Time seemed to slow down as James looked “up” and watched the ground rotate into place above him and then begin lowering. He just had time to wonder if there would even be enough left of him to scan into a robot, when a jarring impact stopped the truck with the ground barely inches from his head.

James’s arms, still wrapped around the gun, felt like they were about to be torn from their sockets. He let go and fell the rest of the way to the ground, then stared up to see the truck body held up by Sera’s robot-mode arms. She gave a shove with one of them, flipping herself back right-side up again and retracting the arms back into her truck body.

“Whew,” James said, picking himself up off the ground and checking for broken bones. There didn’t seem to be any, or even any sprains. Bruises, though, there were aplenty. And adrenaline.

The cab door swung open, and James shakily climbed back in. The door hadn’t even quite closed before Sera was peeling out again. “That’s it,”she said. “Now they’ve made me mad.”