Halfway across the galaxy, far from the ruined legacy of the Primes, Shepherd Fox stood inside the Rift Chamber aboard Lockdown's stolen ship—now fully under his command. The Seed he had acquired pulsed faintly in the containment cradle behind him, but his attention was fixed on something far more elusive.
"T," as Alix had labeled it, still refused to yield its full identity. It wasn't a weapon, a cube, or even a traditional artifact. It was something older—perhaps the first artificial structure forged by an unknown precursor race. Something even the Primes feared.
Alix's projection flickered to life beside him.
"The Rift Key has locked onto an ancient signal. Triangulation places its origin near Earth's Moon… again. But this time, not on the surface."
Shepherd narrowed his eyes. "Subsurface?"
"Precisely. A buried vault. Long dormant, but recently stirred—likely by the presence of both the Cube and Matrix in this dimension."
Shepherd smirked. "Then it's time we paid the Moon a second visit."
The trip was brief. The Moon's low gravity and lifeless terrain made access easy. This vault wasn't near the Ark crash site—it was buried deep beneath the southern pole, accessible only by decoding layers of lunar lattice encryption. Thankfully, Alix had already begun.
Shepherd descended in a pressurized suit reinforced with Rift-conductive metal. The deeper he went, the more unnatural the structures became. This wasn't Cybertronian. It was something older. The walls hummed with dormant power, etched in spiraling glyphs that twisted when viewed directly. He reached a sealed chamber—its centerpiece a towering monolith, black as space, pulsating faintly.
Alix whispered.
"I believe this is the T… or at least, its containment."
Shepherd approached. As his hand neared the monolith, the Rift Core inside his chest surged. A beam of energy erupted from the artifact, scanning him. A voice echoed through the vault—not mechanical, not organic.
"Traveler… You carry the Echo. The Key awakens. One gate opens… another must close."
Before he could react, a flood of information seared through his brain. Star systems. Multiversal gates. A map far larger than even the Cybertronian starmap. And then—an image. A shape like a gear fused with a circuit board, buried on Earth.
The "T" was not an object. It was an interface. A Terminal—one end of a galaxy-spanning transport system built by the originators of the Rift. And it had just recognized Shepherd as an authorized user.
He stumbled back, gasping.
"Alix… store everything. Encrypt it. Burn it into a private drive."
"Already done. But we may have another problem."
Shepherd stood. "What now?"
"Optimus Prime. He's changed. His signal matches that of an altered neural pattern… similar to Lockdown's rogue variant. He's being controlled."
Shepherd clenched his fists. "By who?"
"Quintessa. A powerful being with reality-shaping code. Prime is no longer an ally."
Back on Earth, the Decepticons began mobilizing. Reports of Nemesis Prime destroying a human weapons convoy in Eastern Europe had begun surfacing. Cade Yeager, Bumblebee, and the remaining Autobots were in hiding. The military was fractured. And Quintessa's voice whispered through the winds of Cybertron: "Earth is Unicron. We must feed him the life of his children."
Shepherd returned to his ship, face grim. "It's time we prepared for war."
Alix reappeared, displaying the Matrix of Leadership, Seed, and Cube readings. "You now hold the three core Energon sources. Only the Terminal remains offline."
Shepherd nodded. "Not for long."
The ship powered up. Orbit decayed around the Moon as Rift engines primed. This world was changing fast. The lines between dimensions were breaking down, and somewhere ahead lay a choice: save this universe… or move on before it collapsed.
But Shepherd was never one to run.
Not when the stakes were cosmic.