Title: Final Iteration
Title: Final Iteration
Author: C. Isaac
Character/Pairing: Cameron, Derek, and Sarah with some John.
Rating: T for Teen
Warnings: This story has a character death. If you don't want to see that, don't read it.
Summary: What happens when a mission is failed and a contingency is put into place?
Disclaimer: I do not own anything involved with Terminator or the Sarah Connor Chronicles. All rights belong to their respective owners, and I am making no profit from this.
Author Notes: Thank you to sabaceanbabe, metroid13, and nikwdhmos for all your assistance in beta reading and providing me with such good feedback.
Final Iteration
The T-888 had waited on the roof of the Colony Inn on Vineland Avenue for three days. The first day had been a Sunday and the quarry had not come. The second day had been a Monday, and the shot was not clear. It estimated that the target would follow the same projected route, so it waited instead of potentially missing. The third day had been Tuesday, and using the high powered rifle it had stolen, it completed its mission.
John was smiling at his mother as she drove him and Cameron down Vineland Avenue towards the Campo de Cahuenga High School. He sat in the shotgun position with Cameron directly behind him. They drove in a new Jeep Wrangler that had replaced the one lost two months ago to Sarkissian's car bomb.
They had the top down. It was clear and cool outside in the mid February day. Wind whipped their hair as they zipped down the busy avenue. John laughed at something he had said.
"I don't understand. Why is that funny?" Cameron had asked.
Even Sarah had laughed at the cyborg's reaction.
Her last thoughts of John were of him laughing. She never could remember the joke after that, just Cameron's reaction.
Sarah Connor never understood why she could not remember the joke. It bothered her in the dark of the night that she could not remember her son's last words.
The .30-06 round smashed through the windshield and then penetrated John Connor's right temple due to how he was turned to face his mother. It exploded out from beneath his left ear and ricocheted off the front of the Terminator's coltan alloy sternum due to the downward angle of the shot. Cameron was sprayed with bits of brain, bone, and blood.
The Jeep skidded to a halt, riding halfway up onto the median. Cars honked and swerved around them.
"John! No! NO!" She screamed and grasped her son to her breast. His brain leaked out into his mother's lap. Sarah tried to wipe the blood away, as if cleaning the wound would reveal unscarred flesh beneath the flood of red that came from him. His eyes were wide and empty. Empty of life and laughter.
"Oh." Cameron had said. Masked in John's blood, she watched.
"No! God damn you! Kill me! Take me!" Sarah Connor screamed her rage and grief to the heavens and nothing fulfilled her wish to help her join her son in the next world.
Cameron hopped out of the Jeep and then pushed Sarah into the passenger's seat with John's body. Cameron pulled herself up behind the wheel and restarted the Jeep.
"Why him? Why? It should have been me!" Sarah wept into John's hair.
"Why?" Cameron finally answered Sarah. "This is the thirteenth iteration. Unlucky number. There will be a fourteenth."
"What?"
They buried John Connor in the back yard. He had been buried there five times previously. This was six.
"Watch her. She will attempt suicide," Cameron had told Derek.
"How do you know?"
"She always does."
Cameron took over the garage. The Jeep was burned in effigy of what had happened in it and replaced with a mid-80's Mazda pickup. She exiled it to the curb as a place to park.
Cinderblocks, mounds of sand, and heavy workman's tools soon were the only occupants of the garage aside from the omnipresent Terminator.
Derek watched from the doorway one night. "What are you doing?"
"Sand casting," said Cameron.
"John's dead. Why do we need you anymore?"
"Without me, there is no hope. And for this, I would kill you if you tried to stop me. I have twice before."
Derek blinked. "Twice? And the other times?"
"Someone else does it."
When he would watch after that, he was mostly silent. Occasionally he would ask her about what she was doing. She'd give a brief answer that usually satisfied his curiosity.
Cameron washed dirt and sand from a small cog in the sink of the kitchen. It had not come cleanly out of the sand based mold she had used and she had doubts about its quality.
The report of a gunshot from a nearby room interrupted her inspection of the cog. She pocketed it and walked into Sarah's room, where the sound had come from.
Derek was sprawled out on the bed with Sarah, struggling with a gun. There was a hole in the ceiling. Cameron stepped towards them and pulled the gun out of Sarah's grasp.
"Please do not try to do that again." Cameron removed the remaining ammunition from the weapon.
Sarah spoke with emotion that the machine equated with bitterness and grief. "I've got nothing left anymore. Neither do you. Why do you care if I live or die?"
"John would care. That should be enough."
"John's dead you fucking tin can." Derek scowled at the machine.
"Yes. That does not make it any less true."
They left Sarah locked in her room staring at the few photos she had ever bothered to take of John.
"She misses him very much."
"So, you do understand that much, huh?" Derek stood with Cameron in the living room.
"Yes. She always cries. Thank you for stopping her. We need her."
"Huh. Welcome, I guess."
Cameron pressed the cog into Derek's hand. "Throw this away. It is defective."
Things she could not steal she paid for with stolen diamonds fenced wherever she could get money. Forges cost money. Food that Sarah refused to work for cost money.
Derek frequently came home late in the evening. Sometimes with a depletion in ammo stores. Sometimes covered in blood. Sometimes limping or clutching an arm.
Cameron had asked what he was doing once. He had replied, cryptically, that he was slowing down SkyNet. He did not interfere in her mission, so she did not interfere with his.
They had come to a sort of grudging peace. They talked in short, clipped sentences to each other. Sometimes he would watch her work with a beer dangling from one hand at the door to the garage. She would take time from her work to stitch wounds and extract the occasional bullet out of him.
She had noticed that Derek had increased the usage of the female pronoun and her name by over seventy-nine percent. This was calculated to be a good thing.
It was when she estimated that Derek would accept the request that Cameron walked into the living room with several large jugs of orange juice and an IV stand. "Derek, I need your blood."
"I don't know how to take that."
"I know. I would rather not harm you, and can take it at a measured pace to insure your good health. I have brought orange juice."
"OJ makes everything better?"
"OJ makes everything better," she agreed.
Sarah was drunk. Cameron's olfactory sensors understood it as soon as Sarah came into the garage. It had grown more and more common. Derek had said that Sarah was drowning her sorrows.
Drowning in a 16 ounce bottle was statistically improbable, so the remark was placed into a list of standard human sayings. Cameron added a definition of 'drinking heavily to alleviate pain and/or grief'.
Sarah swayed back and forth in the doorway to the garage. "Still working on your project?"
"Yes. Please stay in the doorway or go outside," warned Cameron.
"What are you doing?"
"What must be done."
"Thank you, Tin Miss. What, exactly, are you doing?"
"I am preparing a synthetic compound I have made from blood donated by Derek Reese."
Sarah stepped into the garage and looked at the large form underneath a blanket in the center of the room. "How long has it been since you failed?"
"Six months, thirteen days, four hours, and thirty two minutes."
"And that means nothing to you, does it? That Judgment Day will come and only your kind will be left?" She swayed back and forth again unsteadily.
"If you fall into the vat, I'll let you explain to Derek why this will take another two months."
"You didn't answer me."
"You're drunk. Will you remember the answer?"
"Sure."
"There are always contingencies. John foresaw that this might happen."
Sarah laughed, her voice an oscillating warble due to the drink. "And what is your contingency?"
"In three days you'll see."
She had just finished cutting open her leg when Derek came into the garage.
"Sarah's been muttering about how John knew he was going to die. What the hell did you say to her?" His tone was demanding and the scowl on his features showed he was determined to get an answer.
"The truth." Cameron extracted a small, wrapped package from the hollow of her leg.
Derek said nothing but instead watched the process of removing the item from the bag and laying it on the workbench. It was the chip of another terminator.
"It would be more efficient if you could stitch this closed." Cameron offered the medical kit she had brought into the garage. "Please."
"You haven't answered me." The human stared at the kit without taking it.
"I did. You want elaboration. You can listen while you work."
He took the kit and knelt to the side of the terminator. Derek began stitching the flap of skin on the Terminator's bare leg shut. "I've left you alone. Hell, I've even helped you. I think time's come for an explanation."
"There was a contingency plan in case John was killed in this iteration before Judgment Day. It is not the first time it has happened, but it has not been the only result. He has lived before."
"And what was the plan?" Derek asked as he continued to work.
She explained to him what she had created and why. What the plan given to her by John had been, and why she had been the one chosen to see each iteration through to its end.
Derek listened with fascination that ascended into horror. "This is bullshit. He didn't want this."
"Want and need are two different things, Derek. There has to be hope. Always hope."
"Mom?"
Sarah was staring at her alarm clock. She had hit snooze three times, but Cameron had told her to be up early this morning. Discounting the chance that she'd actually heard John's voice, she decided to roll over and go back to sleep.
"Mom?"
Sarah sat up. "John?"
"Mom!" He was at the door to the bedroom. He was smiling at her.
Tears blurred Sarah's vision. "Oh God, John!" She was in his arms, standing in the doorway and running a hand through his long brown hair. "I had a nightmare. A horrible, horrible nightmare. I love you so much. So much."
"I love you too, mom." He squeezed her so hard she felt her ribs protest.
She pulled back from him and looked into his face. It seemed older. The face of a man. It was John without a doubt, but it was the man he would become and not the boy he was. "John? Is something wrong?"
"No, mom. I'm back. I'm sorry I was gone so long." John kissed her forehead.
Cameron came to stand behind him then. "This iteration will now have John Connor to lead the resistance."
Sarah pulled away from John. "What have you done?"
"I have implemented the contingency plan created by your son in a previous iteration of the timeline. I have replaced him with a construct similar to my design with a chip given memories by him and other iterations."
Sarah launched herself at John. She slapped and punched and kicked. "You're not my son! You're a lie! A machine!"
After he let the first few blows land, John grabbed Sarah's wrists and pinned her to the bed. "I know what I am." He held her there and the two stared at each other. "I'm going to let you go now, Sarah."
There was a pregnant moment as Sarah sat up and then stared at the false John, before doubling over and vomiting into the wastebasket near her bed. It was not the first time that Sarah had done so on seeing the contingency.
John's features pulled into a frown. "I'm sorry. This is how it has to be."
"Does he always die?" Her voice was a choked whisper from the bile in her throat.
"No," said Cameron as she remained standing in the doorway. "Most iterations he accomplishes his task and lives beyond the point of sending me back. Other timelines exist where he has fallen, and this has been necessary."
"How many times has this happened?"
"We'd rather not say," said John.
"How many more times must it happen?"
"Until there never is a SkyNet and the final iteration is achieved."