Inside the observation station, Vaskot watched his guests arrive from across the sea.
A handful of Americans in tailored suits had stepped out into the yard, followed by several customized vehicles he had previously only seen in classified dossiers.
That must be Optimus Prime, the leader of the Autobots, Vaskot mused quietly, his eyes lingering on the massive red and blue semi-truck resting in the compound.
The long-distance visitors were Colonel William Lennox and the Autobot detachment. Leveraging clandestine American transport networks, they had slipped into Ukrainian territory entirely beneath the radar of international watchdogs, arriving straight at the Vyshhorod outpost.
As Vaskot took them in, Lennox quickly caught sight of the Ukrainian official approaching.
Beside him, a blond secretary named Jelina, sporting thick black-rimmed glasses and a sharp, ascetic poise, stepped forward to handle the introductions.
"Hello," Vaskot said, extending his hand. "I am Vaskot, representing the General Directorate of the Ministry of Energy."
"Colonel Lennox," William replied crisply, offering a firm, polite handshake.
"I'll leave you gentlemen to it," Jelina said. She turned with an exaggerated sway and walked off, casting a flirtatious glance back toward Vaskot.
The wink was completely lost on him. With his mind racing on how to survive the coming hours, Vaskot had no spare attention for her subtle signals.
"Mr. Vaskot? Everything all right?" Lennox asked, noticing the man's vacant stare and tapping him lightly on the shoulder.
"Ah? Yes, fine..." Vaskot blinked, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose. "Let us get straight to business. I presume you have reviewed the detailed briefing."
"We have. That is why we are here."
"Good." Vaskot offered a dry, self-deprecating smile. "Over the past few years, whether to monitor Chernobyl in real time or simply out of sudden moral clarity, we installed a large array of environmental purifiers across the site. A few days ago, one of those units went dark. The final frames transmitted before the feed cut suggested Decepticons, and likely more than one."
His expression hardened into a severe mask. "I will personally guide you into Chernobyl. However, I must make one thing absolutely clear. My government will not acknowledge your entry, will not acknowledge our meeting, and will vehemently deny this conversation ever took place."
Though designated as an observation post, the Vyshhorod facility functioned more like a fortified garrison, housing nearly fifteen hundred personnel. Once the ground rules were laid, Vaskot marshaled Lennox and his strike team toward their destination.
For this clandestine operation, Lennox had brought only a single special forces squad. Aside from his veteran partner Robert Epps, the unit was composed entirely of fresh faces who had never fought alongside the Autobots. The devastating attrition during the battle in Egypt had wiped out nearly all of his elite regulars.
Vaskot led the convoy in a worn, slightly battered sedan. The historical catastrophe had left the surrounding region a chaotic labyrinth, and traversing the fractured roads to Chernobyl was impossible without a local guide.
The sedan's tires crunched heavily over a cracked, rusted roadside billboard. Behind it rolled the armored personnel carrier carrying Lennox's squad, followed closely by Optimus Prime and the other Autobots. Unlike previous deployments, the legendary Peterbilt long-nose truck now pulled an extended silver-white weapons trailer behind its cab.
As the convoy crossed the thirty-kilometer perimeter, Vaskot's voice crackled through the radio.
"Heads up. We have crossed into the permanent exclusion zone."
A heavy solemnity weighed on his tone. Lennox noted it but assumed Vaskot was merely reacting to the grim history of the area. After all, nobody traveled toward a radioactive graveyard with a light heart.
Before long, a cluster of desolate concrete structures emerged against the horizon, surrounded by dead, barren earth.
"Lennox, we are here."
Stripped of human presence for decades, the nuclear power plant projected a bizarre, pristine stillness. Bleak, silent, and hauntingly grand, it felt as though no breeze had dared blow through the sector for an eternity, severing it completely from the living world.
Vaskot stepped out of the sedan, his gaze distant and full of ghosts.
More than twenty years had passed since he last set foot on this ground. In the immediate aftermath of the disaster, thousands had surged into the zone: police, soldiers, scientists, foresters, firefighters, surveyors. He had been one of them.
"Man, if I were directing The Madhouse, I'd shoot the whole damn thing right here," Epps remarked as he jumped down, surveying the dead landscape with a low chuckle.
The Madhouse was the latest horror blockbuster tearing through American theaters, pulling massive crowds for its late-night screenings. Yet Epps privately thought the movie had nothing on him. When he caught a screening a few nights ago, his sudden grin in the pitch-black theater had drawn louder shrieks from the front row than the gore on the screen.
"Good idea, Robert. Why don't you send the director an email once we get back?" Lennox pulled a scanner from his vest and racked his rifle. "That is, assuming we make it out in one piece. We aren't on vacation, and this sure isn't a resort."
Turning toward the team, Lennox raised his voice. "We go inside on foot. Optimus and the Autobots will hold the perimeter and provide heavy support. Helmets on, environmental seals locked. We have sixty minutes to complete the objective!"
"Copy that, sir."
Fully sealed in a heavy radiation suit, Lennox walked over to Vaskot. "Mr. Vaskot, I was told this entire sector has been uninhabitable since '86, and won't be safe for another three thousand years."
"At least that long," Vaskot replied in a hollow tone. "This was once rich, fertile soil. A terrible catastrophe. A tragedy."
Seeing the soldiers ready, Vaskot pulled his heavy wool overcoat tighter against the chill. "Follow me. We go in through here."
"Understood. Wait a second," Lennox stopped, eyeing the man's ordinary clothes in disbelief. "Where is your hazmat gear?"
"It makes no difference," Vaskot said softly, offering a calm shake of his head. "For me, it is merely a matter of time."
During the initial cleanup decades ago, the radiation had already taken its toll on his body. He was among the fortunate few who had survived this long; many of his peers had perished within years of the meltdown.
Lennox stared at the man for a long beat, then nodded without pressing further. "Move out."
Weapons raised, the heavily armored squad followed Vaskot through the broken thresholds. Decades of abandonment had left the interior even more decayed than the outside, the concrete scarred with blast marks, structural collapses, and frozen wreckage. Navigating the treacherous corridors, they finally stopped before a partially collapsed chamber.
"The damaged purifier is situated in the cooling room beneath this structure," Vaskot pointed toward a dark passage. "Thirty meters down. There is an access tunnel that leads straight to it."
Suddenly, Vaskot cast a nervous glance around the empty ruins, stepped close to Lennox, and dropped his voice to a strained whisper. "Colonel, you need to understand something. This whole operation is a tra..."
A piercing, avian screech tore through the sky above, accompanied by a sinister crimson flash through the broken ceiling.
Vaskot flinched violently, the warning freezing in his throat.
"What did you say?" Lennox asked, the thick insulation of his helmet muffling the words. "Mr. Vaskot, use your comms."
"Nothing... It is nothing," Vaskot stammered, his face pale as he quickly backed away, refusing to finish the sentence.
Lennox frowned, but with time ticking, he turned toward the darkness ahead and raised his hand. "Tactical lights on. Move in, maintain tight spacing!"
Beams of artificial light pierced the decades-old gloom, cutting through thick plumes of stagnant dust. They had only advanced a short distance when a scout shouted from the front.
"Colonel, over here! I found something!"
Resting atop an oversized console sat a massive piece of machinery, starkly out of place amid the ancient Soviet hardware. A soldier hovered nearby, sweeping his detector across the strange apparatus.
"What in the world is that?"
Lennox hurried forward, studying the intricate, alien geometry bound by high-voltage cabling. Unable to make sense of the design, he opened an encrypted channel to the Autobot leader waiting outside.
"Optimus, we've located an unidentified object emitting high-energy radiation. It appears to be bound in heavy cabling. Function is currently unknown."
Lennox paused, crouching down to clear away decades of grime from an adjacent surface. "Wait... what is this?"
Wiping the grit away revealed a circular red, white, and blue insignia patterned with stars and an orbiting planet.
"Why is there a piece of equipment stamped with our own Space Agency logo in a Soviet reactor?" Lennox muttered, completely bewildered. "Is this one of our satellites?"
"Colonel!"
Before Lennox could piece the mystery together, a perimeter sentry screamed through the comms.
"Sir, massive energy surge detected! It's off the charts, and it's closing fast!"
"Direction?"
"Right above our heads!"
A thunderous explosion tore through the reinforced roof. A massive mechanical construct came crashing down like a derailed train, pulverizing the concrete floor and sending jagged slabs of stone flying in all directions.
Screams cut short into brutal silence as several soldiers were instantly crushed beneath falling debris, buried under tons of shattered concrete.
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