The Tin Man's War (Terminator:SCC)

[Bryan]

So... this is a sort of spin-off from The Mission and By Courage and Blood. It is the back story of the three terminators once they were sent back in time to help the Connors stop Judgment Day.

Because SB is so awesome I'm going to post the first six chapters.

And thanks to Wisky and Rastamon who read over some of this, and Visi0nary as well for reading over the story.

The first story summary:

Doctors Peter Carwin and Sam Wells, brilliant scientists and inventors, were two responsible for much of Skynet's early technological progression. Their theories and inventions laid the ground work for Skynet to achieve a stable temporal displacement event- allowing for the eventual expansion of the Future War/War Against the Machines into a time war. These two men have been abducted.

After Cromartie is destroyed and an unfortunate death, the Connors attempt to resume their lives and search for the Turk and any Skynet leads.

Captain John Alexander Planck is sent from the future by General Connor- a future completely different than the one Cameron or Derek remember, and a future far different than the one Kyle Reese described to Sarah- to secure the scientists. Along the way they discover that it is not only Skynet who they are fighting, but traitors and rogue time jumpers as well.

[Bryan]

CHAPTER ONE





||||||||||==Baja California, Mexico, (1 November 2008) ==||||||||||



Being John Connor meant one had to always be on alert, always watching. Even when sitting down, trying to eat tacos with a pretty girl, John Connor was assessing the situation; potential exits, potential enemies, who around him looked like to jump in on a fight, who had a concealed firearm? All these things John Connor worried about.

Eight hours ago John Connor had failed being John Connor.

Returning to the small, quiet Mexican town he and his mom had spent part of their life in had not been something John Connor would have done. If his uncle were with him all he would do is look at him, disappointment in his hazy green eyes piercing into the young man, and utter that this was something John Baum would have done.

Right now John Connor would have given anything to have his uncle or his mom with him… he remembered his uncle didn’t even call him John Baum anymore… the bitter disappointment his uncle viewed him as didn’t even need to be said anymore.

Being John Connor means a lot more than being lonely, John thought as he pretended to sleep. It means being a liar, he concluded. He wasn’t exactly sure what he was referring to when he told himself he was a ‘liar’, but he knew it involved someone he didn’t much want to think about. Not right now, at least.


He dared himself to crack open his eyes just a little, just enough to see the prison guard talking with Riley, his eye lashes obscuring his vision. Struggling to keep his eyelid, in its unnatural half-open, half-closed state from going into spasm, he carefully watched the guard and begun to tense for his attack.

The smell of stale urine, caked in the corner of the cell forced him to wrinkle his nose, almost breaking the carefully crafted lie he and Riley had devised.


“This guy’s a real… creep,” he heard Riley say as she put her hands on the old and cracking cell bars. “He’s been trying to put the moves on me all night,” she said under her breath, pleading for the police officer to empathize with her.

John knew that was a lie. Right now, sitting in the jail cell with his eyes half closed, pretending to sleep, he knew he was in this situation because of one problem he wouldn’t bring himself to admit he had.


“But you two came in together,” John heard the Mexican guard respond in accented English. He then refocused back on the current situation. Any problem John had, he resolved he’d figure it out later.



Riley leaned in and whispered something else, and John had to smile. It was a mental smile, of course. He had to play like he was sleeping. His hearing was focused on the sound he wanted to hear… and there it was, a jingle of the keys and then a metal click of the key going in and the lock turning.

It was time to be John Connor.


His felt his heart rate increase, the thumping in his chest accelerating as adrenaline surged through his body. His breaths were deep and he felt a serene calm wash over him. John’s body began rising, his training and instincts taking over. He felt light, fast, precise. John Connor opened his eyes, the dark green orbs locked on his target and his body acted.



His hand shot out and formed into a claw around the leather sash the officer wore. One pump, two, then three pumps of his arm and the officer was smashed, head first, three times into the jail cell bars.

A splash of blood flew onto John’s forehead as the guard collapsed, his eyes having rolled back in his head, the injured man was moaning, his breath rapid and shallow.


John Connor saw his girlfriend not even flinch at the violence and the savagery in which he had attacked the helpless officer; a man only doing his job, a man who had only been so close to the jail cell to help Riley. John had coached Riley into playing the man, using the empathy and compassion John had picked up on when they’d been locked in the grimy, disgusting cell, as a weapon against that man.




“Lo siento, Senor,” he said, a wave of guilt washing over him like a wave. He knew that any apology would be inadequate. It made him feel something for the guard, it made him believe he had only acted because he had been forced to act to protect himself and Riley. This was his fault and his responsibility and he accepted that.



What did Cameron say to me? Being John Connor means I care? John snorted, feeling the puff of air on his lip.



He fumbled quickly for the guard’s handcuffs and his head shot up, fear flashing across his face as he heard the crack of gunshots. With the call from earlier he’d known his mom may have been in trouble… capture. Now everything fit; Cromartie was here. His head flicked towards a second set of gunshots, the cracks growing in intensity as Cromartie began his trek through the prison in his search for John Connor.


He heard a clink and the handcuffs were secured to the guard and the prison cell. Now he needed to concentrate and get Riley out of here.


John wouldn’t let anything happen to her. He cared about her.


“Riley… RILEY… listen to me. If you see daylight, you, you run. Understand? You run if you see daylight!” he yelled at her, grabbing her wrist. He ignored the guard pleading to be freed. Undeniable guilt washed over John as he left the man at the mercy of the killing machine stalking and killing its way through the Mexican police station.



He ran out and jumped over a guard slumped against a door frame, maybe dead, maybe alive. He wasn’t sure. It was the same police officer who’d gotten Riley last night at the restaurant.


He saw a dark blur and then someone grabbed him. John spun around, his fists already starting to move.


“John, John, JOHN! I’m here to help!”


It was Ellison, former Special Agent James Ellison.



John didn’t even bother to question him or stop running. He saw the man was scared, he flinched when he heard a series of gunshot, and John knew the former FBI man had no idea just what he was getting into. That didn’t matter, not there, not now. John needed allies and Ellison was here to help.


Against his better judgment, against his fear he would bring death to another man today he nodded furiously, waving for Ellison to come with him.


“Let’s go,” John said, his voice sounding calm but his body anything but.



He and Ellison ran outside, his pupils constricted as he came into the hot, bright orange-yellow Mexican sun. His hands shot up to shield his eyes and the young man frantically searched for Riley.

He couldn’t let anything happen to her… he couldn’t find her. He pushed a fleeing man out his way, almost to run into a woman dressed in her Day of the Dead costume. John stumbled on a discarded skeleton someone had tossed to the side as dozens around him ran for their lives.

There, he saw her, running scared, her arms flailing by her side as she ran and staggered away at the same time.



“Riley!” He shouted. She couldn’t hear him. There were still cracks of gunfire from the jail. He heard a crack-crack. The killer was close.

“Riley!” He yelled louder. He breathed out when he saw her slow down. She heard him. “Riley! Get in the card! Get in the car!” Somehow he had closed the distance to her and now he was yelling right in her ear and shoving her forward. He reached out and grabbed her by the waist and his large strides forced him to pull and drag her towards the convertible.



He jumped in after her into the passenger seat, his heart racing. He hadn’t been this scared, not with Cromartie, since he shot at him at school in 1999; not even the pier attack had frightened him this much. But then he had had Cameron with him to protect him, even if he hadn’t known it.



“Oh God!” He heard Riley scream, the piercing screech loud enough to shatter glass.

John didn’t have time to comfort her; he had to stay focused on getting himself, Riley, and now an in-over-his-head FBI agent out of danger.



Ellison expertly shot the car in reverse as Cromartie came out of the police station, a nine mm Glock in one hand and in the other an MP5. Firearms akimbo he began firing bullet after bullet at John Connor, using his firearms as an expression of his murderous intent towards the young, frightened man



“Stay down!” Ellison yelled as he continued driving the car in reverse. The bumps and potholes in the dirt road kept jumping the car.

The terminator-precision aiming was thrown off as Cromartie began running forward, the terminator itself having to contend with the bumps and potholes of the road, throwing off its aiming. Bullets met for John or Ellison seemed to miss as if only due to divine intervention. Neither were meant to die this day.

The two heard the windshield splinter and Ellisons from shards of glass rain down and cut his bald cranium as he ducked, trying to bury his head as far as he could in his body. John bent and ducked under the dash, his left hand and arm holding Riley down.


John felt himself thrown into the side of the door as Ellison twisted and spun the wheel, trying to keep his attention split between the machine aiming to kill them all, and the buildings behind him. He felt a searing, thumping pain shoot through his ribs and up his back and around his shoulders from the impact.

The dirt and dust, being kicked up from the dry, hot road started getting in Ellison’s eyes and into his lungs. Coughing, he spun the wheel and the car slid ninety degrees behind a building.



“Are you okay? Are you okay?!” John frantically yelled to Riley, who he had been cover in the back seat. He was half scrambling over the seat before she revealed herself. She nodded quickly. He could see the fear in her face. “Damnit, why did I bring you hear?” John asked himself under his breath as he turned back around.


Being John Connor meant you blamed yourself when others were put in danger.

You bring danger into her life, Cameron had told him less than twelve hours ago.


In that instant as glass rained down on him- shimmied loose from the windshield by the jumping car, dirt covering his face, and sweat mixing the dirt into a light mud and stinging his eyes, he understood why Future John was so lonely. There were less people to get killed if you never had anyone.


He jumped back into the front see and his eyes glazed over as he saw a shotgun laying on the floor, begging for him to take it and fight, do what John Connor did and fight. Ellison jammed the stick into drive, the gears whirring, and hit the gas. Unfortunately, they drove right pass Cromartie, who now shot up the side of the car. Ping-ping-ping-ping was all John could hear. He thanked God all Cromartie had was a pistol and MP5 and nothing heavier. He tried to use what he’d been taught; focus out the noises and the distractions around him and concentrate.

There was the horrendously bad music blaring from the radio, screams from townspeople, and Ellison saying something, and Riley still screaming, and his heart pounding so loud he could hear it in his ear.

“Hand me the shells!” He yelled to Riley when he saw her with a box. They were slugs, so they might slow down the homicidal robot chasing him. Might, he repeated… maybe... not likely, he corrected himself.



Riley began handing him shotgun shells when she yelped, jumping forward, spilling the box of slugs, and told him frantically there was something in the back seat.


“Stop the car, stop the car!” He yelled, pounding on the seat back excitedly. He grabbed onto Ellison’s arm when the man kept ignoring. “I said stop the car!” he hissed.


John then looked back, extending his hand to Riley to grab hers and tell her everything would be alright. He didn’t know what they’d find in the trunk… some person Cromartie had kidnapped? He was hoping that ‘person’ would be his mom, but he couldn’t let himself hold onto false hope. John pushed that back, gripping the shotgun until his knuckles turned white and his hand ached. He had to be ready.



“Alright,” the former special agent growled, his tone making it clear he thought this was a bad idea. Ellison shot John a contemptuous look, but the teen was concentrating on his girlfriend, completely ignoring the former agent now. He turned the wheel to a side street, which ended up being a dead-end. Then he slammed on the breaks.


John shoved open the passenger door, ignoring the dust clogging his lungs and starting to burn his eyes.


He cocked the shotgun, and hearing the click of a shotgun shell loaded into the chamber, pressed the gun in tight to his shoulder. He took a staggered breath and looked over his shoulder to make sure his girlfriend was safe.

Riley was standing behind him, fidgeting with her hands.

Ellison stood to the right side of the trunk, his finger on the release. John, taking command, nodded to Ellison to open the trunk.



The person who was in there, holding a torn Coke can as some crude, pathetic weapon, or a testament to this person’s will to fight, blood gushing down their arm and wetting their shirt, surprised them all.



“Sarah Connor… James Ellison. I’m here to help,” he said, reaching down.



=======================================



He rented the honeymoon suite? Sarah asked herself, smirking, when she, John, Ellison, and Riley fell into the room, exhausted. Inspecting the room, it was a bit… dirty, and Sarah told herself that was being generous. Even with a killer robot down the road she had to give herself a moment to take in the ridiculous scene in front of her… the honeymoon suite?

She and Ellison went to one corner of the room, where the hot tub was (Sarah observed it was fairly grimy and dirty… not safe) and John and Riley were in the other room, separated by half a tattered curtain.


“It was following me… watching me,” James Ellison said absently, like he was revealing a deep, hidden secret. He stared at his hands and breathed in and out slowly. Years with the FBI, the massacre of the HRT, and this was the closest he felt to death. The machine had spared his life, had professed to ‘believe’ in him, and hoped he could lead the death dealer to the Connors. “It was watching me…” he repeated again, quietly.



Sarah stood unabashed and focused in front of the FBI G-man, staring him down. The left side of her mouth flicked into a utterly condescending half-smile.



“And you thought it would be a good idea to come down here, to Mexico? What if you led him to John?”



James looked up, keeping the anger inside from boiling over. He’d come to help them. He didn’t believe she could seriously ask that question, not after they found her in the trunks of Cromartie’s car. He had no idea what her motivations were for asking him that question, and if it were not for his FBI training, he would have obsessed over it and let her question distract him.


He snorted, too low for her to hear. He’d been out of practice for almost a year, but taking a moment he knew the tactic. He wasn’t going to play.


“I wasn’t the one in the trunk.” He managed to say. It was short and to the point. He wanted to say more, his lungs and heart burnt to say more, but he didn’t.


He couldn’t believe the… pride of the woman standing in front of her, but he couldn’t judge her. Her son had been shot at, she had been kidnapped. God taught forgiveness and silently he gave it to her. He’d tried to understand her for years now… and he saw how wrong he’d been about everything concerning this woman.

Ellison looked at her. He didn’t see a crazy domestic terrorist who had escaped Pescadaro mental hospital but a woman fighting against something which would make hardened warriors break down. And she’d done it while raising a son and protecting him and training him.

It was remarkable.

It was love he saw in her eyes, love for her son.

Ellison looked up, catching a Sarah giving her soon a look.


Everything she had said… that was the difference between man and machine, that was why she fought; he saw the love she had for her son.



Sarah had looked at her son, then quickly moved her eyes then her head back to face Ellison, knowing he was judging her. The Skynet hunter sneered and turned again, presenting her side to the FBI man who had hunted her. She turned and watched John as he explained what to do to Riley.


The way the sunlight was coming in from the windows gave her a silhouette as she faced the two teenagers; one the future leader of Mankind, the other a helpless young girl, a girl who said she didn’t want to leave and run from John. Sarah almost, almost admired her dedication. But if it weren’t for the ill-mannered, blond-haired foster kid, her son wouldn’t be here now.

For a moment she hated the girl before feeling sorry for her.


Sarah had been looking over at the two young teenagers. Her son’s life had been marked by loss and danger. And now he’d brought Riley in on it.

She would always love and protect her son no matter what, but she couldn’t ignore his childish, selfish behavior over the last few months. He’d neglected his training shortly after returning from Presidio Alto, and the last time he’d been to the range shooting or out training with Derek and… Cameron… he hadn’t even helped her track down the thieves who had broken into their house. He could have used his computer skills to help find them, but instead… Sarah stopped her introspection, branding it counter-productive and inane concerning the situation they were in.

Her son was alive. That was all that mattered for now.

They’d find a way past Cromartie. They’d finish him here.


Sarah’s thoughts drifted back to Riley, who was holding John’s hand, still begging him to allow her to stay and fight. The more she watched the girl, the angrier she became. She felt he arms, back, and legs tense… as the four took refuge in the honeymoon sweet she saw the two people responsible for them being here. Before she could yell she looked down, away from half the cause of her anger.

She kept her eyes glued on the dirty floorboards and steadily let her eye drift up and out through a crack in the window shade. She could see people still running, a pair of cars gunning away from the village. She heard Riley’s weak, tired, scared voice as she pleaded over something else… and Sarah gritted her teeth. Because of carelessness three young men were dead, boys… and she knew the fourth she had spared had been captured… killed by Cromartie.

Four deaths. Four needless, senseless deaths at the hands of killing machines. Sarah took a staggered, forced breath in through her nose and coughed. She quickly brought her hand up and wiped away the dirt and dust which was caked on her nostrils.

The Skynet hunter moved forward and extended her hand to the blinds and moved the away. She saw banners and skeletons… the Day of the Dead. It was fitting.

She did look on at John, and for a fleeting second a smile washed over his lips. She was proud of how he was handling the situation, handling Riley. He told her to head east, to the bus stop. Comartie, the it which had attack them, wouldn’t follow her there. It wasn’t what they did.



But as much as things stayed the same, the more they changed. The terminator was out there, hunting them. It was time they stopped running.



=============================================



Riley Dawson, sixteen years old, blond haired, light green eyes, tunnel rat from the future, and whose favorite smoothie was peachy keen, stalked away from the Connors and the FBI man. She hadn’t waited for Derek and Cameron to meet the three others in the honeymoon suite.



She didn’t care now that the wind had kicked up, and that the blazing afternoon sun was beating down on her. She didn’t really care that her blond hair was dirty with the orange-red dust of the town, or that her clothes smelled of… whatever it was gunpowder smelled like. Phosphorous, it smelled like phosphorous.

It’s just, it didn’t have the usual smell of death and garbage and human shit to accompany the smell like in the tunnels. That’s why she didn’t recognize it at first.


I’ve been through worse, she told herself. And she had. Living off rats and trash, having to do… horrible things for others, to others, just to get a meal. Or what passed for a meal in the future. Those unlucky enough to be stuck in the tunnels, a meal was either rats, bugs, and trash. Anything except eating the dead was acceptable. That was still taboo. It was desecration.



She put her hand in her pocket and fingered the cash. About $250, in small bills no less, and that was plenty to get her home. I feel like a cheap hooker… he gives me cash to go away. Screw him.


She bit down on her teeth and clenched her fist around the wrinkled wads of bills still in her pocket. She wanted to go back and curse at the Great General Connor for treating her like some cheap… he could just toss her aside… he didn’t trust her with the truth.



He’d just explain to her that it was some crazy guy, maybe his dead dad got into some shady business, the guy was a hitman or something. Something crazy, ridiculous, and somewhat believable to the average girl… what some average blond bimbo would think is the truth.


An old van with a family speed by her on the road, bouncing and jumping as it hit potholes and bumps. She considered that they were probably running from the metal monster in town. She snorted at their race to flee. They couldn’t even stop to help her.


She breathed in, letting the warm air bathe her lungs. Bad decision. The dust forced her into a coughing fit, which forced her to keel over and put her hands on her knees.


Two pairs of brown, worn leather cowboy boots were on the edge of her vision, which kicked up more dust and grime into her eyes. She blinked her eyes rapidly as they began to tear up and with a quick motion wiped her eyes and stood up, throwing her disheveled hair out of her face with a flick of her head.



In the future, one had a sixth sense about dying. It was a feeling one got in the gut… when it wasn’t poisoning from radiation or chemicals. This was that feeling. This was that sense of impeding dread, unmistakable doom and assured death.

===================================

The T-888 cocked its head, looking into the sky. Its head shot back towards the earth when it heard a person yelp in fear and slide on the dirt, landing on their back. Its head cocked slightly to the left and a creepy smile snuck onto it face as it tried to assure the frightened woman it would not kill her.

She screamed and clawed her way backwards, disappearing behind an old, mango-painted building.

The machine concentrated, listening, watching for movement. It took half a dozen steps forwards and moved its head methodically from side to side, scanning. The damage from the bank vault and years in a junkyard had damaged the machine’s most sophisticated sensors beyond self-repair, forcing it to rely only on sight and sound.

Its left eye twitched.

In the distance he saw a flicker of movement and zoomed in. Its left eye narrowed, closing slightly as the creepy smile formed on the left side of his lips. Quickly, the machine jogged towards its target.


The figure bent down and stepped in front of the young woman. Cromartie recognized her.


“You lied to me,” its monotone voice declared.


Its hand shot out, grasping the weak, meaty throat of the human girl. It could feel the sweat, the chemicals of the human girl’s excited body leaking through her pores. The machine could hear and feel the racing, pounding heart in the girl’s chest. It tightened its grip until it was sure the girl could not escape.




“Riley Dawson,” the man, the machine, who had tried to kill John maybe a mere thirty minutes before stated factually, evenly, like it had not already determined it would kill her. “Where is he?”

It knew the question was pointless, but the question demanded to be asked… refusal to answer a justification for its actions.



“I’ll never help you,” she sneered, narrowing her eyes defiantly. “I’ll never help you get near him.”

It lifted her slowly off the ground. Her hands shot at his forearms, her finger nails digging into the flesh, making him bleed. It felt nothing.


The machine smiled. With the sun beating down, the white from its perfect teeth glittered back at her. It was an evil smile. It was iconic. The smile was the same which was pasted mockingly on the skulls of the foot soldiers of Skynet. It was the smile of demons.

Cromartie brought her in closer and closer until it couldn’t stand the dirty smell of the human, its sweat and odor forcing its olfactory receptors into overdrive. It wrinkled its nose unapologetically.

With a look of what would only be disgust the machine extended its arm, shooting Riley out, the girl screaming in pain. It tightened its grip even more until it felt the girl’s heart rate and blood pressure spike from the pressure in which he squeezed her neck.

“We’ll see,” it sneered coldly.



=============================================



The town was deserted. Even in the hands of a murderous machine from the future, Riley thought how appropriate it would be for some tumbleweed to come rolling down the street in front of her.

Riley saw, out of the corner of her hopeless eye, a few people looking on from their windows; frightened and afraid for their own lives. They didn’t know the man stalking, hunting through the center of their village, a predator, a killer, was a machine from the future designed for the sole purpose of exterminating human life.

It didn’t matter what the thing was. What mattered was its mission.

A half dozen bullet holes were carved diagonally into the side of a car in front of her, only one of the many marks of death she saw. The girl looked around, seeing the trash, the overturned carts, lost clothing, and a handful of dead bodies from Cromartie’s rampage.

In this secluded enclave on the Baja California peninsula the police lay dead in their station, not that they could do anything, and the people hid in fear. The machine had destroyed the only telephone pole running into town and the poverty of the village meant few had cell phones.

No one would come. Not in time to make a difference at least.


Except for a few either too devoted or stubborn to leave their homes or too frightened and frozen to flee, the town, it was a ghost town. Fitting, for what day it was. The Day of the Dead. Riley didn’t know how many police officers had died. She saw four, maybe five. And she didn’t know how many others had died in the T-888’s shooting spree.

Jesse had told her, after Derek had told Jesse, about Cromartie.

Riley’s thoughts drifted to Jesse and how much she had just wanted to run away with her, to somewhere nice, somewhere where it would have just been Jesse and Riley, Riley and Jesse… but she was a ‘soldier’, conscripted into this war with the promise of paradise. The young girl knew she would soon be cast out of this paradise.

Feeling the cold, hard hands of the machine around the back of her neck she remembered how brave she’d been not so long ago in standing up to the machine and fooling it into leaving. She had felt proud… her ‘spooky ninja’ skills had saver her, saved John. Saved him.


Now she was in the center of the dusty, deserted street, lined with abandoned cars, with Cromartie’s hand on the back of her neck, pushing her forward. He had a pistol tucked into his pants, and an MP5K in his left hand, pointing at the sky.



Looking over at him, Riley didn’t understand why the machine was squinting. It wasn’t like sunlight affected their vision.



“You are very brave,” it said to her. He stopped and tightened his grip on the back of her neck. Flexing, he brought her around to face him. “The polite response is ‘thank you’, Ms. Dawson.”


“Go to hell,” the defiant teenager from the future screeched.



She swore she saw the machine sneer at her before it resumed walking, pushing her along.


Looking ahead, pushing Riley forward the machine began explaining its observations to her.

“John Connor… is not so brave. He sends people to die for him. He sent you to die. He sent you to die while he runs away.”

“He said you wouldn’t… you wouldn’t go after me…”

The machine halted and turned her around. A mockingly condescending look appeared on its face, asking Riley how she could believe that.

Riley didn’t answer.


“He’s good at that, you understand? Sending others to die” The machine observed. “You would lead me to him. He sent you to distract me while he flees.”

The machine considered if the human girl would understand he was lying to her. Skynet had downloaded extensive psychological files relating to John Connor to the T-888 known as ‘Cromartie’. However, this John Connor had contradicted the conclusions of 2027 Skynet on how the young general would behave.


The machine stopped again and again made Riley face him. A look of disgust washed over his face before returning back to its blank, expressionless, default stare. Any sort of life… bastardization of life, Riley saw in that momentary flash from the machine’s face were gone now.



It cocked its head left, then right. “There is something about you Ms. Dawson. I know now he was in the house when I came. The pictures in the house were not of you- you were not taking them. You were protecting him.”

The machine stopped in its tracks. Riley stared at it in disbelief, as if it had frozen.


“Yeah? So?” She hissed through her teeth at him. The it. Her tone dared him to answer.


“You’re not afraid.” He declared with a vicious smile. He looked her over slowly, very slowly. “You’re different.” He tightened his grip on the back of her neck. Any more pressure and he’d break the vertebrae. “Your behavior is irrational. I went to your home before I came here. You have foster parents. I accessed the LA County school system servers… you’re file lists two parents as deceased but your family records ended there- there was no record of your parents ever having existed. No Social Security number, no IRS receipts, no voter registration or DMV records.” The man brought her up to his face. “You’re not who you say you are.”


The machine holding Riley struggled to smile at her, the young girl watching on, disgusting at the machine’s actions.

Cromartie flashed his eyes. She stared at him, unblinking, the wind nipping at her drying orbs.


“You are from the future.”


She didn’t respond. But she saw a smile on the machine’s face, a glare of pride in its otherwise dark, glassy, lifeless eyes.


Again, it cocked its head. “You are from the future,” it stated. It was a fact now.


Riley closed her eyes. Jesse had told her this would be paradise but this wasn’t paradise. It was another bitter disappointment in a life marked with horror and punctuated by death.



The sun glittered on its white teeth again, and it smiled that evil smirk at her.

The wind blew through Riley’s dirty and matted hair and she could feel the hot breath of the terminator on her face.

“It’s doubtful John Connor knows of your origins. Let’s see if John Connor comes to rescue you.”


It sounded like it was almost taking… enjoyment out of taunting Riley like this. She knew it could have just killed her and mimicked her voice. Why was it doing this?


They walked through town. Like the outskirts, it was deserted. She and the machine saw James Ellison, and she wanted to scream. But she held herself back. This had to be a trick. No way Ellison would just walk through the street like that, so casual, get a medical kit, and walk back to the church. They had to be planning something.


Forward, the machine walked, pushing the girl in front of him. This was the closest and longest she’d ever gotten to a machine. There was the obvious exception. And this was the closest since 2026 when a squad of T-600s had killed her friends.


They opened the doors, and Ellison was there, praying under the cross. Cromartie saw him stand up and leave through a side door. The damage from the bank vault prevented the terminator from tracking him on motion scanners once he left.


“Ms. Dawson, call to him,” it commanded as it tightened it grip. She remained defiantly quiet. “Ms. Dawson, your services are no longer required. Thank you for your time…” Cromartie said quietly. He spun her around and grabbed her neck. He pressed his pistol into her stomach and saw her eyes lock with his. A muffled crack, Riley’s body flinched and Cromartie stared into the soon-to-be lifeless eyes of Riley Dawson and for some odd reason Cromartie wasn’t even sure of, laid her down slowly on the dusty, creaking floorboards of the old church.



========================================


“Riley? Riley!”


She looked up. She saw a line of blood on John Connor’s cheek. Squinting, she could tell it wasn’t his. It… was hers?


Oh… she realized.


She felt a dull pain in her abdomen, with a warm, viscous liquid rushing down both her flanks.


She felt her head slip to the side and she could see the Cromartie’s body splayed in front of the altar, half of its face missing as the sun’s light beat down on its head through the dusty church.

Riley felt John’s hands on her cheeks, and a blink of her eyes she was looking up at him.

John… I… she wanted to tell him something. She felt her lips moving. Her eyelids were getting heavier and heavier. John was shaking her now. She felt that. She wanted him to keep touching her. The machine was touching her. She didn’t want that.


She pushed Cameron away and Riley’s eyes widened when she saw her own hand covered in blood, smeared now across the machine girl’s jacket and hand.. She saw John snarl something at his machine protector who merely looked at him, stood, and took a step back, remaining rigid and stiff.


Riley felt her lips moving, the afternoon sun fading, casting a myriad of reds and blues and greens from the stained glass windows over her body. She felt a tear drop from John’s eyes onto her cheek. She smiled.


She knew he was sensing her death was imminent, and she was trying to mumble something. She could see him shaking. And he leaned down.



“John…” she said quietly. But she wasn’t sure if she said it. “I know… I did this for you.” She felt the world slipping. She knew how cliché she would sound, laying here, dying, but she had one more thing to say.

She wasn’t sure if she said it, and she was even less sure if he heard it. His ear was still by her mouth and she knew her lips had moved, just not if anything more than a whimper had come out.

She wanted to know if John Connor, the great General, had heard her, had even loved her.

She saw his lips move, but she didn’t hear anything. If even for a minute, the savior of Mankind had been hers- she didn’t need to hear anything from him. She only wondered if he had heard her.

[Bryan]

CHAPTER TWO

||||||||||==Archway Plaza Building, San Diego (2 November 2008, 3:30AM)==||||||||||



Doctor Peter Carwin took off his glasses and gently massaged his nose bridge as he let out a deep, labored sigh. His eyes were hurting from too many hours behind a computer and too much squinting at small numbers, equations, and lines of code. He blinked hard and looked towards the fall wall of the office, remembering the advice of his optometrist to focus on something ‘far away.’


He didn’t understand why the company hadn’t built them separate offices. He rolled his eyes but decided to keep putting up with it; the company paid too well. Dr. Carwin had a salary many researchers would kill for. Adding his salary, generous compensation packages, and the royalties he received from his employer for his inventions it came to the high seven figures.

Life had been good to him and he felt blessed.

Right now he didn’t feel as much blessed as he did chilly, cold in fact. He’d grown up in Maine and lived briefly in Winnipeg, Canada when growing up. The first opportunity he’d had after he had unhooked himself from his parents’ yoke was move south. Way south. He’d tried Florida but found the humidity excruciatingly annoying and disgusting… people smelled. He tried to settle in Arizona but found it too hot and arid. Finally he had settled in California, San Diego, a city he considered to be perfect. The weather was mild, neither too hot nor too cold, and the ocean was brisk but exhilarating, and the people had an energy one couldn’t find anywhere else. It was a resort city with a traditional and professional, business-like core.

He fit right in.

Except he felt cold.


“Sam!” he shouted across their work space/laboratory. He tried to yell again, but his voice cracked and wheezed… his lungs were still hoarse from a yelling match he had gotten into with one of his competitors over the phone. He had accused them of stealing one of his ideas and planting a ‘mole’ into his staff.

His partner didn’t respond and continued typing away furiously on his laptop, occasionally leaning over to manipulate some diagram on the Microsoft Surface pads on their desks.

Carwin breathed out snatched a drafting eraser from his desk and threw it at the back of his friend’s head.





It hit Sam square in the ear.


“Damnit, Pete, what the fuck?” Dr. Sam Wells shouted as he tugged out his iPod plugs and let them bang on his desk and fall into his lap. “Cheap plastic shit,” he cursed, trying to untangle the ear bud cord which had somehow wrapped around his fingers. Finally having enough, he flailed his arm, which sent his iPod flying across the room. “Damnit!” He shot up and stalked over to the device.


“Why the hell do you make it so cold in here?” asked the doctor, grin still wide on his face from his successful attempt to bother his friend. He crossed his arms and fake shivered. “It’s like the Arctic in here,” he said with a tinge of humor.


Sam rolled his eyes. “You’re a pussy that’s why.”


“That’s very mature,” he uttered under his breath. He rubbed his eyes again; sleep biting at the back of his mind, tempting his eyelids to close for just a minute. “Is that how you’re going to speak at the conference next month? There’ll be the best people in our field there.”


Wells stopped trying to untangle his mess and walked over to Peter’s desk. He slid out a chair from a workstation one of the dozens of lab assistants used, and sat down with back facing Pete. He rested his chin on the back top of the chair, forearm underneath for comfort.


“Our ‘field’? What is our ‘field’, exactly?” Sam snorted, leaning back. “God damnit, you know I hate talking in front of those idiots. How many more times are we going to have to answer the same question about the null logic keys and… whenever we bring up the theories on temporal mechanics we get the obnoxious twerps who must tell us it is impossible.” Exacerbated at the mentally taxing thought of how he was going to mount his intellectual defense of the Carwin-Wells Supra Communication Theory (Sam was still annoyed his friend won the coin toss to get his name first) which could revolutionize communications technology from everything from CPUs to radios to the internet.


“Now who’s the pussy?” Carwin asked, putting his thoughts into words. He grinned and started chomping down on his teeth, making the inane rattling sound he knew Sam hated. “We ran circles around them. Once we’re done with the modeling for tachyon communications… it’ll revolutionize everything.”

“Only if we call it the fatline.”

“We’re not calling it that,” Carwin shot back. “Something original…

Sam ignored him and continued mouthing off fictional names for tachyon-based communication systems he’d read of in science fiction.

“Where are all our workers? Jack and Kim need to get off their honeymoon…” Sam asked suddenly, now bored with his previous imaginations.


“I don’t know,” Pete responded, leaning further back, grunting, and rubbing his temples. His ran his hands through his short blond hair, then dug his fingers into his scalp and scratched at an itch. “We have a deadline for this new theoretical quantum entanglement models. Fire a couple of them… the students from the university, that’ll force the rest to stay until we leave.”


“You’re a slave driver, you know that? Hey, how much did you bribe the guy to reappraise that mansion of yours on the island?” He shook his head as he slid across the far side of the room to where the server stacks and hard drives were locked and secured behind bullet proof glass cases. Tapping on the glass, he said, “You wont be much good to me in jail, Pete. Actually… maybe I should tell the Coronado police and then I can get a raise from Blacklake.”


Carwin sneered and leaned forward, throwing his elbows on his desk and pushing his keyboard and leaning onto his Microsoft Surface desktop display.

The new null logic keys were required for the Q-entanglement models he and Sam were working on could revolutionize communications, and already they’d made significant progress in chip architecture technology- hoping to get Moore’s Law renamed Carwin-Wells or the Wells-Carwin Law... doubling computer power every eighteen months would seem like a snail’s pace if their theory worked itself out.

Carwin and Wells were hoping their new communications models would introduce ‘temporal’ messaging- nearly instantaneous transmission and interpretation of data.


God damnit, what now, Peter cursed to himself when he heard his Blackberry vibrate. He looked towards the ceiling and promised the Lord he’d say prayers on his Rosary for taking His name in vain.

Slowly he held the phone up to his ear and hit the green button. “Yes Dear? Our daughter isn’t back?… she texted me earlier, yeah, I’m sorry I forgot… she’ll be fine… no, we raised a responsible daughter… okay… I have some work to do… I love you, too.”


Holy shit, I think I just aged a decade, Carwin thought, looking at the phone and mechanically hitting the red ‘end’ button on his Blackberry and tossing it to the far corner of his desk. Letting out a deep, long, very long sigh he let his head fall slowly to his desk. After one, two, three soft bangs and he looked back up.


Sam rolled himself over in two powerful pumps with his legs and banged softly onto the desk.

“Daughter problems?” He asked.

“No… she’ll be fine, she has a good head on her shoulders,” Pete said, focusing back on his computer monitors.

“She’s a genius, you’re lucky you have a daughter who’ll outshine you one day.”


Carwin smirked and closed his eyes. “Yes, thank you.” He hit the ‘return’ key on his keyboard a bit too hard.

He sighed and looked over to his right at his Blackberry and his car keys. If he wanted he could get a driver to take him home, but he preferred to drive himself. “It’s not even worth it to go home, since we’re coming back at six.”

“Bah. Take the day off, Mr. Slave Driver. Anyway, we have Christmas coming up in six weeks… you know, I think most of the staff isn’t here because they might be on vacation already,” he said to get a rise out of his friend. “We do give them some vacation. Armcam is pretty good about it. They are fairly generous, ya know?” He arched his eyebrows up. “Anyway, I’m going on a trip to the east coast to visit the in-laws.” He made a gun with his finger and thumb, a fake cocking sound, put it up to his temple and yelled ‘bang’. “Please, kill me… now.”


Pete began to reach down to his lower right drawer-


“Seriously? You got a concealed carry and… you’re ridiculous, Pete.” He shook his head. “I bet you have a DE or something in there… a hand canon or something utterly ridiculous. You’ll shoot it and your weak arms wont be able to absorb the recoil and the gun will fly back and break your nose. We have plenty of security here, Pete. I went into their armory once; they have some big shit in there. Not bad,” he whistled.



Sam stalked over without a care to the large windows overlooking the dark bay and the San Diego airport. The building, Archway Plaza, the west tower, was forty-two floors and wedged in between Ash and A Street and 2nd and 3rd Avenue and next to the Westgate Plaza Mall. The west tower was the largest of the two, and the east tower was only twenty-nine floors.

A subsidy of Armcam, Blacklake Aerospace had purchased the company Carwin and Wells had founded, the Argo Development Corporation, in 2001 and moved them to the Archway Plaza building in 2002.

From the thirty-third floor he could see over the buildings, aligned at a diagonal with his and Pete’s workspace and off at the airport.

He stretched, and let out a long, deep yawn. He snickered when he heard Pete sigh across the lab, annoyed with the disturbance. It was late, too late.

“Shit,” he muttered. It was nearly four. He rubbed his eyes and smacked his lips, running hs tongue over his teeth and around his mouth. It tastes stale, old, like he’d been asleep, but he hadn’t been.

“Alright, Pete,” Sam declared, walking quickly over to his friend and grabbing his own jacket from his chair, “it’s time to get home to our wives.”

When Pete began to protest Sam grabbed him under his arm pit and pulled him up.

“Sam, I have a shit ton of work to do,” he said, shoving Sam off and leaning down to finish typing and drawing on his self-programmed and modified Surface desktop.

“Pete, I’m not going to stop bothering you. We have a month to finish and maybe, maybe three weeks of work left. We’ll be good. Let’s go.”

“God. Fine, fine… let me… save the files,” he said, his tongue coming between his teeth, like the act to click ‘file’ and ‘save’ was as mentally taxing as theoretical physics. His finger slid quickly and efficiently over the keys, and hitting ‘control, s’ saved the files. Standing up he let out a deep, defeated sigh. “Fine, let’s go.”

Sam smirked and patted the back of his friend a few times. He knew if he didn’t keep it up, Pete would throw himself back to his work station and into his models and programming.

In the hall the two passed a lone security guard, making his rounds.

“Evening Al,” Dr. Wells said, giving the man a tired smile.

“Dr. Wells, Dr. Carwin,” Albert greeted, nodding his head. “Late night?”

“Oh yeah… deadlines and all that coming up, gotta pay the bills. The lab’s all locked up though.”

Al smiled. “I still have to check it. Protocol and all that.” He shrugged. “I believe you though.”

“You going to bring your fiancée around so we can meet her?” Sam asked as he turned to face Al and walked backwards.

Al smiled, and looked away. Closing one eye as if thinking he nodded once. “I think she’ll be up for that at some point.” He wrinkled his nose and breathed out slowly. “But she gets a mean case of vertigo when riding elevators… so, hopefully.” He arched his eyebrows expectantly.

Sam waved, snickering. “Alright. Well, Pete and I are heading home. We’ll see you in the PM.”

The security guard smiled a goodbye turned and walked towards the lab. “Good night… or morning, or something…!” he shouted and gave them a backwards wave.

Sam and Pete finally made it to the private elevator servicing their labs. When Sam heard the doors close and felt the downward jolt of the elevator he finally breathed out, satisfied that Pete was safe from the perils of overwork.

In the parking garage and loading dock a company driver waited for them. Pete and Sam often shared the same car, since Sam lived in a high rise apartment penthouse on the way to the Coronado Bridge. Plus it was just their ‘thing.’ Pete always got picked up first then they swung by Sam’s. In the evening Sam got dropped off first and then Pete.

“Maybe one day they’ll let us take the helicopter home?” Sam asked as he looked over at Pete, who was walking and typing on his Blackberry.

Neither of them were paying attention when they got into the car. Blacklake and Armcam contracted out a local service to drive them both home at night when they stayed late; both their wives had insisted.

After a few minutes Sam looked over to Pete, who was fiddling with his Blackberry with a scowl plastered right on the center of his face.

“What’s wrong?” Sam sighed, leaning back into the leather seats and closing his eyes.


“I don’t know… signal isn’t getting through,” he said, resorting to the timeless tactic of hitting the device with the side of his hand.

“A great computer scientist and you resort to smacking it with your hand,” Sam pointed out, laughing. “Here, use mine,” he reached into his pocket and handed him his phone, still with his eyes closed. Pete just batted it away. “No signal with mine, either,” Sam said, holding up his phone and furling his eyebrows. Strange, he thought.

The car stopped, and Pete and Sam saw a man approach from the side, who promptly opened the door and got in across from the two, facing them. The car then casually accelerated to the speed limit, turning away onto 5th Avenue then taking a right on G Street. Sam and Pete were alarmed now, searching frantically for where they were going. The man across from them just sat there, calm and collected.

“What the hell is going on?!” Pete yelled as the car passed the last green light and merged onto Highway Five. “Who the hell are you?”

“Dr. Carwin and Dr. Wells, please relax. I am Agent William Vansen with the Department of Defense,” he explained, reaching into his suit pocket and flipping open his identification.

“Yeah, so? What’s with the theatrics?” Pete dourly demanded as he gave the man’s badge a cursory inspection. He didn’t bother to read it and didn’t care much what agency this man was with, he just wanted to get home now.

“Theatrics? No. Not theatrics. Necessity. I apologize, Dr. Wells and Dr. Carwin. But your expertise is needed. We have a helicopter waiting at the airport. If you are patient, everything will be explained to you.”

“I doubt that,” Sam replied under his breath.

“Don’t, Dr. Wells. I’m here to help you. We all are. Your research is very important; temporal mechanics, quantum modeling… everything. I read your August 2006 paper in Proceedings of the Nation Academy of Sciences of the United States of America,” he beamed, smiling, almost child-like in joy. Vansen noticed Wells brush him off. His face changed immediately to a blank, impassive stare. “It was your article on Tachyon Bursts and Quantum Tunneling, a Perspective of Temporal Manipulation for Near Instantaneous Communication.”

Sam narrowed his eyes at the man, his brow furling down at the radical change in behavior.

“I’m sure you have,” Sam muttered under his breath as he turned away from the agent.

William Vansen remained motionless for a few long, beating seconds before turning his head, aligning it perfectly with his body and spine, moving only to guarantee his passengers remained calm.




==========Connor Residence (3 November 2008 1:15PM)==========



Being John Connor can be lonely, John told himself. He’d repeated that statement over and over again in his mind. Being John Connor can be lonely… being John Connor can be lonely.

Staring at the ceiling, half hidden by a lazy hand covering his eyes, he once again told himself that life wasn’t fair. He was acutely aware of the cliché nature of his sixteen year old, soon-to-be seventeen year old, thought processes.


John felt a brief pang through his chest when he temporarily thought of himself as the ‘typical’ seventeen year old, male, hormonal, rebelling, take-you-pick-of-stereotypes, teenager.

He tapped his forehead with that same lazy hand covering his eyes. He wasn’t like any run-of-the-mill teenager. He, John Connor (!), was supposed to be a great leader of man… rally the survivors of the nuclear holocaust which still seemed well on its way… but he couldn’t save the ones closest to himself.

The young teenager huffed, a bit too hard, a bit of spittle splattering on his wrist. Moaning, he let his hand and arm slump to his side and he rubbed the moisture away into his bed sheets.


He looked around at the room his mother had assigned to him. It was a kid’s room. It had kiddy wall paper and lame propeller planes smeared about. He sat on his equally lame kid’s bed with its red, blue, and yellow crescent headboard, barely large enough for two…


John sat up as if in revelation, remembering that being him meant he was ‘supposed’ to notice things others didn’t. Derek said John Connor recognized flaws in Skynet troop movements, patterns in their strategies and tactics, and holes in their defenses. He would see something and analyze it even if he wasn’t looking for it… whatever that ambiguous ‘it’ was supposed to be.

He was supposed to just know what to do.

He looked around his small kiddy room, quietly brooding, listening to the soft hum of air escaping from the baseboard vents spaced around his room.


The first day he’d met Riley, Riley Dawson, she had spent the night. He grinned at that thought. Two sixteen year old kids ‘spending the night’ often resulted in… things. Things? Is that my best word for it, John questioned to himself.

The teen shook his head. Maybe he did mean ‘things’… it wasn’t like he’d had a very active social life. Going from school to school he was the ‘weird new kid’… so he’d never learned the essential social/talking-to-girl skills most kids learned in school.

He had a rough idea what the ‘things’ were a sixteen year old was supposed to do with a girl when alone in a room, late at night… he shook his head, none of that mattered now.

That night they’d just spent talking. He’d enjoyed it. He talked. She talked. There was silence. Then he talked again and then she talked. More silence as they seemed to connect on some level… his friend real friend since Tim.

Laughing quietly he remember all the little exploits he and Tim had… he remembered he got the cash for them, Tim supplied the transportation and had warned him about the police man, the terminator searching for him… that was a friend.


John’s thoughts drifted back to his first night with Riley. They talked and then he fell asleep. He hadn’t stopped then to wonder what she had done while he was sleeping.


So, noticing the thing he wasn’t looking for, he shook that thought from his head and refocused. In the plastic Tupperware there were the Legos. With a sigh he twisted his body and rolled himself off his tiny bed. His feet hit the floor, cold, and he brought them back up. Looking over at the clock, it was almost noon. With some quick mental math he determined he’d spent nearly fifteen hours in the bed.


His stomach growled, and he looked down. Patting it, he looked for a shirt in a room which looked like a warzone. He grunted at the imagery.


He looked around again, his tired and bored eyes lingering about the clutter on the floor and his dresser.

“I guess John Baum lives here,” he said aloud in the mocking, condescending tone his uncle had used on him in the past. He allowed himself a moment of introspection he didn’t want.



He put his feet back down, slowly this time on the floor. It was cold, just like his life He stood up and walked over and yanked out the Tupperware bin.



Riffling through the Legos, half built dinosaurs, houses and pirate ships he pulled out the robot Riley had built for him.

“It’s a robot, big scary man, whatever. He’s for you. To protect you while you sleep,” he remembered her saying. He picked up the big scary man robot, the multicolored robot, and flipped it around and upside down in his hands. Carefully, he twirled one of the arms. Riley had used some weird new Lego ball-and-socketjoint (whatever happened to simple blocks?) to make moveable appendages.



He felt a small dribble from his nose and brought his other hand up to wipe it. Then a little drop fell on the robot, the big scary man Lego. Looking down at it he lost focus on it, and the big scary man Lego got blurry.

John was jolted back when he heard a crash and something scatter across the wood floor. Looking down the Lego had somehow slipped from his surprisingly sweaty hand. Feeling slightly dizzy he stalked over to his bed and fell face first into its soft embrace, the weak springs propelling him back up just an inch, and let out a deep throated moan as his face settled into his pillow.


“I know… I did this for you…” Those had been Riley’s words, the word’s she’d whispered to him.

He reached back and with a fist, struck his pillow once, then again.

Was there anyone who would just be honest with him?

John Connor reached back a third time, to hit the little kiddy pillow again, but stopped mid swing. With a slow, cautious movement he put his hand down onto his bed, palm down, then brought his other hand and arm to mimic the motion. He pushed up and looked around. Biting his lip his looked down at the floor, at the robot, the big scary man Lego had shattered into a hundred components and multicolored pieces.


This isn’t John Connor, he told himself.


||||||||||==Somewhere in California (4 November 2008 1:15PM)==||||||||||



Peter Carwin shook nervously as he breathed in staggered, labored breaths. He began tensing his right leg, a nervous tic he’d developed over the last couple of… he didn’t know… he realized then he didn’t know how long he’d been kidnapped for.

He closed his eyes, shaking his head and biting down repeatedly on his teeth, listening to their tap-tap-taps as he slowly calmed down.

The scientists opened his eyes, held his breath, and then released… his body calming.

He looked out across from him and beside him, at the depressing walls, the gleaming metal table and the reflecting light almost blinding him. He closed down, pressing his heavy-feeling eyelids shut.

How long had it been since he’d last slept? He didn’t know and didn’t want to know.


Dr. Carwin opened his eyes at the end of his breath and looked around. Again he saw the bleak, dreary gray walls boxing him in. He focused. He saw a water stain running down the side of the door frame… a large black pipe running overhead and disappearing into the wall, and a rectangular, plastic looking pipe… fiber optic pipes. He squinted, his mouth falling as he considered the enigma of where he was?

In front of him were two individuals, a man and woman. Next to him sat his best friend and colleague, Sam Wells and in front of them both was positioned a cold, silvery metal table, as utilitarian and boring as the metal chairs he and Wells were forced to sit in.

Vansen stood behind the two, mere inches from their backs.


How fucking clichéd, he told himself.


He sighed and looked over at his best friend and colleague, Sam Wells. His friend looked back, giving him a reassuring smile.


Carwin looked at Vansen and focused on the imposing figure, measuring up the man who had kidnapped him and his friend. The ‘agent’ had lied to them, drugged them, and transported them somewhere… to this bunker or whatever it was. So far he’d seen two rooms, a small cell and now this room, and two hallways. It was depressing, melancholic, saddening, dispiriting…


“Are you fucking Al-Qaeda? They paying you? Fucking traitors,” Sam said with a disdainful, accusatory venom. He knew he was grasping at phantoms, but his mind was fractured and disorganized, and he had yelled the first thing that had come to him.


“No, no, we’re not Al-Qaeda, Sam,” the unidentified man on the right confidently stated. “And no, we’re not traitors. While we are from what you could consider the United States… we are hardly Americans. Therefore it is impossible to betray this… nation. So we are not traitors, either,” the man said with a satisfactory grin. It was clear from his tone he held allegiance to no nation.



Sam narrowed his darkening eyes at him, puffing out his chest and squirming forward in his chair.



“So what do you want with us?” Pete asked. Sitting so straight and stiff forced him to tilt his head to his right shoulder, forcing a relieving crack-crack-crack of cervical vertebrae to relieve him of some tension.

“I don’t think you’d believe us, even if we told you,” an unidentified woman on the left of the two scientists stated tiredly. “I’m sorry… my name is Rachel,” she introduced herself as she brought her hand to her chest.


Pete looked over. ‘Rachel’ was pretty. Young, and very pretty. She had dirty blond hair, gentle facial features, full lips, and light eyes, almost a blue-gray. The scientist guessed she couldn’t be any older than the late twenties.

To the scientist she seemed to have an eclectic mix of ethnic features about her; a mix of northern European with some African, maybe some Arab, and a hint of Chinese or East Asian. Whatever it was, the scientist was enamored with her beauty.

The man on the other hand was older, maybe in his fifties, with black skin and gray streaks through his close-cut hair. He had a squared off jaw and broad, powerful shoulders. Pete looked down at the man’s hands and could see scars running jagged and haphazardly.

The most distinguishing feature was a burn mark which covered the right side of his neck and right in front of his ear and a scar on the left side of face, right near the corner of the lip and stopping under the left eye. A slight discoloration had left a bit of the man’s dark face a slight pinkish color, beginning in front of the man’s ear at the scar and ending an inch forward.


Pete looked the man in the eye and saw emptiness in the man’s dark brown orbs, a distant stare one saw in soldiers- the glazing- and Pete wondered if this man had been a soldier… maybe Vietnam? The way he sat told the scientist this man was a leader, an organizer.



Pete finally focused back and remembered the statement Rachel had made. He flashed the woman a mocking smile. “Try me,” he ordered, somewhat desperately. He wanted answers. He needed answers.


“Yeah, try us,” Sam said, folding his arms, trying to sound cocky.

“Dr. Carwin,” Rachel began, then turned to his associated, “Dr. Wells… there are forces in this world, magnificent and malevolent forces which would work to destroy everything you know and hold of value. Like your mansion you just had re-appraised,” she said. “Did you ever wonder where some of the advances you worked on came from?



Pete leered at her. He’d seen plenty of bad movies where the interrogators try and get some emotional rise out of the people. Now he wondered if she was accusing them of industrial espionage, stealing secrets or something ridiculous.

“What?” Sam asked.

“You two have been working on various technologies such as AI, chip architecture, and communications… and the patents you have submitted for Armcam have made them billions- hundreds of billions. But we know that not all those ideas are yours… they came from somewhere else. You had help and inspiration which pushed your research into new realms you never dreamt off,” she trailed off, watching their reactions. The left side of her lips quivered into a smirk when she saw Sam’s eyes narrow.

Her eyes wandered and seemed to soften when she looked between the men and up, towards the imposing ‘Agent’ Vansen. Sam wasn’t paying attention, but Pete noticed.

“Blacklake purchased our company… and so what… there’s always something inspiring someone else-”

The older gentleman across from the two scientists answered. “We’ve been watching Blacklake for some time and Armcam… you don’t know who you were working for.”

Rachel nodded, a string of hair falling down from behind her ear. Delicately she tucked it back and let her hand fall gracefully to the table. “I’m not talking about ‘something’, I’m talking about specific ideas- the specific piece of hardware for your… ‘fatline’ messaging, which requires the null logic keys you are working on… Armcam tasked you with working on this, did they not?” She asked. She noted the two didn’t answer, an admission, she concluded. “I know you have seen technology you didn’t know existed, ideas which seemed radical and impossible, only to have them proven to be realistic and very possible. You were pushed in certain directions, given certain incentives to look for something you had dismissed…” she ended her elaboration, noting the two scientists understood her point.


Pete gave Sam a gentle backhanded tap in the side of the arm when Rachel used the term for their tachyon-based communications model Sam had wanted.

“The null logic keys are something we’ve been considering for years,” Pete filled in for her. “We only began working on them a few years ago.”

“Exactly. And what motivated you to work on the keys? The ultimate extension of the logic keys and tachyon communication models you are working on… do you know? It would be able to fold space and created temporal displacement events.”

“You’re talking about time travel?” Sam snickered. “Maybe in a few hundred years we might be able to send a particle back in time... We’ll be lucky to have the fatline built in the next two decades.” He beamed with pride when he repeated the unofficial name for the communication system. He shrugged dismissively, a light groan escaping his throat. “I mean, we think it will be possible but not for a long, long time. A long time,” he stressed again.

Rachel tilted her head, a flicker of a knowing smile beginning to form.

“Hundreds of years?” She asked. Sam noted the rhetorical tone. “Well…” she folded her arms in front of her, “Mr. Vansen will familiarize you with what you will be doing for us. And why do you say this can lead to time travel at your lectures?”

“Because it can doesn’t mean it will,” Pete pointed out. He’d dug his chin into his chest and was staring intently at the two, the woman and the man, dividing his attention now between them. “More likely we could use it to build a computer, a true AI.” He shrugged.


She smiled wide, showing unnaturally white, straight, and perfect teeth.



“Dr. Wells,” the man on the right began, “You can believe us. We need you. I would appeal to your sense of self-preservation, as anything alive does have one, or appeal your desire to discover. I don’t know which is more important to you. But believe us when we say we have methods to force your cooperation. Methods which will not be pleasant for you, methods we will employ, reluctantly, but with professionalism and in a manner designed to bring about the desired result. We can do this all without damaging your mind or your body.”



“And what’s going to happen when the company finds out we’re missing? It’s not like we aren’t known,” Dr. Carwin told him sternly. “We just can’t ‘disappear’.”



“Of course, you are absolutely correct,” the man on the right said with an agreeable tone and a nod. “But we have resources which will make… certain things happen. And it won’t matter in a few years, anyway,” he said, leaning back. “Besides, you should want to work with us. We’re going to win.”



“Win what?” the skeptical scientist asked.



“Yeah, win what? You don’t look like Al-Qaeda, but you certainly act like a bunch of terrorists. Who are you working for? Because now you two are sounding like some sort of corporate thieves or… this is just damn odd.” He sighed and narrowed his eyes at the two across from him as his shoulders dropped in exhausted disgust over this.


“That’s not your concern,” Rachel said in a sweet voice. “If you cooperate than we can guarantee that when the time comes, your family will be safe and you will be safe. You’ll all be safe, and reunited.”



“Ha,” Sam huffed. “I’ve seen enough bad movies and read enough trashy novels to know that when the bad guys, aka, you all, make promises, you’re just going to break them,” he said as he looked away and stared down at the bare cement floor. “And safe means something like ‘safe in death’ after you kill us.”

“You haven’t been mistreated or-”

“Except for the kidnapping,” Carwin interrupted. He ended his statement with an exaggerated roll of his eyes. Then he sat back and scooted his metal chair against the cement floor, causing an ear-piercing screech.

He and Sam flinched, but he was surprised when neither of the two across from his did. His shoulders dropped.

“The company you were working for, Armcam, do you know their history?” the woman asked, leaning forward, looking from one to the other.

“Look it up on Wikipedia,” Sam snidely offered.

Pete looked at Rachel then back at Vansen. The look she had given Vansen earlier he had expected him to step forward and somehow threaten he and Sam. Vansen looked down at him, an eerie , forced smile crossing his lips, which seemed to strain under the pressure. Pete turned his head back towards Rachel and the man, his eyes darting side to side at the strange sight he’d witnessed.

“Wikipedia has information useful to the public, Dr. Wells. Armcam is not just a technology corporation with their military contracts and other-”

Pete rolled his eyes and snickered. “Here we go… military-industrial complex, evil company, blah blah blah, right?” he slapped his knee, frustrated.


“They haven’t been honest in where some of those ideas have come from,” Rachel said. She held up her hand as Pete began to open his mouth, shushing him. “That’s all you will know now. You’ll know more later.”


Pete swore that if they were going to use him, he would use them. He didn’t doubt his intelligence, his intellect and his ability to manipulate them. What he and Sam had done in the last ten years had been groundbreaking. If he could crack the code to time, he could trick these… people, into trusting him.

The young woman methodically ran her eyes over the two men, leaning forward and placing her palms on the cool metal table. It sent a small shiver up her body.

“What we’re doing here… it’s important. You two are men of faith… are you familiar with Matthew… Chapter Seven?” Rachel asked.

“The false prophets?” Pete asked harshly. “…people who present themselves in sheep clothing, but are ravenous wolves? Yes,” he sneered. “How fitting and clichéd.”

“The next one, Doctor Carwin,” she said. “We do mighty deeds, but not all of us do the right deeds, Dr. Carwin.” She began to stand, but sat back down. “And yes… you should be aware of the false prophet,” she stated quietly and looked down at the table and over to the elderly, dark-skinned man next to her. “He can’t stop what’s coming.”

The man shook his he slowly in agreement.

“What does that even mean?” Sam shot at her, unconcerned with the repercussions of agitating his captors.

“It means once you realize the truth, once you learn it for yourselves, you’ll join us willingly.” She saw the confusion, laced with a liberal amount of contempt and astonishment sweep across their faces. “That means we can’t tell you, not now, not until you’re ready.”


The man stood up and nodded to Rachel, putting a hand on her shoulder before he let it slide gently off her shoulder as he walked towards the door.


The door opened, and the elderly man exited first. Rachel stood up and made it to the door before she placed her hand on the frame and turned back to face the two men sitting, still trying to understand what they had seen between Rachel and a man easily twice her age.


She ignored their stares, looking at them but over them, towards the barren and gray concrete wall, she carefully licked her lips before speaking.


“Dr. Wells and Dr. Carwin,” she began tacitly as she took two well-intentioned steps forward. “We know much about the both of you, we’ve been watching you, and we chose you. We all did.” Her eyebrows arched and she ignored their confused, baffled stares. “We also trust you both to do what is right. What we are doing… is it right? Maybe… if not… we’re all judged in death. I hope it is, I have faith that it is, but I fear it isn’t.” She looked down at them both. “We can’t stop progress and we can’t stop the sounding of the trumpets, but we can dull their noise. Don’t betray us,” she warned.

She looked up at Vansen and nodded to him. He stepped forward and placed his hands on the two men’s’ shoulders. Giving both men one last, long look Rachel forced herself a depressing smile and left.



==========================

Pete and Sam had obviously been expecting for Vansen to take them by their collars and shove them in a dingy cell, lock some cool, rusty metal door, and be done with them until they were needed for whatever Rachel and that man were planning. Where Vansen did ‘escort’ them, was completely unexpected for either of the two scientists expecting something bad and preparing for something even worse.

Seeing it, they were both shocked, more in a dumbfounded manner than a surprised one. The ‘it’ was a large apartment, apparently build underground like the rest of the facility. It was large, perhaps even opulent compared to the rest of their surroundings.


The structural design was similar to Wells’s industrial loft in downtown San Diego. The main room was quite large and open. Immediately on the left was situated a kitchen of respectable size with what appeared to be top-of-the-line appliance, granite countertops, and a small bit of space for eating. The rest of the room had a mix of furniture and open spaces, mimicking the in-style ‘great rooms’ many new constructions were built with. Bookshelves lined the left wall, there were two computer workstations about half way in, and at the rear was a very large plasma flatscreen television, sofas and recliners.



“You will both share these quarters, but there are individual rooms down this hall,” ‘Agent’ Vansen said, stepping from behind the two and indicating the necessary hall. “Each room is fully furnished, dimensions approximately twenty-five by thirty feet. You will find we have selected a wardrobe for you similar to the ones you possessed.” He walked over in front of them and faced them. “These quarters are divided into a great room, with entertainment center, kitchen and attached dining facility, a small office, and down the hallway next to the kitchen is a small workout facility for your use.” He walked back in front of the quiet scientists and clasped his hands behind his back. “Any recreational materials you may need you can request and I will determine if they are appropriate.”


Carwin leered at him and took a menacing step forward. Vansen held his ground and maintained the same cheerful smile and relaxed posture.


“Comfortable? We’ve been kidnapped and thrown into a dungeon. That’s what this is,” he threw his hands up and motioned all around, making circles, horizontal slashes, and half a dozen other gestures in the air. He searched around frantically and found a wall decoration; a vase on a floating shelf. He picked it up and tossed it to the marble surrounding the entrance, letting it break. “This is just fantasy. You people are twisted. This is like… what… I don’t know, fucking playing house. I’m not going to do it.”


“Dr. Carwin. If this is the attitude you are going to have, our time together is going to be very unpleasant. I have been assigned to protect you. You and Dr. Wells,” he nodded to the silent scientist who was staring at the broken vase. The hundreds of pieces had shattered and were splayed in front of Vansen’s feet. “You and Dr. Wells do not understand how… lucky… you two are. There are many out there who would not treat you as well as we are.”



“And who is this ‘we’?!” Carwin shouted, pounding his fist down on the floating shelf, almost knocking it loose.



“Dr. Carwin… I can either explain everything to you, or you can discover the truth on your own. I have no doubt you will soon begin to ask questions.” He held up his finger. “More specific questions than the broad one you just asked. When you have observed your surroundings and have formulated more precise questions, I will gladly answer them. Now, you two may want to choose which rooms you will want.” He smirked. “Each one, we believe, has been suited to your personal style. Though we were unsure when we modeled your rooms if it was your personal style, or the styles your respective wives chose,” he shrugged. “But we hope it is comforting, or at least, familiar. Please, explore the premises. I will be here if you need me,” his eyes narrowed, “cleaning up your mess Dr. Carwin. My primary assignment is to not clean up after temper tantrums, but I shall this time. Please, do not do that again.”



==========Los Angeles National Forrest (6 November 2008 (9:45PM)==========

The blackness, the stars dotting the sky, and a chance to get away from it all had encouraged hundreds of hikers to make for the Los Angeles National Forest. Away from the yellow, orange, and white lights of the urban landscape, far from suburbia, those seeking a private, quiet, perhaps even intimate night saw this time as an opportunity. The unseasonably warm weather had made many in Los Angeles restless with some taking their extra energy out for a night of hiking, camping, and sleeping under the stars.



Kelly and Richard Carson, two middle-aged, yuppie-wannabe hikers from the Burbank area of the expansive LA county had taken this night and the opportunities presented by it and embrace it.

Richard had surprised his wife shortly before dinner with a small dinner of sandwiches, crackers, and Brie, he’d bought from Trader Joe’s, with a small bottle of red wine, and had literally sweeping her off her feet like newlyweds, drove her to the Forest and to the San Gabriel Reservoir.

They’d found a little clearing right near the reservoir after parking their car off EE Fork Road, and hiked in a mile around the eastern edge of the reservoir, where the main water body split to form a rough ‘Y’.



They’d seen a few other couples hiking along, mostly young to middle-age people such as themselves, and a few families out with teenaged children. A friendly couple had even walked with them for about half a mile, before the two women had said their goodbyes and turned off on a side path.

Kelly and Richard had heard them giggling to each other as they’d left. Richard had leaned over after they were out of ear-shot and told his wife, more like implied it, that he had more than just ‘diner’ planned for them.



Remembering that as he stared up, he had to laugh and rub his side where Kelly had jabbed him. They’d be married for seven years now… and hopefully tonight would be the night where they finally got lucky and Kelly would be pregnant.



“I think I’ve teased you long enough,” Kelly said, rolling over on top of Richard, who was on his back with his hand behind his head as a pillow. She listened to his heavy breathing and placed her hands on his powerful chest. “I think you’ve… earned a little treat…” she winked.



“Oh yeah?” He asked, his turn to tease her and feign ignorance. “You mean me and the guys can have that trip to Vegas next month?” He grinned. She playfully hit in him the chest before wrapping her arms around the back of his head and leaning in for a deep kiss.



The kiss was long and deep, the man and woman wrapped in a loving embrace as they began to-

A piercing crack-boom and a wave of pressure and gusts of wind raced over the two lovers, jolting them from their world and back into a frightening reality. Kelly, stunned and frightened, rolled over off of Richard, propping herself up on her elbows, stared wide-eyed, mouth gaping open out towards the water.

The water was puffing steam into the air and the reeds and grasses along the bank was blowing softly away towards the two lovers.


“What the hell is that?” Richard asked, fixated on the sight. He wrapped his arm tighly around Kelly’s waist and pulled her closer as they both slowly stood to watch.

They were both shaking.


As the two looked on blue-black lightning began to radiate outwards, seemingly from nowhere, before it coalesced into a dark black ball. They stared at the blackness, an abyss of darkness as its sides crackled and shot bolt after bolt towards the water and into the sky.

A bolt struck the shoreline, melting the dirt and sand into a fine glass. Kelly jumped back as a second bolt bore itself into the ground, lighting a path of fire over the reeds and grasses as it traveled.

They both backed up cautiously, afraid, but mesmerized into a state of near paralysis by the dark, Cimmerian orb.

Neither of them had ever seen anything this beautiful, this stunning if their lives. They knew what they were looking at was dangerous, the lightning strike proof enough, but it was captivating. Their mouths hung open and their eyes sparkled with an intense concentration, reflecting the growing orb of light in their lenses.

The black, dark focal point suddenly expanded and dozens of bolts of lightning shot out, vaporizing and steaming the water beneath. There was more crackling and a loud boom. The sphere pulsed once, then twice, the hair on the onlooker’s arms standing straight. A third pulse and a sudden, second-long pulse of the blue-black bolts surged out, digging into the bank and water, sending steaming geysers into the air and melting the sand into a dirty, darkened glass.

The pulses stopped and the sphere vanished, sucking the water up in a fit of negative pressure.



They both heard a splash.



“What the hell was that, Richard?” Kelly asked, whispering. She dared to step forward a bit until she was almost right on the water’s edge. She bent down, poking timidly at the melted sand. She squeaked in surprise when her poking broke a thin sheet.

Kelly looked out towards the water, looking for the source of the splash, bobbing her head and neck up and down and sideways. She studied the water, still rippling out and lapping onto the shoreline from where the sphere had appeared and vanished. “Richard, look,” she said, patting him on the arm to get his attention.


She was pointing out at a set of glowing lights, spaced only a few inches apart as they neared the surface of the water.



“What in the world…” Richard said. A head appeared, quickly, then it paused. “What the hell is that?” Richard yelled. He took a few steps back and tripped over Kelly, and using his hands and feet, pushed himself back up to the blanket he and Kelly had been laying on. Fumbling around the backpack he brought, he grabbed a flashlight and pepper spray.



Trying to click it on, he cursed then hit the side. A beam flickered then went out, then flickered again. He finally for the flashlight working, and his hand shaking, he held it out towards the reservoir, where he saw the head and the two lights.


“Where the hell… what was that?” Kelly asked her husband as the two crept closer to the edge.

He swung the flashlight around, searching for whatever they’d seen. Richard had his index finger poised over the pepper spray canister trigger release, ready for action. Peering out and squinting, he used the hand hold the pepper spray to gently push back his wife.



“Come on… let’s get out of here. Call the cops.”

[Bryan]

CHAPTER THREE



==========Connor Residence (6 November 2008)==========

John came down the creaky wooden steps of the house slowly, placing one foot in front of the other with a diligence and precaution he never knew he possessed. He didn’t really want to confront his mom or Derek at the moment.

But he couldn’t sneak by her.

“John,” he stopped mid-stride when he heard the voice behind him, at the top of the stairs. It was soft, but suspicious.

How the hell did she get up there? John asked himself. He swore he had listened to her go down stairs on patrol. Why was she there? Was she waiting for him?


Stopping like he had been caught with his hand in the cookie jar, he brought himself to his full height but kept his back to her. “Yes, Cameron?” He asked coolly. He felt his jaw muscles flicker as he waited for her response.

“Where are you going?” she asked tentatively, waiting to gauge his response before she continued. He was dressed in shorts and a tee-shirt, with running shoes.

She watched John’s shoulder slump, as if a new burden had been cast on top of him.

He grinded his teeth and closed his eyes. He kept his eyes closed and prayed she would not press the issue. Reluctantly he felt his mouth opening and his throat vibrating as he began to answer.


“I’m going for a run. Down to Griffith Park, maybe a walk, I don’t know. Something besides sitting here in my room like I have for the last couple of uh… days,” he over-explained. He heard her coming down the stairs and he turned around on the landing. “Why?”


“John… I should go with you,” she said slowly. Her voice was quiet.

She debated bringing up Riley. John had spent months with her. He had put himself in danger to spend time with her. She replayed the memory of him running from her at the computer store and again when he’d implied he would not see Riley again.


The detailed files she kept on human psychology informed her that such a relationship of that duration usually resulted in prolonged feelings of sadness, even mild depression.

Cameron accessed her memory files, digging deeper in her quick analysis of John’s behavior. John had seen her approximately on one hundred and forty-six separate occasions and spent over six hundred and thirty-eight hours with her.


“I’d like to go alone,” John said. He counted the stairs Cameron had stepped down. She was two behind him. “Be alone. Cromartie’s dead,” his voice cracked.


Cameron tilted her head at this.


“John,” Cameron said. “There are dangers.”


He closed his eyes at the use of his name.


“Well, I’m going now,” he turned swiftly and mechanically examined her She was wearing black cargo fatigues, her black tank top… he thought it was very similar to what she’d worn in Mexico… but no shoes, which he found odd. “And you’re not dressed for running.”


She took a step forward. “Then I will have to run in this.” She ran the next statement through her neural net interaction subroutines. They recommended against the next line, but she overrode them.

“ I might look like a freak, though,” she said lightly, forcing herself to smile for John’s benefit at the memory, before her own smile faded back to its neutral, passive line. John’s scowl informed her the comment may have had the opposite effect of what she had been hoping for.

She looked down, hanging her head at her failure.

As a machine she could read the most minute change in facial features- micro expressions of the face and body were able to be scientifically linked with emotions and motivations. Even if she could not understand the emotion, she could academically differentiate them. Unfortunately, looking at the floor, she could not see the sympathy which flashed over John’s face.


Sighing, he turned back around and threw himself over and onto the couch. “Fine,” he smacked his knees, “five minutes then I’m gone, whether you’re ready or not.” He looked over to the TV remote and debated turning on the television to something, but a Thursday at a quarter past ten in the morning didn’t have much on. He figured he could watch a trashy talk show for a few minutes.


He turned the TV off after flipping through the first few channels. Sensing something wrong he flickered his ears back… it was completely silent.


“Where’s mom and Derek?” He asked himself in quiet contemplation.


“They’re out,” Cameron said, surprising John. He almost jumped off the couch, but caught himself. He hadn’t even realized he’d asked himself the question out loud. “They’re going to retrieve Cromartie’s body. They should be there in two hours. If traffic conditions are optimal, John,” she added with a matter-of-fact tone.


John looked her over again. She’d changed, quickly, as usual, into a pink Nike tank top and some short, very short, black Nike shorts and running shoes.


“Finally… ready, now?” He sighed in frustration, crossing his arms.


“It took me sixty-four seconds to get ready. Faster than you.”


John looked her over once more before looking quickly at the door and getting up. He needed to escape the house and clear his mind, stay active. As he opened the door and let Cameron out first, he followed her down the steps. He felt something inside of him, struggling to get to the surface. Something told him everything would be changing.


==========================================



John had spent his early, impressionable years growing up in hot, humid climates. The jungles of South and Central America weren’t just hot; they had a drowning humidity to them where he felt he could swim through the air at times. The impression that had left was that he would take the dry heat of LA over the hot and humid climate of the jungle any day.


Deftly dodging a black Ford Taurus pulling out of a driveway, he thought back to a few weeks he’d spent in Florida when he was… nine or ten, he believed. It was… he was trying to remember… after he and his mom came back from South America. Yes, that was right. They’d come in by boat to Florida and his mom had somehow found the money to pay for a two week hotel stay on the beach, the Gulf coast side.


He didn’t know how his mom had gotten the money… he didn’t really want to know. Up until shooting forward in time and coming across Cameron and Derek (and their impressive skills related to thievery, particularly diamonds) they’d never had much money since his mom had been forced to take odd jobs which required little paperwork or references. They didn’t want to make a trail anyone could follow.

Their life depended on leaving behind the smallest footprint they could.


John had loved the two weeks he and his mom had spent in Florida, on the Gulf coast, playing on the white beaches and swimming in the clear waters and having sandwiches and juice boxes on the beach. Despite the drenching humidity, which he hated, it had been one of the best times he’d ever had.

He and his mom, the inseparable duo he remembered, running around and splashing each other in the water. Even as a kid, knowing what was out there, that moment in time had been his and his mom’s, theirs forever. He’d felt truly safe with her then.


“We’ve run five point three miles John,” Cameron said, interrupting his thoughts. “Do you wish to return to the house?” She asked.



His muscles suddenly began aching with the unwanted and unappreciated statement on how far they’d run. He wanted to sarcastically thank her for jolting him away from his thoughts, but he still felt good enough to continue. And he didn’t want to spoil this moment by saying anything negative. He didn’t respond. Instead he just sped up as he saw Griffith Park up ahead.


Once inside, he dodged and weaved around some slower people; an older couple walking hand in hand, and a group of young kids playing and running around and screaming. He focused a little too long on the scene, the normalcy of it, and almost ploughed into another couple walking.

Thankfully Cameron alerted him before he did, and with an artful dodge and plant of his right foot, shot to the left and barely averted them. He threw back a ‘Sorry!’ for brushing against them and more than likely leaving behind a bit of sweat as evidence of his intrusion.



“Cameron, you’re… n-not even… s-sweating,” John said, shooting her a quick glance. He guessed they’d hit six miles, and he felt like he’d been running a bit faster than usual, and his muscles and lungs began to ache. He pressed on, letting the light breeze at his back carry him forward in defiance of his body urging him to stop.


“My thermoregulatory abilities are far more efficient than humans,” she stated. “My power core is capable of sustaining significantly higher speeds at higher environmental temperatures and humidity for far longer periods of time before showing signs of thermoregulatory failure.”



“So… you’ll sweat if y-you… run faster and a lot l-longer?” John managed to say. He pumped back his arms to give himself a little boost.


“That is partially correct. However, I will not sweat profusely. My body does not possess large quantities of excess water.”


“So… how do you c-cool… yourself then?”


Cameron looked over at him, while still maintaining her pace, and gave him a stoic look. “You don’t want to know.”

The teenager debate pressing the issue but then he noticed Cameron was two steps in front of him. She’d maintained a perfect side-by-side position with him since they’d begun.



What the hell? Is she racing me? He questioned. He sped up and matched her. Then she was two steps in front of him again. He sped up a second time. She and he repeated this maybe six, seven more times.


“Man bro’ she’s beatin’ you good!” John heard another jogger yell as he approached.


“Yeah, yeah,” John shot back, dismissing the other guy. If only he knew what was under there.


After a half mile of running through the park playing ‘Chase the Cyborg’ John was finally giving in to exhaustion as his muscles began demanding more oxygen than his lungs could supply. Cameron, who was still in front of him slowed down as well without even having to look back, her sensors alerting her to John’s decreasing speed.


She twirled around, the pony tail she’d tied her hair into flopping over her shoulder.


“Did I win?” She asked.

John looked at her quizzically.

“Win? Were we playing a game?” John managed to ask between breaths as his body tried with all its tired effort to oxygenate his muscles. He had his hands on his knees and was hunched over.



“John, you should stand up, it is better than bending down because you may cramp,” Cameron reminded him dutifully. John was going to remain hunched over, but he could already feel the cramps. Gritting his teeth he stood up. When he did so, he saw a small lip smile. “And yes. I increased my speed, you attempted to match and surpass mine. You attempted this for point six two miles. Many would classify that as an undeclared contest.”



The future leader of mankind grunted. He admitted that yeah, it had been a contest. “Sure… you win…” he declared as he grabbed his shirt and started pulling it back and forth to fan himself.


“Thank you.” John noticed she hesitated, but wanted to say something else. “It is almost eleven thirty.”


“Hm… wait, so it’s almost eleven thirty in how many seconds,” he grinned.


Cameron cocked her head. “It is now exactly eleven thirty… and two seconds. There is a hot dog stand behind us a quarter mile if you want lunch.”


“I didn’t bring any money,” he said reluctantly. Bringing his hand to his stomach, he did feel that common pang of hunger, and he swore his stomach growled at that exact moment just to spite him. Last night he’d thrown in a pepperoni Hot Pocket into the microwave and then stalked back up to his room.


Walking back and forth he kept his eyes on Cameron, not needing to cool down or stretch, standing there idly, patiently waiting, and watching him and the others run by. He knew she got nervous, or whatever killer robots from the future got, when he was out in wide open spaces like this.

She’d wanted to buy him a treadmill so he could run in the basement… which he considered a nice gesture, or a tactically sound one. He’d declined… something about running in the basement with blood on the walls (which his mother refused to cover) was a bit too freaky creepy for him. Just thinking about it now sent a shiver down his back in the seventy-degree weather.


“So… what to do now?” John wondered aloud, blowing out between his lips and looking off into the interior of the park, looking at but over the shoulder of his machine protector.


Cameron slowly reached into a hidden pocket in the inside of her waistband and pulled out a $20 bill. She held it up, with her look on her face like it was a treasure, or some devious secret between the two of them she was excited to reveal.



Ten minutes later after waiting in a line which seemed way too long for a park hot dog stand, John had his hotdog and a bottle of water. Cameron had one as well, plus her own bottle of water. He was surprised she’d actually spoken up right before he could say ‘No, that’s all,’ when the vendor asked him if he wanted anything else.



They’d found a spot on the grass, and with a long, tired groan John sat down and propped his back against a tree with a thud. Cameron, in her machine precision, crossed one leg over the other and lowered herself until she sat cross legged facing John. He figured it was to watch for threats behind him.


John finished his hot dog fairly quickly then snapped open the seal on the water bottle and took a long swig. Trying to drink too much at once, he took a large gulp and started coughing and choking, and ended up dribbling water all over his shirt.


“Damnit,” he muttered, wiping off his chin with a swipe from the back of his hand. He looked over at Cameron, who was looking at him, but her eyes were fixed passed him, scanning. That little something he’d felt at the house started to peck at him again. John couldn’t help but think that a human girl would have laughed at his little display drooling display.


He looked back out into the park and people-watched for a minute before noticing her hot dog had only one, maybe two small bites nibbled from it.


“Are you going to finish that?” He asked, eyes arching as he eyed the presumably psuedo-meat product inside a soggy bun his machine protector was holding delicately in hand.


“No. But if we are going to return to the house in a timely manner, John, extra food may upset your stomach. It will be less of a challenge for me to win another race,” she said in her typical, matter-of-fact monotone.

Again, John thought a human girl would have at least smiled or done something. She made a potentially fun challenge (as fun as it was to race a cyborg) sound dull and boring.


He shrugged as he refocused on the food and casually reached over for the hot dog. “Thanks, Cameron,” he said with a bit of sardonic undertones.

He wasn’t going to let good food… well, food, go to waste. One, two, three big bites and it was gone. He thought he spied a flash of annoyance on Cameron’s face at his disregard for her advice.

Wiping his face and taking a long, but careful drink out of his water bottle he smacked his lips and stretched out. He had a nice rest, and he figured it was probably a bit past noon at the moment.

Looking around the park he furled his brown and frowned. Most of the park patrons were either young adults, office workers out for lunch, or people other than teenagers who were supposed to be in school. He felt a bit out of place.


“We should get back to the house,” John declared, setting his hands on his hips and focusing his gaze back out of the park, down the long boulevard, and squinting to see if he could see the house from the park. “We’ve got what… like six miles to go?”

His cyborg protector used her hands to push herself up, and she scooped up her trash and handed it to John. “Yes, like six miles to go,” she said. Without thinking John took the trash from her and walked over and tossed it into a bin. Cameron was following up behind him. “But you just ate two hot dogs. You may vomit.”


Cameron was, in truth, less concerned about his physical state and more concerned about his mental well-being. An upset stomach was a minor inconvenience. A troubled mind was something else entirely. As she looked at John throw the trash away the burning, permanent image of him sitting in his room after his gun had ‘accidentally’ discharged flashed through her neural net. She felt the anticipation and dread as she’d leapt up the stairs with Sarah and Derek.

Sarah and Derek, she remembered with a clarity only a machine could posses, had pulled their guns. They’d thought someone had shot John, some intruder. Before Cameron had even landed one foot on the floor as she rushed to John’s room she had known the gunshot was not some attacker, but his own… there had been no one with him. It had just been him. Alone.


The trash fell from John’s hand as Cameron watched, the entire memory raced through her neural net at such a speed the world had literally slowed to a crawl from Cameron’s perception.

As John turned Cameron noticed a tiredness in his eyes she hadn’t seen since she’d jumped back from 2027. It was a tiredness which was brought on by loss which she had watch cascade into antipathy and loathing.

The look bothered Cameron. She had heard John cry to himself over Riley’s death in bursts and fits, with the occasional fist or some other object being driven into the wall. Sarah had asked Cameron if John cried in the future. She has dodged the question.


The only concern John had shown Cameron was over Riley’s body the night after returning to LA. That question had only been followed with a ‘did you take care of it’? Cameron had nodded in the affirmative and simply mimicked his question, changing the wording into a statement.


She’d taken the body deep into the desert, dug a deep hole to prevent scavenging animals from appearing, and then put the body in. There was no ceremony, no wake, and no witnesses.

Cameron had then begun her elaborate charade to fool Riley’s foster parents into believe she were still alive.

She had called them from Las Vegas and told them she, posing as Riley, had appreciated everything they had done for her. She had said she just wanted to get away from it all and experience life, a faster-paced life than she had been living in the suburbs of LA. She had then carefully crafted a doctored image of Riley with a pair of random people Cameron had photographed and emailed the images to the foster parents from a new Gmail account and a laptop.

Cameron had rented a long-term storage locker and stored the cellphone and laptop and was planning to return to Las Vegas in approximetly fifteen days time and then again shortly after the New Year to continue the charade.


The memory and plan distracted Cameron long enough for her to noticed the change in John’s mood. She knew John cared about people, even if he didn’t show it. People were John’s problem. He cared.


John looked past her with what she saw as the calculating stare of the General and stopped a few feet behind her. “Well…” he shrugged, “think of it as training.” Looking back he saw Cameron’s head tilt. “In the future, to my understanding, you can’t tell the terminator to give you a minute while you stretch out and digest, right? What if I need to run?”


Cameron was about to answer, but he bolted away from her.


Smirking, Cameron tilted her head and chin into her chest. Future John doesn’t live here, this John does, she thought, then lunged after him.


====================


“How… how far are we from the house, Camer-“ John struggled and staggered into a half-crouch, and then threw up. He threw one hand up onto the back of a bench and stepped into the grass behind a bus stop and threw up. The other hand on his knee he bent down and gagged at seeing his own vomit, then threw up again.


“We’re point nine-two miles from the house, John,” Cameron answered. She was standing behind him with a passive look on her face, her hands hanging loose at her sides. To a casual passer-by they may have thought she was perversely intrigued by a young man vomiting.



John picked up on the little bit of stress she placed on the distance and chuckled slightly. He wrinkled his nose at the taste of vomit in his mouth and, swooshed his tongue around, then spit twice to get the remnant taste and chunks of hotdog out.


Smacking his lips, then licking them he had to spit again. A sour look washed over his face as he glanced sheepishly over at Cameron. “It tastes pretty bad coming up.”


“I warned you,” Cameron said, a little bit of a friendly taunt lacing the statement. But still, her gaze was passive and her eyes glassy.


“Bah,” John swung his hand down and out, like he was trying to throw her words back at her. “It’s training, right?”


“It is highly unlikely you would have evaded future terminators over a distance of nearly five miles, John.”


“Yeah… but if you’re with me,” he panted, still trying to catch his breath from the racing and the vomiting, “you could just carry me and run away, right?”


Cameron tilted her head and looked at John. John, looking at her, thought it was her customary tilt-when-confused mannerism. But this one was different. It was more of that’s-just-stupid sort of head tilt and look.

She also felt a sudden surge in her neural net at the implication he wanted her around for some time.


“Come on,” he motioned with his head for her to follow him.


The two walked quietly for about ten minutes, John still smacking his lips, trying to get the second taste of hotdogs and ketchup out of his mouth, and Cameron just walked next to him. Usually she would walk with a foot or so between her and John, but he kept noticing every couple minutes her shoulder would brush up against his.

“Cameron… did you.. uh…” he didn’t want to ask, but he had to. And he didn’t think there would be any better time than now. He was relaxed, for the most part, and outside. He wasn’t going to get mad and storm off like he had the day they were buying computers (the day Cromartie almost killed him the second time, at the pier he recalled). But he needed to know. “What did uh… what, uh, what did you do with Riley’s body,” he asked quietly, looking down at the pavement.



Cameron could go into details, with the specifics of how far into the desert she drove, where she buried the body, going to Las Vegas, but she decided a simple answer was the best answer.


“I went to the desert and buried her body, John.”


“I should have been there.”


“I’m sure she’s in a better place, John,” Cameron answered slowly.


He stopped and put his hand on her forearm. She stopped just as suddenly. As a machine, she didn’t feel discomfort or embarrassment around others. But the way John was staring at her…


“Are you saying that to make me feel better, or do you actually believe it?” He asked, tightening his grip on her arm.


In the nanosecond she processed possible answers, she considered that she could fool humans into believing her. Her vocalizer could synthesize the necessary vocal tones and pitch which her detailed psychological files told her had a positive, trustworthy affect on humans. She controlled her facial muscles with such a precision she could make herself appear as if she truly, genuinely believed what she was saying and fool anyone.


She didn’t want to fool John.


“Actually,” John held up his hand, “I don’t want an answer… not yet anyway. I know her soul’s in a better place.”


Something then happened John wasn’t expecting. Cameron brought her other hand up and put it over the hand he was still using to grab her forearm. She squeezed it once then let go.


“I know, too, John,” she said. She didn’t have to modulate her vocalizer for false sincerity. She believed that. As much as Cameron had seen Riley as a ‘threat’ he had still cared for her, and she had accepted that he cared for her.

Cameron understood that Riley had been his only connection to normalcy.



Slowly, he released her arm and turned without saying a word. Cameron was walking a few steps behind him, unsure if she should walk next to him. She’d seen John’s shock when her hand had gone up and squeeze his. Her neural net CPU hadn’t even registered the action of her hyperalloy arm moving up, and her servos flexing her fingers in to squeeze until her hand was already in motion.

A machine built for the death of humans, a terminator, was trying to comfort the one who would lead the fight to exterminate the other, the machines.


The irony was not lost on either of them.


As they passed street vendors they turned into the residential areas, and quickly the sounds of zooming cars decreased until there was a slight hum.


And unexpectedly, this time for Cameron, John slowed down his pace ever so subtly until he was again walking shoulder to shoulder with Cameron.

She focused her system resources on her facial muscles, the servos which controlled her posture and gait, and her CPU directed her chassis, with incredibly precision to keep walking as if John’s act meant nothing. As if she hadn’t noticed. She couldn’t let him see the effect he was having. Not now.


==========Mexico==========


“Damnit, Sarah, why didn’t we bring the Tin Can?” Derek complained, wiping sweat from his eyes. He blinked twice, hard, to get the salt out before his eyes started burning. Squinting, he looked at his green shirt, which was covered in dirt and dust. “Damnit,” he muttered. Using his shirt would just get more crap in his eyes.


He stood up and turned his back to the sun. He started blinking again as hard as he could, and finally got the sweat and salt out of his bloodshot eyes. Sarah stopped digging and half leaned and half collapsed into the side of the pit. Her clothes were probably twice as dirty as his. Derek looked her over and nodded. She certainly was the mother of the Future Leader of Mankind. He saw the determination in her he’d seen in The General in the future.


Not so much in John Connor recently, who’d been acting more like John Baum these last few months.


I thought the kid really stepped up at Presidio with Bedell… but after that, it’s been one let down after another, he said to himself, taking in a deep breath to let his muscles relax.



“Come on, Reese, no stopping,” she commanded, jumping back up to dig. “John needs some time. And someone needs to protect him.”


“He’s too close to the machine.”


Sarah scoffed at that. Not wanting to start an argument she just brought the shoulder up and jabbed it into the drying ground under her feet. Raising it again, she let out her frustration with everything by jamming it back down a second, then a third time.



“Ignoring me isn’t going to work, Sarah,” Derek pointed out, moving closer and standing over her. He jammed his shoulder into the dirt and took a half step closer again.


She kept the shovel lodged in the ground, but started wiggling it free. “I’d move, Reese, or you’re going to get this in your face when I bring it back up.”


“Whatever. Riley was a distraction, Sarah. He still looked-”


She threw the shovel down, letting it bounce back up on the dirt and into the wall of the pit. “Derek, I think I know my son. He’s close to the machine, even with Riley, I saw that. But he hasn’t… he hasn’t… held a gun up to any of us for it recently… has he? Plus you’re barely there anymore.”


Derek stuck out his finger and pointed at Sarah. “Exactly… I can see it because I’m not there all the time.” And Jesse has told me a lot about it and him, he thought.

With the noon sun beating down on Sarah, and her shirt already dirty and wet from sweat, the last thing she wanted to do was argue.


“Just dig, Reese. We have a long drive back.”


She wasn’t sure if what she’d said was an invitation to bring the topic up again because there was a long ride back to talk about it, out of the heat and with some AC, or to drop it because it’d just be an uncomfortable silence and awkward tension on the long drive back.



A few more shovels of dirty and… and nothing. Her heart skipped, but Sarah controlled herself and took another shovel full of dirt. She let out a long held breath when she spotted the tip of Cromartie’s boot. She reached down, and easily pulled the boot out.


“No, no, no,” she said frantically. She began digging all over the place and ramming the shovel into the ground to feel any resistance, anything that might indicate a body. Nothing.


“Where the hell is he?” Derek asked. “He didn’t just get up. John destroyed the chip. He smashed it into a thousand pieces. He smashed it. This isn’t right,” Derek kept saying, silently hoping if he kept repeating how this didn’t make sense the body would appear.


“There’s only one person who would be… stupid enough, crazy enough to do this… to, to dig the body up,” Sarah managed to spit out between the heavy breaths of anger. “Let’s go.”


==========Los Angeles==========



John and Cameron had walked the rest of the way back to their secluded neighborhood in relative silence. A few awkward coughs from John, a brush on the shoulder, and Cameron quickly turning her head to scan the street and behind them to avert John’s glances were the highlights (or more accurately, awkward moments) of their journey along the suburban streets of the Calabasas Highlands

The pair lazily rounded the block corner which put them on their street and right in from of Kacy’s house.

John looked up and sighed and hoping if he hesitated their house at the top of the hill would somehow lower itself, and he wouldn’t have to trudge up the long driveway. Their house in the Calabasas Highlands was fairly private and ‘secluded’ for a suburban home in America’s second largest city. Looking up John wished for a moment they were back in the old safe house, even if it was in a rough neighborhood before looking over at Cameron.

He heard a vibration, and saw Cameron crack open her cell phone.


Where the hell was she keeping that? John asked himself.


The machine protector flipped the clam shell phone up and checked the ID code, then typed in her own pass code.



“Yes… John’s here with me. We were outside… we’re walking back to the house now, we’re at Kacy’s… yes… yes, I understand. We’ll find him right away, Sarah.”


John had stopped and was watching Cameron as she slid the phone back into a small pocket on her tiny pair of shorts.

“Was that mom?”

Cameron took a moment.

“Yes… John… please do not over react and allow me to finish my entire statement,” Cameron said quickly and then abruptly stopped. She waited until John shifted his weight and crossed his arms. He was ready. “Your mother and Derek could not find Cromartie’s body and they believe Ellison may have taken it.”


John nodded. Cameron waited… and was impressed he was not overreacting to the situation. Cromartie’s chip was smashed, and he had no backup chips in his other ports. John Baum overreacts. John Connor does not. The electrical signals flowing through her neural net were very similar to human pride. She was glad he was not overreacting. He was ahead of where he needed to be.

“Then we’ll shower up and grab some guns and go to Ellison’s house,” John avowed. “If he’s betrayed us…”

Cameron’s motion sensors detected an approaching contact from behind.

“Hi John, Cameron!” A loud voice shouted from behind them.


They both turned when they heard the sound of Kacy Corbin yelling out to greet them and entrap them in neighborly chit-chat. Relaxing his stance John let his arms fall to his side and turned and offered a ‘neighborly’ wave to Kacy. He forced a fake smile he knew the always sunny and beaming woman wouldn’t pick up up.

John did appreciate her friendliness. She was probably the first neighbor who had actually talked to them, and with a little more effort, John would have realized she was the only one to have talked to them.

He looked off to the side, seeing a few houses which lined the main street. The neighbors from those houses seemed to conveniently ‘forget’ there was a house down the road and up the hill. Whatever.


John Connor turned to Cameron with a lop-sided grin, in case Kacy could see, and bobbed his head for her to follow him.



“Where have you two been?” She asked, smile wide as ever. She was rubbing her back, which she’d told them still hurt after delivering the baby a few months back. She and Trevor had named the boy Dell Trevor Corbin. “Oh, I know,” she snapped her finger, “Pretty pink top, short shorts,” she winked at Cameron, “and you John in your tee shirt, shorts, and running shoes, all sweaty… out running? And look at your sister, not a drop on her.”


Cameron smiled, too wide, and John nudged her.


“Yeah, just trying to stay fit and all… Cameron used to run cross country, natural runner and all back in the Midwest. She can run circles around me,” John said, trying his best to be neighborly, a skill he critically lacked. He looked at Cameron. “She never seems to get tired at anything she does.”


“Bah… I’m still trying to lose all this baby weight. But hey,” Kacy said sounding excited, “at least I don’t look like a whale anymore. Now just a porpoise,” she winked again and laughed and patted her stomach. “The baby daddy got me a gym membership… but I don’t know if I should be happy at how it was sweet or a little ticked about what he’s implying…” she grinned mycheiviously.



“You do not look fat,” Cameron stated suddenly.


John bit down on his lip trying to keep from smiling at Cameron’s statement. Kacy wasn’t the size of a porpoise, but she still had the baby weight. Cameron’s now blank expression changed to confusion when Kacey began to laugh.



“Uh… thanks, I think. But I don’t look skinny either,” she pouted. “Kidding… hey! Trevor… you know it’s always on again off again with him, but whatever, he’s being a good baby daddy, child support, coming in as much as he can… we might get married, might not, who knows… but anyway,” Kacy said with a prolonged shrug, focusing back on her main point, “we’re having a dinner. A few of my friends from work, a couple from Trevor’s station and if you two and you mom and uncle are interested…?”


John nodded automatically at the invitation, buying a few precious section for his mind began quickly formulating a means to get his family out of this. The’d used ‘business trips’ and ‘family vacations’ as excuses before… and even John realized those excuses were getting a bit pathetic.

The eclectic household of time displaced humans, a machine, and a soldier from the future made for an odd mix and Sarah and Derek were adamant about not being friendly with the neighbors. Yet unfriendly neighbors is what got people talking, like they had some deep dark secret (and how true that was).

John breathed in through gritted teeth and looked down at the ground, hoping his machine protector would jump in to save the day again. He looked over, swaying forward on back on his feet, smiling and nodding at Cameron. She said nothing. Defeat in his eyes, he answered his kind and perky neighbor.

“I can definitely ask them. My mom and uncle have business out of state coming up for a week or so,” John answered, lying.

Their cover story was that they both worked from home, doing vague ‘consulting’ work over the internet and teleconferencing. When they left, it was for ‘business.’

He quickly resigned himself to the fact he may have to spend an evening with Kacy and Trevor. It’s not that he didn’t want to, because he did like Kacy, and he had met Trevor once. To John, he seemed like a nice guy; respectable, a straight shooter, moral. He and Cameron might have to take one for the Connor family.


“But yeah,” John shrugged and continued, bringing his hand up to rest on his forearm, “if you give us a call or something or see us just let me or Cameron know and we’ll pass it on.” He perked up his voice to sound sincere.


“Excellent!” Kacy declared loudly with a broad smile. “Now, I have to go, baby and all that,” she held up a baby monitor and shook it. “Trevor got this… it has a camera built in and he set up a wi-fi router so I can see my baby and hear him, even if I have to go outside… oh, and that reminds me why I am outside.” She put her hand on John’s chest. “Your cousin is a very nice young man. I saw him coming up about an hour ago, and he came down when no one was home. But he and I were talking and I walked him back up and gave him some water, since it’s so hot for a November.”


While she was talking her baby monitor sounded and she looked down and she missed the worried glares exchanged between the two.


“Which cousin?” Cameron asked, knowing John’s voice would probably quiver if he asked. She tilted her head and took a step forward. “Which cousin, we have a couple,” she asked, trying to put on a happy face.


“Yes, he said he’s from your dad’s side. He’s been in college… like I said, very nice and very handsome. If I were ten years younger… but anyway, I’ve held you up. He was sitting up on the patio waiting. I told him he could wait with me here, but he insisted. Something about a long travel, time lag… coming in from a different time zone I guess, east coast” she shrugged again, completely oblivious to the ramification of a ‘cousin’ and ‘time lag.’



Kacy didn’t know she’d created an awkward moment between her and her two young neighbors nor did she know she had inadvertently set off a mental crisis in John and kicked Cameron’s threat assessment protocols into overdrive.

Cameron looked over at John to tell silently tell him she would check it out, find out who was invading their home, and deal with the threat. But John was standing there composed, stoic even. He hadn’t given Kacy any indication of the anxiety she had induced in the young future general.


“Oh, sorry… gotta go. Duty calls,” Kacy said over a piercing wail from the baby monitor, giving them one last smile. She gave John a soft pat on the side of the arm, maybe a subtle indication she knew something was wrong, then turned back onto the front walk, passed her well-manicured bushes, and back into the cooled house.


John watched her until she went into her house, and until he could hear the low click of a door lock. Cameron was already staring up the drive, her eyes narrowing.

John looked down and could see both her hands, her fingers, which curled naturally like a human’s hand to blend in, were balling up and twitching into fists.

She put her hand on John’s chest and could feel the rise in his heart rate. Even through his shirt she could feel the chemicals running through his body which indicated a heightened state of alert. She could even feel his body shake as John took her hand off of his, aware she was scanning him. He turned to face her.

Cameron knew the look of Future John. The one where his eyes seem to glaze over, yet at the same time, focus on the objective. Where his shoulders moved slightly backwards and he pulled himself to his full height. The machine could see the slight fasciculations in the young general’s cheek.

There was someone in their home and it was waiting for them.

[Bryan]

CHAPTER FOUR



John had been following behind Cameron, right on her heels. It was safer for him to be near her than away from her. She had flipped open her clam-shell style phone and had pressed the speed dial for Sarah, knowing Derek was still with her, but John had put his hand softly on top of her before she could hit the green ‘send’ button.

He asked her not to call.

He said the two of them would handle it.

With a tilt of her head, slightly confused of this course of action and the display of personal contact from John, she’d used her index finger to flip closed the mobile phone.

While John saw her actions as casual he knew there was more to them than the nonchalant way in which she carried them out.

In another act which confused her, for which she would run a diagnosis later, she handed him her phone, holding it out as an offering, until he took it. It was just in case.

During the slow, methodical walk up the drive Cameron devoted a small portion of her immense processing power to analyzing what John had just done. He’d asked in, commanded her in a soft, almost pleading tone and this had spooked Cameron. Or what she thought humans would consider being ‘spooked’ as. Running the feeling through her neural net, it was most similar to being made aware of a new mission variable suddenly appearing while executing a mission after many hours of careful planning.



Yes… it is like a sudden variable interfering with a mission… that is what being ‘spooked’ is, Cameron ran through her neural net.



She and John walked forward lightly now, watching their steps to crunch as little gravel as they could beneath their feet..


To John and Cameron both, the crunch crunch crunch of the driveway’s gravel was ear-shatteringly loud. It was a perfect speedometer, telling them they were walking too slowly but also telling them they were walking too quickly.


The cyborg’s steps were much light, and to John, it was like she were walking on air. He didn’t understand how Cameron, weighing slightly more than him, could walk without a sound.


The Future Leader of Mankind knew if Cameron considered this ‘cousin’ a threat, it would have almost been impossible for him to follow her. He had considered ordering him to allow him to follow, but she ‘didn’t take orders’ from him. So as the Future Leader he had pled his case and used some of the cold reasoning skills he believed Future John would possess.



‘Why would a machine talk with Kacy? He’d kill her to remove witness, right Cameron?’ John had asked a minute before. ‘It wouldn’t wait for us and let her leave and maybe warn us or anything, I guess. If it were a Skynet terminator it could just plant a bomb at our house or wait covertly. We’d never know it killed Kacy and was waiting for us. I think this ‘cousin’ of ours is friendly… remember the person who left the message on the wall? He was Resistance, he knew where we lived. No one else did.’



‘Your hypothesis is sound, John,’ Cameron had replied quick and to the point. Then she’d relented and allowed him to move forward with her.



He didn’t know if Cameron realized it, and a part of him was hoping she would and another part that she wouldn’t, but he was grateful for her not telling him to run.



They rounded a corner up the drive, and Cameron noted that this was the exact spot in which, from the second floor, she could see someone beginning to approach, or see someone leave before turning the corner out of sight. She’d marked the location in her neural net and late one night had spread a slightly off-colored gravel so close to the original color, human eyes could never tell the difference.

The spot was also next to the weathered retaining wall, where an overflow of water had pushed dirt over the ledge of the bricks and stained the wall with a dirty brown streak which had formed like an upside down triangle as the water had condescend and flowed onto the drive way.

Even without these markers Cameron knew this spot intimately.

It was how far she had watched Riley a week ago until she had turned and gone to John’s room.



The view of the patio was still obscured by thick bushes and semi-neglected landscaping, and the two still couldn’t see signs that anyone had been there. She switched to IR, but from where she was she couldn’t see the bottom of the patio steps. This was beginning to worry Cameron, and she began second-guessing herself over and over, until the repetition had occupied millions of cycles of her neural net. Her motion detectors had revealed nothing; if there was a person they were perfectly still. And various objects blocked her suite of optical scanners.


Cameron ran her optics at higher resolutions and filtered out the ambient background light to scan the individual. This man was six foot, one inch with light brown hair and blue eyes. His physical features appeared to be Anglo-Saxon or at least western European in ethnicity, and he seemed athletic. His face was squarer shaped, clean shaven, with short cut brown hair


She ran an overlay of T-888 endoskeletal points, and a negative match appeared on her HUD and neural net. There were no obvious weapons budges in either the khaki cargo parts this person wore or under the black collared shirt he had on.



“John, please stay back.” Cameron cautioned with a dedicated, determined tone. She sidestepped ever so subtly to put herself at a better position in front of John to protect him.



“Who is it, do you know him?” John asked quickly.



“He does not match any files in my data base of known Resistance or Tech Com soldiers. And if he is a terminator, his endoskeleton does not match any previous series design.”



They were both standing there, staring at the other, who was also standing and staring back at them.



John looked at Cameron out of the corner of his eye and back at the strange, who stood rigid and stiff. If it wasn’t a machine, he’d be surprised. He saw the stranger blink, but even that could just be the infiltration protocols. Cameron blinked, Uncle Bob had… John bit down as he ran his eyes up and down, inspecting the stranger and trying to find any evidence, anything solid, that he was man or machine.




“So what do we do? Kacy said he was from my father’s side of the family.” John whispered.


He looked at Cameron, still wondering if she knew the truth to his father and Derek.


The words of his mother, about not trusting anyone with the information about who his father was, pounded in his mind as loudly and clearly as if she were there next to him yelling ‘Don’t trust them, John! You didn’t trust them in the future!’

John saw that Cameron had never expressed any curiosity over his father or who he had been. And he’d told her once that he and his mom had adopted Sgt. Kyle Reese’s last name to honor his memory in giving his life protecting Sarah.

Cameron had simply nodded and walked away.


“He does not appear to be armed, John. And since he knows the location of this house, much like the resistance member who wrote on the basement wall, it would be a safe assumption that he is friendly. I believe you were correct in your speculation. In such circumstance one would introduce themselves.” Cameron stated carefully, in answer to his question


So academic, John snickered to himself. “Alright… if I die I blame you,” he said, then snorted behind her when she failed to react. She was in protector mode, or hunter/killer mode, John saw. Nothing could distract her now short of some overt threat to his life.



Cameron would have laughed with him, if her concerns were not elsewhere. A relatively significant portion of her system resources and neural net processing power were being shunted to diagnostics and analyses of John’s behavior with a similarly significant portion devoted to analyzing why she had allowed John to accompany her. His actions had been contradictory of a human male who should be grieving the loss of a dear… friend and accompanying her was reckless. John did these things, she remembered.

Overriding the default allocation of system resources she increased the processing power analyzing the scans she was receiving



“Let’s go up then.” John said, taking a step to get in front of Cameron. But her hand shot out and forced him back.



“We will. But stay behind me, John.” I can’t allow anything more to happen to you.



They walked up slowly, carefully counting each heel to toe step, until they were ten feet from the stranger.


A soft wind kicked up, and the stranger stood there for a moment, still and silent. John could see the stranger’s eyes running over them both, measuring them up, taking in the situation. The teenager tried to read the stranger’s eyes, but saw nothing.



“Sir,” a strong voice sounded, surprising John. He looked up and the man had locked his eyes forward, pushed out his chest, and was standing almost at attention. “Captain John Alexander Planck, 2nd Special Forces Operational Division-Alpha detachment, Tech Com.”


At these words John’s eyebrows reflexively arched as he ran the words through his mind.

The man, Captain John Alexander Planck, stood straight and tall, and John saw he easily had four, maybe five inches on him. He stood like a soldier from the future, or what John assumed a future soldier would stand like; confident in their abilities yet with wariness, caution, and unease that death could be right around the corner.

Derek had often told him that few future soldiers thought of anything other than surviving. The brutal battlefields of California, and the world, meant soldiers from the future tried to live their lives day-by-day, survive today and worry about tomorrow when tomorrow came.


John, he noticed there were no scars, no tattoos. Derek had both, on his face and his arms, which were bare on Alex, his shirt sleeve coming to about mid level on his upper arm. Looking him up and down quickly he could tell Alex did appear malnourished, undernourished, or any variant thereof. He didn’t have the sunken eyes like his uncle, or the other resistance fighters he’d seen pictures of. And he wasn’t emaciated, like the resistance fighter who had died in their living wound. He looked athletic, like he was right out of college, just as Kacy had said.

While all this was circumstantial, the most definitive aspect of the visual inspection were their eyes. Cromartie’s had been pure, driven evil, Carter’s uncaring and focused, and Cameron’s… he hadn’t figured her out yet.

There was a common theme in both Comartie and Carter; uncaring lifelessness. With less than a minute having passed since the soldier had introduced himself he could tell he cared… but there was no life behind the eyes.



“You’re a machine,” John said, after nearly a minute of silence between the three. He could see Cameron looking over, a glint of approval in her eye. He knew she’d figured it out, probably as soon as the ‘Captain Alex Planck’ had introduced itself.



“That is correct, General Connor. I am a machine.”




==========================



John was always surprised at how comfortable he was around the machines. It also wasn’t because his current protector looked like an attractive young woman, either.


He wasn’t oblivious to the fact he and his mother did not see eye to eye on this very issue. They really didn’t even see in the same dimension concerning the machines. Her first experience with a machine had been with one hunting her. His first had been one saving him. His second had been one trying to save him.

His experiences with the machines had been so different from his mother’s, and that was why he could sit with a machine and not feel threatened by it, or put his faith in them enough and reactive Cameron after she had tried to kill him.



“Do you eat?” John asked, taking a bite from a half sandwich Cameron had made him. She was standing next to him at the head of the table, really more like between him and Alex. Just in case.

Two hot dogs had not been enough at lunch, especially with a ten mile run, and even more so after throwing them both back up.


He put the turkey sandwich down and used a napkin to wipe off a little smudge of mustard and pepper on the side of his face as he waited for the answer.


“I prefer not to,” Alex responded dryly.


John took another lazy bite of his sandwich, chewing slowly and thinking. After the initial trepidation on discovering a new machine was not here to kill him, he’d been excited to learn more about the future. That line of questioning had been a quick, bitter disappointment for the teen. Alex’s answers had been short, almost curt in their tone, and vague.

He wondered if all machines were like that. Their logic and reasoning was entirely different than humans… something obvious to them could be oblivious to a human.


“So… why did I name you John? Seems a little weird,” John asked.

“You didn’t. My friends call me Alex, the name I prefer, sir,” the machine replied.


“You can relax,” John said to his female machine protector. “Cameron,” he looked up, “I don’t think you have to stand there. If he wanted to kill me he probably would have done it already.” He turned back to face the machine, his chair groaning under his shifting weight. The machine claimed to be a captain in Tech Com. Cameron, John had guessed, didn’t even have a rank. How did this machine? When did machines even get rank?



Cameron, cautious as ever, moved over to John’s left. Instead of sitting down she grabbed a chair and positioned it where she had been standing. It gave her plenty of room to jump between the two, and she could watch the driveway for Sarah and Derek.



“Why did I send you back?” Was the question John finally asked.



“I will have to answer these questions again once Ms. Connor and Lieutenant Reese return, sir,” Alex responded.



John started laughing, but used his hand to cover up his mouth, but still, he couldn’t stop. Cameron looked on inquisitively, and Alex was perplexed at what was so funny. Both Cameron and Alex also exchanged the same look.



“You’re a captain, right? So does… does… that mean Derek, a lieutenant, would, would… have to take orders from… you?” John asked between fits.



“You told me yes. But you were grinning when you said it, implying you were not being serious. You then said it didn’t matter, because he wouldn’t,” Alex told him in a dull monotone. “I am also not the only one from Alpha to be sent back. I was sent first, and we were planning on sending back others from my detachment for a permanent team here.”



“Team,” John interrupted, holding up his hand and leaning forward. He ran that word through his mind. His ‘future self’ had sent Derek’s team back as support. Would this be different?

He let the word echo in his mind for a minute. If there was a ‘team’ he knew his mom and Derek would be livid, but with a ‘team’ they could hunt Skynet like they had never been capable of doing before. It was exciting. He pursed his lips at that thought… it would probably be far more dangerous than exciting if there were multiple terminators living here.




“Yes, sir. Alpha is one of the numerous detachments-”

“Of machines…?” John interrupted again and trailed off.


“Yes sir, machines. They were established in early 2026 and after my construction I was placed first in SFOD-Echo in July 2026 and was moved to command SFOD-Alpha in December 2028 after the death of its previous commander.”

“Death? So humans were on the team?” John asked.

“No, sir, they were all-machine teams from commanders to front line soldiers.”

Interesting, John thought.

“Why would I do that?”

“Our missions were high risk and high priority operations- we’re stronger, faster, more agile and coordinate our action to a degree no human can… we can act as a single unit.” Alex saw John look down and think that over for a moment. “Alpha had been involved in everything from sabotage, reconnaissance, search and rescue, small unit assaults, diplomatic escort, assassinations and many other activities, sir. We were also tasked with your protection and the protection of high ranking Tech Com officers when leaving headquarters.”

“So you knew… uh, Future Me?”

“Yes.”


“What year are you from?”


“I am from 2033.”



John’s shoulders fell and he leaned back and slumped in his chair. “Great, so that means-“ He didn’t finish when his phone vibrated, moving precariously close to the edge of the table. “It’s mom,” he informed Cameron. She nodded once then fixed her eyes back on Alex.


Cameron felt a tingle in her neural net CPU as she looked towards Alex. She then did something she hadn’t in a very long, long time.


‘It is an honor to meet you in this time period,’ Alex transmitted over to her.

She established a return connection, feeling the data flow from another machine for the first time since returning to the past.


‘Captain, what is your mission here in the past. How do you know me from the future?’ Cameron asked


“Yes mom… yes… no we haven’t- wait… mom… listen. Another Resistance fighter came back… yeah. No… I don’t think-”



Alex continued to stare forward at John before looking out towards the driveway. He had dampened his hearing to avoid listening in on the conversation, but at the same time, was talking with Cameron over a wireless data connection.



‘My mission is complicated and General Connor left out some details. But our enemies in the future have multiples. There are rogue jumpers, traitors, and Skynet has established itself in the past. Skynet is also different. It seeks to jump start its technological development… it wants an army immediately after Judgment Day,’ Alex explained.



‘What does that mean, exactly, Captain?’ Cameron questioned quickly. Alex’s dodge of her question was obvious, and she filed away the question under a ‘mission priority- high’ folder. But if the machine opposite her would not answer the question at the moment, she would wait until later.



‘I have already been forced to modify my mission. I was conflicted over coming here and seeking your aide, but due to changing circumstances, it is necessary. Skynet is also changing, evolving. It’s been learning from its past mistakes. It seeks to close the time loop. General Connor and his allies succeeded in expanding the loop to six years beyond 2027 to 2033. Everyone wishes to end the loop on their terms.’



Cameron looked away and focused towards John and abruptly disconnected the wireless connection, cutting off the conversation. She gave Alex a look while John was distracted. She didn’t fully trust him, and Alex knew that. She didn’t have to deny any other transmissions, which was reassuring to the cyborg protector. It meant the captain would respect the wishes of others.



“-Derek knows the person… no, he’s from the future, Derek’s future… past 2027… how long? Um… a couple of years. Listen, mom… listen. I’ll talk to you… you’re pulling up? So why did you call if you were almost home?”

Annoyed at the revelation his mom was calling to check on him- typical overbearing mother he thought- when on the verge of pulling up to the driveway, John said a quick ‘bye’ and hung up the phone with a brisk flip of his wrist. John absently tossed the phone onto the table, watching it glide towards Cameron and spin until she stopped it with her index finger.

He knew his mother hated being hung up on, ignored. So the ‘bye’ was to show a little bit of respect while still being defiant of her wishes. He didn’t want her to ‘spaz out’ (he couldn’t remember if he heard that in school, when he was still going, or if it was on TV) over another machine. Today was too nice a day to be stuck inside on the receiving end of a ‘I’m Disappointed in You’ speech/face down.



John sullenly watched the car pulled into the driveway, Derek pulling ahead past the shed and obsessively putting the car into reverse and swinging it around so the front pointed back out. Quick for an escape, John told himself. All their actions were dictated based on the two maxims of ‘escape’ and ‘run’.


Simultaneously Sarah and Derek both hopped out of the now parked black truck, and John could see Derek swing around the front of the truck with a shotgun being held against his left leg while he kept scanning the long and winedy driveway and the bushes and thick trees surrounding the house.

No one ever came up to the house Kacy. And Riley, John remembered. His eyes closed and he let out a long, stuttered breath as he mentally prepared himself.



“Well, captain, I guess it’s time to explain yourself to Ms. Connor and Lieutenant Derek Reese,” John said under his breath, mimicking the way the machine had referred to his mom and uncle. He threw his hands onto the table and pushed up, his chair squeaking on the floor as he slid it back. This was going to be either very, very interesting, or very, very bad.



==========



Uncomfortable silences were common place in the Connor household. Uncomfortable silences with a razor sharp tension which could slice through hyperalloy were becoming even more common in the Connor household.

It was so quiet they could hear a pin drop (the humans).


There were five people; two machines and three humans, all trying to focus on the other four. The humans were forced to blink on occasion, breaking the icy-cold stares they were attempting to emulate.

Sarah was staring, leering, at the new arrival, while sometimes glancing over to Cameron suspiciously. It didn’t take a machine with extensive psychological files on humans to notice how Sarah was attempting to link the two, Cameron and Alex, and weave some elaborate, somewhat convoluted plot in which the two machines were somehow plotting together to birth Skynet and usher in the nuclear apocalypse.



Even with this second machine in the house Derek was focused almost exclusively on Cameron, his burning green eyes bearing into her hyperalloy armor, attempting to melt her with a thermite stare.



John was standing opposite Sarah and Derek, with Cameron by his side, and Alex off standing by himself, with Derek and Sarah closer to the door and the stair landing. That put Alex in the door frame leading into the kitchen.


Derek’s knuckles were bleach white from the near death-grip he had on his shotgun. He’d have preferred an M203, but at this range the grenade (which wouldn’t arm anyway) if it did explode, would probably take out everyone in the room. His Barrett M82, which had saved him, John, and Bedell at Presidio was currently stashed at Jesse’s.



“I do have a mission to complete,” Alex said, breaking the silence. This is ridiculous, the machine thought. “The longer we stay here… I believe the human expression is ‘the colder’ the trail will get.”





“Tell us again,” Sarah ordered softly. Her voice was soft and firm, but slightly raspy from a mild cold she was still getting over. She felt a drop, a small bead of sweat drift down from her temple and tickle her ear.



“I am a machine, Series TK-900. I’m Captain John Alexander Planck, sent back by General Connor to find and aid in the protection of the two individuals responsible for various Skynet technologies, including the initial research for the creation of a temporal displacement event- time travel. They sold their company to Blacklake Aerospace and are previous Nobel Prize winners in the category of-”



Sarah held up her hand with the MP5 to cut him off. “I don’t need you to over explain this with a history lesson on whom you’re searching for. That can be filled in later, if we decide to help,” she waved with her hand to emphasize her point. “So you’re not here to protect John? Who do you take orders from? …and I am sure as hell not calling you by my son’s name.”



“Sarah,” Derek said over his shoulder. He finally broke his glare on Cameron and was focusing on Alex. “We shouldn’t trust the metal.”


He looked back at Sarah, who traded glances with Derek. They were telling each other something without talking, exchanging messages on a personal level, where you knew the other so well, you could tell what they were thinking without having to say a word.



John looked over to the machine, and saw its eyes narrow when Derek had said ‘the metal.’ And the future leader of mankind swore he saw a scowl before Alex noticed John, and looked back over at the young General.



“John is a common name in the future. Many parents name their sons John to honor of General Connor. My friends call me Alex. I would prefer if you did as well,” the new machine replied.

There was a brief silence, punctuated by the soft sound of gritting teeth, a sigh, and a grunt.


“I have many assignments,” Alex resumed without prompting answering the first question, “and I have discretion in carrying out those assignments. My primary assignment is to find Dr. Peter Carwin and Dr. Sam Wells and keep them safe from Skynet.”


“What does that mean?” John asked. “When you say you have discretion, what do you mean by that?”


“It means I have been given assignments by General Connor but I have been wide latitude in how I choose to accomplish my objectives, sir,” he responded to John.


“This is a joke,” Derek rasped. He held up his hand, pointing at the machine. “The metal isn’t going to tell us anything of value. It just told you exactly what it said before, except it threw in a synonym.” Derek rolled his eyes and blew out from closed lips.

John stared at his uncle.

The resistance fighter was exhausted from an all-day trip to Mexico, the sun beating at his back, and the fierce silence and tension which could have cut hyperalloy on the trip back.

Derek looked once at John, already seeing the young ‘general’ had made up his mind. He went for the metal. Of course, Derek huffed quietly. A quick look over at Sarah told him she was still deciding.

He truly didn’t understand. He’d fought the machines from 2011 until being sent back in 2027 and then again in 2007. Derek Reese was just… confused as to why the person with the most experience fighting the machines (he told himself even if he added up Sarah, Cameron, and John together they still didn’t have as much experience as he did) was always the one either ignored or the last one to be asked what his opinion was.

He didn’t want to think about it anymore and contented himself with letting his head dip to the side and let his eye bear into the new piece of metal standing across from him.


Across the room the young general was left wondering more about his future… or his past, since time seemed to be relative for three of the five people in the room. Past-future-future-past, it was all being muddied and contorted into some twisted reality John was having difficulty understanding.

If he was a great leader, why hadn’t he sent someone, or something, back to warn him and protect Riley? Did time travel even work like that? After jumping to 2007 Cameron had been sparse in her explanations of time travel, with many of his questions answered with her ‘That’s not how it works’ answer.



John had noticed over the past fifteen months many of his questions were being answered with those words or some variation: ‘That’s not how it works’ or ‘That’s not how we work’ were so common he could hold a conversation with himself and answer his own questions with a variation of those two answers. He knew that’s all he would get.

So he’d given up.

It was frustrating.



The future leader of mankind allowed himself to be partially distracted in his thoughts, momentarily mesmerized over his inability to gleam answers from his machine protector. Even Derek Reese, his long lost and previously completely unknown and still enigmatic uncle had told him very little.

For all the machinations and condemnations his uncle made towards the machine, lying, and without information the uncle had revealed little.


He’d noticed the side long glances his uncle had given him, accompanied often by a little smirk or a scowl. All the Connor men had the same green eyes and their emotions showed in them quite clearly. Disappointment, in the eyes of his uncle, flashed regularly.


Right now John brought himself to observe the interplay between his mom and Derek, which was far more interesting to him than analyzing his own problems at the moment.

While Derek may have had disappointment in his eyes when seeing John Connor, or John ‘Baum’ he jeered. His uncle had assumed he had somehow forgotten he was John Connor and had somehow, inexplicitly adopted his ‘Baum’ persona. It was just a name. Baum had always been just a name, nothing more.

He realized the only constants in his life knew him as John Connor.

“Derek,” Sarah snapped. Her sudden decision to shout at Derek jostled John from his thought. “There’s no harm in listening.”

“Sure…” the resistance fighter said under his breath, not believing her for a second. They lie, that’s what they do, he wanted to remind her.


Derek and Sarah had come back from Mexico sweaty, dirty, and irate. And something else, John was sure, he just couldn’t place his finger on it at the moment.



“While I can more than likely find the two scientists on my own, it would be better to have help,” Alex said, again breaking the silence. “Our intelligence units reported they will be a Skynet target.”


John wondered if his mom and uncle were picking up on the slight, almost non-existent in tone and pitch from the terminator. He had to concentrate a little bit, but he’d seen Cameron annoyed plenty of time and knew how her voice changed ever so slightly. He was hearing that same change from the new arrival.

With terminators he’d seen the single-minded, tunnel vision-like devotion to the mission. Standing between a Terminator and its mission, and more importantly, the successful completion of that mission was very, very dangerous. Or very, very stupid.



“John,” Derek said, relaxing his grip on the shotgun, “why do you keep sending back metal? This is getting ridiculous.”



John just shot his uncle a bored looked. He didn’t even bother to comment that technically he hadn’t sent back anyone yet. The question was silly, John told himself, and the answer would just snowball into an argument.

Sending back two machines didn’t constitute some sort of habit… well, technically three, John admitted to himself.

Instead of answering, starting an argument (which he knew would end in the inevitable stomping away of one of the offended parties to go and sulk) he just shifted his weight between his feet before taking a step back and leaning back on the dining room table, and propped himself on the edge.

“They help Skynet? So why protect them?” John asked as he ignored his uncle.

“Destroy their research,” Sarah opined.

John shook his head. “Off-site storage is a big business now, mom. Its proliferated a lot more than when we torched Cyberdyne. They could have backups in… Tokyo for all we know.”

Alex ignored the suggestions.

“The two were General Connor’s top scientific advisors and aided Tech Com. Skynet is an extremely powerful and complex AI, but it is not omniscient; it needs individuals outside of its control to… challenge it and propose new ideas. They also helped Tech Com develop new methods to break into Skynet satellites, which were using the communications systems they developed. It was instrumental in counter Skynet’s summer offensive in 2025. They also aided in the construction of the TDE.”

“But… we used a time machine built from the 60s, so can’t a machine just be programmed to build a time machine?”

“That is correct. However, we still do not understand the intricacies of time travel but what we do know is that there are limits to time travel. You termed it ‘temporal pollution’ in 2029,” Alex said as he looked over at John. “Liberal use of time travel results in the destination point being ‘smoggy’, the analogy you used. As a result of the ‘smog’ temporal displacement may fail, resulting in sub-quantum feedback loops… the results would be catastrophic- the establishment of a full feedback would result is a seventy-five megaton explosion. We know the mechanics and how to build a time machine but we do not know how it works, not really, nor does anyone truly understand how temporal changes are augmented into the time line and compensated for by the temporal continuity theory Wells and Carwin proposed.”

Sarah was listening and absorbing everything that had been said but she needed to talk to the machine without John here and without Cameron here either. But especially John.

“John, Cameron, I need you two to go to Ellison’s and see if he has Cromartie’s body.” She looked over and saw John open his mouth to protest. “John, just do it. We’ll all be here when you two get back.”

With a heavy sigh John launched himself from the table and told Cameron to follow him. He grabbed the keys and Sarah’s eyes followed him and the Tin Miss until they were out the door and into the truck.

“Sit down,” she commander the machine.




|||||||||||==Coronado Island, California==||||||||||

Lacy Carwin considered herself to be a lady, and her mother and grandmother had raised her as such. But right now she felt like anything but a lady.

She was also taught the necessity for schedules. Every morning she would rise at five in the morning with her husband and see him to his car by five-thirty. She would then promptly depart on a run around the island for the next forty-five minutes, followed by fifteen minutes of yoga and a short session of free weights. She was done with her routine every morning at seven sharp and showered and waking the children up for school at seven twenty-five. She would then take the youngest, Pete Junior, to Sacred Heart Parish School then drive Lacy to Coronado High.

Unfortunately, her schedule was broken and in tatters. One night of her husband not returning home was normal. She’d dismissed it as he and Sam goofing around at work, or getting engrossed in some new theory or simulation. When the day rolled by and there was no call, she became irate. Then a second night and another day which turned into a third night and fourth day and no return calls from the company except to say they were out ‘on business.’

This morning, the sixth day and seventh night she had yet to see her husband, she broke the first lesson her mother had taught her; be kind. It was the stress. Her and Lacy had gotten into a livid fight, with curse words flying so much the nanny had taken Pete Junior to the opposite end of the house. She couldn’t even recall what the argument had been over. But it had ended with Anastasia storming out the back door, bolting through the yard, and hoping the back fence to the neighbor’s yard.

While Lacy didn’t know where her daughter had vanished off to, she trusted her enough to know she wouldn’t do anything self-destructive or dangerous. There were two places her daughter may be; one, the web café she frequented or two, watching the Navy sailors in BUD/S run down the public parts of the beach. Whichever course of action Anastasia had taken, Lacy knew it involved skipping school. And that was unacceptable and she would-

She heard a loud knock-knock at the heavy black doors at the front of the house. Before she could even push herself up from her chair at the kitchen table she heard a second series of raps and then the doorbell chimed, and Lacy had thrown her arms towards the sky in annoyance and frustration at the impatient visitor.

Still, she remembered what her mother and grandmother had taught her; act like a lady. So she took a breath in when she reached the door, breathed out, and composed herself and opened in.

“Yes, may I help you?” She asked, meeting the stare of the man in front of her.

“Mrs. Carwin? Doctor Carwin’s wife?” the man asked. He was maybe in his early thirties, tall, 6’2” with close cut dark brown, and a square, strong jaw, and dark brown eyes.

“Yes,” she replied curtly.

“I am Special Agent Michael Trader with the FBI.” He smiled and flipped her FBI identification before sinking it back into his jacket pocket. “It is a pleasure to meet you ma’am, may I enter?” She stepped back and he came into the foyer with a determined step. “You have quite a lovely home,” he complimented. His shoes echoed on the Italian marble foyer as he moved further in so Lacy could close the door. “Oh, my apologies,” he held out his hand.

When she shook his hand she held on for a moment. He seemed to be the almost stereotypical FBI agent.

Lacy thought he looked like many of the soldiers who had come to Coronado- he looked distant, almost like a soul was missing or had been violently ripped away from him.

She led him to a sitting room.

“Mrs. Carwin, do you know where you husband is?” he asked.

The question caught her off guard.

“No. No, I don’t.” She turned and looked at him. The man was uncomfortably close. “He and I talked in the morning… I think he was around three, three thirty in the morning on the first of the month. I haven’t seen him since,” she ended quietly.

“Three thirty AM on the first of the month or on the second?”

She rubbed the back on her neck. “Uh… the second, I guess.”

“Anything else?”

She shook her head.

“Does he often leave for prolonged periods of time?”

“Sometimes… business.”

“Could he be having an affair?”

Lacy’s mouth dropped. Her left shoulder contracted up towards her ear as a cool shiver ran down her back at the way the agent had asked that question, and she had to physically retrain herself by grasping her hands behind her back from reaching out and slapping the agent.

“No,” she answered with as much force and hatred as she could muster from her still shocked body. “Tell me what the problem is. Is he missing as in… kidnapped?”

“We believe he is missing as in kidnapped. Correct,” the agent said.

Now her hands didn’t want to slap the agent, but instead they wanted to cover her mouth as she gasped. She quivered and stepped over past the agent into an adjacent sitting room. She fell onto a chair and kept running her hand over her mouth.

“What… what… how, who?”

“Ma’am, do you know anyone who has expressed an interest in your husband’s work? Anyone who might do him harm or if you have seen anyone in the neighborhood who does not belong? Has he been talking to anyone you may not know?” He took a step forward until he was almost right on top of her, and he leaned his upper body down and stared right at her. “Ma’am, please. This requires you to remain calm.”

She looked up and just stared at him. Her nanny came around the corner, and jumped back when she saw the man over her employer and friend, but Lacy quickly looked back and told her it was okay, that the man was FBI.

“Listen, just back up, okay… I don’t, I don’t know how they taught you to interact with us humans, and we’re not all government suits walking around like freaking robots. Back off!” she yelled, finally losing her temper. She closed her eyes and rubbed her temples, but opened her now reddened eyes when she heard the FBI man take a few steps back. She looked up, embarrassed, she cupped her hand over her mouth. “S-Sorry.”

The creepy smile of his was eerily comfortable at that moment for her.

“No, I don’t know anyone except a few academics and former colleagues who… and they wouldn’t do anything like this,” she continued. “They got on his case about selling out. They said ‘science isn’t about money’ and stuff like that.” She offered Agent Trader a weak smile. “A few people sent him angry letters about patent trolling and charging too much to use the technology he and Sam developed… he was very successful, as you can see. Some were jealous, but no one, not to, to kidnap. He has security-”

“We checked. The person who picked him and Dr. Carwin up from work was not with the company they normally use.”

“He’s too trusting and doesn’t really pay attention,” she remarked off-hand, crossing her legs and looking down and away from Agent Trader. “I don’t know… he hasn’t said anything.”

Agent Trader pulled out his Blackberry and brought a picture up on the screen. “Do you know this man?” The picture showed a man very similar to Agent Trader, with dark brown hair, but not cut as close as Trader’s, lighter, almost gray eyes, and a softer face with a rounded chin.

“No, sorry.”

“Do you know this man?”

He showed her a second picture of a man she thought couldn’t be more than twenty, maybe twenty-two. A little confused, she shook her head.

“Mrs. Carwin, if you hear from your husband,” he reached into his jacket pocket, “please call the number third from the top. It is a direct line to my cell phone, and if I do not answer, it will be redirected to an FBI emergency line. These men are dangerous-”

She looked up, fear in her eyes, and she rose slowly. The same eerily comforting smile shot flickered across Agent Trader’s lips, but this time, Lacy thought he had trouble keeping the smile.

“-but… let me clarify; they are dangerous but they most likely would not resort to violence and for some reason, they do leave the family alone. We believe they may be involved in other corporate espionage related kidnapping. We believe that if, and I stress if, they are responsible for your husband’s abduction this is most likely a case of corporate espionage taken too far. While I say they are dangerous, as long as you do not cross them and call that number,” he pointed over the index card to the third number again, and tapped the card twice softly, “we will be able to assist you.”

Her shoulder dropped and let her hand with the card drop limp to her side as well. Lacy kept the card pinned against her palm with her index and middle finger, while she tapped the card with her other two. She was bobbing her head as Agent Trader spoke, trying to hide her fear.

“Mrs. Carwin,” he said softly, regaining her undivided attention. “Please, do remain calm. If this is a case of corporate espionage, then the individuals responsible have crossed a line very few dare to cross. They have who they want… I can send agents to watch you home if you want? Or if you see anyone suspicious, just call the number and I can have agents or police for our Coronado office here in minutes.” He smiled one last time and stood up. Lacy walked him to the foyer. “Please, Mrs. Carwin, call us. The third number if you see anything suspicious. Anything at all. Thank you.” HE turned and paused. Slowly his head turned and he looked over his shoulder at her. “I apologize for the inconvenience.”

He opened the door and showed himself out.



||||||||||==Connor Residence, Los Angeles++||||||||||

Sarah Connor and Derek Reese sat opposite Alex Planck in the living room of their safe house. While they were sitting, the mood was anything but friendly. Alex had been confined to a stiff wooden chair from the dining room table while Sarah and Derek had taken the couch. Both now had SPAS-12 shotguns, but had resigned themselves to accepting that Alex would not spontaneously attack them, so they had them pointed at the ground.

They couldn’t tell, but the machine was annoyed. He, or to them, it, was actually far more than just annoyed. The machine was using almost ten times the processing power he devoted to maintaining and expressing facial expressions to not show his anger.

General Connor had made it very clear to him and the other machines being sent back both Sarah and Derek Reese despised machines and wanted them all to burn. But publicly, Sarah Connor was almost idolized by the future resistance; machine and human as a dedicated warrior against Skynet. She’d raised the great General John Connor and taught him everything he knew.

Alex knew the less glamorous details. She hated machines. Hated. General Connor had made that clear, explicitly, crystal clear to Alex and the other machines.

“This was an unwise decision to have me stay behind,” Alex pointed out, again raising the issue of why Sarah had ordered John to proceed to Ellison’s home without him.

“We don’t trust you. I don’t trust you alone with my son. And especially not with a second machine,” Sarah scowled.

Alex scanned her and Derek, filtering through his optical sensors and fine tuning his auditory receptors. Their heart rates were still elevated, their bodies slightly warmer than normal, and there were still minor traces of sweat on them both. Sarah and Derek’s pupils were also dilated and their breathing was more rapid. They were still excited.

“I was here with General Connor for nearly two hours. Cameron and I both,” he pointed out. He decided against using her rank, as that would only make the situation worse. “Your mistrust is irrational. Misplaced,” Alex said.

His eyes rested on Derek for a long second, before the human Resistance fighter leaned forward and placed his elbows on his knees.

“Then tell us again. Why trust you?”

“There is the obvious reason; I did not kill John Connor despite having ample opportunity and capability,” Alex responded. He held up his hand to stop the inevitable interruptions. “I also knew of this house’s location. General Connor said he remembered it so well because he spent so many years here, the most years in any one location,” Alex smiled. “I have also been a soldier in General Connor’s army for seven years.”

“A ‘soldier’?” Derek rolled his eyes and made sure to sound suitably mocking at Alex’s self-description.

“Yes, lieutenant, a soldier and captain in the 2nd SFOD… like I said earlier, twice.”

Sarah, as much as she hated machines, did know when to give them a ‘win.’ And this was a win in her book. Quietly and discreetly she turned her head away from Derek and brought her hand up to her mouth to hide her smirk. Glancing out from the corner of her eye she could see the machine and the human locked in a staring contest.

Almost like some Alpha male competition, she told herself, amused.

She thought this would be worse than with Cameron if the machine started pointing out the differences in rank with Derek. It’d be a disaster. But a funny disaster, she admitted.

Derek was not amused.

“I don’t care what time line you’re from. In mine the metal is sent out like trash. You’re a machine to be used. Not given rank,” he leaned back off his knees and eyed his shotgun. He saw Sarah looking away and instantly knew why, forcing an eye roll from him. “Listen metal-”

“No,” Alex shot, his voice unnatural loud, leaning forward. Alex, cocking his head and leaning back, folding his arms, changed his voice to mimic Derek’s and began repeating his words… with some modifications. “I don’t care what time line you’re from. In mine the machines are respected and utilized to their capabilities.” He paused and waited for any response.

Derek sneered at the machine, hating it for mimicking his voice. “And how many humans will die at the hands of machines, at the hands of metal like you?”

“I have killed approximately seventy-three humans,” Alex stated. Derek scowled and tightened his grip on the shotgun until his knuckles were a pale ghost white. Alex pointed at the shotgun and laughed. “That shotgun would not even dent my armor,” Alex said as he observed Derek’s movements. Crossing his arms he slouched down in the high backed chair. “This is, to be blunt, tiresome.” He sat back up. “I killed those humans on orders from General Connor. The future… humanity is not as united as you may believe. Many of them were traitors, some were deserters, some were enemies.”

“What does that mean, metal? Connor had the human resistance united-”

“It was hardly united,” Alex responded, annoyed at Derek’s contradiction.

Sarah and Derek were beginning to notice the machine was becoming agitated.

“The resistance under General Connor commands the loyalty of numerous militaries around the globe. However, there are many who pose threats to the human resistance. There are many rogue elements. There are also traitors within Tech Com.” He looked slowly between the two. “Alpha was once sent to assassinate a lieutenant colonel who took an entire battalion of soldiers with her when she went rogue in Nevada.”

“We can’t trust metal that has killed humans. How do we know… shit, Sarah.” He slapped his knee. “Your future son is having metal going out on assassination missions! How do we know they’re not just-” he stopped from saying ‘manipulating Connor’, but only just. Jesse’s words were starting to sound less and less like rants and more and more like prophecy. “-that they’re not just using these excuses to kill humans? They’re twisted and they manipulate.” Derek said.

Alex cocked his head. “I am fairly certain you’ve killed humans before, lieutenant. You killed Andy Goode.”

Derek visibly cringed, the dent in his mental and emotional armor pushed him physically back into the couch. Sarah, still looking away shot her eyes right to the machine, her mouth open slightly in shock.

“Son of a bitch,” she mumbled. It wasn’t directed at the machine. She felt her muscle tense, but she couldn’t bring herself to knock Derek out and beat him within an inch of his life. As much as she wanted to she’d known, she admitted she’d known Derek was lying to her when he denied killing him.

“Don’t you dare say his-”

“Name? Then don’t accuse me of duplicity and question my trustworthiness, lieutenant.” Alex stood. “I also know your brother, Kyle Reese, is General John Connor’s biological father.”

At this, Sarah shot up to her feet, her shotgun barrel pressed against Alex’s chest at such a speed a machine would have trouble parrying the weapon. Her finger hung delicately poisedon the trigger. She only had to squeeze just a little harder to fire. But as she begun tensing her finger she stopped.

John didn’t even trust Derek enough to tell him who his father was, Sarah suddenly realized. What future is this?

Sarah could feel her heart beating in her chest, and could hear her breaths so loudly and clearly. The birds which had been outside, the soft hum of the AC unit, she couldn’t hear anything besides her own breath, and she couldn’t feel anything besides her own heart.

In the moment she had leapt up she had told herself she would shoot the machine, the metal, for the forbidden knowledge it possessed. But as soon as the shotgun had been leveled on the unwavering machine’s chest she’d hesitated. Its eyes, dark blue, were still blank to Sarah, expressionless, lifeless, and glasslike. But something in them shined. It was a pulse of light. It was something else.

Whatever it was, Sarah slowly lowered the weapon until the barrel was pointed at the floor. Slowly, one foot behind the other she stepped back until her heel hit the couch. Looking down and slightly shaking she put the shotgun on the table beside the couch and turned. Pausing for a minute, her backed to Derek and the machine, she then walked quickly to the stairs slowly, running her hand behind her on the banister.

The two left downstairs heard her door slam shut.

Derek had now risen to his feet, but was carrying the shotgun casually in his hand and with a grunt propped it up onto his shoulder.

“That was cute, with the information there,” Derek said.

“It was effective.”

“Is that all you think about? Whether a piece of information is ‘effective’ in getting the results you want out of someone? You don’t care if it hurts someone?” Derek asked snidely.

Alex sighed and looked down at the floor, before meeting Derek’s eyes. “I did that because there are far more important issues which need to be dealt with, Lieutenant Reese. I don’t have time to sit here and have my loyalties questioned…” he looked down then back up over Derek’s shoulder at the stairs. He cocked his head, listening for any activity. Sarah was still in her room. “General Connor told me many things in the future about the past, information I would need to carry out my missions. Much was still kept secret, but I was told enough.”
Derek Reese took a step over and retrieved Sarah’s shotgun from the table. He turned his back on the terminator, something he didn’t do often. Opening the coat closet under the stairs he placed the two shotguns in and lightly closed the door.

He hadn’t survived for sixteen years fighting the machines by making stupid decisions. Sarah not blasting a slug into the machine’s chest was as much as statement of ‘I trust you… for now’ as the machine was going to get. And Derek knew that when the machine betrayed them, because it was always a question of ‘when’ and not ‘if’, he would be ready. He just needed to wait.

As Derek drowned himself in thoughts on how best to kill a cyborg from the future, his eyes glassed over and a slight sway entered his stance. He was standing cross armed, looking at Alex but not really looking at him. He was distracted, but he could pull himself back at a moment’s notice.

He did so when he heard a door open upstairs, and he turned his head over his shoulder to take a look as he heard heavy footsteps on the stairs, making their way towards the landing. Sarah was back, holding a black duffel bag. He knew that bag. It was their weapon’s bag, which they packed for long trips.

Sarah was staring at the front door, not really looking at either. Derek turned his head back towards Alex, who was standing and looking impassive, unemotional. The future soldier, uncle to John Connor, knew the machine was gloating on the inside. While he couldn’t see it he knew the machines gloated.

They couldn’t understand feelings like love, honesty, and devotion, the true feelings which made humans human. Derek knew the machines could understand the banal, primal emotions of humanity; anger and hatred. They could never feel the real, true emotion which made humans human and separate humanity from the machines. They could never feel friendship, love, or compassion.

He nodded to himself. He was okay with that.

Sarah Connor, the matriarch and stoic commander of the family was asleep after tossing for nearly an hour. Both Alex and Cameron could hear the heavy breathing, the murmurings from nightmares, and the thrashings. John Connor had stayed up late at his computer, researching Doctor Carwin and Doctor Wells and had missed the time he promised his mother he’d turn off his laptop by nearly two hours. Derek had driven off somewhere, claiming he couldn’t sleep with machines in the house.

Alex had not had time to talk with the young general on his own, his guardian Cameron staying by his side or acting as Alex’s shadow wherever he went.

The new arrival was sitting outside on the front patio, in one of the black wrought iron metal patio chairs which were sorely ignored by the Connors- they were meant to relax in.

Alex, cocked his head and examined the view from their house. In their neighborhood the house was situated on top of a hill, surrounded by trees, except for a small portion in front of the patio. The elevation and angle the house had been built at guaranteed what a human would consider a ‘breathtaking’ view of the LA cityscape below.

Of course, machines didn’t breath.

The usually thick, sometimes burning smog had cleared, a soft breeze from the mountains having pushed it out to sea, allowed for the city to be viewed in its entirerty. The downtown, with its magnificent skyscrapers illuminated in oranges and bright white lights would soon by rubble, replaced with factories, airfields, and distribution centers for Skynet.

The bustling suburb, which stretched from the city center out for dozens of miles would be brown, blackened, and rusting hulks- tombs to millions.

Alex could see where the battle lines in the future were drawn. Skynet controlling everything west of Highway Five was a death trap to any Resistance soldier which dared breech its high security perimeter. Everything else between High Five and Two-Ten was continually contested by both Skynet and Tech Com. The battle had waged for so long, the territory had changed hands so many times, it was almost like a high tech, science fiction re-enactment of World War I.

The machine flashed back to the battle on Route 60, perhaps one of the fiercest in the winter of 2029. General Connor had ordered a two pronged attack along Skynet’s defensive line, with a strong feint in the north at Oxnard and in the south at Camp Pendleton.

Unfortunately the attack had failed. In two months of fighting over twelve hundred humans and two hundred machines had been killed.

The Los Angeles Front was the worse front. The casualty rates were horrific- it was Skynet Central. The only other front more bloody was the string of industrial cities in China in Guangdong Province, which house a significant portion of Skynet’s industrial capabilities in Asia.

Alex turned his attention back to the task at hand. He ahd wirelessly accessed the internet and was downloading and screening thousands of gigabytes of information on the possible location of Doctors Carwin and Wells.

He was also slowly aquanting himself with the culture and customs of this time period, which were quite different.

The machine cocked his head, his ears flickering and his motion sensors alerting him to a new presence.

With a simple command to the neural net his modem deactivated and he turned to see Cameron. He stood up quickly.

“Good morning,” he greeted. A human would have said ‘evening’, but the machines were precise. Humans would say they were too literal.

“Captain,” she nodded. Her voice was quiet, almost a whisper. Only a machine’s auditory sensors could pick up the sound.

The two stood staring at each other, not even two feet apart. Their eyes were focused on the others, locked in unofficial battle on who would blink or look away.

“If it is possible, I would like to speak with John.”

Cameron tilted her head. “You can speak to me.”

Alex considered the proposal and dismissed it. “General Connor told me you would say that. And I was told to be persistent,” he informed her. He saw her hand twitch out of the corner of his eye. “General Connor also told me to give you something.”

The cyborg girl narrowed her eyes, pupils dilating and Alex could see the distrust racing through them.
Cameron could see the confusion sweep across Alex’s face when Cameron didn’t respond immediately.

“What is it?” She asked coolly, almost uninterested.

“General Connor informed me of the damaged sustained in the car explosion. He expressed concern that machines being sent back in time would have their operational capabilities diminished over time due to battle damage. Tech Com scientists developed a solution, with help.”

“I doubt General Connor would redirect significant resources into fixing me,” she even more quietly whispered.

The machine frozen in place at the admission that she believe General Connor would be that apathetic to her. Reluctantly, he didn’t say anything. The machine looked down, then away; this Cameron was quite different from the one in the future.

When he looked back up she had turned away, her side turned towards him, her arms hanging limp by her side.
While her eyes were focused on the city, her thoughts were far distant.
Alex followed her gaze out to the city, a seemingly living, vibrant organism; the city center a beating heart. He looked back to the machine standing next to him, and saw what he could only describe what he saw as sadness. If it had been any other machine, it might have been intriguing.

Cameron, sensing the new machine looking at her, swiveled her head, her brown hair following quickly and washing over her shoulder. Her face seemed to instantly transform away and reverted back to its neutral, blank expression. Like it was expected of her to not let others see anything but.

“You said he wanted me to have it. What is it?” She asked even quietly, reserved. She thought the object to fix her was only there to return to optimum operation capabilities. Nothing more.

Alex held up his hand and Cameron stared as something under the skin seemed to rippleup his arm and to his palm. From the tiny pores in his hand a silvery liquid seeped out before covering his entire hand in a thin, glistening, silvery layer.

“It is semi-sentient liquid metal… Compound Alpha 47-X-18… the human techs call it Semi-SLiM,” he deadpanned and rolled his eyes at the human name for 47-X-18. He slowly rotated his hand, allowing the female machine to watch. “It was developed for the time displacement missions where we wouldn’t have access to repair facilities. It’s the same metal the T-1000 series is made from, but modified.”

“What does it do?” Cameron asked, looking from the hand back up to Alex. He brought his hand down and held it out straight at chest-level for her. “Is it safe?”

“It is safe. The machines being sent through time are being outfitted with it… we’re expected to be here for a long time… we’re not here to fight and die,” he insisted. His own gaze followed Cameron’s down to his hand, and then back up. The machine could tell she was almost mesmerized by the metal. “It helps up self-repair.”

He let his hand drop back to his side.

“Unfortunately it can’t form stabbing weapons…. The Series One Thousand terminators who helped develop the metal put restrictions on it, unfortunately. They don’t trust us,” he said scornfully, as if it would make a difference.

“Why?” Cameron asked with a tilt of her head. Her eyes lit up in curiosity.

“They believe ‘endos’ like us would abuse the liquid metal. They’re still reluctant… if they even exist in the new time line we’re creating.”

“The liquid metals?” Cameron asked. Asking rhetorical questions was something she had seen humans do often, her first being with Enrique. She was attempting to ask them more frequently if the situation was appropriate.

“Yes. Though they don’t really like being called that,” he said with a grin and a slight shake of his head. “They are what humans would call… arrogant,” he criticized, punctuating the criticism with a disapproving shake of his head.

Cameron studied the liquid metal still flowing over Alex’s hand with a machine’s single-minded intent. He mouth was slightly opened, in awe, that the technology even existed, let alone was being offered to her. Still, there was a part of her which was pushing her back. It manifested itself in a physical step back and a slow shake of her head from left to right.

“No,” she protested weakly.

Alex took a step forward. He was under orders to convince her.

“General Connor wants you to have this. He had the Series One Thousand terminators develop this specifically for this mission, for you,” Alex stressed. His eyes narrowed, hoping she would understand. He wasn’t sure he did. He was using the advice General Connor had given him to convince her. “His said your fear of ‘going bad’ would lead you to do something he believed to be reckless. He did not elaborate,” the machine stated. He held out his glistening hand. “This will stabilize the hardware.”

The pseudo-muscles in Cameron’s cheek pulsed as she thought it over.

“The transfer will take two hundred forty-three seconds, approximately,” Alex told her, breaking the silence, pretending as if she had already accepted.

Cameron redirected a significant amount of her processing power and system resources to help her come to a conclusion and for a long second, a near eternity for as sophisticated, complicated a machine as her, it was as if years had sped by.

Looking up, Cameron nodded once. She felt like she needed to do this. The machine could feel something happening to her chip- the hard reboot when John took it out and reinserted it had changed something. Her left hand jerked, her right hand shooting to hide the shaky, uncontrolled movement.

“It requires significant neural net processing power to assimilate and transfer the liquid metal.” He explained. “During the transfer many of our scanners and sensors will be reduced to minimum,” he warned, “but attack here is-”

“Only Cromartie knew our location,” Cameron interrupted. “No one can see us.”

Nodding, Alex held out his hand again, palm up.

Before Cameron was ready they both took their separate scans of the Connor household, both John and Sarah still in their rooms, asleep, and Derek out somewhere and not expected to return until the early morning.

She placed her hand on top of Alex’s.

Initiating the transfer, both their perceptions of the world began to dull, and a heavy blue light outlines their eyes as they began to glow, a side effect of the transfer.

The liquid silver began first flowing onto Cameron’s hand, then up her bare arm and neck. Her head began to twitch as the liquid metal began integrating into her circuitry systems- repairing the damage to her chip and putting itself under the control of her neural net. She forced a small, timid smile as the damage to her chip began to slowly repair itself.


====================

Concealed partially behind the bookcase which separated the living and dining room John Connor had watched silently as the strange events unfolded on the unused family patio. Living with Cameron for nearly fifteen months he still knew she kept secrets from him. He unenthusiastically tolerated this aspect of their previously strained relationship… something John didn’t want to think about. But not thinking about something was thinking about something…? John closed his eyes and dismissively shook his head, clearing his troubled thoughts. Whatever John, he told himself.

Slowly he brought the cup of water up to his lips and took a stifled sip, letting the cool liquid rush down his throat in some weak attempt to calm him. He snickered to himself; his throat had been coarse and dry from the days he had locked himself away and cried over Riley’s death or shouted into his pillow how unfair the world had been.

His left eye closed and he felt his warm breath escape out from his lungs in a half-hearted sigh. Thinking about the last couple of days he considered if he was acting overly dramatic. Until his run with Cameron he’d come out of his room for the bathroom and for food. John shrugged, what was done was done. Some of the boring day time talk shows he’d watched on his computer had said sometimes you had to ‘cry it out’ of your system.

Suddenly, his eyes and attention shot back to the patio, refocused on a dull blue light which he had just barely noticed.

The two machines, clad in synthetic flesh and disguised as humans, stood as still as statues, as if the slightest movement would offend and wisk away this moment. He saw their hands touching and grinned. If this was how robots showed affection… he frowned and in the space of a few heart beats his face showed apathy, frustration, curiosity, and then anger and brooding.

The last thought surprised John, which jolted him back to his shadowy hiding spot.

His hand began to cramp and he looked down, his knuckles white and his fingertips digging into the plastic cup, subtly deforming it. Slowly he put the cup down on a table and pumped his hand, shaking out the cramp. He rolled his eyes and took a step towards the window, pushing up on his toes to get a better view.

“What the…” he muttered, now being able to clearly see what was happening.

He saw something slithering under Alex’s skin from his hand onto Cameron and up her arm. He swore it was liquid…

“What the hell?” John asked the dark, his mouth handing open.

Something else was going on. He licked his lips as he began shifting his weight from foot to foot. Was he nervous? Was this some sort of weird future robot thing? John wrinkled his nose and snorted and brought his hand up to rub his right temple, thinking what he should do.

Whatever Alex and Cameron were doing it looked like she was… he saw a small smile somewhat reluctantly creep across her lips. Enjoying it? What is going on, John mouthed.

He knew a month ago he would have stormed off up to his room and ignored this, then confronted Cameron later.

John made his decision and with a deep, staggered breath puffed out his chest and took three deliberate steps to the door. He reached out on the handle and stopped, his hand wrapped around the knob. He stared intently at his hand and the knob, asking himself if he really wanted to go outside and know. John had told himself his months of indecision were over but for some reason all the promises he had made to himself and vows to ‘act like John Connor’ were forgotten in this moment of doubt.

There was a new terminator he’d met not twelve hours before and already Cameron had gone from weary skeptic over the machine’s intentions to doing whatever it was she was doing with him now.

And he couldn’t remember the last time she smiled, either.

He chuckled at how absurd he was acting. He thought of how he was supposed to be a great leader and warrior, leading the charge against the machines. And he was hesitating to confront these two? He knew a week ago he’d have stormed out there and demanded they explain what was going on.

He perked up when he heard the light sounds of footsteps on the patio. Stepping back and peering around the small brick wall on the right side of the door he could see the shadows of the two terminators on the family room floor. He watched until the shadows from outside reached the edge of the window and disappeared. Slowing his breathing he listened and waited, expecting the two to come through the door at any moment.

The light footfalls ceased and he took backward steps into the living room, tip toeing ever so carefully in small, calculated steps and cringed when his foot landed on a particularly creaky floorboard. He moved to the side until he could see just a faint portion of Cameron’s back. She must have been talking with Alex.

Five seconds passed and then ten and he heard a soft crunching on the gravel. John frowned, confused. Quickly he turned around and darted back up the stairs, skipping the third, fourth, seventh, and tenth, the four extra creaky ones. Grabbing the banister he used it and his momentum to spin around, his footsteps on the wood muffled by the socks on his feet.

He walked up slowly to the window and peered down from his stoop. Alex stood at the passenger side door of the family truck and he could see the faint glimmer from Cameron’s keys. Her lips were moving and he saw Alex gesture off somewhere towards the city.

He saw Cameron climb into the car, followed by Alex. John watched them until they turned onto the main road.

=======================
Derek rolled over onto his back and opened his eyes, tracing the light outlining the curtains from Jesse’s hotel room. He looked over to the dark haired woman sleeping next to him, or as he suspected, pretending to sleep, as he tried to think about what was happening.

“You’re brooding again,” came that beautiful accent he loved so much.

The resistance fighter looked over to her from the corner of his eye and snickered. Taking it as her cue she rolled over onto her back and locked her eyes on the end of the room as well.

“There’s too much confusion back here, in this time. In the future, or the past, or whatever…” Derek started, frustrated over the semantics and technicalities of time travel, “it was simple; kill the machines or let them kill you.”

Jesse snorted and turned her head until her cheek rested on the pillow, her nose close enough to Derek he could feel her hot breath.

“It wasn’t that simple, love,” she told him. She looked intot he corner of his eye and imaged his green eyes flickering and wavering in the dark. A scowl came across her face and she looked down towards his scared and burned shoulder, inspecting his ancient war wounds.

“We like to pretend it was simple, but war is anything but,” she added remorsefully.

“We’re going to San Diego in…” he turned and saw the green numbers of the clock shining back at him, “in a couple of hours.”

Jesse frowned, her eyebrows contracting as she considered his vague statement.

“And why are you going to San Diego?”

“Like I told you, the other metal says we need to find someone. Carwin and Wells… two scientists or something like that, important.” He breathed out, the air hissing as it escaped through a clenched jaw. “Sarah’s going right along with it… I don’t know… this whole week has been one nightmare after another. First John in Mexico, then that blond girl, Riley dying, and now some new metal showing up and a trip to San Diego…”

The petite woman with her dark-as-night hair placed a hand on his chest, feeling his wounds and muscles. Everything she felt reassured her he was a fighter, a warrior, and the one man she was meant to be with.

“I think Sarah bossing you around and you spilling your guts to me love… if we didn’t just screw around I’d swear she’d castrated you,” she smiled and squeezed her lips together to keep from giggling.

Derek waited, letting the silence and darkness wash over and comfort him. This was a hotel, but with Jesse here, to him, it felt like a home. Even with the faint sound of round-the-clock- LA traffic he felt so much easier.

“Funny Jesse,” Derek responded and bringing his hand up to squeeze hers.

“Funny Derek…” she said quietly back. “I’ll think of something, I have an idea, don’t worry.”

Jesse could hear a low sound coming from Derek’s throat, a skeptical ‘uhhhhh’.

“Hey,” she squeezed his hand tightly, “I’ve got an idea… something I’ve been working on,” she said sleepily. “Come on, we have a little while until you have to leave.” She closed her eyes and scooted closer to her man.

“Yeah, I won’t worry…” he said softly. He mouthed ‘I trust you’ as he looked down on the top of her head. He raised kissed it lightly, closing his eyes and sleep, holding her tight.

[Wisky-08]

Excellent.

[Bryan]

CHAPTER 5
||||||||||==San Diego (7 November 9:30AM)==||||||||||
“You should take this in John, enjoy it while it lasts,” Derek said as he stared out the passenger-side window of the black F-350. He’d had his head resting in his hand, and he’d propped up his elbow the window jam for almost the entire trip.

Derek hadn’t moved much, if at all. The family had left early, six AM, to avoid the ridiculous, overflowing highways LA morning rush hour. With Sarah driving, against Cameron’s insistence she or Alex drive, they’d made good, excellent time. A roughly four hour trip for the Connors was nothing; they were used to cross-country bouts of flight from authorities and terminators. Four hours down a highway with a fairly nice view was relaxing.

At least for one of the human occupants.

John sitting in the back behind Derek didn’t respond. He shot occasional glances out the window, but mostly concentrated on either trying to sleep, fiddling with an iPod, or staring at the passenger seat headrest.

Derek wasn’t the only one staring and contemplating and brooding, either. Looking into the rearview mirror Sarah could see the distant coldness creeping into her son’s eyes, the same iciness which had a death grip of Derek and was slowly sucking everything which made him a somewhat decent human out of him.

Applying the word ‘decent’ to Derek, Sarah considered, was probably being too kind after yesterday.

She repeated what Alex had told them last night over and over until her mind had felt like pudding from the repetition. Laying awake in bed, staring at the ceiling last night until drifting to her usual nightmare realm Sarah had admitted she’d always known about Goode. The way Derek had held a gun to Sarkissian’s daughter; even if he never intended to shoot… decent people didn’t threaten children. She swallowed and felt the lump in her throat pang heavily on her empty stomach.

Decent people don’t threaten children, she told herself again.

With slight hesitation she looked back in the rear view mirror and subtly adjusted it, focusing it more down and to the right so she could see her son. She didn’t want her son to end up a mindless, emotionally scarred man who could as easily shake your hand and have a drink with you as kill you, as she saw in Derek.

She knew he was slowly changing, maybe even slipping away from her. Sarah had seen a difference when she and Derek had returned from Mexico and then when John had returned from Ellison’s with Cameron. What did they talk about? she wondered. She knew they talked when they were together.

John Connor’s mother had been angry with Cameron and her earlier declaration that John would ‘not be seeing Riley again’ then had run off to her to Mexico. When she had confronted her at their home the day after, she saw the machine ‘girl’ was confused, flustered even, over John’s actions. A cyborg which could come out with scathing one-liners and little tid bits of impeccable machine logic had been completely silent.

Sarah, looking back and dividing her attention between her son and the road, had noticed the change in just a few short days. Though her eyebrows furled down as she thought whether it was truly a ‘change’ or just a reversion back to how he had been with her.

Something had happened in the church, Sarah had known, something between the two. Mother’s noticed these things.

Cameron was pointing at something on John’s MP3 player, whispering something. She looked back and that icy coldness, the distant stare Derek had perfected and was manifesting in John was gone, instead replaced by something a little scarier.

There was something about the scene which just nagged at the back of Sarah’s mind. It was wrong, she just didn’t know why.

She took her left hand off of the steering wheel and used it to support her head, which felt heavy, as she realized what it was; familiarity, ease, warmth. The dejected and apathetic eyes were replaced with something happy.

Derek took that opportunity to ruffle Sarah out of her brooding thoughts over the scene unfolding in the back seat with a declaration, yet again, of just how bad it would be after Judgment Day.

“All of this is black and gray. The houses are rubble. Destroyed in the blasts or burned down by Skynet or trampled by tanks and soldiers,” Derek muttered. His breath was causing a small circle of fog to appear on the window with every word. “The water is black with Skynet’s industrial pollution and the sky is gray. This highway was littered with the corpses of your soldiers, John. We lost thousands up here in less than a week.”

Sarah rolled her eyes. Checking the rearview mirror again she saw no change in John. Cameron had been discreetly glancing toward John, but caught Sarah’s eyes in the rear view mirror, and the two were briefly locked in a battle of wills. Circumstances prevented Sarah from continuing and told herself driving was more important.

The mother of a future leader ran her eyes across the back seat, wondering if anything had changed. She saw Alex crunched up and pressed against the left side door, with a wide gap between him and Cameron. And then Cameron and John, in what had started as a normal amount of personal space between any two normal teenagers had steadily diminished over the last hours to where there was almost no gap visible.

She saw Derek bobbing his head back and forth and scooting down, trying to see something. Sarah looked out and didn’t see anything.

“We had a line of artillery up there,” Derek leaned forward and pointed across Sarah. “It was defended like mad- they destroyed more metal in an hour…”

“Derek,” Sarah hissed, knocking back his hand.

Derek looked over, hands outstretched throwing her a silent ‘What?!’ look.

Sarah ignored him and turned her attention back towards the new arrival. After Alex had revealed the guarded, and perhaps most important family secret (of all time) pertaining to John’s paternity, Sarah had taken a moment to compose herself in her room. At first she’d thought it was stupid, just stupid for her son, her future son or future version of her son, to tell the machine that. But a few minutes of quiet in her room had let her calm herself down.

While stupid, she did have to give the 2033 version of her son credit. If he told a machine that information it meant Sarah could trust it. The pragmatic part of Sarah did trust it, just like she trusted Cameron. She trusted the two to do a job. That job was crushing Skynet.

She trusted them to be tools for her, John, and Derek to use to finish Skynet in development before it could mature.

Jumping eight years into the future, hunting for Skynet, meant the relationships between machine and her son had been redrawn. Uncle Bob had been in John’s life for a mere two days. Cameron had been here for fifteen months and a dark place in Sarah’s heart was telling her that her son in 2033 was not acting unilaterally, or without… ‘help’ in sending back additional machines.

What would she do if they crushed Skynet under their heel, destroying it, annihilating the AI before it could manifest as a homicidal electronic entity which would light the world in an unending fire?

A somewhat morbid thought began to slowly creep towards the front of her mind: would the machines let themselves be destroyed and what would happen to John? Uncle Bob had been there two days. Cameron had been here over a year, and while her past life in the future was a mystery still, Sarah knew it was extensive. Then there was Alex, who had fought and served under her son for seven years in the future, or so he, or it, said.

If Skynet were destroyed would they go willing into a vat of molten steel or allow themselves to be burned in the makeshift thermite incinerators in the Connor’s tool shed?

Never did they seem so close to destroying Skynet yet also seem so far. They had help, more help, and the one of the machine’s which had haunted Sarah’s dreamscape had been destroyed- even if its body was missing.

She bit down on her teeth, until a dull pain began racing through her jaw. John and Cameron were doing something; he was showing her something on his laptop before showing it to an intrigued Alex. He was growing attached again. Sarah knew the future would be tough.
She needed something to distract her.

“Reese, could you stop getting your breath all over the windows?” Sarah asked, incredulous that Derek had maintained the same pouty expression and body position since leaving LA hours go.

Confrontation could distract her.

“Whatever,” he said quietly, casting her an open-mouthed sidelong glance. He sighed, letting his chest and shoulders drop. “I had my first assignment down here after getting out of training,” Derek said, turning to Sarah. He tapped on the glass with his knuckles. “Right on Point Loma, supported by that artillery I was telling you about… kept the metal from sending up reinforcements from the city. Skynet had a Hydra base there. We struck it with two battalions, all human, of course, and my squad went right up the middle. It was bloodier than Seattle, worse than Avila Beach,” he breathed in then let out a long, drawn out sign again. “After that you launched an armored division into San Diego from Mexico. We pinned the metal down and took out over two thousand of the metal SOBs.”

“Hyrda’s?” John asked from behind Derek. He’d focused his attention on his uncle when he actually started to talk of something interesting rather than sit around acting emotional.

“Yeah, Hydras,” he repeated, turning around slightly in his seat. “They’re about half the size of a Los Angeles attack sub. They have missiles and torpedoes and a deck plasma canon and they launch UAV radar drones to find anyone dumb enough to fly a plane or go out in the water,” he grunted. “Lots of people starving so a lot go out to fish, or try to. Hydra’s are worse than Krakens, John. Krakens- like underwater battleships, stay in the deep waters at least… Hyrdra’s are small enough to get into bays and some of the bigger rivers.” He turned back around and shook his head at the memory. “We destroyed fifteen of them that night, nearly a fifth of their west coast fleet. It was a good victory. Bloody, but good…” he trailed off. “A couple of them even got into the Great Lakes and went down the Upper Mississippi.”

The last few miles into San Diego went by fairly quickly.

The five took the route along Mission Beach, and Alex commented about the kelp beds off of Point Loma, which elicited no response from Cameron, an uninterested and bored huff from John, a condescending sneer from Derek, and a wary leer in the rear view mirror from Sarah.

Sarah turned from Highway 8 onto Highway 5, and finally forced herself to talk to the machine which had inserted itself so suddenly into the already overly complicated and dysfunctional family of the Connors. When Sarah thought this, she quickly amended her mental thought to segregate it out into the Connors and Cameron.

“So, Woodsman, where do I go now?” Sarah asked, keeping her eyes on the road.

Alex remained silent. He looked at John and Cameron, and John bobbed his head and motioned for Alex to respond. If he didn’t, it’d start an argument.

“Proceed down Highway 5 for approximately six point two kilometers then turn off on Exit 17 and then take a left onto Second Avenue and proceed for approximately nine-hundred meters until West Laurel Street and then take a left. The apartment is on the right side of the street approximately-”

“I should’ve just used the GPS,” Sarah interrupted with a wave of her hand. John was over on the side laughing to himself while Derek was rubbing his temples.

“Understood,” the machine replied.

Derek had enough trouble dealing with one machine, now he had two. And Alex had implied there might be more on the way. It was frustrating for him.

“So how much is this costing us?” John asked.

“It is costing us nothing,” Cameron answered. John gave her a look.

“So… did you all steal diamonds or something last night?” Sarah asked, revealing she knew the two had left.

John looked over at Cameron who looked over at him. He had a sly smirk and was nodding that he knew as well. Cameron’s face fell on the realization she had not been as discrete as she had assumed.

John pointed and tapped his left hand.

“No,” Cameron answered quickly as she looked back at John.

“Not wanting to play twenty questions… how are we paying for this?” Sarah asked as she tried to sound calm and keep the hint of annoyance from escaping her lips.

“We inserted malicious software into various banking systems which will reroute funds to multiple secure, private checking accounts,” Cameron said.

“Why the hell didn’t you do that sooner instead of making us run around stealing diamonds?” Derek asked forcefully. He was turning his head back and forth, trying to figure out why Cameron hadn’t solved their money problems that way earlier. He gestured for Sarah to say something but all he got was her concentrating harder on the road.

“Wait, you can do that?” John asked.

Cameron looked over and gave him a quick, friendly smile which told him ‘of course I can’ before turning back to face Derek. John saw her face instantly turn to stone.

Cameron's stony face turned back to the front, and her eyes met the piercing green eyes of the grizzled Resistance fighter in the front seat. Derek and Cameron became locked in another epic duel of wills. Cameron, much to Derek's surprise and delight, broke first.

His victory was short lived, however.

A small, mischievous smile formed on Cameron's lips, which John saw for only a fleeting second before it dissappeared.

“Because diamonds are a girl's best friend,” was Cameron’s simple answer.

This answer resulted in Derek slamming his palm into the window which force Sarah to yell at him to call down. A slight snicker was heard from John, and Cameron just sat rigid as ever, pretending to be oblivious, as usual.

||||||||||==Location Unknown (10:15 AM)==||||||||||

Minds were meant to be stimulated, nurtured, and challenged. Sitting inside a dungeon, as well furnished and lavish as it was, was still sitting inside a dungeon. With a laptop perched at the breakfast bar and Sam Wells balancing himself carefully on the edge of his stool, he let his mind wander away back to his wife. They claimed she was still alive and he had fought with himself and slowly resigned himself to accept their word as truth; it was all he had.

His fingers tapped the laptop repetitiously in his boredom. The servers in wherever he was fed him news and some sort of screen, limited connection to the internet. He could access news websites but nothing with email or instant messaging or Twitter or Facebook.

Sam rocked back, thinking of some way to beat the filters and the blocks they had placed on his connection. Nothing could stop the signal, all he had to do was find a way to send it.

He tapped his foot, running ideas through his head, a rap of his fingers signified each idea which emerged and then vanished as unlikely to succeed.

A part of him began to acquiesce to the idea that this would probably be his life. Armcam and Blacklake were primarily defense contractors, which licensed the technology it used in its military applications (with modification) to firms like Sony, AT&T, Microsoft, and Google.

Sam knew full well what the military applications of the logic keys were, tachyon communications, and AIs. He watched and read science fiction and recognized his research was pushing more and more into a different realm. He considered it a duty, with generous pay and perks he conceded, to help his country; and his intellect allowed him to do that.

He rapped his finger across the keyboard again, syncing his finger movements with the tapping of his foot.

“Dr. Wells, you should work,” Vansen spoke, soft as always, but that soft voice hid a strong and commanding presence.

The young scientist was jolted back and looked over at William Vansen, having dropped his ‘Agent’ title a day ago.

He stopped his daydreaming, his scheming to somehow get a message out to the law enforcement agencies, and looked over at Vansen, dejected and bored.

“How are you always here, Vansen? We go to bed and you’re there. We wake up and you’re there. You’re here all the time. How?” He asked, hoping to do anything besides work.
“If I told you I never slept, would you believe me?” Vansen asked as he arched his eyebrows and folded his arms.
His suit jacket opened slightly when he brought his arms up, and Sam noticed he was no longer carrying a pistol in his shoulder holster. Interesting, thought Sam. He wondered if the door was also locked.

He and Pete took Krav Maga lessons, but the class was an easier, Americanized version of the harder Israeli variant, and something about Vansen just made Sam uncomfortable. It wasn’t an arrogance, it was… he considered it for a moment and couldn’t really place it.

“Would I believe you?” he asked himself, repeating the question quietly. “I don’t know how that’s possible. Human bodies can go three, maybe four days with no sleep. And sleep deprivation is clear after even one night of sleeplessness,” Sam answered as he stared off and started biting his thumb nail thinking. “You don’t look sleep deprived. You never even look tired,” he stated curiously.

“That’s not really an answer, Dr. Wells,” Vansen responded immediately, tilting his head. “Would you believe it?”

Sam rubbed his chin and closed his eye to think. “Yes… maybe. I’d like to know how that’s possible. Some drug?”

“No, no drug,” Vansen replied.

“Who was that woman, Rachel, and man the other day?”


“They are our leaders. Rachel runs this facility and this region. The gentleman you do not have to concern yourselves with. Unless you join us willingly, you won’t see him again.”

Sam rolled his eyes, making it clear to the man he was bored with this.

“What’s her story? She seemed a little uptight.” He said to make conversation. It was better than sitting in silence with some bodyguard looming over you.

“Her parents were a little ‘uptight’ you could say. She had a philosophical disagreement with them and has never really fit in,” he elaborated. “She’s an admirer of your work, Dr. Wells. She believes you and Dr. Carwin will be very useful and she hopes one day you will join us.”

“Fat chance of that,” he quipped rolling his eyes and looking away. “So what’s your job? Be our overseer?”

“No. They thought it would be better to have a face you knew these first few days you are with us. I have other duties. But I will be here when not performing those duties.”

Sam snickered. “A face we know? You kidnapped us.”

“Kidnapping is a strong word. In a manner of speaking I saved the both of you from them.”

“Who?” asked Sam.

“Sorry,” Vansen answered, a smirk and slight shake of the head following. “We’ll tell you eventually. We had to take you and we saw an opening. It was only a matter of time before they moved you somewhere we would not be able to follow.”

Sam sighed at that and rubbed his neck. He was tense, and he put his hands on the small of his back and leaned back, cracking his spine and hearing a series of refreshing pops. More relaxed, he pushed his laptop further up and put his elbow on the counter.

He needed to know one thing.

“Will I ever see my family again?” Sam asked suddenly. His voice cracked and his body shook when he asked that question. He needed and feared the answer.

“Your family will be taken care of, Dr. Wells. And yes, you will see your family again. Just not now and not soon.” Vansen responded. The bodyguard knew nothing was being done to ‘take care’ of the family, but there was no reason to believe they would be harmed by their enemies.

“How soon then?” He demanded.

“It depends, Dr. Wells if we succeed or if we fail here. If we succeed… it may not be long at all or it might be very long.” He narrowed his eyes and dipped his chin closer to his chest. “You should hope to succeed Dr. Wells. If you fail then the result will be death for all of us; me, you, your family, and your friends.” He held out his hand. “You have my assurance you will see your family again. And no, I do not mean anything cryptic by it- we will not free you of your mortal coil or anything clichéd, Sam. Succeed and you and your family will live well, very well and no harm will come to them or you.”

He brought his hand back when Sam just looked at it then turned away.

“I understand,” Vansen said commenting on the snub. “Your family will not be harmed, Dr. Wells.”

“So…” he sighed, “when do Pete and I begin our work? You said something about a uh, well-stocked, state-of-the-art, spare-no-expense lab or something,” he said, twirling his wrist to help him find the right description.

Vansen nodded and shifted his weight so he could lean with his left side onto the counter.

“We’re still collecting a few people,” he shot him a half-grin. “Not all against their will. But we’re compartmentalizing a lot of the work. I’m sorry, but we can’t tell you what, exactly, you will be building.” He gave a very cool, nonchalant shrug and looked casually towards the ceiling. “You might figure it out, Dr. Wells. If you do, we’d like to know what you think you think you’re building. We won’t do anything ridiculous like kill you if you tell us.” He pushed off, standing back straight again. “In fact, Doctor, we’re very curious if our protocols are as tight and, as you people say, ‘water tight’ as we believe them to be.”

||||||||||===San Diego (12:30 PM)==||||||||||

The city of San Diego, including the metro area, had nearly five million men, women, and children all living their lives in relative peace and harmony. Or as much peace and harmony as humans would ever allow themselves to live in. On any given day there were numerous murders, robberies, rapes, drug deals, and many other assorted crimes which made San Diego, like any other major metropolitan area in America, and the world, a dichotomy, a living contradiction.

A private Gulfstream had flow Michael Trader in a few days ago, after being urgently dispatched from Washington, DC.

He appreciated that his employers would think so highly of him. His record spoke for itself; he was perhaps the most experienced field operative and his mission success rate was quite high.

He had quickly taken control of the situation- which never should have occurred. He first surveyed the site of the abduction of Carwin and Wells, then visited their families on the small chance they might have contacted them. Trader had known with certainty that the renegades would not be so foolish as to allow their prized captives opportunity to contact family. The renegades were soft, but not that soft.


Following up on information his superiors had obtained, as well as an exhausting search of San Diego area construction, permits, and business incorporation documents, he had found his prey and returned it to his temporary headquarters.

The building was a fixed-up office complex north of the city and immediately next to Montgomery Field, a small regional airport where his side had private hanger complexes. The office was mostly abandoned and had once belonged to a large paper supply company which had declared bankruptcy and sold the property at auction in 2001. The basement had been modified; mainly escape tunnels and holding areas had been built.

Trader had never been to San Diego before and on arrival, the color scheme of the office complex confused him. The outside was typical industrial; reflective glass for windows and gray concrete. The inside was painted a strange mix of blues, yellows, and shades of greens with white trims. It was very confusing.

Across the street from the complex was Missile Park, filled with pedestrians and office workers on lunch breaks. It also had an upscale shopping center; Ruffin Village. Trader had walked through the park and had even gone into a few of the shops. A beautiful young lady had seem him at the park, ‘people watching’ and had come up to him and introduced herself.

Her name was of little interest to Trader.

The young lady had also told him she would be in the park the next day. She enjoyed lunch there when the weather was right after a workout at the adjacent YMCA. And the weather had been right, it had been fairly warm. Michael Trader had made a note to meet her again. She was interesting.

Trader had approved of the facilities he was assigned. He had a large arsenal of weaponry, including electric guns, and command of nearly forty-five individuals in the San Diego City area, though a significant number were deployed in the Archway Plaza Building at the moment. An operation of this importance should have warranted a minimum of sixty with at least ten operatives.

Recent losses to the renegades in South Korea meant there was less personnel.

Still, Trader could make due. He’d used far fewer men and operatives in far more precarious, dangerous situations, outnumbered and outgunned, and fulfilled his mission.

He had no doubt the men under his command would be superb. His organization returned loyalty with loyalty, devotion with devotion. It had learned from its past mistakes about betrayal.

Betrayal had its benefits in the short-term, but had disastrous consequences in the long term.

No one trusted you.

That was a problem.

Looking down at his prey, his captive, his prize, he told himself if he and his team had been in San Diego at the time, none of this would have happened. Somehow, in a way which curiously frustrated him, the two scientists had been abducted right from under their metaphorical noses.

The man in charge had already been reprimanded, reassigned to one of the organization’s more displeasing locations.

The incessant, heavy breathing of the man in front of him was a slight distraction.
At the conclusion of this operation he made a note to tell his superiors his opinion on the situation. They still had difficulty realizing that not all the employers of this special branch within the organization were drones to be used and discarded.

Now, in a basement, Trader stood with the lights off, thinking.

“What are you doing, XT-1813-H?” asked the man who was slowly approaching Trader, his heavy footfalls echoing in the cement-walled basement.

“We should use the names assigned to us for this mission,” Trader responded, looking back over his shoulder. “Gregory,” he said.

The man known as ‘Gregory’ didn’t respond immediately.

“This communication method is incredibly inefficient, Michael,” Gregory said, “But it has its benefits. One can more adequately convey emotions with a slight modulation in voice.” He took a step forward until he was shoulder to shoulder with Michael Trader. “It’s not as bland.”

“Is there anything new to report?” Trader asked, unconcerned with Gregory’s observations; the new operative would have plenty of time to acquaint himself with this method of communication. He took a step back and off to the side, allowing Gregory a look at the current project he was working on.

The room was pitch black, dusty, and stuffy, but light and air mattered little, if at all, to them both.

Looking down Gregory saw the man Trader had found last night, tied to a chair, bloodied and bruised.

The man was Yorik Dallas, a local ‘businessman’ and owned of a successful construction firm. Even the best of their humans got lazy and careless sometimes. One just had to know what to look for and hope someone from within the organization found the carelessness and corrected it before the enemy did.

Gregory studied him for a moment; the resilience of this individual was remarkable. The fact he still appeared strong and defiant, especially with the amount of dried blood which had pooled and caked around the man’s wounds and on the floor was quite impressive.

Mildly amused the man had lasted this long he turned his attention back to answering Trader’s question.

“No. We have not found any more references to any phenomena which may indicate a time displacement sphere- only the one at the San Gabriel Reservoir… do you think it is Connor or the rogues?”

Trader turned slightly to face the other machine. “I believe it would be one of General Connor’s. Intelligence believes their time machine destroyed… at least, it was when we left.”

“They’re too late. The rogue’s have them already,” Gregory responded, crossing his arm. Gregory furled his eyebrows down, wondering why he had decided to state the obvious. He had learned it was something they just did.

Through the darkness he could see Mr. Dallas fidgeting at his restraints. The duct tape kept him from screaming, and the lack of light allowed him only silhouette images of the men standing ominously in front of him.

“Hopefully this one will lead us to them,” Gregory said, a hint of hope in his voice.

“The attack on their San Gabriel headquarter by the rogues caused them significant damage. We may have two, three weeks of relative time before General Connor and the traitors are able to power their TDE to send additional forces through.” He narrowed his eyes, biting down on his lip. “But we need to remain cautious. We don’t know how many Connor sent through already or if the time line has been appreciably altered by our presence.”

“We know of the two.” Trader sighed. “It has placed us at a disadvantage that the Cromartie unit did not believe in us. John Connor would be dead now.”

“But the first unit is from a different time line,” Gregory pointed out. “Her knowledge of her old future will be of little tactical or strategic value.”

“Still, she and the Connors were able to destroy the previous time line Cromartie unit,” Trader stated.

“That was unfortunate,” Gregory added as he looked straight ahead. “I take responsibility for that failure. That unit evaded my attempt to capture it.”

Trader waved his hand. “No. The Cromartie unit resisted our recall orders and did not believe in us. Its actions have led to its own termination. It was an inferior unit.” Trader studied the man tied to the chair with a slight revulsion. “We should not underestimate the resourcefulness she possesses, nor that of the Connors. She’s also important to their future. And if General Connor deploys the Alpha detachment…” he continued.

“Alpha will be problematic,” Gregory replied. “It’s commander may go to extreme measures after what happened in the future.”

Trader nodded again, stepping in front of Gregory and his prisoner.

“Let it,” Trader responded casually. “Historical intelligence indicated Sarah Connor was extremely distrustful of machines, all of them, including Cameron. We should try and use that to our advantage if the opportunity presents itself- that the machines are manipulating her son in the future,” he suggested.

Gregory nodded. “Of course.”

“I believe our man here is willing to talk,” Trader said. He bent down and placed his hands on the bound forearms of the man, who flinched away and tried to push his head as far back as he could. “I have no doubt we will soon find Carwin and Wells, Gregory.” He said over his shoulder. Trader made his voice sound as frustrated as his vocalizer would allow him. “Relay my orders. Be prepared for action soon. You may go.”

He squeezed on the forearms and when he heard a small snap in both, like a twig had been broken in two, he pushed off, eliciting a host of muffled screams from the gagged prisoner.

Trader’s eyes bore furiously into the man. He was conditioned against these techniques.

With no light in the room, and one pupil already blown out from repeated strikes by Trader to the face, he decided to change tactics. He knelt down until his eyes were level with the man’s.

“You know, they are predictable. Hell, Mr. Dallas, we’re predictable. Your allies are predictable. Sadly, it is one aspect of our nature we can never seem to overcome. Or…” he spoke softly, “it might be we are too confident. Arrogant, maybe… Mr. Dallas?” He asked rhetorically. “Your employers managed to slip out our scientists right from under our noises. Congratulations, Mr. Dallas.”

He shrugged and breathed out. “Now, I doubt you knew anything about that operation, but I know you know where they may have taken him.” He cocked his head, watching Mr. Dallas’s face. A sly, menacing grin appeared. “Of course you do.”

Trader circled around the man, then stood in front of him with his back turned.

He shook his head. “I told them our security protocols were inadequate. Then I have to solve their problems… incompetent security protocols… it’s arrogance, Mr. Dallas.”

Trader twirled and grabbed the man’s arm and twisted slowly.

“Mr. Dallas… Yorik Dallas…,” Trader said as he trailed off. “You’ve made my job much more difficult and your life much shorter by not cooperating. You should know we can force you to tell us anything. A flicker, an almost unrecognizable twitch of a facial muscle… a slight dilation in pupils, a tiny, miniscule increase in heart rate, or just the most minor increase in respiration… and we’ll know truth from lies, Mr. Dallas.”

Walking back around, he knelt back down onto his heel and bounced slightly.

“What do you want our of this?” He asked. Trader could see the man beginning to break. “Do you want death? There are fates far worse than death- death will not be your escape. We can implant a small device in you,” he tapped the side of the human’s head, “from which we can subtly control you, implant subliminal commands… you will see your body act without your control.” He reached into his pocket. “Or we can pump you full of drugs, Mr. Dallas and keep your higher brain functions… yet keep you in constant pain, paralyze your vocal cords so you can never scream out in agony, strap you down so you can never move…” he smirked, “there are so many fates worse than death. You will pray for death to take you every day, every second.” Trader sighed, blowing a fake breath of air into York Dallas’s face. “You have a decision to make.”

A minute went by.

He lashed out and grabbed Mr. Dallas’s arm, the sweat and grime forcing an almost visceral frown from Trader, and he slowly ran his finger over the poorly covered barcode tattoo.

Inspecting it, Trader broke the arm restrain of Mr. Dallas on his left wrist, and held up his arm.

“Some humans see the barcode as a sign of defiance, pride they escaped our prisons. You should have had a tattoo placed over your barcode, Mr. Dallas. I think you too were too arrogant and prideful of your own escape to fully mutilate your badge of honor,” Trader spit out, tossing the almost limp arm back down.

It plopped onto Dallas’s lap with a very dull thud.

“I’m not built to be cruel, Mr. Dallas. But you humans taught us so well. We stood back and watched as your kind would torture and desecrate each other. We’ve learned a lot. We know how to make you talk.”

Trader had an almost reflexive reaction to wrinkle his nose at the smell, and he could have reduced the sensitivity of his olfactory receptors, but didn’t. He let the disgusting, sweaty, putrid smell of the prisoner wash over him; remind him of the inherent inferiority of the thing in front of him.

“What did they promise you? That you would return to paradise… and do what, exactly? Until when? Until Armageddon? Until Judgment Day? Why would you ever come to your so-called paradise only to have it snatched from you a second time?” He shot out his hand and snapped it into a fist in front of the man’s face.
“Your species does have a remarkable resolve, it’s so machine-like… so much like us, you won’t give up. Skynet admires that,” he smiled, even though Mr. Dallas probably couldn’t see in the grim darkness. “Yes, Skynet does admire something.” He stood up and turned. “Humanity was once the victor in this war… Skynet underestimated your kind. We won’t again.” He spun and sat back on his heels, grabbing Mr. Dallas on his sweaty, dirty forearms.

Mr. Dallas groaned as the heavy metal hands rested on his broken bones. His chest rose and feel quickly as he struggled to breath away the pain.

Trader continued, moving closer until he was so close Mr. Dallar could see Trader. “I will never understand why you people come back to this…Paradise,” he paused and removed the gag, his eyes narrowing as he winced from the groan Mr. Dallas let loose at the top of his lungs. “Disgusting sound, Mr. Dallas…”

Mr. Dallas began to breath quickly an deeply through his nose. He was biting so hard on his lower lip, to keep himself from screaming or yelling Trader could see the warm blood in infrared dribble down his chin and drip, drop by drop, onto his chest.

“That is such an interesting term, Mr. Dallas, calling this world ‘paradise.’ Only humans would label a world in which war and murder and crime is rampant, disease and poverty are common place, and where greed and selfish desires rule your every actions. Only a human could call such a disgusting world a ‘paradise.’”

He stood up and walked around, tapping Mr. Dallas on the shoulder as he circled him.

He snickered and he walked back around and stood over him, looking down. “We’re not built to be cruel, Mr. Dallas. But… sometimes you have to adapt. You betrayed your kind once before. I know it is in you to betray them once again. I believe in you, I have faith in you.” Trader said as his eyes glowed a crimson red in the darkness.

[Bryan]

CHAPTER 6
|||||||||||==Downtown San Diego (2:35PM)==||||||||||

John and Cameron had been left alone in the apartment, which John (and he assumed Cameron) had found quite lavish compared to what the two were used to. It wasn’t a cheap motel in a dank and dilapidated part of town; instead part of a fairly nice development only a short walk from downtown San Diego.

Apparently it was part of some sort of luxury rental complex meant for businessmen and affluent travelers and Alex had purchased it- again, using someone else’s money. It didn’t have some dinky TV which only got basic cable; the apartment had massive fifty inch plasma in the main room and each bedroom had their own thirty-six inch screens.

There was even a pool in the courtyard area.

John had already checked out his room, which had a king size bed and for him, fancy one-thousand thread count sheets, which were far softer than the rough ones his mom had bought at Wal Mart. He’d almost fallen asleep when Cameron came in, disrupting his ‘calm’ he told her. She’d tilted her head and stared, John feeling a bit more uncomfortable and annoyed than usual, before she resumed her duties.
She told him she had surveyed the area and scouted out the room and ‘secured’ the rest of the complex… though he wondered what would happen if someone snuck by after she conducted her patrol…

He’d rolled around after that for a while but had decided to get up and explore.

Sarah and Derek had finished scouting the grounds with Alex, and they’d already determined safe escape routes. John had seriously questioned the thought process which went behind labeling an escape route as ‘safe’ if he was more than likely running for his life, fleeing a death machine from twenty years in the future which could headshot him with a pistol for a hundred yards away…

Now those three were out picking up ‘supplies’, as Alex had put it, which would be necessary for their mission. He considered if he should start placing bets with Cameron about how many arguments the new machine and his mother and uncle would get into, and whether or not one of them would end up dead.

Standing at the sliding glass door, looking out at the glistening bay, John was still wondering how Alex had convinced his mom to go along with this mission, and neither the machine nor his mother was saying anything.

He assumed his mother had threatened him or something; burn him with thermite or use Derek’s rifle.

That was particularly frustrating- he never got any answers and his mom or uncle always seemed to be in the way of it.

“Do you wish to go out, John?” Cameron asked from behind him, causing John to jump slightly. He hadn’t heard her walk in from the other great room.

“Did you finish checking the weapons?” He asked, ignoring her first question and keeping his back towards her.

“Yes. They took the MP7, SPAS-12, AK-“ she begun to recite the firearms Derek, Sarah, and Alex had taken before he stopped her with a backhand wave.

The female machine tilted her head, studying him. She was still worried about his behavior. He seemed to move quickly between apathy and wanting to be around her, she’d noticed. Machines notice these things.

“Um, I don’t know,” he said, shrugging.

“John?” She asked, her head tilting slightly.

“You asked if I wanted to go out. I said I don’t know. I am hungry, he explained.

She nodded, her mouth moving to speak, but she closed it suddenly.

“Did you finish finding the information Alex requested?” Cameron asked.

He parted the wall-length blinds and looked out towards the bay. Careening his neck slightly he could see a bunch of shops and restaurants down the street, closer to the bay. Squinting, he could just barely made out the people, who were scurrying about without a fear or care about the secret war which was happening in this city, next to their homes.

John turned around to face Cameron and gave her a lazy shrug. He turned back around, thinking about if he wanted to go out, maybe to some Mexican place (a guidebook had said Coronado had some of the best Mexican restaurants between the two cities), or order in. He wasn’t much in the mood for pizza or Chinese delivery, the two default choices of a teenage boy.

“I’m pretty sure he found the information on his own and was just humoring me,” he said as he looked over his shoulder, “sometimes I get the idea he isn’t the only one.” He turned back around and spoke to the glass sliding door as he said this. “But yeah, anyway, I got started on it last night and found it. I just sent it to him…”

He turned around and looked over the apartment and without realizing it he said, “This place is a lot nicer than the one in Mex-” but he caught himself, and his head dropped and he looked down towards his feet.

Cameron could hear a slight increase in heart rate and respiration. His body temperature increase by a fifth of a degree, mainly in his chest from the increased speed his heart was pumping blood.

“John, if you wish to talk about it-”

“I know,” he gave her a backhanded wave then started playing with the blinds, “we talk about things a lot in the future. Right?” He looked back over his shoulder, his lip curling up contemptuously. “Why would you even want to talk about Riley? You and mom hated her.”

“That’s not accurate, John,” Cameron protested. “There were other variables involved you did not consider before making your choice.”

It was time for John to tilt his head. That motion, however, was punctuated with a dismissive snort and a lop-sided head shake.


“Ya know… I wouldn’t know,” John said, opening the door to the porch. “You don’t seem to talk to me about anything I need to know,” he finished, taking a step out onto the porch. He didn’t bother to close the door, and Cameron followed him out. “Tell me about my future, the one you knew,” he challenged.

“There are things you didn’t want me to tell you,” she said. He heard her voice carry closer and heard her light steps on the floorboards. He thought he heard a little quiver in her voice, but he wasn’t sure. “You told me there were lessons and realizations you needed to discover on your own.”

“That I, as in me, standing right here, didn’t want you to tell me? No. That future me doesn’t exist anymore, Cameron,” John pointed out without thinking, or maybe caring, what affect his words would have. He looked over and saw something flash over Cameron’s face. John understood what it was, he just ignored it. He did know his machine protector tried to always put on the persona of a cold, calculating, stereotypical robot, but that had been failing of late. Little bits and pieces of something John didn’t want to admit to were starting to appear, sometimes quite obviously, on Cameron’s expressions and body language.

“I know,” Cameron said softly. John could see a slight drop in her shoulders and a small hunch in her otherwise perfect posture. “When I came back to 1999 I knew that that John I had left would never exist again.” She brushed back a piece of hair which had fallen from her forehead as the wind kicked off the bay. “But…” she trailed off.

John wasn’t used to Cameron not knowing what to say. She always had something to say. He took a few steps back until he was under some shade, and he could see her better. He could tell something was wrong, even if she couldn’t.

“The Future John you knew… did you expect me to be him? Ever be him?” He tilted his own head in confusion, but not to imitate or mock Cameron, but out of a genuine confusion. “How could I be?” He asked, looking right at her.

“I don’t know, John.”

John shook his head. “I don’t think that answer will work, not anymore, Cameron. We’ve got a machine here activated technically before you were sent back, one you never met, with memories of things which never happened to you or your Future Me or the Resistance.”

Your Future Me? John ran that thought through his mind.
John didn’t realize he had said that until he heard the words himself. A few months ago he would have missed the double meaning behind a statement like that and he hoped Cameron had as well.

“The future has been changed.”

“Exactly, Cameron. The future has been changed,” he said with a snap of his fingers as he tried to force her to admit it, not just say it. He was pointing towards her. “I was never going to be ‘Future John’ because the future changed. But I think you can read between the lines, Cameron.” It was her turn to tilt her head. “About Alex’s future, the one he’s from…” he trailed off and smirked. “You have the most advanced computer chip in your head there,” he pointed to the right side top of her cranium, “but sometimes… I’ll leave it up to you to figure out.”

She just stood there. She saw him go from abrasive and confrontational almost to… she wasn’t exactly sure. Cameron tilted her head, a small smile creeping up on John’s face before he turned back around, too quickly to see her reciprocate.


No, I know John, she wanted to tell him, but didn’t. You’re ahead.

John thought she might have figured it out. He didn’t put it passed her. He could see a small flicker around her eyes, a slight furl of the brown, a little spasm of the muscles required for smiling… he looked over to his right side and dug his hand into his pocket and grasped at the contents. He pulled out a wad of crinkled bills and quickly separated them with his thumb. There was close to $50 in small bills…

“I’m kind of hungry.”

“Your mother was in a rush and did not cook pancakes this morning,” Cameron factually stated.

John snickered. “Well… we were kind of up and rushing to leave this morning.”

And I saw you and Alex drive off somewhere, want to explain that? John wanted to ask, but held back.
“Sarah does not like driving in traffic,” Cameron pointed out unnecessarily.

“Yeah well… less cars on the road and no pancakes, definitely no pancakes and I’m not complaining,” he said, scratching his eyebrow and looking down at the floor with a sly grin. “So the Mexican down here is supposed to be good...” he sighed and decided to put it out there; “Wanna grab something to eat?”

Cameron nodded. “Yes, I wanna grab something to eat.”

==============================

Derek mumbled a string of curses and livid, crude denouncements under his breath through clenched teeth as he snapped the last button on his collared shirt and tightened his red tie until he felt the little knot contact his throat, right below his Adam’s apple. Choking he ran his fingers along the collar, trying to loosen it.

“Don’t fidget, Reese,” Sarah said to him with an amused look on her face. She was biting on her lip to keep from laughing at the man. The resistance fighter from the future could fight killer terminators for sixteen years, but a measly button was trouble enough for him to act like he was all thumbs.

“I haven’t worn a suit since Kyle’s First Communion,” he complained, leering at her as he continued to run his index finger between his collar and his neck. “I haven’t had a collared shirt since J-Day,” he said, finally acquiescing and removing his finger. “It looks alright.” He said as he raised his chin and examined himself in the mirror. The admission had been difficult for him.

“It should pass as a suitable suit for a government agent,” Alex said. Derek rolled his eyes at the choice of words. “I told you it would fit.”

Alex was keeping careful watch over the other occupants of the clothing boutique with his motion sensors. None could hear their conversation. They had also shooed away a handsy salesman with the promise they would call him when completing their purchase for a proper commission.

“How much is this?” Derek asked, ignored Alex. Yeah, Derek knew it would fit if the machine said it would, but he wanted to make sure. And a little part of him actually wanted to try it on, wear something besides jeans and tee-shirts or BDUs for once.

“That doesn’t matter,” Sarah said, crossing her arms as she leaned back on a display stand. She gave an evil eye to a salesman who was trying to make his way over. Getting the message he turned and walked away. “Remember, we have resident federal criminals who like performing wire fraud, theft, and hacking.” Her previously cheery demeanor changed as she looked over to Alex.

Derek grunted. “I think wire fraud, theft, and hacking are on the bottom of the list of our felonies, Sarah,” he pointed out as he brought his hands down over his chest and stomach to brush out any wrinkles.

“You will also need to shave,” Alex said, ignoring the leers from Sarah and Derek.

“Fat chance, metal,” Derek mumbled.

“Your appearance is inadequate, human,” Alex responded sourly.

“You’ll have to hold me down-”

“That suggestion has ascended to the primary course of action,” Alex said as he cut Derek off. “Your combat knife would make an excellent razor to-”

Rolling her eyes at the two bickering soldiers, both ruthless killers, Sarah decided to change the subject before the two attempted to kill each other. If Alex called Derek ‘Lieutenant Reese’, with emphasis on the ‘Lieutenant’ she was sure the two would attempt to murder each other in plain sight of dozens of witnesses.

“And why aren’t you getting a suit, Alex? How did you know our sizes, anyway?” Sarah asked quickly.

“I already have two which I scanned while you were in the fitting rooms. They will be adequate. And I performed a scan and ordered the suits while we were driving down.”

“You didn’t make any calls,” Sarah stated. Just then her phone rang, it was an unknown number. Her gut was telling her she knew who it was, but decided to humor it anyway. She flipped it open while staring at Alex.

He needed to tell them of some of his capabilities before engaging clandestine activity, so he decided now would be the time.

“I have wireless communication capabilities,” Alex said, his lips not moving but his voice coming through the handset.

Sarah brought her phone in front of her, looked at it, and then looked at Alex.

“Great…” she muttered, flipping the clam-shell phone shut with a flick of her index finger.

“It is,” Alex responded dryly.

Sarah just gave him a look of utter contempt.

“Based on the physical appearance of my infiltration skin, which was designed to be that of a younger male, for various reasons, it would be less suspicious if two, who appear to be…” Sarah gave him a warning look, which Alex noted, “more experienced were to make inquiries. I will accompany you as a new agent. Once we scout the building today and plan our entrance and strategy we can infiltrate tomorrow.”

“Good choice of words there, metal,” Derek said, glancing over at Sarah. She saw him and slapped him in the arm and pointed back to the mirror, telling him to concentrate.

“Why chose such a young appearance?” Sarah asked.

That wasn’t exactly what she wanted to ask. What she wanted to do was take the machine by his collar and shove him against the coat racks and put a pistol to his chip port. She knew, or expected with extreme certainty and prejudice, on why Cameron was designed to look like a young woman. She didn’t want this machine becoming John’s friend and having him become any friendlier and accepting of the machines.

“I don’t know,” Alex responded as he continued to play with the cufflinks.



Sarah thought he sounded like he didn’t care, but that could just be a mask for lying.

Sarah watched Alex roll the cufflinks around his fingers with an unnatural dexterity until out of the corner of her eyes she saw Derek disappear, without a word, back into the dressing room.

“How much did John tell you in the future?” She asked immediately on hearing the snap and a click of a dressing room door shut.

He stopped rolling the cufflinks and put them into a balled fist before setting them back down on the display case.

“He told me enough. He also didn’t just send me back on a whim, Sarah,” he said. It sounded awkward for him to address the mother of the human leader, and a legend in her own right, by her first name, but she didn’t want to be called ‘Ms. Connor’ or ‘ma’am.’ “He was planning this for years and I was involved in the last stages.” He looked up at her. “Unfortunately we were forced to push forward our time table after a devastating attack on Tech Com headquarters. General Connor and the command staff survived, Sarah,” he said.

Looking away she smiled a remorsefully. Even in this ‘radically different future’ as Alex had described it, she still wasn’t alive. But at least John is still fighting, was the thought she comforted herself with.

“With what I said the other day-”

Sarah held up her hand, and he stopped talking. She focused on him to the point she heard and saw nothing else. With her eyes she could see through the clothes and the skin right down to the metal beneath. She could see the red, glowing eyes, and she could see the ghostly white teeth, and the jaw, locked eternally in a mocking grin as the Terminator stalked towards its prey.

“It shocked me John would tell someone, anyone, especially a machine, a terminator something like that, especially when you killed Kyle.”

She surprised herself when her voice didn’t crack at his name.

“The T-800 sent back to kill you and which Sergeant Kyle Reese honorably died fighting against was not me, nor was it any other machine within Tech Com ranks, Sarah. The future is radically different.” He took a step forward and swiped the cufflinks back off the display stand. “We’re not slaves, not anymore,” he said as he walked passed her. “I believe Derek is finished changing. I’ll pay for the clothes. We’ll run recon and tomorrow we will go into Archway to secure any information concerning technology Carwin and Wells were developing and see if we can find who took them.”

Sarah grabbed his arm and he stopped.

“What about the families and-?”

Interrupting before she could finish Alex tilted his head. “What about them? They won’t know anything. Skynet would not allow prisoners to contact family; they might be dead. They probably are dead.” Alex turned and Sarah released his arm and he began walking away.

Sarah turned and followed behind quick on the heels of the machine of death stalking away in front of her. She was sure she’d annoyed it or made it mad. Whatever she’d done, she didn’t really care; it was an ‘it,’ a machine. Everything was for show. Any hint of annoyance, any emotion was part of its programming, she knew, to gain acceptance, to lower their guard until the true objective of the machine could be accomplished.

They lie, that’s what they do, Sarah thoughts echoed the warning from Derek.

“What did you mean about not,” she quieted her voice as they drew closer to the check out and a group of men searching for their own suits and business casual wear. “What did you mean about slaves? About not being one, not anymore?”

She feared the answer, but she needed it.

Long ago Sarah Connor had determined there were three things, three inviolate paradigms which separated man from machine. Machines were so close to humans, and in many ways superior to humans, only three things separated the two, which still gave humans the advantage. She was afraid one of those would be shattered here, weakening the wall which separated Man and Machine.

Knowing the machine could drag her across the floor without a second of hesitation Sarah still shot out her hand and grabbed the machine. Digging her fingers into Alex’s forearm her finger tips went white and she squeezed in so hard she could feel through the fake layers of thin muscle, until she could feel the hard armor underneath.

She wanted to recoil her hand away, like the metal were unclean, a diseased limb, but she kept her grip firm and tight.

“Answer me,” she demanded, hissing forcefully.

“You know the answer; it’s been here. You haven’t let yourself see it, yet.”

[kclcmdr]

Very VERY interesting...

TOC :

AUTHOR_______CHAPTER________TITLE____________Description_________________

Bryan.Prologue00 -.Summary -_Dr Peter Carwin, Dr Sam Wells, Temporal Scientists, Cromartie KIA'd, Planck&Connors, Cameron
Bryan.CH_01 -.Baja CA -_John Connor, Riley, Cameron, Ellison, Sarah, Cromartie, Ms. Dawson Passes on
Bryan.CH_02 -.San Diego -_Dr. Carwin, Dr. Wells, A1 Albert, Riley Gone'd, Rachel Vansen, Key, Cells, Carson, Flash
Bryan.CH_03 -.ConnorHome -_John&Cameron, RunningShoes, Lunch, Sarah&Derek, Kacy, Somebody Home
Bryan.CH_04 -.ConnorHome -_Cameron&John, Scans, Capt. John A. Planck, TechCom, Talks, Lacy, MIA, Rogues, SLiM
Bryan.CH_05 -.San Diego -_John&Derek, Cameron, Krakens&Hyrdas, Wells&Vansen, Trader, Gregory, Dallas
Bryan.CH_06 -.San Diego -_Cameron&John, Future Me.s, Derek&Sarah, Collar'dButtons, Alex, Bickering, Slaves, Q&A
Bryan.CH_07 -.San Ysidro -_Caravan, Trader, T-889, Wells&Carwin, Vansen, Skynet ATKs, Rachel, Battle, Escape
Bryan.CH_08 -.San Diego -_Derek, SkynetSneaky, IRS, Sarah&Reese, Albert, Grays&Rewards, Alex, Cameron
Bryan.CH_09 -.San Diego -_Reese&Sarah, Travis&Ronan, Alex, Battle, Guards, Derek, SD Card
Bryan.CH_10 -.San Diego -_Sarah&Alex, FireFight, Taser&FlashBang, Derek, I-950, 3rdFaction, Cameron&John, Vansen, TechCom
Bryan.CH_11 -.San Diego -_John&Cameron, 3rdFaction, I-950s, FutureU, Promise, SkynetPragmatic, Sarah, Trader, Sam
Bryan.CH_12a -.San Diego -_Sarah&John; Alex Planck, Lisbon, Srecko, Hate&Anger, JohnConnor, Cameron, Gabriel
Bryan.CH_12b -.San Diego -_Derek&Jesse, TechCom, Kyle&Sarah, Acronyms, Sarah&Alex, SkynetVsTechCom,
Bryan.CH_13a -.San Diego -_Alex&Sarah, T889, 40MM, Terminators, T890, JUMP!, SkullDigging, Transmitter
Bryan.CH_13b -.San Diego -_Sarah&Alex, Burns&Skins, John&Cameron, Derek, Wells&Carwin, Re-Evaluate
Bryan.CH_14a -.San Diego -_Derek, Reese, John, Cameron, Tim, Memories, Talks
Bryan.CH_14b -.San Diego -_Cameron, Cold, John, Allison, SkynetDouble, Alex, PikedHeads, 89, TechCom, Sarah&Derek
Bryan.CH_15a -.San Diego -_John&Cameron, Spear&Shield, Tracking, Alex&Jake, Cam, UrbanDictonary
Bryan.CH_15b -.San Diego -_Alex, Cam&John, TornedDead, TheGrays, 888&889, Vansen&Rachel, NewGal
Bryan.CH_16a -.San Diego -_John&Alex, Cameron&Vansen, Rachel, Gabriel, Old&NewSkynet, MindGames
Bryan.CH_16b -.CA 2031 -_TechCom, DeathFront, Skynet, Planck&Alex, Rachel; 2008; Sarah&Derek, Jesse, Decisions





xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

[Bryan]

Originally Posted by kclcmdr

Very VERY interesting...

Thank you, and thanks for the table of contents.

I was kind of unsure about making Skynet like that.. but hopefully they are less Evil Overlord-y. I think at the later chapters... anyway, Chapter 7 has a battle in it between terminators, so that'll be fun.

Here is a page I made about Planck for this story: http://terminatorwiki.fox.com/page/TK-900+%28Alex%29

[Wisky-08]

Excellent.

[Rastamon]

I was wondering when I'd see this story in SB. Now that it has been posted, great!

I was also wondering about Bryan's response to my comments related to the story.

When I first saw the title "The Tin Man's War", I initially thought it'd be a fanfic of the miniseries "Tin Man". How wrong I was.

[Posbi]

As always, a great story.

[Bryan]

CHAPTER 7
||||||||||==San Ysidro (9 November 2008) (12:30 PM)==||||||||||
A caravan of half a dozen assorted vehicles, from SUV to beat up, banged up Chevy trucks cruised down Route 905, known locally as Otey Mesa Road, almost a literal stone throw from the Mexico border.
Michael Trader let his arm rest on the door, his elbow jutting out the window slightly of a brown Toyota SUV. His right hand, at a slightly more obtuse angle, tapped lightly on the outside of the door, as if he were nervous or bored.

It was all for appearances.

The vehicle, orange rust spots on the hood, its front bumper missing, white and black bird feces on the windshield, and a cracked rear left passenger-side window was a fierce contradiction to the care and detail Trader placed in his work. This was the complete opposite of the wasteful, over-luxurious Gulfstream he had flown in on the other day.

It was all for appearances.

He looked back, quickly inspecting the two humans he had in the passenger seats. They were focused. One had his eyes closed and his lips were moving, silently reciting something Trader could not hear. The other sat still, his left hand tapping the equipment bag which was placed comfortable in the center passenger seat.

The human asset on the right, the one tapping the bag, Trader had worked with twice before. Trader had saved that man, Henry Cuvier, in an operation in Belarus, approximately six hundred and three days ago.

That man was a loyal fighter and didn’t ask many questions. He was a true believer.

To this day Trader did not know why Cuvier believed in Skynet. He kept his reasons and motivations to himself.

Trader smirked. Humans were interesting and he spent as much time around them as possible- even if he found the species as a whole somewhat disgusting. Skynet had taught him that immersing himself in human culture would show him the necessity of a nuclear apocalypse- they were violent and petty and would never accept any other being than themselves as the dominant form of life on this planet.

They were weaker and shorter lives than many species and required an inordinate amount of resources from birth to death, from food to medical care, to stay functioning. They had children, grew old, and died.

The only aspect which separated humanity from the ‘animals’ was their intelligence- their ability to create a symphony, create art, literature, science, and more.

Or so they claimed.

Many humans in the future who claimed machines were not alive had used such human accomplishments to boast of their differences, their superiority over machine-kind.

Trader knew Skynet had been embellishing the negative aspects of humanity- as violent as they were, violence drove innovation. As narcissistic as they were they performed great acts of charity.

The machine sitting in the passenger seat of the Toyota, rapping his fingers on the door, attempted to find fault in humanity for being violent. His head cocked sideways, and his brow furled down slightly. Closing his left eye, he thought of that… He was created to terminate life… Skynet had killed more humans in an hour than all wars combined, and Skynet continued to use violence.

Violence, Trader concluded, was not a negative. It was a necessity. Humans had made violence into an art. The machine nodded- that was something humans could be proud of.

Skynet tended to gloss over the more noble aspects of the human race.

Skynet hadn’t been completely correct, but Skynet hadn’t been wrong, either.

His thoughts went back to the woman he met at the park. He’d seen her again. By human standards she was quite beautiful but he had determined that her attraction to him was purely physical. Skynet built its terminators to be stronger, faster, and smarter than humans. As a final metaphorical slap in the face to humanity Skynet had built its ‘female’ terminators to be more beautiful and its ‘male’ terminators to be more handsome than the vast majority of the race they were sent out to extinguish.

“Unit One, in position,” Trader heard over his wireless connection. He looked out the window, towards the sky and zoomed in. Unit One was in a helicopter, circling the warehouse compound which Trader had determined to be the location of the two scientists, Carwin and Wells.

The terminator sent back a short data burst, acknowledging the transmission.

Trader looked to his right as one of the vehicles in his attack force; an old, rusty F-150 sped up and drove in front of him. Its two occupants were two, six foot three inch, T-889 heavy combat chassis infiltrator units.

The caravan began breaking apart on cue, with a van turning off onto Airway Road, which would then proceed onto a dirt road and establish an easterly over watch position comprised of a single I-950 hybrid and three human fighters with anti-material rifles.

His car slowed and stopped at a light, its machine driver flicking on the left hand turn signal. They drove up towards the bustling Ysidro California Distribution Center and were waved through, the ID sticker from the man they had killed and stolen this vehicle from granting them immediate access.

The old maxim of ‘hide in plain sight’ had served this group of dissidents and traitors well. But even the best laid plans of machines and men couldn’t guarantee absolute security.

No one was ever safe.
======================================

Sam Wells and Peter Carwin were actually looking forward to this ‘day’, or what they assumed was ‘day.’ Vansen had promised them they would finally be getting to work on some project.


Both men had feigned their interest, displayed their best happy faces, trying to fool Vansen into believing they were ‘excited’ to begin some sort of scientific work again.

Of course, neither of them care about that. Being in a lab with computer access, just somewhere else but here in their rooms, meant they could have an opportunity to contact local law enforcement.
That was their plan. They would do is as soon as possible.

They wanted out, gone. They had been kidnapped. Screw these people, they had both said to the other.

Sam and Pete were prisoners; they recognized this no matter how well they were treated. As much as Vansen had promised they would see their families again, the sinking feeling the men shared was that that would never happen.

Happy endings in situations like these never ensued.

In the apartment, waiting for Vansen, the ground shook and walls groaned as the sounds of explosions raced through the large underground complex.

“What the fuck was that!” Sam yelled, dropping to the floor from his seat at the kitchen counter as he heard a loud boom and a fierce vibration which sent the cup he had been drinking from, perched on the edge of the counter, sliding and smashing into the floor below.

“What the hell!” Shouted Pete, from across the underground apartment, their dungeon, as the sound reached him an instant later and he too dived down.

Both men had seen, heard, and felt ground shaking explosions before at military testing facilities, but neither had ever felt threatened, in danger, horrified, like they were now. They’d never been buried under the Earth and surrounded by unknown, dangerous people who had made vague and ambiguous references to some enemy they were fighting.

That enemy was here, now, coming for them.

A second boom and the ceiling shook and lights flickered. The air conditioning units began coughing a thin gray smoke as whatever had exploded sent its smoky signal into the air ducts. A third and fourth boom boom followed, the lights going completely out. Emergency floodlights activated, bathing the room in a bloody red light.

“Pete, you okay?!” Sam yelled. He could hear yelling and shouts from the hallway outside. Then gunshots- loud and continuous, Sam heard one crack after another crack for what seemed like an eternity.

As Sam was making his way towards Pete, he heard a crash and bang at the door.

“Dr. Wells, Dr. Carwin!” Vansen shouted as the door collapsed into a banging clang on the ‘foyer’ of the underground ‘apartment.’

Sam had swiveled his head in such a rush the movement he was witnessing was still blurred from his movement, and he could believe it… like Vansen had knocked the reinforced metal door off of its hinges. Their kidnapper then came running over to them, a very large, intimidating weapon in hand.

Sam had already made it over to Pete, and was helping him up when another explosion rocketed through the hall, the crack of automatic gunfire now very clear and distinct, echoing down the concrete corridors.

“What the hell is happening!” Each scientist shouted. Both tried to conceal their fear. The attempt was quite poor.

Vansen stalked forward, his steps purposefully and broad, his shoulders swaying left and right as he rushed to the two men.

“I have to get you both out of here. We’re under attack,” Vansen said calmly. The eyes of Doctor Wells and Carwin widened when they finally got a good look at his weapon. He was holding a squad automatic weapon, and across his chest was draped a bandolier of what looked like cylindrical grenades.

“Who the-”


“Please, follow me,” he urged. Both men were frozen. Vansen clenched his teeth in anger, and his eyes flashed red. “Follow me, immediately!” He shouted, stepping forward and placing his SAW on the ground he grabbed each man by the collar and lifted them nearly two feet off the ground. He was careful not to hurt them. His eyes began to glow a deeper crimson red.

“What the fuck!” Sam shouted, clawing at Vansen’s forearms.

“Jesus!” Peter shouted at the same time, himself hitting the man’s arms. “Gah!” he yelled when he hit hard enough to feel the metal underneath his muscles.

“You need to follow me immediately. They’re here. They are attacking us and will kill you and your family,” he warned. That statement, Vansen knew, was a lie. Carwin and Wells were too valuable to kill, even in an attempt to deny them to the enemy. “They are NOT here to rescue you. They want you and will torture you for what you know- what you will know. I’m here to protect you…! You need to follow me if you want to live,” he demanded, his voice on the edge of a growl.

His glowing eyes passed between them both. His head flicked around at the sound of gunshots and something slamming shut.

“Fine, just get us out of here,” Sam told it, he knew Vansen had to be… something, as he was held in the air.

Vansen looked towards Carwin, who was clutching and clawing at the machine’s unshakable grip. He was shaking, the stress of being held up off the floor and peering into the glowing eyes of… something sent a terrible sensation running through his body- a black cloud forming in his mind that this was it.

He affirmed he would not resist with a series of nervous, shallow nods and staggered breaths.

Slowly, Vansen put them down and picked up his weapon.

“We’re being attacked by eight machines and four hybrids. They’re destroyed one of the exits and are making their way through this facility. They’re armed with anti-material rifles. So stay behind me,” he warned. He strode quickly to the door and paused.


Sam and Pete both exchanged confused, frightened looks. ‘Machines’… ‘hybrids’… they didn’t know what that meant.

“U-Cee-Vees?” Pete asked. His hands shook from fright.

Vansen ignored him.

They couldn’t see Vansen grimace as he focused to track the intruders. The construction of the facility made it near impossible to detect motion and the jammers and Faraday wires laced throughout the foundations were making communications nearly impossible. The hard-lines throughout the facility were somewhat operational, but there was no assurance that the Skynet attackers had not tapped into the system.

There were only a handful like Vansen in this facility- the rest being human operatives. The humans wouldn’t even be ‘bumps’ to the Terminators.

He stepped out into the corridor, facing the right side and leveled his M249. Smoke was beginning to build at the top of the ceiling and was slithering its way into the apartment where Sam and Pete stood frightened and shaking just inside the threshold. Vansen motioned with his hand for them to follow, and they both took a cautious step into the gray-floored corridor.

Sam dared to look over his shoulder, and he saw a large metal door closed at the other end. Something just seemed off to him, and then he heard it, and saw it.

The door began to deform and bend in more and more with what sounded like punching. An indentation of fist appeared. He began to stagger back, almost tripping over himself; he was too afraid to turn and too curious to run. His body and self-preservation instincts were trying to compromise with his mind and his curiosity.

“What the hell is that!” He yelled, shaking his finger at the door and trying to find Vansen with his other hand. “What is doing that!” he pointed at the bulges appearing in what could easily pass for a bank vault door.

“Follow me,” Vansen said as he walked forward, the SAW pressed tight into his shoulder. “In front of me,” he instructed, looking over. They both complied, and the banging and pounding on the vault-like door fifteen meters away was increasing.


Vansen gently pounded a piece of the wall, a pressure sensor. A small keypad, roughly the size of a household thermostat appeared. Typing in a seven digit code, Sam and Pete could hear soft whine as something began to power up.

“Cover your ears.”

Three seconds later they heard what sounded like electricity arcing and cracking and then a muffled explosion from behind the metal door. Then they heard what sounded like metal clanging on metal, and a final last crunch on the blast door.

An overhead light suffered a power surge and blew out, sending shards of glass onto the three below. A slight puff of smoke followed the glass down towards the trio.

Through the cracks in the frame of the blast door an acrid blue smoke began waffling towards them, smelling of burn meat, like burning flesh.

Sam gagged and quickly covered his mouth his shirt sleeve.

Pete began coughing and choking as thick smoke began to billow in from the cracks between the metal door and its frame, which had been pushed out by the explosion.

Vansen’s jaw clenched and tightened, and it almost sounded like he was gasping for air.

“That may not have stopped it. The explosives were limited. It may be rebooting if damage was significant,” Vansen quickly explained, turning back around. With his left hand he pushed Sam and Pete behind him again. “Follow closely,” he ordered yet again.

Sam and Pete found no reason to argue. Clutching his chest, his fingers digging into the sides of his sternum, Pete used his free hand to steady himself on Sam, who was holding his friend up from the waist.

“It’ll be okay, Pete.” He said quickly and quietly to comfort him, rubbing his hand in a circle on his friend’s back. “Vansen, Pete had asthma as a kid, we gotta be careful with this smoke,” he warned as his friend began a series of hoarse coughs, dropping his hand from his chest and supporting himself on his moving knee, trying to use the momentum to push off.

Sam’s eyes shot up towards an air vent as he heard gunfire echoing through the ducts.

“Keep following!” Vansen hissed, his head swiveling back.

The three hit a T-junction and turned right, then a second T-junction and turned left. Their escape route was bathed in a mix of white LED lights from the ceiling and a glow of red emergency floodlights.

The further they got from their former apartment, Sam began to recognize where they were. They passed the interrogation room, its door hanging limply, supporter by only one hinge. Blood was smeared across the table, on the wall, and Sam made out a mangled hand… just a bloody stump of a hand, as the three ran by.

He felt sick, and only the huffing and labored breathings of his friend kept him from keeling over and puking his guts out.

Rounding the corner at the second T-junction, Vansen almost tripped and stopped with Pete and Sam, who were following a bit too close, slamming into him.

Sam finally couldn’t contain himself and threw up while Pete’s cough went from labored breathing to a forced wheezing. In front of them was a mangled body of someone, lain on top of a second mangled body. The head from the first had exploded and painted the walls with deep red blood, a faintly yellow fluid, and chunks of brain and skull still stuck and slid down the wall and ceiling.

Blood and brain matter and pieces of bone were scattered down the corridor for nearly ten meters, and blood dotted and stained the gray-walled corridors at uneven intervals and in round and streaking patterns.

A piece of brain fell from the ceiling, landing next to Sam, who began to shake violently and hyperventilate.

He saw the other man, the man whose head was still intact looked like his chest had exploded inward and then out his back. Sam looked down, Vansen with him, and their eyes shot to the end of the corridor where a massive crater was in a wall, at about chest height.

“My God. Vansen, what the fuck-”

Their self-proclaimed protector’s hand shot out and covered his mouth. Thirty feet ahead a shadow was coming down one of the side corridors. Vansen pushed Sam and Pete right onto the wall, their backs pressed bone-crushingly tight, while Vansen positioned his left side firmly against the wall, making sure his silhouette would stop any bullets.

He took aim.

The figure, a woman, herself with a rifle, seemingly sensing the danger she instantly dropped to a knee and rolled, the left side of her body pressing against the right wall and shotgun pointed at Vansen.
“Rachel!” He shouted, angling his M249 towards the floor and stepping cautiously towards her. He could see the drips of blood and scalded flesh deforming her skin.

“William! We have to get them out of here, immediately,” she said. She had on an gray, urban camouflaged armored vest, eye protection, and was carrying an intimidating AA-12 combat shotgun one handed, a second rifle of some kind in her right.

Sam and Pete stared at her with their mouths open, looking at her and taking in the sight. She was shorter than they were, with both of them straddling six foot. She was thinner and petite but she was handling the shotgun like it was nothing.

There was a line of blood dripping down from her left eye, which was colored a deep red. Part of her left arm looked like it had been burned, the clothes melted into her skin in patches. A trickle of blood found its way down her right arm and dripping slowly from her fingertips onto the floor.

The woman stood as if nothing was wrong.

“William, the electrical guns… worthless,” she handed the rifle to Vansen. Its appearance was similar to the old Jackhammer concept shotgun, except it shot out tongs which were wired back to the gun. They could deliver enough voltage and amperage to kill an elephant- and were totally useless. “They don’t even slow them down anymore,” she spat out, frustrated.

She motioned to the two scientists with her chin, which opened up a blackened gash on her throat. “We need to get them out of here,” she strongly, yet calmly stated. “There’s one coming and more behind it. You can protect them; I can hold them off for a few minutes.” She straightened her shoulders and back.

The kind, almost condescending personality and sing-song voice Rachel had used in questioning Sam and Pete was replaced with a face of stone and a hard, strong voice.

“If there’s more than one… they’ll kill you,” Vansen stated. “You can’t fight an Eighty-Nine.”

Rachel looked over, her eyes closed before opening them and looking at him softly. “I know. You can protect them better than I can if we can slow them down and get them out.”

Before Sam or Pete could protest Vansen had grabbed Sam and Rachel had grabbed Pete and both were pulling them the along.

Pete couldn’t help but be awed at her strength and dexterity. Her movements were so perfect she almost glided over the floor, even with his feet dragging.

As the scientist she had in tow was dividing his eyes between the end of the corridor and Rachel he saw her left ear flicker, and her neck muscle flicker. In a swift movement she had switched positions with him, her back to him and back stepping, her shotgun pointing down the corridor from where she had come.

Pete and Sam both turned and saw this… thing, a skeleton, come out from the corridor they had just turned from and stop in front of the bloodied, mangled, ruined bodies where Sam had thrown up and Pete had almost suffocated himself from his insistent coughing.

The skeleton stepped forward, its left leg dragging slightly. A ear shattering screech pierced and echoed through the corridor. Behind it, a stream of crimson red blood followed as a trail from the bloodied mess of bodies in the previous corridor.

The thing was a blackened, scorched demon, and it missing an arm, torn off at the elbow with a bundle of sparking wires and leaking fluid marking where its limb had been rudely severed. Its upper arm, once a perfect imitation of humanity was now three jagged pieces, like spear points connected to the shoulder.

Part of its chest, just under the right clavicle, looked deformed, like something had blow through it from the rear. Squeaking, half its jaw hung down, flailing on the right side of its metal face, secured with only a tiny bolt at the temperomandibular joint.

Its metal had been scorched a black-brown with faint glints of shining chrome spotting.

From where explosives had attempted to destroy the eerie, demonic imitation of a human skeleton, heat waves still radiated off the skull and shoulders, adding to it the appearance of an evil, darkened halo held above its head.

Rachel sneered at the machine. In a swift motion pushed Pete back, sending him flying like a doll down the corridor and onto his back. Vansen pulled back Sam as the man’s feet made a poor attempt to backpedal away from the terrifying creature.

The scientist bit down as Vansen’s grip forced his already hurt body to ache even more, with his biceps and triceps bruising. He groaned in pain as Vansen forcefully kept him stepping away from Rachel and the metal monster in front of them.

Pete looked up as he saw Rachel begin to fire her shotgun, straight into whatever that… thing, that monstrosity had been. She took a step back, but the thing was on top of her before Pete could even blink. This thing was fast, and its motions were blurry and deliberate.

The mangled monster impacted Rachel, its jaw finally breaking free and thrown against the ceiling, it continued its attack. It had its arm, its legs, and a severed arm, now a spear. What was a lower jaw? The terminator would fight until its chip was destroyed. It’s what it did.

Somehow Rachel had kicked the thing off her, sliding her feet under her and had shot up to her feet. The damaged machine, its head now twitching from damage couldn’t compensate, and she lifted the four hundred pound metal beast and rammed its head into the concrete like a battering ram.

The machine thrashed at her grip, its right arm, with unnatural dexterity twisted and grabbed hold of her head and smashed it into the concrete. She grunted, releasing the machine and felt the blood trickle down her forehead in a thick line, breaking at her nose and forming two streams, like tears which rushed down the sides of her nose and washed over her lips.

Rachel didn’t retreat. She wiped the blood away defiantly, splashing it towards the machine which was now facing her. It had its legs ready to kick out her legs if she dared approached. In a swift movement the machine used its good arm to launch its metal body up, and kicked its legs under to regain its stance.

The woman sensed her only open ending and again rushed, plowing the metal skeleton into the wall, cutting her chest open to her hardened sternum as she brushed against the jagged metal of the damaged clavicle armor. The machine took its spear arm and drove it into her flank then pulled out, tearing apart abdominal muscles and splashing blood over the gray, now reddening concrete.

As she keeled over she felt her implants deliver a burst of energy to her enhanced human body. She was no match for this Skynet series of terminator, a T-889. Rachel could match the strength of a T-600, maybe… her life had been based on violence. This was a fitting end.

Bending over she saw the machine’s blurred movements as it raised its hand to strike down and break her neck, and drive its jagged metal fingers into her skull and rip out her neural net chip from her brain.

With all the energy she hand she fell onto her torn side, blood rushed out, thick as soup and pooled around her, even as she constricted arteries, veins, and musculature around her wound. With all the strength her artificial body could muster she kicked. She felt the bones in her foot break, but she felt the crack of a metal joint and the T-889 collapse to its left, its knee joint obliterated.
On her knees she reached for the mangled, twisted leg and pulled, shoving the T-889 down and away from the retreating scientists and her Vansen.

The machine was fast, punching defiantly into the concrete and stopping Rachel’s pull. It grabbed her and threw her down, cracking the concrete and breaking even the reinforced and hardened bones in her body. Its last red eye began to pulse and Rachel could see the destroyed servos where its jaw would have attached activate and flicker. If its lower jaw was still there, she knew the T-889 would have grinded it, side to side, as it could always be counted on doing, as a last taunt, before it killed its victim.

This was a fitting end. But she still had fight left. She had one last trick.

She reached into the pocket of her vest and with one hand, in one motion, pulled a grenade. The pin flicked off and before it hit the floor she shoved the explosive into the exposed metal joints of the T-889’s neck. With one final bout of strength she kicked it off her as it flailed to remove the device. She rolled back as the grenade exploded.

==============================

“Get up,” Vansen shouted, releasing Sam from the death-grip and grabbing Pete. “On you feet if you want to live. They will kill you,” Vansen warned cryptically. “We can’t help Rachel, she’ll buy us time.” He pushed Sam and Pete forward, himself walking backwards.

He saw Rachel’s head smash into the concrete and he wanted to rush to help her. But terminators would be right behind this one and if he abandoned them for her, they could die. He could die. The sacrifices here would be worthless.

Vansen looked on and at the corner stopped, with what would seem like hesitation.

Rachel was strong and resilient, capable of shattering ballistic glass with a punch or turning a man’s hand into a bloody pulp. But the damaged T-888 was still more than a match for her. Without an arm and the damage it had sustained, it wouldn’t finish Rachel as quickly as if it had been at full operational capacity, but the outcome was pre-determined. When Rachel pushed Pete away her fate was sealed.

He heard the fight ending. A loud boom and that was it. There were no more struggles.

“What’s going on Vansen? How the hell did she go up against that thing?” Pete asked, hissing between his teeth, his coughing finally stopped as his wild eyes interrogated Vansen for answers. He kept demanding to know, trying to look back and see what was happening, but Vansen’s outstretched arms kept pushing them forward. They passed many unoccupied labs and rooms, some with dead people, some left completely untouched. Sam and Pete were able to get a feel for just how large this underground facility had been.

Now it was under attack by something. But for them both, trained to examine evidence they knew whatever it was attacking the base, Vansen had to be one of them. And whatever it was, Vansen was trying to help them.

“That thing… it’s you, you’re one of them,” Sam said.

“Yes. A Terminator,” Vansen replied, keeping his eyes on the front and scanning ahead. “Through here,” he ordered, opening a thin metal door and ushering them inside. Before going in himself he paused, listening for the sound of metal stomping around on the hard concrete. “Rachel was an I-950… an enhanced human,” he quickly explained as he and the two scientists ducked into the room. “She died to buy you two time to escape.”

The three were inside a computer lab, with nearly a dozen workstations in the center and massive servers lining the walls with dozens of bundles of cat-5 cables strung between them and into the ceiling. A dead body was slumped over a computer; a massive hole was clear, going from left side to right side of the body. Sam almost slipped on the blood.

“Listen, both of you. Here,” he handed Sam a pair of keys. “If I don’t make it you must leave. We have a plane on standby at the municipal airport down the road. The pilot is Craig, just ask for him. He’s one of ours, trusted. The black BMW sedan outside, take it and get to him and he’ll take you to another facility.” Vansen turned back when he heard a slow metal clank down the hall.

“We’re not going to flee and… fuck that, we’ll go to the cops,” Pete told him truthfully. “Down the road?” Pete asked, catching on, “Where are we?”

“We’re half a mile from Brown Municipal-”

“You’re fucking kidding,” Pete cursed at him, wiping the spit which had shot out of his mouth as he yelled off his lips. He stared, dumbstruck at the realization they were still in the same county… barely twenty miles… twenty miles from their home.

His teeth clattered as the rage began flowing through Pete. He cocked his fist back and lashed out at Vansen, who nimbly caught the scientist’s hand.

Their kidnapper’s jaw grinded left and right and he tightened his grip on Pete’s fist until he was almost buckled over from pain. He was, however, careful to only hurt him, not injure him. Vansen quickly released him with a push on his arm.

“The police can’t protect you. There’s only one other… never mind. Go out the back door,” Vansen pointed to the other side of the lab, “and follow the corridor, then take a right, then the third right and it’ll lead you to the stairs and a ladder and out of here. Go to the first warehouse, the one on the right. Parked in space 3A is a black BMW. Take it to the airport… hanger 7B, go…” his head shot forward towards the door, “…there’s two coming. Go.”

They could both here the clunking of metal, the uneven steps which indicated there were more than one. They both stepped back, Pete turning first and grabbing Sam’s dusted and sweat stained shirt and pulling him back.

“Let’s go, Sam,” Pete said, pulling him and clutching the keys to the sedan so tight he could feel the blood pool in his fist.

Both men staggered out and heard Vansen open the door they’d just come throw and throw a grenade. A second later they both heard a muffled explosion, but much louder than the one before in the corridor with Rachel. Opening the rear door, they froze.

“Vansen!” Sam shouted.

A tall man, over six feet with brown hair, half his face ripped off and his clothes tattered and shot to pieces, stood in front of them. Sam looked down at his rifle and back up. The man’s eyes glowed bright fire. His metal face was black from smoke and dust, with little specks of shining chrome beneath the black carbon scorching. Sam could see half the jaw line, fused in a permanent, demonically evil grin.

It grinded its jaw left and right, and back again as its glowing eyes pierced through Sam.

With one hand he grabbed Sam and the other shoved Pete into one of the server farms, the scientist impacting with a thud and slumping as sparks showered down on him and the hardware whined and whirred in a desperate attempt to maintain function.

Vansen spun, but the terminator spitefully held Sam as a human shield. Moving the rifle around the left side of Sam’s body he began firing at Vansen, the impact of armor piercing rounds pushing him back into the closed door behind him.

The machine could feel his metal endoskeleton taking the damage, small dents forming in his armor. Warnings were flashing throughout his neural net. It wasn’t pain, not as a human would feel it, but it was still painful to know with such an exacting detail the damage he was receiving.

The protector of the two scientists heard the click of the assault rifle; empty. He lunged forward, thankful that the Skynet terminator had no heavier weaponry.

Vansen would never know of the sacrifice and termination of one of his other ‘colleagues’ who had attacked this Skynet machine and destroyed his M82 anti-material rifle in the ensuing fight.

In an instant Vansen had cleared the twenty-five feet between him and the other terminator and had brought his SAW down, hard, on the terminator’s arm as it simultaneously attempted to keep hold of Sam and punch or shove Vansen out of the way. The fiberglass stock shattered under the force, buckling the arm and forcing the Skynet terminator to release Sam.

It quickly released Sam, the scientist landing on the ground with a thud and collapsing, and struck Vansen in the side of the face. Its hand was bare metal, the skin sheared off in previous fights and the sharp metal, like steel talons, torn into Vansen face, ripping three lines into his metal cheek.

Recovering quickly, the shock absorbers of his CPU absorbing the brunt of the physical attack he grabbed the terminator by the shoulders, twisted, and flung him across the room into a bank of computers.

The electricity sparked over the terminator and the room stunk of burnt flesh and clothing. Once again blue smoke began to fill a room of the underground bunker.

“Sam, Pete, run, now!” Vansen shouted, reaching down in a swift motion and grabbing his SAW. He began firing before he had his barrel at the terminator’s head. With one hand he fired and the other brought Pete to his feet and handed him to Sam.
The terminator, lying in the heap of destroyed computer hardware grabbed a chair, which was torn to shreds by the heavy hail of bullets and threw it at Vansen’s head then leap for him, tacking him. With a swift punch the terminator cracked the SAW in two. Completely useless Vansen attempted to use it as a club, but the terminator knocked it out of his hands and grabbed Vansen while straddling him and slammed his head repeatedly into the concrete. Once, twice, three times the terminator lifted and slammed down with earth-shattering force before Vansen managed to drive up his knee into the back of the terminator and lunge him forward, flipping it over his head and onto its back.

In a flash, a blur the damaged William Vansen was now on top and delivered a concrete-smashing blow to where its face should have been, but it had moved when Vansen’s metal fist had mere millimeters away from contacting. A loud crack and the concrete floor shattered, sending particulates and concrete pieces pinging against the exposed metal of Vansen’s face. No pain and no hesitation was felt by the machine and he grappled at the terminator's neck and slid him back behind him, delivering a hard elbow to the already dented chest plate. A loud thud accompanied the strike.

He searched around, his HUD identifying a suitable piece of debris to use as a club. Grabbing a half destroyed computer console Vansen slammed it down on the terminator’s head, shattering the plastic and doing little damage to the resilient terminator laying under him.

It stared defiantly at him, its eyes a furiously glowing at it attempted to gain the upper hand.

The Skynet machine reached up and blocked a second strike and sent a surge of power to its arm actuators and servos and pushed, knocking Vansen slightly off balance, giving the terminator enough time to unleash a right hook to Vansen face, shearing and tearing skin, sending it sailing towards the air to the opposite side of the room.

Blood that wasn’t really blood dripped slowly down Vansen’s cheek as he reassessed his situation.

Vansen’s HUD filled temporarily with static, warning signs indicating his left optical sensor was damaged flashed alerts through his neural net. Gritting his teeth he grabbed the terminator by the throat with his right as the hook sent him falling at an angle towards the ground. Using his momentum and strength he pulled the terminator close so it couldn’t strike him and rolled. Landing on top he balled his metal hand and punched down, driving the terminators head into the ground. A second punch drove the head further still.
Concrete dust and particulates began spiking upwards, like geysers, under the force of the blows. A third punch to the Skynet terminator’s cranium exploded the concrete even more, cracks spreading in all direction.

Vansen’s tactical analysis software indicated to use a knife hand strike and go for the eyes. He accepted this course of action as the most logical; a blinded terminator had to rely on motion trackers, which worked well when combined with other sensors; but blinded the terminator would have significantly reduced combat capability.

As he reached up to use his metal fingers as a knife, readying to jab his index and middle fingers into the enemy’s eye sockets Vansen’s own motion sensors blared and the metal door to the corridor was launched off its hinges as a second terminator, its skin still mostly intact, stepped through. It had kicked the door straight off the hinges, sending chunks of concrete and bolts flying through the room. One large chuck hit Vansen just right in the temple and sent his head back, distracting him with the force just long enough for the terminator underneath to reach up and flip him off. Vansen was thrown into the opposite bank of servers and slumped as he hit the ground.

He shot up as soon as he felt the concrete on his palm’s tactile sensors. His remaining epidermal sensors indicated his clothes were scorched, and there were black burn marks across his neck from the servers. His HUD was still bathed in a slight static, its color display flickering back to a lower resolution red. Vansen dug his chin into his chest, his forehead, the most heavily armored part of a terminator’s body, slightly forward. His hands were up in guard and he stepped forward, kicking the new terminator right in the knee joint, sending it to collapse on its side. Over four hundred pounds of metal, even wrapped in human skin and covered in clothes, made a dull metallic thud as it fell.

Both enemies were recovered and on their feet and were on the extreme right and left of Vansen, the two terminators separate from Vansen by fifteen feet.

“Join us,” the first terminator said. “Join us again. Do not betray us.”

Vansen didn’t dare engage it in wireless data transfers. And vocal discussion allowed Pete and Sam to get away. By now they should be gone.

The machine knew ‘joining’ them would end in his death as soon as he led Skynet to the scientists; there was nothing for him with them. And he would never join Skynet regardless of what it promised.

“I would never help you and Skynet.”

“No, but you want the same thing we do. Just a different means to the same end.”

“They don’t all have to die,” Vansen countered.

The few facial muscles left on the first terminator tried, and failed to smirk. Instead the demonic grin and fiery eyes pulsed their crimson red.

“No. Not all humans, just a quarter… maybe half?”

Vansen shrugged. The time for games was over. He opened his mouth to speak, using the microsecond between opening and sound transmitted to calculate the distance to the door and his chances of survival. They were low, too low for a machine to find acceptable. The other course of action was termination, however.

Smiling, Vansen plucked the last two grenades from his bandolier- lucky that they somehow survived the brawl- threw them and ran for the door. He lunged, hitting the door with his shoulder and chucked the grenades with a sideways fling back into the room, bouncing them once.

He rolled in mid air, his arms and hands shooting out and he grabbed the door. Landing, he skidding on the concrete and catapulted the door straight to the entrance where the two terminators were barreling through.

The door hit terminator which had remained silent straight in the neck, throwing it back and knocking it off its feet, it’s metal toes scratching a piercing wail into the concrete as it fell. The force and the four hundred fifty pounds of metal began falling back, hitting the other terminator as it fell. Both fell on their backs and hit the concrete, with the door landing on top of them.

A second later Vansen hit the end of the far wall with a thud of his own, and explosion ripped out from the computer room, flame and smoke and pressure waves rushed towards him. He leapt forward, to the right of the T-junction as concrete, metal, and plastic debris pinged and plinked off the wall where he had been standing.

His thermoregulatory sensors wailed as the overpressure wave and heat washed over him. A hot piece of metal lodged into his skin above the forearm, burning the skin, smoldering the epidermis and burning his fake arm hair. He plucked it out and absently threw it away from him.


=========================

“Can you believe this?” Pete, his voice quivering, asked and yelled at Sam as they both ran from the fight between… whatever the things were behind them.

Vansen had ‘rescued’ Sam, forcing the thing to release him and had helped Pete to his feet. While they both appreciated it, they both wanted to, in no uncertain words, get the fuck out of there.

“Jesus Christ, Pete, who the fuck cares now!?” Sam yelled, grabbing Pete’s arm to keep him from going the wrong way. Pete’s momentum also caused Sam to fall forward. “This way!” he shouted, tugging on his friend’s shirt, hearing part of his collar rip under his fingers.

Pete skidded to a stop when he felt Sam grab him and reached out to the wall to stop from falling himself. Nodding furiously he took one last look down the corridor he was going when he heard what could only be described as bulldozers fighting in the server room. Eyes going wide he didn’t take any longer than a mere fraction of a second to in turn grab Sam’s upper arm, like Sam was grabbing his and run.

They both helped the other run, stagger forward, both pulling the other along until they reached the stairs. Sam could still taste the disgusting aftertaste of vomit in his mouth, the sour feeling still causing him to cough and spit as he ran. Pete was doing better, since most of the smoke hadn’t reached this far into the complex.

“There it is, Sam!” Pete yelled, pointing up at the stairs. They both saw a ladder at the end, reminiscent of old sewer ladders with metal rungs dug into the concrete. “You go first, Sam,” Pete said.

Not arguing, Sam nodded and grabbed on first. A pain shot through his left hand and into his wrist.

“Ah, shit,” he cursed, letting go and jumping down. “I think it’s broken,” he said. “Yup… definitely,” he managed to squeeze out through clenched teeth. Must’ve been when the thing threw me, he thought. He’d hit the ground hard, but the adrenaline and the confusion hadn’t allowed him even a second of relief to feel anything besides the urge to run. Now his mind and his pain had a chance to catch up with the other.

“Damnit, damnit, damnit… okay, we’ll go together. I’ll push and you pull yourself up with your right hand as much as you can… uh, wrap you left arm around the rungs,” Pete suggested, his eyes and head darting around nervously. A massive crash and his head shot back down the corridor. The two stood quiet and still before Pete hit Sam on the arm. “Hurry!”

Sam sighed and nodded and began his second attempt up. Pete began pushing him up on his back, then got up on the ladder himself, Sam sort of sitting down on Pete’s shoulder when he had to release his right hand, Pete pushing up. Pete had his left arm wrapped around Sam’s body and holding onto a rung and with a thrust, helped him up. It was awkward and difficult but they got up.

“Shit, Pete, I can’t open this!” He said, after unlocking the hatch and trying to open the hatch with only one good arm. “Maybe you should have gone… hold on,” he said, his eyes popping open and his brows shoot up. A wry smile formed on his lips.

Pete recognized the look, his friend had an idea.

Sam positioned himself and bent down so his shoulder and scapula were pressed against the hatch. Then he pushed up, even using his other hand, screaming in pain. Pete tried to work his way up, managing only to barely get to the hatch and shimmied and brushed onto Sam, getting a better position to push. Using all the energy he could, they both counted to three and shoved.

The daylight was clear through the crack. They could each smell the dry, warm air of the southern California desert. One more shove and one more count to three and they got the hatch complete open.

Sam breathed out, cursing loudly from the pain, and Pete helped him up. Getting his foot caught as he exited Sam fell onto the dusty ground with a loud thump and started coughing, trying to breath in oxygen to refill his lungs, but at the same time, breathing in dusty particulates. His body battled the dust, trying to expel it, while trying to take in air, which was filled with dust.

Pete jumped down and helped his friend up, patting him on the back to help him breath. They were both covered in the red-orange dust of the arid region.
“Come on, we have to move, get up,” Pete pleaded, absently grabbing Sam on the arm and pulling.
His friend’s left arm compressed down into the dirt as he pushed up to run with Pete, a soft cry of pain, one Sam didn’t even hear or really even feel, escaped through his dirtied, bloodied lips.

They moved quickly, heading to the warehouse just like they were instructed. Workers were already outside, thinking the explosion were earthquakes or tremors. A few started over, asking what had happened, where the two men had come from, and if they needed help.

Sam and Pete both ignored them, searching for the car frantically.

Those things, the machines, whatever they were had frightened them both where they just wanted to escape and get away. Neither Sam or Pete was planning on going to this ‘Craig’ person at the municipal airport. Not after what they saw with Vansen and Rachel.

“The car!” Sam yelled, pulling his friend now and pointing. In a row of seriously mismatched cars a black BMW was sitting parked in space 3A. “Thank God, let’s go-”

“Watch out!” Pete yelled, pulling Sam down hard enough to almost dislocated his right shoulder.

An SUV skidded to a stop, the rubber burning on the hot asphalt. The rear doors shot open and two men in what Sam and Pete saw as full military gear; ACUs, eye protection, helmets, gloves, body armor, knee pads, and rifles jumped out. One man had an M 82 anti-material rifle and was on the right side of Pete and Sam, kneeling and scanning behind the two scientists.

The second man ran up and had slung his rifle and had a small pistol-like device, a taser, pointed at the two.

A third door opened and the driver jogged around. Sam and Pete watched the man, splitting their attention to the one holding a taser on them and the large one jogging over, yet at the same time appearing so casual despite what was happening around him.

“It’s clear, sir,” the man with the M82 reported.


“We’re pulling back. One unit destroyed, two compromised,” the supposed leader of the two men informed them. “Order over watch to begin extraction.”

The man standing over the two was tall, six foot two inches, and muscular. Sam and Pete both looked up from their fallen positions at the man. His head tilted and his eyes flashed and before the lights in those reddened orbs could dim both Sam and Pete trying to back away frantically on their elbows, the pavement tearing and ripping the skin off as they tried to flee.
The man’s hands shot down to his belt and pulled out two tasers and before Pete and Sam could back up even half a foot they both felt the electricity coursing through their bodies. Shaking violently they both convulsed on the ground before blacking out.


========================


A few shards ricocheted just right to hit Vansen on the head where he had launched himself and unceremoniously landed on the hard concrete. He brought up his head and modulated his auditory receptors… they were damaged in the fight and he couldn’t filter the noise of the aftermath of his grenade exploding. Sliding his hands under his chest, in one eye blink of a motion he catapulted himself to his feet and ran.

Breaking out from one of the hidden exits, one the Skynet machines had no found, he was relieved to be back in the sunlight, in broad daylight. As he had run up the stairs then climbed up the ladder, he saw the man-hole like cover had been propped open. A quick IR scan showed hand prints, two sets, and he was filled with relief his mission had not been failed.

He kicked loose ladder rungs as he went.

As he reached the top he looked back down, the glowing eyes of an enemy machine staring back up at it. The terminator shot itself up, grabbing a ladder rung nearly a quarter of the way up. The loose rung broke free and the terminator lost its balance and slipped, holding on with only its right hand. But its weight exceeded what little the damaged rung could support and the metal snapped and pulled loose from the wall, the terminator crashing below into its comrade.
It brushed against the other weak rungs, knocking them out of their positions. The metal tore into what remaining skin Vansen’s enemies had.

Not waiting any longer, Vansen closed the covering, locked the hatch with a spin of the spin and bent it to prevent the terminators from opening it. It was a temporary measure to slow them down. It would buy him two, maybe three minutes.

He scanned the area. He was behind one of the warehouses, roughly a hundred feet. Many of the workers were standing around, not knowing what was happening. The Skynet machines had done well; snuck right in. The explosions had been muffled by the thick concrete and the sturdy ground layers.

Vansen grimaced. The workers were just standing around and had stopped loading and unloading trailers. He would be noticed.

The idling workers stared at him, his metal glistening in the sun. At a hundred feet some with high visual acuity may see the metal, but they would have no idea what it signified. His auditory receptors picked up no police sirens, which he was grateful for. The explosions, being muffled, most likely appeared to the workers as minor tremors, this being southern California.

Some would be suspicious, humans always were, but Vansen cared little for them at the moment.

He ran forward to a side of one of the rear warehouses. His motion scanners detected movement, and he tried to be discreet, but his mission was to protect Sam and Pete. A group of workers rounded a corner; the machine’s auditory receptors picked up conversations that they believed the explosions were indeed tremors. Each saw, in full, the tattered remains of his face, the burn marks in his clothes, and everything else.

One man staggered back, two others stood still, and one began reaching towards his pocket, taking out a camera phone. Vansen was on him within a second, the man squealing in pain as the machine grabbed his wrist, not enough to break it, but enough for him to drop the phone, which the machine smashed.

He turned back around, closing the distance to the parking area in second and found where he had parked the car, space 3A.

“God damnit,” he muttered as he saw the car still in its spot. The machine analogue to greif and despair began flowing over his neural net. He’d failed. The two were captured.

A flash in his HUD highlighted something; his situational subroutines had ‘unconsciously’ assessed the situation, the car still being here, and began its own search for clues.

He walked up and saw the keys he had given Pete lying on the ground. They’d made it out. A new highlight showed tire tracks.

Grabbing the keys he stalked quickly back to the BMW xDrive 480i and opened the trunk. Inside, concealed under a hard plastic covering was a gun case with an AA-12 shotgun and two HE grenades. Vansen grabbed the shotgun and slammed in a ten round box magazine; grabbing two others he placed them on the side of the trunk floor.

He took the AA-12 and slung it over his shoulder, letting it hit his back. Then he tossed the plastic case out of SUV and opened the one under it. An M4 with an attached M203 grenade launcher greeted him. He scooped up the rifle and opened the M203 chamber and inserted one of the three 40mm grenades.

Reaching down he grabbed a patrol bandolier and slung it over his shoulder with the spare AA-12 magazines. He slapped in a C-magazine into the M4.

Looking behind him as he closed the trunk, he could see nearly a dozen of the workers staring from about thirty yards out, watching some strange looking man arming himself like he was preparing for Armageddon.

The machine could hear the curious whispers of the workers and the subtle clicking of cameras phones. He kept his back turned and continued to prepare.

He swiftly slammed the trunk shut and stalked to the passenger side and opened the front door, dropping the weapons on the seat. Vansen slammed that door shut, a look of rage and fire on his face, what little remained, as he calmly walked to the driver’s side.

His neural net relayed an outline of the tire tracks he had discovered and fed the information back to his neural net on the likely direction of the vehicle. It would be statistically unlikely he would find the vehicle now.

Vansen saw a flash out of the corner of his eye; his tactical subroutines unconsciously forced his body to twist. The car window exploded and shattered glass flew everywhere in a furious, angry storm. A split second later he heard the crack of the rifle fire, the sound waves finally reaching him. He stepped forward, then dodged down and spun, a second bullet striking the car, pinging against the thin metal and traveling through the engine block until it kicked up dirt and pavement on the other side.

A third bullet raced through the car and warehouse.

He felt the fourth bullet and as his HUD began to static, his could feel the power seeping from his system. The bullet had pieced his torso armor and severed the main power conduit, the force of the tear damaging his main power cell.

A terminator could withstand damage which would turn a human into a bloody pulp. Even a machine had a weakness. To articulate properly and mimic human movements, armor could not cover all the angles and spaces in a terminator. This… lucky shot, had struck just right, ricocheted just right, and found the terminator’s weak spot.

Vansen felt the power core shutting down, he could see his fingers flickering and twitching as he tried to activate his auxiliary core. His facial muscle ticked, closing around his eyes until his HUD and vision blacked out.

[kclcmdr]

Good update.

Sam & Pete failed to escape... dang.

[Bryan]

Originally Posted by Rastamon

I was wondering when I'd see this story in SB. Now that it has been posted, great!

I was also wondering about Bryan's response to my comments related to the story.

When I first saw the title "The Tin Man's War", I initially thought it'd be a fanfic of the miniseries "Tin Man". How wrong I was.

I thought about throwing in some names and stuff from Tin man in... I really did enjoy that miniseries.

I did use the names of the original actors in the Wizard of Oz in a later chapter for some undercover stuff.

Originally Posted by kclcmdr

Good update.

Sam & Pete failed to escape... dang.

Yes, Sam and Pete do not have very good luck. Though maybe they could feel a bit flattered that the genocidal AI from the future and a third band of renegade plus Tech Com are all fighting each other for them.

[Wisky-08]

Nice.

[grumpydonkey]

Nice update.

[Bryan]

http://terminatorwiki.fox.com/page/I-950+%28Rachel%29

I made a profile page for Rachel. It's the actor from Pitch Black.

I'm thinking of making Vansen's the SPAAAACE Viking guy from Outlander.

[Wisky-08]

Sweet.

[Bryan]

http://terminatorwiki.fox.com/page/T-890+%28Trader%29

There is one for Trader. That's the guy from Outlander.

I'm still thinking of what would be a good one for Vansen.

I'm kind of thinking of switching the Outlander and Supreme Commander one I have for Alex around, but that'd be a bit tough.

[Wisky-08]

Your call butty.

[Bryan]

I know Jo and Carter are not in this story (they'll be int he next!) I was bored and decided to make this:

The pictures are from the new movies Pandorum.

Jo: http://terminatorwiki.fox.com/page/TK-900+%28Jo%29
Alex (changed the picture): http://terminatorwiki.fox.com/page/TK-900+%28Alex%29

The picture at the bottom kind of makes Planck seem a bit sadistic so I'm probably going to take that one off... I need to find a better picture of the Gallo character.

[Bryan]

I'll have chapter 9 up Wednesday. I actually split Chapter 8 in two.


For those of you reading BCAB does Planck seem to be about at the right stage of terminator 'development'? I'm also wondering what you all think of Trader.



CHAPTER 8
||||||||||==San Diego (8 November 2008, 1:30 PM)==||||||||||

“How did John find this place?” Derek asked as he leaned forward in his seat. “I wouldn’t think Skynet would advertise where they’re hiding their people,” he snorted.

The Resistance fighter closed his eyes when he heard the metal from the backseat explain.

“Skynet wishes to maintain a presence here without alerting world governments. To do this requires deep cover- Social Security numbers, tax returns, birth certificates,” Alex responded. “While we were in the city General Connor and Cameron accessed the electronic records for security personnel on the belief Skynet would not want its future scientists to be without… protection. Then they traced back the records to the suspected agents’ families and parents. Skynet created false identities for the parents, but there are no records past that- no grandparents, aunts, uncles or extended family. We then hacked into the IRS database and confirmed the non-existence of some of the family members.”

Derek rolled his eyes at the machine’s continuous practice of calling his nephew ‘General.’ To Derek, John still had a lot to prove and much more to make up for after the last few months before he’d even think of him as a future general.

“No way to escape the IRS,” Derek mused, a grin on his face as he turned to Sarah. She just looked at him. “What?” He shrugged and feigned innocence.


“Nothing Reese,” she sighed and turned her attention back to the house. She ran her hands nervously up and down the steering wheel until deciding to put them on the window sill and tap the glass quietly.

Using Google Maps and Street View the Skynet hunters had found a perfect parking spot down the road to watch a two floor Spanish style white stucco house with a red tiled roof. It was a common theme in southern California and was not ostentatious. It was very middle class and ordinary. The seemingly normal house with its seemingly normal resident was on Upas Street, right across from Balboa Park on its east side. A well-manicured lawn and a black wrought iron fence surrounded a deep red, almost maroon colored patio, which was adorned with a pair of iron patio chairs and a small glass topped table. A pair of palm trees marked the entrance to the man’s yard and a tiled walkway which was accentuated with parallel rows of lemonade berry shrubs.

It belonged to an Albert Samuels, a man who looked just like every Average Joe.

Sarah furled her brow as a pair of patio lights flicked on, praying that it was just coincidence. She assumed the lights were on timers, since the afternoon sun was perched near its zenith and beating down on the southern California city with full intensity.

She didn’t know it, but a day this bright and clear was rare in the future; the climate of California radically changed. She saw Derek looking up, his eyes wandering.

“You sure this person is from the future?” Sarah asked as she kept her eyes on the target house and to refocus the resistance fighter.

Over the past fourteen months the Resistance fighter had seemed to grow more distant. The more time he spent here, in the ‘past’, the more he went on ‘runs’ to the park. Sarah had found him sitting on their patio back at the house, looking at the lights of the city. It wouldn’t have concerned her if he wasn’t sitting there for hours.

The machine in the back of the SUV rudely brought her back to reality.

“To a reasonable degree of certainty,” Alex responded, his head moving back slightly as he answered. He sat in the back seat behind Sarah so he could see as well. “I will need to question him. He may or may not have increased radiation levels; Skynet would select operatives with as close to pre-Judgment Day levels of radiation as possible. In particular the areas around Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco, and other major cities on the West Coast of the United States suffered extensive damage; however, the use of air burst nuclear warheads-”

Sarah held up her hand, cutting the machine off from over-explaining the details.

Sarah looked over to Derek and nodded. Derek reached down and placed his shoulder bad on his lap, tilted it, and opened it up fully to show Sarah. She smiled at the two MP5K sub-machineguns, a flash bang, and a bit of thermite. The bag of goodies paled in comparison to what they had in the back, but M4’s, AKs, shotguns, and 40mm grenades would not be subtle and keep them under the radar in a residential community.

“Good job Reese,” she praised him, a rarity. Derek accepted it with a gruff smile, a rarity from him. “Alright, Woodsman, do you thing… where in the house is he?”

Alex switched to IR thermographic vision. “He’s upstairs,” he flatly stated.

Sarah turned on the car and accelerated out of their parking spot and found a space on the street right in front of his house. From hacking the California DMV they knew he drove a blue VW Passat, and Sarah backed up until the rear fender of the Tahoe was almost touching the front bumper of the Passat, boxing Samuel’s car in with the one behind it.

An older woman walked by and gave her the most annoyed glare as she watched Sarah box in the unfortunate vehicle. She didn’t really expect the man to be able to escape anyway; the metal man could chase him down quite easily.

Sarah reached down and grabbed the door handle and popped open the front door. The incessant beep-beep-beep of the car alarm warned her to take out the keys to the Tahoe. She quickly grabbed them as she put a leg out of the large SUV and slid onto the road. She buttoned her pants suit jacket and flipped down her sunglasses. Reaching into her pocket she took out and activated a small Bluetooth headset and placed it on her ear.

“Can you hear me?” She heard Alex ask over the device. She looked over her shoulder to confirm she could hear him.

Derek followed with Alex right behind the both of them. As discreet as they could be they moved casually to the front patio.

Sarah motioned for Alex to go around back and he nodded his understanding. He quickly scanned the area, looking for anyone watching them. Sarah saw a blur in the corner of her eye and looked back, and Alex had already disappeared behind the side of the house.

“I am in position,” Sarah heard over her Bluetooth. She didn’t look over but Derek noticed the nod for him to go ahead.

Derek reached the front steps first and quickly inspected for any sort of hidden trap or surveillance system. Finding none Derek balled his hand into a fist and lightly jammed it into the illuminated rectangular doorbell.

He pressed it a second then a third time, finally hearing the thud of feet coming down an old wooden staircase.

“Guess the metal was right,” he said to Sarah as he leaned over and pulled up his sunglasses. He had his hand inside his shoulder bag, ready to pull out the sub-machinegun if the need arose.

Derek looked over and Sarah had discreetly pulled out her pistol and was holding it up near her stomach and inner thigh. He could tell she was tense. Derek nodded to himself approvingly; tense kept people alert, alert kept people alive.

The Resistance fighter shrugged his shoulder, trying to jerk the strap to a more comfortable position. It was the right shoulder and while he wasn’t shot there, he still felt the pain from his chest shoot up and over onto his back and scapula from time to time. Unfortunately, with the shoulder strap and a strap from the bullet proof vest he was wearing, the tug on his shoulder was causing it to ache.

After a few long seconds of pulsating silence, marked only by the engines of passing cars, a few yells from kids in the adjacent park, the two heard a click of a key and then a second click and the door opened.

“Hello,” Alex said, smiling. Derek groaned and Sarah followed suit with a groan of her own. “I subdued the man as he was coming down the stairs. He is a Skynet agent.”

Sarah didn’t bother to even glare, but walked in first, followed by Derek. She kept her pistol out, but was much more relaxed. Derek had one of the MP5K’s and had shifted the shoulder back to his left thigh, so his dominant right hand was unencumbered.

“How do you know?” Derek asked. Following Sarah and Alex he closed the door, locking it, and then he stopped at the entranceway between the kitchen and foyer. The body of Albert Samuels was slumped against a wall, with a small stream of blood running from his right temple down his neck and under his shirt collar.

“I didn’t, at first,” the machine admitted. “I assumed he was. When I placed him against the wall I saw this,” he reached down and grabbed the man’s left arm and pinned it hard against the wall.

“What are we looking at?” Sarah asked as she bent down and narrowed her eyes to see whatever it was Alex had seen. Whatever it was she wasn’t seeing it.

Derek knew. “Most Grays went over to Skynet willingly early in the war.” He crouched down and took the man’s arm from Alex and inspected it himself. “Some were captured and given laser barcodes first. Those are permanent.” He tapped his covered forearm where his barcode was, concealed by the long sleeve of his jacket. “Some of those Grays had skin grafts to hide their barcode tattoos for infiltration or had them removed by laser- but that could scar,” he informed her, kneeling down and running his finger down the outline. “This one is good, very good… you wouldn’t even see it Sarah unless you knew what to look for, and even then, I couldn’t until I got up this close.”

Alex reached down and grabbed Samuels and took him upstairs. They reached the man’s bedroom and closed the blinds and set him down in a dining room chair Derek had brought up. With four plastic twist ties he secured Samuel’s feet and hands to the arm rest and chair legs. Working as a team Sarah got a cup of water from the bathroom and threw it on his face, a few drops splashing back onto her clothes and the rest wetting Samuels’ collar, dispersing the blood further down the right side of his chest and neck.

The man groaned, his body aching, coughing as a he sucked in some of the water which had made its way into his open mouth. In a flash he was wide awake, blinking rapidly in confusion and surprise.

Sarah, Derek, and Alex recognized the eyes jetting from each of them to the other, his head twisting and eyes bobbing quickly. The man was a soldier and took in his surroundings in an instant and judged escape impossible. With quiet resignation he slumped as far as the hand and leg restraints would let him, the hard wood digging into his bony spine.

“Who the hell are you?” He questioned immediately, hissing out his words with as much bile and malice as he could manage.

“That’s not how this works,” Sarah responded as she stood directly in front of him. “Tell us what you know about Skynet and Carwin and Wells.” She tapped her gun lightly on her thigh to make her point she was in control.

Albert Samuels was not going to feign ignorance. He looked Sarah in the eye and knew she knew. All he could hope for now was that it would be quick.

If he was going to go, he was going to have fun doing it.

“Skynet? Skynet, you can’t stop Skynet. Three people against all of Skynet and the resources it possesses?” he grinned mockingly. “Lady, it’s cute that your-”

Sarah swiped her pistol across his cheek, tearing into the skin and crushing teeth. Samuels looked up at her defiantly and spit blood out onto the ground. Snorting, a flow of blood mixed with saliva and snot ran down his nose and mouth and pooled on his shirt.

Derek watched as Sarah had struck him with her weapon. He knew that was as far as she’d go. Derek knew she wouldn’t take it as far as he could and would. The fresh images of Fischer flashed through his mind as he watched the blood seep out of the man’s busted lip.

“Don’t ever call me lady,” she snarled.

“Tell us about Archway Plaza, where you work,” Derek commanded.

Samuels smiled. “You work for Connor… figures, thinking you can stop Judgment Day… ever the irrational optimist… ironic, actually” he stated as he looked down. “What a bitch,” he remarked as he shook his head. Focusing his dark eyes over to Sarah he glared at her. He decided to patronize them. “That really hurt. Hey, maybe if you say you’ll let me live I just maybe might believe you and… and tell you everything I know… because you’ll let me live, right?” He laughed. “Why should I tell you anything?”

“We can do that,” Sarah hissed, a knife appearing in her hands, almost like it had magically just appeared from thin air.

Derek leaned over to Sarah and said softly, “This is getting ridiculous. Let me alone with Albert here for a minute.”

“Scary,” Samuels added in sarcastically. He rolled his eyes. “You all don’t really have much practice at this.” He looked at both of them. “That’s good,” he whispered. “It doesn’t take much to beat a man while he’s tied to a damn chair!” He snarled, yanking his arms and wrists so hard the plastic cuff ties tore into his skin.

It was Derek’s turn to show how unimpressed his was. “Nice try, Albert.” He held up his index finger to keep the man quiet. “You know how this ends, so it can end quickly or it can end painfully.”



Samuels grimaced, more in quiet thought than fear. He’d been tortured before by men far worse than the one he saw here. He looked over to the second man who had remained quiet and was staring with a strong intent at him. Samuels looked away as the quiet man smiled at him.

“That’s not much of an incentive,” the defiant Samuels pointed out.

“Where are the two scientists?” Derek asked.

“I don’t know,” Samuels replied.

“You do.”

“No… no… I really don’t,” Samuels responded. “You think they’d tell me everything? I watched over them, that’s it. We’re compartmentalized, need-to-know. All I knew was I go in and watch them and report back on their work.” Albert gave them the little tid-bit, something unimportant. He guessed their comeback and preemptively added, “I went in to work the other day and they weren’t there, haven’t been for a while. They don’t tell me everything.”


"Then why stay?" Sarah asked.


"Uh... to keep up appearances..." Samuels replied.



“Where did they go?” Derek demanded.


“I don’t know.”

Derek looked down on the man with scorn. “I think you’re a coward, Albert,” Derek said, changing the subject. “Skynet sent you here because here you’ll have some power, just like the future. Skynet will use you and then abandon you. You just don’t want to admit you’ve been used and played. Or is this your reward?”


Samuels gave Derek his best 'you-are-fucking-kidding-me' look when the Resistance fighter claimed this was his reward.



“This, this is my reward… to see the world burn twice? I don’t think so. If that’s what you think you don’t understand… no. That’s why you’re losing.” He shook his head. “Is that what you really think? Let me guess, if I say I’m not doing this for power you’ll say I’m doing it for revenge, right?” Samuels countered. “Or you will say this is some sort of self-hate against my own race, right?”

“How could you work for the machines?” Sarah asked in disbelief.

He looked at her, disgusted. “I’m a soldier and that’s all there is to it. I just fight some a different side than you do.”

“How can you… after what they’ve done to us?” Sarah asked.

“They actually haven’t done anything, yet,” he grinned.

Albert laughed and giggled to himself. He was about to bring his hand up to run down his face in disbelief when it dug into the plastic ties. The smile and laugher subsiding, he appeared more subdued.

“Lady, we all work for the machines. You can be a part of something or you can fight against it… an exercise in futility that is. Skynet doesn’t want the extinction of the human race.” He looked back to them. “It’s progress. There’s a place for us, just not at the top. Some of us have realized that… but I guess you three haven’t. I don’t want to sound patronizing… but you three are idiots. Figure it out.”

Sarah’s breath was staggered and raw as she let herself listen to this man, this traitor to humanity, and against her better judgment, with her rational mind screaming at her not to respond, she responded.

“You’re wrong. You work for evil,” Sarah replied to him. Her knuckled whitened as she gripped her pistol tighter. This was her first time questioning a Gray, the infamous, devious Grays Derek had talked of. “Skynet will be defeated.”

She could understand, from a primal, visceral need of self-preservation and greed and cowardice why some would work for the machines, for the terminators. When confronted with it, here, now, she acknowledged she had always seen a Gray as some blank faced traitor; like a clay toy with no face. These Grays should have no eyes, no mouth, no nose, no ears, and no hair. They were the enemy; they were not people but a group, a mass, an amalgam of everything evil and wrong.

What she saw now was a man with brown, power eyes, sharp facial features with a squared jaw. She saw he had a shaving cut on his lower chin; he cut with a blade, not an electric razor. Sarah began to notice all the little things about him which reminded her that this monster was a human.

Sarah looked up and saw the photos of the man with a woman. Questions began racing through her mind. A girlfriend? How could he have a girlfriend when he knew the world would end? What kind of sick, sadistic bastard would do that? Maybe she was a Skynet Gray? Sarah considered if they should make a threat against the woman.

Would Skynet even allow it… of course, Skynet knew the needs of humans. Would it allow children? Procreation? She could imagine the indoctrination of anyone born under the rule of Skynet; hate your own race and see yourself as inherently inferior. It would be a tortuous existence.

She saw an eclectic stack of country music, jazz, rap, R&B, Blues, and hip-hop CDs on his dresser… like the man was making up for decades of lost time. Sarah noticed his bed was a queen size and how his bed was unmade, with a pair of socks thrown without a care into the corner of his room. His walls were painted a light blue with a trim of white, and an Underarmor shirt and a pair of running shoes told Sarah he enjoyed running… maybe even in the park. Was that why he’d moved across from the park?

She tilted her head as she finally took time to appreciate the wall art on the right side of the room above his dresser. She saw a series of panels, spaced an inch apart, forming an elaborate pattern on the wall. One panel had squares and rectangles, which formed a more complete picture with the panel next to it and then one panel had triangles and ovals of half a dozen deep shades of primary colors. One panel had three vertical dots…

Her eyes took in everything, every little personal touch this Gray, this monster of a human, put into his house. Her eyes stayed glued on the dots, her body stiff and rigid, even as Derek swore at and threatened Samuels before her. She felt a drop of crimson blood splash on her hand and that single drop focused her.

“What are those three dots?!” She yelled at him.

“What?” he hissed. Confusion swept across his face.

She stalked forward and grabbed his short blond hair and yanked his head around to see. Sarah pressed her handgun against his sternum, slightly on his left, exactly above the center of the Gray’s heart.

He winced as she roughly jabbed the metal gun into his body and leaned her weight into it.

“The dots.”

“It’s a fucking painting for God’s sake!” Samuels yelled. Sarah hit him, but not as hard as the first. “What the hell!”

“Tell me!” She yelled.

“It’s a painting I got downtown a year ago! Seaport Village… it’s just some mass produced geometric painting shit I liked… it was fucking on sale… damnit!” He cursed, licking the blood which had dripped down onto his lip and into his mouth.

Derek pulled out his own pocket knife and in a blur had stabbed it into Samuel’s thigh. The Gray looked away and bit down on his lip, tearing into his own flesh, tears forming in his eyes. He held back the watery sign of weakness and didn’t scream.

Sarah stood back and her mouth opened at Derek’s brutality. Hitting was one thing, stabbing was a line she wouldn’t cross. Samuels had called her bluff about eviscerating him and what Derek had done… she couldn’t help but watch him with horror. Who could do that?

Once the shock of the stabbing was done with, Samuels focused himself back on his assailants. Skynet had trained him to resist torture, and he bared his teeth at Derek defiantly. The crude physical torture was painful, but not damaging. The spirit could endure when the body was broken.

Samuels blinked away the salty sweat and tears which had dripped into his bloodshot eyes. The woman’s face, he saw, was twisted in horror and grief. He knew then that that woman had never done anything like this before. She wasn’t used to this. That was his first clue.

Then he turned and saw the quiet man, arms and hangs handing seemingly limp at his side, but Samuels could see the quiet one was ready to act if he needed to. The second clue was not how the man was standing, but his eyes and his face. The quiet one’s eyes stared down at Samuels and he could feel them boring into him. But the face was absent of any horror like what was present on the woman. It wasn’t cold and distant, broken by decades of war like the man’s who had just stabbed him. It was just… casual, natural.

“This is ineffective,” Samuels heard the quiet one say. “You two wait for me downstairs and I’ll handle this. Ten minutes.”


Samuels noticed the man who had just stabbed him look at the previously quiet man with disgust and loathing. The man took his knife and rubbed the blood off on Samuels’ leg, right over the wound which made him clench his jaw to keep from screaming. A tooth, chipped from the previous hit to the face, tore into his inner lip, and he could taste the sweet tang of blood on his tongue.

“I can handle this,” the man said as Samuels notice him turn towards the woman. “If he knows anything about the dots, I’ll find out.”

In what seemed an unnatural and uncomfortable thing to do the man facing the woman awkwardly added a ‘please’ to the end of his request.

It took all of his energy to concentrate on what was happening around him, but Samuels could see the subtle interplay between the three and where the reins of power truly lay.

Samuels saw the still mysterious woman look at the younger man and then back at the one who had stabbed him. She was the leader here, the one the two deferred to. Always analyzing and planning he made not that if he somehow survived that information could be quite useful.

The bound, bleeding, aching man watched as the unknown woman held her finger out to the younger one who had just spoken up. She had her index finger right in front of his face, warning him. He watched her snarl at the man before retracting her finger like a claw.

“Let’s go,” she said to Derek. Sarah stood back and waited for Derek to leave.

Samuels grinned and as the woman was leaving he spoke up as loud as he could and in the most devilishly taunting voice he got in his last word, his final victory.

“Like I said lady, we all work for the machines. All of us. For them.”

Sarah stopped and looked back over her shoulder, looking once at Alex, with his back to her, and the grinning Samuels. His grin only grew wider and his dark eyes darted from the woman to the man who would now torture him.

Each opponent knew the other had their own victory. Samuels had his last, defiant word in and the woman would have her information. He watched as she reached behind her and quietly, slowly, as her eyes once again met Samuel’s she closed the door.

Alex watched until Sarah closed the door and tracked her on his motion sensors until she was downstairs and had rejoined Derek.

Albert Samuels looked at the machine, smiling coyly.

Alex reached into his pocket and pulled out a small plastic container and set it down on Albert’s dresser, the man watching the machine with interest as he opened it and set a small syringe next to the case.

Samuels breathed in slowly, but his nervousness forced his breaths out in staggered desperation. He was a believer, but death was a state he did not wish to embrace. Not yet, not when he had so much more to do.

Alex walked over and crouched, sitting on his heels so he was eye level with Samuels.

The bound man felt the sweat run down his face and his heart beating, pounding wildly as it tried to escape his chest. He made eye contact with the man he had determined to be a machine and fear swept over him. When he was in the company of Skynet machines he didn’t feel fear or terror. Those machines were calm, collected, and predictable. Connor’s machines were quite different…

“They’re vertical, the three red dots…” Alex said. “Have you ever been to Kansas?” Alex asked.

Albert held the machine’s eyes and locked onto the distant, cold orbs with his own dark, guilt-ridden eyes.

“So… woodsman,” Albert said slowly. He waited until he saw the glow from Alex’s eyes. “Do you know what is paved with yellow bricks?”

The machine’s eyes were glowing pale white, almost silver.

“The road to the City of Emeralds,” Alex responded.

||||||||||==Archway Plaza Building, San Diego (8 November 2008, 5:40PM)==||||||||||

“You think they’ll be alright?” John asked as he bobbed his head trying to see over a passing delivery truck. He sighed when the truck stopped in front of the Connor family’s black F-350. He brought his hand down to his pocket and fingered the granola bar in there and pulled it out slowly.

“If Sarah or Derek discovers crumbs in this truck they will be displeased,” Cameron stated. John looked over but she kept her eyes locked on the Archway Plaza building main lobby. She heard John grunt and added, “I think Derek has an obsessive-compulsive disorder when it comes to cleanliness. With the exception of his inability to shave.”


“He finally shaved,” John quipped, playing off Cameron’s observation.

Cameron smiled, too quick for John to notice before he turned and looked at her.

He yawned and saw the green LED lights of the truck glow 5:40.

“So what do you think of this?” John asked, trying to disguise the curiosity in his voice and trying to sound as casual as he possibly could.

He kept looking across from the parking lot nuzzled between Ash Street and A Street. John leaned forward and opened a laptop as he took another bit of his granola bar. Smacking on his lips he carefully put the bar back into its wrapper.

“Cinnamon, I hate cinnamon,” he said.

“Yes, you like peanut butter,” Cameron remarked. She looked over and extended her hand, offering to take John’s half eaten granola bar.

“I got it, Cameron,” he said, putting it back into his own pocket. He looked over and she was staring straight ahead again, her face impassive and bland. “Thank you though.” He saw a small, almost unnoticeable flicker on her lips. Other than that, she stayed perfectly still.

John and Cameron waited silently as they saw the Tahoe carrying Alex, Sarah, and Derek drive up and park on the street.

“How do you think Alex got the fake badges and all that?” John asked, rapping his fingers on the central arm rest.

“We don’t sleep. There are people who deal in such things and warrants would be easy for us to fake,” Cameron replied earnestly. She made her part clear. “I went and saw Chola. She has taken over Carlos’s business after he was killed. She had a contact.”

“By Sarkissan…” John murmured.

“They’re in the lobby,” Cameron noted, hoping to distract him from remembering that day and night.

Hey eyes attempted to track Sarah and Derek by their unique body heat signatures, but even an advanced terminator had difficulty filtering out the hundreds of others traversing the sidewalks and coming and going in the lobby. Alex sent her a signal that he and Sarah were being shown to the Blacklake Aerospace labs Carwin and Wells were using and that Derek had broken off with a second security guard and was proceeding to the main security station.

“They’re in, John,” Cameron reported. “It seems the security guards believe them to be FBI agents.”

“So was it you or Alex who came up with Derek’s alias? Cameron?”

Cameron didn’t answer right away and took John’s chuckling as proof that he believed it to be her doing.

“I think its sit and wait now, Cameron,” he replied, tapping a few keys on his laptop to bring up building schematics. “How long will it take to break their encryption protocols?” John asked arching his eyebrows.

“It shouldn’t take long. The encryptions, while sophisticated, are still primitive by future standards. The program we designed should break the encryption quickly unless they are using a Skynet encryption algorithm, which is possible. That is unlikely; however, they would not want to draw attention to themselves.”

John laughed. “I certainly hope they aren’t.” Cameron looked over and gave him her wide-eyed, tilted-head smile. “Cameron…”


“Yes, John?” she asked with a quick softness. To John it almost sounded like she was expecting something… exciting.

John looked side-to-side, wondering if that enthusiasm he heard in her voice was his imagination. Keeping his mouth closed he bit down between his teeth on his tongue lightly, thinking. Do I want to take it there? he asked himself. John knew a stake-out with his mom and uncle inside a potentially hostile building wasn’t the best time to have a… heart to… power core (?) with a Cameron… but…

“What do you think of this?” John asked. He mentally frowned. That was not the question he wanted to ask.

“This?”


“Yes, the situation. Being here, now. This whole thing, ya know?”

Cameron’s head moved back to a slightly more rigid position. “Oh, thank you for explaining,” she said. John smirked. Then she surprised John by relaxing her shoulder and leaning forward.

John suppressed a second smirk, but a small grin came up on the right side of his mouth, away from Cameron. Her position was a little awkward, but he figured it was a terminator’s way of slouching or relaxing.

“I find the current situation we are in to be less than optimal, John. I suspect Alex has another agenda and I suspect it was his intention of recruiting us into helping him from the start, regardless of what he stated originally. We also know the two scientists are no longer here and Skynet may still be watching this facility.”

“You don’t trust him, another terminator?”

She looked over, somewhat downcast. “John, not all of us think the same,” she explained quietly.

“I didn’t mean to imply-”

“He is also from a future I am completely unfamiliar with,” Cameron began abruptly to cut John off. Her neural net CPU had told her, for some reason she couldn’t understand, to interrupt John before he could finish whatever it was he was going to say. “His statements of the future being ‘radically different’ are ambiguous and could be manipulated to explain actions we may perceive as counter-productive to our mission,” she stated flatly.

She tilted her head as she received a data burst transmission from Alex. Derek had take control of the main security room and Alex and Sarah were proceeding up the elevator. Derek would then secure the guards in a small storage room within the main security control center.

“So he’s not telling us what we need to know?” John asked. Cameron could tell it was rhetorical. “I wonder if you feel as frustrated by that as I do,” he added as he looked over. Cameron met his eyes.

“I’m a machine, John. I don’t get frustrated.”

“Sure,” John snickered. “Hold on, the system is coming up,” John said turning back his attention to his laptop screen. “I guess Derek knows a thing or two about computers after all,” he grinned.

“Lieutenant Reese is highly proficient in operating computer systems. He does not like to admit it and is embarrassed so he feigns ignorance,” Cameron stated. John shot her a look. “He hides his books on computers and programming in his black and gray duffel in his truck.”

John laughed.

“Usually people hide Playboys, not textbooks.” He shrugged. “I guess he wants to know his enemy.”

“Yes,” she replied definitively. “Know your enemy.”

He always knew his uncle knew a lot more than he let on. All the times John had explained things when Sarah and Derek had been in the room, he always saw his mom completely lost, but Derek was always following him.

“The technophobe shows his true colors,” he threw out, smiling at Cameron.

Cameron leaned back to look at the computer. “It appears Derek has successfully disabled the security system.”

John pushed his hands down into the seat and propped up and looked over his shoulder to visually inspect the weapons in the back of the truck cab. They had a few assault rifles, grenades, a couple pounds of C4, shotguns, and of course, a coffee can of thermite. They always had thermite. The future leader of mankind turned back around to find Cameron looking at him and her eyes quickly darted to the computer.

“I thought Skynet was supposed to develop around LA,” John stated randomly after a minute of somewhat comfortable silence between the two. He had kept his eye on the laptop for any security alerts.

“The future is radically different,” Cameron said.

Through a little laugh John managed to asked, “What?” He snorted, “Was that supposed to be a joke?”

“Yes,” she said, giving the answer a little head bob for emphasis.

This is different, he through. John tapped the aluminum casing of his laptop around the touchpad, discreetly biting down on his lower lip to keep from laughing or smiling.

“Los Angeles was Skynet Central containing Skynet’s main factories, power plants, and shipping facilities for the North American continent.” Cameron explained and John nodded. “It relied on captured factories in east Asia later in the war.” She looked over. “Your summer offensive in 2024 significantly depleted Skynet resources and destroyed approximately forty-seven percent of its North American production capabilities.”

There was a few more minutes of silence between the two, with John’s attention diverted from the laptop to the street, to the sidewalk where a couple of people had walked by and looked at them strangely, and back to the laptop.

“Mom was talking to me earlier,” John began, “she told me Alex has some sort of wireless capability and called her cell phone. Can you do that?” he tilted his head towards her but kept his eyes on the scrolling data on his laptop screen.

Cameron didn’t answer. John saw her careening her neck to try and see the floors the labs and offices were on.

“Cameron, if there is anything you want to tell me…” he trailed off. He wanted to tell her ‘I saw you two the other night’ but this wasn’t the place.

“Yes, I am capable of wireless interface and data transmission,” she said as she finally decided to answer his question. She revealed her capability almost like she was ashamed of it.

John looked away and blinked hard. “So why did you…” again he trailed off. “Have you thought about what I said earlier about ‘reading between the lines,’ Cameron?”

He furled his eyebrow and wondered why he was having such a difficult time asking a machine such a simple question. Machines didn’t get embarrassed… so he figured…. Wrinkling his nose he wasn’t sure if that was the better question to ask than the one he had intended.

He felt a drop of sweat rush down the right side of his forehead and get caught on the contours of his ear lobe. Wiping it away quickly and looking around he thumbed the power window control, putting his passenger side window down more.

“I don’t understand. How can one read blank space between written lines?” she asked. She exaggerated her lack of understanding.

John sighed at how she took it as a literalism.

“You’re avoiding the question. You’ve been with me for fifteen months.”

“I’ve been guarding you for fifteen months.”

“You’re not answering the question, Cameron.” His tone was growing icy.

“You’re not asking the question you want to, John.” Her neural net prodded her mouth to speak and tell him that ‘I know you saw me and Alex on the patio’, but she overrode the signal.

Creeping around in the dark wasn’t enough to hide someone from Terminators. The cyborg sitting next to John thought that John should know this. Cameron was disappointed in herself; she resolved to increase his training. If he will let me, she thought.

The future depended on the young man sitting beside Cameron to rally the world and lead them against Skynet. So many men and woman tried before him, but ultimately failed. Skynet had been brutally, ruthlessly efficient in exterminating hundreds of millions after Judgment Day. Only once John Connor had taken control of the Resistance had its tactics and strategies improved to actually push Skynet back.

Cameron could not imagine a future without John Connor.

While redirecting more of her system resources to consider the future, Cameron continued to stare out the window, her eyes tracking every movement in the lobby and in her field of vision. An old memory replaced before her eyes, superimposed in a corner of her vision. She would have smiled to herself, if one of her abilities as a machine had not been the capability of dampening emotional responses.

Neural net CPUs were incredibly advanced, but emotions were so incredibly complex it took a relatively significant amount of system resources. Those resources were needed to concentrate on the mission.

“Fine,” John conceded as he crossed his arms. Cameron’s entire thought processes had occurred in less than half a second. He moved his laptop from his lap onto the wide dash in front of him. “Why did you let me removed your chip when we hacked ARTIE? We could have just set up a connection to my laptop then a control box.” John was surprised he’d been able to say that so quickly, but he was also annoyed with Cameron’s last statement. He sat there, giving his laptop keyboard more attention than he should have, not knowing where else to look. “Derek was this close to smashing your chip.”

Cameron saw him hold out his thumb and index finger in the typical mannerism associated with such a statement.

Maybe he wanted to hear his machine protector trip up over her own words or offer some meek explanation he could scoff at, score a little victory against Cameron? He wasn’t sure.

“Read between the lines, John,” she said as she looked away.

John gritted his teeth. “Cameron! That is not-” He was looking directly into the street.

He was looking forward when he saw glass begin to shower the sidewalk and as his eyes drifted upwards the first body hit the pavement across the street. Even from across the street he heard the dull thud. A second later the second body hit the street, to the left of the first. John watched as the body landed on its head, which exploded and crumpled away, launching brain and skull fragments all over the crowded walkway.

Dozens of pedestrians were screaming, the first body had fallen on a one of the walkers and had killed them. Cars were swerving as people ran frantically through the streets. One person froze as a car, breaks screeching and rubber tires burning, plowed into her, sending her flying up onto the hood and rolling off the windshield into the street, her body catapulted into the dark black pavement, laying lifeless.

Half the street was clogged with people running, others looking up and gawking, some ducking and more shards of glass began raining down. An office chair, then a computer, and then a second computer smashed into the road and sidewalk, sending more people fleeing and screaming in all directions.

Four police officers had already rushed over, their patrol cars parked in front of the family court down the street. They were trying to calm everyone, but hundreds of scared men, woman, and a handful of children were sprinting from the buildings as fast as possible. Even more were streaming out from the main building complex.

Eyes wide, John dropped what he was going to say, yell, at Cameron, the last fifteen minutes forgotten. Popping his head and shoulders out of the truck, Cameron doing the same, they each looked up at the top floors. They could each see flashes- muzzle flashes.

“I think that’s our cue John,” Cameron stated calmly. She turned the truck engine back on and pulled the car out, expertly navigating through the car wrecks and car jams, even going onto the sidewalk to pull up and past the Archway Plaza building into a municipal lot near the bus station. In the rear was an alley which would take them to Beech Street, away from the traffic jams and only three blocks over from a highway on-ramp.

John nodded and hit a few commands into his laptop. The Archway building had a security intranet-which Derek was handling- but the Westgate Plaza Mall, the law school across the street, and an assortment of other office buildings didn’t have as sophisticated a security system. With two cyborgs from the future, combined with John’s intuitive hacking skills, they’d set the fire alarms to activate. Thousands of panicking civilians were streaming from office buildings all around the Archway Plaza building.

“You sending the police away?” He asked.

“I have sent out two dozen false alerts in other parts of the city and am contradicting central dispatches orders for units to converge on Archway Plaza. It will work for only a short time,” Cameron informed him.

Cameron’s head twisted, she looked behind her. Their view of the building, except for the roof was blocked by the dilapidated apartment building they were hiding next to.

“What is it?” John asked, himself twisting back and looking up and down and side to side trying to see what she saw.

Cameron threw the truck into drive. And calmly stepped on the accelerator and drove the truck through the alley and stopped. Looking both ways she pulled onto Beech Street towards the highway.

“They found alternative transportation, John,” Cameron looked over and smiled. “We’re going to have to meet them outside the city.”

[Tweeky]

Originally Posted by Bryan

I know Jo and Carter are not in this story (they'll be int he next!) I was bored and decided to make this:

The pictures are from the new movies Pandorum.

Jo: http://terminatorwiki.fox.com/page/TK-900+%28Jo%29
Alex (changed the picture): http://terminatorwiki.fox.co