Huddled close to Sam, Mikaela tried to keep from being knocked over by the continuous back-and- forth surge of customers. “Everyone sure is in a hurry.”
Sam turned philosophical. “That’s Armageddon for you. Gives everyone an appetite.”
Rising above the requests for food and the demand for service, a booming voice floated across the crowd. “Number Forty-two! We got your kishka-knish- kasha-varnishk-and-kreplach combo right here! End-of-the-world specials, cash only, who’s next?”
That voice . . . Rising pitch, naturally accusatory tone—where had he heard that before? Straining to see over the crowd, Sam finally located the source— only to be shaken by something considerably stronger than hunger. Swathed in a butcher’s apron and grease, the lean and sharp-eyed figure behind the counter was
carving a corned beef as if it had committed some personal offense against him.
Simmons. Formerly Agent Simmons. Formerly Agent Simmons of former Sector Seven. Sam turned to Mikaela, as he did so gesturing in the direction of the source of his astonishment.
“You gotta be kidding ...” She joined him in confirming the identity of the busy operator behind the counter.
Coming up behind the subject of their study, a short, stout, elderly woman unloaded a smack on the back of his head. Sam was reminded of all the black- and-white movies he had ever seen that involved old- style dynamite detonators.
“Moron! I told you to cure the lox in the brine, then smoke it! You ruined a beautiful piece a fish!” Staggered, Simmons looked back and down. “Ma! You want me to cut my own hand off or what? I’m like a Ninja with a blade—it’s an art form!”
Signifying that such altercations were a daily if not hourly occurrence, Simmons immediately forgot the confrontation as he turned to serve his next customer.
“What’ll it be, kid? Time’s money, business has never been this good, and there are starving people waiting behind you. ”
Leo paused a moment to make certain no one was listening. No one was: everyone was trying to get the attention of another of the several counter operatives. He leaned forward and lowered his voice. “Robo-Warrior. Know him?”
Simmons made a dismissive sound. “Figment of your imagination, my friend. Never heard of him.” Straightening, Leo continued unabashed, “My imagination has no figment, friend. Never heard of a survivalist psycho stealing paid subscribers from an authentic alt-news provider: The-Real-Effing-Deal- dot-com?”
Recognition dawned in Simmons’s eyes. “Oh, you must be talkin’ about that amateur-hour blog operation with Gameboy-level security? That sends out ‘cease and desi-si-st’ letters without bothering to spell-check?”
“Robo-Warrior,” Leo confirmed.
A brief nod from Simmons acknowledged the fact, and he countered, “Leonardo Ponce-de-Leon Spitz.” “Only my mother calls me ‘Leonardo.’ ”
“Well, come to mama,” Simmons mocked. “You just give information, I take it. . .”
“Why don’t you get me a cookie, bitch?”
“All out,” sneered Simmons. “How ’bout some kugel, bitch?”
Leo and Simmons locked eyes, literally growling at each other.
Leo turned and signaled to Sam and Mikaela. “It’s him! It’s this dude!”
The instant he set eyes on them, Simmons took a step back.
“No . . . whatf You! Again? No—way. ”
“Excuse me.” An elderly man struggled to reach
the counter by pushing past Mikaela. “But Pm in a terrible hurry, and ...”
“Meat store’s closed.” The ex-agent gestured sharply. “Murray—out!” As the bewildered customer moved off in the indicated direction, Simmons leaned forward across the counter. “C’mon with me—can’t have anyone seeing you here. Dangerous for business.”
“What business?” Leo inquired quickly.
“Shut up, kid.” Gesturing for them to come around the corner of the counter, Simmons shucked off his apron and started toward a back hallway, beckoning them to follow. As the noise of the crowd out front began to recede behind them, an incredulous Leo stared at his roommate.
“You know this guy?”
“Yeah.” Sam sounded tired as Mikaela checked behind them. “We’re old friends.”
“ ‘Old friends’?” Simmons looked back in disbelief. “You’re the case that shut down Sector Seven! Got the ki-bosh, disbanded, no more security clearance, scattered to the four winds, powdered, no nuthin’.” With a wave, he took in his immediate surroundings. “So I’m waitin’ in the weeds. I’ll get ’em back, all cuza you and your little crim girlfriend.” His gaze settled on the tight-lipped Mikaela. “Look at her now—all mature and everything.”
A powerful yet feminine voice blasted through the noise from the front of the deli. “Seymour! Where’s the whitefish?”
Muttering under his breath, their host turned to shout toward a one-toothed helper working near the meat grinder. “Yakov! You don’t get Christmas bonuses just standing around! You want those new teeth you saw in Skymall? Help her out.”
Mikaela was ready with a few choice words the instant their dyspeptic host turned his attention back to them.
“You live with your momma—Seymour?”
He glared at her. “No. My momma lives with me, okay? Big difference.” His attention snapped back to Sam as he looked his visitor slowly up and down. “They got your face all over the news, Alien Boy. And NBE-1? Still kickin’? How the hell’d that happen?” He raised a hand to forestall the reply Sam was not prepared to give. “Don’t answer—I don’t know what you’re hiding, but I don’t want anything to do with it. So g’bye, you never saw me. I got bagels to schmear. Vanish.” He eyed the silent Leo with obvious distaste. “And take Mr. Juvie-obsessive here with you.” Sam took a deep breath. “Look. I’m not happy about having to come here, either. But—I need your help.”
Whatever response Simmons might have been expecting, it was plain from his reaction that this wasn’t it. A slow, knowing grin spread across his face.
“Reeeeeally? You need my help?” He chuckled softly and with evident satisfaction. “Oh, how the wheel of justice turns. The big boy with the pet car and a personal line to its buddies needs the help of poor oP Seymour Simmons.” Looking past Sam, he glared anew at Mikaela. “Whose mother lives with him. ” When she didn’t take the bait, he shrugged and turned back to Sam. “And why. On Earth. Would I. Help you. I mean, considering all that you’ve done to—pardon the irony—for me?”
Sam didn’t hesitate. “Three reasons. One, you get to save the planet. That’s big. Two, they’ll give you your old job back. And three, 'cause I am sick of this shit. I got toasters nunchucking my knees, an anima- tronic coed tried to pierce my spleen with her tongue, a crab-bot stuck a worm in my brain and used it to project alien symbols like a frickin’ home movie, and now I’m a wanted fugitive. You think your life’s rough? Say the word. I’ll go feed your mom whitefish and you can run for your life.”
It was dead quiet in the corridor. Leo held his breath. Mikaela’s gaze kept flicking anxiously between Sam and the ex-agent. Unlike Sam’s roommate, she knew what Simmons was capable of. Fugitive youth and trained operative stood staring at each other for a long, long moment—until Simmons finally proffered a reply.
“Go back,” he said quietly and calmly, “to the part about the crab.”
Sam blinked. “Huh?”
“The crab-bot.” The change in Simmons’s demeanor was as stunning as it was swift. “You said it projected symbols offa your brain?” Speechless, Sam could only nod affirmatively. Apparently, that was enough for the ex-agent.
“You. Her. Him. Meat locker. Now.”
Sam found himself hesitating. From the time of their first encounter, Agent Simmons of Sector Seven had always struck him as a bit—unsettled. Yes, that was the word. Unsettled. It was a polite, almost deferential description. Also, it sounded so much better than maniacally deranged. Did he really want to take Mikaela and Leo
and go into a meat locker with this man? Even one that was kosher?
He steeled himself. They had come a long way under difficult conditions in the improbable hope that his new roommate might actually know someone capable of helping them. That the identity of the individual to whom they had been led was not one who would have been Sam’s first choice to lend them assistance did not obviate the fact that he might be the best qualified to do so.
Mikaela was watching him closely, waiting for a sign. With a nod, Sam made the decision to follow their host.
Once inside the walk-in deep-freeze, Simmons quickly shut the door behind them. Sam observed that not only did Mikaela keep her distance from their guide, she had already checked out a large meat cleaver hanging from a hook on the wall and positioned herself between it and their host. Simmons’s interest, however, was not directed toward neighboring utensils.
Continuing on, he paused about halfway into the frigid locker before turning to face them, his gaze meeting each of theirs individually.
“What you’re about to see is completely top-secret. Do not tell your friends. Do not tell government operatives. Do not inform the military. Most especially, do not tell my mother.”
Reaching up between hanging slabs of beef, he fumbled with something unseen. A click was followed by a low grinding sound as a hatch opened in the ceiling and a telescoping stairway extended downward. There was nothing remarkable about this, Sam
knew. It looked like the kind of retrofit attic stairway available from any home-improvement shopping site. What was unusual was its location.
Gesturing, Simmons led them upward. A motion sensor activated lights in the room above. As soon as they were all upstairs, he used a rope to pull the hatch
and stair arrangement up after them, This gave them
a chance to take a quick survey of the converted, win- dowless storage room above the freezer.
A wide-eyed Leo was drawn immediately to the partial alien skull clamped to a table in the center of the room. As he reached out to touch it, Simmons intercepted him.
“Huh-uh. Still radioactive. Hands off.”
As soon as he was confident the youth would comply, the ex-agent moved to a file cabinet and began yanking open drawers. Extracting an armful of file folders, he carried them over to an unoccupied table and dumped the pile. As they spread out and fell open their contents became visible: photos of ancient ruins, close-ups of hieroglyphs, cuneiform, and friezes. Many of them conveyed no decipherable information, while others were so obscure that Sam and his friends could not even recognize their origin. But some—not many, but some—boasted inscriptions that were by now immediately familiar.
Although the method of scribing and the materials employed differed, they were unquestionably the same symbols that Sam had drawn on the walls of his and Leo’s dorm room.
Simmons didn’t know that, of course. At least, not yet.
“Okay, Cube-brain. Any of these look like the symbols that’ve been coming out of your head?”
A bewildered Sam examined one folder after another. They were crammed with images and pictures drawn from a wide diversity of sites throughout the Middle East. “Where—where’d you get these?”
Sam’s manifest confusion appeared to please the ex-agent. “Before I got fired, I did a little copying. Filled up some flash drives and helped myself to some ‘scratch’ paper. I poached Sector Seven’s ‘crown jewel’—over fifty years of research into alien ‘scribbling.’ A lot of it—most of it—is the kind of junk you’d expect to find in such files. Overhyped interpretations of well-known ideographs. Von Daniken- style leaping to conclusions unsupported by actual facts. Drawings that seemed to mean something that when examined by experts really mean nothing. But some of it, enough of it, when properly correlated with recent research and the latest findings and studied by someone with actual knowledge of the facts ...” His voice trailed away.
Leo finished the observation for him. “Like you?” “Modesty forbids me,” Simmons responded.
“Since when?” Mikaela shot back.
He threw her a sour look, then returned his attention to Sam and Leo. “Analysis and distillation of the available evidence points to one inescapable fact. The Transformers? They didn’t just show up a couple of years ago. They’ve been here a long, long time.”
Now even the skeptical Mikaela was intrigued. “Like—how long?”
He could have taken the opportunity to reprove
her. But this time the seriousness of the subject matter under discussion muted his natural inclination toward sarcasm, and he replied as if he was a teacher earnestly instructing a student newly enrolled in his course.
“Way B.C. Twice as long as you think, and then even longer than that. Leastwise, if my math is correct. I’m talkin’ ‘Quest for Fire’ was the national pastime, the wheel was j ust coming into fashion, and we were all riding around on Snuffleupaguses.” He saw the doubt in their faces.
“How do I know this? Archeologists found these unexplained markings in ancient ruins all over the world. Macedonia. Mohenjo Daro. China. Luxor. Each instance was explained away as being part of some alphabet or set of glyphs for which a Rosetta stone equivalent had yet to be found. So how’d they all end up looking the same, these drawing and symbols from completely different corners of the ancient world? From entirely unrelated civilizations? Well, the owners of that particular Rosetta stone showed up and started beating the crap out of each other, and we’ve been caught in the middle. They’re alien symbols. Utilized by the originators and copied by those of our ancestors who saw them and were lucky enough not to get stomped for their trouble. And I think some of those alien originators stayed. ”
Leo was staring at the file photos and shaking his head. “No way, man. If even one of them had hung around, it would’ve been singled out and sketched by some primitive van der Rohe.”
Simmons nodded slowly. “Sure it would—if it had remained in its original form. But these are Transformers, remember. They can take any mechanical shape. A cart first, then more complicated machinery. ” He indicated a wealth of drawings and photos. A cotton gin. A steam engine. One of the first Model Ts.
“Robots—in disguise,” the ex-agent insisted triumphantly. “Hiding here all along.”
Sam’s mind was whirling. “Megatron said there’s another Energon source on Earth. He thinks what- ever’s in my head’ll lead him to it.” Reaching up, he pushed hair back off his forehead. “His way of trying to obtain it was a little too straightforward.”
Simmons considered. “Have you asked the Autobots what it is? Or where it might be located?”
Sam shook his head. “Tried to with a couple of them. They said the relevant language predates them.” The ex-agent let out a slow whistle. “And I thought the stuff I was working with went back a ways. Well then, we’re porked. Too bad we can’t ask a Decepticon.”
“Excuse me.” They both turned to Mikaela. “Actually,” she informed them, “we can.”
Simmons made a face at her. “Uh-huh, right. I suppose you carry around a spare Decepticon in your purse?”
Hands on hips, she met his gaze without blinking. “Close.”
The bare table in Simmons’s hideaway was more than sturdy enough to accommodate the metal box Mikaela brought from Bumblebee’s trunk. Leo and the ex-agent eyed it with interest, Sam with apprehension.
“I see the latches,” the ex-agent declared. “Want me to ... ?”
“I’ll do it. Just a sec.” Picking up the tiny welding torch she had brought with her, Mikaela snapped it alight. A soft roar accompanied the intense blue flame as she approached the container and popped the catches. Holding the torch firmly in one hand, she
used the other to lift the lid and peer inside.
“Come on out—but behave yourself.”
Like a nightmare Jack-in-the-box, something small, shiny, and multi-limbed hopped out of the metal container. It trailed a chain
that restricted its movements. Espying the torch, it scrambled as far away as the restraining links would allow.
“Hothothot—keep away, keep away!” Then it saw the partial skull of Frenzy clamped to another table nearby and the tiny Decepticon shrieked like a child—albeit one with a metal esophagus. Trying to calm it, Mikaela gave a sharp yank on the restraining chain.
An utterly flabbergasted Simmons observed this girl-Decepticon pas de deux in stunned silence before finally commenting in disbelief.
“Spent my whole adult life combing the planet for aliens. First as part of Sector Seven, then via libraries and the Net—and you’re schlepping one around in your luggage like a little tinfoil chihuahua.” He shook his head in amazement.
Wasting no time, Mikaela selected a couple of especially detailed photos from the ex-agent’s vast collection and positioned them in front of the shackled Wheels.
“Speak English! What do these mean?”
The Decepticon examined the images closely, then drew back in surprise. “Ohh—language of Primes! Words before time. Me know not, know not me. Only Seekers can explain you.”
Sam frowned. “ ‘Seekers’? Who are they?”
Metal limbs gestured excitedly at a number of the photos piled on the table. “Seekers. Old Transformers! Oldoldold. Stranded, stuck, searching for something.” Despite his predicament and restraints, his tone turned scornful. “Seekers seek”
“Well, duh.” Leo was delighted for a change to be entranced by a robot instead of terrified by one. “What we want to know is what they’re seeking.” Wheels’s response to that was more subdued. “Don’t know what. Old language. Old seeking. Wheels not old.”
Simmons’s reaction was half triumph, half disdain. “See? Told you they were here. Nobody listens to Seymour Simmons. Years of experience means nothin’ to pencil pushers and key kissers. All they’re interested in is moving up a rating—not in results.”
“We're interested.” Mikaela spoke softly as she turned back to Wheels. “What are these Seekers? Decepticons? Autobots?”
Transformers-Revenge of the Fallen Page 16
