Alias

Take Me To Your Leader

Cade Yaeger had been thinking of his daughter, safely moved into her dorm for her sophomore year of college, rather than paying attention to where the car took him. It wasn’t like Bumblebee needed any help from him to drive back to base anyway. Moving her into a dorm this year wasn’t what he’d wanted, but since she’d wanted an apartment of her own, it was a compromise. Nineteen was too young for that, in his opinion, and at least the dorms had chaperones. He hoped Tessa would concentrate on her studies and that Lucky Charms wouldn’t distract her too much–

–and then he looked out the window and saw that they were in a part of Houston he’d never visited before. A really, really shitty part, in fact, and since when had this place been on the way back to base?

“Hey Bee, take a wrong turn somewhere?”

“–life signs detected–” Bumblebee replied through the radio–even though Ratchet had managed to mostly repair his vocal processor, Bee still communicated though the radio much of the time. “Keep a look-out, pardner. Signal’s weak.”

“Might be more help to you if I knew what I was looking for,” Cade replied, but before he even finished the sentence, Bee slammed on the brakes so hard that he was thrown against his seatbelt and nearly hit the steering wheel. “OW! What the hell?” he gasped, rubbing his chest where the belt had cut into him as the yellow Camaro’s back end whipped around to reverse their direction. “Bumblebee, what’s going on with you tonight?”

Agitated noises erupted from the radio as Bee turned down a series of narrow, dark alleys. Then a few more disjointed lines from radio and television came from the speakers. “–eureka, I found something!– Sarge, get the medic over here!–take me to your leader–” With the last blurb, Cade’s door popped open and his seatbelt released. When he hesitated, Bumblebee even bounced the driver's seat to urge him on. “–out of the car, son–”

“Christ, all right, I’m out!” He stumbled a little as the car began to transform before he even had both feet on the ground. The darkness pressed in around him, too quiet for the city, and he glanced nervously around as Bumblebee rose to his feet. This place had “muggings and murder” written all over it.

Then again, what was really going to happen that a sixteen foot tall robot warrior couldn’t handle?

Bumblebee prodded Cade in the back, urging him toward a pair of overflowing and extremely smelly dumpsters. They were wedged at the very back of the alley, covered by an overhang the robot would never fit beneath, and surrounded by mounds of trash. “Man, I don't know what you could possibly want in there,” Cade grumbled as he moved forward with something less than eagerness. A blast of the Camaro’s horn and seeing Bee reach to the fullest stretch of his arms and start scooping trash out of the way himself had Cade moving faster, though. He’d never seen Bumblebee so upset, not even when it looked like they were going to lose the battle of Hong Kong, but that didn’t mean he was anxious to dig through trash. “Okay, okay, man, I’m going, but you really need to tell me what I’m digging for,” Cade said as he started tossing trash bags out of the way.

“–Houston, we've got a problem–nurse, get this woman to the trauma room, STAT!–take me to your leader–”

But Cade saw her before Bumblebee’s broadcast was even finished. A woman’s bloody body lay crumpled between the dumpsters, covered in trash. “Oh, Jesus,” he whispered, stopping dead in his tracks. He’d never seen anything so pitiful in his life. “We’ve got to get the cops out here. Whoever killed her might still be around–”

Monty Python blasted in his ear so loudly that his teeth vibrated. “I’m not dead yet!”

Cade jumped, covering his ears. “Jesus, Bee, you don’t have to scream!” he shouted, moving forward despite the stench. When he lifted a trash bag off her, he saw that she was indeed still breathing. The realization sent a jolt of adrenaline through him. He flipped his phone out of his pocket with one hand while continuing to shove trash off her with the other. “I’ll call an ambulance. I don’t think we should try to move her.”