Starscream was ambitious—but his terror of Megatron kept him in line. When Megatron was absent, he could play the boss for a while. The moment that tyrant returned, all bets were off.
He moved quickly. He ordered the Decepticons to rally on Mars.
Daze arrived first, followed by Barricade, Brawl, and Bonecrusher.
Five Decepticons gathered on the far side of Mars, debating how to rescue their leader.
"We go straight in! Humans are nothing!" Brawl snarled, his temper as explosive as always.
"We need to move fast," Barricade said, edged with fear. "If Megatron finds out we picked up his signal and still sat around wasting time..." Even after ten thousand years, Megatron's reputation for brutality still haunted them all. Not knowing had been one thing—but now that they knew, and were still stalling on Mars, Barricade was genuinely afraid of what Megatron would do once he got free.
Bonecrusher and Daze were on the same page: ignore everything else, rescue the boss first. Even if they couldn't pull it off, they at least had to make the gesture.
Starscream had a different idea. As Megatron's second-in-command and the Decepticons' de facto leader for the past ten millennia, his rank outstripped the others by a clear margin.
"Fools. Megatron himself was trapped on that planet. Do you really think Earth is still run by primitives?"
Daze fired back: "Then what do you suggest?"
Starscream smiled—cold and calculated. "We send someone else in first. I hear Earth has enormous water reserves. The Seros—those resource-starved aliens who'd trade anything for water—happen to be only fifteen light-years away..."
The others broke into grins.
"Starscream, you are ruthless. Those poor bastards are going to walk right into it!"
"Brilliant. Let the Seros probe the humans for us first!"
Starscream's expression stayed flat. "While the Seros hit Earth—you four slip in and locate Megatron."
The Decepticons admired his cunning. All of them raised their voices in unison:
"Long live Megatron!"
Two days later.
Samantha had delivered naturally, and her body had always been strong—this wasn't her first time, either. By now, she'd recovered most of her strength.
The baby's face had turned rosy, the wrinkled newborn look already fading.
"Little Kitty," Bella cooed, pulling ridiculous faces at the infant. "Tell me—who's the most beautiful woman in the world?"
Natasha shoved her aside without ceremony. Are you even human? She'd been running this question since morning, repeated it at bedtime, and now she was inflicting it on a two-day-old baby?
The infant obviously had no answer to give. She simply stared up at her two bizarre big sisters with a cheerful, baffled expression.
"They really do get along so well," Charlie said warmly, watching the three of them from across the room. Samantha stood beside him, both their faces soft with the same quiet joy.
They had already packed and were ready to be discharged.
For the past two days, everything Bella had said pointed in one direction: get Samantha and the baby out of the hospital as fast as possible. The medical staff found this baffling.
But in a capitalist society, money talks. Pay enough, and anything is possible.
"You're worried about aftershocks?" Natasha asked, still keeping the baby entertained.
Bella's expression darkened by a fraction. "I'm worried about another major quake."
The experts had been adamant after the 7.1 Nevada earthquake—no further seismic activity expected, West Coast residents should remain calm. But could you actually trust the experts?
In Bella's view, most American experts operated at roughly Trump-level know-it-all territory. Fine for casual commentary in normal times. In a life-or-death situation? Trusting people like that would make you the biggest fool in the room.
She trusted her instincts. She trusted her divination. She couldn't spell out the details—and she was wary of disrupting the family's harmony—but after weighing everything, her answer was the same: get her family out of here.
Charlie and Samantha had some reservations, but they went along with her.
Natasha carried the baby. Charlie steadied his wife. Bella walked ahead, bag in hand. All five of them left the UCSF Medical Center together.
"I really don't think this is necessary," Charlie muttered, genuinely puzzled. Bella had paid for everything and done everything—he couldn't complain—but it still felt like wasted money. "Earthquakes happen in California all the time."
"Better safe than sorry. The casualties in Nevada were significant." Natasha, still cradling the infant, stepped in smoothly and took some of the pressure off Bella.
The five of them walked out through the medical center's main doors. Bella, chasing that nagging dread that wouldn't leave her, had called Bumblebee in specifically for this.
"Hopefully I'm just being paranoid," she said with a strained smile. "Next time, we could always deliver on the East Coast. Better facilities over there."
Samantha glanced at her husband. "Next time? Ha. Someone's going to have to put in the work first."
Charlie's face went red. It had taken over a year of trying just to get to this point—then months of pregnancy, months of running himself ragged waiting on her—and she was already talking about another one? Was she trying to kill him?
He squared his shoulders and drew himself up, ready to deliver a suitably dignified response as the man of the house.
"Ahem—"
That single syllable had barely cleared his throat when the wall five meters to his right cracked open—savage, jagged, and deep. The ground beneath their feet dropped sharply, then erupted into violent, rolling shudders.
"What—" Charlie froze. Did I do that?
"Move! This one's big—RUN! GO!" Bella had no time to worry about seeming shocking. She shouted a warning toward the medical center, grabbed Samantha by the arm, and sprinted.
"Come on! Move it!" she yelled back at Natasha and Charlie as she ran.
The doctors who had quietly been laughing at her paranoia lost their nerve completely. All that "nobody understands earthquakes better than me" talk evaporated into thin air. They ran.
The remaining nurses and patients fled in a stampede. The shadow of death fell over everyone.
Bella caught a glimpse of a patient with a broken leg hauling himself forward on one leg—but this wasn't a movie. He was too slow. An entire section of ceiling came down and smashed him into a pulp.
Worse followed. The medical center's ground floor dissolved into chaos. The earth split open in a gap seemingly without a bottom, and doctors, nurses, and patients vanished into it in countless numbers. Then the ground heaved—and the second floor, third floor, and everything above came pressing downward together.
The medical center had been built to full code, rated for earthquakes and major disasters. But those specs covered magnitude 7 and below.
The first wave alone exceeded magnitude 8. Anyone with a working knowledge of seismology understood what that meant: every two-point jump on the Richter scale represented a thousand-fold increase in released energy. Even a single-point jump meant thirty-one times the force.
The difference between a 7 and an 8 was not just a number.