise. She leaned, grimacing, against the nearest streetlamp. "I'm fine. Save your money."
"Will you be able to skate on—"
"No," said Dead End. "No big deal. Clobber can sub for me next week. I'll probably never walk right again. Who cares?"
"I care," said Perceptor curtly.
For a moment they walked in silence, and Dead End's heartbeat seemed unnaturally magnified in the stillness. She would not, she told herself, take Perceptor's hand.
"If we break into the Quintesson facility," said Perceptor, as if choosing his words carefully, "you will need to be able to run."
And Dead End stopped short in her tracks; her cheeks burned in the cold, and the air seemed too thin to breathe. "Only a moron would even think of that—"
The wind was picking up, toying with her hair and tugging at her scarf. Dead End tasted something metallic on the gale.
"Then I'll see you tonight," said Perceptor, unbothered, and he strode onward and was lost in the hazy fog.
The steam soaked into Dead End's bones; the pain dribbled away like melting ice. The shabby kitchen smelled of herbal tea and cigarette smoke.
Still she felt the cold deep in her lungs.
"I'm such a shithead," she muttered to no one, putting down her half-knitted scarf. With a short sharp shiver she stalked over to the window, eyeing the creek running through the yard. In the half-light, it was easy to picture Perceptor kneeling by the water, taking samples—
"Parasitic worms," she muttered, and a sneer tugged at her lips. "That's so—"
But no insults came to mind.
Dead End lit a second cigarette, watching the cloudy light play over the snow. "I'm a moron," she muttered—
"You are," growled Astrotrain from the doorway. "Did you call your brothers again?"
And with a stomach-churning laugh he slammed the door.
"Fuck you," said Dead End. It lacked its usual bite.
For several hopeless minutes she knitted, but her fingers seemed to defy her: quickly the scarf turned into a helpless tangle. She longed, for an instant, for Perceptor's dexterity—
—and felt the ghost of Perceptor's bony hands over her own—
"I'm a jackass," she mumbled. "Perceptor this, Perceptor that—"
And—the deepest cut of all—he'd been right about her. As the sunlight turned moody and slanted, Dead End pulled on her Doc Martens, donned scarf and goggles, and slipped from the house.
"For the record," she said, "this is a stupid idea."
Perceptor's smile was thin and arch. He leaned cavalierly against a tangled oak, tapping his cane against the roots. (Dead End smiled into her scarf.) "You're late."
"I didn't have to come," said Dead End. She glanced back over her shoulder, watching the wind and the fresh snow erase her footsteps. "If you get us both arrested—"
"How fast can you run?" said Perceptor, as cold as the snow.
"I dunno. Pretty fast."
The snow glistened in Perceptor's hair, melting on his hollow cheeks. Dead End pushed him—gently, with firm shaking hands—against the tree; he let out a little gasp, a puff of air against her cheek, and then she was kissing his chapped lips, again and again—
He tasted of cigarettes and winter-chill, or perhaps that was the taste of apprehension in her mouth. And he pressed cold hands to her chest, but did not push her away.
"There," she said at last, releasing him and stepping back. "Are you happy?"
His warmth lingered on her lips. He tasted, she decided, like home.
"No," said Perceptor, but the last light of day glittered in his eyes. "Not until we collect those samples."
"Moron," muttered Dead End, and she kissed him again.