One hour later. Dayton, Ohio.
A sleek black muscle car streaked across the broad, clean asphalt of Iverson Avenue, its engine a low-frequency predatory hum that caused pedestrians to stop and stare.
Nathan was searching for a specific node of high-density aeronautical data. If one wanted to find the greatest concentration of flight-frames outside of a classified airbase, the second-best option was always a National Aerospace Museum. Dayton was home to the National Museum of the United States Air Force—the world's largest collection of military aircraft.
Nathan had arrived in Ohio from Nevada in exactly sixty minutes. For a high-performance ground vehicle, the distance was impossible, but for a Cybertronian Interceptor burning cold plasma in the high atmosphere, it was a trivial transit.
The museum sat adjacent to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. While the neighboring base was a fortress of radar and kinetic batteries, the museum's perimeter was designed for tourists, not planetary incursions. Nathan activated his Active Optical Cloak and rolled onto the secondary tarmac behind the primary exhibition hangars.
A mechanical graveyard, Nathan thought, surveying the rows of retired frames.
The humans called this place a museum; to a Cybertronian, it was a data-vault of primitive evolution. He bypassed the more famous displays—the B-52s and F-15s—and moved into the experimental prototype hangar.
He passed a SR-71 Blackbird, pausing for a fraction of a second. He remembered the Decepticon veteran Jetfire. In the cinematic records, Jetfire had chosen the Blackbird as his final alt-mode, falling into a deep, energy-starved stasis within a similar museum in Washington.
He's better left sleeping, Nathan calculated. Jetfire was a "Seeker" from a forgotten age, a titan whose power far exceeded a Mid-tier drone. But more importantly, Jetfire was an ideological traitor—a Decepticon who favored the "Light." Nathan had no intention of awakening a being who would likely disassemble him on principle.
Nathan eventually found the frame he was looking for: a sleek, sharp-angled prototype designated the YH-22.
Nicknamed the "Silver Fox," the name shared a numeric symmetry with his own designation. The craft was a high-altitude, high-speed interceptor designed for Mach 3.5 sprints. It was faster than almost any standard terrestrial jet and even outpaced Starscream's F-22 frame in a straight line.
Speed over durability, Nathan decided. I don't need to trade blows with the humans if they can't catch me.
He initiated the scan. His T-Cog vibrated with the familiar strain of reconfiguring his mass. He felt his energy reserves drop by five percent—a significant cost.
Changing alt-modes was not a casual act. Each shift required the T-Cog to map a new mechanical geometry and force the chassis to align with a foreign blueprint. For a unit with integrated weapon modules like Nathan, the risk of hardware conflict was high. He felt the internal friction as his shoulder-launchers shifted to accommodate the Silver Fox's narrow fuselage.
"Much better," Nathan rumbled.
His bipedal form had returned to its original, jagged Seeker silhouette, stripped of the "soft" curves of the muscle car. He circled the Dayton facility once, recording the coordinates of other high-value frames for future use, before banking hard toward Florida.
At Mach 3.5, the flight to the Miami outskirts took less than an hour. He descended over the Aethelgard Industrial plant, his thrusters venting blue fire as he performed a vertical landing in the center of the ruins.
THUD.
"Commander! You've returned!"
E-15 scurried forward from the shadows of a collapsed vat. Nathan didn't acknowledge him. Instead, he scanned the facility. The plant was a wreck. Craters marred the concrete, and several secondary warehouses had been reduced to piles of twisted alloy.
I leave them alone for two days and they treat the base like a demolition derby, Nathan thought, though his vocalizer remained silent. He wasn't surprised; Decepticon boredom was always destructive.
"Where are the organics?" Nathan asked.
"In the primary assembly bay, Sergeant. E-13 and the others are maintaining the stasis-lock."
"Lead."
Inside the bay, huddled against a massive chemical reactor, were the six teenagers. They were a pathetic sight—covered in dust, their clothes torn from the rough handling of the drones, their faces masks of soot and terror.
Sean, Karl, Alicia, and the others were surrounded by three towering, jagged metal monsters. They had been quiet for some time, likely paralyzed by the realization that these weren't "military prototypes." The glowing red optics and the low, guttural binary clicks of the Decepticons had made the truth of an alien incursion undeniable.
"Sergeant," E-13 reported as Nathan entered.
"Vacate the bay," Nathan commanded. "Wait at the perimeter."
The three drones hesitated for a split second before bowing their heads. "As you command, Sergeant."
As the smaller robots exited, the six humans looked up. Their pupils dilated as they saw Nathan. He was taller, sleeker, and far more imposing than the drones they had been staring at for two days. He stood over them like a god of cold steel, his red optics burning with a terrifying intelligence.
Sean swallowed hard, his voice barely a whisper. "Are you... the leader?"
Nathan didn't answer. He simply stared, his processors weighing their lives against the necessity of his mission.