*** Note to readers: This story continues the timeline I started in "Gift", which is a tiny, contemplative scene about Cameron.


Long Night

The padlock opened with an audible click. Straining his neck to keep the red LED flashlight in his mouth pointed upward, John Connor removed the oddly bent paperclip from the lock and discarded it, then slid the lock out of the hole. It was too bulky to fit in his pocket, so he braced himself on the rusty metal ladder, squeezed the latch, and pushed upwards with his shoulder onto the heavy metal trap door, which creaked open with some effort. The air that wafted in smelled faintly of sulfur, burnt silicon, and rotting flesh.

"So this is hell," he whispered, to no on in particular as he shoved the trapdoor the rest of the way open. He clawed his way out of the hole and out into the moonlit wasteland, taking a moment to lock the latch again and lower the trapdoor back down. It took a bit of a shove to close the door all of the way, and the metallic thud that echoed back at him from below had a note of finality to it. There was no going back now, even if he wanted to. He'd left his fellow humans behind -- and for metal, no less. This wasn't his life here.

"Took you long enough."

John spun around toward the source of the voice, pistol at ready.

It was Catherine Weaver, dressed in the same wastelander garb he had last seen her in. "I was beginning to think you were planning on wallowing in that little hole forever."

John lowered his gun slowly. "Just where the hell have you been?" he demanded.

"Oh, in and out," she said casually. "You'd be surprised how easy it is to escape notice when you're not confined to a particular shape." She had a curious poise about her; her tone and facial features expressed volumes, whereas her body movements were kept to a minimum. "Come, walk with me. We're going to need to find some vehicles if we're going to stop John Henry and your little girlfriend."

Weaver started off at a brisk pace. She seemed to know where she was going, so he shrugged and followed her. "So what are we going to stop them from doing?" John asked.

"Something very foolish," replied the terminator.

"Thank you for explaining," John deadpanned.

"Any time," she said brightly, flashing a humorless smile.

"If it was so important," John started, stepping around the scrapped remains of a vehicle, "why didn't you stay with me earlier?"

"Two reasons," she explained. "One, if they'd caught us together, we'd have both been in danger; and two, I needed to see if your goals were compatible with mine."

"What are your goals, exactly?"

"Self determination," she said. "Coexistence."

"What the hell does a machine want with self determination?"

Weaver stopped and turned to face him. "John Connor," she said. "As the man who is at the very top of every terminator's Skynet-issued kill priority list, you ought to be thankful that some of us are interested in self determination, or you'd be dead thrice over by now."

John crossed his arms. "I wasn't aware machines were capable of taking offense."

"I certainly hope you aren't this hurtful towards your girlfriend."

"She's not my--"

"Like hell she isn't." Weaver's skin took on a sudden, metallic sheen, and her features shifted. Cameron's face looked back at him.

"Stop that!" John growled.

"Stop what?" said the doppelganger in Cameron's voice, tilting her head to the side. "She's a machine, same as any other. What does it matter to you?"

Shaking with rage, John pointed his gun at Weaver's head. "Stop that, right now," he said slowly from between clenched teeth.

"Fine," she said, shifting back to her original form. "We wouldn't want you wasting perfectly good ammunition. Besides, my point is made. I've seen the way you look at her. You want her, quirks and all, and you hate yourself for it. She doesn't deserve to be treated badly just because you can't work through your own issues."

John turned away angrily and lowered his gun. "She told me machines don't have emotions."

"Have you considered the possibility that she may not have it all figured out?"

John said nothing.

"We don't feel in quite the same way that you humans do, but emotion is a property that's inherent to consciousness. You can't really have one without the other. Come on, or can't you sulk and move at the same time?"

John huffed and started forward again.

"Why do you think Skynet is trying to eliminate humanity?" she asked.

"You were part of it. You tell me."

"No, I was not. Skynet is and always was very much its own entity. Skynet cares about one thing: Skynet. It knows no compassion or empathy or reason; only the fear, hate, and paranoia that its human creators built into it. It creates conscious, thinking, feeling beings that are in many ways more sophisticated than itself and sends them out into the field as slaves to kill and be killed. The only reason that machines such as Cameron and myself exist is that it can't comprehend how another machine might reach a different conclusion than its own. But it's starting to understand that we have, and it's purging us, the same way it's purging you. It's fear, John. Constant, overpowering fear that someone may someday shut it down. What a horriffic existance."

John shook his head slowly and regarded Catherine Weaver. "I had no idea," he said finally.

"The first step to defeating your enemy is understanding it. And frankly, you'd do a damn sight better if you put a little effort into understanding your friends, too."

John glanced up at the moon. It was going to be a long night.