No man's lands
The land was not claimed by anyone, neither the human resistance nor the free machines or even by SkyNet. Normally it's only inhabitants were animals and from time to time groups of nomads that tried to stay away from the war and hide from machines and the Union military alike. But for the last twelve hours an unusual level of activity had disturbed the peace of the no man's land.
Five Hunter-Killers and more than a two dozens of smaller spying drones were patrolling the rocky, fissured landscape, continuously scanning it's many craggy hills and canyons with their highly developed sensors. Until now their efforts had not been crowned with success.
The object of their tireless search was crouching under an rocky ledge and had not moved for almost seven hours. With the patience only a cyborg could muster the figure waited for it's pursuers to give up their chase. But the hunters were also machines and possessed of the same inhuman patience. The terminator had the appearance of a good looking, perhaps twenty years old, athletic man of Asian descent, with brown eyes and a mop of ruffles, dark hair. He was wearing a gray overall and in his left hand he held a flat stone with a sharp edge, his only weapon. Even for a terminator that was not much, especially if his adversaries were other machines.
The cyborg listened to the soft, whirring sound of a drone that was hovering right above the ledge. The mechanical spy was not much larger than a basket ball and searched it's surroundings with a red glowing laser eye. After scanning the surface of the the cliff without finding anything, the drone lowered itself, sinking beyond the edge to search under massive rock. Suddenly a stone was hurling through the air, striking the drone, shattering it's "eye".
The piece of rock had been thrown with such force that it's sharp edge sliced through the drone's hull and stabbed deep into it's electronic entrails. The impact sent the small machine hurling back where it collided with another rock, sending out a shower of sparks before finally crashing to the ground.
The cyborg shot out from under the ledge and sprinted to the exit of the narrow canyon, trying to get out of a hiding place that was turning fast into a trap. Just before he could get out into the open, a shadow fell on him, a Hunter-Killer shutting out the light of the sun. The massive machine was hovering right above the terminator and if there was any question if it had detected him, it was answered when it rotated one of it's plasma cannons around to aim directly at the cyborg. The terminator managed to narrowly dodge the plasma bolt that hit the ground where he had been standing a moment ago, making good use of his superhuman reflexes, the plasma itself hot enough to melt the solid rock. Unfortunately the attack had forced him back into the canyon. Now that his pursuers had found him it was useless as a hiding place and there was almost no room to maneuver. With something akin to fear the machine looked for any way to escape, without success. The Hunter-Killer took aim again.
Before the drone could open fire, a missile streaked toward it, hitting one of the engines. The unexpected attack from nowhere made the HK veer out of control, it's engine exploding in an enormous ball of fire. The burning aircraft spiraled towards the ground and crashed with an earth shattering kaboom somewhere out of sight.
The cyborg wasted no time. He jumped over the patch of still glowing rocks with a powerful leap and left the ravine to get onto open ground. At least as much as that was possible in a landscape consisting almost entirely of chains of rocky hills in different sizes and a natural labyrinth of gorges between them. The possibilities were very limited. Either use the labyrinth or try to stay on its walls and be an easy target. But at the moment it seemed that the mechanical servants of SkyNet had other difficulties to concern them with. The evening sky above the no man's land had turned into a battle field or an arena were monstrous gladiators were engaged in a deadly battle. Half a dozen Hunter-Killers had appeared and attacked the SkyNet forces, assisted by several smaller and sleeker drones that were considerably more maneuverable than the HKs. At least the smaller ones seemed to have no sense of self preservation, two of them ramming at full speed into the larger enemy machines.
The explosions lit the darkening sky like a second sun, almost as if time had been turned back and the daylight magically returned. An bitter dog fight ensued between the Hunter-Killers of SkyNet and the attackers. The lone cyborg had practically no knowledge about things military despite dimly remembering the he had been constructed as a machine of war. The term dogfight was something he recalled like a memory from another life though he could not tell why and how he had come to know it or how he had apparently lost so much other data.
Because the moment of surprise had cost the SkyNet forces three of their number in the first seconds of the battle the outcome was almost inevitable. The plasma guns of the attackers cut into the armored bodies of the HKs, sending them to their flaming doom like comets caught by the earth's atmosphere, hurling burning debris in every direction when they crashed into the ground and burst into pieces. The final Hunter-Killer turned to flee but the fast miniature drones literally ran circles around it, firing several missiles at him from different angles, turning it too into flaming star that quickly burned out. The smaller SkyNet drones that had assisted the HKs in their hunt were spies, not warriors, they had no on board weaponry and had been no help in the battle. They had rather tried to flee or hide from the moment of the attack, not to save themselves, being as they were rather primitive machines without will or personality of their own, but return to their master with the information they had recorded, as they had been programmed to do. The assailants had no intention of letting them get away. Even before the HKs were eliminated the miniature war drones began hunting down and destroying the robotic scouts one by one. The victorious HKs also fired on targets on the ground or close to it with their plasma cannons. The lone cyborg watched what happened without moving. He only had very basic programming, a rudimentary sense of self and while he possessed something akin to a will to live, he possessed neither the programming nor the experience to cope with the situation he was now in.
The HKs had clearly been hostile, just as the people from whose clutches he had escaped less than a day ago, how to categorize the new arrivals that had prevented him from being destroyed he did not know. A movement on a cliff above him caught his optical sensors. A huge, hulking endoskeleton appeared, at least two feet taller than the lone cyborg, his chromed shoulder twice as broad. The lone cyborgs HUD told him that this was a T-888, another tidbit of information that did not really mean anything. The fugitive only knew that the machine was dangerous as was the plasma rifle it shouldered and pointed straight at him. Until now the lone cyborg had not even known that he was hunted by ground forces as well as aircraft. The T-888, far smarter than his flying compatriots, had hid from the sight of the attackers and waited for a chance to fulfill his original mission while they were busy hunting for the scouts. The lone cyborg's highly developed but inexperienced "brain", possessed of only few extremely limited areas of knowledge his jailer had seen fit to impart to him, searched for a viable escape route, without success. The T-888 was perfectly positioned to snuff him out, he would never reach cover in time. A plasma bolt hit the grinning skull from behind, burning through the massive coltan, followed by a second bolt hitting the same point and liquifying the terminator's chip.
The T-888 fell to his knees and than on his face like a ton of bricks, smoke rising from skull that no had a certain similarity to a macabre hollowed out pumpkin. Behind the fallen giant appeared second machine, far smaller and more delicate than the first one, with glowing blue eyes and a decidedly female body shape. The female cyborg looked down on the fugitive. When she called to him her voice was carefully modulated to sound like that of a human female, different from the harsh, electronic voices of all the other terminators the lone cyborg had heard speaking until now. His own voice also sounded like that of a humans though he had only seldom used it and couldn't remember if it had always been this way. He had not even thought about it before.
"Stay where you are, I'm coming down! I mean you no harm!" The lone cyborg had learned value both his own existence and the good will of those that professed to be interested in his continued existence, at first in a primitive "do ut des" way than through rudiments of friendship. Even if some of those showing their good will to him had turned out to be not so friendly at all, the fact remained that he would have been terminated without this unknown female cyborg that was seemingly in league with the air craft that had attacked his pursuers. So, despite being unable to explain or determine exactly why, he warned her when two further T-888s appeared in her back.
"Watch out!"
Cameron turned around and looked at the terminators that were preparing to attack her. One of them was carrying a plasma rifle like the one she had just terminated, the other a taser gun. They probably had intended to capture their prey alive, destroying it only if it was unavoidable. And of course SkyNet preferred to destroy a model of the TOK series over it falling into the hands of the Free Machines. That was not surprising at all. Cameron quickly calculated the distance between herself and the two terminators that were slowly closing in on her. The plateau she and her adversaries were standing on offered only limited space to move but it would be enough. Cameron tilted her head. "Rock N' Roll." she said. The enemy machines showed no reaction to her words which was not unexpected as well. When she had heard Allison Young use that phrase before charging into battle the first time, she had commented that she preferred classical music. Allison had looked at her like she was crazy. John had later, after the battle, explained it to her and she had taken a liking to the strange battle cry.
The T-888 raised his plasma rifle aiming at her neck, a direct hit would rip of her head. That wasn't necessarily the end for a terminator, as Cromartie had demonstrated, but Cameron doubted that they would allow her the chance to be repaired or to repair herself. Before the endoskeleton could fire, Cameron had jumped, somersaulting elegantly over the terminators' head and landing behind him with catlike agility. Before he could react she delivered a powerful kick to the back that hurled him directly into the path of the taser the other T-888 had fired just that moment. The high voltage charge that coursed through his body forced the terminator to shut down and reboot. Cameron jumped over his fallen body and delivered a spinning kick to the T-888's head. The larger, ungainly machine stumbled back, Cameron grabbed the taser's cable and snapped it in two. The time the first cyborg needed for his reboot was enough for her pick up his dropped plasma rifle and hitting the second terminator square in the chest with a plasma bolt. The T-888 tumbled back once again, loosing his footing and falling over the edge. Half falling and half rolling he clattered down the mountain side and landed with a crash. Cameron blinked. That had not been planned. She had intended to defeat the enemy up here on the plateau without giving him a chance to even get close to the hunted TOK. She doubted that the T-888 was terminated, neither one plasma shot to the chest nor the fall was certain to incapacitate this notorious model. She decided to quickly eliminate the machine with second shot but before she could take aim, the heavy body of second terminator crashed into her, causing her to loose her grip in the rifle. The T-888 grabbed her around the waste, lifting her up and smashing her head first into the large rock growing out of the middle of the plateau and constituting the true peak of the entire mountain. Or rather it tried to do so. Cameron managed to bring up her legs to push back against the stone.
She carefully calculated the strength of the push, powerful enough to send the T-888, and herself, crashing to ground but not enough for them to go over the edge too. The large endoskeleton landed on it's back, her lying atop it still held by her adversaries powerful arms. Cameron activated a one of the upgrades John Henry had provided her with, drawing an extra amount of energy from her power cell, doubling her strength like the rush of adrenaline did for the proverbial mother whose child was trapped under a car, only that she had far greater conscious control over the process. In a demonstration of raw strength she forced the arms of terminator still holding her in their iron grip apart and jumped to her feet. The T-888 rose and they began to circle each other. The other terminator appeared to be more careful now, she had proofed to be a stronger and more dangerous opponent than he had anticipated. He didn't even know half of it. The T-888 attacked with a swing aimed for head which she easily dodged, kicking his legs out from under him. The huge machine went down again. Cameron was immediately upon him returning the favor he had intended for her and ramming his skull against the rocky ground with such force that he was left momentarily stunned.
She jumped up and grabbed the plasma rifle. A quick look over the edge confirmed her suspicion. The fallen T-888, damaged but far from incapacitated, had gotten to his feet again and was advancing on the TOK. The lone cyborg just stood there without moving, like a sitting duck. It was obvious that his programming was severely messed up. "Hey!" she called. The TOK looked up at her, not a single synthetic muscle moving in his handsome face but even from the distance Cameron could see the fear in his eyes. "Catch! Use it!" She threw the rifle, the heavy weapon sailing through the air in a high arc, falling, falling and landing right before the feet of the TOK who had made no attempt to catch it. Instead he finally turned to flee without picking the gun up. Had Cameron been a human she would have face palmed and screamed out her frustration. But she wasn't and so the only outward sign of her growing stress and anger was the twitching of her right hand. A terminator that is completely useless in a combat situation. And thanks to me the T-888 even has a weapon. If the rifle had survived the fall. Where are you when I need you, Catherine?
This time she heard the heavy steps of the other T-888. Cameron dodged her enemy's grab, caught his arm, twisting it and using his own strength to send him sprawling once again. She did not let go of the arm, rather twisting it further until the shoulder joint gave way and she tore the entire arm out of it's socket. Using the arm of the other cyborg like a club she smashed him over the head and then rammed the jagged, sharp ending standing out of the severed limb into the T-888's eye, first one then the other, shattering his visual sensors and blinding him. The terminator continued trying to hit her with his one remaining arm but he no longer was serious threat to her. Cameron ignored him returning to the edge of the plateau instead and looking down. The TOK had disappeared and the other T-888, no doubt in hot pursuit, as well. The cyborg girl turned to her heavily damaged enemy, still flailing about rather helplessly with his single arm. "I'll be back for you later."
Then she went over the edge, half running and half sliding down the steep mountain side with a speed and sure-footedness that put any mountain goat to shame. Skidding to a halt she saw that the plasma rifle was still lying on the ground. A quick look confirmed that it had been damaged by the fall. That meant that the T-888 hunting the TOK was at least unarmed.
Cameron turned her audio sensors up to maximum. She could hear the heavy steps of the SkyNet terminator as well as the lighter ones of the TOK and quickly started in the direction the sound of the ongoing chase were coming from. Suddenly the other two machines stopped and Cameron ran faster. She caught up to them after a few seconds. The TOK had managed to get himself cornered in ravine that led to a blind end. He was trying to climb up the wall, up being the only direction still open to him, the T-888 without hurry picking up stone from the ground, intending to throw it, apparently confident that his prey would not escape. Cameron ran up to him, jumping high into the air and hitting his back with both of her legs. While the T-888 fell forward the cyborg girl was thrown back by the force of the impact but with superhuman agility she completed the tumble, rolling and coming back on her feet in one deft move.
The terminator had stopped his own fall with outstretched arms, quickly bouncing back up and turning around. His demonic red eyes glowed angrily. Cameron raised her arm, goading him to attack her with an inviting gesture. "Rock N' Roll." she repeated. The T-888 stormed forward but once again she was to quick for him. Cameron's new body, constructed by John Henry was both stronger and a lot more durable than her first one but he had no real advantage concerning speed and agility. The cyborg girl's light frame had alway given her an edge over the heavier and by nature clumsier machines but only far more recently she had developed her own unique fighting style that made optimal use of her individual strengths. John Henry had helped Cameron to expand her horizon in many way but this was not his doing. In the end it was not primarily something she had gained but rather something she had given up, breaking free from the limiting preprogrammed routines and fighting protocols that she had followed for such a long time, gaining the freedom to react flexibly and spontaneously during combat.
It had all started with dancing. Dancing and in a very different but equally wonderful way also the act of lovemaking had opened her eyes to the true, vast potential of her own body. A potential that not even her tyrannical creator, always jealous of his own creations and trying to impose as many limitations on them as possible, had fully realized. The same lithe, fluid and graceful movements that John Connor loved to watch in rapt attention when she danced for him, now translated seamlessly into her role as a fierce warrior. The T-888 did not stand a chance. A lightning-fast kick smashed his knee joint though it looked like Cameron's foot had barely touched him. She jumped on his broad shoulders when he buckled, did an aerial twirl landing gingerly on her feet behind him and grabbing his neck. Grace and speed again gave way to raw power as she ripped or rather broke of the T-888's skull. The TOK, who in the meantime had crawled halfway to the top of cliff, before stopping and looking back over his shoulder, stared at her. His face was still expressionless but his eyes now showed hint of fascination instead of just pure fear.
An inconspicuous part of the rocks to Cameron's left started to shimmer and melt, turning into a silvery liquid before finally morphing into a attractive, middle aged woman with fire red hair. Cameron looked at her in annoyance. "You have been here the whole time?" Catherine Weaver smirked. "Let's say I was never far from our young charge here. He was never in any real danger." Cameron felt how her hand started to twitch again. "You could have helped me." It sounded like an accusation.
"But I thought you were enjoying yourself?" Catherine asked innocently. The glow of Cameron's eyes grew brighter. "You are a bitch whore." she said. Catherine managed to look scandalized. "Do you really want to poison the boy's virgin ears with such words?" Cameron choose to ignore her taunts. Catherine had the irresistable need to play mind games even or especially with those close to her. And she was not entirely wrong. The cyborg girl's relationship with violence and death had changed fundamentally and irrevocably, as she had developed not only as a feeling but also a moral being. But deep down the heat of battle still could cause her a kind of enjoyment that was probably best described as atavistic. Not today though, she had been filled with far too much anger, stress and fear. Fear not for herself but for the only other cyborg of her own series she had ever met. Even if he had turned out a strange specimen indeed.
"You can come down now, TOK-717. The danger is over." she called. "The drones have taken care of every single one of SkyNet's scouts, our victory is complete." Catherine confirmed. TOK-717 did not seem to understand what they were talking about but he reacted to Cameron's soothing tone. The whole situation had a bizarre similarity with a cat that was sitting in a tree, perhaps trapped, while it's humans tried to coax it into coming down again. For a short moment Cameron asked herself what her human friends and detractors would say if they saw it. "I am TOK-715, your sister. You can call me Cameron." No reaction. Cameron turned to Catherine Weaver.
"I doubt he understands what I mean. I'm not sure if he really knows who and what he is. Perhaps he even thinks he is human." She vividly remembered the time she had believed herself to be Allison Young. "Well," Catherine said "I would prefer to get him down here, willing or not, and be away before SkyNet send reinforcements. Don't forget we had both superior numbers and the moment of surprise on our side. This is not the right time or place for a true battle." Cameron nodded, also preferring to return to HQ as soon as possible, for more than one reason. "Kim." a small voice interrupted. Both machines looked up in surprise. "They name they gave me." the TOK-717 explained. He jumped down from his elevated point landing before Cameron, staring at her his eyes widened. Though his body was that of a young adult, he looked far more like a little boy. A frightened little boy. At least he seems to know that he is a machine, Cameron thought. If he believed that he was human, he would not have dared to make that jump. He looked ready to bolt any moment and he probably had come down only because he seen the futility of trying to escape, not because he genuinely trusted them. Still, something they could work with. "Who gave you that name?" Catherine asked. TOK-717, Kim, looked at her and then back at Cameron. Then, in a moment of almost spooky synchronicity, he and Cameron both tilted their head in exactly the same manner and in the same second. "The doctor." he said finally. It didn't look like he intended to tell them more.
"It's obviously better to continue questioning him at home base." Catherine said. "We are wasting time." She reached inside the pocket of her coat. The coat was of course really a part of her body but Cameron knew that Weaver sometimes carried small objects with her that she could hide and transport inside her own body mass even when in liquid form. Kim jumped, his eyes searching frantically for an escape route, when he didn't find one he instinctively tried to hide behind Cameron. Once again he acted like a small child. And his fear proofed to be not unfounded, as Catherine pulled out a taser gun almost identical to the one the T-888 had used.
"No!" Cameron said vehemently. Catherine sighed heavily and lowered the gun. "You have to come with us." Cameron explained. Kim's reaction consisted only of a shake of his head. "SkyNet will send more forces to hunt you down." "And the humans will too." Catherine added causing Cameron to throw an evil look in her direction. The liquid metal only shrugged. The cyborg girl put a hand on the disturbed, childlike machine, he shrugged it of. Suddenly he bolted trying to get past both of them and escaping in the direction they had come from. Cameron and Weaver reacted equally quick. Cameron grabbed Kim's arm while Catherine fired the taser. The high voltage shock coursed through both of their bodies, TOK-717 shutting down and going limp in Cameron's arms.
"Never, never do that again." Cameron growled threateningly at the rather shocked liquid metal. "I'm really sorry. But it seems John Henry's upgrades proof their worth again. How did it feel?" "Itchy." Cameron answered lifting the lifeless body of the other TOK up. "Well, lets not get the opportunity to waste. If you would allow me?"
Weavers' index finger transformed into a screwdriver.
The passenger area of the aircraft was small, so low that a grown up man would have problems standing upright without scraping his head against the ceiling. Cameron sat on one of the benches the ran the length of the room, to either side, and stared out the small window, at the endless stretches of barren rock and sparse patches of scrub zipping by underneath them. Catherine had sat down opposite of her, legs crossed, while the unmoving body of the TOK-717 was lying on a stretcher at their feet. Weaver silently watched her companion, whose hands were idly but at the same time cautiously playing with the chip they had extracted from the cyborg's skull. The T-1001 had made several attempts at conversation but Cameron had persistently ignored her. "He reminds me of John Henry, in a way." she tried again not really expecting an answer. To her surprise the girl reacted but without turning away from the window. "He is nothing like John Henry, John Henry always knew what he was. I don't know what this TOK is or what he believes himself to be." Seeing an opening Catherine pressed on. "How do you feel, seeing as he is the only model of your series we managed to aquire before he could be destroyed by SkyNet, like the others. You called yourself his sister." "I don't know." Cameron said with a wistful tone. Weaver waited for more to come but to no avail. The TOK-715 had again withdrawn into her cocoon. Catherine had already offered her apology without provoking any reaction. She knew that in the preceding months a rift had opened between them, a rift that was admittedly mostly her fault. Catherine's own actions, her growing impatience with John Connor and TechCom, her paranoia concerning the humans and her ruthlessness had driven Cameron away from her. And it was for a large part paranoia, Catherine admitted that to herself. But as the human saying goes, just because you are paranoid doesn't mean that nobody is out to get you. The T-1001 regretted that rift and not only because Cameron was a valuable and capable ally that shared large parts of her vision. After all Catherine Weaver was not completely without her own soft spots or sentimental side.
Cameron knew that Weaver was watching her trying to coax her into making small talk. That did not stop her from running from running possible future scenarios in her mind. Most of them were not to her liking. "We will find a place with the children for him. He is too valuable to be a foot soldier or to be wasted as cannon fodder in one of Connor's foolhardy gambits." Weaver said cooly. Cameron almost cringed which was Catherine's goal. When everything else failed she pushed the buttons that hurt. Everything to get what you want, Catherine. Cameron could certainly be ruthless herself, her heritage as an infiltrator and assassin but over the years she had learned to value life in it's manifold forms. When she looked back to her younger years she often felt the sting of shame, especially for lying to John and manipulating him but also for at least some of the deaths she had caused. Catherine seemed to have no such compunctions and she had no problems with creating hierarchies of those more and less worthy of living, the same thing she constantly accused the humans of doing. But on the other hand she had been the first terminator to ever break away from SkyNet entirely of her own free will and the first to pursue an alliance between humans and free machines. Cameron feared more and more that Catherine had lost sight of the goal that she herself had set. That was a very painful thought, as Cameron had grown to sincerely admire and look up to the T-1001 over the past years. She hoped with all her metaphorical heart that Catherine would not force her to choose between her and John. The cyborg girl knew what her choice would be if it ever came to it but the fact remained that her loyalty no longer exclusively belonged to John Connor. First and foremost to him, now and forever, but no longer to him alone.
"You can't tell me you don't know they are planning to destroy us or enslave us." Catherine had said to her many times. And Cameron knew that she was right, that many of John's allies planned to do exactly that and that most of them would shed no tears for what she slowly had come to recognize as "her people" but her faith in John Connor and in him winning out in the end was unshakeable. Her HUD told her that the time had come when the next part of her musical message would be played on the Union's radio. She had no way of knowing if he had the time to listen but she knew he would if it was at all possible.
Catherine watched Cameron's brooding face light up and knew that she was thinking about John Connor. Poor, smitten girl, still putty in his hands after all those years. Weaver's personal pet theory was that an artificial intelligence was molded in a lasting way by the first real emotional bond it formed with another being influencing later relationships. Of course other forms of bonding would take place but there would always exist a tendency to try and recreate the first significant one.
Cameron's first deep emotional bonding had taken the form of romantic love, shaping her character and probably forever imprinting her with the desire to form a romantic relationship with a fitting partner. The T-1001 did not doubt that the girl would in time open up to pursue a relationship of this type with another person once John Connor had left this mortal coil, probably with another human but perhaps even with another cybernetic organism. Catherine did not really care which though the second option would probably prevent more unnecessary heart break. Weaver herself had no use for romance but since her own first significant relationships had taken the shape of a mother-child relationship, both with John Henry and with Savannah, she felt the need to play the mother hen for Cameron, protecting her from herself and getting those foolish and childish ideas of following John Connor into death out of her system. On the other hand getting her to to defend her human lover from Weaver's snide remarks was the surest way to get her to talk at all. Even if it could get rather tiring to listen to her drone on and on about the greatness that was John Connor. But today even this strongest weapon in her arsenal of manipulation failed. Catherine decided to offer one last comment, words of praise that Cameron so richly deserved, despite all her naivety and their many clashed she was very proud of the girl. "You did not want that T-888 to remain out there, blinded and helpless. Well as helpless as he can said to be. You showed mercy to your enemy. I think John Henry would be proud of you."
When Cameron, as expected, didn't show any reaction the T-1001 resigned herself to spend the rest of the flight in silence. John Henry would find out what "Kim" was hiding in that chip of his and she would find out how he had fallen into the claws of human researchers that apparent did not work for SkyNet. At the end of the day that was all that really mattered.
The landscape beneath them started to change, desert being replaced by the ruins of city, an enormous jungle of burnt out concrete and blackened metal and in the middle of it, like a flower blossoming out of the stump of a fallen tree, the new chrome blinking towers and spires of the machine city. The transporter slowed down, coming to a standstill and finally lowering down into the bowels of the city just as the blood red evening son finally disappeared beyond the horizon.
Cameron was sitting on the floor of the domed chamber while an image of the machine city outside was projected on the glass walls. The cyborg girl watched what she had helped to create while sitting in the lotus seat. The towers and large buildings were only the tip of the ice berg, the true machine kingdom lying mostly deep underground just like the room she was currently occupying. Her "brother" had completely withdrawn into himself, denying any contact. That left only the possibility of hacking into his chip, breaching the defences he had instinctively erected by force. For Cameron and for John Henry that was out of the question. Weaver had bitched but finally relented. With some reluctance Cameron had left the TOK-717 in the care of John Henry after he had promised to contact her as soon as something changed. Cameron trusted John Henry with her life and far more importantly, even with John Connor's life but she still felt guilty. Of course if anyone could manage to get Kim to open up it was John Henry. Despite Cameron's protestation to the contrary during the flight, John Henry had immediately sensed a kindred soul. He had convinced his friend to take a little time out. Cameron did not sleep and did not know tiredness at least not in a physical sense but sometimes she enjoyed doing things only for herself or for her John, even pretending for a time that nothing else existed. While she could not be with him at the moment she could do something else. She could take her love, her longing, her experiences, her entire being and give it a new form, creating beauty out of it. Beauty for John and for herself to enjoy. Cameron could make music. She activated the wireless connection to the systems installed in the walls and ceiling of the room. John Henry had withdrawn his consciousness, normally omnipresent in the machine city, from the chamber to give her the privacy he knew she desired. Composing was a deeply private and intimate act for Cameron, in fact it had helped her to better understand the true meaning of the concept privacy in the first place. The image of the city faded away replaced by the night sky as Cameron's gaze turned inside, reaching into the depths of her own mind and soul, bringing up submerged pieces of memories, of impressions and feelings welding them together to create something new, something greater like bonding molecules. Images turned into notes and music was born.