It was early summer, and the days were stretching out. Though dawn was still an hour away, the horizon was already stained with the first red threads of a rising sun.
Nathan had chosen his parking spot carefully, killing his engine and darkening his windows to mimic a high-end terrestrial muscle car.
A Cybertronian in vehicle form is not dormant; the shift is morphological, not functional. Nathan's consciousness remained fully integrated with his new shell, his external sensors providing him with a 360-degree, multi-spectral feed of his surroundings.
He had scanned the customized black muscle car purely as a tactical compromise.
Low-profile is a relative term when you're nine meters tall, Nathan calculated. He found the human obsession with "conspicuous consumption" to be a severe operational disadvantage. The black paint job helped, but he was still a magnet for local attention. However, a sleek ground vehicle, no matter how "cool," was infinitely more acceptable in a human suburb than a fully armed, subsonic Cybertronian fighter jet.
The choice of a high-performance vehicle wasn't an aesthetic decision; it was about kinetic capability. Cybertronian mass-shifting replicated the mechanical geometry of the target vehicle. If he scanned a rusted economy sedan, his top ground speed would be restricted to that vehicle's factory limitations, regardless of how much Energon he pumped through the pistons.
A high-performance engine was the only acceptable bottleneck.
As the sun crested the mountains, the Crescent Drive neighborhood began to stir.
Joggers and early-morning commuters appeared on the sidewalks. Every single human who walked past the black muscle car instinctively slowed their pace. Their primary visual response was a mix of awe and resource-envy. Some even stopped to run a hand along his fender before continuing their mundane commute.
Organics, Nathan observed, recording the genetic material left on his chassis. So easily distracted by shiny paint. He was beginning to regret not choosing the alternative: a derelict dump truck with the visual profile of industrial waste.
He cataloged the various human sensory inputs. He couldn't understand why they needed to physically touch everything. He found it highly inefficient. The next organic to wipe grease from their synthetic breakfast onto my chassis is getting a localized thermal burst, he promised, his processors still agitated by a young boy who had earlier smeared a portion of a sandwich onto his hood.
However, his operational focus shifted as the door to 217 Crescent Drive finally opened.
A lanky human teenager, adjusting a backpack, stepped out. "Yeah, Mom, I got it. I'll be back on time after class." The boy waved toward the doorway, where a middle-aged human couple was offering synchronized gestures of domestic farewell.
[ UNIT IDENTIFIED: SAMUEL JAMES WITWICKY ]
The boy looked exactly like the file Nathan had reconstructed from high school security servers. Nathan ran a quick diagnostic on his internal protocols; he noted the complete absence of human nostalgia or cinematic "affinity." He wasn't looking at a hero; he was looking at an information-asset holding a critical variable. His perspective was now entirely clinical— (Perspective depends on one's position).
Sam, currently a tangle of teenage hormones and academic stress, straddled his bicycle and began to push off, only to slam on his brakes and stare at the black muscle car parked down the street.
"Whoa! Heavenly stars! Look at that!"
Sam abandoned his bicycle, letting it clatter to the concrete, and fast-walked toward the customized car. Heเดือน ago, his father had promised him two thousand dollars and a car-fund if he maintained a straight-A average. With the end of the semester approaching, Sam was obsessively mapping the local automotive landscape.
"Look at those lines... that paint is like a black hole! It's perfect!" Sam was radiating low-level dopamine signals that Nathan's sensors translated as intense arousal. "If I could just... possess that engine..."
Sam reached out, preparing to run a hand along the hood, when his eyes locked onto the smear of sandwich grease from earlier.
"Gah! Sacrilege! Who puts grease on a work of art like this?!" He instantly unslung his backpack, fishing for a packet of tissues and beginning to wipe the spot with a frenetic, almost religious intensity. "Don't worry, baby... I'll make you clean again..."
Nathan felt a flicker of systemic disgust. The boy was "babying" him with the same lack of self-awareness he had shown with the sandwich. If you think this paint is 'art', organic, wait until I show you my true form, Nathan thought, watching the human fret over the blemish.
"Sam! What are you doing out here? Are you talking to cars now?"
A harsh human voice barked from the doorway, attracting Nathan's focus.
A slightly overweight human male, holding a briefcase, stepped out.
[ UNIT IDENTIFIED: RONALD WITWICKY ]
"If you don't depart for the academy immediately, you will encounter a high probability of tardiness," Ronald stated, checking his watch with biometric precision.
"Yeah, yeah, going!" Sam replied, finishing his unauthorized cleaning and sprinting back to his bicycle. He looked back at the car several times as he pedaled down the street. He'd decided he would return after class to properly document this statistical rarity of a vehicle.
Ronald watched his son disappear around the corner, then stepped into the street himself. He eyed the black car with a calculating suspicion. "Nice machine. Must belong to one of those new money developers... didn't know this neighborhood attracted that bracket." He huffed, then unlocked his own conservative family sedan and began his commute.
By 10:00 AM, Sam's mother had departed with a small domestic canine asset, leaving the Witwicky residence entirely unoccupied.
Target coordinates stabilized, Nathan calculated.
He activated his internal electromagnetic-dampener. The localized signal interference immediately cut all local Wi-Fi, cell service, and closed-circuit security feeds, including the camera under the Witwicky's eaves. Humans were often unaware that Cybertronian physics rendered their "smart technology" completely useless within a fixed radius.
Nathan rolled over the manicured lawn, coming to a halt at the back of the house. He verified the signal black-out, then initiated a full morph.
The process was faster than usual. His chassis reconfigured with an intuitive speed, the veteran Decepticon hardware within his T-Cog executing the sequence flawlessly. He was no longer a car. He was a nine-meter-tall war machine, his bipedal form reflecting his new alt-mode; sleek, aerodynamic, and terrifying.
His optics—now set into a streamlined, high-flicker pattern—scanned the house. He locked onto Sam's bedroom window. It was small, but he only needed a hand-width of clearance.
Nathan reached out, his hand reconfiguring into a series of delicate micro-manipulators. Before leaving Las Vegas, he had hacked an online auction database, confirming that the Witwicky glasses were not yet listed. They were still on the property.
"Engaging active deep-tissue scan..."
He activated his optical sensors' full multi-spectral capabilities, sending a tight beam of X-ray and magnetic resonance through the house's structure.
"Found them."
The glasses worn by Archibald Witwicky, with their distinctive Cybertronian etched coordinates, glowed on his tactical display. They were in a shoebox under Sam's bed.
Archibald's map to the stars, Nathan thought, closing his fist. And I'm the one holding the key.