Time didn't exist in the war. At least, not when the time of day was concerned. To Kyle, time was just numbers; seconds, minutes, hours. A combination designating when the next mission was due. It didn't matter any other way. The sky hardly ever changed, even the slightest peek of natural light was blanketed by heavy, dark clouds of ash. Kyle never knew what daylight used to look like before the war – he wasn't born in that time. It was a fantasy story to him. It was always night here after Judgement Day. Dark, cold, unsafe, and scary.
Kyle crawled through the remains of a playground, blending with the ashes and ruin that littered the ground and caught on his Resistance uniform. The air smelt of thick dust, dirt, and burnt metal. He was careful not to move too quickly, or too loudly, as he made his way for the top of a hill to recon the zone ahead. He pulled out a long-range rifle, and as he shouldered it, his elbow knocked against a human skull beside him. He watched it roll, tumbling down the slope of the hill before burying itself into a heap of ash and scrap.
Quickly recovering focus, Kyle sighted into the scope of the rifle and looked out one-hundred metres ahead, into a large field. Piles of debris littered around the area like broken walls. Nothing moved. It was a graveyard – of course, with billions of the human population vaporised by the bombs, everywhere Kyle looked was a graveyard. While he grew up in this atmosphere of stillness, the silence was more unsettling than an army of Terminators.
Like himself, any smart human survivor sought refuge underground in sewage tunnels. While nowhere was "safe", it was the wisest place to hide from HKs, better than abandoned buildings exposed on the surface. Tech-Com HQ was located in an abandoned fallout bunker hidden under the torn city of Los Angeles. Skynet always tried to search for the heart of the Resistance, recently sending Terminators to seek out and infiltrate pockets of Resistance camps, wiping out every living thing inside. While their efforts were slow, Skynet was getting closer to finding HQ. Time was running out for the Resistance.
"Do you see it?" Asked Connor, leader of Tech-Com. Kyle hadn't even heard him approaching.
Kyle peered into the scope once more and scanned further into the field, finding their objective. Tall concrete fences boxed a perimeter, its entrance lined with a glowing red field of energy. A Skynet prisoner camp. The mission was to infiltrate the camp, clear it out, and then call for evac. Easier said than done, but John was oddly confident that they would succeed.
Kyle nodded, whispering, "Target acquired."
"How many guards stationed on top of the fences? Also, if I was a Terminator sneaking up on you like that, you would be dead. Your stealth is sloppy."
"Seven guards," Kyle replied, nonchalant. "Guess I'm not cut out for recon after all."
Kyle caught something at the corner of his eye: a bright light slithering across the street ahead. Kyle did not acknowledge the existence of daytime because he knew that what he saw was not sunlight. In this world, sunlight was a trap; if you saw it, it didn't mean warmth and safety, it meant danger. It meant certain death. Kyle found a HK aircraft hovering thirty metres above the ground near the camp, searching for trespassers.
The HK floated still for a moment, its thrusters lifting dirt off the ground in whirlwinds of dust as its beam of light scanned the ground. The scan lasted five minutes before it roamed off, deeper into the city. Kyle had thought that was the end of it, until he felt a breeze brush against his hair and cheeks, and heard a soft whine of jet engines. Kyle looked up, it was a second HK, heading toward their position, the light skimming across the playground like a predator sniffing out its food.
John instinctively rolled to his left, burrowing himself into cover under a large, circular piece of metal. Kyle followed. The manoeuvre disrupted the dusty ground beneath them which sent puffs of ash rolling out into the open. The flying behemoth flinched, pointing its burning luminescence over their hiding spot in one quick movement, and Kyle could see the edge of the metal outline with white. He held his breath and froze.
The two remained there on their backs, lifeless, like the rest of their surroundings. A sting crawled up Kyle's left cheek, but he did not dare move. Twenty seconds felt like forever until the HK finally lost interest and moved on. Kyle exhaled, but the two soldiers remained hidden for a moment longer until they felt it was clear again.
As they scrambled out, Kyle inspected the sensation on his cheek with his gloved hand, which came away with a dark streak of blood. He must have scratched it from rolling under the metal so quickly and carelessly. Nothing serious, he would get it cleaned up back at base. He looked at John, who was brushing the ash off himself, smiling.
"What are you so chipper for, Connor?" Kyle asked, bewildered.
"Roundabouts," John beamed.
Kyle raised an eyebrow, "Round-a-what?"
"Roundabouts," John indicated the object on the ground. "They were these things in that you sat on as it spun around in circles, and sometimes they spun so fast that it felt like gravity was trying to pull you off. And if you weren't holding on tight enough, it'd send you flying."
"Sounds dangerous." Kyle replied.
"My mom thought so too," John grinned. "I always liked how the world looked while spinning that fast, everywhere blending together like some kind of smudged painting." He gazed out into the dark scenery ahead of them, his eyes following the path of the HK as it headed for the prisoner camp. "Being a kid back then," he continued, "sometimes the dangerous stuff was the most fun. Back when dangerous wasn't anything more than a broken arm or scraped knees over reckless play."
Kyle looked at John, and he could see a hint of longing in his face. Unlike Kyle, John was one of the many survivors who had lived before Judgement Day. He had seen how the world once was, its thriving beauty, and he had watched it all burn to the ground. Kyle thought he could see it in John's eyes sometimes, the loss of what once had been, like the memory had been permanently engraved into the man's soul.
"I wish I could have seen it," Kyle said. "I mean, I've heard stories, but to actually see it, to know what it all looked like before this happened..."
"Here, speaking of which, I want to show you something." John fumbled through the pockets of his uniform. He pulled out a thick piece of paper which was folded in half, and handed it to Kyle.
Kyle held it in his hand, "What is it?"
"A picture. Open it up, you'll see."
Kyle unfolded it, and his jaw dropped slightly. He had never seen so much colour before – a little faded, perhaps, but enough to stand out in contrast to this environment. In the picture was a woman, with a large German Shepherd sitting beside her. The main feature that drew Kyle's notice was her green eyes, seeming to stare straight back into his. She had light brown hair tied back which fell loosely to her face and shoulders; a small, rounded nose; pronounced cheekbones, and full lips. She looked young her early twenties, and strikingly beautiful. Kyle had never seen anyone like her before.
"That's Sarah."
"Your mom?" Kyle straightened, quickly snapping out of his deep concentration. "Sarah Connor? The Sarah Connor?"
John nodded, "The one and only."
"She's..." Kyle hesitated. Beautiful? No, I can't say that, that's too weird. He handed the photo back to John. "She looks...nice. Here."
John chuckled, waving Kyle's offer away, "It's yours."
"What?"
"I want you to keep it, look after it for me."
Kyle shook his head, "John, no, I can't take this."
"Why not?" John pouted.
"It's not mine to keep, I mean, it's your mom – it's all you have left..."
Their debate was interrupted by the distant sound of a tank, sending rumbles through the ground beneath Kyle and John's feet as the HK crunched through bone and debris. Thankfully, it would not reach them before they were underground again.
John looked at Kyle. "You said that you wished to see how the world once was, what it looked like. Well, this photo is the closest thing to it."
John gave Kyle a firm slap on the back, then continued on his way, treading carefully through the remains of his childhood. Kyle gripped the photo gently by both edges, and gazed into it once more. Now, he noticed something else about it, something that made Sarah appear to glow.
Sunlight.
Then, for a long moment, Kyle Reese forgot about the machines.