Fic: Expo(sed) 3/?
TITLE: Expo(sed), part 3
Kind of a crossover, faintly based on 'Thirteen'
SERIES: Imperfection Deviation
AUTHOR: Macx
RATING: PG-13
DISCLAIMER: None of the characters belong to me, sadly. They are owned by people with a lot more money :)
FEEDBACK: Loved
SUMMARY: Will Lennox discovers there's more to the Stark Expo than just fancy tech. There's also the matrix Key. Damn.
Tony had left dealings with Lattimer and Donovan to Sam and Jazz. He didn’t care about the culture shock those two were in for, nor did he want to end up in the middle of inter-agency politics. Banachek was already informed and would probably be on the phone with Mrs. Frederic, the woman who was Thirteeen’s Caretaker. While Thirteen was clearly of Cybertronian origin and would fall under his responsibility as a Prime, Tony had different priorities.
Like a fellow messed-up human and Prime.
Looking at Will, who was studying the palms of his hands where the shards had disappeared into, he wondered if it was his imagination that there were far less runes at the moment, and those present were close to invisible. Normally, when Lennox was agitated, the runes reflected that. Right now there was almost zilch.
Scanning his friend, Tony cocked his head thoughtfully. Everything was tightly coiled within the hybrid. Dense energy registered on his ‘radar’. But the runes were invisible.
Tony didn’t say anything, just filed his observation for later evaluation and maybe study. For now they had a lot of other things to handle.
“Coffee?” he offered.
Will gave him a weak smile. “The good stuff?”
He chuckled. “Always the good stuff. C’mon. There’s a coffee shop on the premises. They won’t miss a cup or two.”
He pushed the other man ahead of him, telling Rodimus where they were going. The R8 sent an affirmative through their Extremis connection. AIDDE personnel was already coming to keep a lid on matters. Tony couldn’t care less. Feeling the quiet tension radiating through Will had him on the edge, too. He hadn’t switched off his Will Vision, as he started to call it, and the dense pockets of energy underneath the now deceptively rune-free, almost human looking skin had him worried.
“You’re accumulating energy,” he told his friend when they were out of the building.
“Don’t feel like I do.”
Tony gave him his ‘cut the crap’ look and Lennox sighed.
“Do something about it before we end up with an Expo-sized crater,” Stark suggested almost casually.
“Like what?”
“Change. Give this some time to bleed off.”
Will grimaced, but he followed the suggestion and smoothly changed into his less-human looks. His skin was now a burned golden, bronze and darkish brown, crawling with stationary glyphs, and his eyes had transformed into white-blue optics. Walking Allspark. Tony knew never to call him that because it would be bad. Will was rather sensitive in that matter.
The energy knots were untangling, flowing through the hybrid’s whole body, and Tony gave him a nod. “Better.”
Rodimus approached, rolling almost silently toward where both humans were, and Tony shot him a wry smile.
::Baby-sitting?:: he teased.
::Offering company::
Stark leaned against the silver R8 Spyder, unconsciously relaxing a little more. Rodimus didn’t comment on it.
An hour later the area was swarming with AIDDE soldiers and whatnot. A lieutenant saluted smartly as he approached Will and Tony.
“Sir, I have orders to accompany you and the remains of the relic back to Nevada,” he told Lennox.
Will shrugged. He looked human once more, aside from the glyphs down one side of his face.
“What about me?” Tony asked.
The lieutenant hesitated, then shrugged. “My orders were for Major Lennox only.”
Twenty years and he was still addressed by his military rank. Things never changed, Will mused. Then again, it was better than being addressed as ‘Prime’.
“Well, I’ll keep an eye on things here,” Tony simply said. “Can’t have you guys mess up my Expo.”
“Sir.”
“See ya,” Lennox only said and followed his guide.
Tony watched him go, fingers drumming against Rodimus’ paint job.
::How much of what happened did you get:: he finally asked.
::Not as much as you, apparently. I felt a wave of something coming through the Extremis link, but I couldn’t say what happened.::
Tony grunted. He couldn’t really say what had happened either. Whatever it had been, it had felt weird. And Lennox said it had been a portal opening. A portal! Shit… His mind was fascinated by the very idea, he wanted to experiment and learn, but another part was really freaked out about it.
He needed a drink.
Something other than coffee.
Badly!
* * *
Lattimer and Donovan, both looking a little shell-shocked despite their past experience with the fantastic, were allowed to remove the type-writer for storage inside Warehouse 13. Mrs. Frederic was on the scene, her quiet competence and no-nonsense attitude diffusing the situation further. Banachek came in almost at the same time and both were seen talking seriously and quietly for a while. Sam and Jazz were with them, Bumblebee keeping an eye on things.
Optimus Prime was kept in the loop via a live-chat function from one of the pavilions. Tony had made sure it was a heavily encrypted and super-secure connection. Tony himself was digging through his memories for any experience that came close to what had occurred, but no sub-space pocket had ever torn the fabric of space like that.
While he kept Extremis on this new development, Stark had also looked into how the two Warehouse agents had managed to get onto the Expo grounds undetected. He had pulled files from the deepest, darkest corner of the net, and he had been only mildly surprised by how well-protected they were. Then again, there was only so much protection out there. With the right access, anyone could read about the Warehouse. Still, it wasn’t an official branch of the government, just like Sector Seven had never appeared anywhere on official records, and it was an exclusive little club.
The file on Claudia Donovan had Tony smirk. He read a lot of himself in her dossier.
Young, hip, brilliant techno-wiz.
And she was. Brilliant, of course. She had a grasp on this technology that rivaled Tony’s. She had dug into the alien hardware and implemented her own programs, had taken Warehouse systems apart and rearranged them to fit the needs of the agents.
What had Tony mark her file for further investigation was the mention of her supposedly dead brother. He had been trapped between dimensions and that device alone had all alarms go off inside Tony. He really, really needed to get everything on the Warehouse and the artifacts. Some of those things sounded very much like they didn’t belong into anyone’s hands.
::You want to go there:. Rodimus remarked.
::Peeping Tom::
::You think very loudly. And I happen to know you::
He smiled at that. Yeah. Something he hadn’t been able to prevent from happening. In the years they had known each other, Rodimus had come to understand and see a lot of Tony Stark that the billionaire would have rather hidden.
::Yes, I want to look at that stuff. Badly. I know Sam’s been at the warehouse and he’s been talking to Thirteen. We could get access::
::One step at a time. The artifacts are secure where they are. I wouldn’t want to get them on base and near Wheeljack:: Rodimus remarked. ::You know what happened with the Sector Seven experiments::
He grimaced.
::The artifacts are potentially volatile and dangerous when not handled correctly. Cooperation of the Warehouse agents would help us. Especially Mrs. Frederic and Mr. Nielsen::
Yes, Arthur Nielsen. That file had been interesting as well. Born Arthur Weisfelt, Artie was the Secret Service Agent-in-Charge at Warehouse 13. A former cryptographer, most of his personal past was kept under lock and key. Tony had skimmed over those locked files - after breaking the lock - and had learned that Artie had once been convicted of treason for selling State secrets to the Soviets. He also seemed to have died recently and been brought back by what was called the ‘Phoenix Charm’. Another artifact Tony wanted to badly examine.
::But one step at a time:. Rodimus added. ::We need to handle this first and worry about everything else later. How do you feel?::
Tony blinked. “What?” he asked out loud.
A wave of amusement touched him and he glared at his guardian.
“Very funny. And I’m fine.”
Tired, but fine. He had so much still to do and so many thoughts racing around his head.
“You leaving?”
“No, I’m here to stay for now.”
Tony shrugged. “Then you can play taxi. I need to get back to HQ. Pepper’s been buzzing me for an hour or more.”
“One hour and ten minutes, thirty-seven seconds,” came the helpful answer. “She keeps sending me the same requests simultaneously. With the addition to kick your ass over to Stark Towers or else.”
“Got you whipped, too, hm?”
“She’s a formidable woman.”
Tony chuckled and slid into the driver’s seat. “Home first. I need to shower and change or that formidable woman will do more than ass-kicking. Then we get more coffee and then I’m ready to take on the world.”
Rodimus started his engine. “I believe Pepper mentioned that she has your clothes at the office already and she doesn’t care whether you look like a Yeti or not. Or smell like one. There’s a last meeting she will drag you to by the scruff of your neck.”
Tony groaned. “She’s turning into a Valkyrie,” he muttered.
But he did as Pepper had ordered.
At least today.
* * *
The few remains - dust particles, really -- found of the relic had been flown to Nevada. Under heightened security measures and accompanied by Will. There had been just a few sprinkles of dust on the ground, but those might prove to be the key to knowing what this thing had been. Tony had had to opt out. The Expo was opening this weekend and Pepper was monopolizing his time. He had speeches to give and hands to shake. He also wanted to look into where the relic had come from. Stark knew suspicious when he saw it and his people were already digging for the truth. Knowing the grind and slow progress of the official inquiry, Tony had freed a substantial amount of cash to make things move smoother.
Ratchet and Wheeljack were awaiting the transport. Contained within a secure box, kept under lock and protected by a strong force shield, the debris particles were placed into the high security lab deep within the base. Even tiny fragments of the Allspark and anything related to it were regarded as immensely dangerous. With good reason. The Cybertronians had been in possession of the Allspark for millennia and, while they had no real understanding of what it truly was, they knew how dangerous it could be.
Just look at what had happened to Lennox.
“No readings,” Wheeljack announced after intense minutes of calibrating and recalibrating his equipment. “Nothing registers. It’s… dead.”
Lennox regarded the mysterious debris and shook his head. “It didn’t feel dead when Tony and I touched it. It somehow doesn’t feel dead now.”
“You can feel it?” Ratchet wanted to know, voice intense.
“Yes… no… well, I know it’s there and that it reacts to the runes. Like a tickle.”
Ratchet stared at him, clearly flustered. Wheeljack regarded him silently for a moment.
“Maybe you depleted it and the remains react to the energy inside you?” the scientist hazarded a guess.
The human Prime snorted. “I have a habit of doing that. Absorbing stuff.”
Wheeljack was about to scan him, then thought better of it. “This time Mr. Stark seems to be in on your talent,” he simply remarked. “From what you told us, something happened that had you… teleport?”
Will shook his head. “No. We weren’t there. Physically, I mean. Really there. It was like standing inside a photograph. Like a hologram. I could see the landscape and it was Cybertron. I recognized it from what Ironhide has shown me in the past. But I didn’t breathe the air or felt or tasted anything.”
“Curious,” the scientist remarked.
Ratchet hummed thoughtfully, still trying to get anything out of the debris. His instruments showed no blip either.
“Did it feel like the time you absorbed the Allspark shard?” Wheeljack wanted to know.
It got him a snort of dark humor. “Wheeljack, I was out like a light and didn’t wake up for a while. And afterwards I had no scar, no injuries, nothing at all, except weird runes and even weirder powers.”
“Maybe the energy you are surrounded with, the one acquired through the hybridization, triggered the relic,” Ratchet spoke up.
Lennox felt like strangling the mech when he said ‘hybridization’. It sounded like he had been transformed with his consent.
“Possible,” Wheeljack agreed. “But unless we find out what it is, it’ll be difficult to interpret events.”
Which was why Will sketched the relic and Tony was asked for his version, which promptly came as a kind of screen capture image through Extremis. Wheeljack then started the needle in a haystack hunt.
* * *
“So… most of the artifacts are what? Alien?” Claudia asked.
The sun was up, it was a bright late morning, and breakfast had come in form of fast food bags. Sam didn’t care. His metabolism made short work of anything others would call fattening or unhealthy. His body had finally made a few adjustments where the technopathic backlashes were concerned, but he still needed the energy. The coffee that went with the food was eagerly consumed.
“Yes and no,” Sam answered, pouring himself another cup. “The technology is clearly derived from Cybertronian tech, but it was adjusted to fit human thinking and skills. Everyone who worked with an artifact or created something with the help of Cybertronian technology changed it. It became a kind of ancient hybrid tech, something not unlike what Stark Industries puts out.”
Pete shook his head, clearly still not very much adjusted to the whole idea. It had taken him a very short time to accept the Warehouse and the strangeness there, but this…? Alien robots? Alien tech crashing on Earth millennia ago? Way past the normal weirdo-meter.
“Now what?” he asked, shooting glances at Bumblebee, who was parked near-by.
“Nothing much. You go back to your job, we go back to ours,” Sam answered easily. “Mr. Banachek has cleared things with the people you call The Regents and your Caretaker, Mrs. Frederik. I know there were a few heated discussions with your man at home.”
Claudia snorted. “Oh, Artie will give us an earful.”
“The Autobots don’t claim any of the artifacts and what you’ve been doing for centuries has helped prevent a lot of trouble.”
“That’s us. Troubleshooters,” Claudia proclaimed with a grin, pumping her fist into the air.
Sam chuckled. “I guess we’ll hear of and see each other more often in the future. For my part, I’m glad to know there is a way to neutralize old tech and that it is stored safely.”
“Guess the big guys don’t have to worry about that stuff,” Pete said.
Claudia nodded. “We wouldn’t have enough of the slime to neutralize a foot. Well, maybe Jazz’s foot. But it’s not like we get mass production. What we got is needed to keep the Warehouse from overloading and the artifacts calmed down.”
Sam nodded. He knew what had been discussed behind closed doors, thanks to Jazz being in on it and giving him a direct technopathic line to listen in. It wasn’t that they had wanted to keep him outside, but Sam had been busy going through the exhibits and scanning for anything that might be classified as an artifact - thereby being of Cybertronian descent. He had found nothing, much to his and everyone else’s relief.
Optimus had been slightly apprehensive when he had heard about the potent fluid that temporarily neutralized an artifact. Mrs. Frederic had assured them it wasn’t produced in large quantities, that it was actually quite difficult to store it in larger barrels, and she had offered to send samples for examination. The older Prime had agreed and those samples would be shipped to Yuma base for the Constructicons to look at. Ratchet, who had been reviewing the effects the small containment bag had had on the artifact of the Expo, believed that the fluids only influenced hybrid tech. It would have to be seen.
A black SUV pulled up, accompanied by a well-known black-and-white. Sam felt a buzz of conversation in the back of his mind as Jazz greeted his bonded and he grinned secretly to himself. He should have known that Barricade wouldn’t stay away from this.
The driver of the SUV got out. He was a heavily muscled man of Asian descent, bald, with granite features. He was dressed in a spiffy suit that couldn’t hide the fact that he was armed. Apparently Pete and Claudia knew him, since they gave him a nod.
::Mrs. Frederic sent her driver:: Bumblebee told Sam.
So that cleared that up.
“Well, see ya around,” Claudia said brightly.
Sam smiled back. “We probably will.”
Pete just nodded at him, then followed his colleague.
Sam watched the two Warehouse agents go, an uneasy feeling in his stomach region. The SUV pulled away, followed by Barricade.
::Sam?:: Bumblebee asked through the link.
He leaned back against the Camaro with a sigh. “I don’t know, Bee,” the technopath answered quietly.
“Are you worried that they will pose a danger?”
“No. Not like that. It’s just… they had the technology to detect your presence for ages and they’ve been in close contact with your technology, too. They can find you guys, Bee.”
“You think they might stumble over one of our kind, Autobot or Decepticon, and will get hurt?”
“If they find a Decepticon, probably,” Sam replied darkly. “Any Con hiding on Earth doesn’t want to be found, for one reason or another. If they run across an Autobot… well, I’d wonder why the mech hadn’t contacted Optimus or anyone else prior to their discovery.”
“True. So far they’ve been lucky.”
Sam chewed on his lower lip, thinking. Bumblebee waited.
Finally, “I think I need to talk to Tom about getting the Warehouse files. Thirteen would cooperate, I’m sure. I’d like to get them officially if possible, but if that raises too many flags, I can always sneak in and strike a deal with Thirteen.”
Because there might be hints as to locations of mechs in those files. The Warehouse had a very detailed list of artifacts, all ever discovered, created or stored. It would be a long and tedious, mind-numbing and dry job to go over the files, but maybe they could gain something from it.
Bumblebee, listening in to his partner’s thoughts, agreed silently.
Walking back onto the Expo grounds, Bumblebee following him with a soft rumble of his engine, Sam went looking for Tony. He knew Stark was still around, making sure that all traces of their midnight adventures were gone from any kind of surveillance equipment.
*
Nothing of the events remained on any kind of surveillance equipment and those who had been on duty throughout the night knew when to claim nothing had happened. Tony paid them very, very well for turning a blind eye and a deaf ear to anything that might compromise the Autobots.
tbc...
Kind of a crossover, faintly based on 'Thirteen'
SERIES: Imperfection Deviation
AUTHOR: Macx
RATING: PG-13
DISCLAIMER: None of the characters belong to me, sadly. They are owned by people with a lot more money :)
FEEDBACK: Loved
SUMMARY: Will Lennox discovers there's more to the Stark Expo than just fancy tech. There's also the matrix Key. Damn.
Tony had left dealings with Lattimer and Donovan to Sam and Jazz. He didn’t care about the culture shock those two were in for, nor did he want to end up in the middle of inter-agency politics. Banachek was already informed and would probably be on the phone with Mrs. Frederic, the woman who was Thirteeen’s Caretaker. While Thirteen was clearly of Cybertronian origin and would fall under his responsibility as a Prime, Tony had different priorities.
Like a fellow messed-up human and Prime.
Looking at Will, who was studying the palms of his hands where the shards had disappeared into, he wondered if it was his imagination that there were far less runes at the moment, and those present were close to invisible. Normally, when Lennox was agitated, the runes reflected that. Right now there was almost zilch.
Scanning his friend, Tony cocked his head thoughtfully. Everything was tightly coiled within the hybrid. Dense energy registered on his ‘radar’. But the runes were invisible.
Tony didn’t say anything, just filed his observation for later evaluation and maybe study. For now they had a lot of other things to handle.
“Coffee?” he offered.
Will gave him a weak smile. “The good stuff?”
He chuckled. “Always the good stuff. C’mon. There’s a coffee shop on the premises. They won’t miss a cup or two.”
He pushed the other man ahead of him, telling Rodimus where they were going. The R8 sent an affirmative through their Extremis connection. AIDDE personnel was already coming to keep a lid on matters. Tony couldn’t care less. Feeling the quiet tension radiating through Will had him on the edge, too. He hadn’t switched off his Will Vision, as he started to call it, and the dense pockets of energy underneath the now deceptively rune-free, almost human looking skin had him worried.
“You’re accumulating energy,” he told his friend when they were out of the building.
“Don’t feel like I do.”
Tony gave him his ‘cut the crap’ look and Lennox sighed.
“Do something about it before we end up with an Expo-sized crater,” Stark suggested almost casually.
“Like what?”
“Change. Give this some time to bleed off.”
Will grimaced, but he followed the suggestion and smoothly changed into his less-human looks. His skin was now a burned golden, bronze and darkish brown, crawling with stationary glyphs, and his eyes had transformed into white-blue optics. Walking Allspark. Tony knew never to call him that because it would be bad. Will was rather sensitive in that matter.
The energy knots were untangling, flowing through the hybrid’s whole body, and Tony gave him a nod. “Better.”
Rodimus approached, rolling almost silently toward where both humans were, and Tony shot him a wry smile.
::Baby-sitting?:: he teased.
::Offering company::
Stark leaned against the silver R8 Spyder, unconsciously relaxing a little more. Rodimus didn’t comment on it.
An hour later the area was swarming with AIDDE soldiers and whatnot. A lieutenant saluted smartly as he approached Will and Tony.
“Sir, I have orders to accompany you and the remains of the relic back to Nevada,” he told Lennox.
Will shrugged. He looked human once more, aside from the glyphs down one side of his face.
“What about me?” Tony asked.
The lieutenant hesitated, then shrugged. “My orders were for Major Lennox only.”
Twenty years and he was still addressed by his military rank. Things never changed, Will mused. Then again, it was better than being addressed as ‘Prime’.
“Well, I’ll keep an eye on things here,” Tony simply said. “Can’t have you guys mess up my Expo.”
“Sir.”
“See ya,” Lennox only said and followed his guide.
Tony watched him go, fingers drumming against Rodimus’ paint job.
::How much of what happened did you get:: he finally asked.
::Not as much as you, apparently. I felt a wave of something coming through the Extremis link, but I couldn’t say what happened.::
Tony grunted. He couldn’t really say what had happened either. Whatever it had been, it had felt weird. And Lennox said it had been a portal opening. A portal! Shit… His mind was fascinated by the very idea, he wanted to experiment and learn, but another part was really freaked out about it.
He needed a drink.
Something other than coffee.
Badly!
* * *
Lattimer and Donovan, both looking a little shell-shocked despite their past experience with the fantastic, were allowed to remove the type-writer for storage inside Warehouse 13. Mrs. Frederic was on the scene, her quiet competence and no-nonsense attitude diffusing the situation further. Banachek came in almost at the same time and both were seen talking seriously and quietly for a while. Sam and Jazz were with them, Bumblebee keeping an eye on things.
Optimus Prime was kept in the loop via a live-chat function from one of the pavilions. Tony had made sure it was a heavily encrypted and super-secure connection. Tony himself was digging through his memories for any experience that came close to what had occurred, but no sub-space pocket had ever torn the fabric of space like that.
While he kept Extremis on this new development, Stark had also looked into how the two Warehouse agents had managed to get onto the Expo grounds undetected. He had pulled files from the deepest, darkest corner of the net, and he had been only mildly surprised by how well-protected they were. Then again, there was only so much protection out there. With the right access, anyone could read about the Warehouse. Still, it wasn’t an official branch of the government, just like Sector Seven had never appeared anywhere on official records, and it was an exclusive little club.
The file on Claudia Donovan had Tony smirk. He read a lot of himself in her dossier.
Young, hip, brilliant techno-wiz.
And she was. Brilliant, of course. She had a grasp on this technology that rivaled Tony’s. She had dug into the alien hardware and implemented her own programs, had taken Warehouse systems apart and rearranged them to fit the needs of the agents.
What had Tony mark her file for further investigation was the mention of her supposedly dead brother. He had been trapped between dimensions and that device alone had all alarms go off inside Tony. He really, really needed to get everything on the Warehouse and the artifacts. Some of those things sounded very much like they didn’t belong into anyone’s hands.
::You want to go there:. Rodimus remarked.
::Peeping Tom::
::You think very loudly. And I happen to know you::
He smiled at that. Yeah. Something he hadn’t been able to prevent from happening. In the years they had known each other, Rodimus had come to understand and see a lot of Tony Stark that the billionaire would have rather hidden.
::Yes, I want to look at that stuff. Badly. I know Sam’s been at the warehouse and he’s been talking to Thirteen. We could get access::
::One step at a time. The artifacts are secure where they are. I wouldn’t want to get them on base and near Wheeljack:: Rodimus remarked. ::You know what happened with the Sector Seven experiments::
He grimaced.
::The artifacts are potentially volatile and dangerous when not handled correctly. Cooperation of the Warehouse agents would help us. Especially Mrs. Frederic and Mr. Nielsen::
Yes, Arthur Nielsen. That file had been interesting as well. Born Arthur Weisfelt, Artie was the Secret Service Agent-in-Charge at Warehouse 13. A former cryptographer, most of his personal past was kept under lock and key. Tony had skimmed over those locked files - after breaking the lock - and had learned that Artie had once been convicted of treason for selling State secrets to the Soviets. He also seemed to have died recently and been brought back by what was called the ‘Phoenix Charm’. Another artifact Tony wanted to badly examine.
::But one step at a time:. Rodimus added. ::We need to handle this first and worry about everything else later. How do you feel?::
Tony blinked. “What?” he asked out loud.
A wave of amusement touched him and he glared at his guardian.
“Very funny. And I’m fine.”
Tired, but fine. He had so much still to do and so many thoughts racing around his head.
“You leaving?”
“No, I’m here to stay for now.”
Tony shrugged. “Then you can play taxi. I need to get back to HQ. Pepper’s been buzzing me for an hour or more.”
“One hour and ten minutes, thirty-seven seconds,” came the helpful answer. “She keeps sending me the same requests simultaneously. With the addition to kick your ass over to Stark Towers or else.”
“Got you whipped, too, hm?”
“She’s a formidable woman.”
Tony chuckled and slid into the driver’s seat. “Home first. I need to shower and change or that formidable woman will do more than ass-kicking. Then we get more coffee and then I’m ready to take on the world.”
Rodimus started his engine. “I believe Pepper mentioned that she has your clothes at the office already and she doesn’t care whether you look like a Yeti or not. Or smell like one. There’s a last meeting she will drag you to by the scruff of your neck.”
Tony groaned. “She’s turning into a Valkyrie,” he muttered.
But he did as Pepper had ordered.
At least today.
* * *
The few remains - dust particles, really -- found of the relic had been flown to Nevada. Under heightened security measures and accompanied by Will. There had been just a few sprinkles of dust on the ground, but those might prove to be the key to knowing what this thing had been. Tony had had to opt out. The Expo was opening this weekend and Pepper was monopolizing his time. He had speeches to give and hands to shake. He also wanted to look into where the relic had come from. Stark knew suspicious when he saw it and his people were already digging for the truth. Knowing the grind and slow progress of the official inquiry, Tony had freed a substantial amount of cash to make things move smoother.
Ratchet and Wheeljack were awaiting the transport. Contained within a secure box, kept under lock and protected by a strong force shield, the debris particles were placed into the high security lab deep within the base. Even tiny fragments of the Allspark and anything related to it were regarded as immensely dangerous. With good reason. The Cybertronians had been in possession of the Allspark for millennia and, while they had no real understanding of what it truly was, they knew how dangerous it could be.
Just look at what had happened to Lennox.
“No readings,” Wheeljack announced after intense minutes of calibrating and recalibrating his equipment. “Nothing registers. It’s… dead.”
Lennox regarded the mysterious debris and shook his head. “It didn’t feel dead when Tony and I touched it. It somehow doesn’t feel dead now.”
“You can feel it?” Ratchet wanted to know, voice intense.
“Yes… no… well, I know it’s there and that it reacts to the runes. Like a tickle.”
Ratchet stared at him, clearly flustered. Wheeljack regarded him silently for a moment.
“Maybe you depleted it and the remains react to the energy inside you?” the scientist hazarded a guess.
The human Prime snorted. “I have a habit of doing that. Absorbing stuff.”
Wheeljack was about to scan him, then thought better of it. “This time Mr. Stark seems to be in on your talent,” he simply remarked. “From what you told us, something happened that had you… teleport?”
Will shook his head. “No. We weren’t there. Physically, I mean. Really there. It was like standing inside a photograph. Like a hologram. I could see the landscape and it was Cybertron. I recognized it from what Ironhide has shown me in the past. But I didn’t breathe the air or felt or tasted anything.”
“Curious,” the scientist remarked.
Ratchet hummed thoughtfully, still trying to get anything out of the debris. His instruments showed no blip either.
“Did it feel like the time you absorbed the Allspark shard?” Wheeljack wanted to know.
It got him a snort of dark humor. “Wheeljack, I was out like a light and didn’t wake up for a while. And afterwards I had no scar, no injuries, nothing at all, except weird runes and even weirder powers.”
“Maybe the energy you are surrounded with, the one acquired through the hybridization, triggered the relic,” Ratchet spoke up.
Lennox felt like strangling the mech when he said ‘hybridization’. It sounded like he had been transformed with his consent.
“Possible,” Wheeljack agreed. “But unless we find out what it is, it’ll be difficult to interpret events.”
Which was why Will sketched the relic and Tony was asked for his version, which promptly came as a kind of screen capture image through Extremis. Wheeljack then started the needle in a haystack hunt.
* * *
“So… most of the artifacts are what? Alien?” Claudia asked.
The sun was up, it was a bright late morning, and breakfast had come in form of fast food bags. Sam didn’t care. His metabolism made short work of anything others would call fattening or unhealthy. His body had finally made a few adjustments where the technopathic backlashes were concerned, but he still needed the energy. The coffee that went with the food was eagerly consumed.
“Yes and no,” Sam answered, pouring himself another cup. “The technology is clearly derived from Cybertronian tech, but it was adjusted to fit human thinking and skills. Everyone who worked with an artifact or created something with the help of Cybertronian technology changed it. It became a kind of ancient hybrid tech, something not unlike what Stark Industries puts out.”
Pete shook his head, clearly still not very much adjusted to the whole idea. It had taken him a very short time to accept the Warehouse and the strangeness there, but this…? Alien robots? Alien tech crashing on Earth millennia ago? Way past the normal weirdo-meter.
“Now what?” he asked, shooting glances at Bumblebee, who was parked near-by.
“Nothing much. You go back to your job, we go back to ours,” Sam answered easily. “Mr. Banachek has cleared things with the people you call The Regents and your Caretaker, Mrs. Frederik. I know there were a few heated discussions with your man at home.”
Claudia snorted. “Oh, Artie will give us an earful.”
“The Autobots don’t claim any of the artifacts and what you’ve been doing for centuries has helped prevent a lot of trouble.”
“That’s us. Troubleshooters,” Claudia proclaimed with a grin, pumping her fist into the air.
Sam chuckled. “I guess we’ll hear of and see each other more often in the future. For my part, I’m glad to know there is a way to neutralize old tech and that it is stored safely.”
“Guess the big guys don’t have to worry about that stuff,” Pete said.
Claudia nodded. “We wouldn’t have enough of the slime to neutralize a foot. Well, maybe Jazz’s foot. But it’s not like we get mass production. What we got is needed to keep the Warehouse from overloading and the artifacts calmed down.”
Sam nodded. He knew what had been discussed behind closed doors, thanks to Jazz being in on it and giving him a direct technopathic line to listen in. It wasn’t that they had wanted to keep him outside, but Sam had been busy going through the exhibits and scanning for anything that might be classified as an artifact - thereby being of Cybertronian descent. He had found nothing, much to his and everyone else’s relief.
Optimus had been slightly apprehensive when he had heard about the potent fluid that temporarily neutralized an artifact. Mrs. Frederic had assured them it wasn’t produced in large quantities, that it was actually quite difficult to store it in larger barrels, and she had offered to send samples for examination. The older Prime had agreed and those samples would be shipped to Yuma base for the Constructicons to look at. Ratchet, who had been reviewing the effects the small containment bag had had on the artifact of the Expo, believed that the fluids only influenced hybrid tech. It would have to be seen.
A black SUV pulled up, accompanied by a well-known black-and-white. Sam felt a buzz of conversation in the back of his mind as Jazz greeted his bonded and he grinned secretly to himself. He should have known that Barricade wouldn’t stay away from this.
The driver of the SUV got out. He was a heavily muscled man of Asian descent, bald, with granite features. He was dressed in a spiffy suit that couldn’t hide the fact that he was armed. Apparently Pete and Claudia knew him, since they gave him a nod.
::Mrs. Frederic sent her driver:: Bumblebee told Sam.
So that cleared that up.
“Well, see ya around,” Claudia said brightly.
Sam smiled back. “We probably will.”
Pete just nodded at him, then followed his colleague.
Sam watched the two Warehouse agents go, an uneasy feeling in his stomach region. The SUV pulled away, followed by Barricade.
::Sam?:: Bumblebee asked through the link.
He leaned back against the Camaro with a sigh. “I don’t know, Bee,” the technopath answered quietly.
“Are you worried that they will pose a danger?”
“No. Not like that. It’s just… they had the technology to detect your presence for ages and they’ve been in close contact with your technology, too. They can find you guys, Bee.”
“You think they might stumble over one of our kind, Autobot or Decepticon, and will get hurt?”
“If they find a Decepticon, probably,” Sam replied darkly. “Any Con hiding on Earth doesn’t want to be found, for one reason or another. If they run across an Autobot… well, I’d wonder why the mech hadn’t contacted Optimus or anyone else prior to their discovery.”
“True. So far they’ve been lucky.”
Sam chewed on his lower lip, thinking. Bumblebee waited.
Finally, “I think I need to talk to Tom about getting the Warehouse files. Thirteen would cooperate, I’m sure. I’d like to get them officially if possible, but if that raises too many flags, I can always sneak in and strike a deal with Thirteen.”
Because there might be hints as to locations of mechs in those files. The Warehouse had a very detailed list of artifacts, all ever discovered, created or stored. It would be a long and tedious, mind-numbing and dry job to go over the files, but maybe they could gain something from it.
Bumblebee, listening in to his partner’s thoughts, agreed silently.
Walking back onto the Expo grounds, Bumblebee following him with a soft rumble of his engine, Sam went looking for Tony. He knew Stark was still around, making sure that all traces of their midnight adventures were gone from any kind of surveillance equipment.
*
Nothing of the events remained on any kind of surveillance equipment and those who had been on duty throughout the night knew when to claim nothing had happened. Tony paid them very, very well for turning a blind eye and a deaf ear to anything that might compromise the Autobots.
tbc...