/dev/null
The world is a stochastic lens of jagged glass; actinic light cuts at her, glinting off eccentric surfaces. It fuzzes the optics briefly but the body performs as it always does; every move is frictionless. Her breath is ambient thunder. She hears nothing else.
She runs, substructure pushing against the earth with tensile strength that powers the body forward like a bullet chased by expanding gas. With her left hand she shields Him. With her right she grabs at air solid as an iron bar, takes the illusion of torque and uses it to hurl them another stride over the surface. Again. And repeat. Her lungs take in the whole sky and breathe it back out; her heart pumps an ocean of blood.
Time, now. One more stride and the wings will gather and strike the air; the tether will snap. Sudden smell of ozone, metal-burn: she holds Him close. She reaches, she kicks.
A sound splits the world; it's His voice, flinging them back in the instant of ascent. She shouts in reply, a protest, as the bitstream overwrites itself and returns the unwanted output to its origin.
Clean file: all reads return EOF.
Systems hum on their force-feedback treadmill. The millisecond clings like a drop of liquid to an empty glass. It will be a long time falling.
This John Connor is asleep. This Sarah Connor lies awake but silent. There's nothing within sensory range larger than than the family of rodents foraging under the steps outside the timber-frame structure they use at present as home base.
Cameron's slow tread is quieter than the mice; nor does it pause. Her breath, undisturbed, sighs in her throat in the dark.
[end