The smell of ozone and burnt metal hung heavy in the air, a choking reminder that I wasn't in a corporate office anymore. The "interview" I had prepped for—the one where I worried about the knot in my tie and the firmness of my handshake—felt like a memory from a different lifetime.

Now, my hands didn't just shake; they felt numb.

Across the hangar, the sound of tearing steel screeched through the silence. Optimus Prime didn't move with the grace of the heroes in the stories. He moved with the heavy, rhythmic brutality of an industrial press. He cast the mangled remains of a scout aside, the metal clattering against the concrete like hollow thunder. He was towering, a titan of crimson and cobalt, but his shadow felt even larger, swallowing the small patch of floor where I stood.

He turned. The gears in his neck ground together—a low, predatory growl of hydraulics. Those optics, once described in legends as a benevolent blue, were now two piercing apertures of freezing light. They locked onto me, pinning me to the spot more effectively than any blaster ever could.

"You," he rumbled. The vibration traveled through the soles of my shoes, rattling my very bones. "I want your report. Now."

I swallowed hard, my throat feeling like it was lined with glass. I looked down at the tablet in my hands, its screen cracked from when I’d dived for cover during the skirmish. The "Cube" was gone. The Decepticons had vanished into the smog of the city, leaving us with nothing but scrap and a crater where a city block used to be.

"The... the negotiations with the human council were... interrupted, sir," I began, my voice sounding thin and brittle against the vastness of the room. "The atmospheric interference caused a lapse in the surveillance grid. By the time the scouts identified the signature, the energy readings for the AllSpark had already flatlined. They took it through the sub-sector tunnels."

Optimus took a step forward. The ground groaned. He leaned down, his massive faceplates inches from mine, close enough that I could feel the radiant heat bleeding off his cooling vents.

"Excuses are the language of the sparkless," he hissed, his voice dropping to a dangerous, gravelly whisper. "I kept you alive to bridge the gap between my steel and your kind’s cowardice. If the Cube is not recovered, this planet’s 'deals' will be the last thing you ever have to worry about."

He straightened up, the sheer scale of him blocking out the overhead lights. "Tell me where they went, delegate. Or I shall find a use for you that doesn't require a tongue."