Chapter Text
Sam stumbled into the foyer, finding his mother accosted in the family room. Black-suited men were not only posted inside, but outside as well.
"Aching joints? Fever?" asked a curly-haired man, one of the few not wearing shades.
Judy shook her head, seemingly affronted. "No!"
"What is this?" Sam breathed, looking back and forth between his parents and the intruders, when another two of them appear in the open doorway. Midge has her hands behind her back, a cop guiding her with his hands on hers. The man that seemed to be the head of the operation, with his slightly hooked nose and cropped curls, switched personas in a matter of seconds.
"How ya doing son? Is your name Sam?" He tossed Judy's bat to another suit, angling his open palm at Midge. "That your sister?"
His shaded brown orbs shot over to her, noticing the bloody nose and grass stains that weren't there before. "Yeah."
"Well, I need you two to come with us." The government worker takes a step toward him, and immediately his father and mother get in front of him. Even Mojo scurried into the line up, lip raised. "Whoa, way out of line."
His sister took a step toward them, but was jolted back by the man at her side, his hands disappearing behind her. She turned away from him and Sam could finally see the cuffs on Midge's wrists. It rubbed on one of his last nerves.
The only person who was allowed to be a dick to her was Sam. He'd have his revenge. Maybe not now or even soon, but he would get it eventually.
"Sir, I am asking politely." The agent stayed his course, raising his eyebrows and strengthening his tone. "Back off."
Mojo started barking up a storm, his squeaking woofs providing a chaotic backing track to their attempted abduction by their own government. He hoped Mikaela was still into him after all this. She was the best thing that could've happened to him and every crazy thing that went wrong felt like it was pushing her closer to him somehow.
"You're not taking my kids." Sam had never seen such a look of determination on his father's face. He was usually such a pushover that he almost thought him incapable of acting this tough.
"Really?" The curly-haired agent remarked, looking derisively at Ron. "You're gonna try to get rough with us?"
Ron pointed at the ground, his face turning red as he raised his voice. Judy nodded along, backing him up as a good wife should, or so she would say. "No, but I'm gonna call the cops because there's something fishy going on around here."
He smiled, a disdainful chuckle accompanying his words as he pointed his pen at them. "Yeah, there's something a little fishy about you, your kids, your little Taco Bell dog and this whole operation you got going on here."
Ron's eyes shifted, befuddlement apparent on his features. "What operation?"
Judy scooped Mojo off the floor, holding him close as if it could save him from the bad man with the government badge. "That is what we are gonna find out."
Just a hair after he'd closed his mouth, Simmons was approached by one of the men that brought in Sam's sibling. Brown tufts covered the sides of his head, but left the top almost bare. He slid off his sunglasses, revealing his sly gaze as he handed over a two-piece machine to his apparent supervisor. "I think direct contact."
"Both of them?" The head agent's mouth moved quietly around the words, almost imperceptible to teenage boy.
His subordinate nodded firmly, a muttered "She's a 17 on the Geiger," falling from the balding man's dry lips. It prompted his superior to take the device, turning his distraught gaze on Sam.
Simmons inched forward, eyes locked on the boy. "Son, step forward for me please."
He did as he was asked hesitantly. His mom and dad standing watch at his sides, Sam swallowed the saliva building up in his mouth. "Just stand?"
Without a word, the agent's gaze flickered between the parts of the machine. His right hand lifted the wand to Sam's face, slowly waving it down his chest. The older man's dark eyes widened comically as the machine clicked repeatedly. It only became more rapid as the wand went further down his torso.
"14 rads... Bingo! Tag them and bag them!" The man shouted, turning on his heel and swiftly strolling away. Instantly, the other suits were on them, separating him from his family. He was cuffed to match his sibling, hands wrenched behind his back. Midge was marched back out the front door, soon to be followed by the rest of them., as she raged at the unfortunate soul that had to deal with her.
The only luck Sam found was in being tossed into the same backseat as his sister and Mikaela. He looked to his right, feeling horrible about getting the two women wrapped up in this. Midge was sat in the middle, her legs the shortest out of them, the other girl reclined on her right.
The large, black SUV concealed them with heavily tinted windows, but they could easily see the city racing past the window. They took the highway, telling him that speed was of the utmost importance to their captors.
The head agent, Simmons, lifted an evidence bag in front of his face. "So, LadiesMan217." He extracted from it a cellphone, one that resembled Sam's own too perfectly to be anything else. Turning around in the passenger seat, he aimed the phone's lit screen at the teen boy. "That is your eBay username, right?"
Knowing how conceited — and inaccurate— the name sounded, he fumbled for an excuse. "Yeah, but, you know, it was a typo and I ran with it."
"What do you make of this?" He pressed play on the recording Sam had made the other night when he was following Bumblebee around. He couldn't believe they found that so quickly. They must have already known what they were looking for. "Is this you?" The head agent turned his head, looking at the two females and gauging their reactions to the recorded audio.
"My name is Sam Witwicky, okay? And my, uh, car is..."
"Sounds like my brother, but you don't need us to tell you that. Seems like your ears work just fine, pig."
He slid the cell closed with a 'clack' and pointed at Sam's sister, his eyebrows wrinkling his forehead as they rose. "Watch it, jailbird. I could have you locked up again in no time with your record." Collecting himself, he turned back to the brunette teenager. "Last night at the station, you told the officer your car transformed. Enlighten me."
The tremor in his voice is hard to force down, but he managed, while still becoming a stuttering mess in the backseat of the SUV. "Well, here's what I said, okay? Because this is a total misunderstanding that my car had been stolen, from me. From my home, and- but it's fine now because it's back! It came back!"
The stomp of Midge's flat converse on his toe was no less painful than it would have been with a sturdier shoe. Holding in the yelp, he looked tearily at his sister. She only gave him a pointed and commanding stare.
"What he means, is uh... I borrowed it. I brought it back thirty minutes later and he wasn't home. So it wasn't stolen."
"Really? That's a problem because your license is still suspended from that street racing incident all those years ago. You were in that pretty black Dodge muscle car, the one you modded to inject nitrous oxide into the engine, you remember that?" He pulled out a few photographs. An image of her car wrapped around a telephone pole was flashed before another was brought to the forefront: Midge and an olive-skinned man on the car's hood, his arms around her waist and his lips on her cheek. It was picturesque. "You and your beau endangered innocent lives racing on a public street! You'd go away for a long time with the right judge."
He hardly ever came around the house, but Sam remembered him. He had constant circles under his eyes, making him appear gaunt. The lanky, slim man never brought any drugs around the house, but Sam couldn't say he didn't suspect it when looking back.
It wasn't always that way. DJ was seemingly a nice guy when he first came into the Witwicky home. No one told Sam what happened, but he could tell that something changed between DJ and Midge along the course of their relationship. Sam was relieved when they finally broke up. He thought he'd get his sister back but that ultimately proved to be a pipe dream. They were getting older and growing apart as people do, but still loved each other dearly.
Midge, jaw tight, raised her chin at the man, her irises reflecting the light from the center console and touchscreen of the vehicle. "And that would be my crime. What do you need my brother and his friend for?"
"It's his car, his license plate, his responsibility. You got him involved."
"Why would you take my parents, our dog, even the rosebushes, if that's what this was all about?"
"Oh, you're sharp. You're sure you two are related?" Simmons chuckled to himself, and eventually it became a full-bellied laughter, his expression warping into something phony. Sam laughed along, and so did Mikaela, hoping to ease the tension somewhat. The agent suddenly cuts himself off, face going stony. "So what do you kids know about aliens, huh?"
"Oh, you mean like a martian? Like what, E.T.?" Sam blew air between his lips, making a flippant sound and shaking his head. "No."
"Uh, it's an urban legend." Mikaela licked her lips. Sam could see this becoming something of a tell for the girl, disturbing her easy poker face.
His sister shifted in her seat, wriggling her shackled wrists into a more comfortable position. "I think we'll find single-celled organisms on other planets within the decade." That really was what Midge thought, once upon a time. Sam was sure that her opinion had changed quite recently, with all that's been going on recently.
"You see this?" Simmons' suit rustled and he pulled from it a black and silver badge. "This is like a do-whatever-I-want-and-get-away-with-it badge. I'm gonna lock you up forever."
Sam gulped, his face breaking into beads of sweat that gathered the dirt from his skin as they dribbled down. Midge moved her hands again, this time bringing them to his own and awkwardly placing her hand on his. It made him feel comforted, safer, but there was nothing she could do about this situation.
"Oh, God. You know what, don't listen to him. He's just pissy 'cause he's gotta get back to guarding the mall." Mikaela provided support in her own way. She preferred to attack rather than defend, he found that about her after the night they'd spent together.
"You, in the training bra. Do not test me. Especially with your daddy's parole coming up."
The words made Sam do a double take to the high school girl. "What? Parole?" He huffed, feeling the niggling seed of doubt planting itself in his heart. This betrayal cut into his heart.
"It's nothing. It's just... You know those cars my dad used to teach me to fix? Well, they weren't always his. And we couldn't always afford a babysitter so sometimes he took me along."
"She's got her own juvie record to prove it." Dark eyes meet sapphires, the agent staring down at Sam's sibling. "And your record of charges is longer than my big, Jewish-"
"Excuse you!" She cut him off, indignation written on her face and open mouth.
"-Nose. What did you think I was gonna say?" Frustratedly, Midge blew a strand of hair out of her face. The head agent let a smirk fall over his features, sending a lascivious gaze at the two women on Sam's right. "They're criminals. Criminals are hot." Simmons was walking the line and he knew it. His sister scowled, blocking the agent's view of Mikaela's body with her own.
Threatening, flirting, dangling a plea deal in front of them. Classic interrogation tactics, as Midge would say. She and mom were always watching true crime shows about such subjects late at night.
"That'd be a real shame if your dad and your boyfriend had to rot in jail the rest of their natural lives." The clicking of the Geiger counter was back, its volume exponentially rising. "It is time to talk!"
As if punctuating his words, the car crashed into a wall that wasn't there a moment before. It then clipped something with its right headlight, spinning out on the freeway and smashing into some mechanical thing. It was like being inside of a golf ball when the club struck it.
Sam wanted to close his eyes, but didn't. The familiar red flames on blue metal in the corner of his eye made him feel at ease. Optimus' giant mitts wrapped around the roof, shattering the windows. He lifted up, raising the entire car before it eventually fell off. Sam grunted with the impact on the ground, the shock absorbers doing their job well.
The light from Optimus' chassis was too radiant to see anything else. It soon faded, allowing the teen to see his savior.
Sam leaned forward, taunting,"You a-holes are in trouble now." He realized a moment too late that something was missing. The body that was once in the middle seat was gone. "Where's my sister?"