Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Sharsky grunted softly as he hefted Lisbeth's suitcase. "What's in this thing? Bowling balls?"

Fassbinder smacked him on the back of the head with Lisbeth's shoe bag since he figured the dress bag in his other hand wasn't heavy enough. Still, to his girlfriend, he asked, "You really need this much luggage?"

"It's a week-long Broadway workshop in New York City," she reminded them, picking up her prized theater makeup kit and her purse and leading the way to the living room. "I need to be prepared."

Sam and the ever-silent Cam were waiting for them by the front door. All three of them handed Lisbeth's gear off to Cam, and jock that he was, he carried all of it without breaking a sweat.

"Besides," Sam smirked at his roommates as he opened the door and started walking toward the bright yellow Camaro waiting at the curb, "since we're giving her a lift, she doesn't have to travel light."

Fassbinder didn't feel too badly volunteering Sam and his wheels to spend an afternoon playing taxi. It was the first week of summer between their sophomore and junior years, which meant Sam's lady-love was out West with her dad for a couple of weeks. The fact that Leo was also in California until Friday meant Sam was practically a hermit right now. He was doing Sam a favor by getting him out of the apartment for a while.

With a little effort, they loaded all the gear into the trunk and, turning, Lisbeth smiled up at Fassbinder, her eyes dancing with excitement. "See you on Saturday!"

"Break a leg," he told her and stole a quick kiss that she drew out for an extra second or two. When Sharsky wolf-whistled, Fassbinder flipped him off.

Sam, Cam, and Lisbeth piled into the car and drove off, leaving Fassbinder and Sharsky waving after them. Once the Autobot rounded the corner, Sharsky asked, "How are you gonna survive without her for a week?"

Sharsky had been teasing, but Fassbinder held up a jump drive with a smirk of his own. "Easy. The genie granted my third wish."

"No way!" Sharsky tried to snatch the jump drive, but Fassbinder's hand curled into a fist around it. Sharsky hadn't been able to weasel out of Fassbinder how exactly he'd coerced 'Bee into doing three favors for him, but he suspected blackmail was involved. Why else would 'Bee give them a copy of an honest-to-Cthulhu alien robot virus? "You gotta let me see it!"

Grinning, Fassbinder turned and started walking the five blocks to their apartment. "A Zookeeper's Special is the price of admission."

"Greedy," Sharsky grumbled, but he was already pulling his phone out of his pocket to call in the pizza order.

As soon as they got home, Fassbinder fired up his laptop and cracked open a Red Bull.

"Wait!" Sharsky said, his eyes wide with horror. "I just realized...that's a sentient software virus - do we really want to upload it to your computer?"

Fassbinder shrugged. "It isn't really sentient. He just said the AI was advanced enough that it would look that way to us, and besides, it's deactivated, so it's harmless. Even if it weren't, all it does is affect their motor control systems, so what's it going to do to a laptop?" And with that, he plugged the drive in.

They spent the next half hour figuring out the GUI Cam had written so that they could read and understand the virus and spent the twelve hours after that in a taurine-fueled code-monkey bliss, tinkering with actual, alien software. The sun was starting to rise at that point, so they decided to call it a night. Sharsky wanted his own copy of the virus, too, so Fassbinder let him save the modified virus to Sharsky's DropBox. Then they both hit the sack.

Sometime around noon, the DVD-ROM drive on Fassbinder's laptop popped open on its own.

…

High above Earth, Soundwave kept his vigil on the Autobots and their allies. Something fundamental had changed in Optimus Prime. His last transmission had piqued Lord Megatron's curiosity, and so he'd ordered Soundwave to return to Earth to discover what that change was.

The Autobots had taken the normal precautions to secure their base on Diego Garcia, but Soundwave could hack the humans while in recharge. He still made occasional forays against the Autobots via the worldwide web, but most of the time it wasn't even necessary. If he based his monitoring around the Pentagon and Optimus' pet human Sam, then he knew 90% of what he wanted to. That was his official reason for also keeping tabs on the squishies designated Mikaela Baines, Ron and Judy Witwicky, Leo Spitz, Glenn Morshower, Seymour Simmons, Sarah Lennox, Mohammed al-Sharif, Nadipati Fassbinder, and Joseph Sharsky. He routed all of their internet traffic to flow through his own processors and sifted through the dross of Farmville and World of Warcraft to discover the nuggets of knowledge that would give Lord Megatron the victory.

He'd never admit it to Megatron, but Soundwave was also beginning to understand why the Autobots had made pets of the humans. Individually they were dull little insects, but when they started fitting and working together, they were able to build some things that were truly remarkable, considering the low level of their intellect. If only the Decepticons could harness the humans' collective creativity and drive.

An email to Nadipati from his femme caught Soundwave's attention: Sam and Bumblebee were in New York City for the afternoon. He forwarded the information to Lord Megatron in case it would be of tactical value and then resumed monitoring the reality TV show Seymour Simmons was currently streaming.

When Seymour went dormant for recharge, Soundwave shifted his attention to Sarah Lennox. She checked her financial accounts every morning, including the stock market funds she monitored for the Autobots, and the Decepticon noted that Sideswipe's balance had increased substantially since the last time he'd looked. Soundwave shifted some of his own holdings so that his portfolio matched the Pit-spawn's a little better.

He knew the Lennox's sparkling femme had woken up when Sarah's internet traffic shifted to streaming Dora the Explorer. The thought of a talking monkey wearing boots made Soundwave's tanks churn - the whole phenomenon of talking cartoon animals was evidence that the humans would be better off serving Lord Megatron. Clearly, their imaginations needed to be channeled better.

To his relief, Joseph was online again by that point and was logging into World of Warcraft. The battle tactics utilized in the game were simplistic to the point of being ridiculous, but it was amusing to see how seriously the insects took themselves sometimes. He activated his own character and joined the raid.

He was so engrossed in observing the various humans over the next several hours, in fact, that he didn't notice when one of his tentacles attached to the human-built satellite twitched.

…

Megatron strode onto the bridge of the Fallen's former spaceship. It had crashed here eons ago and would never fly again, but it was still shelter against the harsh conditions of the planet Char.

Skywarp, the Seeker who had requested Megatron's presence on the bridge, bowed to him. "My lord, we're receiving a distress call from Soundwave."

"Let me hear it," Megatron ordered, and Skywarp patched the transmission into the command channel.

"...point to two possibilities: I have been hacked or I have been attacked with a cybernetic warfare agent."

"Soundwave, report."

The voice that came over the comm channel was more shaken than he'd ever heard from the mech (though he was still more calm and collected than Starscream on his best day). "Lord Megatron, I have lost most of my motor control. I'm currently in a decaying orbit and will likely make an uncontrolled landing in approximately two Earth solar cycles."

Frowning, Megatron said, "It will take us twice that long to reach you."

"Acknowledged." It was subtle, but there was defeat in Soundwave's voice.

Megatron considered his next move. If it were any mech but Soundwave, he'd leave the wretch on Earth to fend for himself until he was either strong enough to find his own way home or until the Decepticons had other plans that involved that miserable mudball.

But it was Soundwave, and somehow either a hacker or a virus had slipped past his famously impenetrable firewalls. Megatron dismissed the second option - it was laughable - and considered the first. Jazz was the only Autobot Megatron was aware of who had ever successfully hacked Soundwave, and even then it was when the Decepticon had been severely injured in battle. But Jazz was dead...although these days extinguishing a mech wasn't the guarantee it used to be.

If Optimus was reigniting the entire Autobot army, then Megatron was going to have a fight on his servos for the first time in more than 150 vorns. That alone was reason enough to intervene.

Aloud, he said, "You are fortunate, Soundwave, that you have served me so long and so well. Starscream and his trine-mates will retrieve you. I will punish whoever had the audacity to attack one of my officers."

"Acknowledged, Lord Megatron."

The warlord heard the gratitude in Soundwave's voice and smirked. Don't you forget it.

…

Lisbeth grinned when there was a knock on her motel-room door. She eagerly peeked through the peephole and her grin faded a little. There was no sign of Fassbinder - it was just Sam and Cam in the hallway. Still, she opened the door for them, grateful that they'd come all this way to give her a ride home. There was no way she could have juggled all her luggage on a train.

"Hi, guys."

"Hi," Sam greeted while Cam started scooping up her bags. "Fassbinder sends his apologies. Apparently his computer managed to pick up a virus."

That made her do a double-take. "How does a self-proclaimed hacking god pick up a virus?"

He glared at Cam for no apparent reason as the big blond walked out into the hallway. "We're not sure."

"Well, what's it doing?" she wondered, pulling the door closed behind her. "His credit card numbers weren't stolen, were they?"

"No, nothing like that," Sam assured her. "The DVD player on his laptop won't stay shut."

Lisbeth snorted. "I'm gone for a week and he picks up a cyber-STD."

Ahead of them, Cam made a strangled sound and his shoulders started to shake. Lisbeth smirked, pleased that she could make the alien laugh. It was a just a guess that he was an alien, but over the past year and a half, she'd heard Fassbinder and the guys make enough thinly-veiled jokes and seen enough of Cam's quirks to be convinced that he wasn't exactly human. Still, Lisbeth had learned to appreciate his easy, joking manner and the fact that Fassbinder trusted him. Wherever he'd been born or spawned or whatever, to Lisbeth he was just one of the guys.

They checked her out of the motel and, with some creative rearranging, they were able to get all of Lisbeth's stuff into the trunk. Cam gallantly took the back seat so Lisbeth could ride shotgun - yet another reason she approved of him. They hadn't made it out of Manhattan, though, when a plane flying below the buildings buzzed them.

Lisbeth poked her head out the window to see it better. "Wha…?"

Sam recklessly swerved, cutting Lisbeth off and making her flail for the panic handles, and the car ducked into the entrance of an underground parking garage. Lisbeth's eyes widened when the car doors opened and seat belts disengaged on their own, and both she and Sam were dumped out onto the concrete. The speakers blared, "Quick! Hide!" over the squealing of tires and the car sped toward the exit.

Lisbeth sat there for a second, blinking stupidly and unable to get beyond the thought that her prized theater makeup kit had just driven off.

Muttering "slag" repeatedly under his breath, Sam rushed to her and pulled her to her feet.

Tearing her gaze away from the garage exit, she asked Sam, "Did Cam just…?"

An earth-shaking crash interrupted her again, and a booming voice outside roared, "Bumblebee!"

Sam visibly paled. "Frag." Ducking low, he started creeping toward daylight.

"What?" Lisbeth whispered, following him.

"Look," he hissed, "Cam isn't what you think."

"He's your alien bodyguard, right?" Sam stopped and turned to look at her, stunned, and she smiled ever so slightly. "I do pay attention, you know. Why'd he steal your car, though? Wouldn't he want you safe inside it?"

"He is the car."

Lisbeth's mouth was an "O" of surprise - to Sam's visible relief.

The sound of some kind of laser-weapon firing made Sam cringe, though, and he started creeping toward the garage exit again. Lisbeth resigned herself to asking questions later and followed him.

…

New York City was one of the few Earth locations that almost made Megatron nostalgic. The densely-packed angular structures, the steel and smog, the cars clogging the streets - as he flew over them, they were all reminiscent of Cybertron back when it was alive. The fact that it made him feel that way awoke a deep and abiding hatred of the place in his spark.

Soundwave had survived the crash landing, taking only mild damage to his frame and none to his processors. Though grounded, the mech had resumed his assignment of monitoring the Autobots and their allies, and so Megatron knew that somewhere in this city teeming with humans was at least one Autobot.

Thanks to Soundwave, they also knew what had taken the mech down - a particularly nasty strain of the Twitch that had obviously been engineered. It was more virulent than usual, slipping past the defenses of every Decepticon who'd encountered it (including Megatron) and causing both fine and gross motor spasms that were more severe than the Twitch was known to produce. Soundwave had been battling it ever since he'd isolated the code two days ago, but it was already well-established and evolving past his attempts to eradicate it. His efforts weren't entirely wasted, though, and he'd developed some protocols that at least slowed the progression of the virus.

Megatron was already showing symptoms of the illness, but he'd be fragged if he was going to let a little case of the Twitch stop him from getting revenge on the Autobots. Bumblebee was half a world away from the rest of them, and where Bumblebee was, Optimus' pet was likely to be. They were both an easy kill.

He had been away too long - two Earth orbital cycles - and it showed. Bumblebee didn't even bother shielding his spark and Megatron was able to swoop down on him in a matter of moments. Just as he was taking aim, though, one of his horizontal stabilizers spasmed, and he narrowly missed careening into a building. Bumblebee tried to evade him by ducking into a parking garage, but Megatron saw where the mech emerged on the other side just astroseconds later. Focusing solely on his flight mods, he was able to stick a landing this time half a block from Bumblebee. The Autobot transformed, and Megatron growled out his name in challenge.

Bumblebee unleashed his entire arsenal on Megatron, and the Decepticon almost laughed at how pathetic the attack was. The sting from fresh damage awoke a fierce lust for energon in his spark, and he swung his cannon-arm to take aim. The arm stopped short, though, and a full-frame twitch brought Megatron to his knees. Furiously, he punched the asphalt. He'd had this virus before - it shouldn't be able to do that!

Another Autobot was coming to back up Bumblebee - Megatron could sense the poorly-shielded spark creeping closer from under the same building where Bumblebee had briefly tried to hide. The Decepticon staggered to his pedes, trying to train his fusion cannon on where the second Autobot would come into view, but the slagging virus made his arm jerk wildly.

It wasn't a Cybertronian that rounded the corner, though. It was a filthy meatbag. A human...with a spark? Stunned, the warlord stared for a surreal moment, not believing what his own sensors were telling him. It was Optimus' pet. Sam, that was his designation. But now that Megatron examined the spark's output more closely, he recognized the frequency. How could he not - it had been compatible with his own, before he'd severed his brother bond with Optimus.

This human was Prime-bound.

He burst out in sudden laughter. Optimus was so fragged! Megatron could step on the squishy now, he could tear his fleshy arms off, he could do nothing at all and let the creature die a natural death - no matter what, Optimus would writhe because of this bond.

The spasms in his pedes and legs were enough to send him crashing to the ground, but he was too amused to be angry this time. "Weak!" he chortled, crawling on all fours toward Sam. The human skittered back in fear and Bumblebee was in front of him again, bristling with weapons. Megatron tried to shoot the annoying yellow 'bot, but missed and struck a skyscraper behind him. Bumblebee's missiles flew true, though, hitting and severely damaging the Decepticon's shoulder joint. If he tried to use the fusion cannon now, the recoil would blow his arm off.

Frustration roared through him again. Sneering, he growled at Sam. "I don't know how you did it, but this is better than any revenge even I could have planned." Two more of the Autobot's missiles struck home, and Megatron began to back away. "I'll still kill you - slowly and painfully - but I'll have the satisfaction of knowing I'm gutting Prime's spark in the process. Tell your brother that!"

Transforming, he took to the air. Thankfully no other Decepticons were there to witness how wobbly he was, and hopefully any other observers would assume his barrel-roll over Boston was intentional.

…

Lisbeth watched the exchange between Sam and the monster of a robot while cowering behind a flipped-over car (that thankfully was empty). When Cam resumed his Camaro shape, though, she mentally face palmed. Cam...Camaro. How did she not see it before?

Sam turned, frantically searching for her, and Lisbeth ran to him. He placed a steadying hand on her elbow and half-ran, half-led her toward where Cam sat with his doors open. "Come on, come on, in the car!"

She ducked into the passenger seat and got her seatbelt buckled just as Sam dove behind the wheel and the Camaro leaped forward, buckling Sam in for him. For several long, breathless minutes, they drove in silence as Sam watched the sky and Lisbeth tried to think of a way to bring up the elephant in the room without sounding like either a complete novice or an idiot.

Sam didn't seem to be convinced they were going to be okay until they crossed the George Washington Bridge and he slumped a little in his seat.

It was the radio that finally broke the ice. "So, I expect you have some questions for me?"

Sam shook himself and looked at Lisbeth like he just realized she was still in the car with him. "Oh. Yeah. Are you okay, Lisbeth?"

"Yeah…" she slowly answered.

"You didn't, like, get hurt by random falling debris or anything, right?"

"Nope. Not a scratch."

"Not gonna puke?"

She briefly considered her stomach. "No. Why would I?"

He snorted. "Shock can do that to people." Tilting his head, he added, "But you're as cool as a cucumber about all this. Did Fassbinder tell you?"

She felt a sudden spike of worry for her boyfriend. "Not exactly, but like I said, I pay attention. I kind of figured out Cam wasn't human last Christmas."

Sam gave her an incredulous look. "And you haven't told anybody else this whole time?"

She shrugged. "Who could I tell that would believe me?"

The radio played a laugh-track that Lisbeth recognized and all the questions she'd placed on the shelf during the alien duel came back with a vengeance. "Are my bags okay? I mean, you transformed and…"

"Subspace pockets," Sam said, "he hid them someplace not even Megatron could get to."

"Megatron?"

"The other robot."

She blinked for a second, trying to process it. "You mean, you put my theater makeup kit through a tesseract?"

A puzzled expression crossed Sam's face, but the radio played a round of applause. "By George, I think she's got it!"

Since the alien was willing to talk to her directly, or at least indirectly through the radio, Lisbeth asked the dashboard, "Is Sharsky one of you?"

Sam choked on a laugh. "Nope, humanity still takes the blame for that one."

Her eyes widened. "What about Fassbinder?"

"Fully human," Sam quipped, "besides, all the 'bots tend to get weirded out at the thought of kissing."

Cam played a long, drawn-out smooch over the radio followed by a jumble of jeers, laughter, and the sound of gagging.

She raised an eyebrow at that. "Not even with your human avatar?"

"They're called holoforms," Sam clarified, while 'Bee spliced several quotes together to say, "It'd be like pretending to get it on with puppets - not exactly satisfying."

Lisbeth laughed so hard she snorted and blushed to the ears. Clearly, Cam the Alien Robot had been spending too much time around Sharsky. Pulling herself together, she finally asked, "And what about your name? I mean Cam is just short for Camaro…"

The speakers played a clip of a bizarre song she'd never heard before. "Sweet little bumblebee…"

"His voice was damaged in battle," Sam softly explained. "He can only talk in sound-bites, but his real name - or a good translation of it, I guess - is Bumblebee."

Bumblebee. Well, that explained the paint job, at least. "I'm pleased to meet you for real, Bumblebee."

The speakers played another round of applause, along with the quote, "The feeling's mutual, lady."

"So," Sam interrupted, clearing his throat, "like 'Bee said, I'm sure you have a million questions, but we should try to answer as many of them as we can while driving. Just knowing about Bumblebee and his buddies is top-secret classified, and sometimes the walls really do have ears. You shouldn't talk about them even if it's just you and Fassbinder in the apartment."

Lisbeth pondered that for a moment, and then asked, "How long has Fassbinder known?"

Sam had to explain then about the alien robot warrior blog Fassbinder and Sharsky hacked all the way back in their freshman year, and Lisbeth's follow-up questions kept them talking and laughing the entire way home. They dropped off her luggage at her apartment and then they all went back over to the boys' place.

As Sam, Lisbeth, and Cam walked through the door, Sharsky said, "Perfect timing! Two pizzas and a cheesy bread will be ready for pick-up in ten minutes."

Cam's phone played, "Hi, honey, I'm home."

Fassbinder was sitting on the couch, looking slightly glassy-eyed as he stared at his laptop's screen.

"Hey, babe, you okay?" Lisbeth asked as she sat down beside him.

"He OD'd on Red Bull again," Leo said. "I wanted backup before I tried to pull an intervention." Then he whacked Fassbinder on the back of of the head.

Her boyfriend jumped. "What?!" Owlishly, he stared at Lisbeth. "When did you get here?"

"Um, just a minute ago?"

"Any closer to a fix for the bug?" Sam asked Sharsky.

It was Fassbinder who answered, though. "Not yet, but those guys from the Pentagon are stumped, too, and even the Hatchet's having fits, so they might fly us out to that base where we'll either write the antidote or disappear for the rest of our lives."

Sharsky was tugging on Sam's arm. "Pizza's gonna be ready before we get there."

Lisbeth tilted her head curiously. Was Sharsky trying to get Sam away from the others so they could talk about aliens in Cam's...Bumblebee's cab?

Her lips twitched in a smile. "Hey Sam," she called out as Sharsky all but dragged him out the door. "Thanks for the ride. Next time, though, take me to your leader."

Sam grinned. "Oh, you met him last summer."

Lisbeth's brow furrowed in confusion and then her eyes widened in surprise. "Optimus?!"

Leo, Sharsky, and Fassbinder froze in shock, but Sam grabbed Sharsky and headed toward the carport.

"Another chick in our boy's club?" Leo protested.

"Wait, what the…" Fassbinder babbled.

Lisbeth kicked back and put her feet up on the coffee table. Grinning like the cat that ate the canary, she said, "Well, you know, I could tell you, but then I'd have to kill you."

Chapter Text

When Sharsky stumbled through the door fifteen minutes later with a stack of pizza boxes, he was grinning like a kid on Christmas morning. Sam, however, looked like someone had died - or like someone was going to. It wasn't an expression Lisbeth had seen on him before. Cam was also uncharacteristically somber.

Leo took one look at Sam and smirked triumphantly. "'Bout time we hit the R&R cabins again."

"You miss the twins that much?" Sam grumbled in answer, and Leo grimaced. To the rest of the room, Sam announced, "Get packing. Cam's going to run Lisbeth home so she can get ready, too. We're going to the island."

Lisbeth frowned in confusion (while Fassbinder engaged in an intricate high-five with Sharsky). "What island?"

"The island - that's all you need to know for right now," Sam said, breaking up his former roommates' fist-bumping and shooing them toward the bedrooms. "At least three days worth of clothes," he called after them. "And don't forget the deodorant!"

He turned, but Lisbeth was already on her feet with purse in hand. "Work will expect me on Monday. I don't have any more vacation time because I used it all up for the Broadway workshop."

Sam glanced at Cam before meeting her gaze. "Fifty years from now, when you're looking back on your life, aren't you going to wish you had the guts to come with us?"

"Um...rent?"

Cam started laughing and gave her a reassuring pat on the shoulder. "I've got your six. Let's get to it."

"No, seriously," Lisbeth started to protest, but Sam spoke over her. "It will be taken care of. Trust me."

Lisbeth was shocked to realize - despite everything - that she did trust this serious side of Sam. "Three days?"

He shrugged. "At least, but they'll have laundry facilities. Is there anybody besides your roommates and work that'll miss you if you're gone that long?"

"I... I should tell my parents if I am going out of the country; I'll need to give them and my roommates an explanation."

"Just tell them you and Fassbinder are going on a road trip so you'll have spotty cell coverage. Call your work and tell them whatever excuse you think they'll buy - stomach bug, broken leg, death in the family - and if they're still unreasonable, quit." She opened her mouth to protest, but Sam added, "'Bee said he has your back. He's got the resources to keep a roof over your head and food on your table until you find another job."

Still Lisbeth hesitated. "Is this really going to be worth it?"

Sam's grin was a familiar one this time. "No question."

Nodding decisively, she turned to Cam and followed the holoform out to the waiting alien robot. As soon as she was buckled in and the car was in motion, she asked, "What island?"

Like before, Bumblebee spliced soundbites together while his holoform pretended to drive. "We're going to a...military base. You will meet the...rest of the family...there."

"Like Optimus?"

"Yep! It's your boyfriend's...first time there."

"And all this is because of the cyber-STD he caught?" she wondered.

Bumblebee used her own voice in answer. "All this is because of the cyber-STD he...wrote...He saved our lives."

The pieces fell into place then for Lisbeth. "He wrote a virus for you guys and that's what was making the big one - Megatron - look like he was having a sneezing fit without the actual sneezes?"

"Bingo!"

Lisbeth's breath rushed out in a whoosh. No wonder he and Sharsky were doing a manly happy dance. "Why bring me along, though?"

Bumblebee drifted to a stop in front of her apartment. "Because you know...Now hurry."

Lisbeth took a deep breath, opened the car door, and ran to her apartment.

…

Twin Oaks was not difficult to reach from Tranquility. The moment that Mikaela had been ordered to Nellis for evacuation to Diego Garcia, RaFly had received her own orders and set to work finding a path that would allow her to arrive at her designated post in an expedient manner without finding herself in heavy traffic or a remote area. Twin Oaks could be reached within three hours at what Samuel Prime referred to as "Granny speed" and while cutting through the Angeles National Forest, she would be able to unobtrusively exceed the recommended speed limit without drawing unwanted attention from the California Highway Patrol.

The proposed route also allowed her to pass near Edwards in case of an emergency but there were few indications that the Antelope Valley was to be involved in the current crisis. Nevertheless, it was best to arrive at the Lennox ranch without making trouble of any kind on the way.

Given that GPS communication and satellite tracking were both compromised, she prepared for traveling off the proverbial beaten path roughly an hour into her journey. Her alt-form blended in very naturally with the cars of Palmdale's local Wal-Mart and she surveyed the population for several minutes before choosing an appearance. Rebecca Segretti made her way to the road maps in a pair of high-waisted jeans and a white t-shirt and emerged fairly quickly and captured the image of the route to Twin Oaks with her optics. She left the map neatly on the passenger seat should she need to reference it again, but the scanned image was sufficient.

It was fortunate that Megatron's attack had not coincided with rush hour traffic, but as it was, she found herself at the barbed wire fence and welcome sign at Sarah Lennox's ranch just after 1 p.m.. Major Lennox was dressed in jeans, a t-shirt, and cowboy boots as he lounged against a small shack just inside the property. She wasn't sure if she should salute or tip her non-existent hat. (She made a note to herself to search through her holoform library in the "accessories" folder for ranch-appropriate attire. Surely, someone had already programmed a Stetson into it at some point.)

She could have tracked Ironhide on her own from the entrance-regardless of the technological shutdown, there were ways to recognize one of her own through more conventional methods-but she opened her right door as soon as Major Lennox approached.

"Welcome to our humble home," he said in a grave tone that did not match his pleasant expression. "I thought we could do this the easy way and give you directions."

"I appreciate the trouble you have gone to," she responded in kind. "If you would prefer to drive, I would be happy to yield control of the steering and propulsion tools."

"It's fine," he reassured her. "Take a left up here."

By the time she parked and Major Lennox exited the chassis at a structure surrounded by displaced heavy machinery, she was aware of Ironhide's symptoms, current conditions, and Rachet's most recent instructions. As she observed the area she discovered one other thing was significantly out of place: Ironhide's favorite cannons. They sat, disconnected from the Autobot, on the ground outside the building.

"He insisted on being as harmless as possible when he started getting twitchy," Lennox explained with an almost sympathetic grimace.

"It is prudent in any situation for a patient to be divested of anything that could cause himself or others to be put in danger," she replied approvingly.

"I'm glad it was his idea," Lennox said. "He's been a little dramatic about the whole thing and being forced to strip down on someone else's say-so would come off as the end of the world as we know it."

Ironhide was not prone to such human histrionics in her experience, but he did have a propensity for taking pride in his invulnerability. The voluntary surrender of his most effective weapon without attempting to negotiate alternative precautions was unusual, but understandable in the circumstances.

"Have any of the other vehicles on the property been infected?"

"We're not that fancy," he chuckled. "You won't find any Cybertron-worthy tractors around here. Though the desktop in the kitchen has been randomly opening and closing its CD drive and, on the recommendation of the Witwickys, we have quarantined the waffle iron. Just to be safe."

Waffle irons were, traditionally, not equipped with the necessary networking capability, but humans had peculiar aesthetics when it came to the most trivial appliances, so she did not understand why the Lennoxes had internet-enabled breakfast appliances when their riding mower appeared to have not been upgraded since the late 20th Century. Out of respect for her hosts, however, she would not question their judgment on such matters.

Rather than transform to her base form, she took on the holoform's appearance and circled the garage for an evaluation. She could see a few structural weaknesses that may have predated Ironhide's more explosive episodes, but had probably not been aided by his unpredictable physical symptoms. If needed, they could attend to structurally reinforcing anything that had been damaged once he was on the mend.

"I think he could use a friendly face," Major Lennox commented as he strolled along beside her.

"I'm sure you're correct, sir," RaFly responded, "but this is a patient and you might say that I am reading the chart before taking his vitals."

She was certainly not equipped as a field medic, but it would be negligent of her not to be thoroughly aware of the sickbay's structural integrity before entering, especially when it was built by humans.

She allowed her holoform to vanish as she returned to the alt-form and immediately transformed so she could address Ironhide face-to-face, as it were.

He did not look his usual imposing self. He was in base form-it was prudent to have all parts accessible should mechanical intervention be called for-but his posture was more slouched than she was accustomed to. Nevertheless, Ironhide was her superior in this circumstance and she gave him a formal bow before speaking.

"I hope I find you well, sir."

His response sounded close to a snort of amusement, but he inclined his head. "Thank you for coming, RaFly. Your prompt assistance is most appreciated. This fragging Twitch is aggravating. Do you have any symptoms?"

She immediately compared his stature to the proportions of the garage and discovered that, barring more violent spasms than had already been documented, there was a relatively low chance of him bringing the roof or walls down on the inhabitants of the space.

"None yet, sir. With any luck, I digitally quarantined in time."

…

There were not that many advantages to flying commercial. The food sucked, the seats were designed for hobbits, and the flight attendants never let you have a whole can of something caffeinated.

On the other hand, Fassbinder thought as he surveyed his seating options, a C-17 was definitely designed for people who were too badass to want peanuts with their ginger ale. Today's flight wasn't that full-as soon as they were airborne, there was a migration effort that made him suspect people had some kind of hive mind. There were plenty of open seats lining the walls, but there were knots of people in similar uniforms talking in very intense mutters as if they were rehearsing for a sequel to something starring Jack Ryan.

If he had been twice as idiotic, he would have tried to eavesdrop. It was his natural response to anything too classified to discuss at a normal level, but there was a Code of Professional Conduct that replaced the TOS for The Daily Buzz and it included respecting national security.

So, without an in-flight movie and not wanting to risk any of his electronics, Fassbinder did what any good boyfriend would and turned to his significant other for meaningful interaction.

"So, a week in New York," he said brightly. "I bet you learned so much."

That was definitely the right opening line. In thanks for him not asking about the crazies at Times Square, Lisbeth interlocked her fingers with his and grinned back.

"I did," she responded. "I got to work with a professional improv troupe's creative director for the morning session and I've got a lot to work on."

"Comedy I assume?" All he could think of were the high school shows that had started with an argument and always seemed to end with someone getting left behind in an awkward situation. "I mean, I don't think Shakespeare or George Bernard Shaw needs a lot of improv."

"True, but there are a lot of physical dynamics that need to be flexible in the rehearsal process and I'm hoping to use what I learned with next term's productions. It can't hurt to provide some spontaneity if the director wants to go in a different direction…"

He loved it when she talked nerdy, even if he didn't always understand the nuance of what she was describing; but even then he was always interested in getting tickets to opening night of the end result. He was still listening as attentively as possible to her discourse on a lecture given by a Broadway set designer when he heard a pointed cough.

Lisbeth had paused for breath, so he glanced in Sam's direction. "Yes, Alienboy?"

Now that Lisbeth was actually aware of the reasons for the name, he had no qualms about digging up the familiar nickname.

"We've got a worldwide crisis, several branches of the military coordinating emergency measures. Could we focus on the situation at hand?"

"I haven't asked my girlfriend about her trip yet," he said. "I'm not allowed to tinker with anything connected to a power source. People have been threatening me very creatively with an air gapped laptop. I'm not going to butt in on anyone I'll have to salute first. So yeah, the situation at hand is that I'm going to make sure I pay attention to my honey before she thinks I don't care about this stuff and before I'm too busy restoring order to get some private time."

"After what you pulled, the closest you're getting to 'restoring order' is organizing the office supplies for the lowest-ranking data entry person on base," Sam guessed.

"Gee, thanks," Lisbeth drawled in addition. "I'm glad I get to be your sentient distraction."

"Oh, you're my favorite distraction," Fassbinder said, resting their clasped hands on her kneecap. "You can babble about Pygmalion any time you want. But you're my highest priority for the time being."

She rolled her eyes.

Plus, quality time was the most romantic thing he could provide on a plane full of brass, well ok, only a few people were actually in uniform, but the effect was still there. Even if an admiral wasn't the one to interrupt a make-out session, it would be horror beyond imagination if Glen and Sharsky went looking for something to relieve their boredom and found them trying to get some privacy.

"If you don't mind," Lisbeth interjected in Sam's direction, "I haven't heard anything about his week other than the havoc he wreaked."

He flashed a rare innocent look at Sam. "I haven't even talked about the pizza and Poltergeist movie night."

Sam grumbled something about there being better Spielberg to watch for the end of the world, then went back to minding his own business.

...

When Mikaela drove up to the Nellis AFB checkpoint on her motorcycle, the guard there took one look at her driver's license and waved her through. She smiled behind the helmet face shield - there were advantages to being associated with NEST. If the organization you worked for didn't exist, neither did all the usual paperwork involved in getting onto the base. After the four-hour drive it took to get here, she appreciated not getting bogged down.

Maggie was waiting for her outside of a nondescript building that Mikaela had only visited a couple of times before.

Mikaela parked her bike, pulled off her helmet, and strode toward the Aussie. "Hey."

"Welcome." Maggie pushed the front door open, and Mikaela stepped into the blessedly air-conditioned room. Maggie gestured toward a water cooler. "Need a drink?"

Mikaela gratefully downed three paper cups of cold water before saying, "I got here as quick as I could. What's going on?"

"We appreciate that, since our plane arrives in about twenty minutes." Maggie led her toward a desk that was occupied. "Glen was the first one to find it 'in the wild' so to speak."

He barely glanced at Mikaela. "'Sup."

Mikaela blinked in surprise - it wasn't the usual reception she got from him, or from any guy for that matter. Then she looked more closely at the computer screen he was working at. "Is that Cybertronian?"

"It is," Maggie confirmed. "And it's the reason you, me, Glen, and the entire Prime protection unit are being recalled to DG."

Tearing her gaze away from the screen, Mikaela said, "I'm still not following."

"It's a virus," Maggie explained, "a Cybertronian one that Bumblebee handed over to Sam's former roommates."

Mikaela felt her heart sink - there was no way for this to end well. "And they set it loose on the internet?"

"Not directly. We think that our internet traffic is being monitored by Decepticons and the virus appears to have escaped through them. That's why our recent communications with you have been so vague. We're not entirely sure how deeply we've been compromised."

"Wait, how do you know Decepticons are spying on our internet traffic?"

"Because it's moving up their ranks fastest." Maggie went to another workstation and pulled up a video feed. "A report from Bumblebee." In it, Megatron looked like he was having convulsions of some kind while threatening Sam.

Fury filled Mikaela, mostly driven by the panic of seeing Sam in a fusion cannon's way and knowing she couldn't help him. "Why didn't I hear about this already?"

"Because it only happened about seven hours ago and we're under radio silence now. Before that, 'Bee sent this directly to us and to DG, since he recognized the symptoms. Usually it's similar to a cold for them, more annoyance than anything. That's why Bumblebee selected that particular virus to hand over to Fassbinder and Sharsky. But they modified it, and now it's something really nasty."

"So… 'Bee gave those goofs the Cybertronian code for the sniffles and they turned it into something like cyber-Ebola?"

"More like pneumonia. As near as we can tell, it's not particularly deadly but it is highly debilitating," Maggie clarified, "and it's now spread over the entire world."

"But it's Cybertronian," Mikaela protested.

Maggie shrugged. "Bumblebee wrote an interface so that Fassbinder and Sharsky could manipulate the code. The virus has a very advanced AI, though, and it's evolving. It's installing the interface along with replicated Cybertronian viruses on anything it can. Phones, laptops, cars, servers…"

Mikaela let out a low whistle of surprise. "So that's why the world's gone wonky. Are we safe to fly?"

"At the moment, yes, but only because it's a NEST plane with Autobot-level virus protection. We need to get a handle on this, the sooner the better."

"Right. And our flight to DG arrives in…?"

Maggie looked at the clock. "Ten minutes, at this point."

"Just enough time to freshen up and use the little girls' room," Mikaela said. Because the johns on a C-17 sucked. And so did four hours on a bike without a pitstop.

A military escort was parked next to Mikaela's motorcycle when she, Maggie, and Glen left the building a few minutes later, and they all piled into his jeep for the ride to the airstrip where their plane was refueling.

Mikaela was used to her, Sam, and Bumblebee having the bay of the C-17 pretty much to themselves when they flew to Diego Garcia, so it was something of a shock to find it crowded, mostly with humans. Bumblebee was there with Sam, of course, but so were al-Sharif, Simmons, Leo, Fassbinder, Sharsky, and … "Lisbeth?"

She brightened when Mikaela approached her. "Hello stranger."

Maggie and Glen continued on to talk with Fassbinder, Sharsky and Leo, while Sam started drifting Mikaela's way.

"I didn't realize you were in on the secret," Mikaela said, feeling a little frustrated that she was apparently the last to know everything today.

Lisbeth didn't seem to notice, though. "Only since this afternoon, at least officially. I met Megatron, so..."

"You met Megatron?" And then Mikaela figured it out. "You were with Sam earlier today."

"Yeah. I was the reason he and 'Bee were in New York."

"Well in that case," Mikaela said, smirking and extending her hand, "welcome to the crazy life."

Lisbeth tentatively smiled and shook her hand, saying, "Thanks, I think."

…

The NEST base on Diego Garcia was still on high alert, and Optimus had been on duty for the last 72 hours. Bumblebee had reported to Ratchet on Tuesday what Fassbinder and Sharsky had done back, but they hadn't realized the virus had escaped until Glen found it in circulation on Wednesday, and the appropriate human intelligence agencies were then notified. The Autobots were mostly concerned about protecting humans from hardware that might randomly malfunction, but they didn't think it would impact them until Thursday night when Skids and Mudflap contracted the modified Twitch (or as Epps dubbed it, the "twitching awfuls"). Friday morning, Ironhide started showing symptoms, too, stranding him and the Lennoxes at Sarah's ranch. RaFly was ordered to go shelter in place with them.

Ratchet didn't dare put the twins in stasis since doing so would also diminish the effectiveness of their antivirus systems, but the human repair crew couldn't go near them for fear of getting squished during a twitch. Ratchet's solution was to immobilize the twins on berths in the med bay, which lasted for all of ten minutes before they decided the best available entertainment was medic-baiting because he had also turned off all the Autobots' comms for fear that they'd spread the infection.

When the twins broke out in a rousing chorus of the "Spongebob Squarepants" theme song, Ratchet stormed out the med bay, saying maybe if they tortured the virus long enough it would wither up and die on its own.

Sarah Lennox was the one who Friday afternoon suggested via a secure phone line that Ratchet allow the twins to watch cartoons on a projector and that he just tune them out by muting his own audials. The medic accepted the suggestion with ill grace, but there weren't really many other options at that point.

Skids and Mudflap were in a near-constant state of twitch and Ratchet couldn't even say for certain how many variants of the virus they were fighting. It was evolving rapidly and along lines that simply made no sense to him. He'd studied every digital virus known to Cybertron, and they followed predictable patterns of evolution. That was how Cybertronians got ahead of a virus and eradicated it - their own antiviral systems out-guessed the malware.

This virus, though, this virus was just alien enough that it slipped past their antiviral systems completely undetected and, even when he could isolate one variant and kill it, the anticipated daughter-lines of code simply didn't exist. He was fighting each variant individually while they were multiplying in the deep, dark recesses of the twins' processors. It was a battle he was losing, and while the infection had not been spark-threatening so far, it was only a matter of time before it evolved into something that was. So he'd muted his audials, encouraged his human repair team to bring their ear plugs, and worked in the blessed silence of his own mind while the restrained twins convulsed with full-frame twitches.

That's also why every half hour or so, the manic strains of "Who lives in a pineapple under the sea?" rang out through the Autobot hangar.

It was chaos, Optimus mused to himself as several soldiers groaned at the sound, but at least it was controlled chaos.

For the Prime, the one silver lining in this mess was that he could feel the brother bond he shared with Sam steadily growing stronger. The C-17 carrying him (and basically every other military and civilian programming asset NEST had) was getting closer with each passing moment. He recognized the contented calm of Sam settling down to sleep, and turned to Epps. "Considering the length of time I have been on duty, I believe it would be best to recharge at least briefly before Sam and the others arrive."

Epps nodded, not even looking up from the report he was reading. "Sounds like a good idea."

They were planning on building a barracks for the Autobots, but it was currently being held up by the environmental impact study, so he dropped down into his alt mode and found an out-of-the-way spot to recharge.

Optimus was the first to enter the shared dream-space where they usually met, but he did not have to wait long on the remembered aircraft carrier. Only moments later, he felt Sam's approach.

"Brother."

"Optimus." Sam sighed deeply, drawing on the peace at the core of Optimus' spark, as he came to stand at his brother's side. As usual, they were the same height in their bond-dream. Suddenly Sam tensed, "Are we safe to dream together like this? I mean, I don't think either of us could get the Twitch…"

"We are safe," Optimus assured him, wrapping him up in a 'hug of the heart,' as Sam put it. "This connection is beyond mechanical systems or even the most fundamental code."

Reassured, Sam eased down a notch from his anxiety. "It's been one Pit of a day."

"Did you come to that conclusion before or after Lockheed Martin's systems contracted the Twitch?"

"Hadn't heard about that one yet." He ran his fingers through his hair in frustration. "I'm just glad we got out while the getting was good. From what I've been able to overhear and read, it seemed like the whole world was on the fritz. Trains, planes, and some cars halted, ATM's randomly spitting out cash, GPS systems down, even garage doors randomly opening."

"I will be grateful when your feet are safely on the ground at Diego Garcia," Optimus told him, letting his pent-up worry wash across the bond, along with his unfettered affection for his brother. "You didn't mention the most dangerous part."

Sam's shoulders slumped. "Oh yeah. Megatron."

"Of all the consequences of this day, that is the one that concerns me most."

Sam started pacing, his nervous energy crackling over their bond. "I know, Optimus, I know. And I also know what you're going to say - that you want me to stay on Diego Garcia. You know I can't. I can't be the Prime I was born to be if I'm hidden away on a tropical island. You're going to need a lobbyist and, if all goes well, an ambassador someday."

Optimus partially blocked the bond, hoping to hide his own despair at the words, "You are of no value to us dead."

Sam paused and looked at Optimus, his surprise pushing back against the block Optimus had erected. Eventually he straightened and said, "I stared down the barrel of a fusion cannon this morning, Optimus. If I was going to die by Megatron's hand, it would have happened already. It did happen but here I am - because it was my fate. I have to go forward trusting fate to get me where I'm supposed to be. Even we humans know that running away from your fate tends to turn out badly. And I like having both my eyes in my head, thank you very much."

Optimus tilted his head, puzzled.

"You haven't seen that play yet? Probably better that way," Sam said, pacing again. "The ancient Greeks were pretty gruesome. My point is that this doesn't fundamentally change anything."

"Withdrawal of your scholarships would change things."

Sam whirled and searched Optimus' optics and spark, nudging against the block on their bond again. Optimus let the block fall, let his brother in to see just how terrified he was at the possibility of losing Sam.

"You really would do that," Sam muttered, surprised.

"Yes, if it meant keeping you out of a fusion cannon's way."

"Slag."

Chapter Text

Fassbinder jolted awake to find a line of drool on his chin and Lisbeth absent from the adjoining seat. He blinked to focus and found her after a moment, approaching with what looked promisingly like something energy-related.

"It's not Bull," she said, "but I thought you could use some electrolytes after your sugar crash."

He guzzled it obediently after a word of thanks, then remembered to wipe his chin. "What'd I miss?"

"A security briefing, communications with the NSA, and a blood test."

At the sound of "NSA," he straightened his posture in an involuntary reflex. "Seriously?"

"No, but I bet you don't need caffeine to wake up now." She returned to her seat and took a long gulp from the water bottle she was always toting to keep her voice in top form. "You're not the only one who dozed off."

He tipped the generic gatorade bottle, but only got a few more drops. "Do we have an ETA?"

She shook her head. "I know from dropping a few eaves that we're on-schedule, but I don't need to know the details of that schedule until we land."

Much as he had gotten a buzz of excitement from her fib about security, the thought of the impending landing was even more of a stimulant. There wouldn't be time or bandwidth for admiring the scenery, but they were being secreted away to a classified installation where what happened on Diego Garcia stayed in Diego Garcia, on pain of actual prosecution.

He rubbed the last vestiges of sleep from his eyes and cracked his neck like a prizefighter preparing for a title match. "Then, what do you crazy kids do around here for fun?" he drawled.

"Well, Sharsky borrowed my Sudoku book and I got to hear some funny stories about Mikaela's first Close Encounter now that I'm in the know. Otherwise, I've been narrowing down monologues for the next round of auditions."

Which meant that he would leave Diego Garcia with a greater understanding of humankind's place in the universe and something about "Yet Brutus is an honorable man" stuck in his head.

...

Bumblebee led the way off the plane, rolling down the ramp ahead of the human he was supposed to be guarding. Fassbinder tried to keep close to his former roommate, but al-Sharif somehow kept everyone a pace or two distant, so a crowd kind of piled up behind Sam.

A Black man in uniform greeted him just inside of the open hangar door. "Mr. Witwicky."

"Don't 'Mister' me, Epps," Sam practically growled. "This isn't my fault."

"This time," Epps grunted with a half-smile. Falling in step beside Sam, he added, "Glad you made it in one piece, kid."

"Thanks."

Epps called out, "You, too, 'Bee."

The yellow Camaro started transforming, and Fassbinder's heart leaped to his throat. He'd known for years now, but still, it wasn't every day that 'Bee could transform, so it was awesome to see it again. Bumblebee replayed Sam's voice in answer. "Thanks."

Fassbinder's eyes adjusted as he followed them and crossed into the hangar, but his brain took a little longer. This was Sam, his goofy ex-roommate, Alienboy, the n00b who didn't even speak Klingon. He wasn't some admiral or general to go swaggering into a top-secret military installation like he owned the place. And he sure as hell shouldn't be on teasing terms with a soldier who could tie into a pretzel anybody who crossed him. The man was packing heat and made al-Sharif (who had scared Fassbinder half to death several times) look like some weird and weedy Pentagon pencil-pusher.

And then he realized the heavy equipment in front of them wasn't some kind of high-tech scaffolding. It turned and looked down on them with bright blue eyes.

"Welcome, all of you, to Diego Garcia," the towering giant said with a voice Fassbinder recognized. Optimus, Sam's "blood brother," he'd said back during their freshman year. "I wish it were under better circumstances," the giant continued, "but it is not an exaggeration to say that the world as you know it is in danger, and the team we are assembling here is Earth's best hope for stopping the threat."

Fassbinder tilted his head in curiosity when a pink robot face peeked around a corner behind Optimus and then disappeared again.

"You will be briefed on the current situation and - "

Another robot, a little more than half as tall as Optimus but still bigger than an elephant, came storming from around that corner. "Where are they?" he roared.

Optimus paused his monologuing to look back at the interrupting robot. "Ratchet…"

"Where are the carbon-for-brains nincompoops who thought it was a good idea - "

"Ratchet," Optimus repeated more firmly.

Ratchet turned toward Optimus, brandishing an array of saws, welders, and lasers that made Fassbinder think for a split second that he was some techno-Cthulu. "You're not the one trying to save lives to the tune of that for the last THREE DAYS," he snarled as the Spongebob Squarepants theme started playing.

Optimus wisely kept his mouth shut, and Ratchet turned to the assembled humans, still brandishing his tentacle-weapons. "Where are you, you fragging squishies?"

Everyone around Fassbinder took a step back, and he'd never felt so betrayed in his life. Someone belatedly shoved Sharsky up beside him.

"It was an accident, Ratchet," Sam said.

The green-and-metal demon leaned closer and snatched up Fassbinder in one hand and Sharsky in another. Fassbinder managed to keep all bodily fluids in their corresponding vessels just barely, but in no way did he squeal in terror like Sharsky. Striding back to the corner, Ratchet said over his welder-bristling shoulder to Sam, "No, it wasn't. It was recklessness." He paused mid-stride and turned half-way back toward the hangar. "Which reminds me. 'Bee, come with me. You'll have to answer to Arcee."

'Bee made a disappointed sound as he dejectedly followed.

The corner led to a short hallway which opened on the left into another, gigantic room. In it, two more robot-figures were laid out on oversized beds.

"See this?" Ratchet demanded, his voice dripping fury. "This is the result of your 'accident!'"

"Season 3? We had nothing to do with this!" Sharsky babbled, "We're not animators and even if we were, we were still just kids back then, but I'm not gonna lie, I wish we had some magic invisibility spray right now!"

"Not the cartoon, flunkie," another familiar voice said behind them, and Fassbinder cringed that they were getting schooled in front of Seymor Simmons. "He means Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum here. It's not just Decepticons who are getting taken out by this virus. You're killing off the good guys, too."

Ratchet's tools finally retreated back into their proper places and he turned to loom over Simmons. "Worm."

"I'm human," Simmons growled in response.

"No, I mean the Twitch isn't a virus. A virus, even one as alien as this one, we could deal with. A virus won't start replicating unless the infected user takes a proactive action to accidentally trigger it. Originally, that's what the Twitch was. But you two mindless drones," and here he gave Fassbinder and Sharsky a none-too-gentle shake, "have turned it into a worm that spreads on its own. And it's spreading everywhere."

Ratchet finally freed Fassbinder and Sharsky, standing them on one of the beds next to the head of a little, orange robot. Then turning, he addressed the crowd of humans who stood in a knot just inside the door, with Optimus and Jolt behind them. "What are you all doing here?"

Optimus was the only one brave enough to speak. "We decided it was both more efficient and wiser to let you explain only once what has happened and how the humans can help."

Ratchet harrumphed but couldn't find anything in the Prime's logic worth yelling at. "This virus-turned-worm has thwarted our malware algorithms because it isn't recognized as a threat by our defense systems. It's basically cloaked in human coding, which our systems have always allowed because even the most advanced human malware is no match for us. Worse, the logic has been fundamentally altered. It's thinking like a human now. And acting like one - reproducing insanely fast and in inexplicable ways."

"Hey!" Sam protested on behalf of the whole of humanity.

Ignoring him, Ratchet continued, "You all are here because we can't think like squishies and you can."

"You need us to outwit this virus - worm - for you," Simmons said with just a smidge of a smug smile.

Ratchet vented a defeated sigh and hung his helm. "Yes."

"Right." Simmons whirled to look at first Maggie and then Glen. "Let's get to work and save these Transformer's afts."

"NEST has set up workstations for you in the main hangar," Optimus said, leading the humans back out into the hall.

Fassbinder grimaced and, inspired by his drama queen's influence, muttered under his breath, "At this hour/lie at my mercy all mine enemies." Like hell any of these glorified HTML lackeys would be able to crack the code. He and Sharsky had created this monster - and they would be the ones to bring it to heel. But first they had to find a way off the table.

Looking around, Fassbinder saw the pink alien robot from before talking with 'Bee. It? She? Whatever seemed less inclined to shout at them. "How do we get down from here?"

The pink alien strode closer and, one by one, lifted them like toddlers and set them on the floor. "Word to the wise," the 'bot said with a female voice, "stay out of Ratchet's way. He's prone to throwing hardware when he's pissed, and you two have made us all feel like chucking wrenches your way."

"Yes, ma'am," Fassbinder said crisply.

"Don't I know you?" Sharsky said to the girl-bot, but Fassbinder grabbed him by the elbow and hurried them both after the rest of the humans before Sharsky could get them both slapped with a metal hand or with a restraining order.

"Only as triplets," she said, and Fassbinder skidded to a halt, remembering the rough-and-ready trio of hotties who had flirted with Cam Romero - Bumblebee's holoform - during their freshman year. He pivoted to look at her, but her back was already turned, and she was whacking 'Bee upside the helm.

…

Fassbinder sighed as he looked around the room. You knew you were a pariah when your fellow humans treated aliens better than you.

Everyone else had gotten spacious banquet tables with dual or triple monitors and comfy office chairs. By the time he and Sharsky arrived, there was one rickety little table left that was missing the foot on one corner so it wobbled. There was barely enough room for two laptops on it, much less a mousepad. Oh, and they also got stuck with folding metal chairs - not even any padding.

"Seriously?" Sharsky protested.

But Fassbinder wasn't focused on their makeshift workspace. No, he was looking at his girlfriend. She was currently perched in the hand of an alien robot, a male by the sound of his voice, and he was projecting some kind of...something that she was exclaiming over.

"Lisbeth?" he called.

"Just a second, babe." Then to the silver mech, she said, "You're right, the similarities are striking. So much of our iconography is rooted in mythology, though. I'd love to learn more about the symbolism behind your work, Sideswipe."

"Lisbeth!"

"Don't you have work to do, squishy?" the mech grumbled. At his side (where Lisbeth couldn't see it), a blade slid forward into his hand.

Fassbinder ducked his head and focused on booting his laptop. To Sharsky, he muttered, "I think we caught less hell when we hacked the blog."

Sharsky was already plugging in the ethernet cable - a local area network had been set up so all the computers we could see in the hangar were networked together and pooling information but none were connected directly to the world wide web. Apparently there was a military lackey who was tasked with just being the one watching the internet and relaying any important information about the worm's spread. The short, but very thorough, briefing on the walk from the sick bay to the hanger had covered a number of do's and don't's and included the indignity of confiscation of their phones.

Sharsky said, "The blog didn't lead to us kicking tech back to the '50s. I kinda get why they're mad, but you have to assume that it's a damn shame we can't put this on our resumes."

"Resumes? We'll be lucky if this doesn't go in our FBI files."

Behind them, Sam said, "This is a worldwide crisis and you're worried you're not going to get credit for it?"

Fassbinder wasn't about to admit that "Mr. Witwicky" had gotten the drop on him and nonchalantly shrugged. "It'd spice up my list of qualifications for sure. Sadly, that's one of the many reasons that NDAs exist around here."

Sam shook his head and wandered off.

Fortunately, despite their being banished to the rickety table, they weren't so shunned as to warrant cruel and unusual, and they had full access to the cola fridge and coffee station. Unfortunately, the fridge was stocked with Monster instead of Red Bull. The way al-Sharif glared at him when he opened his mouth to protest this, he knew two things: it was deliberate, and he was toast if he complained. Huffing in irritation, he grabbed an extra can of Monster for Sharsky and headed back to their digital dungeon.

With the jet lag and in-flight nap, he wasn't sure exactly what time his body thought it was, much less what date would display on his cell phone. He and Sharsky worked without stopping for at least 18 hours after arriving on the base, though. The tutorials had given them some additional syntax and logic of Cybertronian programming, but Sharsky was the first one to admit defeat.

Throwing his fourth Monster can away in disgust, he said, "It's no good. This isn't like a programming language at all. It's one thing to tweak code that's already written - it's another thing entirely to write an antivirus. It's way too complex."

Fassbinder grimaced and rubbed his burning eyes. He needed to remember to blink more. "It's like trying to pick up Mandarin Chinese overnight. But Robowarrior thinks he can do it." Fassbinder glared in the direction of Simmons' table, but it was empty. With a start, he realized all the programming tables were empty. He and Sharsky were the only code monkeys in the hangar. Some military types were up on the command scaffolding or whatever it was, but they mostly ignored anything happening at ground level.

"That twelve o'clock flasher couldn't code a simple calculator in this language, and we both know it," Sharsky grumbled in answer still focused on his screen. "I mean, we know way more than any of them. Not counting our innate coding genius, we at least had a 5-day head start."

"Sharsky..." Fassbinder whispered very loudly, "Where'd everyone go?"

Sharsky finally looked around, puzzled. "Maybe they've been abducted by aliens."

"We were abducted by aliens, you doofus!" Fassbinder sighed. "What is the local time anyway?"

Only then did Fassbinder realize that - not counting crossing the international date line - this was his third all-nighter in a row. It made him a little proud, though, knowing they had already succeeded in producing something viable in actual, alien code. Even if it did basically end the world.

"So we can't beat it," Sharsky said, stretching in his chair and popping something - either in his back or bolt on the chair, it was hard to tell.

"Maybe we could join it," Fassbinder said, only half-joking. "Maybe it could help protect us from Ratchet."

"Get insider intel," Sharsky agreed. "Be the double agent and make it believe we're on its side."

Blinding inspiration struck. "Oh! Oh! Oh!" Fassbinder exclaimed. "What if we could convince it to join us! Its AI is basically as smart as a human. Maybe we could win it over!"

Sharsky stared for a second and then shrugged. "It'll probably be more productive than trying to write this effing antivirus. Let's see…" He pulled up a shared file folder from the LAN. "Do we want the Windows-compatible version of the Twitch that apparently came from your lame-aft computer, or do we want the more-advanced and formidable version I wrote that can even attack a Mac?"

Fassbinder blinked in confusion. "Did you seriously just dis my version of the Twitch?"

"I'm just saying - my coding baby can do things yours can't. I'd even put down a twenty that mine's the one that brought Megatron to his knees."

"Whatever. I'm the evil genius here."

Sharsky scoffed. "Whatever. You sound like a valley girl. Or Leo."

"Same diff. Go with my Twitch version. It's more versatile than your snooty Mac version."

He snorted and pulled it up. They together stared at the GUI - it had been written for manipulating the Twitch's underlying code, not for communicating with the AI. But it did also have a "compile" function with a syntax checker and everything.

"Hello, Computer," Sharsky said in his best Scotty voice.

Fassbinder snorted in amusement, then more thoughtfully asked, "Think 'Bee could write us a chat function?"

Sharsky shook his head. "No way, he's in the doghouse now, too. You saw how Biker Chick was beating on him. We're on our own on this one."

"Well, the GUI already does all the hard work for us," Fassbinder suddenly realized. "It already converts whatever we're doing in English into Cybertronian. Let's play to our strengths here and let Bumblebee's code do the rest."

Reinvigorated, they dove into the code again, this time Bumblebee's handiwork instead of the Twitch.

At some point, Fassbinder noticed Lisbeth beside him with a breakfast burrito and a latte. He rubbed his eyes, wondering if he'd nodded off again, but this time, his dream girl seemed to be real. Hallucinations didn't remember the hot sauce and definitely didn't remember his slow-and-steady-work drink order.

"Here - have something to eat. I'm pretty sure someone has a monitor on when you last got REM sleep," Lisbeth said, "but I'm looking at your eyes and guessing it's been too long."

"Yes, dear," he answered indulgently. "But saving the world requires a lot of espresso if they don't let me have any other stimulants."

He took a sip and grimaced, but before he could put the problem into words, she handed him two packets of sugar. "I'm not bringing you anything stronger than this until you've shut down the computer and gotten some shut-eye."

She had apparently been working on alliteration in that improv workshop, Fassbinder thought. He turned his attention away from the screen to give her the kind of adoring look that had to be practically scheduled when he was getting single-minded about a project.

"Thanks for the sustenance," he said. "This is why you're twenty percent more awesome than any of my roommates."

"Hey," Sharsky protested, but Fassbinder just waved in the general direction of the break area someone official had set up.

"Go get your own breakfast," Fassbinder told him. Sharsky grumbled something unintelligible and looked mournfully at my burrito, then trudged off to the food.

Once he was gone, she leaned forward with a lazy tilt to her smile and ran a hand along Fassbinder's arm. "I hope that's not all I'm better at than your roommates."

He decided he needed to stretch his legs right then and there. He downed the latte and got a few blisters for his trouble but was on his feet before he could articulate an excuse for being AFK.

"I need a fresh set of eyes on this," he announced to no one. "Don't crash the world while I'm gone." Lisbeth looked in confusion for a moment at the empty tables around them.

The computer whirred in a very non-sentient way as he turned his back on it. He and Lisbeth walked out of the hangar, but Fassbinder stopped in confusion, "Wait, is that sunrise or sunset?" he asked, gesturing at the sky. She snorted and shook her head before leading him across a bit of pavement to a utilitarian building and, inside it, to a room.

"Where are we?" he asked.

Lisbeth pointed to a piece of paper on the clipboard by the door.

TEMPORARY BARRACKS ASSIGNMENTS:

FASSBINDER, NADIPATI

SHARSKY, JOSEPH

Opening the door, he found two twin beds (his hastily-packed bag already distributed on one, with Sharsky's bag on the other), two desks, and a semi-functional A/C unit. "Cozy," he said.

"It does the job," Lisbeth answered.

She planted one hand in the middle of Fassbinder's chest and shoved him with a disciplinarian sexiness. He smacked his head on the wall but was still conscious enough to be a little turned on.

"Tuck me in?" he hopefully asked.

"Only if you promise to stay here," Lisbeth said. "Don't make me tie you down."

"I wouldn't object," he mumbled.

Her next words were somewhere between a purr and a growl and she leaned over, pulling the pilly blanket back so I could get horizontal. "I'll even kiss you goodnight."

"So it is a sunset!" he said with a yawn. Caffeine could only carry a body through so many all nighters.

"As the saying goes 'Morning is whenever you wake up.' You'll be in a better mood eight hours from noon if I say so."

"Seven hours, forty-five," he haggled. "I'd be willing to go as low as seven. Hell, some doctors say it's healthy to get three to five and do some light exercise before bed!"

She kissed her palm and smacked him lightly on the forehead with it. "Sleep, you maniac. I'll be back for room service and maybe another latte later."

He was out cold before she closed the door.

...

When Fassbinder woke up, Sharsky was sawing logs in his own bunk. It was twilight outside, or maybe the sun was just rising. Fassbinder really had no way to know. Regardless, his bladder was telling him he'd had way too much sleep on way too much caffeine.

One restroom break later, he headed out into the tropical morning...scratch that, evening. It was getting darker, not lighter. He'd slept the whole day away. The others had probably written the antivirus and fixed the whole world while he snored. Too bad, he really wanted in on that action. As a silver lining, maybe he and Lisbeth could slip away to enjoy the beach for a bit under those bright stars...

Fassbiner walked leisurely back towards the big hangar, taking deep breaths of the tropical air. He was a little glad he hadn't been awake during the heat of the day, but the evening breezes were a refreshingly cool relief from the residual humidity. He opened the human-sized door next to what could only be a huge roll-up alien-sized door. The scene that greeted him was complete chaos.

His and Sharsky's little kids' table with laptops had mysteriously collapsed, and what had been Fassbinder's laptop had a burrito squished between screen and keyboard. Hot sauce was gently dripping like blood from the trackpad.

"OH YEAH?" Simmons was shouting at his own computer and, rather oddly, being held back by Ratchet. "YOUR MOTHERBOARD IS A FRAGGING PAPERCLIP!" On Simmons' screen a giant Clippy GIF appeared and made a rude gesture.

A blonde woman was furiously typing away at her computer with a scowl, when suddenly the CD drive popped out causing her coffee cup to spill all over her. She jumped up and quickly started trying to dab the coffee with a napkin while swearing in an Australian accent.

A Black guy slammed his fist down on his own keyboard. "I'll show you 'Will not compile!'"

"Sup?" Fassbinder said to Sam, who was watching the whole thing with a kind of gray-faced expression associated with military men in the movies.

"Dude, you fell asleep on the job at the WRONG time," he pronounced grimly. "Ladies and gentlemen, we are at war."

Fassbinder shifted nervously and looked at his computer. "Is that why little Tiffany had to die?" he asked, riffing on Men in Black.

Sam grimaced. "'Little Tiffany' had the worst potty mouth of them all."

"Kinda sad Sharsky's sleeping through this mess," Fassbinder commented.

"Sleeping through it? Near as we can tell, he started it," Leo snarled, coming over. "My fragging computer just called me a pinchi son of a puta. How da hell did it learn to be a glitch in Spanglish?! We're not even connected to anything but the LAN."

Sam gave him a steely glare. "It learned from the best."

"Wait - what exactly did Sharsky do?" Fassbinder asked.

"He wrote a chat function for the GUI. Now the fragging 'twitching awfuls' worm can be awful over chat, too. It's also learned to commandeer the audio, web cam, screens, and printer," Sam explained, rubbing his forehead tiredly.

"And, so far, has dumped coffee on four people via optical drive," Leo said pointing to a drenched pant leg.

"We're just lucky they physically removed the wireless cards on all the machines prior to setting up the LAN or this would have already infected the entire internet," Sam sighed.

A piercing whistle rang through the hangar and everyone quieted and looked at the source. An intense, bald, military guy who obviously was of some high rank spoke once he had everyone's attention. "These machines are not salvageable and we don't want any chance of this virus getting out. Everyone clear out, get dinner. We'll have techs come in and disconnect everything. The machines will be destroyed and you will all be issued new computers. We'll be continuing in the morning. We will not be setting up a LAN so if something like this happens again it only takes down ONE machine."

Sharsky happened to enter at this last moment and stared around, clearly in need of six ounces of caffeine and a comb. Channeling Clone Wars-era Kenobi, he demanded, "What the blazes happened here?"

Leo took one last look at his computer and mournfully stepped away to let the military techies put it out of everyone's misery. It wasn't pretty, but it was necessary.

Then glaring at Sharsky, Leo said, "You broke the internet, man."

Before any of them could think of a comeback for that, Intense Bald Military Guy approached with a woman in tow.

"Epps," Sam greeted. Fassbinder remembered that this was the guy who had met Sam when they first arrived.

Epps nodded at Sam but beadily glared at the techies beside him. "Misters Fassbinder and Sharsky."

Both Fassbinder and Sharsky straightened up a little nervously.

"Meet Sergeant Patricia Thomaczech," Epps continued, "she'll be your guide and manage your schedules while you are on base. You are to follow her orders." He practically stomped off as Fassbinder and Sharsky looked at each other in confusion.

Leo snorted, "Y'all got a babysitter!"

"Only while you are here in the Autobot hangar," she grimly said. "You know where the mess hall is."

"Wherever it is," Sharsky muttered, "it's not this mess."

The gaggle of college guys headed for the human-sized door, and Mikaela and Lisbeth were just a few yards away when they made it outside.

"Hey babe," Lisbeth said with a wave. "I was just coming to see if you were alive still when we heard about the whole project crashing."

"Don't remind me," Sam grumbled. He perked up a bit, though, when Mikaela took his hand and gave it an encouraging squeeze.

"Go ahead without us," Mikaela said, making eyes with Sam. "We'll catch up in a few minutes.

Fassbinder shook his head at them, but Lisbeth locked arms with him and they meandered in the same direction as the rest of the techies, Leo and Sharsky falling in step behind them. While he'd been given a map of the areas he was allowed to go, 'Binder hadn't actually been to the mess hall yet and wouldn't have been able to find it right now if his life depended on it.

"So, nice night, huh," Fassbinder said hopefully to his girlfriend.

"Sure," she easily agreed, "but the next time you need a break, you should see some of the artwork Sideswipe and his brother have made. It's amazing!"

"You mean the 'bot you were talking with…"

"...Is an artist, yep!"

"What's his handle on the blog?" Fassbinder asked over his shoulder.

"ConSlayer," Leo answered. "Because, unlike your girlfriend, most people remember him as the silver psychopath who likes to slice people open."

Lisbeth shrugged, grinning. "All true artists have their quirks."

…

When they got the call to return to the Autobot hangar, the place was set up again with shiny new laptops, office chairs, and tables. Apparently, the carnage had taken out the last of the old, rickety temporary furnishings, because Fassbinder and Sharsky even had a decent set up this time (though they were still banished to the corner furthest from the command center). Sergeant Patricia was there to greet them at the door and escorted them to their new station.

Another human - a guy in coveralls - was kicked back in a third office chair near their station. He glanced up from his phone and nodded to their escort. "Thomaczech."

"Davis," she nodded in return. "Ratchet sent you?"

"Yeah. Epps assigned somebody who could shoot them if needed, but I can actually keep an eye on their code."

"Who are you?" Leo demanded.

Davis rose to his feet and met Leo's gaze in a totally dominating stare. "I'm here on Ratchet's say-so. I'm one of the members of his human repair team."

"You repair humans?" Fassbinder snarked.

"No, I practice percussive maintenance on them," Davis replied with an evil grin that caused both Fassbinder and Sharsky to step back.

Thomaczech snorted despite the uniform.

"Han Solo would be so damn proud," Sam said. To Fassbinder and Sharsky, he added, "Davis was an electrical engineer for the Air Force, before Ratchet recruited him."

Davis crossed his arms. "I was one of those punk kids who taught myself to code and built my own home computers back when War Games seemed plausible."

"In what language? FORTRAN?" Sharsky asked, daring to pull his chair out and sit down.

Davis shrugged. "That's what the Pentagon computers were using back then, and how else was I supposed to hack them? Nowadays I roll with the tide and look up anything I need to on Stack Overflow, like all good programmers."

Fassbinder and Sharsky shared a look of both frustration and begrudging respect. "Got a first name?" Sharsky asked.

"Not for you, not yet," he said, letting his hands fall to his sides and smirking. "I'm here to keep an eye on your code. You two have a knack for absolute chaos. Ratchet wants to watch the next time you two do something interesting, and I get to decide when you hit that threshold. So get to work."

Fassbinder and Sharsky shared a glance, wondering if they were being insulted or praised, then turned their attention to their respective machines.

"Did you keep my chat function?" Fassbinder asked Davis.

He sighed deeply. "Yes."

Fassbinder was relieved by that. He'd been feeling vaguely cheated that Sharsky had chatted directly with his Mac-compatible code-baby, while he hadn't been able to make first contact yet. Cracking his knuckles, he set to work.

...

Fassbinder looked up in surprise when Davis offered him a soda and a burger. A cafeteria tray with identical contents was set in front of Sharsky as well.

"It's 22:00 hours," he explained. "All the other techies are turning in for the night. Eat something and go to bed."

"Dude, between multiple all-nighters and globe-trotting, my brain doesn't know what time it is. I slept all afternoon. I'm good for at least another 20 hours."

Thomaczech snorted. "We don't need a repeat of you taking down the LAN."

"But the lab computers are no longer networked," Sharsky protested.

"That's not the point," Thomaczech said.

"You'd find a way," Davis added.

Sharsky took a bite of the meal Davis had brought for him, ignoring the soda and reaching for his Monster. "Just a couple more hours," he haggled like a kindergartener hoping to stay up 'til 10. "There has to be a way to crack this thing and we'll never find it if you cage us in with bedtimes and stuff."

"Why don't they have you working on this, Davis?" Fassbinder asked, more to stall while he ate his burger than anything.

"Because I really haven't done much programming since FORTRAN was all the rage. I can write a website and query a database but I'm a little rusty on my hacking skills."

"So how'd an early 80's nerd end up in the Air Force anyway?" Sharsky added.

Davis popped open a Monster of his own in what Fassbinder hoped was a good sign. "I wanted to be an astronaut, of course. Many astronauts, especially the early ones, were test pilots from the Air Force."

"So what happened?" Sharsky asked.

"Turns out I go into G-LOC at a relatively low threshold so I didn't qualify," Davis said with a nonchalant shrug.

"G-LOC?" Fassbinder nearly tried Googling it before remembering he didn't have any internet connection.

"G-force induced loss of consciousness," Davis explained.

"That sucks, man." Sharsky commisserated.

"Yeah. One of my buddies from the Astronaut Training Program is on the shuttle in space right now. I did kind of envy him - until I ended up being the one to work with aliens," Davis replied with a grin.

Sharsky considered that this was the one thing capable of making Armstrong and Aldrin green with envy. "Fair point."

...

Thomaczech's radio crackled to life just after midnight. "Bring in the techie twins," a man said through the speaker. "JCS called and shit just got real."

"You want a hand?" Davis offered.

"I can handle 'em, but you may as well tag along," she answered. "Fassbinder, Sharsky, you're with me. Davis, lead out."

They made an unconventional Walk of Shame through the Autobot hangar, though thankfully none of the aliens or G.I. Joes were there to see. They stopped at a door labeled "Lennox," and Thomaczech opened it. Epps was waiting inside, tapping a pen on the desktop with the kind of determination that made Fassbinder wonder if he wasn't tempted to throw it instead.

"So. You slaggers managed to screw over NASA. We've got a shuttle in orbit that's going to be lucky if it stays that way. Flaps and landing gear are fragged up."

"Mac or Windows?" Sharsky eagerly asked.

"Neither," Davis answered. "NASA's OS is Linux-based."

Fassbinder and Sharsky shared a look of awe. "We broke the Linux barrier!" they chorused.

Epps' arm moved, and Fassbinder reflexively ducked, but Epps' hand was still clenched around the pen. "It's not something to be fragging proud of!" he bellowed while hammering the pen like a gavel with each word. It not only shut them up in a hurry, but they looked slightly abashed at having been colossally short-sighted.

"How long do we have?" Davis quietly asked when all parties were in a more even-tempered state..

"Dunno," Epps grunted, setting down the pen. "The shuttle started showing signs of the Twitching Awfuls about an hour ago, so hopefully we've got at least a little while yet. We'll brief the rest of the team in the morning. But if you techie twins can't keep the craft from burning itself up on reentry - along with a whole bunch of astronauts - not even Prime will be able to keep me from killing you. Go to bed, and you sure as hell had better bring your A-game tomorrow morning."

"But we don't look at all alike," Sharsky protested as Thomaczech ushered them from the room.

"Keep walking," Davis urgently muttered.

Out in the hallway, Sharsky added, "But we don't!"

"In code, we all look alike," Fassbinder quipped.

Sharsky grinned at the thought. "Dude, that's beautiful."

"How long HAVE you been awake?" Davis demanded.

"Too long on not enough lattes," Fassbinder answered.

With a sigh, Thomaczech said, "The term 'twin' has become something of an insult in NEST. Like beauty, twin is as twin does."

"Wonderful," Sharksy proudly quoted. "We are now a part of the tribe."

...

Thankfully, they'd been met at the barracks by Lisbeth, who had a can of root beer for Sharsky to settle him down. Fassbinder also was able to sleep a little bit later, with some help from Lisbeth.

The next morning, Leo was waiting in front of their barracks with Sam, 'Bee in his bipedal form, Lisbeth, and Mikaela. Together, they walked toward the Autobot hangar-turned-computer-lab. Having everyone together reminded Sharsky of a question he'd thought of off-and-on all day yesterday. "What have you been up to, Sam?"

"Mostly talking the biggest of the alien walking weapons down from various panic attacks," he grumbled.

'Bee quoted, "A likely story!"

"Well, one recurring panic attack," Sam defensively added.

"You heard about the shuttle?" Fassbinder asked Leo.

"Yep," he said. "Sam told me. It'll probably be in this morning's briefing."

"We've got a bet going for whose baby made the leap," Sharsky said.

"Wait! What?" 'Bee demanded via quotes.

Mikaela started laughing, and Sharsky explained, "I wrote a Mac-compatible version of the GUI you gave us, so there's two variants floating around. Now three, I guess."

"So it didn't...make the leap to...Mac-compatible...on it's own?"

"Is that important, 'Bee?" Sam asked as they entered the hangar.

"I'm not sure."

Epps was up on the command scaffolding and glaring at them. All the rest of the gang was there.

"You're late," 'Bee quoted Frodo Baggins.

"A tech wizard is never late," Leo retorted.

To the room at large, Epps announced, "The space shuttle is showing signs of the Twitching Awfuls. It looks like the Mac-compatible variant is the one that made the jump to Linux."

Sharsky celebrated with something between a shimmy and a shake. Fassbinder turned a pointed glare on him, which didn't stop the dance, but at least caught his attention.

"You're not supposed to be happy," Fassbinder snapped. "Someone, somewhere, is going to get your little Super Bowl shuffle entered into evidence in a congressional hearing and you do not want that on C-SPAN."

Sharsky perked up. "You really think they'll talk about alien interference in Congress? That'd be epic!"

"I don't know," Fassbinder said, "but Dad would definitely use imperiling NASA as an excuse to write me out of the will."

"GENTLEMEN," Epps' voice interrupted, "You done so I can continue the briefing?"

Fassbinder and Sharsky, looking sheepish, turned their attention back to the man in charge.

With one last glare their way, Epps said, "Our best conclusion is that it's evolving faster in the wild, since it doesn't have Cybertronian antiviral software to suppress it. And in other bad news, Skids and Mudflap's condition is deteriorating. Ratchet says that, statistically speaking, the chance of this turning fatal for one of the twins is uncomfortably high after another 24 hours or so. This thing is accelerating, and we have got to find a way to stop it. Techs and flunkies, get to work!"

"You're the flunkies," Mikaela not-so-helpfully said to Fassbinder and Sharsky. "Good luck!" Then she and Lisbeth ambled in Sideswipe's direction.

Everybody else started heading toward their computers except Sam and 'Bee, and Fassbinder asked them, "What about breakfast?"

"You've already had it," 'Bee again quoted, this time from Aragorn.

"No we haven't," Sharsky protested, while Fassbinder accused, "You've been binge-watching Lord of the Rings, haven't you!"

Sam ignored him and answered Sharsky. "Well we did. Grab something from the snack station to keep you going until lunch. And set your alarm earlier tomorrow morning."

With a long-suffering sigh, Sharsky headed toward the stash of food. "Look, they've actually got something besides protein bars and fruit. Donuts!"

Maybe it was the aroma of donuts combined with the Autobot smell of the place - diesel fuel and machine oil and everything - that brought him back, but Fassbinder felt an odd sense of nostalgia as he filled his plate. Freshman year, Bumblebee had stuffed them in his trunk and hauled them off to a military base for interrogation. And they'd had piles of donuts there just like this. Thinking of Bumblebee reminded him of the Autobot's question just a few minutes ago, and Fassbinder paused mid-bite as that question finally lodged in his brain.

Chewing and swallowing in a gulp, he said, "How did the Twitch make the leap to Linux?"

Sharsky shrugged. "It's an advanced alien AI. It programmed itself."

"But you wrote the Mac-compatible Graphic User Interface. Do you think the Linux variant kept the GUI or wrote its own?"

"Why…?" Sharsky's eyes flew wide. "The GUI!"

Fassbinder sprinted toward his work station as fast as his piled breakfast plate would let him, Sharsky hot on his heels. Davis and Thomaczech were already there casually talking. "We need to see the Linux variant!" Fassbinder panted.

"I leave you two unattended for five minutes…" Thomaczech grumbled.

"No, no, no!" Sharsky said. "The GUI! We need to see the GUI!"

"Why?" Davis suspiciously asked.

Sharsky set his plate down. "If it's remaining compatible with human systems, it's gotta have a piece that's still human, like a .dll or something that's keeping our languages, code syntax, and everything. Find that - a combo of Cybertronian and human code - and it paints the target. You can find all the variants!"

Thomaczech looked to Davis. "Does that make any sense?"

He tilted his head and then stood. "Surprisingly, yes." Pointing to the office chair he'd just vacated, he said, "Get to work. I'll go talk to Ratchet."

Leo had noticed the excitement and drifted over. Before he could ask what was going on, though, Ratchet walked into the hangar. Crouching down so he could glare optic-to eye at them, he demanded, "Explain in precise detail what you are proposing, so I can figure out where it might explode."

Fassbinder took a deep breath. "The Mac variant didn't evolve spontaneously. Sharsky wrote a GUI for it. With the virus - sorry, worm - making the leap to Linux, we are wondering if it took Sharsky's code with it."

"And even if it didn't," Sharsky added, "there's got to be a file or something where it's keeping all our human-related code to allow it to interface with human systems. We've been hunting for the Cyber-bug, but it's the human armor it's cloaked in that we should be looking for. The 'inside' of the code is evolving, but the 'outside' can't. Not if it's going to stay Windows-compatible. Or whatever."

"It's thinking like a human and a Transformer," Fassbinder added. "It's programming in disguise."

Ratchet straightened, and his optics dimmed for just a flicker. Looking to Davis, Ratchet said, "Give it to them on a jump drive - their computer only."

"Lucky," Leo jealously muttered under his breath.

And for the first time since getting the news they were going to the island, Fassbinder felt inclined to agree.

As soon as Davis turned over the jumpdrive, Fassbinder and Sharsky got to work. It took them less than an hour of comparing all three GUI's to flag several possible targets for Ratchet. Since Cybertronian antiviral systems still had been able to neutralize the Twitch when it could find the worm, all they really had to write was the query that would light up all the variants.

When they ran the search on their computer, it identified all three of the variants from the jump drive.

"We have a winner?" Sharsky asked.

"I sure as the Pit hope so," Fassbinder said, and saved the query to the jump drive. "Let's see what Ratchet says."

Chapter Text

Chapter Text