✔ᵉⁿᵍˡⁱˢʰ Warfare [Transformers]✔

25

Did Brady want to be there? No. Was she there anyway? Yes.

Initially, it was assumed that the coming conversation with Joyce would not be particularly enjoyable, but not that it had to go outside specifically for that. The fact that Brady, together with Joyce and Attinger, was standing somewhere outside, where no random people were walking around and the three of them, could not be heard by anyone else, made one suspect, or rather know, that there had to be more to all this. Much more. And some things she had not been told.

"So, what about the deal?" began Joyce, once it was certain that the three of them were undisturbed except for the security team, far away, "Is that done? Do you have the seed?"

"Yes, as soon as the bounty hunter has Prime," and that could take a while, as Attinger knew but did not reveal, "In the meantime, unfortunately, there was a complication."

"A what?" a word Joyce did not want to hear, "No, no, no. At KSI, we don't use words like that."

"A civilian who granted embezzled to the Autobots hacked one of your mini-drones," here Attinger had dropped the bombshell that Brady's boss had been trying to save for the last few days, "That means they may know about your involvement."

"What?!" retorted Joyce, stunned because this could not possibly be, "I need more Transformiun. And, I need it now to build more prototypes. So, you tell your alien bounty hunter that the fate of my entire company, hangs on this deal."

"Yeah, and for me, my life hangs on it.", if you play with fire, you should assume you can get burned too, which Attinger didn't.

"Hey, you came to me with this. Remember?", this was a warning, but with that, Joyce didn't stay, but went a good bit further, "You quit the CIA, get seven figures worth of company stock from me and we revolutionize national defense together. But Attinger, my friend, for both our sakes, deliver those seeds to me immediately."

With that, the initial warning had become a threat. It should now be clear why the drone and Yaeger, the daughter and boy, were urgent to find.

From a certain point Brady had already realized that not always everything ran, completely according to regulation or it was completely hard, on the border of the illegal, but it was to be reconciled with the conscience still quite well. Slowly it became difficult.

Just when that was cleared up, the next problem arose. One and the same ID card, was scanned at two different entrances. When they arrived at the lab, they were told by the head of security that the secret area had been sealed off. Through a pane of glass, they could watch as all the employees were checked, but one man walked past the checkpoint. As soon as Attinger saw the face of the man wearing glasses, he immediately looked at the head of security and the message went out that someone was to check the alleged worker. Nothing came of it, because no sooner had the man with glasses caught on than he began to flee.

"Why do people always run?", Brady wanted to know and shook his head questioningly, "Is it a reflex action, short-circuit reaction or do they think there is really the possibility to escape? How is that possible?"

"It isn't. He won't get far," Joyce assured him, walking forward to a small vehicle that employees could use to get from A to B in the building, "He'll get just as far as the man who tried to rob the Flamingo seventy-one. And not one step further."

"That's a good one. As of now, I like you even better than I already do," a comparison Brady wouldn't have taken first, which didn't mean to imply, "The guy had been able to get some fresh air, but one of the casino security guards had caught him, two feet from the door."

And just as Joyce had predicted, as far as the door, Yaeger didn't make it. But it could have come down to Caesars eighty-seven. Shot outside the doors of the casino and on the street of Las Vegas.

─⌖❖⌖─

Industrial espionage. An extremely serious crime. At least for the moment, that's how it could be described. Basically, it could have amounted to theft, if they didn't know why Yaeger was at KSI.

"Are you all right?" asked Brady as she entered the room, closing the door behind her and looking from Yeager to Joyce, "It's going to be a little while longer."

"I'm just trying to protect my family," Yaeger continued from where Brady had joined in, interrupting him, "Not from your company. From the government."

This was when Attinger also entered the room, signaled Joyce's security staff to leave, and looked briefly at Brady, who was to remain with Joyce. Better. Should her boss rather work it out with Yaeger in private. The previous had been enough for her.

The next moment, just halfway down the hall, there was a loud noise; the building began to shake and the security chief, instructed them to go to the basement. To where every Decepticon and Autobot, was taken after the hunt and disassembled into parts. Into the elevator when the building was shaking? All right.

"Hey! Stop!" yelled Joyce, walking toward Optimus Prime and his support with fingers outstretched, "That's company property."

"You can look at it either way," Brady added to that and began typing a message to Attinger that Prime was in the building.

"They're not your property," Joyce was corrected by Prime, who was now pointing his own finger, first at the KSI boss and then at the scattered bits and pieces, "They were my friends."

"Go ahead," Joyce said as a brown Transformers, pointed the cannon at Brady and him, "Go ahead, show us your true colors already."

"One word and I'll make mincemeat of them," but Prime said nothing, which seemed to displease the chubby Transformers.

"Why don't you tell that nimble finger that this is all my spoils of war? Dead metal. Innovation. What we're doing here is research," difficult wording Joyce had there, because it could become the reason Prime changed his mind after all, "And if we don't do it, someone else will, because the technology is unstoppable."

"We're not your technology.", no, the Transformers weren't and with that Prime more than owned it.

"I cracked the code. I decoded your genome," the world learns what KSI does, at least that was Prime's opinion, but Joyce saw it completely differently, "The world? The world approves of this. We can build you ourselves now. Don't you get it? We don't need you anymore."

Prime and his friends didn't expect that.