Chapter Text
Samantha Jane Witwicky had always been strange.
Not in the way that made her interesting or mysterious—not the kind of strange that might earn her a quiet, brooding aura that others admired from a distance. No, Sam’s strangeness was the kind that made her invisible in a room full of people, but very visible in the worst way.
She wasn’t the girl who got swept into secret club activities or became the subject of whispered fascination.
No, Sam was the girl whose questions made teachers sigh with exasperation, the girl whose constant tinkering with random mechanical parts or electronics sparked the ridicule of her classmates. She wasn’t the "quiet, quirky" girl with an air of untold wisdom; she was the one who always felt too loud, asking things that no one else seemed to care about. Things like, “Why does the engine vibrate that way?” or “Have you noticed the sound frequency in this radio signal?” In a world full of people who only wanted to talk about the latest trends or pointless gossip, her questions felt like a glaring anomaly.
And it wasn’t just the questions. It was the way her mind wandered when she should have been paying attention to something else—how her eyes would drift from the teacher’s dry lecture on history and instead focus on the faint hum of the fluorescent lights above, wondering what powered them. Or how the cracks in the classroom window would catch the light just so, and she'd trace their intricate patterns with her gaze, imagining them were something more.
Sam didn’t mind being different, not really, but the constant reminder that she wasn’t like the others was suffocating. They never seemed to see her—not truly. She wasn’t the bubbly, talkative type, nor was she the mysterious one who could float above social expectations with ease. She was the girl in the corner, headphones in, hands covered in grease, staring intently at a broken radio or an old motorcycle engine as if it held the secrets of the universe. To them, she was invisible in the worst possible way—she was background noise, a glitch in the smooth, predictable world they lived in.
At home, the feelings of being "off" didn't go away.
Her mother, Judy, hovered over her with a protective concern that had only grown more frantic over the years. Judy's worried glances, her repeated questions about whether Sam was feeling “alright,” how her day had gone, and whether she was “making any new friends” were almost always met with a polite but dismissive shrug from Sam. She wasn’t being difficult on purpose, but she knew the conversation was never going to go anywhere. Her mother could never understand. She never had.
Her father, on the other hand, was less concerned. In fact, he barely noticed anymore. His offhand comment, made with a half-grin on his face, had become a mantra in their household: “It’s just a phase. Every kid goes through it.” He never understood the depths of her restlessness, never knew how much her strangeness gnawed at her like a constant itch she couldn’t scratch. To him, she was just a teenager, working through an awkward period, and one day she’d grow out of it.
But Sam knew that much—this was no phase.
Sam had always been good with machines. It wasn’t something she learned, not in the way most people learned things. It wasn’t like a skill she’d picked up from a book or a class. No, it was something that had always been there, etched into her bones, coded into her fingertips.
When she touched a car, when she pulled open the hood of a motorcycle, it was like speaking a language she had known since birth. The hum of an engine, the click of a gear shifting into place—it was all so familiar, so instinctive, like an ancient rhythm that flowed through her veins.
She didn’t have to think about it. She just knew.
Machines made sense in a way people never did. The logic of them, the predictability of their inner workings—the way the pieces fit together in perfect harmony—was something Sam could wrap her mind around without effort. Unlike the chaos of human relationships, the uncertainty of emotions, and the randomness of social expectations, machines were right. They were solid. They obeyed laws. They worked.
It wasn’t just a hobby. It was something she couldn’t escape. The smell of motor oil and metal grease, the way her hands would itch to take apart a broken-down engine and put it back together, it felt like a part of her soul.
But it drove her mother insane.
Judy Witwicky, Sam’s mom, was constantly sighing, shaking her head as she hovered near the garage, watching her daughter surrounded by tools, half-disassembled motorcycles, and the oily clutter of her little mechanical world. “Why can’t you focus on normal things?” Judy would ask, a note of concern—no, frustration—creeping into her voice. “Girls your age don’t spend all their time playing with engines and grease. You should be thinking about other things.”
Sam would glance up at her from under the hood of whatever project she was working on. “Maybe because normal things are boring?” she’d reply, not bothering to look her mom in the eye. She was already too absorbed in the process, her mind swimming in calculations, the rhythm of gears and pistons taking up every corner of her focus.
But there was more to it than that.
Sometimes, in those moments when her hands were deep in an engine’s belly, she could almost hear it—a soft, distant hum, something alive beneath the metal and oil. It was a sound that was as familiar to her as her own heartbeat. But when she tried to focus on it, to understand it, it always slipped away, like sand between her fingers.
The ache inside her grew, gnawing at her. It wasn’t just an obsession with machines. It was something deeper—something that tugged at her from the inside as if she was supposed to do something as if there was a reason she felt more connected to an engine than to the people around her.
Maybe that was why she was always alone.
It was easier to lose herself in the hum of an engine than to try to figure out how to make sense of people who seemed to only exist to fit into boxes she didn’t understand.
She was an outcast, a loner, "Wit-Wacky," as the kids at school so kindly dubbed her. It wasn't just because she struggled to connect with them. No, that was only part of it. Sure, she was the girl who never quite fit in, who always said the wrong thing or got too quiet at the wrong time, but there was something more to it than that.
Deep down, Sam felt like there was something fundamentally wrong—with them, with her, with everything around her. It wasn’t just the way her classmates chattered about the latest viral trends, gossiping over brands she couldn’t care less about, or how they seemed obsessed with perfecting the art of appearing “cool” or “popular.” She couldn’t even put her finger on it, but something about them felt... off.
She watched them in the hallways, in the cafeteria, in the classrooms where they all gathered together like little flocks of birds, chattering and laughing and sharing their inside jokes. And they looked so real, so human. Their limbs, soft and pliable, moved in ways that felt natural, graceful even. Their faces held expressions that flickered with emotion, their eyes sparkling with excitement or narrowing with suspicion. But it all seemed so... shallow.
Their voices, though, that was the worst part. She hated the sound of their voices. No matter how friendly they tried to sound, no matter how much they tried to act like they cared, their words always felt hollow. A mechanical repetition of sounds that didn’t seem to carry any weight behind them. They sounded like they were speaking in a language Sam couldn’t understand, even though the words were the same ones she used every day.
The kids around her didn’t fit. Not in the way she somehow expected people to. Their movements were fluid, but there was no real meaning behind them, no sense of purpose. They laughed at the right times, sure, but it was always the same laugh. The same stories, the same jokes that circulated and cycled like clockwork. They were real, she knew that much—they bled, they breathed, they had flesh and bone—but there was an emptiness beneath the surface that Sam couldn’t ignore.
And then there was Sam herself.
Her own reflection, the way her eyes always seemed too sharp, too searching, too hungry for something they couldn’t find, only deepened the discomfort. She was different. She felt it in her every bone, in the way her fingers twitched at the thought of machines, of gears and pistons clicking together. The way her mind would wander to places it shouldn’t go to, thoughts too big for a small-town girl like her to process.
It wasn’t that she thought of herself as some kind of alien; she knew she wasn’t one. But when she looked at them, she couldn't shake the feeling that the distance between her and everyone else wasn't just a product of her own awkwardness. No, this was something bigger. Something inexplicable. They were too human in a way she couldn't explain, and it made her skin crawl. She couldn’t relate to them, couldn’t connect with their meaningless chatter, their hollow banter. It was like they were all playing a game, and she wasn’t sure what the rules were.
She’d tried, of course. She’d made efforts to be like them, to fit in, to laugh when they laughed, to nod when they nodded. But it was all just... wrong. The way they looked at her, or the way they didn't look at her at all. She was different, yes, but it wasn’t just about her interests, or the fact that she’d rather spend the afternoon in the garage than at a party.
In the middle of a crowd, Sam often felt more alone than she did when she was sitting by herself, surrounded by books or sketching car engines. At least then, she could make sense of the world around her—gears meshed, parts clicked into place, and everything was logical. But here, surrounded by people, she felt like a misfit puzzle piece, forever on the outside looking in, not quite fitting into the patterns others created so easily.
Her thoughts wandered, often, to the moments when she'd look at her reflection in the mirror.
Something about her own eyes would strike her as strange. It was like they were too aware, too knowing. And sometimes, when she stared at her face long enough, she'd start to wonder if the person looking back at her really was her. It was as if she could see the outline of someone else, something older, something... different. She couldn’t put it into words, but the feeling was always there, gnawing at the back of her mind.
Her dreams whispered of things that shouldn’t exist.
Massive structures—towers of steel and metal—stretched high into skies she’d never seen. The air was thick with energy, humming with a vibration that resonated deep within her chest, a sound that felt like it was both inside her and around her like she was the sound. There were sharp edges, and jagged spires reaching for the heavens, their forms bathed in an eerie, glowing light. The landscape was harsh like the world had been broken and remade by something far beyond human comprehension. The ground was cracked and scarred, remnants of something ancient, something other.
Yet it wasn’t the destruction that unsettled her. No. It was the sense that, even amid all the chaos, everything felt like home. The hum of the machinery, the overwhelming presence of the massive structures towering over her—there was a deep, intrinsic pull in her chest, like a magnetic force, urging her toward it. She wasn’t afraid, not in the way one might expect. No, she belonged here. She was a part of this place, this world of towering metal and flickering energy.
But then there were the voices.
They echoed through her dreams—deep, resonating tones that felt like a physical presence, vibrating the air around her. They were not human voices, but they spoke with such authority, such certainty. They called her name—************** This name, this sound, it reverberated with meaning, a chord strummed deep within her soul. It felt like hers, yet at the same time, like something older—something ancient.
The voices grew louder, pulling her closer to the metal giants that loomed around her. She couldn’t understand the words they spoke, but the tone—there was no mistaking the urgency, the need in their voices. She was being summoned. She was being called.
And she couldn’t resist.
She reached out, her hand trembling as it moved toward one of the towering figures, its form shifting and shimmering in the dim light. But just as her fingers brushed against the cold, metallic surface, the ground beneath her feet trembled. The figure loomed even larger, its blue optics—unfathomably deep—staring down at her, locking with her own wide, unblinking eyes. At that moment, she understood.
She was needed.
But before she could speak, before she could ask what was happening, a searing, blinding light erupted around her, pulling her from the dream, pulling her back to reality.
She woke with a start, her body jolting upright in bed, heart hammering in her chest. Her skin was slick with sweat, and the lingering scent of metal, of smoke, was still in her nose as if the dream had bled into reality like the edges of the dream world hadn’t quite faded away.
For a moment, she lay there, her breath shallow, staring at the cracks in the ceiling above her. The shadows of her room were thick and familiar, yet for some reason, it felt foreign. The walls of her bedroom, cluttered with sketches of cars, half-dismantled electronics, and worn-out tools, looked strange in the dim light of morning.
Everything felt... off. Like she was still in the dream. Like she was out of place, still standing in that war-torn world surrounded by towering metal giants that felt like home. But she wasn’t there. She was here. In this cramped room. In this life.
Sam sat up, rubbing her temples, trying to shake off the overwhelming feeling of loss. She’d had dreams like this before—strange, alien dreams filled with voices and impossible landscapes. But this... this one had felt different. More intense. Like it was telling her something, something important.
But what?
She couldn’t tell anyone. No one would understand. Not her mom, not her dad, not even the few people who pretended to be her friends. How could they? They couldn’t even fathom what she was experiencing. The dreams, the visions—they weren’t normal.
Sam had always been good with machines. It wasn’t something she learned, more like something that had always been there, etched into her bones, coded into her fingertips. Cars made sense in a way people never did. The way an engine purred, the way gears fit together—it was right. Logical. Predictable.
It drove her mother insane.
“Why can’t you focus on normal things?” Judy Witwicky would sigh, watching as her daughter spent hours in the garage tinkering with an old motorcycle instead of doing anything remotely girly.
“Maybe because normal things are boring?” Sam would reply, not looking up from her work.
But it was more than that.
Maybe that was why she was always alone.
Nights were the hardest.
Because it was at night, when the world was quiet and still, that her thoughts grew loud—louder than the hum of a thousand engines, louder than the soft tick of a clock marking the seconds. When everything else seemed to fade away, the noise inside her head became unbearable. That was when the dreams came, when the ache in her chest intensified, tugging at her from the inside. And no matter how hard she tried to ignore it, she couldn’t escape the feeling that something was missing, something vital that she couldn’t put into words.
The nights when the stars were the only things that made sense were the nights, she felt closest to it—to whatever it was that called to her. She would sneak out of her house, the cool night air brushing against her skin, and climb up to the roof in a way that felt almost instinctive. The roof was the only place where the world felt quiet enough for her to hear herself think—where she could breathe without the weight of everything else pressing on her.
Sitting there, knees pulled tightly to her chest, the stars above her felt almost real. Not just twinkling dots of light in a vast, indifferent sky—but something alive. Something waiting.
She would look up, hoping—praying—that one of them would somehow answer her. She wasn’t sure what she was hoping for, exactly. It wasn’t a wish for fame or success, or even to escape the small town that had never felt like home. It was something bigger, deeper. It was a longing that she couldn’t define but felt in every part of her being.
There’s something out there. She knew it. She could feel it in the pit of her stomach, like a tugging, an invisible force pulling her toward something beyond the reach of this world, beyond the small, lonely life she led.
Her gaze always found its way to Orion.
She didn’t understand why, but there it was, every night without fail—her eyes drawn to the same constellation, to the same familiar stars. The sight of it made her chest tighten, a sharp pang cutting through her heart, like the memory of something long forgotten yet somehow familiar.
The name—Orion—sent a chill down her spine. It didn’t just refer to a cluster of stars.
It meant something.
To her, it felt like a forgotten key to a door she couldn’t open. There was a whisper, an echo in the back of her mind as if she’d heard it before as if the word had been spoken to her in a time she couldn’t recall.
Orion. It was both everything and nothing. A puzzle piece that fit somewhere she couldn’t see.
She didn’t know why it made her heart race, why it made her eyes sting, or why her fingers twitched as if they were reaching for something—someone—who wasn’t there. She couldn’t explain the ache in her chest when she stared at those stars, the way her soul felt known in a way it never had been before.
There was a feeling that wrapped around her, a weightless sense of longing.
She’d spent her whole life feeling misplaced, like a jigsaw piece trying to fit into the wrong puzzle. And the stars, those faraway pinpricks of light, offered no answers but only that ache, that knowing that there was something more.
She closed her eyes for a moment, letting the cool night breeze wash over her, trying to push away the feeling. She didn’t have the answers—she didn’t even know the questions. But somewhere out there, in the vast, endless stretch of the universe, there was a place that felt like it was waiting for her.
And maybe, just maybe, there was something—or someone—there who felt the same.
Somewhere, light-years away, a pair of blue optics were gazing at the same sky, filled with the same aching, endless longing.