After stealing an iPad from an anonymous businessman on a coach, drifter Verity Carlo and her younger sister Sari are picked up by an intense man, Hunter O'Nion, who reveals he's an alien conspiracy theorist tracking down reports of giant machines in the area. They soon come across the coach Verity and Sari departed, which had been run off the road by a police car - the businessman whose iPad Verity stole is missing. Meanwhile, the Machination prepares to "appropriate" Cybertronian technology, having discovered the location of Ark-19 via the SM-40's homing signal.