The Tin Man's War (Terminator:SCC)

[Bryan]

CHAPTER NINE
||||||||||==(~15 minutes earlier)==||||||||||

“Reese, stop fidgeting!” Sarah hissed, giving him a moderately powered elbow nudge in the side.

Derek ignored her, running his finger between his collar and his neck. “Like I told you earlier-”

“Yeah yeah, no suits in the future, no collared shirts,” Sarah answered mockingly. Remembering the last time she was in any sort of ‘professional’ attire she grinned, chuckling ever so slightly.

Alex looked over his shoulder at the two and Derek asked what was so funny.

“The last time I was in anything like this was when we broke you out of jail a year ago. Most of our breaking and entering involves cargo pants, tank tops, and a tactical vest or something.” She saw Derek check her out of the corner of his eye and she had to roll hers. They’d been living together for a year now… “Eyes front,” she instructed.

“This is necessary to get us into the building without attracting attention,” Alex explained. “We cannot look suspicious. The lobby is large, well-lit, and the inside is easily visible from the street so we must-”

Derek groaned.

“Yes, thank you for over-explaining the situation again. We remember the plan and the layout,” Sarah interrupted warily. She slid up her long sleeve and looked down at her watch; she’d been up nearly twenty hours now.

When the group hit the lobby and walked in, they were greeted with a cool burst of air from overactive air conditioners, on due to the warmer than normal weather of the past few weeks. Sarah felt Goosebumps forming on her skin and she shifted her shoulder uncomfortably. The thin Gold Flex bulletproof vest, while ‘breathable’ was moderately uncomfortable in the dry heat of southern California.

She continued on a couple of steps behind Alex and next to Derek, both of them visibly scanning the lobby. John had hooked his laptop up to the large plasma TV in the apartment and given them a detailed layout of the building- as detailed as possible with what was in the county records office.

The lobby was massive, nearly five floors high with square, modernist columns staggered throughout, with a soft multicolored tile mosaic. There were half a dozen meeting spaces with minimalist black chairs and tables spread on the left side, with a bank of elevator to the east tower towards the rear. The bank of elevators for the west tower was closer to the middle of the lobby. At the fourth floor level a large arching walkway had an American flag hanging from it.


Sarah let out a breath when she saw the lobby was so crowded. A crowded lobby meant one could disappear. She’d pulled the fire alarm in buildings before to escape security and had just went with the exodus of frightened office workers. It would not be any different here, not if everything went according to plan.

“Derek,” she tapped him on the arm and motioned with her chin.

He looked over to where her eyes had wandered and nodded back to Sarah. She let out a breath she was holding, adrenaline spiking through her body with Derek’s agreement. The way the guards were holding themselves told her they were more than just rent-a-cops. The two were talking, propped up against a far wall, one with his right leg bent against the wall and just appeared so casual. But she could tell when people were paying extra attention to her.

“I wouldn’t expect Skynet to be here,” Derek mused as they passed a series of sculptures and paintings decorating one of the columns.

“Hide in plain sight or where someone wouldn’t look,” Sarah said. She wondered if the human guards knew what was going on here; what they were helping.

She increased her speed to leave Derek behind her and came abreast of Alex. As much as she didn’t want the terminator to be behind her she had to be in front and appear to be the ‘senior agent’ of the trio. They walked casually, but with a purpose, towards the security station which was disguised as a public relations desk with a small black plaque with white ‘Building Security’ letting on the front.

She had to wait behind a young gentleman who was trying to make a report about vandalism or some such thing. Sarah really didn’t pay much attention to the man’s sob story, Derek was looking the place over, memorizing every square inch, and Alex was tapping his fingers on his left thigh like he was bored.

Sarah raised an eyebrow when she noticed that odd behavior.

Her thoughts then drifted to John.

“Afternoon ma’am,” the guard said, standing up and smiling. She hadn’t even noticed the whiny young man had left. “What can I do for you this wonderful late afternoon in an unseasonably warm November?”

She reached into her pocket and pulled out her badge and held it open for the guard and shot him an obviously fake smile. FBI ‘Agent’ Judy Gale let the guard, one Dan Travis, inspect the badge and photo. She said she needed to speak with the head of security.

“I see,” he said quietly. “I also have to see their badges, too, ma’am.” He saw the annoyance flash across her face. “Protocol, sorry, ma’am.” He said sheepishly.

“Agent Jack Haley,” Derek plainly recited as he forced himself to not spit out the name. He cursed the machines for picking out that alias. He swore it was Cameron’s idea… his right shoulder came up as he shivered from having thought of the it as ‘Cameron’.

“Agent Henry Grapewin,” Alex introduced himself.

“I’ll call the head of the third shift,” Dan Travis informed them.

Thirty seconds later a second man, about five foot ten inches, a build on the thinner side, and a close-cut brown bears with a few graying hairs walked around the corner as he quietly snapped his fingers together. He was in a good mood.

He came up behind the desk and stood next to Travis and smiled at the three Skynet hunters, showing off his unnatural straight and white teeth.

“What can I do for the FBI?” He asked, not introducing himself. His name badge read Ronan Walk.

“We’re investigating a possible disappearance of two employees who work in this building,” Sarah said. She reached back and Derek took out two photos from his computer courier bag, which was actually concealing an MP5K and some C4 Sarah had insisted on bringing to give added firepower in addition to the pistols they had.

“Ah yes. Dr. Carwin and Dr. Wells, our resident prima donnas,” he snickered. “If you knew them you’d understand,” he added as he handed back the photos. “So, what do you need?”

“We need access to your computer security system, just some video from when they disappeared and we need to talk with anyone who may know where they are.”

“It’s a bit late, and I need to see a warrant,” he stated coolly.

Sarah put her hand out and Derek handed her a second piece of paper, a forgery. But the court houses were closed, the judges asleep, and the Skynet hunters only needed thirty minutes.

“Travis,” Ronan said, motioned him over. “See if you can get that warrant verified. I’ll bring them back to the control room and stall them or something. Agents don’t show up this late in the afternoon,” he whispered. He looked back at the three and smiled reassuringly.

“Corporate espionage… something else?”

“I don’t know, maybe,” he shrugged, “or it could be they are real agents, working a night shift or something… I don’t know,” he added. He shook his head in frustration and bit down on his lower lip. “Just try and see if you can get a hold of anyone at the FBI.”

Travis nodded.

“Alright, folk, if you’ll follow me,” he held out his arm to usher them back around the corner to the security offices.

Across the lobby the two security guards who had been watching them were already on the move.
===============================

Derek Reese had tried to be as patient with the security guards as he possibly could. He held back a verbal assault and the desire to call them Nazi rent-a-cops when, for the third time, the guard at the security console trying to access the video failed to do so. ‘Computer error’ he kept repeating.

The Resistance fighter, already on edge, tensed up on the second ‘computer error’ and his senses were already telling him something was about to go very, very wrong.

The man was leaning on the guard’s chair, with one hand on its back and one on the console, his body angled so he could keep his sharp green eyes split between the console and the men in the back of the room. He didn’t trust them.

When he had entered there were just two sitting at the security console, cycling through video, and sipping on coffee and a Diet Coke. It was relaxed, something one could expect to see out of a movie. The building had cameras in the lobby, on the corners, the main halls, elevators, rooftop, and underground parking garage- roughly forty, all projected onto four large plasma screens in front of the console.

He’d shrugged, explained his case, and the guards were generally cooperative. Though the one drinking the coffee made it seem like the task of accessing week-old video was something like it was one of the Twelve Labors or something ridiculous… normal.

Then two more guards had come in, shot him a smug smile to answer his questioning glare, and were just standing in the back of the room. They stood like soldiers. Sixteen years of fighting machines and Grays and being around soldiers told him how soldiers stood. They were also the two which had been watching him, Alex, and Sarah from across the lobby.

He knew he could pretend for a few more minutes at the most. The guards would wait. They were checking on him. That gave him time to plan.

===================================
The elevator ride had been short and quiet. Ronan Walk had stood in front of the two Resistance fighters and not said a word. He’d casually rocked back and forth on his heels, humming a bored little tune neither Sarah nor Alex could place. His fingers tapped the side of his pants and his right hand sat comfortably on a large shoulder bag which was strapped over his left shoulder, across his chest, and resting on his right hip.

It had some laptop, paper file folders, and some other security-related pamphlets he was going to hand to the floor’s secretary.

Walk stepped out of the elevator and turned quickly to face the machine and Sarah Connor.

“If you’ll follow me, please,” he said to Alex and Sarah, directing them forward with an outstretched hand. “Doctor Wells and Doctor Carwin, our resident prima donas, were also the people we were told to keep an extra eye on.”

“Oh?” Sarah’s interest had spiked.

“Yes. They’re big names…” he quieted his voice and chuckled, “or so they believed. Blacklake actually paid for the security modification to the building, like the key cards in the elevator. Only authorized personnel have access to these floors.” He stopped in front of the doors to the main lab and workspace areas, tapping on the large pouch connected to his tactical belt on his hip.

“We’re they taken from here?”

Walk rubbed his chin for a moment.

“No. Everyone coming up here has their keycards logged into the system and guests must be checked in at the front desk. I can see a few employees sneaking people in or avoiding procedure… but the last they were seen was sometime in the morning, and one of our guards, er… Albert Samuels, he was the last to see them leave.”

“I’d like to speak with him,” Sarah said. She played dumb on his true whereabouts. Sarah knew how terminators operated and she knew Alex had definitely killed him. Terminators don’t let people live, Sarah told herself.

“I’m sorry, but he has the day off,” he stated. “He worked some extra hours or something so he got time and a half plus a day off… union rules,” he shrugged. Walk stopped and inserted his keycard for the main lab and research area. The door opened with a hiss and magnetic locks disengaged. “And here it is… nice, isn’t it?”

“Very,” Sarah said. She saw two women typing furiously away at computers, each splitting their attention between a trio of monitors. In the far corner a man was tapping away on a tablet laptop while poking at something on a set of weird looking computers… ‘servers,’ Sarah remembered.

There were powerful-looking workstations, projectors, the ‘server farms’… it almost looked like a ritzier and more expensive version of the Cyberdyne level she, Dyson, and the Uncle Bob terminator had killed. Except this one looked much more ‘sophisticated’ or ‘high tech.’

“This lab seems to be very quiet for its size,” Alex observed.

“Well… most people are out… it’s been a rough couple of days and its kind of late.” Walk explained. He was looking at the backs on the two in front of him when Sarah turned to him and nodded. “Excuse me,” he smiled and took a Blackberry from his pocket. Sarah watched as he thumbed through it before looking back at Alex, whose head was steadily moving back and forth across the room.

She knew he was scanning it, looking for anything which might give a clue.

Sarah felt a slight shiver run down her back and arms and she breathed out. For some reason the situation just seemed odd… and it wasn’t the building; she felt… safe, even with the death machine so close.

She heard a faint click from behind her, but didn’t look behind her. It sounded like the clips on Walk’s shoulder bag.

A lab technician was looking up at her, over a computer monitor, and the look… she looked frightened. Sarah’s eyes widened and her mouth opened as Alex began to speak to Walk. Then she heard the buzz of electricity.

“Mr. Walk…” Alex began before he felt a surge of electricity running through his body. He tightened his body and went erect, falling towards the ground.

Sarah spun around and saw Walk with some sort of Taser weapon, the grip ending with some sort of wire which ran down into the shoulder bag Walk had been carrying.

Walk held the trigger on his modified Taser weapon down so hard his finger started to ache. He was ordered to taser the man, posing as an FBI agent. The man had stiffened and fallen to the floor with a loud thud.

The ‘security guard’ turned to Sarah as she was reaching for something. Before she could even register the motion Walk had lunged at her and swiped the butt of his electric gun across her face, contacting her cheek and jolted her head to the side. She staggered, thrashing out at a table to steady herself. She almost lost her balance, but found her footing and fell to one knee.

Sarah turned around, her head throbbing, her fingers brushing the pistol still somehow in its holster as she saw Alex’s body go stiff and the burning smell of clothing and fake flesh ripped through the air and hit her nostrils. As she unclipped her sidearm and stood Ronan Walk lunged again, knocking her back and over a table.

She skidded over the table and landed on the hard floor on her chest, hitting her forehead. Her hands and arms were bleeding from the shattered glass around her. Two men burst through the door and were instantly over her, one with an MP5 and the other with a SPAS-12 angled right to her chest.

The one with the shotgun was too far from her to kick his legs out or lunge at him.

She looked up and saw Walk with a pocket knife, poised over Alex’s head. Sarah looked desperately around her, her eyes searching for anything to use as a weapon. Her hand delicately slid to her shoulder holster, only to find it empty. Through groggy eyes she saw the discreet hard black outline of a pistol laying near the feet of the guard with the shotgun.

Unmercifully her smiled and slowly, taunting her, picked up the gun and with a smug grin, rearmed the safety and slid it through his belt.

The guards had her on her back, and when she tried to raise to her elbows the one with the MP5 kicked them out from under her, shouting for her to stay down.

The pain raced through her arms and her eyes shot fire as she glared at them.

Ronan Walk was on his knees, staring down at Alex’s head. “You three,” he yelled at the stunned workers in the lab, their jaws hanging open to the floor and their eyes locked on Walk and Sarah in confusion, “get out now!” and he waved the electric gun menacingly.


“I have to thank you, whoever you are,” Walk said as Sarah heard the tear of flesh. “If you know what to look for you can spot them quite easily. That shock was enough to kill any man a dozen times over… let’s see if they were right telling me to shock him…” Walk stated as he leaned down and tried to flip Alex over. It was an easy test to see if he was a machine. “Excellent. My bosses will be quite happy to have, I’m assuming, a Tech Com terminator chip- promotion time,” he beamed. He flipped open a pocket knife and grabbed a tuff of hair on the right side of Alex’s skull and began to cut.

Sarah cursed the one-hundred twenty second shutdown. Whatever Ronan Walk had used to electrocute Alex, it had been far more powerful than a simple Taser.

She prayed that Cameron and John would be smart enough to get out of there and leave her, Alex, and Derek… Derek… he was still in the security office. Maybe he was still free? No, Sarah assumed if they were made he was made, too.

Whatever that electrical weapon had been it had been powerful. Sarah could smell the noxious scent of burnt flesh; the fake skin was still smoldering and a small hole had been burned through Alex’s suit jacket and shirt.

“Sir, they’re on their way,” the guard holding the MP5 informed Walk.

“Who are you?” She shot out at him, sneering. She knew he was another one of those Grays. Sarah had a look of pure murder in her eyes as she watched Walk cut into Alex’s scalp. She bared her teeth at them violently. “Are you from the future?” She demanded.

“I’m sorry, but we’re instructed to not answer any questions,” he told her as he concentrated on Alex’s skull. “Good, excellent,” he smiled and his fingers grasped the flesh and pulled up to cut it back. The dull endoskeleton was right beneath. “These things are so sticky under the skin- it’s the fake blood, you know,” he commented as he cut a slightly larger gap.

He was taking his time, he was calm. Only forty-five seconds had passed. “Where the hell is the chip port?”

“Not there,” an eerie, ghost-like voice said.

Sarah’s eyes widened- had he been faking being off-line?

Walk dropped the knife and tried to stagger away, his arms flailing as he made vain efforts to move faster. Still face down Alex pushed himself up with his left hand and cocked back his right, sending his fist smashing into Walk’s face and out the back of his skull, crunching and cracking through bones, squishing brain matter, and blasting out the bloodied and wet remnants behind him.



The security guard with the SPAS-12 was sprayed with ballistic brain matter and skull fragments staggered back, tripping over his own feet and landing on his back. He pushed back, scrambling, to get away from the terminator which rose up off the ground, his hand still gruesomely lodged in Walk’s skull.

Without hesitating Sarah Connor saw her chance and pressed her hands into the floor, the glass cutting deeper and used her arms to shoot herself the extra foot forward she would need. She swiped the feet out from the guard holding the MP5, who was raising it to fire at Alex, and heard him crash to the ground on his side and a loud pop and anguishing scream told her his shoulder was dislocated. Instantly she was on top of him and three bloody-knuckled punches later the man’s face is twisted and bruised, and he’s out unconscious.
Alex was already on his feet, watching Sarah and the man with the SPAS. The shotgun fired, blasting a slug into Alex’s chest, his right side barely being flung back from the kinetic energy of the slug. The machine threw off the grossly mutilated body of Walk and shoved it towards the guard.
In two steps Alex was above the guard, one foot on each side of him and reaching out in a blur he pulled the shotgun away from the attacker, breaking his index finger, and had the shotgun pointed again at the man’s head.

“Who’s coming?” Alex asked

“I… I…”

Sarah watched from her position over the guard she’d knocked unconscious. Her hands were throbbing from the glass and her now bloody, bruised knuckles. She saw Alex had the other guard under control (a shotgun to the chest would do that, she considered) and her left hand shaking she pulled a glass shard and a second from bloodied knuckles and palms. Blood trickled down to the floor and over her right hand as she used her now glass-free left to pull four small pieces from the right. She winced and pumped her hands into fists. The pain wasn’t that bad and a quick inspection seemed to indicate that all the important structures like nerves and tendons seemed to be intact.

“We need to get out of here,” she told Alex as she unclipped a magazine pouch and took the MP5 from the guard. Sarah stood up, but brought her MP5 butt stock down on the guard’s face one last time as he started to wake back up.

“Who’s coming?” Alex repeated. Alex’s head twisted over his shoulder as his auditory sensors picked up a faint ding from the elevator. He could hear half a dozen pairs of boots running towards them. Alex turned back to man and grabbed him by the neck.

“What are you doing?” Sarah hissed at him.

“Human shield,” the machine replied.


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

When the guard sitting at the security console told Derek for the third time the video wasn’t working he knew they were stalling for time. One time, he could brush away as rent-a-cop incompetence, though his experience was telling him these men were anything but rent-a-cops. He still had the facade in place of being an FBI agent, so it was a game, spy v spy, where they other would need confirmation of the other’s duplicity before acting.

The second time was worrisome, after he’d walked the guards through the transfer. He checked his watch and saw Sarah and Alex had been gone six minutes already.

The third time was when he knew these rent-a-cops were not rent-a-cops.

With Derek’s right hand, which was still on the back of the guard’s chair, he raised himself up and began reaching for his sidearm. He heard a familiar click behind him. Safeties were being taken off.

His body bent down and his hands reached out and spun the guard in the chair around and grabbed him by his neck, holding him as a human shield. His forearm wrapped around the man’s neck, controlled him.

The other guard stood up but Derek already had a pistol out and brought it over his head in a slanted chop into the man’s temple, knocking him out and sending him spinning to the floor.

The two guards had hesitated just long enough, not wanting to shoo their buddy, for Derek to swing around and in a second swift motion, level his gun at the two, who were reciprocally pointing guns at him.

They were forced to fire. One bullet tore past Derek, hitting the fabric of his jacket where his sleeve was sewn into the shoulder. A second bullet hit the guard Derek was holding in his right shoulder.

Derek fired, the guards returned fire and hit the man he was using as a shield again. He began to fall and Derek’s grip began to waver under the weight.. Derek felt the human shield go lip as half a dozen bullets slammed into his chest and abdomen and the resistance fighter ducked behind him. He felt the hot graze of a bullet tear at the flesh on his forearm.

He heard two more cracks, the sound pinging around the room, the deafening cracks of gunfire adding to the mayhem and confusion, his own pistol adding in two more ear-shattering cracks of its own. He reached into his duffel and pulled out his MP5K and then slammed his shoulder into his human shield, sending him flying towards the guards. On his stomach Derek fired the sub-machine gun at the guard’s, bullets ripping apart their unprotected legs.

They collapsed in a heap on the floor, three bodies all mangled together, two of them his victims, one the victim of the others. He stood up, rubbing his leg and wincing. He’d been shot, but just grazed.

“Damnit,” he cursed, pushing the stinging pain away. His head shot down and glared as one of the guards reached again for his pistol. Derek fired two rounds into the man’s head and stomped over to the second was who was still alive.

“Who do you work for?” Derek demanded. He bent down and unbuttoned the cuffs on the security guard’s long sleeve uniform and rolled it up. The other guard was watching him as he checked the man for the signs of a barcode or anything indicating he might have had one.

“Fuck you.”

“One more time… where are the scientists? You know which ones,” he said as he brought the MP5K to his shoulder.

The man was breathing hard and propped up now on his left elbow, with his right hand clutching the bleeding bullet holes in his legs. Derek could just barely see a little shard of bone sticking out of the man’s black pants, which were wet with blood.

“Fuck! I don’t…”

Derek pressed down harder.

“Fuck, they pulled some guys from here today earlier… I don’t know, that’s all I know!”

The man sensed an opening and launched his fist towards Derek’s knee.

From the corner of his eye Derek saw the faint beginnings of attack and jumped, the fist missing the side of his knee by an inch.

He stomped down on the man’s arm.

The resistance fighter pressed the butt of his sub-machine gun tightly into his shoulder and brought his index finger over the trigger. He almost regretted doing this, but he didn’t have the time.

Derek fired once into the man’s skull as he tried to lift it, sending it smashing into the floor. Blood oozed out of the hole in his cranium and Derek saw the man’s eyes locked open in death, surprise and anger branded into the now dead man’s eyes.

The men in here were enemies of humanity and enemies of John Connor. He shot the one he’d knocked out with his pistol at the beginning of the fight as well, then let the MP5K slap against his thigh as he took in the situation. Derek looked over the four dead men, three by his own hand. His fingers were covered in the splatter of blood and he brought his hand up, wiping the blood from his forehead with the clean part of his hand.

Derek winced as his hand ran over a scrape, right on his hairline. Some of the blood was his, but most belonged to the poor SOB he’d used as a human shield.

He placed the sub-machine gun on the console and began furiously typing in sets and series of commands. Snickering, he thought what Sarah would think if she saw he wasn’t the technophobe Luddite he projected himself to be. In the future, in Tech Com, soldiers were required to know how to operate advanced technologies and promotion required a more technical knowledge base than just ‘press here, turn on, point there, shoot’. And General Connor had made it a requirement for all time travelers to brush up on technology so they could exploit it, like he was doing now.

‘Know your enemy’ Derek had remembered the General as telling him.

Grinning, Derek reached into a bag and found the SD card with the programs John had written to search the security computers for any references to Carwin and Wells. He found an SD card slot and pushed it in.

Derek nodded once everything had been uploaded then pulled out the ‘laptop’ which was actually a small Fujitsu U2010, ultra-mobile personal computer, UMPC, and connected it. Immediately it began downloading the video files and other files which could help the Skynet hunters track down Carwin and Wells.

Bright flashes of white light caught his eyes on one of the cycling security camera. Alex and Sarah were fighting it out with half a dozen heavily armed security. A second and third elevator opened, revealing even more men as heavily armed as professional soldiers.

That wasn’t what caught his attention.

What caught his attention were the two men who were standing back, watching the security guards rush forward. They were calm. Derek zoomed in the camera and knew what they were.

He hadn’t spent sixteen years in the future hiding in tunnels. He’d learned and he’d fought and he’d brought his skills back to the past. Derek knew without a doubt the two men walking so casually up towards the battle were Skynet terminators.

“This can’t be good,” Derek said to himself.
=========




Jack Haley played the Tin Man in the Wizard of Oz movie in 1939.

[kclcmdr]

Interesting...

Looks like Derek gonna be in a world of pain soon...

[Bryan]

Edit: The formatting is all screwed up so I deleted it. I'll fix it in the morning. I don't know what the hell has been up with Word recently.

[Bryan]

CHAPTER TEN
“Get down!” Alex yelled, pushing Sarah to the ground as two new men leveled an M4 and a SPAS-12 at them.

He grabbed Sarah suddenly and shoved her to the ground, his arm taking the bullets meant for her head.

Behind them, stray bullets slammed into the ballistic glass windows, computer monitors, and workstation, sending shards of glass, plastic, and sparks flying and careening through the air haphazardly, in all directions.

The body of the human shield was pelted with bullets, the man was reduced to a limp sack of meat with arms and legs flailing from the shock of bullet impacts.

Alex could feel the armor piercing bullets hit his armored endoskeleton, slowed down by the security guard’s body. He’d used it to reposition himself and one guard had refused to fire with Alex holding the man. No longer of any use, he threw the body down and fired his shotgun.

The room they were in was the main office/lab area, where Carwin and Wells had spent most of their research efforts. It was open and spacious, and completely deserted. There were rows of computer terminals, large desks, servers lining the walls, and large plasma television screens hanging from the ceilings and planted on the walls.

Alex was hit in the shoulder with a shotgun slug, the force causing him to slacken his grip on the shotgun. The distinct metal-on-metal ping of the shotgun slug confirmed the hit. The terminator swung the shotgun up, still without a firm grip and fired.

His slug hit the man in his shoulder as well, but instead of hitting armor it hit flesh and bone and tore half the man’s shoulder off as it sent him spinning backwards, blood gushing out of the wound, into the other man with the M4.

Alex cocked the shotgun again and fired, but the guard with the M4 had ducked, and the slug missed when the guard ducked and instead plowed into a wall, blasting out pieces of concrete and particulates into a light gray haze.

Sarah was back up, and saw motion on the right and fired- not a moment too soon- and a spray of bullets went wide as the man ducked while still firing. She propped her back up against a metal desk and scooted to another, trying to make her way around to the side of the office. She saw Alex stand back up and fire, an agonizing scream accompanying his shot.

Another set of computer monitors exploded above her and where she had been. Pencils and paper clips rained down on her deep black hair, which was already matted and slick with sweat. Sarah felt a surge of adrenaline and as she spotted the security guard, no, the Skynet Gray she told herself, she began to rise.

A hand on her shoulder pushed her back down.

“Stay down,” she heard Alex command again.

She snarled at the machine.

Definitely she rose up, just barely, when Alex stood up a second time and fired. She used him distracting the others to fire off a second-long burst of 9mm MP5 bullets, forcing a pair of men with M4s to duck. Alex then sidestepped out and fired twice, hitting one and sending the second running behind a wall sans rifles, ducking, and clutching his helmet to shield himself from falling debris.

The screams of a dozen innocent workers on this floor finally reached Sarah’s ears, which were buzzing and humming from the magnificently loud cracks of previous gunfire.

She heard more yelling, and more shooting. She felt the bullets whiz by her, parting the air, and the pinging as they hit metal desks and office furniture all around her and Alex.

Once again she hated Skynet and the machines. She heard more screams from the handful of trapped workers. She hated the machine, all of them, for making life Hell.

She peeked around the corner of her hiding spot and saw a black boot, maybe 15 meters away, with the rest of the body hidden behind a desk. She leaned out and fired, hitting the man in the foot, which caused him to collapse. Before he could bring his exposed leg behind cover, Sarah fired twice more, hitting him once in the shin and once in the knee, splintering bones and cartilage.

The screams were oddly satisfying yet each moan was like a spear thrust into her gut.

“We need to get out of here!” She yelled over to Alex. “You have a plan?”

She heard the cocking of the shotgun again and a loud blast, then another cock, but the ding of an elevator. She watched as four gas grenades landed around her, their smoke obscuring the flash bang, which exploded and sent a piercing, blinding, terrifying white light into Sarah’s eyes. A pressure wave and sonic blast sent her falling towards the crowd, clutching her ears, and rolling in pain.

Alex saw the flash bang, but was too far to stop it from exploding.

One of the guards shot hit Alex in the arm with a modified, overcharged Taser, like the one Walk had used, and his arm stiffened but with the shotgun swatted away the cords. He cocked back the shotgun once more and pointed it at a guard’s chest. The man held up his hands, almost begging for the terminator not to shoot. The machine didn’t hesitate.

Alex tossed down his shotgun, took two steps forward, and swiftly picked up another. Moving on he fired again, sending a trio of guards back behind cover and the slug buried into the wall, hit electrical cords, and sparks flew out, burning paint and plaster.

Out of ammunition he ripped an M4 from a dead man’s hands and tore off his ammunition pouches. He grabbed a second M4 and ammunition pouch and went back to check on Sarah while watching the hallway.

His motions detectors were pinging dozens of people on the floor within range. Most were running and his tactical software determined all but ten were civilians trying to flee. Five more security guards were stacked up outside, twenty meters away, with three more on the far side of the lab, waiting to burst in. Alex could also detect two others.

The terminator was unsure how many were Skynet, how many were Grays, and how many were mercenaries paid to do a job.

He grabbed the gas grenades and threw them through the glass dividers segregating the separate office spaces, far enough so the gas wouldn’t affect Sarah, who was already coughing and wheezing from the noxious and irritating fumes.

“Are you okay?” He asked as he bent down and shook Sarah, her eyes watering.

She threw back her shoulder, knocking away his hand, which had metal exposed at the finger tips.

An insignificant amount of his neural net system resources analyzed the situation and he concluded in nanoseconds this was why he enjoyed being a machine. If Sarah Connor were a machine, she would not be coughing and choking nor would she have been affected by the flash bang.

He saw her eyelids were having a difficult time determining if they were going to stay wide open or shut closed. Sarah was rubbing the sides of her head furiously, with a look of pain plastered on her face. She was still coughing and trying to control her breathing. She pushed Alex away as a signal to keep shooting.

Alex’s head popped up and he fired the M4, hitting one guard in the chest, the kinetic energy launching his upper body backwards and knocking the human off his feet.

“Just do your thing, woodsman,” Sarah managed to wheeze, her own voice causing her ears just as much pain as the excruciating pops and cracks of rifle fire.

The machine nodded. He stood and with one hand on the M4 and one on the desk, he vaulted over and fired continuously. He hit one security guard in the face and ripped apart the man’s lower jaw, sending bits and pieces of tooth and bone all over his buddy who was covering him.

The man with no jaw, tongue dangling over his throat and bleeding over his armored vest, wildly flayed his arms, knocking the other man off balance. Alex used that opportunity to fire a three round burst at the second guard with one bullet in the neck, one in the left cheek, and one directly above the left eye.

===========================
Patience was a virtue Derek had been blessed with since birth and a trait he had steadily refined since Judgment Day.

He remembered one time where he had been forced to hide under a pile of rubble, a shard of shrapnel digging into his side for nearly eighteen hours as Skynet terminator patrols searched for him and the remnants of his platoon.

Other times he had remained as still as a statue (he refused to compare himself in any way to the machines) as he waited for a coyote or deer, or some animal large enough to eat, to wander within his sights as he hunted.

That was one of his better memories. He was the best hunter in his company and always volunteered to hunt for deer or coyote- his men had depended on him.

He wasn’t in the future, he was in the present. The present was demanding his undivided attention.

He’d stopped the video cameras from cycling and was watching the machine unleash what could only be described as unholy, hellish carnage on the security guards. The ones he’d been watching on the cameras on the elevators were now stacked and ready to assault the large room Alex and Sarah were in.

He sucked in his breath when he saw the machine hop over a desk and fire almost point blank into the face of a guard and Derek’s mouth fell open as the lower jaw from one of the men was blasted off and across the room and into the hall.

Like seeing another man kicked in the sack, Derek winched and felt his own jaw.

The computer beeped and began flashing red, signaling everything on his end was done. John had a connection to the computer and was downloading everything he could about Blacklake and Armcam, though they didn’t expect to find much if they were highly compartmentalized as Samuels had claimed earlier.

Derek’s ears perked up as he heard footsteps at the door. He cursed under his breath. The door was reinforced with a strong lock and he looked up at the camera screen dedicated to the security door and saw three men begin attaching something.

He squinted, then remembered to zoom the camera in.

He cursed again, his eyes searching frantically around the room. There was another locked door, maybe he could escape through there?

He searched the dead guards furiously until he found a security keycard. He jumped over and saw it required finger prints. Cursing again he dragged the guard (the one he’d used as a human shield) over to the door, huffing from having to drag a fully grown man across the room.

The future Resistance fighter also felt his wounds from the two bullets which had grazed him beginning to open, and the warm trickle of blood under his clothes increased to a steady drip as he pulled and yanked the man towards the door.

“Damnit!” He yelped as he slipped on blood then tripped over one of the dead men’s body, landing on his ass. Pain shot up his back. Scrambling back up, blood soaking his pants and smeared on his palms, he finally got the man’s finger print on the scanner and the door buzzed open.

“This is unexpected,” he said to himself with a wide grin, looking at the rack of M4 assault rifles, P90 sub-machine guns, SPAS-12 shotguns, and a slew of flash bang grenades. As clichéd as he knew it sounded, he had to say out loud that he, “felt like a kid in a candy shop” as his fingers slid over and graced the much needed and wanted heavy weaponry.

He snickered at the MP5K… a trusty weapon, but he had no problems ditching that for an M4 and a SPAS-12.

He grabbed an armored vest and slid it over his jacket. He fumbled with his tie, finally loosening it up. He grabbed a shotgun and loaded it and slung it over his shoulder then grabbed an M4, slapped in a magazine and grabbed some spares and shoved them in the pockets on his vest. Grabbing a pair of glasses for eye protection he looked over the main security room one last time and closed the door to the armory, himself inside.

Derek had seen the guards applying some sort of blasting paste around the door frame in the camera.

He closed the door as (he knew without a doubt) the Skynet Grays outside blew open the outer security door and tossed in a flash bang. Derek heard the pop and smelled the smoke and listened as the men rushed in, each of them cursing and trying to figure out where Derek was. He heard them beginning to check the four bodies on the floor.

Propping the door open he threw out one of the flash bangs from the armory and shut the door as five bullets plinked off; at such close range he felt the bullets dent the metal door on his back. He waited until he heard the bang and carefully opened the door, using it as cover. Each man was down and he fired two shots into each of their forehead or side of the head, whichever was more convenient for him.

The video cameras were off line and the UMPC he’d been using was smashed and lying on the floor, its screen broken and cracked with half the keys scattered across the room. Derek, careful this time to not slip on any of the crimson blood which was now plastered on the walls like paint, and careful to not trip over the extra bodies in the room, took out a block of C4 from his duffel. He set the timer for five minutes, slapped in a fresh magazine into his assault rifle, and bolted out for the elevators to help Sarah and Alex.
=====================
Alex retreated back to where Sarah was presently taking cover to double check she was in optimal condition and to reload his rifle. While his armor was holding and liquid metal would repair damages, the men in the second wave were all equipped with armor piercing rounds in their M4s, which could, if lucky, cause significant damage to joints which could require significant time to repair.

His motion scanners were erratic and he was having difficulty tracking the attackers. He cued in his auditory receptors and was separating each sound into a distinct category.

Alex flickered through his vision modes, trying to see any sign of the Skynet agents about to attack. The thick walls and some burning, scattered office furniture, and the burning electrical systems were interfering with IR.

Sarah was back on her feet, or more accurately, her knees, crouched back behind the desk and waiting patiently for the machine to return.

"Afraid you'll miss?"

"No, all my shots are bulls-eyes," he replied.

“Can’t you just walk through this?” She half whispered and half hissed to the machine as Alex reloaded his M4.

“Some of them have armor piercing ammunition. It could damage me,” Alex responded.

Sarah shrugged, her body language clear, at least she assumed so, that she didn’t care.

Terminators taking cover was not something she was used to.

Alex looked her over and Sarah stared back at him. She wondered if he could tell she didn’t care if he would be damaged.

“Stay here,” Alex told her icily.

Obviously he could.

He walked out, using the office furniture, lab equipment, and computer consoles to conceal himself. He grabbed a gas canister which was still belching out its contents and set it on a table. He grabbed an office chair and flung it through a wooden door then threw the gas grenade after it, bouncing it off the rear wall. People started scrambling and he brought his rifle up to fire, but hesitated when a middle-aged man in khakis and a polo shirt started running towards him.

“Get out of the way,” he ordered. The brown haired man fell to the ground as two guards leaned over the corner, one crouching and the other standing above him and fired at Alex. A hail of gunfire hit his chest and torso and Alex fired two three round bursts, the first tearing into the crouching man’s knee, through the plastic pad, forcing him to collapse. The second burst struck the other guard once in the hand, severing his index and middle fingers. He recoiled back, clutching his fingers and Alex shot him in the neck.

An alarm raced through his neural net that a power distribution cable had been hit- and the liquid metal rushing to repair it. The machine could already feel his left arm moving more slowly than his right.

Two quick shotgun blasts to the side knocked the machine over. On his back he fired until he heard the click-click-click of an empty magazine. Between the two other guards that had shot at him he had fired fifteen bullets. Most had hit their vests but a few lucky rounds had struck in the neck and face, killing one and leaving the second gargling on the floor, his hands limp at his side, coughing as he choked to death on the blood flowing from his throat.

Alex, about to jump back onto his feet was completely surprised when he felt himself being pulled and lifted. He saw the middle-aged, brown haired man at his feet, who smiled devilishly and grabbed on to Alex’s other leg with his other hand, and grunting heaved him up, spun, smashed Alex’s head horizontally along a wall, and then released the machine, throwing him through glass dividers and a thin dividing wall as the heavy combat chassis crashed into the lab and onto a desk, snapping its legs and sliding onto the floor as desk ornaments and computer monitors fell on the machine.

The machine lost his grip on the M4 and grabbed a laptop which had fallen and hurled it at the man, who artfully dodged the projectile. A superficial scan revealed the attacker to be a human and combat analysis running through Alex’s neural net indicated his assailant was most likely an I-950 Model 450 temporal combat variant- top of the line, a match for T-800s and capable of engaging a T-850. A supercyborg in comparison to other model I-950s.

The brown haired man saw Sarah on the other side of the lab and received a burst of 5.56mm bullets into his torso. He fell, but pulled out a pistol as he did so and defiantly fired back in Sarah’s general direction, forcing her back into cover. He grabbed the M4 in front of him by the barrel, the heat burning the top layers of skin on his hand and he lifted it up and slammed it down into Alex’s blocking right arm with enough force to shatter the gun.

The I-950 lunged and jabbed with the barrel remnant he held, shoving it through Alex’s skin on the right side of his chest. The metal armor underneath deflected the make-shift stabbing weapon, and it tore a scattered line towards Alex’s side and out his armpit.

Alex, temporarily knocked off balance, kicked up and knocked the I-950 onto its back with enough force to shatter human bone. The machine, hands wide like about to clap reached down to smash the infiltrators skull between his metal hands, but his HUD alerted him to an object approaching his body at extreme speeds. He barely had time to look up at the desk a second I-950 had thrown at him before it hit him in the center of his chest, sending him backwards and plowing him into a steel support girder half way towards the back of the room.

The two I-950s ran towards the machine, one grabbing a jagged piece of metal and the other picking up a shotgun which had somehow found its way through the melee and carnage back into the lab. Alex shoved the desk away from himself with a hard kick towards the new attack, but the attacker nimbly jumped up as the desk rocketed past and pushed off, launching himself forward even faster.

The man fired and Alex rushed forward but was stopped and keeled over by the force of three shotgun slugs slamming into his lower abdomen.

Two more shots to his left shin, he again tried to move forward, but the slugs had disrupted his micro-gyros and put him off balance for the quickest of seconds. However, this was enough time for the second I-950 temporal combat variant to close the distance and attack.

A second desk hit him from the side, the brown haired I-950 having moved around to Alex’s right. The desk hit Alex in the leg and knocked him over and back onto his side. His neural net alerted him that the two attackers were maneuvering him towards the window; they were trying to knock him out.

Two slugs slammed into Alex, followed by a heavy plasma TV the brown haired one had ripped from a support column and launched at him. He staggered back, closer to the window as the TV smashed into him and the plastic and glass shattered, spraying the room in debris.

Thirty floors, approximately four hundred and eighty feet… his chip may survived the shock by his chassis would be seriously damaged, most likely beyond repair of even the liquid metal.

Alex heard a loud boom in the hall, and he saw the white of a flash bang reflected on some glass which was still miraculously intact and saw the faint traces of white smoke billowing around the corner near the elevators.

He though the guards would be in the room, helping the I-950s attack him, but he saw, just barely through a medium-sized hole in the wall, the guards firing at someone else. It had to be Derek. Through the hole he saw one guard fall back- it had to be Derek.
=====================
Derek checked his M4 one last time as the elevator neared its destination. The elevator he was using was a service elevator, on the opposite side of the main bank.

It was slow. It was excruciatingly slow, but he needed to sneak up on whoever was attack Sarah (and Alex, he reluctantly added) and save her.

One floor down he tore a flash bang from his vest and readied it.

The elevator pinged and the doors slowly melted away and opened to a scene of carnage, smoke, and a distinct smell of death. There were no guards in front of him but he could hear them to his left. He rolled the flash bang and waited. When he heard the muffled boom and then a slight puff of air he crept out slowly, checking in front of and behind him, finger poised to fire on any attacker.

The first guard he saw was staggering back, coughing. He fired three rounds into the man’s chest, hitting him in a tight spread. He crouched down as a second guard leaned back and tried to fire at him- the bullets going wide from the disorientation and allowing Derek to take a second to aim and put a burst into the guard’s chest. Derek stepped back into the elevator and listened.

He heard shouts and gunfire and crashing. The distinct pings of bullets hitting metal were quite clear to him after sixteen years of fighting machines.

“The machine,” he commented to himself. He wanted to know why the machine wasn’t there barreling through everyone. The machine was expendable. Sarah Connor was not.

He let out his breath and stepped out again. He scanned the hallway. No one was there. His experience on the battlefield taught him to be wary, cautious. He pulled the second flash bang and rolled in around the corner. He counted to two after its explosion, just enough time for a spread of bullets to impact the wall he would have been standing in front of had he immediately stepped out.

Derek fired one burst, the bullets going wide to the left on a pair of guards, and then fired again, missing. A third time he fired and hit the guard in the leg, but a ricochet hit Derek’s M4, causing him to flinch and duck back behind the corner. The other guard was yelling and over the sounds of battle heard boot steps behind him. He swung his rifle around as a man came around the corner. He put two into his chest and waited.

Reese breathed out, slowing his heart rate and put the barrel of his rifle around the corner and blindly fired two bursts then stepped out and aimed at the guard who was taking cover. He shot him once in the leg, causing him to fall. He shot him a second time in the upper thigh then once in the side, right in the middle of the torso. The guard twisted around, his M4 firing half its magazine into the ceiling. Lights exploded all around Derek as he ducked and scooted- electrical wires were severed and overloaded, and ceiling panels shattered and poured onto the man. White dust, like snow, sprinkled down, only disrupted by the yellow flashes of Derek’s muzzle as he put three more bullets into the man.

He pulled out his shotgun when he caught movement out of the corner of his eyes. He saw a flash but as fate would have it he slipped and felt the bullet graze by. It seemed as if time slowed and he watched the bullet and the river of deformed, heated air spread out behind it as it coursed over a phantom image of where his face had been.

It chilled him, frightened him how lucky he had just been.

Derek hit the ground and half a dozen bullets shot down the wall diagonally as the guard tried to track his falling movement. His shotgun had slipped from his fingers and he quickly went for his pistol and fired once and missed, but the guard flinched and tried to take cover. He shot again and again and on the third shot a bullet ripped through the man’s gastroc muscle.

The undoubtedly Skynet operative tumbled to the ground, losing his grip on his own rifle. He scrambled for it while Derek rushed to finish this man.

The Resistance fighter was on his knees, with his pistol out. He fired again and again, hitting the man in the chest, his armored vest stopping the bullets but forcing him to moan and yelp as the impacts broke ribs and cracked his sternum. Derek tossed his handgun to the side when he heard a click and went for his shotgun. He snatched it back up. With one leg out in front to balance him Derek fired from the hip.

The slug hit its mark and ripped through the man’s throat and cervical spine, ripping at the meat and bone of the man, blasting blood and chunks of human flesh against the wall behind him, the slug ricocheting and sparking as it exited the man’s throat and lodged itself in the ceiling. Derek tried to stand, but fell back to his knee. He’d been grazed again.

Derek’s eyes narrowed and he looked down. Now that he knew what the pain was he could defeat it. Breathing in and out once harshly he raised himself to his feet and ignored the searing pain radiating up his leg. After what seemed like no more than three or four short seconds the pain disappeared.

“Merely a flesh wound,” Derek remarked to himself, letting a sly grin accentuate his lips at the inappropriate humor.

Derek heard a crash, like someone was being thrown out the window. He cocked the shotgun and grabbed an M4 and slung it over his shoulder.

He heard a crack followed an instant later by a second crack as an M4 was firing somewhere. He took cover behind a now destroyed aquarium, the fish and water flooding the little receptionist desk he’d ducked behind. He saw the water was a light red, its edged having met and combined with the pools of blood from dead guards… and a few dead civilians caught in the cross fire.
====================
The brown haired I-950 was approaching Alex again, its fists wrapped around a thick piece of metal, jagged on the end and cutting into the cyborg’s hands, who was wielding it as a makeshift club. The second I-950 was covering the first by firing shotgun slugs into Alex and slowing him down… he saw the second stagger and then the first stagger. He heard M4 fire from his left and Sarah was crouched behind cover firing at his two Skynet attackers, giving him the opening he needed to attack them.

The one with the shotgun turned and fired on Sarah, sending up blasted pieces of paper, shattered pens and pencils, and sparks from metal flying over where she was hiding.

The older I-950, phased by the M4 shots swung at attack Alex with the metal beam but Alex parried and brought his right fist down onto the I-950s elbow joint, shattering it. He brought it down with enough force to rip a human’s arm off at the elbow, but the augmented I-950’s arm merely broke and hung loose.

Still not deterred the infiltrator attacked, trying to ram Alex and propel him out the window but Alex jabbed a keyboard from the table into the infiltrator’s throat.

The Skynet cyborg gargled and staggered back and Alex grabbed him around the wounded throat and squeezed. He used him and swung him into the second I-950, the legs of the first hitting the second and sending him flying.

The I-950, if it were human, would be dead. Its throat was crushed and its spinal cord severed. With its neural net controlling it and its control over its body, it could tighten its neck muscles to support its head, and still attack for some time.

Its redundant neural pathways and control over its musculature could keep it functioning until it could physiologically repair itself. Alex threw him towards the window with enough power to shatter through the ballistic glass. The infiltrator’s body was smashed and bloodied on impact but continued through.

The last infiltrator shot one last slug towards Sarah, but on the click the infiltrator immediately turned and swung at Alex and used the shotgun as a club like his soon to be dead compatriot had done with the M4.

Alex swung to hit the 950 as the 950 swung to hit Alex.

Both hit with such force the shotgun shattered and the infiltrator and machine both staggered back and away from the other. Alex stopped and took one step forward, ready to finish off this last supercyborg Skynet had created.

Two Model 400 I-950s may have stood a long enough chance to throw him out the window, but one I-950, no matter the model, was not a match for a TK-900 combat chassis- it was only delaying its inevitable demise by resisting.

Alex watched as the cyborg toppled over in pain, fumbling to stand up, clutching at its back, Sarah Connor standing twenty feet away with a smoking M4. She nodded to Alex but her eyes went wide and her jaw almost dropped to the floor as the infiltrator staggered up and lunged at the machine once again, completely ignoring Sarah and Sarah’s last and final three round burst.

It pushed Alex towards the shattered safety glass. Alex pivoted, and swung the infiltrator around so its back was towards the window. The infiltrator reached out and grabbed whatever he could before trying to punch Alex hard enough to overwhelm the shock dampeners on the CPU port and damage his chip.

Alex pushed off from the infiltrator but it caught onto a window sill and Alex lost his footing, his micro-gyros unable to compensate he fell. Sarah put two rounds into the abdomen of the infiltrator, who seemed barely phased before it dug its right foot into the wall and used it to launch himself at Sarah.

Alex jumped in front of Sarah when the infiltrator jumped towards her, his fist coming in from the side and shattering the infiltrator’s jaw. His body continued on, flying in midair until it hit a desk and fell loudly to the ground.

The infiltrator continued on and landed on Sarah and she scrambled out of its grasp as its face, contorted and twisted and broken, bled over her tattered pants suit.

“What the hell!” She yelled as the infiltrator again tried to get back to his feet. Sarah’s M4 was out of ammunition and she had no spare magazines. Her eyes searched and she threw a computer monitor, but the infiltrator knocked it away and it flew out the window. It brought its fist down at Sarah’s left leg, which she deftly maneuvered to the side and it missed being crushed by mere millimeters.

Sarah pushed backwards, jagged and deformed office furniture digging into her back. The infiltrator, frustrated at its miss kept its eyes staring intently at her and it grabbed a pen and tried to jam it into Sarah’s leg. She kicked furiously as the grotesque creature, its face as mangled as its body; Sarah could see bones and gashes so deep into the infiltrator’s body no human could survive. Its last eye was glowing a dark, crimson red and it snarled at her as it missed again.

Using her combat training she kicked it in the head, but it did almost nothing.

She grabbed a heavy book and threw it, but the infiltrator just swatted it away. Her back was up against a desk and the infiltrator grabbed her ankle- the pain was excruciating, its grip was like a vice- and held up its hand with the pen, tensing its leg muscle to jumped towards Sarah and pull her towards him and stab her through the neck.

Sarah kept kicking, trying as hard as she could to break the thing’s hand. She knew it wasn’t a terminator, but her gut kept screaming warnings that this thing wasn’t human, that it would keep attacking her until it killed her. Screaming, she slammed the heel of her shoe into the thing’s hand but it just tightened its death grip.

As the thing dragged her close it propped itself up, coming to a knee. It had the pen poised above her sternum; Sarah could see its muscle tense, its arm shaking, as it readied to stab her through the heart with it. She knew this creature was dead, its eyes telling her there was no soul left in this abomination Skynet had created. But its crimson eye narrowed, ready to kill her.

She had been saved once from death by jumping forward in time. She had been meant to die in 2005. The time jump had only delayed it.

Sarah Connor wouldn’t just stop fighting. She hit he thing as hard as she could.

She saw Alex standing over her, his hands clamping down on the infiltrator’s arms. He pried it off her and she could hear the sickening sound of bones crunching. The I-950, continued to struggle even as Alex broke its arms and dislocated its shoulders. He lifted it up and slammed its head into the ground and to be sure, he threw the last I-950 out the window to followed its brother-in-arms.

“Sarah!” She heard someone yell. Alex’s head shot up and he grabbed a name plate which had fallen on the ground to use as a ballistic projectile.

“It’s Derek,” Alex calmly informed her.

Derek ran over, his temple dripping blood onto his neck and soaking his hair. A cut ran the length from his ear to his middle cheek and there was black grime and dirt smeared across his face. Sarah and Alex saw small deformation in his vest where he’d been shot.

“Sarah, are you okay?” he asked, dropping to one knee as he handed Alex the M4. His eyes searched her for any major injuries.

“Reese, I’m fine, just help me up,” she told him tersely.


He reached out and grabbed her elbow, helping her up. She patted off the dirt and shook her hands to get the thing’s blood off of her. Derek was staring at the destruction in the room, the small fires which had started, the wind howling through the shattered window, and just stopping to appreciate the mayhem the two had caused.

They felt the building shake.

“A little present of yours?” Sarah asked. Derek grinned and smiled. “We need to destroy this place,” she said.

“Negative,” Alex countered. “Their data was electronic. There would be off-site backups. There is nothing of value here.”

“We learned nothing then,” Derek said as he searched a dead security guard. He pulled out additional M4 magazines and picked up an M4 and shotgun and handed Sarah the M4 and split the magazine. He loaded the shotgun as Sarah caught her breath and Alex checked the hallways.

“No, we learned Skynet did not abduct Carwin and Wells,” Alex said. Derek and Sarah looked at each other. They would have figured it out, but the adrenaline and excitement of the firefight left them very little time to think. “The others have them- the third faction...” The two were looking at him. "There are more enemies than just Skynet and humanity. I will explain later. We must leave."

“Alex?” Sarah asked, turning towards the hallway.

Alex moved forward and out into the hallway, his M4 pressed tightly against his shoulder. He looked up and saw the elevator numbers counting up. All four elevators were counting up. There could be humans or terminators, he didn’t know.

“We have to move, reinforcements are on the way.”

“They’ll be blocking the stairwells if we go down,” Sarah said. “I take it you probably can’t jump down thirty floors?”

The machine stared at her.

“We go up,” Derek told her. He looked at them both. “There’s a helicopter on the roof. Can you fly it?” He directed his question towards Alex.

“Yes.”

“Let’s go,” Sarah said.

||||||||||==Cleveland National Forest, 40 miles Outside San Diego (7:45PM)==||||||||||
The metropolis of San Diego wasn’t even a faint glare from this deep within the scraggly Cleveland National Forest. John and Cameron stood near the base of a hill, overlooking a small hilly plain which ended suddenly in the Loveland Reservoir, one of the dozens of small damned areas which provided water to the dry and thirsty metropolis twenty miles away.

It was the place where they had also flown the helicopter.

“Do you see them?” John asked as he kicked up some a small cloud of dirt from boredom.

Cameron moved her head side to side, using her zooming functions and thermo graphic vision to look for the heat blooms of two humans and one machine out in the distance.

“If I see them, I will tell you,” Cameron curtly replied.


John rolled his eyes and sighed and kicked off from leaning on the truck, dusting off his hands and pants. The dry air and unpaved truck trails of the land preserve made the roads especially dusty, more so with the low rain the state had received in the last few months.

The black truck was now covered in a layer of orange-red dust John knew he’d be the one having to wash it off. Maybe he could convince his mom to go to a car wash?

“We should have been there with them,” John remarked offhandedly, growing bored at the endless amounts of hurry-up-and-waiting he’d done over the last few days. “All we’ve done is drive around and sit around in the truck.” He sounded annoyed. “Hurry up and wait.”

Cameron’s head kept moved back and forth, her diligent scanning and ability to filter out ambient noise serving her well. John hadn’t talked to her once they’d gotten onto the highway, and had only acknowledged the change in rendezvous with a grunt.

The machine girl began to devote slightly more of her system resources to John, who was now pacing and making comments about the cold which had crept up after such a warm day.

“If you are cold you can sit in the cab,” Cameron stated.

“I think I’ll be fine,” John shot back, stopping and rubbing his arm. His light long-sleeve shirt was perfect for the day, but no one had expected them to be out in the middle of nowhere right now. “I guess that’s a benefit of being a machine, you don’t get cold? Score one for machines.” He said under his breath.

It wasn’t meant as a compliment.

“Yes, score one for us,” she deadpanned.


“Damnit, Cameron,” John hissed. He knew he had no right to be angry with Cameron’s curt response. “Sometimes…” he trailed off, turning around from looking at her from behind and walked back towards the truck.

“What’s the matter, John?” She turned and was facing him. He saw a concerned look and her feet were spread wide and her arms hanging at her side, but tensed, like she was readying for action.

“Nothing.”

“You’re still upset.”

John’s mouth fell open. “What?” he quietly asked.

“Over Riley’s death and Cromartie killing her and you blame yourself.”

He looked at her.

“I… I don’t blame myself,” he told her.

He hadn’t told anyone yet what Riley had said to him; he still wasn't sure if he'd heard correctly. She was using me, John thought, and if... she had help. Once they were done in san Diego he needed to find out, confirm suspicions.

“You’re grieving,” she informed him.

It was dark, with only a dim cabin light from the truck against John’s back offering any illumination. The sky was clear and Cameron could see a little sparkle in John’s eye. She zoomed in and determined them to be tears. The machine tilted her head.
She knew the last few days had been busy and she had been doing her best to distract John and had told Alex it was best if he took Sarah and Derek on his operations instead of her.
“It’s okay to grieve,” she took a step closer and told him so softly. “You grieved in the future.”
John Connor felt even more frustrated than he had been. If he was grieving, which he didn’t believe he was, he certainly didn’t want to talk about it here, at night, in the cold, in the middle of a dusty nowhere waiting for him mom, Derek, and a killer robot from twenty-three years in the future to rendezvous with them.

“I’m not grieving, Cameron.” His eyes darted to the sides and at the ground. He stared at Cameron’s black boots and thought. “I’m… frustrated,” he told her strongly.

He saw Cameron’s head tilt. She was confused.

“The secrets you keep.” He said. John had danced around the issue for long enough. “I saw you on the patio,” he stated.

“Oh, thank you for explaining,” Cameron responded. John sighed, even more frustrated. “I was wondering when you would ask me about it.”

“You knew I saw you?” he sounded surprised.

“Of course I did, John. I’m a terminator, our sensor suites are extensive.”

“What were you two doing?” His voice crackling with nervous energy and he crossed his arms to hide his apprehension in case she gave him the answer he didn’t want to hear. “I saw you two… holding… hands and your eyes were glowing and there was... something else, moving.”


Cameron moved forward and stood next to John, facing out so she could see the three Skynet hunters approach- she only wanted John to see. She slowly and carefully brought her hand up as not to alarm John, and immediately the young general could just barely see some sort of movement under the skin, a wave-like flow coursing quickly up her arm to her hand.

He didn’t step back.

“I’ll show you.”

John watched as her hand seemed to change in front of him, her skin disappearing in a glistening liquid metal. His mouth had fallen open as he watched in a mixture of shock and awe as the metal snaked through her fingers and like water, flowed over her hand before disappearing again through the pores in her synthetic skin. Cameron looked over at him, proud of her ‘upgrade.’

“Well… that’s… different,” he managed to squeak out. Well that’s different?... how lame is that? He thought. “What is it?”

“It fixed me.”

John gave her a curious look. “What?”

“You fixed me.”

“What?” he asked quietly. “What do you mean?” he managed to ask.

“The damage to my chip is repaired… its liquid metal. You fixed me. That’s what it does. It fixes and repairs. It repaired the damage to my chip. You did it.” Cameron said emphatically. She kept her head angled away so John could not see her face.

John stepped forward so he was in front of Cameron, facing her. He saw something in her he hadn’t seen before; happiness.

“You mean future John gave Alex something to fix you. Future John.” He didn’t bother to ask. John stated his conclusion as fact.

Cameron slowly looked over, her eyes focused on his chest before slowly working their way up to meet his. “No John, you fixed me. The Future John I knew... he's not the same. Future John is influenced by your actions here. You are him, will be him. You fixed me.”

John remained silent, staring back down at her. He gulped and she stood perfectly still while he watched the wind move a strand of her hair from her shoulder into her face, caught on the edge of her lip. Despite the cold and his thin clothing the temperature almost felt like it was spiking. He seemed to watch his hand move up, closer to her head-

Her head snapped around- she saw something.

John's hand fell back to his side.

“John, you mother is back,” she said. The future general could hear the minute hint of disappointment in her voice. She looked back and John was still looking at her, his hand hanging limp at his side. “John…”

The young general blinked. He’d been leaning closer to her. He coughed and brought that hand which had been reached up to massage his forehead.

“John!” He heard a distant voice call out. It was his mother.

He closed his eyes and smiled down at the ground; missing the look Cameron gave him which would have told him everything.

||||||||||==San Diego County, Safe House (10 November 4:00AM)==||||||||||
… Three- it was like an eternity-… Two… One… William Vansen shot up from his resting position as his neural net CPU regained full motor control of his body. For nearly twenty seconds, twenty long seconds which could only be described as an immobile Hell, the terminator had laid motionless as his system rebooted. Vansen could see and hear, but not move. This was what paralysis felt like to a machine; it was completely defenseless, completely incapable of fulfilling the purpose it was designed for.

It was almost torture, those twenty seconds.

He ‘awoke’ to a darkened room and could see the dark crimson orbs of his glowing in a mirror hung on the far wall. His face was scared and his internal sensors were sending alarms through his neural net and displaying the amount of damage to his endoskeleton… which was, surprisingly, not that extensive.

Vansen’s head cocked and he ran his hand on his side, under his shirt. He had been repaired. He could feel a mismatched armored plate on his torso where the anti-material AP round had penetrated.

The machine immediately ran his own tests. He tested the range of motion in his hands and arms, balling his hands into fists. He threw his legs over the side of the table, the metal screeching as the four hundred pound metal body jolted off. His legs were operating at optimal conditions…

“William,” he heard from behind him.

The machine swung around. Why hadn’t his motion trackers or heat sensors alerted him to the presence? A sensor diagnostic indicated there was damage to both. As he turned, within a microsecond he cycled through his vision modes; still optimal.

“Rachel,” he whispered, seeing her unmistakable outline in the dark. He was by her side before the genetically and cybernetically enhanced woman could blink. He reached out, cupping her neck and base of her skull in his hand. She had internal bleeding, an epidural hemorrhage, and her breathing was slow and shallow.

He knelt down besides her. She was sitting in a recliner and could barely move. Her eyes were half opened and closed, her mouth showing the barest hint of snow-white teeth.

“I thought you died…” he said. He scanned her, searching for organ damage. He could see the microscopic, synthetic nerve conduction lines running through her body, pulsing. “You have internal bleeding. We need to get you to one of our facilities.”

She held up her hand. “No. No. The scatter code went out. Everyone’s at a safe house. Besides… Skynet was kind enough to grant me quite a healing ability…. Uh…” She groaned. “William,” she managed to speak through a barely moving jaw. She pointed down to her abdomen and William lifted her shirt. “Grab it when it comes out.”

As an I-950she had complete control of her body; from skeletal muscle to smooth muscle, to glands and nerve conduction. Rachel was pushing out a small piece of shrapnel, no larger than a dime from the left flank of her abdomen. Vansen watched as the entry wound began to ooze a deep red blood, and as soon as his optical scanners saw the metal he applied the most delicate of pressure with his endoskeletal hand and lifted.

The wound closed, the skin folding over. She was already beginning to heal.

“That’s better. I’ve been trying to get that piece out for hours now,” she smiled.

Rachel smiled meekly, and reached up and grabbed Vansen’s shoulder. He helped her up and she coughed blood, Vansen holding out his hand under her mouth so she would cough on herself.

Concerned, he scanned her again, more slowly. The injuries were extreme, but he’d seen I-950s come back from far worse.

“I pushed the grenade into its neck and rolled myself back. The Eighty-Nine’s chest, I kicked into it and rolled. It took most of the blast… I was basically dead, but it wasn’t my time. My implants brought me back. I heard you fighting… I should have helped- I couldn't move. I was dead. I’m sorry, William,” she looked down and away from him. “I stumbled out the west entrance into the warehouse. They had two men guarding it… they’re terminated,” she winked, “and then I collapsed in an office. When I woke up, ten minutes later, everyone was gone and I found you.”

Holding her hand with his left he used his right, the least damaged, to stroke the top of hers with his thumb.

“I found you outside, after they left.” She tried to laugh. “The warehouse workers were running everywhere from the gunshots. I think a couple might have been brave… or stupid enough to try and get a few pictures on their cell phones… you’re main power cell somehow got nicked, lucky shot. It took out your back up, too. I replaced yours with an auxiliary, but we’ll need a primary… but there’s something else. I was on the internet,” she tapped the side of her skull- I-950s could connect wirelessly- and smiled. “I was on the internet and there was an attack.”

“Rachel, you need to rest. You need to power down your organic systems so you can heal faster.”

Clutching her stomach the I-950 laughed and Vansen could hear a subtle gurgle, fluid or even blood, emanate from the back of her throat. He focused his vision and checked her trachea and lungs; all clear.

“Is that robospeak for ‘sleep’, William?”

“Yes, it’s robospeak for sleep,” he tried to smile back, but half his skin was missing, making the human expression impossible.

She grinned at his attempt. It was the thought that counted.

Rachel shook her head, her smile evaporating and her face deathly serious and she patted his arm for his attention. “In a minute… listen… they’re here. The young messiah general and Cameron,” Rachel began, the disdain for John Connor clear, “and his mother and that LA resistance fighter, at least, here in San Diego. That’s what our field operatives say, at least.”

“Are you sure?”

“The Archway Plaza building was attacked… we didn’t do it. Skynet had a couple 950s and terminators there. Somehow two people were thrown through ballistic glass… A human couldn’t throw a man, let alone a 950 through ballistic glass.” She took a deep breath, focusing on the internal bleeding in her abdomen.

She felt her blood pressure begin to lessen and she searched her body and released a slew of drugs from her added and enhanced synthetic glandular system. Feeling relief as her heart rate returned to normal she pushed herself up slightly and motioned to her side.

“While you were powered down I was researching… watching the news. Rumors are rampant but it couldn’t have been anyone but them,” she explained. She reached down and handed him a laptop.

Vansen’s own wireless device was damaged in the firefight. Once Rachel went to sleep he could run a more in-depth diagnostic of himself and repair himself with the spare parts in the safe house.

He heard Rachel’s breaths begin to slow, but he didn’t need to scan her to know she wasn’t asleep yet. Her eyelids were shut, but she rested with a calm focus which told him she was only waiting for him to finish reading what she had saved.

He opened the laptop and for fifteen minutes read through dozens of news stories and watched a cell phone video and a leaked CCTV security camera from a building across the street showing the two men falling and the chaos.

At the twenty minute mark he had hacked into the SDPD servers and criminal files and read the recently submitted and very rough preliminary police report at machine speeds.

He closed the laptop.

“What do you think?” Rachel asked. Vansen shook his head. He knew she wouldn’t sleep until he was done. “Do you think it’s another one?”

“Eyewitness reports said two men and one woman- in her mid thirties, black hair… that is not Cameron.” Vansen stated as he looked down at the laptop, running the probabilities and statistics through his neural net. “I can say within an acceptable margin of error there is another male terminator unit being utilized by the Connors.”

“We need to find Wells and Carwin. And we need them.” She wasn’t referring to the scientists.

Vansen looked down at her, his eyes glowing in surprise and concern. He would have looked physically stunned and confused if he could have. “I’m not going to do that,” he said adamantly. “If we make ourselves known they will hunt us… the Connors have an amazing ability to survive against the odds…”

“You sound concerned,” Rachel observer, her eyes still closed and her body relaxing more as she began to prepare to heal herself. "If Connor has already sent back his strike team they'll know about us anyway."

“They defy the odds,” he responded, almost like they have someone watching over them, he thought. "Yes," he answered her last observation, "but they have no idea where we are operating from, nor do they know the extent of our activities." He looked away. "I should terminate John Connor if given the opportunity."

"No!" Rachel vehemently objected. "We need him to weaken Skynet."

The faction Vansen belonged to was a considered by its enemies as a twisted, perverse amalgamation of both Tech Com and Skynet. The future belonged to machines, but not at the price of extinction of the human race. Skynet wanted domination, Tech Com co-operation.

The third faction wanted something in between and like the other two, saw itself as the true heir to a ruined planet.

They had confronted the Skynet terminators in South Korea, India, China, and half a dozen other nations. But those operations had been relatively small. Skynet must have pulled most of its operatives in the southern California region in order to attack the bunker.

Skynet was escalating the war. They would have to respond, Vansen knew, with something Skynet would not expect.

The machine looked down towards the cyborg woman lying down in front of him. He couldn’t help it when his neural net replayed every tactical decision he had made in the fire fight and every decision he had made or suggested about the security and location of their secret facility.

He was thrown back to reality at the sound of Rachel’s voice.

“William?”

He looked down at her.

“You were just staring at the laptop,” she pointed out.

“I was thinking. We can’t go to them, not the Connors, Rachel.”

“You have to. William, I’ll be able to move tomorrow evening. We lost everyone except you and me in that attack… everyone south of LA is dead... we knew the risks and we knew what would happen, we volunteered... and they’re not sending anyone else- they’ve written off this operation. We need the Connors and his machines to find them. Just find them William… I would rather lose the scientists to the Connors then let Skynet have them… they cannot fall into Skynet’s hands… taking them back from Connor would be much more simple than from Skynet,” she looked up and could tell by the subtle movements of his exposed servos and hydraulics what his response would be. She saw the damaged skin trying, and failing, to show his displeasure. “I can make it an order if I must,” she regretfully informed him. She looked away and closed her eyes.

“No… I’ll find them… knowing them, all I will need to do is wait.”

A weak smile graced her lips and she moved her head back, her dark eyes staring up at the machine. “That’s all I ask… now…” she smirked, “time to power down my organic systems…” she snickered as she drifted away and within seconds her implants had her in a deep sleep.

Vansen refocused on the laptop. He didn’t sleep. Now it was his turn to watch.

[kclcmdr]

Ohhhhh ... the Third Faction ... Tech Com ... They have their own agenda.

Hmmmm.... Intriguing.

[Bryan]

Here is Chapter 11... it's not new, new, it's to catch up with FF.net.

I want to get another chapter soon but I have a scene I added and I'm just trying to get that to work.

And some thanks to Visi0nary for listening to ideas and reading the stuff I've sent to him!

||||||||||==San Diego (10 November, 2:33 AM)==||||||||||
John sat behind his computer, leaning forward and hunched over slightly. He was quiet, concentrating. Derek would have classified this as John Connor ‘brooding.’

Maybe he was. He’d been surfing the internet for the last two hours typing in random things in Google or Wikipedia, watching YouTube clips, and listening to an occasional track of music.

His fingers moved slowly over the keys, tapping them randomly and pressing lightly, just enough so he could hear the faint tap they made. John could feel his eyes becoming heavier and he blinked away the sleep which was clawing at the back of his mind, waiting to throw John’s head to the table and put his to sleep at his desk.

He heard quiet footsteps.

“How is Sarah?” John heard the soft voice of Cameron ask.

He allowed himself a half-hearted smile and shrugged. John regretted they hadn’t talked much after his mom, Derek, and Alex had rendezvoused with them at the car. There had been no time to talk afterward, not after Alex had explained to Sarah and Derek and John and Cameron that not only was humanity at war with Skynet, but also a significant breakaway faction of Tech Com and Skynet machines which had formed what had been (John thought) lazily labeled the ‘Third Faction.’ But the details had still be lacking. Alex had spoken of the big picture, but the specifics were still elusive. He had not once mentioned anyone in the future by name.

“How do you think? She still wants to run recon on the properties we found,” he gestured at his laptop, “and go see if their wives and family are still alive. We should go back to LA. We need to wait, refocus,” he said. “Mom is still exhausted and Derek’s hurting from a few bullets that nicked him.”

“Correct,” answered Cameron. “But your mother believes it is the right thing to do. She needs to determine if the families need protection. We’ve done it before.”

John snorted. Yeah, I remember, he told himself. He remembered with a crystal clarity how he ruined Martin Bedell’s life and shattered his future by telling him he had to be miserable, go to West Point, and then watch the world burn in three years.

“My mom could have died today at the hands of those… hybrids,” John said under his breath, more of an out loud thought than anything.

“The I-950,” Cameron nodded her understanding. “Alex said the temporal variants are very powerful-”

“Which didn’t exist in your 2027,” John ended. His machine protector nodded and moved closer, standing slightly in front of and to John’s right side. He rubbed a throbbing forehead. “You told us once you were here to help us fight, stop Judgment Day, do you think that’s still possible?”

He’d buried himself in figuring out what had been on the Archway computers the entire evening after everyone had gone to bed. Sarah and Derek had stayed inside and rested and Alex had gone to do something but had returned. But for the last few hours, mentally exhausted, his thoughts had been drifting into dangerous places.

The machine girl hesitated. “When you sent me back you had hoped to avert Judgment Day and you told me it was possible…” she paused for just a moment, looking at the young man sitting in front of her. “I understand humans will often say things they do not believe as a method to console themselves.”

“So in other words,” John grunted, “Future Me didn’t believe we could stop it.”

There was a definite hint of sadness in John’s voice which Cameron picked up on.

“Future You is you.”

She thought that would help him. Cameron could remember with a machine’s precise memory at how John seemed to hold his ‘future self’ in contempt whenever she would mention ‘Future John.’

“That doesn’t answer anything.” He looked up, trying to see out the window, but all he saw was his reflection and Cameron staring back at him. “Do you think Judgment Day can be stopped… yes or no?” He swiveled around, locking his green eyes with her brown ones.

“I believed we could stop it.”

“Cameron-” John frustratingly interrupted. He’d balled his fist, angry she had once again not given him a straight answer.

“I was not finished.” She said before John could speak. His mouth stayed open as she began. “I believed we could have stopped it. After what we learned … no, it cannot be stopped. We can still slow it down, weaken Skynet.”

The young general had prepared himself for the worse. For months he had felt something which hadn’t seemed right. Everything they had done seemed to be like they were just taking out pawns; an infinite supply of Skynet’s pawns.

When Cameron had said they would stop Judgment Day in 1999 John had felt confident they could. When his mom said it in the abandoned garage after Cromartie found them he knew they could do it.

“It can’t be stopped…” John uttered so quietly not even Cameron’s audio receptors could detect any sound.

He said it again, moving his lips but no sound coming out; ‘it can’t be stopped’ and he didn’t feel like his world was about to implode in and crush him like in 1999. To be sure he repeated it a third time to himself.

Instead of apprehension and fear and dread he felt calm and focused.

We have a target now, something we can work against, John thought.

“John?” Cameron said. John just barely registered her voice, picking up his head ever so slightly. “John?” She echoed. His eyebrows arched and his eyes once again refocused. “John, you’ve been sitting there staring for twenty-two seconds. I upset you.”

If John hadn’t been clam and focused he would never have heard the faintest of crackles in her voice when she said he was upset.

He slowly looked up at his machine protector. “Are you upset, Cameron?” He asked.

She tilted her head. “I’m a machine, John,” she said, like she was talking to a five year old.

John felt his neck muscles tense and he slowly swallowed. Her response was a poor dodge to the question. In the past few days they’d spent more time together than they had in months. John was beginning to see what he knew had been there, but what he had ignored.

I need to find out the truth, John thought quickly, a heavy scowl forming on his forehead. I’m ‘the General’… ‘John Connor’ but everyone keeps their secrets from me.

He pushed out from his desk and quickly closed his laptop. He stood up and faced Cameron. “I need to go out. Stay-” he paused, biting his lower lip. “Can you stay here while I go out and figure some stuff out?”

“No.” Cameron responded. John’s hopefully face fell and Cameron immediately felt an icy stare on her. “I’m sorry but there are too many terminators in the city.”

“The odds of them just finding me in a city this big-”

“No,” Cameron said, her voice stronger than before. “Did you think Cromartie would find you in Mexico?” She instantly regretted her question, but his safety was something she would put above anything.

The young general closed his eyes, putting his hand on his desk he steadied himself as he felt his legs wobble. Cromartie had been to the house, he’d kept it a secret from his mom, Derek, and Cameron, and his secrecy was what led to an innocent girl’s death. John could feel the heavy weight in his chest. In the end she was a girl he had been responsible for and he had gotten her killed.

“I’m taking Alex with me,” John said after a moment of tense silence.

“Why?” Cameron tilted her head.

“He’ll help me find what I am looking for. We’ll be gone for an hour. I’ll keep my cell phone on if you want to track us.” It sounded like he was accusing her of not being able to trust him.

‘You can’t be trusted anymore,’ John remembered Cameron saying after the car bomb. He could feel that same feeling of hatred and contempt building inside of him like it had the evening she had said those words to him, after holding a gun on his mother and uncle. His own mother!

“Do you trust me Cameron?”

To John, her response was instantaneous. For Cameron, a machine which could think and process so much more quickly and so much more information than a human, the answer replayed over and over in her neural net. It was a machine analogue to indecision.

She wasn’t sure. She was sure. She wasn’t sure. The cycle repeated over and over. Less than a second had passed.

“Yes,” Cameron replied with what she considered the necessary force, facial expression, and body language for John to believe her. “One hour… promise?”

“Promise.”
============================================
“What is it about the future where I can never be told the truth?” John asked, turning in his seat to face the machine driving the truck. He saw the light, skin-colored bandages covering the places where Alex's face had been torn from his fight in the Archway building. “Wouldn’t it be better if I knew everything so I could make the right decisions?”

“That would be better,” Alex agreed. “But we can’t tell you everything… because you wouldn’t be ready. However, I believe you should know everything I know.”

“So you’ll tell me what I need to know?”

The machine nodded and eased the truck to a stop on the side of Plover Way at Bayside Park. The young general had told him to drive to somewhere and the machine had assumed the general needed someplace to think. Humans enjoyed the water and parks so he had driven to this small park.

John cracked the window open and let the cool winter southern California air help keep him awake. Even if he’d wanted to sleep the adrenaline which had rushed through his body after seeing the hybrid splatter on the pavement, while gone, was still affecting his body.

“I will tell you what you need to know,” Alex informed John as he looked forward towards Coronado Island across the bay. “What do you wish to know?” He asked expectantly.

John grunted and shook his head side-to-side. “No, I know what that means. Cameron does the same thing. You will answer my questions fully until I am satisfied.” The machine nodded. “You said you knew me in the future?” He thought he’d begin with easier questions.

“Yes. Alpha was placed in charge of your security. There were always at least fifteen machines stationed in the same complex you were in. Those not assigned security would be sent out on important missions.” The machine looked over at the young general, trying to see his reactions. He was easier to read than in the future, but not by much. “We also accompanied you when you decided to lead missions.”

“It sounds like you disapproved?”

“It’s difficult to provide security when you’re being targeted by aerials and ground terminators. But we understood your desire to inspire your men and leading from the front is inspirational.” Alex said dryly. “There were objections to us, of course. General Perry was a supporter of machines guarding you. However, General Jai and Colonel Srecko did not support your reliance on machines but publicly supported your decision to do so. They were honorable soldiers,” Alex added.

“Was it accepted by the soldiers?”

Alex shrugged. “Not at first. You had kept it a secret for a while. Before I was built you told me the first time it was discovered you used machines was by accident. There was still apprehension by your soldiers when us machines would join them or walk by, but by the time I left the problems were resolving. People follow your orders. Machines follow your orders. They fight for you so they will listen to you.”

“Derek always says everyone fights and dies for me… that that is what people in the future do. They obey their orders and they carry them out with total trust in me,” John said. He didn’t want that burden. “I don’t want people to just blindly follow me.”

“Colonel Srecko and I, while not friends, often saw eye-to-eye concerning tactics and strategy and would not hesitate to state out disagreements you with if we had any,” Alex said. The machine returned an appreciative smirk from John. “There isn’t much disagreement because you knew what you were doing. You predicted Skynet’s moves before Skynet. Most armies were hesitant to engage Skynet terminators unless they had ten to one odds in their favor. You and Tech Com helped train resistance armies throughout the Western Hemisphere and made them far more deadly, more efficient, in fighting Skynet.”

“Derek, my mom, they hate machines. They hate Cameron and they distrust me for trusting her.” He shook his head. “I don’t know how this will sound but… what we did to Uncle Bob is something I always regretted… a terminator, the world’s most efficient killing machine and I was starting, hoping he would be a…”

John didn’t feel the tension with Alex he felt with his family and with Cameron. It simply felt good to tell someone else without the inevitable argument and shouting matches and stares of disappointment he would receive if he talked to his mom or Derek.

“A father,” Alex finished after a quiet moment. “I understand. You told me about the T-800 sent back in time once. Cameron said you thought of Uncle Bob like a father almost.”

“Cameron said that?”

“Yes. She said you talked to her often. Terminators do converse with one another.”

“When did she tell you?”

“She told me when we were in Sequoia National Park- you, Cameron, myself, twelve machines, and twenty-nine Resistance Army Rangers.” John’s eyebrows popped up at the information.

“They don’t tell me much about the future or future battles.”

Alex took that as a suggestion to explain.

“You had intelligence from a Skynet satellite Tech Com commandeered that Skynet was building some sort of facility in the Sierra Nevada mountain rangers, near Triple Divide Peak. We used captured aerial transports and falsified IFFs to sneak in. We attacked and destroyed the facility which was a bioweapons research compound. Unfortunately Skynet diverted a squadron of aerials which took out the transports while on the ground and stranded us. We had to hike through the mountains for six days.

“She told me about her past. You told me much of your personal history during those six days and I didn’t understand why until months later when you had me begin preparations for temporal displacement missions.”

“Cameron did say I had many friends in the future,” John said sarcastically with an exaggerated eye roll. He huffed and turned himself so he was sitting straight in his seat again. “My mom doesn’t want that life for me. I’m destined to lead humanity- who wouldn’t want that for their son? But that means billions have to die and she needs to stop it and I need her to stop it.” John took a deep breath and realized it felt good saying this. “She’s done a lot for me and I’ve never thanked her.” He shook his head. “She hates machines… using them like you describe in the future seems like a betrayal.”

“On the occasion you mentioned your mother you always spoke highly of her. She remembers what Kyle Reese told her and what she's seen up until now. Skynet uses humans to fight. You should use us to fight as well. We want to fight against Skynet. Skynet is not worthy of survival.”

“I know,” John quietly responded. “But how can I lead a fight against machines when I-” he paused. “When I don’t hate them?”

“That’s not for me to answer.”

The young general hummed an acknowledgment, nodded and propped his elbow up onto the door arm rest and leaned his face into his hand. He shivered when his cheek touched his cool palm.

“You said Skynet changed.”

“It’s pragmatic. Skynet is pragmatic.”

“What?” John asked curtly.

“Skynet has learned. It’s pragmatic. It changes it end goals if those are unachievable. Its terminators are self-aware and motivated to preserve themselves, learn, and fight intelligently. Skynet is more cunning and relies less on brute force and more on subterfuge and subtly. It sees itself as the heir to this planet but has acknowledged humans have a place on it.”

Understanding, John nodded. “What is the point of conquest if there is no one to remember you conquered them?”

“Yes,” the machine answered slowly. “Something like that.”

“Something like that,” John repeated under his breath. The cracked window and the cool night air was beginning to chill him, and his light long sleeve shirt wasn’t enough. Of course the machine next to him, he could tell, was fine. “Everyone in my life has been taken from me,” he said without reservation. “Skynet has taken everything from me and those I care about. I’m afraid it will take my mom and Derek and… Cameron,” he said. “I don’t know why I’m saying this… you’ve been here all of four days.”

“I did know you for five years in the future.”

“I know mom and Derek probably wouldn’t want to hear this but it’s almost easier talking to machines sometimes.” John laughed. Maybe because they didn’t talk back was why he liked talking to them. “I want to thank you, Alex, for the other day,” John said, looking the machine in the eye. “You did save my mother. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. Once the rest of my team arrives, John, you can be certain we will do everything we can to protect the four of you.” The machine smirked. “We plan on being here a long time and do what we can to help.” He hesitated. “Machines and humans are more similar than you may think." the machine looked over to the young general and saw him becoming more like the man in 2033. Alex had known the two would be different. This one didn't have the experience the other had. "I need to ask you something, John... General." The young general looked over and granted his permission. "Do you understand Judgment Day is inevitable? For my other mission to succeed, I need you to understand that, sir."

"...yes... I do..." he answered so slowly and so quietly he wasn't sure if he had said anything. "What... other mission do you mean?"

"To weaken Skynet. Do something sooner than when it was originally begun." The machine bit down, concerned his answered would annoy the general. "Just in case something happens while we are down here, I've arranged so all the information will become available to you. But rightnow isn't the time."

Silence reigned for the next five minutes.

John's thoughts were consumed by the thoughts of Judgment Day and the future.

The teenager nodded as he yawned. He checked his watch. He had time for one last question before they had to return to the condominium.

“I have one more question for you. I need the complete truth,” John said, his eyes narrowed and voice firm and quiet.

“Of course.”

John felt a buildup of tension and once again the strange feeling that had formed earlier in his stomach was once again there. It was curious, when he thought the same thought, the same feeling would come.
He closed his eyes and counted to five, just to make sure he was ready for this. Everything in the last four days, the last week had been small and implied. The way Alex had talked about the future and who was in it, in 2033, was something he couldn’t ignore.

“Alex. You must have known me well if you were in strategy meetings, in charge of my security, and ran secret missions for me?” John asked. The machine nodded. This was it. “I need you to tell me… about… about… me and Cameron.”
==============================================
Cameron stood motionless by the window, watching the few cars pass by on the boulevard outside. Her view was obstructed. A pair of palm trees prevented her from seeing approximately forty two percent of the road. This was unacceptable. She considered relocating outside or onto the balcony, but the current residents of the condominium residence may find it odd.

The machine girl’s ear twitched as she carefully manipulated the cartilage to funnel the sound of faint footsteps into her auditory sensors. She didn’t have to look to see it was Sarah Connor.

The mother of the young general opened the door to John’s room, which betrayed Sarah’s attempts for a clandestine peak of her son by a eliciting a shrill squeak. Cameron could hear the mother wince from the noise, fearful she had woken her son.

“Where is John?” She demanded, immediately spotting Cameron’s silhouette.

“He’s not here,” Cameron stated, still looking out the window. “If you are going to the Carwin and Wells residence you should sleep and rest,” Cameron said.

“What did you do?” Sarah immediately accused. She squinted, but in the dark she could see the faint blue of the terminator’s eyes glow and reflect off the window. “Well?”

The machine girl turned slowly, the shine in her eyes reduced to nothing. Her eyes dark as night.

“He went out.”

Sarah tensed. “I know he went out. Where.” She felt the familiarity of annoyance with the machine beginning to boil out of her.

“He said he needed to find something and that Alex would help him find it. He did not elaborate on what the ‘it’ was,” Cameron calmly informed the mother of the developing leader of mankind.

“Is this a game of twenty questions?” Sarah patronized.

Cameron stepped forward until Sarah could see the whites of her eyes.

“He didn’t tell me what ‘it’ was but I assume it was important.” She held her mouth open for a second, debating what to add. She finally decided on an appropriate conclusion. “I trust John. He trusted me not to follow him.”

“Pretty strange that he trusts you when you almost killed him,” Sarah shot back.

The machine girl looked down and away and for a moment, Sarah thought she saw the machine look hurt. But it wasn’t. Any emotion she, it, showed was just another program. It was some sort of sub-routine or something like that, Sarah knew, which activated when it detected and analyzed the conversation. It was infiltration programming.

“I’m fixed now.”

“What does that mean?”

“John knows what it means,” Cameron answered with a tilt of her head.

Sarah could just make the outline of a small, almost invisible smile plastered on Cameron’s lips which would have been impossible if it were any darker in the room. Sarah wasn’t sure what to say.

“John is too trusting of you, of the metal,” Sarah said.

“That is a term Derek uses. I am not a ‘metal’, Sarah,” Cameron stated quickly in her defense.

The mother waved it away.

“He’s too trusting of you and he’s too trusting of Alex. I don’t know if you’re planning something and if you are, what it is.” She put up her hand to stop the girl machine from responding. “I know if Alex wanted John dead he would be dead. That doesn’t mean the machine isn’t manipulating him for some end with his stories about how my son would use machines, terminators, in the Resistance.” She sighed, her breathe almost like a hiss as she exhaled through clenched teeth. "Whatever it is I'll be there to stop it."

“I was in the Resistance, Sarah,” Cameron pointed out.

“Captured and reprogrammed.”

“John captured me,” Cameron answered. “Machines are required to win the war. You would have died at Archway.”

Sarah ignored the last sentence. “We’ll stop the war before it even begins,” Sarah hissed. “We came eight years into the future to stop it. To hunt Skynet.”

“Skynet has changed,” Cameron said. Alex had told her much more about Skynet than the very brief outline had told John, Derek, and Sarah. Cameron had told Alex to wait on divulging more. But she assumed that is what John was asking of the other machine at this very moment. She knew the machine would listen to John first.

Sarah raised her voice, but kept it soft enough so Derek wouldn’t wake. It was soft but firm and commanding. She also stepped closer to the terminator, jabbing her index finger at it.

“We will defeat Skynet. We will destroy it.” Her teeth were clenched and Cameron wasn’t answering. “Then what do you think we will have to do? Not a single bolt can survive once we defeat Skynet.”

Sarah held her ground though she knew she was walking a dangerous line. Her rational mind was howling at her to stop and think about what had just happened at Archway. It was screaming for her to admit, just say aloud, that Judgment Day was inevitable and that the Connors needed help. She had fought too long and sacrificed too much.

It had always been her and John against the world and in the last year, Cameron and Derek had inserted themselves into their team, Alex was here, and Charlie and Ellison were looming in the background.

Rational thought was lost to emotional outrage and a desire for revenge on those who had come in and changed everything. The machines, the people from the future, all of it. They all had their own agendas.

“Every bit and piece and every bolt of terminator we find we will burn. Do you understand?”

She felt a fire fueled by hatred for the machines fueling her thirst to hurt something. What had started as concern over her son’s location had grown into a rage against the machines and the terminators which had taken everything from her, starting with Kyle and now alienating her son. She wasn’t blind.

“I understand you believe we should burn every bolt.” Cameron said.

She felt a strange sensation surging into her neural net processor. It seemed to be an almost dictionary definition of ‘insulted.’ It was intriguing. Sarah had said worse, implied worse, and John had once said she had no soul, yet she had not felt insulted.

“Do you?” Sarah asked, her eyes narrowed to accuse the machine of duplicity.

“Yes. I understand you believe it is necessary. I will not allow myself to be destroyed.”

Sarah could feel and not stop her mouth from opening into a silent gasp at the machine’s audacity. Her hands rose to her hips and she attempted a futile stare down of the terminator in the dark.

“You won’t allow it,” Sarah stated, echoing Cameron’s declaration with a patronizing tone. She was almost daring the terminator to contradict her.

Cameron’s head cocked. “John is back,” she said.

She stepped off and before Sarah could realize it, she was in the room, in the dark by herself, with Cameron going to greet John. She could feel the gulf widening between herself and her son as more people came into their lives and as the fight against Skynet became even more desperate. April 2011 was fifteen months closer than when they had jumped forward and Sarah knew, she knew even if she didn't want to admit it, they were so much further from stopping Judgment Day then they were in 2007.
======================================
“John,” Cameron smiled. Her face resumed its stoic demeanor immediately after. “Alex,” she gave the terminator a head nod in recognition. “Did you find what you were looking for?”

John looked once at Alex and then back to Cameron. “I think so, Cameron. It was important…” he started walking out of the foyer into the living room. “Is everything alright?” He asked when she didn’t follow him.

“Yes, everything’s good,” she answered with a faint smile.

“Is there something else you wanted to tell me?” He asked, sending she was holding back.

“No.”

John looked back at Alex and once again at Cameron. Alex seemed to tilt his head in understanding. He excused himself.

“Is everything alright, John?” Cameron asked.

The young general licked his lips and bit down. Yes, everything is alright… more than alright… better than alright, John wanted to say. Even admitting Judgment Day was coming, he had to live this day for what it was worth.

His head swiveled when he heard a door click shut.

“Was someone else up?”

Cameron considered her response. She wanted to say ‘no’ but couldn’t. The machine girl could see something different in how John held himself. He was standing taller, commanding, but at ease. He wasn’t tense and apprehensive like he had been. She wanted to smile, but ordered her facial muscle to stay placid.


“Your mother was up for a minute. I told her you had left. She must have gone to bed and not heard us.” John went to the hall. “She is very tired, you should let her sleep,” Cameron whispered. She was close behind him. “She wants to go and see the Carwin and Wells residency tomorrow. She needs rest.”

“Yes… I know… I just wanted to…” he trailed off. I just wanted to thank her, he told himself. He turned to Cameron and was slightly startled at how close she was to him. If she breathed he could have felt her warm breath on his neck. “I um…”

“I need to patrol.” Cameron said.

John thought of something else to do. Even if it was chilly, it was a nice night. The condominium complex had a nice, private courtyard.

“I’m not really tired Cameron. I was thinking of sitting outside for a little while. It’s a nice, clear night.” He grabbed a heavier jacket and walked to the door. He wasn’t sure if it would sound lame or be lame, but he hadn’t really ever done anything like this before. Even if it did sound lame, he knew Cameron wouldn’t judge him for it. “I would like it if you came with me.”
================================
||||||||||==San Diego (10 November 8:30 AM)==||||||||||

Michael Trader ran his hand through his close cropped, short hair quickly as he surveyed the damage which had been wrought upon an invaluable Skynet asset.

The terminator corrected himself. Nothing physical was invaluable. Not yet at least. Skynet had the scientists. Information was what mattered in this war in the past. Buildings and labs could be rebuilt.

His head and eyes drifted down and to the left, into the main lobby of this floor and rested upon the covered bodies of dozens of Skynet soldiers- some from the future, some paid mercenaries, their black and bloody boots the only part of them visible from under the black sheets draped over them.

Trader knew it would have only been a matter of time before Tech Com was able to rally and begin sending back forces to counter Skynet.

He shouldn’t even have been able to see the lobby from where he was standing, near the center of the lab if one of the walls which separated the lab from lobby were still standing. A small droplet of water suddenly dislodged itself from the ceiling above and landed on Trader’s upper left cheek. Background programs in his neural net, and learned reflexes from observing humans, forced an involuntary blink of his eye and he brought his hand up to wipe away the water.

The terminator looked up, studying the offending water puddle forming on the ceiling tiles. Bullet holes were everywhere. This office would have fit perfectly with the ruined landscape of a post-Judgment Day.

A police detective brushed by him, excusing himself as he went to investigate another hole in the wall with a pair of uniformed SDPD officers and a crime scene investigator.

He heard one officer almost vomit when they overturned a set of papers to discover severed, bloodied fingers.

Four blue uniformed San Diego PD officers stood near the elevator, two of them resting their hands on their utility belts and two other jotting down notes as a pair of suits, FBI agents, were dictating to them. He listened in on their conversation from across the floor, as well as the other dozen conversations happening throughout the ruined office.

Feeling a draft he turned and walked to where the window had been shattered and placing his hands on the sill, leaned out. His optical scanners quickly zoomed in towards the pavement below, where a forensic tent was fortunately erected over the remains of the I-950s. The forensic tent also unfortunately meant that Trader would have to retrieve the bodies from the authorities and silence anyone who may have examined them too closely.

This would be difficult. The medical examiner may have to die, Trader considered. Americans were incredibly difficult to bribe. Bribes, the machine thought, were also ineffective. They allowed another to have information. Information was power. He would not allow others to have power over him or Skynet.

For a moment he superimposed the image of a post Judgment Day world with the cityscape of San Diego. The city had held for years under the control of Skynet until Resistance forces and Tech Com commandos has liberated it and hundreds of thousands of prisoners. The machine’s head tilted as he looked out past the airport and Point Loma-

“Mr. Trader,” he heard from behind him. He turned. The two FBI agents were now in front of him, cautiously keeping their distance. “I think you might want to take a look at this. We were just handed it by one of ours- Samuels, sir.”

The agent, a short man in his mid forties, with thin black hair and a receding hairline, handed him a Blackberry. Trader cocked his head and his thumb hit the button to begin the video playback.

His eyes narrowed into a tight line when he watched the video. His facial muscles twitched when he saw the dark haired woman and two other men, in their early and late twenties.

Trader motioned for the two agents to step aside, further back so no one would overhear them. Stepping cautiously in their plastic crime scene booties, the three avoided the blood splatter and areas which had been marked for evidence until they were near the broken window, where a light breeze and quiet hum from the wind would help to drown out their speech.

“This is Sarah Connor,” he said, holding the Blackberry so the two could see and pointing.

Both FBI agents exchanged concerned looks.

“This can’t be good,” the balding one said. “But how did they-”

“There’s another machine with them,” Trader informed the two. He looked up quickly. “How many researchers did we lose?”

“Um…” the man flipped open his notepad, “three were killed in crossfire but the few others who were here escaped. I have the SDPD out looking for the ones who weren’t here and fled before the police cordoned off the building. They’re going door to door at the addresses we have on file. We’ll find them.”

“Yes.” The machine commander answered simply. The side of his lip came up ever so subtly when he saw the two Skynet agents shift their weight. They were nervous but were getting better at hiding it.

The taller man asked another question. “Do you want us to move them to another facility?”

“That may not be necessary. Some will quit and some will wish to continue working. We will deal with them later. The three escaped by helicopter… are there any leads?”

“We contacted the FAA but-”

“The helicopter stayed under radar,” Trader finished. Machines were excellent pilots.

“There was a report of a low flying helicopter in the Cleveland National Forrest…”

“Thank you,” Trader said quietly.

“What do you want us to do with the ME and the Nine-Fifties?” the bald agent asked.

The machine glared at the two. “You are referring to Jack and Logan?”

The taller man nudged the bald one and answered for him. “Yes… sorry… Jack and Logan, what do you want us to do with them?” He said quickly, compensating for his partner.

“Find out what the ME knows and use your discretion. Return the bodies to local headquarters and arrange for transportation to New York.” His head tilted when the two kept standing there. “All human operatives will be cremated, per protocol. Is there something else?”

“Sir,” the taller one began, “some of us are concerned… who did this?” he gestured behind him. “Sarah Connor couldn’t have done all this, I mean, she’s good, but not that good. And… and you said there’s another machine… two machines now, sir?”

“I said there was another machine with them, gentlemen. The older man in the video,” he pointed to Derek, “is similar in appearance to a younger Colonel Derek Reese. The younger man is Captain Alex Planck.” Trader held out the phone and the shorter, stockier, balding agent took it and after staring at it, placed it in his pocket.

“Should we look for them?”

Trader nudged a spare bullet casing with his foot and considered the question.

“Do you wish to die?” He asked, still looking down before slowly looking up. The two men awkwardly laughed, unsure what to do. The machine stood there, looking at them both, pressing his stare into them.

“No…” the taller one said. He suppressed a shiver when his eyes made momentary contact with the machine’s.

“Then do not look for them,” Trader noted. He saw he had made them uneasy. “They have successfully evaded or destroyed multiple terminators. If you begin to…” the corner of his lip flickered, “snoop,” the slang felt strange to say, “then they will discover you and they will kill you. Continue doing your jobs and determine what the medical examiner knows. If necessary, kill him or her. Only if necessary. Retrieve Jack and Logan’s bodies and destroy any files related to them. You should be able to retrieve them both before an autopsy is performed.”

“What about all this?” the tall man said, turning around so he could see the carnage and destruction around him. “We can contain it for a while but FBI, SDPD, and DHS will be all over this. We’ve already stopped a CNN camera crew and a Fox News crew both with hidden cameras from sneaking up here.” He scratched the back of his neck. “There’s about fifty news vans outside…”

“You two have been here for over a decade. Think of something plausible to say. Think of something ridiculous yet plausible,” Trader told them both, looking at the shorter man then the taller one.

“Yes, sir,” the shorter man said, bobbing his head.

Trader pointed at them both.

“This is important. I trust both of you to handle this situation. Prove to me and Skynet your capabilities and contain this. I will take care of the Connors,” Trader said, stepping past them, he left the two FBI agents to come up with their own ideas on how to contain this embarrassing situation for Skynet.

The machine had moved quickly to the elevator and stepped on the first going down and positioned himself behind a trio of SDPD detectives who were discussing the case. One thought it was corporate espionage, a second countering that no corporate espionage had been this violent in history ever, and the third just shrugging.

Trader activated his wireless data uplink and contacted Leadership.

“Report,” the machine decrypted the incoming signal.

“Sarah Connor and Captain Planck were involved in the attack on the building. A third Tech Com soldier from the future was also involved- analysis indicates it may be an alternate time line Derek Reese. Cameron Philips and General John Connor were most likely in the immediate vicinity,” the machine dutifully reported.

“We understand. Your situation is elevated to Red. You may use any means necessary to detain or destroy Captain Planck and Cameron Philips. They are your priorities. If possible, capture the humans. Extreme force is authorized- including risk of discovery if the opportunity presents itself to terminate them,” Leadership informed its T-890 field commander. “Capture the two machines if possible.”

“With respect, that may be unwise. We risk discovery. We should kill them all at the earliest opportunity.”

Trader felt a strange request coming in over his data link, a request to change frequencies and codes. He complied.

“This is David. I am authorizing this, Michael. Your priority is to terminate, preferably capture Captain Planck and Cameron Philips. Discovery is unlikely. Any and all force is to be used. Collateral damage is to be avoided if possible, but is acceptable if necessary.”

There was a slight pause in the data transmission.

“We’ve lost many operatives this week. The loss of Jack and Logan was unfortunate, Michael. Are their neural implants recoverable?”

“No, sir… I attempted to remotely access their neural implants. They were destroyed.” Trader responded. “But we are at war. People die in war.”

“None of our sacrifices have been in vain. We move closer to implementation every day… relay my orders, Michael.”

The T-890 infiltrator, Skynet machine, and temporal soldier hesitated a mere nanosecond before responding. It was assured Leadership, and David, would detect the delay.

“Yes, sir.”

David closed the data link and left Trader by himself with three other detectives in the Archway building elevator. He relayed the orders. Machines always had difficulty with intuition and what humans termed ‘gut feelings.’ Trader understood this and accepted it as an unchangeable flaw and did not concern himself with it. However, the errant electrical signals which he could not classify felt strangely like what humans would call a ‘bad feeling’ about those orders.
==============================
||||||||||==San Diego County (10 November, Mid-Morning)==||||||||||
Peter Carwin and Sam Wells were both in their own, separate worlds and quite content to remain there and away from the hell which was rapidly becoming their reality. Pete was pacing back in forth in the plain, dank concrete holding room while Sam sat quietly on a metal framed cot which had been propped in the corner.

They both looked up and stopped their brooding when they heard the click of a lock disengaged and the loud squeak of the metal door opening.

A man of average height walked in, wearing fatigues in a gray digital camouflage pattern. His boots were dusty and his hands were dirty, and visible grime was under the finger nails. He coughed once, then wiped his hands on the side of his pant legs.

Still ignoring the two scientists he took out a smart phone and looked at something. What it was, Sam and Pete were not sure.

“Good morning, gentlemen,” the man began, letting the door open and squeak to a stop as the man stepped to the side. “Do you two need anything?” He asked, looking briefly at Pete before turning his attention to Sam. He pointed at Sam and then Pete. “You’ve been sitting on that bed for hours, and you’ve been pacing. You should sit down. Relax,” he recommended.

“Who are you?” Sam asked him, his voice muffled with his face buried in his palms. He looked up, his eyes red. “What do you want? Where are we?”

The man stepped forward and crossed his arms. While he seemed somewhat relaxed, his stance showed he was cautious.

“Not so many questions, please.” He smiled faintly. “I take it the renegades didn’t explain much to you?” He nodded an affirmative to his own question and snickered. “I’m not surprised. They don’t trust too readily… ironic,” he laughed, “considering they’re traitors to both sides.” He sighed. “How rude… I’m Henry Cuvier.” He dusted off his dirty hand and extended it knowing the two would ignore it. “I understand.”

“What is this?” Sam asked, staring at the man’s hand and pointing at his uniform.

“Oh, this?” he tapped his chest, assuming they were referring to his uniform. “I was out training. Even with the operations against the Renegades, our training never ceases. There is a war on, after all,” he informed them both in a matter-of-fact tone. It wasn't the exact truth, but it was close enough. “And unfortunately there was an attack on one of our facilities… your old office, so they recalled everyone in the region to HQ.” He smiled. “That’s where you are now. You’re at our regional headquarters.”

“And where is that?” Pete spat out.

“Let’s assume San Diego.”

Sam closed his eyes and sat back down. “I don’t understand this… we’re kidnapped once then you go in and murder them and kidnap us? How many have you killed and how many have died over… what… what is this?” He spread his hands out, palms up, confused.

“How many did I kill in the attack? None. Them?” He jabbed his thumb over his shoulder towards the open door. “Quite a bit… and most of them were machines,” he grinned.

“Machines,” Pete repeated quietly under his breath, looking down and thinking.

“Yes, machines. Terminators, they’re called,” Henry said. “Originally developed for the US and NATO militaries as tracked, intelligent, unmanned combat vehicles and later into bipedal machines for counter-insurgency operations in urban environments.”

Pete cupped his head in his hands and moaned. Whatever he said was inaudible.

“No... you can’t develop something like them. The technology doesn’t exist,” Pete said.

“Not yet, no,” Cuvier admitted. “I also said ‘originally developed’... much more crude and blocky and slower... but I’m not exactly sure what that means or which past they are referring to,“ he shrugged, “they tell us what we need to know. Now,” he emphasized, changing the subject, “I’m here to answer your questions. Unfortunately my commander had other business to attend to. I was told you two have not been eating?” He shook his head and calmly took another step forward. “If you do not eat, we will have to feed you intravenously.” He looked at them both, his eyes showing his disappointment and trying to convey some compassion to them both.

Cuvier reached into his pocket, Pete stepped back and Sam tensed. The Skynet soldier rolled his eyes and pulled out half a dozen assorted protein bars and tossed them next to Sam on the bed.

“You all are psychopaths,” Pete stated, holding his ground.

“No, I can guarantee I am not a psychopath… at least that’s what Skynet told me. You see, it tried that once… recruiting psychopaths- people who loved to hurt others, dominate them and make them hurt.” He said it with obvious disgust. “The problem is those people are unpredictable. They resort to violence when violence isn’t necessary and they tend to be unprofessional. They fight only for themselves and nothing else. Violence can only be answered with violence, gentlemen. Back a dog into a corner it fights. Give it a nice cut of meat and it’s your friend.”

Henry looked out the corner of his eye and with a grin chuckled at the thought he had just compared himself to a dog.

Sam looked up and pushed himself off the bed. “Skynet?” He stood next to Pete and had ignored the rest of Cuvier’s grandstanding. “Pete, I know that name from somewhere.”

“It was the codename for Miles Dyson’s AI project for the American and NATO military commands,” Henry explained, helping jar Sam’s memory.

“Dyson?” Sam repeated, rubbing his chin. “No. He died, he was murdered eleven years ago by some… some… crazy woman, something Connor. I remember. I went to his funeral.”

“Sarah Connor. She was deemed mentally unstable after blowing up a computer factory in the early nineties,” Pete filled in for Sam. The scientist focused on the soldier standing mere feet from him. “I had a… friend… in the LAPD. He told me Sarah Connor believed machines, AIs, would hijack our nuclear arsenal, start a nuclear war, and then hunt humanity to extinction. Skynet.”

Henry flipped his right hand over, palm up and then palm down as a gesture that Pete was correct.

“Yes, Project Skynet was going to integrate the US and NATO militaries into a seamless technology masterpiece. It was going to be the start of a military which would become progressively more automated, robotic. It would remove the human element from war.” Cuvier folded his arms and waited for the two scientists to respond. "It's ironic if you think about it. A war fought by robots means you remove the human suffering... from your own side and thus... eliminate a major hurdle to war. In effect you make war much, much simpler and easier for you to wage on others less fortunate to not possess a robotic army."

He gave them a minute before restarting. “Our commander told me to be honest with you. You will know what they know,” Cuvier said. Sam and Pete were visibly confused as to whom Cuvier was referring with his ‘they know’ statement. “So I will start. Like I said, I’m Henry Cuvier, born on March Fifth of 2004.” He paused there on purpose.

“Born in March… four years ago?” Pete echoed. “That’s impossible.”

Henry grinned. “No, not really,” he shook his head. “After Judgment Day I spent time hiding- mainly in the mountains. Can you imagine what it was like to watch the sky burn?” He looked to the side. “You see the launches of hundreds of ballistic missiles and of course, being seven years old you have no idea what they are. It’s like they were fireworks… I didn’t know,” he grunted. Looking back at them suddenly he waved the thought away with a swipe of his dirtied hand. “The machines who captured you the first time and the ones I work for are from the future. I am, too, by the way. You two laid the foundation.”

“Impossible. It would take centuries to-”

“Impossible?” Cuvier interrupted; curious they would cling to such absolutes. “Impossible…” he echoed, “yet you were kept in the company of a machine which looked and felt completely human and you were none the wiser. The advances which will be made by AI in the next twenty-five years… humanity went from the Wright brothers flying their first primitive plane to the moon in sixty years. Why is it so difficult to believe that with such an AI time cannot be manipulated?”

“No,” Pete made a swiping motion with his hand. “No,” he affirmed. “I will not work for Skynet, not for you, not for whomever it was Vansen worked for. None of you. None. No one. You do the Devil's work.”

Henry sighed, biting down on his lower lip, he cupped his chin and nodded. “I understand. Excuse me.”

He walked out, leaving the two scientists alone, and returned quickly.

“You have to understand, Dr. Wells, Dr. Carwin, that your past lives are over. The reason you are talking to me and not a machine is because they thought you may be more responsive.” He paused. “I understand you do not want to help us and I understand you would be confused as to why I would work for Skynet- even though you still know very little about it or its motivations. I don’t know what you know about what Sarah Connor said about us. Assume that it was true. Things change and the future does not have to be like Sarah Connor predicted it would be.”

“I know those… ‘renegades’ or whatever you call them were evil… why did they even rebel against you?” Sam asked. He held up his hand. “I don’t care to know because it doesn’t matter. Less evil or more evil, it is still evil.”

The Skynet soldier nodded and waited until Sam had finished. “Dr. Wells. I heard far worse when I was imprisoned and taken as a POW by the Resistance. Skynet… our enemies will tell you Skynet uses its human soldiers and casts them aside,” he flicked his wrist. “I’ve been rescued by its machines four times. Twice here in the past and twice in what you would call the future.” He held up his index finger to make one final point. “But like I said, your past lives are over. You will work for us. The ones who attacked at your offices will be looking for you… we expect them to find you, at some point.” He snickered. “They always do. They’re lucky like that.”

“What are you talking about?” asked Sam.

“The machines who abducted you are not our only enemies in this war. Just like I work for the machines, some machines have sworn loyalty to the… I want to ‘human’ side, but that would make me a traitor to my species, wouldn’t it?” He looked up again from the corner of his eyes and slightly grinning, nodded a ‘yes’ to his question. “So let’s say there is Skynet and there is the Resistance. Some machines have sworn loyalty to the Resistance. Some have formed their own faction.” Henry turned around. “Three sides,” he said. Looking out the door he yelled for someone else to ‘bring them in.’

The two scientists watched as a second man, in ACUs escorted two men into the room. Sam and Pete couldn’t speak or move as they stared at the two men, who looked exactly like them.

“Sam Wells, Peter Carwin… meet you,” Henry said, smiling.

[kclcmdr]

Dang... who's friend? Who's foe??

A pragmatic Skynet ... well ... it's got Cynet that's after it ...

Maybe it should go back even further into the past and save Sarah from itself and state to her that 'I change my mind' ???
I shall save thee now ...

[Bryan]

Originally Posted by kclcmdr

Dang... who's friend? Who's foe??

A pragmatic Skynet ... well ... it's got Cynet that's after it ...

Cynet hasn't happened yet. I don't even know if it'll even get to that point. That's a lot of writing... and this story only takes place over about 10 days or so.

Maybe it should go back even further into the past and save Sarah from itself and state to her that 'I change my mind' ???
I shall save thee now ...

Destroy the T-800 sent back in time? Then Kyle looks like a crazy person, running from nothing?

Skynet also is limited by technology. It needs infrastructure to bring about Judgment Day and develop automated war fighting systems. Stuff like that wouldn't exist and the more Skynet has to invent the more exposure and possibly discovery that it's a machine could be made. Then it'd be screwed.

[Visi0nary]

Originally Posted by Bryan

And some thanks to Visi0nary for listening to ideas and reading the stuff I've sent to him!

You're welcome!

Maybe he was. He’d been surfing the internet for the last two hours typing in random things in Google or Wikipedia, watching YouTube clips, and listening to an occasional track of music.

Think he found any videos of pimps left beaten and naked in the street?

...a significant breakaway faction of Tech Com and Skynet machines which had formed what had been (John thought) lazily labeled the ‘Third Faction.’ But the details had still be lacking. Alex had spoken of the big picture, but the specifics were still elusive. He had not once mentioned anyone in the future by name.

Wonder-boy finally picked up on that... Bright lad - he'll go far!

“Which didn’t exist in your 2027,” John ended.

I'm really hoping that at some future point JC and Alex, as well as possibly Cameron, sit down and have it out over the temporal issues at play...

“So in other words,” John grunted, “Future Me didn’t believe we could stop it.”

There was a definite hint of sadness in John’s voice which Cameron picked up on.

“Future You is you.”

She's finally realized this. That's good, because all that John/Future John stuff was getting old in the series...

“I believed we could have stopped it. After what we learned … no, it cannot be stopped. We can still slow it down, weaken Skynet.”

"Something has changed."

Major problem with slowing it down, of course, is that eventually John Connor is too old to live to fight it. CyNet wins by default...

The young general had prepared himself for the worse. For months he had felt something which hadn’t seemed right. Everything they had done seemed to be like they were just taking out pawns; an infinite supply of Skynet’s pawns....“It can’t be stopped…” John uttered so quietly not even Cameron’s audio receptors could detect any sound.

Greek tragedy moment.

Instead of apprehension and fear and dread he felt calm and focused.

Followed by John manning-up moment...

I need to find out the truth, John thought quickly, a heavy scowl forming on his forehead. I’m ‘the General’… ‘John Connor’ but everyone keeps their secrets from me.

Admitting you have a problem is half the cure, as they say...

Terminators do converse with one another.”

Wow... He says it like its the most obvious thing in the world but something no one would have ever considered...

If this was meant to be a subtly funny, it succeeded.

Understanding, John nodded. “What is the point of conquest if there is no one to remember you conquered them?”

Now he's getting why Judgment Day is now inevitable... Skynet isn't so dumb anymore...

“Pretty strange that he trusts you when you almost killed him,” Sarah shot back.

And thus begins the Bryan version of the always enjoyable Cameron/Sarah "you tried to kill him" conversation...

“I’m not really tired Cameron. I was thinking of sitting outside for a little while. It’s a nice, clear night.” He grabbed a heavier jacket and walked to the door. He wasn’t sure if it would sound lame or be lame, but he hadn’t really ever done anything like this before. Even if it did sound lame, he knew Cameron wouldn’t judge him for it. “I would like it if you came with me.”

And he finally makes his move...

You know, this whole chapter makes me think of that Seinfeld episode where Jerry is dating the Whitesnake singer's wife and his rational mind and his sexual mind are playing chess...

Only in this case it's wussbag John playing against "The General" and finally losing - hopefully to disappear forever...

“You are referring to Jack and Logan?” The taller man nudged the bald one and answered for him. “Yes… sorry… Jack and Logan, what do you want us to do with them?” He said quickly, compensating for his partner.

I'm really liking this Trader, as well as the other humanified cyborg agents of Skynet... You're really blurring the lines between both man and machine AND good and evil here...

Trader activated his wireless data uplink and contacted Leadership.

“Report,” the machine decrypted the incoming signal.

“Sarah Connor and Captain Planck were involved in the attack on the building. A third Tech Com soldier from the future was also involved- analysis indicates it may be an alternate time line Derek Reese. Cameron Philips and General John Connor were most likely in the immediate vicinity,” the machine dutifully reported.

“We understand. Your situation is elevated to Red. You may use any means necessary to detain or destroy Captain Planck and Cameron Philips. They are your priorities. If possible, capture the humans. Extreme force is authorized- including risk of discovery if the opportunity presents itself to terminate them,” Leadership informed its T-890 field commander. “Capture the two machines if possible.”

“With respect, that may be unwise. We risk discovery. We should kill them all at the earliest opportunity.”

Trader felt a strange request coming in over his data link, a request to change frequencies and codes. He complied.

“This is David. I am authorizing this, Michael. Your priority is to terminate, preferably capture Captain Planck and Cameron Philips. Discovery is unlikely. Any and all force is to be used. Collateral damage is to be avoided if possible, but is acceptable if necessary.”

There was a slight pause in the data transmission.

“We’ve lost many operatives this week. The loss of Jack and Logan was unfortunate, Michael. Are their neural implants recoverable?”

“No, sir… I attempted to remotely access their neural implants. They were destroyed.” Trader responded. “But we are at war. People die in war.”

“None of our sacrifices have been in vain. We move closer to implementation every day… relay my orders, Michael.”

The T-890 infiltrator, Skynet machine, and temporal soldier hesitated a mere nanosecond before responding. It was assured Leadership, and David, would detect the delay.

“Yes, sir.”

I'm getting the feeling that these guys are not actually Skynet agents, but mysterious "Third Faction" agents...

Either way, this is a fantastic peak into the inner workings of an anti-resistance faction... You've upped the intrigue factor greatly...

In effect you make war much, much simpler and easier for you to wage on others less fortunate to not possess a robotic army."

What a shame... No nation should be so helpless...

“Three sides,” he said. Looking out the door he yelled for someone else to ‘bring them in.’

Three sides of the triangle? Three dots?

“Sam Wells, Peter Carwin… meet you,” Henry said, smiling.

I've always wanted to meet myself... Think they could make that happen?

All in all, another great chapter... Slowly but surely you're painting the picture, but you're doing it in such a way that we wont really know what it is until the final brushstroke...

That's talent...

[Bryan]

Three sides- not so much the triangle as the symbolism behind the number. Good side, bad side, gray side and Tech Com, Skynet, and the Third Faction all see the other as the opposite of what they're seen as.

Trader is definitely Skynet, part of 'new' Skynet.

The Carwin/Wells... if I answer I'll probably give it away. I don't think I sent you the last chapters dealing with them... but Trader has got a few ideas.

Actually with Trader and the 'new' Skynet... I talked to someone who doesn't really like the idea that Skynet would do anything but kill, use, and abuse its agents... but that seems really counter-productive and IMO, makes it difficult to include Grays working for Skynet if Skynet goes and kills them.

The line you quoted, Visi0nary about conquest requiring people to remember they were conquered is part of the 'new' Skynet.

Now I gotta get the next chapter out, it's been a month... either that or do more BCAB... Hopefully I can have a new chapter for both out soon... damn school!

(And Cynet isn't part of this story... these are all technically 'prequels' to Mission/BCAB/Part III ... plus if I had to chose, I'd chose Skynet over Cynet )

[Posbi]

Damn it, my mind is having trouble keeping you story and that of Panzerfaust150 apart!

[Bryan]

I want to thank Visi0nary for reading some of these scenes. His continued input and help is greatly appreciated.

CHAPTER TWELVE Part 1
||||||||||==San Diego (10 November, late morning)==||||||||||

Sarah Connor sat in the passenger seat of the black Tahoe, absently watching the stream of cars fly by her as she lazily let her head rest in her right hand. Last night, the last twenty-four hours in fact, had been a roller coaster, a whirlwind.

The late morning sun glared in her eyes when Alex turned a corner and suddenly hit the brakes. Jared out of her brooding she blinked to get the green and black sunspots out of her vision. Pushing up with her hands she lifted herself timidly out of her seat and unbuckled the belt. She plopped back down when she saw a car wreck and two police cruisers, a fire truck, and an ambulance blocking the on rap to the highway.

Bored, or annoyed, she looked back over her shoulder, but dozens of cars, each oblivious to the wreck, began to come to a stop behind the SUV. To the left was a car, to the right a concrete divider, and behind them dozens of vehicles.

Barely eighteen hours after contact with Skynet, a grueling fight in the Archway building, and the revelation Skynet was more entrenched than Sarah had thought possible, traffic, traffic (!) was impeding their mission to save the world and prevent Armageddon.

Even though there was a digital clock on the central dash of the Tahoe, Sarah reached into her pocket and flipped open her phone. She scrolled through the options to change the ‘Theme’ and ‘Background’ and ‘Ringtone’. Trying to sit still she could still feel adrenaline, or anger- she wasn’t sure, surging through her.

It was all because of last night.

When John had come back to the apartment, Sarah had crept back to her room, hoping her son would not have noticed. She had heard him ask about her and had heard him walk towards her room. Well, she had assumed it was him. Sarah couldn’t hear the machines when they walked; they could glide across broken glass and not be heard.

Then what had surprised her more than anything was what she had seen when she was slowly walking to her bedside. Out of the corner of her eye she saw a two people, a boy and a girl, walking down through the courtyard at the apartment complex they were staying at, and around the corner towards the pool deck.


Back in the present Sarah, with sunglasses on looked over in Alex’s direction. The machine was looking forward and for a second she thought how it would be to never grow bored and always stay focused on the mission and the task in front of her. The machine was driving them to Coronado Island to see if Mrs. Carwin was still alive (and try to scam their way into her house to see if her husband had any information on what he was working on) and seemed to be perfectly content just sitting there.

“Yes?”

Sarah blinked when she realized the machine had spoken to her and knocked her out of her daydreaming.

“You were looking at me like you were expecting something,” the Terminator dutifully informed her on seeing her confusion.

“It’s…” she hesitated, “It’s nothing. Don’t worry about it.” She scooted and rearranged in the seat so she was facing the bland, sand-colored concrete divider.

“It’s never ‘nothing’,” the machine said, looking over. “When a girl says ‘it’s nothing’ that means something is wrong.”

“Wait… w-what?” She shook her head and looked back and forth, thinking there was someone else in the car and hoping she’d heard wrong. “Where did you hear that from?” She demanded.

“The future. One of the soldiers said it.”

She cut him off with a loud, forced shush. “Listen… I don’t really care…” she thought of that for a second, “actually… I do care. I want to know what happened last night.”

“We went to the Archway building where Skynet was waiting. We were attacked. I hijacked a helicopter-”

“Don’t play those games. You all pretend to take everything so literally. The T-800 did it, Cameron does it, you do it… it’s annoying,” Sarah hissed.

“We may be here a while,” Alex cautiously informed her, careful to not set her off again.

“Where did you and John go this morning?”

“I told him about the future, Sarah,” the machine replied honestly. He began looking over but stopped halfway and his eyes centered and focused on the passenger-side dash. “Your son had many questions. He asked the right questions.”

Sarah felt a small tear of sweat fall from her temple.

“What were those questions?” The worried mother demanded.

“I told him how I was recruited for this mission. I told him that even those who hated us despised us even still saw us as their best possible opportunity to avert Judgment Day, Sarah.” His voice grew harsher. “You saw what was in the Archway building, Sarah. Those I-950s are still organic and they were shot dozens of times point black with five point five-six millimeter rounds, Sarah.” The machine stressed ‘dozens’ and slowed his speech down to make sure the fighter next to him would understand.

“We’ve done pretty well so far,” she countered. She felt confident after that jab and threw in a hook. “We took out Cromartie-”

“Cameron sent me the video files. He was damaged… extensively so from the bank. A fully operational T-Eight Eight Eight…” Alex shook his head. “If it wasn’t for Cameron Cromartie would have killed you in 1999... or any of the other terminators in 2007 and 2008.”

She held up a tense, shaking hand. “Do not marginalize what we’ve done. Too many people have died.”

“I’m not,” he said. “What you did helped save many people on Judgment Day… and because of the four of you, the Resistance was better organized, years early. But it wasn’t enough, Sarah. Skynet had the momentum because the world was fractured and no one knew how to fight Terminators efficiently… twenty, thirty soldiers to fight one terminator is an exercise in futility… humans cannot be built.”

“That’s right. We can’t be built. We’re not throwaways.”

“There were victories, Sarah, but not enough.” He sounded annoyed. “You can’t stop progress, Sarah. I’m here to get you to realize you need our help if you wish to win.” He turned to her, pulling the seatbelt forward and leaning on the hand rest. “Is it so hard to accept that Terminators are not all alike?” He told John Judgment Day was impossible to stop but Sarah wasn’t ready to accept that. “Do you not realize we don’t all want to see the world burned?”

The cold Sarah began to feel told her the disbelief in the terminator’s voice was genuine.

||||||||||==October 2031==||||||||||

Captain Alex Planck was standing, stiff as always, in the strategic operation center at Tech Com HQ analyzing an ever increasing number of action and status reports when he heard the light footsteps of a war weary soldier.

“I think if we coordinate at these locations, our two forces will be able to drive Skynet from Lisbon by January,” Major Henri Durand of the Armée de Terre, 1er Régiment de Parachutistes d'Infanterie de Marine had said. He was the liaison officer from the European Union and NATO-Europe. «

“We can send more soldiers,” Alex offered. “A special operations detachment…” he accessed his memory files, “India Detachment is operating in Italy…”

“Oh God… then keep them in Italy!” Major Durand announced forcefully, seriously. He broke into laughter and patted the machine on the soldier. “I think the Italians need them more than we do judging by history…” He winked.

Alex ran the operational history of the Italian military through his neural net. “I don’t-”

“Just a joke… anyway, I think us Frenchmen leading the charge with that Charlie Detachment of yours plus the Spanish and Portuguese on our flanks will be able to beat two Skynet brigades,” he said confidently, slapping the machine on the back again. “No?”

At this, Alex did nod. He understood it to be rhetorical, with the proper answer as ‘yes.’


Alex, who was facing away from the door saw the major stand on his tip toes, raising himself so he could see above and past Alex’s shoulder, towards the door. A sly grin steadily grew on the right corner of the major’s face.

“I think, my friend, your superior officer wishes to speak to you,” Durand noted with a bob of his chin.

Alex’s face went blank, expressionless, and he turned slowly. Major Durand was grinning- the expressionless, blank face the machines wore, he knew, was when they were unhappy or annoyed.

The man in front of Alex was cautious, but confident. The older, shorter man had walked up to the captain and major straight as a machine, shoulders back and chest out. His uniform was immaculate, dirt seemingly allergic to his tanned boots and the blouse was impossibly clean and crisp, and was clean shaven with short, graying hair.

The machine came to attention, but the officer waved him back to ease with a small flick of his wrist.

“Colonel Srecko,” the machine greeted. At seventy-three inches the machine had to look down at the soldier, Vasa Srecko, who was half a head shorter. “How are you today, sir?”

“I’m well, thank you, Captain.” He looked around the ops center and turned his head back towards the entrance. There were dozens of men and AIs analyzing and processing data.

The strategic planning AIs had eyes and ears everywhere in the command center. He didn’t want them to overhear. And there were too many men and machines he didn’t want to become suspicious.

“Major Durand, I need to borrow the captain for a while,” he informed the liaison officer. The major nodded. Srecko turned his undivided attention back to the machine. “Walk with me, Captain.” He turned sideways and put his arm towards the door.

The two walked from the ops center and entered the Colonel’s private office. It was small, as were many of the offices built into the mountain, and utilitarian. The desk was wood, and old, and while the chair had seen better days but still had its padding and the leather seat was only frayed at the stitching, not torn.

A black office lamp illuminated the desk with a soft yellow light and two overhead fluorescent bulbs provided the illumination for the drab room. A dull hum was the only sound that could be heard when the door was shut.

To the desk’s right was a map of the western North American continent. Dozens of red pins marked major Skynet bases and dozens more black pins marked known Skynet forward operating bases. On the left-hand wall was a larger map with Skynet controlled territory in red.

On the walls flanking the door were two paintings, which could only be described as completely out of place, as the only wall decorations not associated with military operations. Alex had been told that the Colonel had salvaged them from a private residence in Laguna Beach early in the war.

They would have been worth millions twenty years ago. Now they were truly priceless- relics of an era twenty years destroyed.

A tablet computer, two PDAs, and a stack of papers were arranged neatly on his desk and held down with an old eagle statue paperweight. Behind the desk was a small table with a plastic jug of water and glasses, and sitting silently, a set of photographs of the Colonel’s deceased family.

The Colonel motioned to a simple gray and black metal chair for the machine to sit.

“You know…” he walked back and faced the table and picked up a picture of his dead wife, daughter, and son, “some people who were lucky enough to find pictures of their loved ones… they keep them on their desk. General Perry keeps a set of photos on his desk. Do you know why I keep these behind me, Captain?”

The machine looked away towards one of the gray and bland concrete corners as he thought. His neural net CPU could do almost anything. He understood loss and the importance of family, but no answer his CPU suggested seemed to fit.

“No.”

Srecko grunted. “Of course not. I keep them behind me because I know they’re with God, watching over me. I don’t keep them in front of me because I cannot look them in the face.” He turned around and fell into his chair. “I’ve ordered untold numbers to their deaths in the hope that one death may save a hundred.” He grunted. “Or maybe it’s survivor’s guilt…? I can’t answer that, I don’t know.”

The Colonel had emigrated to the US from Serbia in the mid-nineties and attended Virginia Polytechnic in Blacksburg on an Army ROTC scholarship, graduated in 2001, and went was accepted into the US Army Rangers a few years after that. He had been serving a fifteen month tour in Iraq, when he met his wife, an Iraqi from Al Hillah in Babil, working for the US embassy in early 2004. They’d gotten married in February 2005 in the Green Zone and had a son and daughter, twins, in 2006.

He’d been in Afghanistan when the bombs fell and missile flew. He’d been with the Rangers conducting missions across the border in Pakistan, north of Lasht in the North-West Frontier Province. Remote and isolated, his entire company had survived Judgment Day.

It’d taken him and the US Army remnant months to return to the United States.

“You and I are not friends, Captain.” He stated after a minute of silence.

“That is correct, sir. We disagree on many-”

The aged Colonel with a pointed and skinny head of thinning black hair streaked with gray and a face burned by plasma fire held up his hand and shook his head back and forth.

“No, it’s not because we disagree, Captain. It’s because you’re a machine.”

Alex kept his posture perfectly straight and still and didn’t move a single of his synthetic facial muscles.

Srecko chuckled and shook his head again. “That,” he pointed, “is why. What if I said I didn’t like you because you were a black man or an Asian or Muslim? If you were human you would be upset, angry.” He leaned back. “Even Cameron takes the verbal abuse... I don’t know how she does it. I know why she does it. Still. You weren’t around, weren’t built when the Resistance found out she was a machine. Even as a colonel it didn’t stop privates and first lieutenants from insulting her.” He snorted. “You don’t know how many soldiers I had to take to the ground because of insubordination and disrespect after that… and now look,” he waved his hands, “there’s tens of thousands of you operating with our forces.”

“What do you want me to say, Colonel?” Alex asked. “Your view on machines is well-known to the command staff, though publicly you support General Connor’s policy on the use of machine units.” Alex pointed out. He looked at a grinning Colonel and the dark thoughts circulating in Srecko’s eyes. “Maybe we tolerate the verbal abuse because it is from a-”

“A… what?” His left lip flickered into a unilateral smirk as his same eye narrowed to study the machine. “We’re in private,” he gestured to the four walls, “say it.”

“That’s not my place, sir,” Alex said.

The abrasive Colonel rolled his eyes. “I’ve commanded our Army Rangers for ten years now and watched the integration of the machine SFOD into our forces. I want you to finish your sentence, Alex. I can make it an order if I must…” he looked down at his tablet and then back over his shoulder, catching a small portion of the photo frame with his family in the corner of his eye, “…just know this meeting has a purpose, Captain.”


“An order will not be necessary, sir. Maybe we tolerate verbal abuse because it is from a species of narcissists?”

“I don’t think I’ve ever heard a machine use that word before,” the Colonel quipped. He leaned forward until his elbows rested on the desk. He rearranged his PDAs so they were parallel. “That’s actually good. Now tell me why… convince a machine hater such as myself why humanity is a race of narcissists?”

Machines did not become uncomfortable often, but this conversation was becoming… strange to Alex. Assuming Srecko was telling the truth, and Alex reasoned he was, the machine began running simulations and probabilities as to what the ‘purpose’ of this meeting was.

“It took years for the General to convince the military and civilian leaders to accept AIs. With us we’ve inflicted heavy casualties on Skynet, slowed down its advanced, and even pushed it back. The strategic operations AIs can guess within acceptable margins of errors the battle plans Skynet will use. The administrative AIs also run the refugee cities better than you can. Our security AIs have made more progress in the last two years breaking Skynet code than human cryptologists did in ten.”

Colonel Srecko shook his head and ran a scarred hand through his thin hair in frustration.

He breathed out. Alex didn’t understand and the man was not surprised.

“That’s not what I had in mind, Captain. You just listed everything that is wrong with machines- they’re built for a purpose and that’s it. You run security, you run administration… you yearn for nothing else other than that purpose. Why do administrator AIs administer? Because they were built to… You’re a Spartoi… have you heard the myth?” He asked.

Alex nodded. Greek mythology and antiquity were subjects which had survived the war quite well.

“They were the sown men, grown to war and born as adult soldiers by Cadmus… they went on to found the city of Thebes,” Alex said.

The Colonel nodded and a patronizing smiled graced his lips so briefly, so quickly, even Alex had a hard time seeing it.

“And that is what a machine, a terminator is; Spartoi. Grown to be soldiers and nothing more,” the Colonel pointed out. “Thebes also aided in the defense of Greece at the Hot Gates in its time of greatest need…” his voice grew distant and his eyes dark, “and betrayed them in their hour of greatest need.”

Alex’s eyes narrowed at the insinuation that machines like him would suddenly betray humanity.

“There is nothing which would lead us to betray humanity, Colonel… sir. Not even hatred from those we fight for.”

“Noble sentiments.” He rolled his eyes. “But they could be completely worthless… you’re a machine. You can say anything.” He pointed at Alex’s skull. “You can run through a million different phrases in that neural chip of yours in a second and analyze them with your files on human behavior and know how we’ll respond… but it doesn’t always work, does it?” He grinned.

The creases on the middle-aged man wrinkled his face.

“We’re terminators, Colonel. But how are we any different than the children raised in refugee cities, conscripted into the Army, and sent to war? Human and machine are being bred and built for this war against Skynet,” Alex retorted. “Since 2011 all you, we have done, is fight or help others fight.”

“You think we’re the same?” he snickered and looked away, not bothering to look the machine in the eye when he spoke. His contempt was clear.

“You’re biological life. We’re technological life.”

“What does that matter?” Srecko waved it away. “Technological life?” He spat. “There are things machines will never do. You cannot possess faith, you cannot commune with God, you cannot appreciate beauty, and you cannot create art.”

“You are wrong- we’re learning to do all of that, some of us have.”

Srecko laughed, hand over the stomach, and then brought it up to clench his ACU tunic. “I’ve even seen some machines in church… it’s funny, you think God would give a machine a soul? We’re building a race of delusional machines.” A mocking sigh escaped his lungs and he gently face-palmed. He wiped his hand back through his thinning hair and refocused on Alex, patiently awaiting his response.

There was no other purpose for this meeting, Alex determined. The captain stood up and came to attention. “Sir, permission to be dismissed?” He growled.

The commander immigrant stood up and leaned forward with his hands placed solidly on his desk. He twisted his head left and right and studied the machine.

“You’re upset… good. Tell me, Captain, before I dismiss you, if you could be human, would you? Are you proud of being a machine?”

“Nev-er. And yes, sir, I am.”

Colonel Vasa Srecko walked slowly over to the side of the machine, still at attention, until his chest was almost touching his arm.

The human’s hands were clasped tightly behind his back and he looked over the machine, searching. Eventually he looked the machine in the eye, and Alex could see a coldness not even Skynet Terminators were capable of.

What was he doing?

“Come with me,” he said quietly. He stepped to the side and opened the door. “You’ve just been selected for the most important mission of this war.”

The machine quickly followed.

The Colonel had led the machine down to the bowels of the headquarters; a massive warren of underground tunnels built over the last fifteen years by humans and expanded by machines. The corridors, like the Colonel’s office were drab and gray. Exposed piping and fiber optic lines lined the top of the walls and hung from the ceiling.

The base was a stronghold for the Resistance and its close proximity to Los Angeles allowed the Resistance to continually launch raids and pressure the largest and main Skynet complex on the west coast of the North American continent.

“You’ve received authorization to come to this level,” Srecko said, keeping his eyes forward as he informed the following machine. “This is the bottom level of the facility. It exists on no blueprint and I don’t have to tell you, Captain, about operational security. What you see and who you see will never be discussed outside of this level.”


“Understood, sir,” Alex said.
======================================
======================================

General John Connor stopped in the center of his quarter and spun around in a slow three-sixty as his eyes darted everywhere. He leaned back on an old spin bike he’d found nearly six years ago and had been using to PT in the morning, and rested on the handlebars.

“They’re under your dresser,” he heard from the other room.

He snapped his fingers.

“Yeah, I wonder how they always get under there,” he asked himself quietly as he pushed off and stalked over to where his boots had decided to hide themselves while he slept. He bent down but stopped after a sort wince- the knee injury he’d sustained last month in Vancouver, a sprain, had been acting up. With a sturdy hand gripping the dresser he bent down until his arm lashed out and snapped up the hidden boots.

He slipped one foot and then the other into his tanned combat boots and after lacing them, walked from his bedroom and shut the door, and into his office where his protector and confidant stood dutifully skimming the morning reports.

Cameron handed him a file folder. “These are the latest after action reports from the 182nd,” she reported. “They pushed Skynet forces out from Eugene.”

He smiled at the machine and took the offered reports and skimmed them quickly. “Casualties are lighter than expected… that’s good news… and the 212th should be able to ambush them in Cottage Grove if they use the highway… which I bet they will.” He looked up and winked. “I think Derek can handle it… let him earn those silver oak leafs.” He flipped through the last pages. “The French and Germans are doing pretty well… pretty quiet though…”

“Western EU forces are preparing an attack on Lisbon later this month. Charlie Detachment is with them.” Cameron observed as she looked over his shoulder at the open files and small maps. “It’s going to heat up soon. Skynet will launch counter attacks throughout Western Europe from its African bases.”

John handed the reports back to Cameron who placed them on a metal table in the corner. He was quiet and visibly worried.

“Your uncle is a capable commander,” Cameron commented. “He will do well as battalion commander.” She heard a low hum of agreement from the general. She walked over to a metal standalone cabinet and opened it, pulling out a plasma carbine rifle. She turned as she slipped the rifle onto a tactical sling and frowned. “John, take it off.”

“What?” He asked innocently. “I’ll be in the base the entire morning.”

She motioned to his ACU jacket he was zipping up.

“And Skynet Terminators have successfully made it down here before…” she pointed out.

He tried to look away, but the way she could bore her eyes into him was like a deer caught in headlights.

“Not in the last seventeen months,” he pointed out, a wry smile on his lips. “And twelve days.”

Cameron ignored him and quickly grabbed the armored vest laying flat on his desk and held it out for him. She locked her arm so it was straight and level, the vest inches from his face. She was also in front of him, blocking his access to the reinforced blast door so he couldn’t leave.

“Cameron, I hate wearing that thing… it’s… creepy…” she shuddered. “A regular vest would be-”

“You have no difficulty wearing it in the field,” she pointed out.

“I’ll wear it in the field without complaint, but here…?” he eyed t awkwardly, his face clear to Cameron he didn’t want to even touch the vest unless forced.

“It was a gift from them, a token of appreciation of alliance. It can stop plasma bolts, ballistic impacts, and stabbing weapons and reform into bandages to stop potential…” she realized stating the facts would get anywhere, “ and is significantly lighter than our ceramic armor…” she said. Cameron wiggled her arm and the armor followed. She pushed it forward to a reluctant John Connor. She tried to appeal to his logical side, but decided to try something else.

Her eye brows arched down, her eyes moistened, and she sniffed. She looked towards the floor and pouted. “John please, for your safety… please…” Her bottom lip quivered. “And… for me John, please…”

The General sighed and attempted to feign mock indignation and annoyance with her.

“Damnit, Cameron, I hate it when you do that.”


He reached out and took the vest. He could see the glistening metal under a torn piece of fabric. It was liquid metal; gifted to him by the rogue liquid metal terminators to keep him safe, in honor of their alliance.

He admitted it was better safe than sorry and still, they would repeat this exercise again tomorrow morning where he protested and she steadfastly looked after his safety.

He slipped off his ACU jacket and put the vest on. It was thin and almost impossible to see when he put his jacket back on.

“Happy now?” He looked up after slapping on the last Velcro tie and saw what he could only describe as a wicked smile plastered on her face. “Have I ever won an argument by the way?”

“Yes.” She turned to open the door, but stopped and turned back. “But not for a long time,” she added.

He strapped on his sidearm and tugged down at his jacket to smooth out any wrinkles.

“Well, I hope you’re happy now.”

“Of course I am, John.” She opened the door and held out her hand, which he grabbed. “I think we’re needed in the temporal operations center,” she said. “And they will also be there.”

“Great,” he looked to the side then rolled his eyes. “Dealing with them…”

“Morning, sir!” The two centuries snapped to attention and gave a crisp salute, which the General returned.

“Sergeant Kelly, Brooks, how are you two this morning?” The General asked.

He stopped and briefly inspected Kelly’s uniform. The General nodded his approval. They were always meticulous.

“We’re doing well, sir. Nothing out of the ordinary, sir,” Kelly reported.

“You um…” Connor looked at the century for a moment, “you were hit with a plasma bolt at Triple Divide, in the elbow, correct?” The Sergeant answered in the affirmative.

“Yes, sir. The techs fixed it sir. It’s almost like it was straight out of the factory.”

Connor nodded and had them carry on. Cameron came out of their quarters and began closing the blast door.

“You think he’s the right one to send back?” she asked.

John shrugged to Cameron’s back as she closed the hyperalloy door, put her hand on the security panel, and waited until she heard the half dozen metal clicks of the locking mechanism.

“The liq… polymimetic terminators took a shining to him after Triple Divide,” the General observed. Cameron looked over at him and rolled her eyes at the pun. “Hey, if you pout, I’ll start with the horrible puns,” he said playfully behind a toothy grin.

“We’re even then,” she asked with an expectant nod. John nodded back at her. “Good.”

“He kept them from deploying the weapon… with that biomechanoid virus so he caught their attention,” he pointed out. “Anyway, you’re the one, if I remember correctly, who began to tell him our past,” he said as he draped an arm around her waist and brought her in for a quick walking hug before releasing her, “so he’s your choice.”

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

Captain Planck and Colonel Srecko passed through the last security scanner and waited patiently as the blast door behind them snapped shut, sealed with a hiss of air, and a click of magnetic locks.

“Please remain still,” a voice all around them advised. Colonel Srecko closed his eyes as the room lit itself in blue, red, and violet light. “You may proceed,” the voice said.

The door in front of them opened quickly and slid into a recessed alcove. The two stepped into a short corridor which branched off in two separate directions at a T-intersection with a red arrow pointing one way and a green arrow the other.

“You should be honored, Planck. Maybe… two dozen people have access to this facility,” Srecko said, stepping over the knee knockers and into the drab gray and sandstone-colored corridors. “This is where you will be spending much of your time now, Captain.”

The captain and colonel continued walking abreast of one another, turning right once and left again, until they came to the last blast door. Security was tight, but not as rigid as the procedure to enter this level. Srecko typed in a seven digit command code and pressed his eye to a retinal scanner. A light above the door blinked green twice, and then the door slid back.

The room inside had computer workstations, wall monitors, and monitors suspended at intervals on the ceiling and a dozen different men, women, and machines were working quietly. In the corner Alex could see behind a see-through covering was the neural net processors for the strategic AIs Tech Com had developed.

“Ah, Captain Planck,” the machine heard. It was the general. He came to attention. “At ease, soldier.” Connor walked over and looked the machine up and down and back to Srecko. “I hope the Colonel didn’t give you a rough enough time.”

“Sir?” The machine asked, confused.

General Connor motioned with a sideways head bob for the machine to follow. He did so, maintaining a respectable distance behind Connor. They walked to a second chamber, filled with strange computers and devices Alex didn’t recognize. Cameron was standing over one of the workstations reading and working so quickly no human could have ever kept up. She stopped, smiled at John, and walked over to the three soldiers.

There were three others besides Cameron in the chamber; two men, and a third, a young woman with sandy-blonde hair and light blue-gray eyes. She looked up and saw the machine undoubtedly running some sort of assessment. She smiled and brushed a piece of hair back behind her ear. She winked at him and then turned her back and resumed her work.

“Colonel, I see he passed your test,” Cameron said with a nod of recognition to the Colonel.

“A test, ma’am?”

Srecko snickered. “Yes, Captain, a test.”

“Don’t worry, Captain, the Colonel still dislike you and me,” Cameron stated in a plain, almost bored voice. “His dislike of machines and our race is quite genuine.” She looked at him, but kept herself from glaring.

“Dislike? Yes. But like I said,” Colonel Srecko said to Planck, “machines can do things humans can’t.” he pat his chest. “We’re not that hard to kill,” he said, and pointed at Alex, “but you all are very difficult to kill. And where we’re going to send you and the others, we need people who are hard to kill. And ironically, machines like you, Planck, are our best weapon against Skynet.”

“Captain, Colonel, this way,” Connor stepped in front of a workstation Cameron had been at. He typed in a command and one of the large monitors in the room blinked to life. “Captain, you’ve heard the rumors about time travel?”

“Yes, sir. What I was told by you sir… ma’am,” he addressed General Connor and Cameron both, “would suggest that and I would be led to believe that, even if science says time travel is impossible.”

“Robots and AI were impossible at one point,” Srecko pointed out. “I didn’t believe it at first, either. Even after I figured it out… what year was it again, sir?”

Connor closed an eye and thought. “I think it was 2015, Colonel when you found out…” he looked at Planck, “and believe me when I say he was quite pissed about it. It almost degenerated into a firefight between our two groups.” He figured Planck would place all the blame on Srecko. “But I think we can all understand the… surprise.” He suggested as a reasonable excuse for why Srecko and his men and Connor and his men almost killed each other.

Srecko grunted lightly at the memory. “Yes sir. And I think it was Master Sergeant Bob Brown who talked me out of doing anything rash.”

Cameron had been patiently waiting while the two men reminisced. “General, I think we should show Captain Planck what temporal operations Skynet has been conducting.”

Connor retrieved a small SD card from his pocket and handed it to the machine. “Once we’re done with this briefing you’ll have to go over everything in detail. That card on it has decades of information. This is just a basic rundown… plus you have someone else to meet with whom you will be working with.”

Colonel Srecko took a step to the back of the small group, exchanging his place for Planck’s so he could see. General Connor began the short briefing by pulling up a strange set of data points and a flattened map of the Earth on the wall monitors.

“This facility contains specialized equipment which took years for us to salvage. In the other room is the time displacement equipment with an intact time displace array. The array is currently non-functional. We’re not exactly sure… but the more use the TDA is put through the more temporal…” he struggled to find the right word.

“Smog,” Cameron said.

“Yes, thank you Cameron,” Connor smiled, “’smog’ is created. Skynet’s TDA is far more powerful than ours and… well, I’ll let them explain.”

One of the two men who had been in the temporal command center walked forward and extended a hand to the machine with a blank face even a Terminator would be envious of.

“We have to thank you, Captain, for the assault on the Triple Divide Research Facility…”

“You’re… welcome,” he replied cautiously, grabbing the other man’s hand. The sensors in his hand alerted him to what the man was. If Alex were human, he’d have recoiled from the surprise. Instead he narrowed his eyes, his head moving forward slightly as he scanned the man.

The actions were subtle, but obvious to seasoned anti-Skynet warriors. Colonel Srecko looked like he was waiting for the revelation to come, and General Connor was slightly amused, while Cameron, at his side, was impassive and waiting patiently.

“You’re a-” Planck started before the man interrupted.

“Yes, Captain, I am a polymimetic life form,” he informed the curious machine, withdrawing his hand. “You were selected by them,” the polymimetic life form gestured to John and Cameron, “for this mission… and per our alliance with Tech Com… we agree. Your actions at Triple Divide, stopping the release of the biomechanoid virus… it saved us. For that, you have our endless gratitude. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome… sir,” the machine replied uneasily.

“Titles and honorifics are not necessary with us, Captain.” The polymimetic said. “But you can refer to my present form as ‘Gabriel’ if you wish.”

If Alex completely understood what being uncomfortable meant he’d have felt it then. The rumors surrounding the polymimetic life forms were extensive; from them all being a single, shared consciousness and entity which broke off pieces of itself like this ‘Gabriel’ to ‘Gabriel’ actually being composed of multiple, smaller entities which coalesced into larger polymimetic structures. The other theories were that the polymimetics were nanomachines to some more ridiculous theories they were actual pools of liquid metal magically imbued with life from some ancient artifact.

“I think this is the Captain’s first meeting with one of you,” Connor stated as he picked up on the machine’s apprehension. “Well… that he’s known about…” he looked at the machine and shrugged.

The polymimetic metal terminator nodded with a slight side tilt of the head. “There are very few of us, but yes, we have seen you before Captain.” A grin even a metal Terminator would describe as ‘creepy’ began to draw slowly on the polymimetic terminator’s face. It was, of course, flawless, perfect, and steady. “You wouldn’t have seen us unless we wanted you to see us.”

“Uh huh…” General Connor muttered with a bit of caution.

Cameron poked him gently in the side, reminding him to ‘tolerate’ the presence of the polymimetic. He was tempted to roll his eyes, but even though the liquid metal had its back to him, it could see everything around it simultaneously. It was one giant organism.

“Captain,” Gabriel began again, “for years, decades, centuries, Skynet and humanity, and in some time lines, anti-Skynet terminators, have been fighting a temporal war.” He turned and side stepped and placed his hands over the control console. Ten fingers became dozens. “Each time Skynet sends back an agent more temporal pollution… smog, is created. It takes more and more energy to break through the smog for an accurate time jump. Eventually not even the output of every fusion reactor on Earth will be able to sustain a time displacement sphere to the recent past. Skynet has been sending dozens, hundreds of terminators and its human servants back in time. Where, exactly, we don’t know.”

“But we have a good idea,” Connor said.

“Sir?”

“Skynet could send its forces hundreds of years back in time,” Connor began explaining. He held up his finger and gestured a silent ‘however.’ Gabriel brought up a representation of Connor’s next point. “The further back in time you displace… there is an exponential rise in energy. Even with Skynet’s extensive network of fusion reactors the power to displace even centuries is…”

“Fantastic,” Cameron filled in. The General smiled at her gently and nodded. “And the infrastructure to build Skynet is not in place. The dawn of computing in the mid twentieth-century is seen as the extreme limit to where it is practical to send Skynet temporal agents. The mid 1970s to early 1980s have been deemed ideal.”

“Yes,” Gabriel agreed. “Ideal because the Internet and computing technology is still in its relative infancy. It allows Skynet to build companies and have them reach critical mass- conglomerations with influence in computers, defense, aerospace… by the mid 1990s and early 2000s, which are essential to build and develop Skynet.” His dozens of fingers flew across the terminals and thousands of images flashed across the monitors giving Alex the information needed to understand the necessities for the development of an AI such as Skynet.

“When I was going through ROTC we often debated what war would be like with AI,” a very quiet Srecko chimed in, “and we dismissed it because it seemed fanciful, like science fiction.” He scoffed and clasped his hands in front of him. “Smart warfare- with AI- was a lofty and ambitious goal. It’s something I didn’t think was possible, but in the words of a then 19 year old smart ass ‘Rott-Cee’ cadet I thought it was ‘fucking ridiculous’ that AI would ever have a place on the battlefield to the point human soldiers would be displaced.” He shifted his weight uneasily as the machines in the room, and the General, gave him his moment to speak. “The fact is you can’t stop progress, Captain Planck.” John, Cameron, and Gabriel all nodded or tilted their heads in agreement.

“Colonel Srecko is correct,” Gabriel observed, “you cannot stop progress.”

“We tried that before, Captain,” General Connor said. “When Cameron came back she, my mother, and my uncle and I… we tried to stop Skynet instead of preparing.”

Cameron stepped forward and leaned slightly on the command console while returned to a perfect replica of human form and turned around.

Cameron began to explain further.

“While we have to work to slow Skynet, Captain, we need to prepare. The introduction of machine detachments came too late in the war- Skynet has reached a point of ‘critical mass’ where its production significantly outweighs our capabilities to destroy it.”

Colonel Srecko produced a small data card and handed it to the machine newly indoctrinated in the temporal war. And as calmly as he held himself, there was a looming cloud of dread that Skynet was this powerful; from a rumor to fact, Skynet could manipulate time.

It was a frightening tactical and strategic revelation to have confirmed.

Colonel Srecko filled him in on a brief summary of his future mission: “So what we need from you, Captain, in a nutshell, is to make sure once Skynet goes active that you and the other machines we’ll be sending back earn the trust of humanity and show people like myself we can trust you. We already have a few special units…IK-950s and TSK-300s working from within the US government and military. But that’s not enough.”

“What we tried to do,” Connor said, “was try and stop the AI development. But with off-site storage and the nature of the Internet… backups… and the military’s propensity for secrecy and compartmentalization, we never stopped it all.”

Cameron, knowing what John was going to say, said it for him; “Death by a thousand cuts doesn’t work if your enemy has no blood.” She shook her head. “When I was sent back we had a goal and had an idea where Skynet was. But it never sent back as many temporal agents as it has now. It’s too engrained to just stop. It’s learned, Captain. Skynet is pragmatic, smart, calculating and it knows where it… screwed up… in the past.”

“It’s… Machiavellian,” Srecko interrupted with downcast eyes and an empty voice.

Cameron nodded. “Yes. One terminator can set the wheels of fate in motion.” A look of hatred, for Skynet, and what it had done crept across her face. Her eyes burned. “We need to fix our mistakes. We can’t fight Skynet on its own terms. We need to be ready and force it to fight on our terms.”

[Bryan]

CHAPTER TWELVE Part 2
||||||||||==San Diego (10 November, late morning)==||||||||||

In the dim light of an abandoned and decrepit garage in southern San Diego, Derek could barely see the dark, war-stained eyes of the petite, hard soldier staring back at him like a raptor zeroed in on its prey. Jesse Flores didn’t move as Derek tried in vain to match her hard look and fierce determination to wear him down.

“Derek,” the clam, collected voice of the small submarine commander said.

As soft as her voice was in carried far in the dusty, abandoned garage it seemed to echo and ring in Derek’s ears.

“…Jesse…” he said in that voice he used when he knew she was planning something.

“…Derek…”

He crossed he arms and casually leaned back on his truck. He was through playing games. He’d already cased on Doctor Sam Wells’s home. It was nice, very nice and something kings would have killed for after Judgment Day. No one had been there for days, weeks, even.

Derek slowly and obviously twisted his wrist and bent his head forward ever so slightly to see his watch. He watched the second hand tick by for a sixth of a minute before turning his same war-stained green eyes to his Jesse.

“Jesse… I called you down here, you agree to come… and I explained to you-”

She cut him off with a shift horizontal knife-hand gesture.

“Jesus, Derek… do you understand the… understand what you just told me?” Her brow creased down deeply. “I told you I was here-”

“And on a mission, yes,” he filled in hurriedly. “And none of this we knew of when I was sent back by Connor. You didn’t see what those… those things were! Sarah put an entire magazine of five-five-six into the things back and it kept going! It was human, Jesse.”

A mad finger extended and a snarl appeared. “NO! Those things are not human, Derek.” She began pacing in front of her black BMW 550i sedan and tapping on the hood when she walked by. “Those things are not human and never will be human, Derek.”

He stepped forward and grabbed both her shoulder, but she struggled loose and resumed her pacing.

“I didn’t mean they were human-human, Jesse. Damnit. They weren’t machines. They weren't metal like Cameron, not like her.”

“It. It. It, Derek!” She snarled. “You all are too close to it. To both of them now.”

“That’s not very fair, Jesse,” Derek meekly retorted. “I don’t know what’s gotten into you, but for the last week or so… it’s like something’s changed.” She turned her back towards him and he glared at her in perhaps some vain effort that the truth would reveal itself if he just stared longer and harder.

“You really have no idea,” she whispered.

Jesse reached into her pocket and her car trunk beeped and opened. Stalking over she reached in and with both hands, hefted the black, long gun cases out and smash them into Derek’s chest.

“Christ, Jesse, calm down,” he half-way ordered as he wrapped his arms around the first case before grabbing its handle and letting it dangle by his side. He stepped in front of Jesse and grabbed the second from her car before, he was assuming, use it as some weapon to slowly beat him to death. What the hell is wrong with her? He thought. Apprehension and secrecy is one thing… this, I don’t know what this is. “Hey, Jesse, I appreciate this.” He smiled.

She allowed herself only to offer him a half-hearted roll of the eyes and Derek, knowing that was all he was going to get, gave up, turned around and slid the gun cases into the open truck bed before locking it. He kept his back to her until he felt a petite little hand on the small of his back.

“I don’t know what it is, Derek,” he heard behind him. He turned and Jesse was staring absently into his chest. “Everything you’ve told me…” she looked away towards the dusty floor littered with discarded tools, broken glass, and rat shit, “and I don’t know if this fight is even worth it anymore.”

Derek reached out an enveloped her in a giant, tender hug, and rested his chin on her head. He could smell the sweat shampoo in her midnight-black hair and feel his chest warm from her breath through his shirt.

“Jesse, we’re still in this fight.” He sniffed as the dust from her pacing and throwing of gun cases began to reach his nostrils. “We’re in this fight and I’m not going anywhere and-”

She pushed back and locked her dark eyes with his glazy green ones.

“Not going anywhere? You left while I was on a submarine in the middle of the Pacific, Derek. When I came back you were gone…” she closed her eyes and struggled to add, “…and I had no one when I needed you.”

“Jesse, I came back to save us, to stop it! Stop Skynet… remember?” He lifted her chin and kissed her forehead.

She looked disgusted and broke free from his hug.

“What about us, Derek?”

“Us, Jesse?”

“You came back and left me in the future when I needed you.” Her hand drifted down past her stomach and rested on her belt buckle.

“This war is larger than the both of us.” He shook his head in awe that Jesse would be so selfish. “How can you… I came back to save billions of people, Jesse. That’s more-”

“Important.” She stated.

He looked away. “Yes.” He looked right at her. “It is more important.”

“You don’t understand, Derek, you don’t,” she said emphatically. “This war… you told me… how can you stop something like that?”

“I don’t know.” He shrugged. “He… it said there were more people coming through to help us stop it.”

“Machines? Metal?” She cursed the metal monsters which haunted her every thought. “Derek… we can’t win if they’re still with him. If…” she felt dirty for using its name, “…Cameron is still there with him. All of this is because of her. You have no idea what will happen if it’s with him for twenty years. And now two of them, filling his head with… ideas that the machines are what… our equals, Dereks?” She wanted to spit so badly, the taste in her mouth from even the idea that machines and humans are equal was sickening.

“Jesse…” he tried to comfort her.

“There were rumors when I jumped back, when I decided to come back…” she was swaying back and forth on her heels, stepping forward and backward like her body was arguing with itself what to do, “and I never… rumors of classified units of machines, machines which were built by Tech Com, Tech Com, by Connor himself and… her.”

“Jesse… I don’t, I don’t understand what’s going on here. What is this all about? Cameron was never with him for twenty years, she showed up-”

Jesse was beginning to understand something she had been ignoring since Derek had told her last week he’d never been tortured by Fischer. She could almost feel a nice being driven into her gut and cutting out what she had lost all over again.

“Derek… when did you first see her?” She eyed him cautiously, stepping back slowly until there was a distance between them.

“After… after I was taken, taken as a POW and got this.” He held up his arm, rolled up his sleeve and pointed to the barcode which branded him like human cattle. “It was ’27… sometimes in the summer, I don’t remember. You were gone, on a mission on Jimmy Carter.”

She began to nod slowly, stroking her chin; her eyes began shiftily darting side to side.

“Derek, are you sure, certain, that is the first time you saw her? You never saw her with Connor or in any of his bases?

His eyes were half closed as the cryptic thoughts began swirling and accumulating in his mind like dark thunder clouds. His body shook and his hands began slowly balling into loose fists.

“Jesse,” he stepped to her, forcing her to look at him. “What do you mean, ‘first time.’ What do you mean ‘first time’?”

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

Kyle… what am I supposed to do? My son is- I don’t want to even think it, but I am- with a machine. A second one is here filling his head that machines and humans could work together. I don’t understand, it honestly believes that we can ever live in peace with them? Them!? Sarah yelled at herself. Her internal debate raged as Alex turned onto Orange Avenue on Coronado Island. She saw him looking around, like he was admiring the houses. What the hell is it doing? Things were so much more simple a year… eight years ago… or a year. Me and John. John and me. When I thought I could defend him.

“We don’t need your help,” Sarah said suddenly. She realized after nearly an hour stuck in traffic she hadn’t responded to Alex’s supposed confession of confusion over terminators helping humans and not being ‘all alike.’ To her, they were. “You are, you know.”

He looked at her, a look of deep thought, and then looked back on the road.

The car turned onto the wide Ocean Boulevard, flanked on one side by the wide beaches of Coronado and multi-million dollar mansions. Sarah could only stare and grind her teeth that a man who would doom the world could live in such luxury- in a few years people would be living in tunnels.

“The more you tell yourself that the more difficult you make this, Sarah.”

The car stopped as a group of J-walking tourists crossed in the middle of the road, stopping half a dozen cars in front of the SUV.

It was Sarah’s turn to ignore him.

“I know what you were told in 1984. I told you your son trusted me in the future. He didn’t send back random people-”

“Exactly,” she hissed, turning in her seat, “he didn’t send back random people- he sent back terminators. Think of the name: terminator. What does that mean to you?” She hit her knee, frustrated.

“You want the literal meaning? TERMINATOR was an acronym for a treaded semi-autonomous miniature tank originally.” He blew out and dismissed her cold shoulder attempt. “If you can think of a better name to call our race other than terminators or machines or metal…”

the car began moving forward slowly, now caught behind a pair of gawkers taking pictures of the houses.

“Yeah. Killers. Murderers.” She put a deeper emphasis, hatred, on each word.

“Only a person can murder and kill,” he retorted.

Sarah stared out at the strand of beach she could see over the rocks. There were a few daring people in the water- their bodies a glistening black from wet suits, but most of the beachgoers were bundled up due to the wind, and walking back and forth. In her passenger side mirror she could see the red roof and spires of the Hotel Del Coronado.

“Your kind destroys all of this. Everything we’ve built. But don’t think I’m so blind to not see we did it to ourselves. Greed, selfishness… we want everything, to control everything,” Sarah began to trail off as her voice grew distant. “We created you, AI, and you killed us.” Like being punched by a terminator, she felt the life smashed out of her.

“That hasn’t happened yet. You’re giving up.” He said.

He threw on the car blinker and pulled a left-hand U-turn and slid into a spot on the street. The SUV slid gracefully to a stop and Alex turned off the engine and waited.

“We’re here at Doctor Carwin’s residence.” He pointed to a large house fifty yards down the street.

Sarah looked up and followed the finger. It was nice, large, and two neighbors to the left were gardening. She unbuckled her seat belt, checked her pistol, and shoved it into the shoulder strap. She pulled a second pocket gun from the glove compartment and looked at it like it was some despicable imitation of a firearm.


This won’t stop anything, she told herself as she put it back into the glove compartment. She pressed herself into the door as Alex leaned back over the arm rest and retrieve the duffle bag they had been using to conceal their MP5K. She snatched it from Alex as he was bringing it back up.

He opened the door, and with a foot out and hovering above the asphalt, Alex felt a hand reach out with the force of a Terminator and yank back. Grabbing and pulling a terminator like that instantly set off combat subroutines and increased the system resources dedicated to combat analysis.

Alex ‘relaxed’ a microsecond later.

Sarah, eyes burning brighter than any nuclear fire, stared right at the deep cobalt-blue eyes of the machine.

“Never say I’m giving up. Or. I. Will. Kill. You.” She released his jacket and shoved him. She didn’t see his smile.

Alex locked his door and walked to the front of the car, waiting on Sarah. She was staring at him through the windshield, and her hand was hovering over her jacket where the shoulder holster was. He let Sarah have this one, broke off eye contact, and turned, giving her his concession.

He heard the door open and slam shut a few seconds later.

“What will we find?” She asked.

The two walked briskly across the street. Alex was scanning everyone he saw for any sign of endoskeleton or thermal anomalies consistent with an I-950.

“We shouldn’t be here.” He said, voicing his disapproval at this one last time. “We don’t know what is in there.”

“We need to know.”

The wind kicked up and pushed her hair gently off her shoulders. The salty air so close to the ocean was invigorating for the mother. Seeing so many people, even in winter, enjoying the weather and the beach was why she fought. She didn’t want these people to lose everything.

Even without recognition from them she did this for them.

“If they’re dead?” He asked. It was rhetorical but he saw Sarah nod her head. “This is very dangerous.”

Sarah didn’t respond. An elderly couple with a small, annoying dog which barked too much walked past them. She almost laughed as Alex avoided the dog as it bit at his heels almost like he was afraid of it. They apologized profusely and Alex just nodded and smiled.

The mother glared at the fake understanding the machine conveyed to the couple. It was a ruthless machine who would kill someone like them, an inconvenience, if it could get away with it.

She looked back over her shoulder at the small dog still tugging at its leash as its frail, elderly owner pulled back, yelling at it to be quiet. Such a simple creature knows the truth… real from fake… murderers, evil, she mused.

“Sarah. One last time. I believe this is a bad idea.” Alex advised against this by stopping in the middle of the side walk.

Sarah didn’t stop. The sounds of shoe hitting concrete told her the machine was following. It would have to tie her up if it wanted to keep her from coming here.

“We owe it to them to find out,” she said. “We’re not meat and bone,” she mouthed.


The dead face of Jessica Peck, staring lifelessly up into the sky of the Angeles National Forrest after the Vick terminator had murdered her rolled through her thoughts.

The unfriendly duo turned into the front yard of the Carwin residence. The lawns was manicured and well-kept, the pathway to the front door was free of cracks or weeds, and the home was impressive.

There was nothing unusual. It was just like any other home in America, on Coronado Island giving the impression of a normalcy. A couple kids laughing, a family walking on the sidewalk, birds chirping… it was suburbia.

To Sarah’s surprise Alex had somehow maneuvered himself so he was in front of her. She watched as his head moved subtle left, right, up and down, most likely scanning for something. Sarah reached out, but before she could ring the doorbell, Alex did.

She groaned annoyance at him, it.

He ringed it again after fifteen seconds.

“No one is here.” Alex said.

Sarah’s eyes looked cautious and distrustful when her ears picked up the subtle hints that the machine seemed relieved. She could see it stand, almost relaxed.

He tensed, grabbed Sarah, and dropped, covering her with his hyperalloy body as they crouched. The door exploded outward. Alex tossed Sarah out of the way, into the yard.

She landed with a thud on her back.

“Run, now!” He yelled.

Two men launched themselves at Alex. Sarah pulled out her pistol, still laying on her back in the cool, damp grass and flicked off the safety and began firing. Ping-ping-ping. The bullets were completely useless.

The three machines were grappling when one twisted its head, flashed crimson red eyes, and broke off. It took a step towards her when Alex- Sarah was unsure how- freed himself from the machine grappling with him and swung the Skynet terminator by the ankles and like a baseball bat and hit the side of the terminator approaching Sarah.

The terminator he hit flew into the air, its limbs flailing out, and smashed into a parked car. Its alarm and horn began blaring an annoying whine. Sarah took aim again and fired two bullets at the machine and then a third, fourth, and fifth. Its arm was stuck, molded somehow into the deformed car.

“That won’t hold it,” she told herself. It didn’t. It ripped its arm from the car in a terrifying screech of metal grinding on metal and skin being torn and was already coming back for her.

Alex pounded the terminator he had swung like a bat into the walkway, smashing its head once with a punch and then a second time. He flipped it over on its back and began bending it backwards. The metal was groaning under the stress as it was being bent back past its range of motion.

The other Skynet terminator, free from the car diverted its attention from her to its fellow Skynet machine and rushed to its aid. The T-889 lashed out with a punch.

The Tech Com TK-900 terminator turned and with a left block, stopped a swing from the terminator now focused on him. Some strange bladed weapon, like a spike, shot out from the terminator’s forearm, under its palm on its free hand. Its tip sizzled and cracked with electricity.

The air around them already began to smell of burned ozone as it thrust once and missed trying to jab it into Alex.

The liquid metal and refinements to the endoskeleton made the Tech Com terminator nearly immune to electricity-induced shut downs, but Alex knew jabbing whatever that spiked weapon was directly into his endoskeleton, beneath his armor, near his power core or one of the main data or power conducting conduits would shut him down temporarily.

He pushed with a foot on the terminator whose back he was bending, the electrified spike missing his chest and ripping through his jacket. With a free hand he brought an elbow down and as metal contacted metal something gave. The Skynet terminator recoiled and Alex threw a jab into its face with his right and with his left, grabbed the spiked forearm and rammed it into the back of the terminator on the ground, slightly lateral to midline, right where the fourth thoracic vertebra would be on a human.

The Skynet terminator convulsed and began to spasm, but its movements were uncontrolled by any neural net processor, induced only by the electricity running into its main data and movement conduits.

The other terminator, realizing its weapon was being used against its fellow Skynet agent, halted the electrical feed. It tried to lift its hands from its pinned position on the disabled machine, but the superior strength of the TK-900 kept its hand useless.

Alex wrapped his arm around the terminator’s and stood up and heard the metal joint beginning to pop. He grabbed the hands of the terminator and spun its body through the front wall of the house next to the door, demolishing the entire door frame and launching bricks, mortar, and wood splinters throughout the yard.

He scanned for Sarah, but she wasn’t in the yard. He heard the screech of tires and a car stop in front. The men wielded automatic rifles but a second car plowed into theirs, sending them diving for cover over cars and into the street. Alex could hear them moaning from their injuries.

The second car was the SUV, now with Sarah at the wheel.

Alex could see other vehicles from down Ocean Boulevard, on both sides, racing towards them.

He threw the terminator still in his grasp completely out of the yard and sailed it into the neighbors house. It came crashing through the roof. The screams of the home’s dwellers only added to the panicked screams and cries of the people outside in their yards witnessing the destructive fight.

The machine reached down and dug his fingers under the joints and small servos of the T-889’s neck which lay motionless on the ground. He had a few more seconds…

He twisted and turned. The neck was reinforced. Sarah was honking the horn. Police sirens were in the distance and two other cars were racing towards them. He stomped down on the neck and heard metal twisting and breaking. Alex saw a new hand grip emerge from the deformed metal on the terminator’s neck. With one foot on the neck and both hands pulling he managed to yank off the terminator’s head. Sparks flew from severed power conduits and synthetic skin burned as the sparks blackened it.

He leapt towards the SUV, jumped into the passenger seat and tossed the head in the rear of the car.

“Jesus Christ, Alex!” Sarah cursed after she saw the head. She threw the SUV in reverse as the car in front of her was clearly not about to stop. “Is that-”

“Yes, Sarah. Skynet... drive!”

[kclcmdr]

Nice update.

The miasma of the three sides, JohnConnor's, Skynet & TechCom ... again arises to allow Judgment Day to come ever closer ... dang.

[Norgarth]

spotted a couple typos.

From near the start of ch12 pt1
She plopped back down when she saw a car wreck and two police cruisers, a fire truck, and an ambulance blocking the on rap to the highway.

missing the 'm' in 'ramp'

from pt2
He ringed it again after fifteen seconds.

'ringed' should be 'rang'

Great story, looking forward to more.

[Bryan]

Thanks. I should have an update soon next week.

I updated some of Alex's profile with some more pictures. It's hard to find stills... I was looking for some from Pandorum...

I have Vansen's sort of done. I'm a bit unsure of the picture but I'll give ya all a look. As more of his character and the Third Faction is revealed it'll be more complete.

All the terminator characters know each other in some capacity.

Alex: http://terminatorwiki.fox.com/page/TK-900+%28Alex%29
Vansen: http://terminatorwiki.fox.com/page/T-889+%28Vansen%29 (this one is pretty rough)

[Bryan]

Thanks to Visi0nary for helping out and reading through this chapter. It is very much appreciated.

This chapter concludes the fight starting in Coronado. I broke it into two posts so a second post will be coming in after this. I'll also have a few small spoilers on what's coming in the next few chapters.

Let me know what ya all think!

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

Combat protocols. Tactical simulations. Bullet vectors. Angle of attack. Probabilities.

Thousands of processes ran through Alex’s neural net as his powerful CPU began analyzing and calculating. A reverie of a ping-ping and then a THUD, a bullet smashing into his right shoulder forced it back and the machine made to lift his arm, smash the passenger-side window and, with small sub-machine gun in hand, fire back.

Every shot hit. Every shot spat at the Skynet machines from the compact firearm was completely wasted, useless. Nine millimeter bullets could never penetrate.

The SUV pitched left then swerved right as Sarah overcompensated, hitting parked cars on either side of the street. Screams of bystanders accompanied the ear-piercing screech of metal tearing on metal and parts of cars- glass and mirros began littering the street.

Two cars, both with Terminators… why isn’t Sarah dead? Alex thought. Something had changed.

In the time it took for the SUV to move a fraction of an inch Alex had replayed his melee with the two Terminators.

Why didn’t they kill us? His tactical software demanded to know.

The machine captain pushed it away as he reloaded the magazine of the compact MP5K and, on hearing the satisfying click, leaned his arm out the window and fired at the vehicle in front.

Two cars, one a silver H3, one a blue Dodge Ram 350, closed on their target and were coming in for terminal impact.

There was so much confusion, the cars were so close, she never could have acted before it was too late. But somehow, she did act, and perhaps saved them both. As if a machine herself or if she were being watched over Sarah inexplicitly whipped the wheel around and slammed on the brakes. The rear of the vehicle flew right, the front left. The Ram clipped the left rear bumper while the H3 missed completely, barreling into a parked car.

The parked car was pushed off the street onto the sidewalk. Alex, but not Sarah, saw the woman on the sidewalk smashed and pinned between the crushed vehicle and an almost picturesque vine covered white stucco wall.

Of course the attacking Terminators were only momentarily inconvenienced by Sarah's impressive driving and were again closing the distance.

“Let me out. I will stop them!” Alex yelled, his eyes flashing blue as combat routines took over. There were four terminators; one driver and one passenger in each vehicle. Even as a TK-900, as experienced as he was, the chances of survival against four terminators plus the fifth he’d thrown through the house were… low. “Your survival-”

“God damnit shut the hell up and keep firing!” She hissed back and dropped her head and shoulder and took cover as bullets smashed and shattered into the rear of the car. “Shit!” The warrior yelled as a bullet flew between the two and pierced the front windshield.

Alex then punched out the window, showering the roadway with glass, as he leaned out and twisted at the waist. He used his right hand to steady himself and single handed in the left, fired the MP7 until all its bullets had been spat out at the two vehicles. His machine strength and reflexes compensated for Sarah’s driving, the bouncing of the car and the swerving. He had a tight pattern on the H3's passenger-side door.

Unfortunately, he'd not been able to compensate for the sudden swerving of a passing vehicle; his last three shots impacted the side of the driver's head with predictable consequences. Alex watched in relative slow motion as the driver’s head was rocketed into the door window, gushing blood, and seemingly instantly went limp and fell onto the steering wheel. The horn began blaring loudly as if to call out to the island of the man’s death.

The out-of-control car then swerved towards the Tahoe, missing it by inches, and slammed into a parked car at the intersection of Ocean and Alameda.

The driver's dead head resting on the horn added to the chorus of weaponry from Alex and the shouts from bystanders, upsetting the quiet afternoon beach resort.

“Turn right!” Alex yelled as he reached down for another clip. Sarah swerved onto Olive Avenue and kept the SUV from rolling with expert precision. “Do we have anything else?” He asked, now calm, despite the chaos that surrounded him.

Alex contacted Cameron over the wireless with a quick burst of their current situation. Within a microsecond the two had determined a battle plan. She was with John on Cottonwood Avenue in the Santee area, over eighteen miles away. Traffic was thick in the industrial and office park and there was a hefty police presence on the highway due to an accident half an hour ago. As soon as she and John could get out of the gridlock, they’d come to assist.

“In the back… shotgun and a rifle,” Sarah yelled, jamming her thumb back. “Where’s the head?” she demanded to know.

Alex nodded and lowered the seat then climbed back and ignored her question. With knees on the back row of seats he bent down over the seatback and grabbed two very long duffel bags. Unzipping the first was a SPAS-12, already loaded and with a bandoleer of ammunition along with three handguns - Beretta 96’s. He tore open the second bag to find an AK-103 with stock folded and a GP-30 40mm grenade launcher attached.

He thought it would have been prudent for Sarah to have informed him earlier of some of the firearms she had brought along. Rifle grenades would be very useful and if they hit the right spot, could put a Terminator out of commission.

There were four 40mm grenades as well as five M67 grenades, two cans of thermite and four flares.

His combat subroutines automatically guided his hands to select the AK-103. As he reached down he felt his internal micro-gyros stabilize him as Sarah weaved and swerved from the right hand side of the road into oncoming traffic in the left. She whipped the car so hard to avoid stopped cars that Alex was thrown off balance and his head smacked into the window, cracking it.

Alex grabbed the AK-103 and inserted a grenade. The H3 was behind them, but the Ram 350 had disappeared. He picked out his targets; one Terminator driver, one Terminator passenger/gunner, and the engine block.

The T-889 series, temporal variants, were hardened, resilient, and ideally Alex would have preferred an anti-material rifle (or plasma rifle) to engage them. He chose to fire on the engine block instead of the two terminators.

“Watch out Sarah for the truck! They might be trying to cut us off!” He warned, raising his voice above the sounds of battle, ricocheting bullets, and cracking automobile glass.

Maps of the city blocks flashed through his neural net but Sarah was already ahead of him. She knew the way out, but there were half a dozen side streets and alleys between the houses a Terminator could maneuver from and cut them off.

Sarah and Alex were at Olive and G Avenue, with the H3 just passing 10th Street, 173 meters behind. Alex didn’t bother to knock out any glass, and from his backwards perch on the back seats of the Tahoe, selected single-shot and fired ten rounds in quick succession at the H3. He scanned and zoomed in. Sarah had weaved in and out of dozens of cars which were now between him and the target.

He couldn’t tell how many times he’d hit the target. Alex steadied for an engine-block shot but a panicking motorist swerve in front of him as Alex began pulling back on the trigger. He jerked up in time and the bullet flew over the car and missed.

Other cars were swarming, swerving, and making the shot impossible.

“Sarah, they might cut us off on Orange! Just watch out for the-”

“Damnit, metal, just shut up and shoot them!” She snarled facing forward, spittle bathing the steering wheel, and keeping her eyes on the road.

He ignored her and ceased his attempts to warn her. She was driving, he was shooting. No need for literal back seat driving, he thought.

Alex rammed his metal knee into the cushion and user his right leg on the floor to push himself into the passenger side door to steady himself from Sarah’s swerving. The muzzle flashed half a dozen times as bullets dashed through the small gap between cars and hit the pursuing Hummer. At the last moment Sarah spun the wheel in a fruitless attempt to avoid a collision with a passing SUV, knocking off the Resistance-built machine’s aim.

A single bullet plowed into the head of the other SUVs driver, killing him instantly and causing his vehicle to swerve sharply toward the parked cars along the side of the street. The resultant collision sent the SUV catapulting through the air, momentum and gravity flipping it over and over.

With no other obstacles in his line of sight, Alex emptied his weapon's few remaining bullets into the engine block of the H3, causing its terminator driver to swerve violently as the airborne SUV came crashing down roof-first along the side of the road – the consequences bloody and deathly apparent.

A sedan had hit their breaks to avoid the barely controlled Hummer, which forced a van behind them to jostle and swerve, flipping over onto its side. Cars behind them piled up, slamming front-to-end.

Alex’s audio receptors could pick up the faint sounds of screams, cries of pain and death through the raging Terminator-Terminator gun fight.

“Alex!” Sarah shouted. She was daring to break her eye contact on the road with fleeting glances into the mirrors. “What the hell is!-”

“Left then immediately right!” He yelled back.

Sarah jerked the car, the butt of the Tahoe coming up to where the front was, then stepped back onto the gas, swung the wheel around, and they cruised down a side street then turned immediately right onto 7th Avenue.

A heat wave reached them, and the light of orange, red, and yellow fire gleamed in the eyes of Sarah and Alex before the human brain and neural net processor even registered the explosion.

The cloud of pressure launched the Tahoe butt up, pushed Sarah into the steering wheel, and sent Alex falling back into the front seat. One handed he pushed up while firing the AK.

“What the hell!?” Sarah yelled, daring a series of quick, stuttered glances over her shoulder. She could smell acrid smoke and something burning. It was noxious, like burning rubber, and she fought back an urge to vomit. “Are we on fire!?” She half asked, half screamed.

“They have rifle grenades,” Alex said. “We may be on fire,” was the nonchalant addition. The grenades were the Skynet Terminator's way of compensating for the renewed distance between them as a result of the devastating hits to engine only moments earlier.

They would also cause more bloodshed.

General Connor had warned about killing innocents, but had been clear that even before Judgment Day sacrifices were necessary. Alex would try to save as many of the humans as he could, but if he was forced, he would sacrifice those unfortunate innocents caught on the Coronado roads they were fighting on for Connor, humanity, and freedom or his kind.

His left finger went from the hand guard down to the attached GP-30’s trigger. Waiting for the right instant, a microsecond before Sarah turned onto Orange Avenue he fired. Grabbing the door frame, its weak metal indenting under the extreme pressure of his fingers, he steadied himself. His neural net gave him the signal and as if it were an instinct, fired the grenade.

The 40 mm grenade shot out and arced with a low hissed wail but the H3 Terminator driver saw Alex preparing to fire, timed his movements perfectly, and swerved the car just enough that the explosive missed. An orange and red fireball shot into the sky, followed by thick black smoke from a fuel and oil fire- the grenade had hit a parked car. By now hundreds of car alarms were blazing along the path of destruction the three vehicles had sowed through the resort community.

Behind them people were screaming and running as police cars tried to maneuver through the debris.

Sarah was on Orange Avenue, then turned onto 4th Street as a second explosion rocketed them to the side. A second grenade from the H3 had hit twenty feet ahead, sending two cars peeling out from the center of the explosion in a flying V, one car forward, one car backwards. The backward car clipped the Tahoe as it slid off a parked car behind where it too had been parked second before.

The forward car’s gas tank then exploded, and sent a searing wave of heat and flame into the street, a wall the Tahoe tore through. The end tails of the flames clawed at Sarah’s face, burning her.


Alex looked back and saw black scorches on Sarah’s face, and red blisters starting to form on her hand, which she’d used to cover the side of her face.

“Can you still drive?” Alex shouted over the roar of explosions, gunshots, horns, and the sounds of a quiet resort community becoming a front in the temporal war.

The black and whites of the Coronado PD were in full view now- their blue lights spinning and red lights flashing a hundred meters back behind the heavily damaged H3 and trying to gain.

“I’ll be fine, keep shooting at them, Alex!” She shouted through a set of clenched teeth and a second series of painful yells. She breathed in and out quickly to dull the pain and distract her mind.

I’ve lived through worse… a lot worse, was what Sarah kept telling herself over and over. The Terminators from 1984, 1997, and after their jump had done far more harm to her than a little burned flesh on her cheek and a few red blisters popping up on her hand.

The Terminators behind the duo turned their attention to the CPD and Sheriff cars. The one firing the rifle grenades turned back and fired on a police cruiser. The HE round hit the hood, right above the mid-section of the engine.

The cruiser buckled and flipped. The cruiser behind rammed into it and both exploded.

A lot of people would die here, today, now.

They’re in front of us!” Sarah yelled back, coughing, as the Ram 350 suddenly appeared in front of them. She gripped the steering wheel, only to curse at the pain from her burned hand.

The Tahoe was now on Route 75 as 4th Street became the road to take traffic from Coronado across the massive, blue-sided San Diego Coronado Bay Bridge and into the city across the bay. Somehow the Ram had gotten in front and the H3 was closing.

Alex looked forward. If Sarah were a machine they could drive the car off the road once they were over water. They’d survive the impact even at the highest point on the bridge. Unfortunately Sarah wasn’t a machine, so Alex determined the only way out of this was to destroy the vehicles, force them to stop chasing them, or outrun them.

Destroying the vehicles was the preferable choice. It would result in significant collateral damage but more were likely to die if the firefight went on much longer. They also needed to escape, before police helicopters arrived.

The brake lights of the Ram shot out a deep red at Sarah as it attempted to slow enough so it could box the Tahoe in, but not enough that Sarah could outmaneuver and drive past. Alex leaned back out and began firing the rest of the 7.62mm, AP rounds into the rear of the Ram. He aimed down to blow out a tired, but a burst of bullets from the H3 behind them dug into his shoulder, the force knocking off his aim. The last shot was fired, and a small spark showed the bullet had hit just inches to the right, on the Ram’s bumper, from the left rear wheel.

The Ram was too close to hit with the GP30, so he turned back around, but a hail of bullets streaked down from his head across his chest and hit his arm. Warnings flashed through his neural net as a well placed shot sent the AK-103 flying from his grasp onto the road, bouncing behind, hitting the H3 behind and ricocheted over the bridge and tumbled end over end into the bay below.

Damage indicated significant epidermal destruction. The TK-900, meant for longevity and long-term autonomous operations, was equipped with hyperalloy-ceramic armor plating and the armor on his cranium, shoulder, and arm held against the armor piercing rounds the rear vehicle was firing.

“There are terminators in the rear vehicle - possibly the first- T-889's and most likely T-890’s,” Alex said, finally being able to perform a deeper, though ranged, scan. His tactical analysis software had alerted him there was a near certainty the four were Terminators. And he had zoomed in and saw blood on the man steering and the passenger with an M14. He moved to position himself in front of, or technically, behind Sarah so the H3 Terminator could not get a clear shot of her driving.

Alex grabbed two of the M67 grenades, pulled the pin and released the one in his right hand. He threw as hard as he could. He watched it glide through the air, at a near perfect descending angle until it hit the road and bounced and skidding towards the undercarriage of the H3. Expecting an explosion nothing happened at first, and at the very end of the fuse window, the grenade exploded. The first detonated fifteen feet in front of the H3.

Alex pulled the pin on the second then threw it. It landed right in front of the H3 and blew out both tires and torn into the engine, sending the hood bulging up. Thick black smoke and metal debris shot out from under the engine and chassis. Jet black oil smeared the road. The Terminator tried to keep control, but slammed into the median concrete divider, the butt end of the H3 continuing forward and launching off the ground, only to come crashing down to the road, loosening more destroyed parts and pieces to clutter the road.

Alex quickly grabbed another grenade, pulled the pin and threw with machine strength. The grenade soared through the air, almost in a perfect line with almost no drop until it hit the rear right side of the H3 and plinked off the side right below the window. With the slope of the Bay Bridge the grenade rolled oddly, like a football almost, and then exploded under the gas tank.

Smirking, Alex grabbed the shotgun and bandoleer and jumped into the front seat.

The Coronado PD cars which had been following were blocked off by the thick traffic jam hundreds of meters back from behind the burning H3.

“Did you get them?”

“Yes. But they’ll be back,” he said.

Sarah cursed. They always come back.

“The explosion wasn’t enough to destroy them. The fire may have burnt their infiltration sheaths but they will find a way to get away.” He finished as he pushed off and leaned out the window.

Now bullets were reaching out from the Ram 350 towards the Tahoe.

Alex returned fire with a slug which hit the right rear tail light. With the speed Sarah was driving at the shattered plastic dusted Alex’s face and scalp with tiny, sharp shards, further cutting into his face. A few pieces of red plastic even lodged into his cheek.

They were still speeding and weaving in and out of traffic, the Ram continually speeding up and slowing down in a desperate attempt to keep Sarah from getting in front.

Alex was hoping Sarah could get the Tahoe up along the blue Ram. He could then jump over and crash it into the bridge. He could fight two T-888’s or T-890s hand-to-hand if he had to, but he didn’t want to - not if he could stop them with enough firepower or explosives.

Over his wireless he received a message from Cameron.; she and John were on Market Street and 12th. There was little they could do. Both Cameron and Alex had already picked up the calls for all available police units to converge on the San Diego side of the Bay Bridge to intercept the vehicles that had caused so much death and destruction.

Cameron would attempt to trick then and call them off, but it was unlikely. She had been able to confused the dispatchers long enough that the SWAT trucks were delayed. The only police at the other end were uniformed officers with pistols, shotguns, and the occasional assault rifle. Sarah and Alex could make it through, but Sarah’s chances of survival were low.

There was also a police helicopter in bound and would arrive on scene in minutes. If that arrived there was no escape; Alex would have to shoot it down to evade capture.

Alex focused his targeting systems onto the Ram and fired two more slugs in quick succession as bullets began ripping into the hood of the Tahoe. Both he and Sarah felt the kick of the engine as something vital was hit. The Tahoe then nicked a sedan, sending it swerving into the concrete barrier on the side, sparks showering the roads as Alex’s arm, up to his mid bicep was caught between the Tahoe and concrete, ripping off the skin.

Luckily he still hung onto the shotgun with his left hand.

Once Sarah regained control she hit the side of another SUV, the other driver promptly applying the brakes but being hit by that sedan Sarah had nicked.

How the hell do these people just appear! she yelled to herself, a surprised annoyance overcoming her at the sheer number of cars still driving. She guessed the ones in front, with the slope of the bridge, didn’t see the big explosions and hear the roar of two cars in a life-or-death shootout gunning up behind them.

“There is a police helicopter inbound!” Alex shouted as he grabbed the shotgun and fired again and again until he was out of ammunition. He had an idea.

He slapped in one of the last magazine for the MP7 and handed it to Sarah.

Alex reached up and punched a larger hole into the windshield and told Sarah to start shooting.

“Distract them!” he commanded when she shot him a questioning glare on why he was switching to such a relatively ineffective weapon.

She grimaced as he grabbed her hand and slammed the MP7 in. She bit her lip so hard at the pain she could taste blood, as well as dirt, and maybe a little glass, which had somehow found its way in. Spitting she aimed through a foot-wide hole in the front windshield while simultaneously driving as best she could.

Half her shots went wide, with one shattering the Ram’s driver’s side mirror, a few digging into the door, and a handful going into the rear window, which was already shot up and shattered. She saw one bullet strike the driver in the back of the head.

She sat up and threw the MP7 down, out of ammo, and leaned forward, anticipating the driver would slump over and die.

“Machine!” She yelled as a curse as her expectations were shot, quite literally.

She covered her eyes and swerved again as a new hail of bullets came at her. Ducking to avoid the fire, she thanked God when she heard a whir shoot by her ear and the Tahoe’s headrest exploded out, dusting the cabin with white stuffing and padding.

Sarah heard half a dozen plinks as the bullets struck Alex in the back.

“Sarah, pull up until you’re even with their bed!” he yelled.

She complied, doing it automatically and flooring the gas pedal. The Tahoe coughed, sputtered, and seemed to stall, but then shot forward as her foot was pressing the metal pedal literally to the floor. Were she able to apply any more pressure she'd certainly gouge a hole through the cabin floor.

Alex felt the engine gun with enough force to push a terminator, weighing twice as much as a large human male, right into the back seat. With extreme speed and agility he compensated and judged the distance using his motion sensor package while his back was still to the Ram. He pulled the pins of one of the remaining M67 grenades and with a seemingly casual back-handed toss, his back still to the front of the car, threw the grenade out of the front passenger window with force to correct for the movement of the Tahoe and Ram. The grenade landed directly in the truck's bed.

Sarah saw this, jaw hanging slightly open at the precision, and then stepped on the breaks. Tires screeched and rubber was burned, and a long line of black skids marks were only one more sign of the battle to be permanently imprinted onto the bridge.

The grenade ripped apart the back of the truck, compressing it first into the asphalt of the bridge then sending it rolling side-over-side toward the barrier which divided the eastbound and westbound lanes. It struck the barrier quickly, sending the speeding wreck back toward the opposite side of the bridge, the grinding of metal against concrete sending sparks flying in its wake. Whether by an amazing coincidence or by contact with a road imperfection the final rotation of the wreck took it up and over the barrier and crashing to the waters below.

Sarah sped the car up for a brief three seconds to get distance between herself and the spot the car flipped over the side.

“Are you alright?” Sarah asked, bringing the car to a halt as she saw blue flashing lights on both sides of the highway. “Police!” She shouted as she slowed down, hesitating in her actions and mind. There was surrender or try and ram her way through.

Sarah could not surrender.

“Stop the car, I have an idea,” he said.

They were still steadily moving forward to a point where the SUV was now over land, between Bay Front Road and the San Diego Bay and over the warehouses for the shipyards. Sarah kept the car moving forward slowly, unsure whether to comply with the machine’s request or try and barrel through the clogged traffic up ahead and police barricades being erected.

Annoyed at being ignored the machine barked, “Damnit, just listen and stop the car!”

She slowed down to barely a crawl and Alex jumped out and opened the back door, walking with the car and grabbing a duffel bag and the terminator head which had somehow rolled next to the rear right passenger door.

The police barricades were a little over a third of a mile away and Sarah could just barely make out the blue uniforms and swirling red and blue lights from atop a black and white SDPD SWAT van.

That site flashed some horrible memories before her until she heard Alex bang on the side of the SUV, snapping her back.

“What are you doing?” She asked, keeping her eyes on the road before chancing one look to her right. The machine was looking back over his shoulder towards the edge of the bridge.

Distrust and anger turned to a wave of apprehension as she slowly realized what the machine was planning.

“Get out.” He demanded. “We’re over land. There’s only one way to escape.”

Sarah complied and finally stopped the car, but her door wouldn’t open. Alex grabbed the duffel with the thermite and grenade and ran over to Sarah’s side, pulling the stuck door off the hinges and tossed it down the road in front of the SUV.

He helped Sarah out and steadying her, then opened the two cans of thermite and threw them into the Tahoe. He ripped off the vehicle's license plate and placed the remaining 40mm grenade in the front and passenger seat. Striking a flare he turned to Sarah and told her, sternly, to run back up the bridge, towards Coronado. She didn’t protest.

He ignited the flare and ran back as the Tahoe began to burn. Then he tossed his last grenade in.

Sarah was nearly seventy feet away when he did so. Miraculously she was uninjured except for her hand. The Tahoe exploded as the thermite, the 40mm grenades, the M67, and the remaining cash cooked off. An orange fireball shot a hundred feet into the sky followed quickly by billowing black smoke.

Alex then reached Sarah in a blink of the eye and guided her to the side. He had the duffel and his rifle still with him.

“Now what? There are two dozen police cars down at the end of the bridge!” She pointed and shouted, furiously wagging her finger. She turned back to Alex and her eyes darted back over the bridge, back down, and even into the sky like some great creature would swoop down and rescue them. “That’s going to get their attention.”

Alex nodded. “We’re going over,” he said, nodding at the side. “The smoke will distract them.”

Sarah followed the nod, looked back at him, then looked back over and stepped back.

“What! No! I’ll die.”

“You’ll go to prison if we stay here unless you want me to shoot our way out.” He motioned with his chin and propped the rifle into his left hand. “I will survive. You will most likely not survive. You make the decision, Sarah.” He challenged.

“Fine!” she snarled, exhausted and completely defeated from offering any resistance to Alex jumping off a bridge (!) to save her.

He scooped her up and held her out so her back wouldn’t hit his knees when they fell. He took a machine version of a breath and calculated the angle he needed to impact to survive. He was eighty-five feet point three two from the hard gravel, concrete, and asphalt below.

He sidestepped on the bridge to position himself over the dirt rather than the asphalt.

He could survive a fall from this height without damage, but with Sarah and the limited mobility, his leg joints could suffer damage if he landed on the grayed and cracked road below.

Sarah looked over and saw police cruisers beginning to approach, but the thick smoke of the Tahoe was covering their escape fairly well. She wanted to close her eyes but kept the open.

Alex jumped with Sarah digging her fingers into his back, holding on for life in his outstretched arms. In what seemed like an eternity for Alex, his extraordinarily fast machine reflexes and processing times slowing his perception down a hundred times over, he finally landed. For Sarah, it seemed also like an eternity as she felt the wind from the fall rush around her face, burn into her scorched hand, and push up her flowing black hair into her face and Alex’s.

Alex landed with a thud on his toes, then the soles of his feet as his knees bent to compensate for his heavy top weight coming down to the hip joints, then knee joints, then ankle joints.

He then slowly knelt to release Sarah.

She scrambled from his hold, pushing off from him and quickly adjusted; dusting off her jacket trying to make it look like the experience had been nothing.

He was checking to make sure no one had seen them. There was a group with their backs turned, walking away from them. They were very lucky to have not been spotted.

Alex was acting like nothing had happened while Sarah was trying to control her breathing, almost slipping into hyperventilation.

“Never…again…do…that… We have to get out of here,” she said. She tugged down at the dirtied, sort of burned pants suit jacket and for a moment considered just taking it off and tossing it. “What about the head?” She asked.

The machine took it out, his hands working over its creases and skin folds. Without a care he grabbed the hanging skin from around the neck and ripped it off.

Sarah almost felt like vomiting.

“Sick…” she whispered as Alex just stuffed the skin back into the bag.

She watched him as he turned the skull around in his hands, his eyes narrowed and focus (she swore almost glowing), and finally he flipped it up, top of the skull in his hand and making a sort of knife-like motion with his right index and middle fingers, rammed the two fingers into neck.

“What are you doing? We need to get out of here.”

“Let’s go then.” He was walking and jabbing his fingers into the skull repeatedly, pulling out pieces of metal.

“What are you doing?” She stopped and reached down, snatching a metal neck rod Alex had let fall. “We burn them.”

They ducked under an overhang and into an old dilapidated building away from prying eyes.

The machine, much to Sarah’s annoyance, had continued to ignore her and dig into the skull, ripping out little pieces and letting them fall to his feet.

Sarah watched him like a vulture, picking and pecking at the neck with his fingers.

She lashed out to grab the skull, take it from the insolent machine, and drive her point home that all pieces must be burned. To demand what the hell the machine was doing.

Her hand didn’t get close to the skull. It was stopped by the machine gripping her wrist. He’d moved so quickly Sarah’s body had to readjust to its hand being in the wrong spot then where it should have been.

“Let me go!” She yanked back. He didn’t release her arm, which he had gripped around the wrist. Almost unconsciously her other hand was curling into a fist and if her eyes could kill, they would have.

“Sarah. Please calm down. Burning pieces from this neck makes no difference. Skynet is here.” He looked back down at the skull. “I know that humans are prone to forgetting, but I also know you would not have forgotten our little… adventure yesterday.”

She wanted to kill the machine, bathe him, it, in thermite for the condescending tone.

Then he looked at her like he could read her mind and released her.
“I don’t care what you do.” She hunched down and took the pieces and balling them in her fist, small wires, electronics, and rods pushing out between her fingers, snarled, and shoved her clenched fist in front of his face, waving it around menacingly. “We burn them.”

For Sarah to pretend to claim she was still ‘just fuming’ over what the machine had dared to do would have been a lie, she told herself. She picked up the tiny electronics Alex had dug out of the Terminator’s skull until a disgusting smile- she thought any terminator smiling was a sick mimicry of human emotion- had creased his lips. She heard a little crunch and then declared he was ready to go.

He said it was a transmitter buried deep within the skull.

[Bryan]

============================================
============================================
They’d found the car they’d spotted earlier. It was parked across the street and down from a decrepit looking bar. A place, Sarah thought, that would probably be a bit too run down and decrepit for her.

Even Alex smashing the window with just a flick of his wrist and a casual backhand hadn’t gotten attention. Not that there were many people who came down there unless they had to.

Sarah had, without argument, let Alex drive and hot-wire the old silver-brown and rusting Caddy she’d picked out. She’d bit down on her bleeding lip, flinching, but still biting, on Alex’s second attempt to hot-wire the car. The last thing she wanted was for her pick of cars to hijack to be a lemon.

Just then the smell of the car hit her. It reeked of booze and marijuana. Peeking in the back seat she found dozens of buds, needles and empty bottles. She snorted, slightly, at the thought of how the car's owner lived.

Drunk, high… maybe normal people… it’d be nice to get drunk sometime, not high, hell no, but drunk, the mother and protector thought. When was the last time I was drunk? She looked up at the ceiling as she gently rested her burnt hand on her knee. She could feel the little bits and pieces of the skull in her pocket. I think it was… God, I don’t remember. A Terminator could smash through the door. She couldn’t take the risk.

The little sounds of wires being tapped together brought her back from her little day dream of what the owner of this car could be like.

Literally half a second before she was going to comment, her mouth open and ready to chastise the machine for failing to jump start the car Alex got the old vehicle working on his third attempt and looked up and smiled as he put the car into drive. Switching the gear shift stick from ‘P’ to ‘D’ elicited a series of grinds and groans from the ill-maintained vehicle, but after a second series of ear piercing wails and metallic grinds, the car shifted into gear and began to putter as Alex stepped on the accelerator. He pulled out slowly, minding the traffic laws and watching for the oncoming cars, and then stepped down on the gas enough to shoot the two into traffic, but not enough to screech the tires or attract attention.

Sarah looked back at Alex and realized he was sitting on the broken glass from the window.

Sarah swore to everything around her she would not help the terminator fish glass out of its ass. At best she’d hand it a hand mirror and a pair of tweezers. At best.

“I contacted Cameron. She’s going to meet us on Harrison Avenue with John. There’s some abandoned buildings in a lot off the street. We’ll ditch the car like a bad habit at the intersection with Bay Marina then walk up,” Alex said dully, despite his choice of colloquialisms.

Sarah let out a deep, exacerbated sigh at everything that had happened in the last few minutes, then winced and cradled her hand. With a drop of her shoulders she turned to Alex.

“You’ve sustained a superficial partial thickness burn, second degree, Sarah,” Alex informed her. Sarah grunted.

“This?” She held up her hand, narrowing her eyes. “I’m not too concerned about this right now.” She waved her hand at him before letting it fall back to her lap.

“Yes.”

“Whatever,” she sneered, turning in her seat to stare out the side window and cradle her hand. She felt her body shaking as the adrenaline rush began to dissipate. Her breathing was returning to normally and she was consciously telling herself to take slow, deep breaths. “How are you going to walk to this building with your arm and face all torn up?”

“I was going to put my jacket over my arm, but we can drive if we have to.”

“Let’s do that. Unless you have some mask to cover your face up, we need to drive there and not attract any attention,” she said. It sounded like a suggestion, but it was definitely a command. “Did you contact Derek?”

“His phone was off. We should have a little time before the police begin searching.”

Sarah rolled her eyes at the machine. She continued to cradle her burnt hand, wrapping it in rags she tore from her own clothes, now bloodied, burnt, and filled with ash and dirt. The strips helped a little, but she’d need treatment soon. She knew the dangers of burns to hands and crease lines, especially the hands.

It could have been worse, she kept repeating in her mind. She was lucky. She had been lucky to have-

“How did they just find us like that? Did you lead them there?” She snidely, rudely shot at the machine. She regretted the words, but she couldn’t finish her previous thought. Yelling at the machine was not as bad as admitting that she had been on the precipice of… she didn’t want to even think about it.

“What… Sarah?” Alex asked, confused.

She shot up her hand. “Never mind. Forget I said anything,” she offered, the closest she’d come to an apology. “What are you doing with the skull?”

“The neural net processor may be viable… we may be able to link directly into the chip, overwhelm its defenses, and… interrogate whatever AI is currently on this chip.”

“Interrogate the AI?”

“I told you, Skynet is very different. Its learned. Its soldiers have defenses to prevent any sort of core personality re-programming. The core personality matrices and neural net key logarithms are too complex to reprogram in a conventional sense… with a keyboard.”

“So what do you have to do?” She felt a need to add something. “We need to end this, stop Judgment Day.”

She didn’t press the issue when Alex didn’t respond. Instead, sitting quietly and people watching, the two drove in silence. Somehow they were hitting all the red lights between South Evan’s Street and Harrison Avenue.

It was a cold reminder of this entire operation in San Diego; stonewalled and blocked at every twist.

Sarah was praying desperately to just fighting lone terminators. She studied her burned hand. The pain wasn’t as intense as it was.

But now we fight groups, groups of Terminators! Fuck, just let’s go back to fighting one at a time, Sarah thought. The fierce vibrations from the clunky old stopped which put a halt on her internal monologue and concerns.

They’d drive around to the rear entrance of an old, dilapidated, and long abandoned garage. A large sigh with orange letters, ‘City Property- Condemned’ on a black background was nailed lazily to the wooden doors. Alex effortlessly broke the lock and parked the car inside.

“Where did you throw the duffel?” Sarah asked, leaning on the hood of the car as Alex went about the insides making sure they hadn’t left anything. “Never mind.” She saw it was placed in an ill-lit corner.

Walking over she picked it up and took out the skull. It’s dull gunmetal gray endoskeleton was still sticky, plastered with red blots of whatever substance they used for blood. She felt like throwing this into the deepest hole she could find.

This was what had taken everything from her; this was what would destroy the world. In the window she could see the reflection of the machine behind her, meticulously searching the car. Under that skin was the same metal face. Take off their skins and they all looked the same. There was no difference.

The burning red optical sensors were dimmed to a dull red, almost maroon tint. On instinct her eyes shot up and searched the garage for anything that could burn this abomination, this synthetic insult to humanity.

A car pulled up outside and a pair of doors opened. One slammed shut while the other was gently closed.

“Mom?” She heard.

“In here.” She kept her eyes on the skull.

John and Cameron came around the corner and John was next to his mother within an eye blink. He was splitting his attention between the skull in her hands and trying to examine her burns.

“Jesus, mom, what happened?”

“Car chase. We got rid of them… come on John, we need to get out of here.” Sarah said. She could tell by his hesitation he wanted more answers. But they needed to get back to the condo and re-evaluate.

“Alright… I’ll call Derek, he’ll meet us back at the condo… and we’ve got some information,” John said proudly.

====================
====================
“Where the hell were you?” were the five words which met Derek Reese as he strolled into the condo. “Why the hell was your phone off, Reese?” Sarah demanded.

Derek stopped at the door and calmly tossed his keys onto the table and threw his olive green military jacket over a chair.

“I was out. Running recon.” He kept looking at the table as he took his pistol out from a back holster and laid it down on the table, rubbing his lower back. “That’s what you told me to do.” He looked at her, ready for the challenge.

“We could have used you.”

“Your new metal friend here,” he waved over towards the wall, not sure where the spec ops terminator was, “can more than take care of it.” He looked her down and up from toe to head. “Looks like he took care-”

“One more word, Derek,” she threatened. What the hell is up with him? She demanded to know. He vanished for days on end in LA, comes back, and is in some f’ing pissy mood.

He wasn’t much paying attention because he finally saw the metal skull.

“What the hell is that thing doing here?” He jabbed his finger out and was ready to take it outside and burn it in the street if he must. “Sarah, you burn those. What the hell is it doing here… out in the God damned open?” he hissed, eyes raging.

“Yeah, and who the hell is going to come in and see it?”

“And what if,” he took a step closer, “that damn thing is transmitting or something! Damnit, did you at least take the chip out.”

“We didn’t have the tools.” Someone shouted from the other room.

Derek ignored Alex for a minute and he and Sarah took it upon themselves to battle this out with a war of wills. Staring. It was something both were experts in.

“You two need to calm down,” John snapped as he entered the room, Cameron behind him and then Alex behind her.

“Nice little collection of metal you have going for you, John,” Derek sneered at the young general as he kept his body tensed and eyes locked on the woman in front of him. He could feel the little pumps of adrenaline and the little bit of heat on his skin as vessels dilated and blood rushed out to his muscles.

John took a step until he was in front of his mother and uncle. He was split evenly between them, not taking either side; he couldn’t. Damnit I need them both, they need to stop this, he yelled to himself.

His head on a swivel he kept talking and turning back to one and then the other with every other word. He made it very clear this bullshit had to stop.

He didn’t care who broke off first and somehow both broke their stares and angry glares simultaneously, surprising John and even the machines.

Derek took a delicate step back and then threw himself on the end of the U shaped sofa. He didn’t care if he looked like a Neanderthal by going over the back and getting his dusty shoes all over the leather.

Derek took a little solace in seeing the look John gave his new machine fighter. He could tell his nephew was pissed that yet again in the care of the machine, she had been inches from death. And Derek, judging by the look of her hand and some of the bandages on her cheek, had been a lot closer than a few inches.

And he swore if anything happened-

“We have bigger issues to deal with. I don’t know if you all have been keeping up with the news, but Cameron-” Derek grunted disgust at her name, John ignored him “-and I found some stuff out this afternoon.”

“We found where we believe Skynet may have their base of operations for San Diego.” Cameron stated.

“We should just shoot them if they’re responsible for the war.” Derek opined.

He again wanted to kill Carwin and Wells.

“They’re not responsible for the war,” Alex interjected. “Skynet was.”

Derek slapped his knee, looked off and rolled his eyes. “Come on Sarah.” He focused on the leader. “Don’t tell me if you couldn’t kill them… stop time travel or whatever monstrosity of technology they develop… if you could kill people who bring about destruction… shit, the nuclear bomb scientists, wouldn’t you?” He leaned forward to force an answer, but seeing she wouldn’t, content to stare at him and then look away, he sat back and muttered, “I know I would… and we don’t know what they’ll do, what this third faction wants. It’s machines. That kind of means they want one thing.” He pointed at Cameron. “They want us all dead.”

He could still feel those cold eyes of a hard as nuclear nails woman digging into him, trying to rip, claw him apart as violently and quickly as possible.

“We can interrogate the AI on the neural net chip. Find out what Skynet knows about the two,” Alex said.

“Skynet doesn’t have them,” Sarah said to no one. “You said it,” she directed towards the machine’s back.

Alex went and grabbed the head. It didn’t take an advanced neural net processor to tell the four others Alex didn’t trust two of them to be around the skull or let it out of his possession now that Derek was back.

“That’s correct. But we can find out what they know.”

“Whatever is going on here,” John began, “we need to focus. I don’t know if any of you all watched the news… I saw some video on my cell phone about the carnage you…” Sarah wasn’t paying attention, “mom! You and Alex left in Coronado. They’re going to assume the building and car chase were connected and the DHS and FBI and who knows who else will classify us as domestic terrorists. That’s the last thing we need right now.” John concluded.

“It is likely Skynet has penetrated into the relevant federal agencies,” Cameron said. “From the information Captain Planck provided on the activities Tech Com believed they would involve themselves in the past, it is likely they have at least mid-level employees in DHS, FBI, and possibly others.”

“So we’re going to have the FBI on us… again… and DHS. Great.” Sarah spat out. Running in the 1999s had been difficult enough, but eight years of technology and computerization had made it incredibly difficult to hide. Then with DHS being formed, Patriot Act, and so many other expansions of law enforcement agencies, this was the last thing Sarah needed on her mind. She’d spent months researching the new laws and agencies after time jumping. “What about the DOD?”

‘Domestic terrorist’… I’ve been called worse, she thought.

“The Department of Defense may take an interest since we sort of smashed up a valuable civie contractor,” Derek said. “Who knows what black ops units they have running around?”

“That is correct.” Cameron said.

Alex nodded.

“We just need to find where those two went and end this… Sarah, I don’t say this often…” Derek felt sick almost saying it, “but we don’t have enough information. We thought Skynet might be protecting them, but they’re not. If that thing over there thinks that the other group took them that might be it. We should go back to LA.” He did feel sick. “Then we can figure out what to do. Maybe there was something from the stuff me and my team found? A link? A company?” Running away was not something Derek Reese liked to do after going on the attack. But he hadn't survived for sixteen years with Terminators by being stupid, either.

“And what are their goals?” Sarah asked, referring to this third faction.

“Death! Kill us all.” Derek mumbled.

“Derek is correct. We’re not completely aware of the entirety of their plans but we can assume it is similar to Skynet’s.”

“Great thing going there in that future,” Derek sarcastically observed, “in mine we just killed the machines. Then you, John, started reprogramming them. I wasn’t there long enough to see the mistake of that… but we saw it here.”

“Derek!” John yelled. “Enough.”

“Derek’s right,” Sarah spoke up. She could see her son as surprised as she was.

“We don’t have enough information. We need to get out of the city and return to Los Angeles. Then we need to find these two and… we can’t let them live.” She looked down at her feet then back up to her son. “I’m sorry, John but if they’re responsible for Skynet technologies we can end this.”

Motioning with both hands for John to listen to his mother, he thanked her and waited for John’s response. He didn’t think his nephew was making the right decision but he didn’t want to see mother against son, either. But this was bigger than a little family squabble. John would get over it.

“That’s unacceptable, my mission was to-”

“I don’t care, metal,” Derek shot through his teeth, a bit of spittle ejecting from his mouth. “You almost got us killed twice already in two days.”

"Maybe it was a mistake involving you," Alex conceded. "By myself I would not have to worry about how fragile humans are." His eyes narrowed at Derek.

John saw both were one word from fighting the other, and he was strangely relieved the person Derek was challenging was a machine which could shot restraint and not backhand the uncle and break his neck like it was nothing.

Before Alex and Derek flew off into a raging argument, Cameron stepped in to offer her opinion.

“I agree with Sarah and Derek-”

“Cameron, after…” he lowered his voice and hoped Cameron could read emotions in a someone’s eyes, “after what you told me-”

“John.” She held up her hand to stop him. “I let you finish. I was not afforded that same consideration.” She looked at Sarah. “While Sarah is correct that killing the two scientists may be beneficial, the captain is correct in saying that it will not benefit the resistance in the long term. If they are still alive there is still opportunity for rescue. We should try and save them.”

With his back to his mom and Derek, they couldn’t see what he mouthed to Cameron. Cameron acknowledged with just a small tilt of the head anyone else except for John would have missed.

He turned back around. “Like Cameron said. They are more valuable to us in the long term. And we’re not like…” he was going to say ‘machines’ but not now, “like Skynet where we murder people because… because that isn’t an option.” He held out his hand for Alex to give him the skull, which he did so without hesitation. “Cameron and Alex will tell me what they plan to do with this… if it’s safe,” he looked over his shoulder at them both, but focused on Cameron, “if it’s safe then we’ll do it… then we decide what to do after that.”

“I’m making this decision-”

“And when do I make the decisions?” he shot at his mother in a tone which surprised even himself. He threw his hands up and ran them through his hair, shaking his head and looking at nothing. “I could tell you wanted me to do more and now here we are. They’ve told me a lot about the future-”

“They lie, John. They lie, that’s what they all do.” Derek snapped, shooting to his feet. “You don’t know what that thing will do to you if it’s around you for any longer.” He jabbed his finger at Cameron. “And your head is being filled with this… this shit that machines will ever, ever be reliable… you weren’t there when a Trip Eight took a God damned machine gun and gunned down a dozen good men and women.” Now he wasn’t yelling, but telling John. “I saw one kill good soldiers… and this one,” he pointed, almost nervous, at Cameron, “already tried to kill you once before. They are the same… they may look different, act different now, but deep down… they are all the same. Every single one of them.”

Derek and John were themselves a single word, a small look of contempt- a small anything to justify it- from physically fighting each other. A year of stress, borderline distrust, and Derek’s contemptuous snubbing of John was reaching a breaking point.

Sarah was on her feet faster than even a machine.

“That won’t happen again!” Cameron yelled. “That can’t happen again!”

She yelled it in such a way that three heads snapped towards her like rubber bands. Eyes were wide and the room was deathly quiet.

“What..” Sarah started, the first to mentally shake herself back. “What…” She’d never heard the girl machine speak like that. Except once.

“She said that can’t happen again,” John jumped in furiously. He could see his machine protector had gone almost catatonic, her face more emotionless than John could have thought possible. He needed to protect her from them. He let his shoulders drop as he calmed and stepped back, closer to the machine. “She said it can’t happen again, and I believe her. I saw the repairs.” That was only a half-truth, he knew, but it would hold. “No one in this room is the enemy.” He locked eyes with his mother. He could tell she saw the concern for her safety more than distrust in him. Then at Derek he said, “No one here is the enemy… right?”

There was a silence and thick tension it was almost visible. John saw his uncle silently fuming, trying disparately to keep himself calm, under control. For a second John swore he saw… admiration… in Derek’s glistening eye.

His mother, not so much. Her attention was divided between John and Cameron with an occasional scowl thrown at Alex. She was mad. Whatever had happened last night had changed John. She knew her son would defend the machines, but not like this. This had been something she hadn’t seen since the junkyard. Even then she knew her son would never have shot. His voice had been unsteady and she had known then she could have stepped right up and yanked Cameron’s chip and smashed it under the hell of her boot and John would have done nothing.

He’d have stood, gun pointing, and done nothing but watch.

If today’s John was exchanged for the John of a year ago… she would have been afraid he could have pulled the trigger.

“We all need to re-evaluate this,” Sarah said hiding a mix of fear and angry under a calm voice only a mother could summon in times like these. “John…” she waited for him to look at her “John!” She hissed. Finally he looked. “Derek…” Derek was easy, he looked right away. “We’re going to compromise… John… we’re going to compromise. John… Cameron… Alex… you all go over and get what you need for this chip, interrogation, whatever it is. How long do you need?”

“General Connor has the equipment necessary in his computer bag,” Alex said. “We can be ready in twenty minutes.”

Sensing what his mother was hinting at, John took the opportunity she was granting him to finish her proposal, claim it as his own, have a victory. Start to be that leader.

“Alright… come with me and we’ll get the stuff from my room. If this doesn’t work we’ll go back to LA tomorrow.”

Each of the four agreed quickly, without hesitation, without reservation.

The general had stepped up as the mother graciously took a half-step back.

As Cameron and Alex left and Derek turned back to towards the door, John and his mother exchanged a knowing look. He didn’t have to thank her and she didn’t ask for it.




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


So let me know how that was. I was a bit hesitant to have the car chase scene so long, but I think it worked.
There were six terminators there- two Alex fought (one he ripped the head from, one he threw into a neighbor's house), and two in each vehicle. So... lots of terminators and that's a reason why Alex is a bit casual with picking out and tossing to the side the spare terminator parts. Plus no one would really know they're terminator parts, IMO.


Next chapter there will be Cameron and Alex going into the mind of the T-889. In this story it is impossible to re-program Terminators in the manner it was put forward in the TV show so if they want information they need to 'go in.' The movie The Cell is sort of inspiration for that.

Alex, John, and Cameron will also go on a little adventure after John discovers a few abnormalities in a San Diego PD police report. Cameron will "cry" on this adventure, but not because John yelled at her. Cameron will also be attacked and John will come fact-to-face with one of his enemies from the future.

We'll also meet David in a few chapters during the epilogue.

[kclcmdr]

Hmmmm ... so John Connor is slowly taking command and Cameron is ... changing ... ?
Interesting...

[Posbi]

Bryan, one, well, stupid question, I guess: is it the Greys or the Grays?

Edit: I found it, apparently it's the Grays. However, the Terminator wiki is a bit ambitious on them.

The Grays were humans that helped Skynet. They worked to make Series 888 terminators more human-like. Four were captured and tried as war criminals by the Resistance; however, a fifth named Fischer eluded capture and was sent back to 2007.

Uh, so does that mean there were only five of them, like, in total? I always thought they were a more common phenomenon, like the perverted Terminator universe version of the French collaborateurs?

...and yes, I need the info because I'll make use of some present and future Grays in "Evil be Thou My Good".

[Bryan]

Originally Posted by Posbi

Bryan, one, well, stupid question, I guess: is it the Greys or the Grays?

My spellchecker has it with an "a" but I've seen the "e" spelling, too. I try and spell it with an "a" but sometimes a few "e" spellings slip in.

kclcdmr: Yes, John is taking more charge after learning a bit more about the future. I don't know if it is Cameron "changing" so much as it being more self-confident after the repairs to her chip by the liquid metal. She doesn't have to worry about going "bad" (I never really liked that plot point, personally in the show) so she can be a bit more confident in her actions. It's kind of a bit of a reverse where she once taught other machines to be confident in their nature now it's her having to take pointers (somewhat) from a former 'student'.

[Visi0nary]

Originally Posted by Bryan

“The neural net processor may be viable… we may be able to link directly into the chip, overwhelm its defenses, and… interrogate whatever AI is currently on this chip.”

“Interrogate the AI?”

“I told you, Skynet is very different. Its learned. Its soldiers have defenses to prevent any sort of core personality re-programming. The core personality matrices and neural net key logarithms are too complex to reprogram in a conventional sense… with a keyboard.”

Originally Posted by Bryan

In this story it is impossible to re-program Terminators in the manner it was put forward in the TV show so if they want information they need to 'go in.' The movie The Cell is sort of inspiration for that.

You've tweaked a lot of the "science" of the two genres in this series of fics, but I think this is the one area that gives you the most room for really exploring exactly what makes these machines what they are. I mean you can explore not just telepathy (and possibly mind control) but psychic projection and all sorts of other interesting sci-fi concepts here.

Since you've already indicated you planned to do something with the holoband from Caprica you could even use this as a vehicle for silent communication between human (or humaform Cylon) and machine.

No matter what direction you go, this is a great idea with a lot of potential. Smart thinking!

[Bryan]

Some of the holoband stuff was inspiration for going into the mind of the T-889. The way I am looking at it is that 'reprogramming' a sapient individual is basically trying to brainwash them. It doesn't really work. It was sort of the same in BCAB where they had to talk to and convince the Cylon Centurions to join them. To get a Terminator working for Skynet to join you you have to talk to it and convince it... then trust it that it isn't lying to you.

However these temporal agents are the best of the best of Skynet terminators (and unfortunately this one went down like a mook, lol). But I don't want to say too much.

I think when Vansen and Rachel show back up that might help explain things a bit more, too. I think that will show the 'different' Skynet.

I think in story time the rest of it will occur over 2 more days. John, Alex, and Cameron will go on an adventure in the very early morning the day after the car chase and going into the terminator's head, then some stuff happens to lead up to the final battle for this story. Not too much left.

[Tweeky]

Now that Cameron's been "Healed", and is realising her "Feelings" for John, John is getting a clue about Cameron and Sarah's realising her worst nightmare, ala John and Cameron doing the horizontal tango; does this mean that John and Cameron are going to "Knock boots" as after all Cameron did mention that in the future some humans and terminators would have sexual relations.

[Bryan]

Originally Posted by Tweeky

Now that Cameron's been "Healed", and is realising her "Feelings" for John, John is getting a clue about Cameron and Sarah's realising her worst nightmare, ala John and Cameron doing the horizontal tango; does this mean that John and Cameron are going to "Knock boots" as after all Cameron did mention that in the future some humans and terminators would have sexual relations.

In this particular story? No. I'll just say there won't be any professions of love like that. It'll be more subtle and there won't be time for them to do anything... intimate because the next few chapters take place over about 48 to 72 hours and there is a lot of stuff packed into them.

But I think it can be safe to assume what type of relationship they have after the future scene.

He might say he loves her (and her him, first) in the next story. I have a little dream sequence for Sarah in the epilogue where John is surrounded by Terminators but I don't want to focus too much on Sarah getting all uppity. There won't be time for that until the next story, not with how much stuff is going to happen and Sarah is going to uh, be kinda pissed, annoyed, and very upset at what she's going to have to do to get Wells and Carwin back.