Living with the Autobots became routine. To guard against a Starscream ambush, each family member got an escort: Jazz shadowed Charlie, Ratchet stuck with Samantha, Ironhide rolled with Natasha, and Bella kept driving Bumblebee.
Charlie's latest heroics—rescuing civilians and helping bring down an alien ship—earned him yet another promotion.
He now sat on the Board of Police Commissioners, the LAPD's highest governing body. In theory, every officer on the force answered to the Board. In practice, with more than half the department killed or injured, the workload was an ungodly tangle of a thousand loose threads.
Samantha was reassigned to manage logistics. Nobody objected.
Natasha's performance during the earthquake and the subsequent alien incursion earned her a promotion to Level 6 agent.
Even Bella joined Monarch, though only as an intern for now. She'd need to finish her bachelor's degree before they'd bring her on full-time.
Then a letter arrived from the Ancient One, and Bella nearly jumped out of her skin. The language inside, however, was surprisingly casual—a few lines of pleasantries, followed by an open invitation to visit Kamar-Taj whenever she found the time.
No address. No set date.
Bella decided to think it over carefully, weigh the risks and rewards, and then make her move.
While the Swan household was riding high, the rest of America was anything but.
Four months hadn't come close to healing the West Coast's wounds. America's foundations were strong, but against devastation this widespread, the country was limping badly.
Californians—along with the western states battered by the earthquake and tsunami—felt the federal response was too little, too late. The eastern states resented the government pouring resources westward at their expense.
The whole nation was restless. The western states had stopped bothering to report unemployment or GDP figures—there simply was no data.
A disaster this catastrophic demanded a scapegoat. Blame God? Hardly appropriate. Pin it on Russia or some other foreign conspiracy? Not an option either—America was hobbling on one arm and one leg right now, and picking a fight would be suicidal.
The buck stopped with the President. He found himself blamed from every side, his approval ratings at historic lows.
Besieged on all sides, he nonetheless remained in the Oval Office—and the seat came with power. He could do far more than Benjamin Asher, who could only shout from the sidelines. The presidency came with institutions, agencies, and authority.
The military-industrial complex's pressure infuriated him, but a head-on confrontation was out of the question right now. After rounds of probing, negotiation, and compromise, he agreed to their demands—but broadened the scope. The alien-tech pie wasn't going to the defense contractors alone. He threw it open to every American corporation.
The technology embedded in those ships spanned too many fields for even the military-industrial complex to swallow whole. Every sector was invited to the table—and foreign capital poured in too.
Nearly twenty alien ships had reached Earth. More than half had vanished into the ocean. Seven or eight remained in human hands.
Apart from the ship Benjamin Asher had brought down and the one Bella and Charlie had downed, the rest had been ground to pieces by sustained missile bombardment. Those were blown to fragments—wreckage so mangled the research value was negligible.
Now that America had opened the floodgates, capital from around the world used American corporate fronts and jockeyed for a seat at the technology feast.
Against the combined pressure of global capital, the American military-industrial complex's resistance crumbled.
After extensive screening, the Pentagon assembled what amounted to a trade expo—over a hundred multinational corporations spanning pharmaceuticals, materials science, chemical engineering, aerospace, energy, and every flavor of high tech.
CEOs, chief engineers, and authorized representatives from dozens of conglomerates descended on the site, ready to carve up whatever the U.S. government and the Department of Defense had thrown onto the table—poison or windfall, nobody was sure yet.
Obadiah Stane, president of Stark Industries, was there.
Norman Osborn, president of Oscorp, was there.
Ana Miller, president of Croft Holdings, was there.
The chief science advisor of Roxxon Oil was there.
Alan Rikkin, president of Abstergo Industries, was there.
And Peter Weyland—006 wearing his freshest alias—president of Weyland Corp, was there too.
Weyland's existence wasn't exactly a secret among the upper echelons, but 006's identity was. His face hadn't reached "known worldwide" status. When Bond had reported to his superiors years ago, the official story was that Trevelyan was dead. British intelligence had since learned the man was alive, but they hadn't made a federal case of it—too many rogue agents had vanished into outfits like the Syndicate. What were the agencies supposed to do, hunt them all down?
For the intelligence community, 006's situation amounted to retirement. As long as he didn't stir up trouble, no agency was going to dedicate resources to one individual.
MI6 kept its own secrets, and it certainly wasn't sharing them with its American allies.
So 006 strolled into the Pentagon under the Peter Weyland cover without breaking a sweat.
He'd originally worried that Weyland Corp researching alien spacecraft might look suspicious—lacking a credible pretext. But the President's sweeping open invitation had handed him the perfect excuse.
He'd brought three Weyland scientists along. None of them were on par with the Vankos, father and son, but they were top-tier in the industry.
Most of the other CEOs were equally non-technical, relying on their own specialists for analysis.
At the moment, the entire crowd was clustered around one alien ship. This was the vessel Bella had downed—Mind Blast to kill the commander inside, then Charlie had finished it off with a single Stinger missile.
All told, the ship had taken exactly one surface-to-air hit. It was the best-preserved specimen they had. And yet the assembled experts were growing more concerned by the minute.
Weyland's scientists examined the ship inside and out, then quietly shook their heads at 006. The message was clear: this thing isn't worth our time.
A tall, severe-looking man who appeared to be in his mid-thirties voiced his displeasure to the Department of Defense colonel handling the reception.
"This is what you're showing us? This vessel's core technology is biotech-based—the gap with Earth science is enormous. I refuse to believe your people at the Pentagon can't identify something this elementary. This thing has zero research value for humanity!"
006 watched the man without a flicker of expression, appraising the one called Victor Von Doom.