Las Vegas, Nevada.
Nathan ripped the fiber-optic cables from his chest port, letting them spark against the rooftop gravel. "As expected. No mention of Section 7 on the public grid."
He wasn't disappointed. Expecting a shadow-government agency to leave a digital footprint on a civilian network was a failure in logic. He had achieved his primary goals: synchronizing his internal clock with the current Earth timeline—2007—and gauging the planet's technological ceiling. While the details differed slightly from his previous world, the broad strokes remained identical.
Time to secure a secondary resource, Nathan mused. He seized another set of cables and jammed them back into his interface.
Images of local financial institutions flickered through his HUD. Las Vegas was a city built on the flow of capital; it was the perfect environment for a digital siphon. His sensors locked onto a specific target: Fortis Bank & Trust.
"You're the lucky winner," Nathan hummed.
He initiated a Cybertronian data-stream, a surge of sophisticated code that made the bank's "state-of-the-art" firewalls look like a child's toy. In less than sixty seconds, he bypassed fifteen layers of encryption. He didn't just want a few thousand dollars; he wanted a strategic reserve.
The shinier the surface, the filthier the depths, Nathan thought as he scrolled through the bank's offshore accounts and laundered funds. He decided on a figure that was significant but below the threshold of a federal audit: exactly One Hundred Million US Dollars.
When prompted for account holder information, a flicker of dark humor crossed his processors. He entered the name: Archibald Witwicky.
The name belonged to the great-grandfather of the story's protagonist, Sam Witwicky—the man whose madness had begun with the discovery of a frozen giant in the Arctic. To the human authorities, it would appear as an ancient, dormant trust coming back to life.
Nathan severed the connection and closed his chest plating. A hundred million dollars. In his past life, he couldn't have dreamed of such a sum. Now, it was just a series of bits and bytes he had reconfigured with a flick of his intent.
"One in the morning," Nathan noted, checking the timestamp. "Time to move."
He vaulted from the skyscraper, his optical cloak engaging mid-air. He left behind a scorched server room and a broken transmission tower, a ghost vanishing into the neon lights of the Strip.
Ansnough Air Force Base. Nevada.
Nathan hovered near the high-voltage perimeter fence, his active camouflage rendering him invisible to the naked eye. It was nearly 01:30, yet the base was a hive of activity. Searchlights swept the tarmac, and heavily armed patrols moved in synchronized patterns.
His plan for a silent infiltration of the military grid was failing. While his cloak worked against optics, he was a massive source of thermal and electromagnetic noise. To hack the hardened military servers, he would need to deploy his physical interface cables, which would instantly break his invisibility.
No wonder Blackout chose to just flatten the base in Qatar, Nathan calculated. Subtlety isn't a Seeker's strong suit.
He realized that his current frame—a Combat-class Decepticon—wasn't designed for stealth-infiltration of high-security human networks. That was the domain of Soundwave's Ravage or Laserbeak. He was a hammer trying to be a lockpick.
Change of plans, he decided, withdrawing from the fence. If I can't find the data, I'll wait for the players to reveal themselves.
Los Angeles, California. 05:00.
A sleek, pitch-black muscle car drifted through the silent streets of a residential suburb. Its paint was a deep, unbranded obsidian that seemed to swallow the light of the streetlamps. To any observer, it looked like a high-end customized street racer—except for one detail.
The car was empty. No driver, no passenger. It moved with a predatory grace, rolling to a silent halt in front of 217 Crescent Drive.
Archibald's legacy, Nathan thought, his sensors scanning the quintessential suburban home.
The car was his new alt-mode. After leaving the airbase, he had realized his jet-form was too conspicuous for urban operations. He had scanned a customized high-performance muscle car—a "black-out" Saleen—allowing him to move through the streets of LA without triggering military radar.
He wasn't here for Sam Witwicky. He was here for the glasses.
The glasses worn by Archibald Witwicky during his ill-fated Arctic expedition. The glasses that had accidentally laser-etched the coordinates of the AllSpark onto their lenses when Archibald touched Megatron's frozen finger.
I need those coordinates, Nathan plotted. I won't wander blindly through the dam like a lost drone.
He hadn't found the address in the public records. He'd had to perform a high-speed reconnaissance of Marshall High School to obtain the Witwicky family's residence details. It had cost him three hours of searching, but it was a small price for certainty.
The black car sat idling in the shadows, its sensors focused on the darkened bedroom window of a teenage boy who had no idea his life was about to become a war zone.