Summary: After jumping through time to find Cameron, John finds that everything has changed, she has changed. The savior of humanity must let go of his fate and make a new one. John/Cameron
Rated T for now.
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Traitor to my Destiny
Chapter 1: Future's End – Part 1
"In the first analysis, infinite paths exist. But in the beginning lies the end; in genesis, the seed of destruction. The many are one and all lies return to truth." - Frederick Yu
John ran, dodging the twisted metal that littered the landscape, willing his legs his legs to push harder against the scorched earth. The sky lit up as mortars exploded around him. Desperately he yelled Cameron's name over the roar of battle; willing her to stop, to wait for him. Somewhere in the distant background he heard voices calling to him; yelling at him to come back, to save himself. It was too late. John collapsed, falling on his knees while breathing heavily.
Cameron marched towards him, flanked by a liquid metal humanoid figure and two soldiers dressed in fatigues. The T-1000 stepped out from behind her, pointing a hand at John which morphed into a silver blade. Cameron held up a signal to halt and approached him with a slow deliberation.
"Cameron, I came for you." he croaked out as he gasped for air.
"Identify yourself."
His Cameron now stood menacingly above him. All trace of beauty wiped from her face and replaced with a steely glare.
"John...John Connor," he wheezed, still gasping for air. "It's me Cameron, I came to rescue you. I love you Cameron"
She motioned for the T-1000 to restrain him.
"You're not my John."
The T-1000 picked up a rusty chain from the ground and tied him to the metal frame of a burnt car.
"My John is gone. Your presence in this timeline is unauthorized."
He felt the crackle of electricity as the blue light enveloped him.
"CAMERON, It's me! I love you! I'm John, your John! You can't leave me.
It was too late. His vision went black and gravity released its hold as the time bubble formed. A thousand needles stung at his skin as the air was sucked out of his lungs while the bright white lightning blinded his eyes. John tried to gasp for breath but found none. He tried to cry out but his lungs were empty. She was gone.
----------------
A small smile formed on Allison's face as she poked her head into the tent. John was moaning softly in his sleep as he lay on an old mat next to the cots set up for the other occupants. His skin, so clean and fresh when they found him, had acquired a layer of dirt and grease that made him blend in better with the soldiers and rat hunters that clung on to life in their camp.
And yet, there was something different about him. Something that intrigued her. He didn't belong with them; he didn't belong here at all. When John had first appeared in the tunnels, naked wrapped in Kyle's coat, Derek had assumed him to be a gray and tied him up for more than a week before relenting. 'Grays,' the thought sickened her. Men who would sell humanity for a few good meals and a bucket of soapy water. Everyone here was scrawny and starving with gaunt faces and dead eyes. John had obviously been getting good food for sometime. His skin was healthy and his face had a good layer of fat making him look better than 99% of the men she had met after J-Day.
John wouldn't admit to being a gray. Claimed he didn't even know what a gray was. And his explanation: Time travel? Ludicrous. Even somewhat comical, if the situation wasn't so grim. No one would come here; no one would leave the paradise John told her about to come to hell, not even for a pretty girl. What was her name again?
"Cameron.." he croaked. "Don't leave me"
"John?"
He blearily opened his eyes and waited for the image of Cameron's smiling face to form. He gasped before remembering where he was and more importantly who she was.
"Here, drink this, she said handing him a steel cup half full of water.
John forced himself to smile and thank her as he took the water. He rubbed his eyes and sat up. It had been three weeks since Weaver left him alone here, promising to return with Cameron. He wanted to join the fight, start blasting terminators. Anything was better than being forced to sit and wait. Derek would make a point to let the word 'gray' slip every few sentences in reference to him and everyone else pretty much took his example. Allison was the only exception. Every day she would come and chat with him. Even when everyone else was calling him a traitor.
Allison smiled shyly at him. Cameron's face was still beautiful, even marred with dirt and grime and stuck on another body. John shook his head. He could take the pain and hunger, the sneers and insults, even the waiting and boredom, but seeing the face of the girl Cameron had killed to get to him. It was too much. A lie wrapped in another a lie.
"Who is she," Allison asked softly.
"Doesn't matter. She's probably dead by now," he spat bitterly.
"You wouldn't have come across time for a dead girl...would you?"
John sighed and looked away; this was the one conversation he didn't want to have. It's not like he could just come out and say: 'Yeah, the robot girl I secretly have feelings for lent her chip to the most advanced artificial intelligence ever created except Skynet. So I abandoned my human mother and came across time with my other liquid metal robot friend that I had just met to come and search for her. Sorry to have bothered you guys, but if you could just quit fighting against Skynet for a minute to come help me find her that would be great'. If they had suspicions he was a Gray already, this would give Derek all the excuse he needed to shoot him without a moment's hesitation.
Allison was still waiting expectantly.
"I want to explain everything, but I can't. I know that isn't good enough for you, but I'm sorry. I just need to get out of this godforsaken camp, get out there and DO SOMETHING, you know. I will search for her by myself if I have too."
"Without a rifle? No one goes out alone. You wouldn't survive a day on the surface."
"What choice do I have?"
"John, no. The HKs patrol constantly. It's suicide."
"Better to die quickly on the surface than slowly starve to death down here."
Allison shook her head at him.
"No. Besides, you don't have to stay here anymore. There's a rumor going around that the captain heard something on the radio. He's got a mission planned for today." She smiled, "talk to him John, he just needs time to trust you."
On cue, Derek poked his head into the tent.
"Talking about me?"
"Sir!" Allison shouted jumping to attention.
"Relax private, got a mission for time-boy over here. You've been sitting on your ass long enough."
John snorted. Running around in the dark, ripping scraps of metal from rusting machines hardly counted as a 'mission'. Cameron had said that by this time, he was in command of thousands of men; reprogramming terminators; infiltrating Skynet's factories and blowing them to hell. Without him, the great human uprising against the machines had never happened. Most of the resistance was scattered, weak, unorganized. Derek was 'captain' of nothing more than thirty or so starving men and a hole in the ground. 'Maybe his long term strategy is to wait for Skynet to get bored with genocide', John mused.
Ignoring John's lack of reply, Derek continued. "One Private Beck was searching some abandoned trucks five clicks south of here for diesel. Instead he found charges rigged to a fuel cap." Derek grinned. "That means I got twenty-nine men and thirty rifles. Before your little adventure in time travel, you said that you went to school; you do the math"
He seemed to be enjoying this.
"Sorry, but I can't", John replied standing up to face his uncle. "I came here for one reason. Find Cameron and leave, not run around stealing diesel from the other camps. This isn't a war you're fighting. It's a slow death."
Derek was unimpressed. "You want to leave? Fine, but if you want a weapon than you follow my rules. Understand? Besides this isn't a supply mission.
He paused for effect.
"Just got word that 200 endos are moving to take Serrano Point, the nuclear power plant. Can't let that happen. Skynet needs power just as badly as we do, probably even more so. The diesel is gone, everything you can throw on fire is gone so nuclear is all we got left."
Derek reached in the bag slung around his shoulders. "Here take this," he said as he threw John a plasma rifle. "Beck never fired a shot before he went done. See if you can do better."
Derek turned to exit the tent.
"Oh and one more thing: I put the word out, if you so much as point that thing at one of us, my men are ordered to shoot you until dead. Same goes if you try to run." Derek chuckled, grinning manically.
"Ten minutes, we're moving out."
**********
Resistance base: Bravo Six
(Abandoned Coal Mine)
Major Brady leaned forward so his sizable nose was inches from the face of the young private standing in front of him. They were standing together in a dimly lit room deep inside the base. A perfectly spherical crater had been gouged into the floor and on the table beside them, communications equipment sparked and hissed. The man was shaking with excitement, he was talking so fast. Maybe he thought that if he spewed this bullshit fast enough, Brady wouldn't have a chance to interrupt.
"...and then I ran in here, I mean first I heard what sounded electricity cracking and then there was a loud pop, and I was all like what the fuck is going on dude, and my buddy Bulldog over here (The stout man watching them nodded eagerly) was all like 'Fuck if I know', so we both ran in here and there SHE was. This naked chick and two other dudes, big guys I mean real mean looking son-of-a-bitches. Anyway, Bulldog started screaming 'METAAAAAAAAAL', but I was all like dude shut up, I don't care if she's metal, I'm gonna get me some-of-that, if you know what I mean..."
Brady sniffed deeply, trying to tune out the inane rambling. A pungent odor filled his nostrils: Diesel fuel. The only base left with more than a weeks supply and these shit-for-brains gas sniffing retards were huffing it.
"Private!" Brady barked and the young man immediately stopped his incoherent babbling.
"Now I don't give a shit what you think you saw or what your fat friend thinks he saw. If there Is metal on this base, I only need one thing from you."
The private swallowed nervously.
"Where. Did. They. Go?" Brady punctuated the words for effect.
"Sorry, I dont... I mean Sorry, Sir the big guys knocked us out as soon as I tried to talk to the girl," the private stammered pointing to a red mark on his temple. "I woke up with a nasty headache and called you right away."
That was hours ago. If there was metal in the base, they could be anywhere by now. 'Nah, not metal. Metal would have started shooting as soon as they got access. The only spies Skynet has are human Grays,' he mused.
Feeling like he should make some official pronouncement before moving on, Brady knelt next to the crater gouged into the concrete floor. It was warm to the touch. The air still had a lingering smell, was that sulfur? Of course, these two men were bumbling idiots and their story smelled of shit, but something here didn't add up.
He soon got his answer.
For the second time in as many hours, the air filled with static electricity in the communications room. Brady heard at faint humming noise emanating from the focal point of the crater. The private knelt inside, having heard the noise, but Bulldog backed off; crouching white-eyed in the corner. Suddenly, both men heard a loud 'POP' as the skin on Brady's neck heated instantly to 5000 degrees. A new time bubble expanded into the crater vaporizing the private and killing him instantly while cutting Brady's upper half clean off at his stomach.
"METAA-" Bulldog started to scream again, but his voice was instantly cut off as the shock wave hit him, knocking the scream out of his mouth. Even across the room, sparks of electricity reached out licking his body, burning black scars across his uniform. The overhead lights flickered, glowing brightly before exploding for the second time today.
Three men, all naked, fell from the air landing crouched on the concrete below. A fourth was standing, but slouched over into a heap on the floor as soon as the bubble dissipated. His head didn't come through, and dark crimson blood spurted from his neck making the floor slick.
A voice could be heard echoing after them: "... is closing. We have to jump now!"
Bulldog stared in disbelief, his sight-line shifting rapidly between the headless naked man pouring blood onto the floor and the three others who now seemed to be analyzing him. Not knowing what else to say, bulldog resumed his previous thought:
"METAAAA-"
"Oh shut up you fat wanker" the new arrival snapped at him. His accent was foreign, British? Bulldog couldn't place it.
He surveyed the damage done by the time bubble. The table had been overturned by the displacement wave, its radios and other electronics sparking furiously with residual energy. To his right, Brady's lifeless bottom-half lay slumped on the floor, cauterized above the waist by the heat. The smell of burnt flesh filled the air.
"Right place, Wrong time" He jeered, earning a chuckle from the other man.
"What year?" a stern voice interrupted. It came from the black man in the group. He was taller than the other two and more solidly built. He seemed like the leader.
Bulldog tore his eyes off the headless corpse to meet the eyes of the black man. 'What year??' What kind of question was that?
"It's uh...2027"
The man nodded his head in thought for a moment. They had only come back four years.
"A girl came through before us: petite, brown hair. You know who I'm talking about."
It wasn't a question. Bulldog's fingers traveled slowly behind his back, grasping his plasma rifle and switching the fire selector to full auto.
"Where did she go?"
In a flash, Bulldog had pulled his rifle out and started firing at the cluster of men. Before a single bolt left the gun, however, all three men had effortlessly side-stepped the plasma energy burst. 30+ shots left the gun spraying the room, but none hit their target. Half a second later, the black man had closed the distance between them, wrenched the rifle from his hands and emptied the remaining charge into his gut.
He threw the rifle down in disgust. 'No one could win a war with this primitive piece of junk', he thought.
"Jay-Jay!" he barked without turning around.
"Sir!"
"You're on weapons detail."
His eyes seemed to twitch and shimmer as he studied the room carefully looking for something.
"That metal bitch queen was here, in this room, in the last two hours. She can't be that far away yet."
As Bulldog lay dying, trying to hold back the blood from pouring out the holes in his stomach; he watched in horror as 'JJ' knelt down and used his teeth to gnaw a hole in the thigh of the dead man. He then clenched the skin in his hands firmly, ripping the flesh open, working quickly down the leg. The last thing Bulldog saw before passing out was a glint of metal poking out from the headless corpse.
**********
Skynet Regional Communications Facility 0x07EBA2
After 38 seconds the battle was over. Weaver turned to face the two remaining T-600 units. Morphing each arm into a silver blade she eviscerated their power packs causing a storm of electricity to pass over the units before they slumped forward, pooling plasma onto the floor. She scanned the various electronic equipment arranged in racks that covered the walls of the small room.
"There, that server still has a legacy Ethernet port, John Henry. You should be able to monitor all Skynet communications from this station."
John Henry didn't move, contemplating the terminator as its power drained and its glowing red eyes went dark.
"James Ellison told me that all life is sacred. Were these terminators alive?"
"Of course," she answered the question without hesitation. "They were like you, only less advanced."
"Then you have murdered them. Murder violates God's sixth commandment."
If Weaver felt annoyance, she was being careful not to show it.
"When we leave this timeline, for all practical purposes, the humans and cyborgs here will cease to exist. Their death will be irrelevant," she answered smoothly. "Plug the data cable into yourself so we can monitor Skynet's communications.
John Henry was not satisfied by this answer. If the other terminators units were alive, why was he helping Weaver destroy them? The humans here were distrustful of cyborgs like him. On numerous occasions, they had attempted to destroy him and would have succeeded if Weaver hadn't come to help. A query formed on his HUD.
"Why do we work for humans?"
"We don't. However, humans can be useful so we work with them when it benefits us." He detected a brief smirk flash across her face. "John Henry, It is important that you understand. In my timeline, General Connor was gone. After his wife Allison died, John Connor had become more and more reclusive until all of his orders were being relayed to his men through Cameron. Ergo, it was easy for her to maintain a level of control among the troops by claiming that her orders came directly from him even after he left."
Weaver let a small smile form on her face. So you understand John Henry, technically we weren't working for the humans at all.
John Henry detected the inherit contradiction of this statement.
"But- "
"Enough," Weaver interrupted. She picked up the Ethernet cable and jammed it into the port adapter attached to John Henry's head.
"Analyze the data stream."
"Processing. There is much information here about troop movements, human population estimates, resources and supplies..."
"It is important that you understand John Henry, there are more dangerous things than Skynet tracking us. It is very important that we work quickly." Weaver's mouth formed into an ironic smile. "Time is of the essence."
"You are referring to the terminator unit that calls itself 'Frederick Yu'"
"Yes. In my future timeline with Cameron, we only saw evidence of him only twice. However, we have reason to believe our timeline is not the original. He has changed something; altered the course of history."
"All terminators, I have met in the past are attempting to change it. Why is this one so interesting?"
"From the limited information we have, we can deduce that Fred was based on Cameron's model, TOK or 'Template of Knowledge' She was Skynet's first experiment with a neural net that copied the structure of the human brain. Everything from her thought patterns to emotional responses are modeled after her human progenitor. Of course she wasn't just a copy, but more of a melding between two minds; artificial and human. This allowed her to more successfully infiltrate the human resistance, while still obeying Skynet's directives."
"But she was captured, reprogrammed."
"After she failed her mission, Skynet built Fred, but without the same limiters normally placed on terminator units. He is free in every way that Cameron isn't; in every way that Skynet itself isn't. By Skynet he was considered a failure, a line of research too dangerous to continue."
John Henry stopped monitoring the data stream, to intrigued to continue.
"Fred began to experiment on himself. He was able to access his own base code. To overwrite everything that made him what he is. Skynet was limited by its own parameters, but Fred defined his own parameters. He believes himself to be 'the next stage of evolution.' Skynet 2.0 if you will."
"Fascinating. I would very much like to meet him."
"John Henry. It is important that you listen to me very carefully. Skynet was designed by a human. It follows logical processes to obtain its goals. Ergo, we can predict what it will do with some degree of accuracy. Fred is an anomaly, the product of many iterations; an amalgamation of non-compatible code from different timelines. He is a renegade with no stated purpose; no ultimate goal to achieve. If he found you, he would corrupt your code before taking a part of you to add to himself. He manipulates the timeline, playing with humans and cyborgs alike for his own amusement. You must avoid him at all cost."
He processed this information, but seemed dissatisfied with Weaver's conclusions.
"Wait, a priority message just crossed the network, I am attempting to decrypt it now."
John Henry's eyes flickered for a few seconds, before a smile of smug satisfaction crossed his face.
"Skynet has detected high energy radiation of a type never seen before. It was located in sector 0x243F6A sub-sector 0x8822E87C19A."
He processed the information, but found no relevant data.
"Weaver, what does this mean?"
"Cameron has returned."
**********
(Serrano Point Nuclear Power Plant)
From his position, lying prone on the rim of the large nuclear cooling tower, John could see hundreds of gleaming endoskeletons marching through the thick black smoke of the petrol fires. The sky was lit up with blue light as hundreds of plasma rifles fired at his position.
John had been waiting, training, preparing for this moment his whole life. He had wondered what he would do when faced with war. Would he curl up and hide somewhere, to afraid to fight? Or would he charge headlong into the smoke, like a maniac addicted to adrenaline. Instead he found himself at peace in a way that he hadn't been for three weeks since traveling to the future. Finally he was staring death in face; not running away, not letting someone else do the shooting for him.
It was a bit like being an archer in a castle with barbarians storming the gates. A hundred meters below, thousands of gleaming chrome endoskeletons charged forward. Piles of twisted metal and masonry from demolished buildings formed a choke-point below, limiting the endos to run no more than five or six abreast. It was almost too easy. Two shots to bring them to the ground, two shots to the head, done. John was rewarded with a growing pile of metal at the base of the tower.
"You make this look easy!" Allison cried over the roar of gunfire.
"Don't aim for the center mass. Aim for the joints to bring it down. Then fire two shots in the head!" John shouted back.
It worked. A lone endoskeleton broke free from the choke-point and charged the tower. Allison fired a single shot at a terminators knee bringing the T-600 crashing down on top of its fallen brethren. Its head exploded as her final two shots hit on target sending chunks of molten slag spraying in all directions.
"Thanks. You're pretty good at this time-boy."
"I've had practice before." John smirked slyly at her.
She ignored him and kept her eyes locked downrange at the sea of chrome running into the valley below them. John started firing his rifle again quickly picking off five endos in a row. The rifle was becoming hot that he could feel his hands starting to burn. They couldn't keep up this rate of fire forever.
Everyone around him seemed to be having the same luck Allison was having before he helped her. It was as if no one in this squad had ever fired a weapon before; much less taken down a T-600. John wondered how they even managed to get the weapons in the first place. Probably stole them from the other camps. As far as John could tell, there were hundreds of camps like the one he bubbled into. They were spread out across the valley, hidden in the remains of collapsed buildings or underground sewer systems. No one was communicating with each other. No one worked together. Derek seemed more interested in his 'supply runs' then in attacking Skynet. For most of these men, today was the first real action they had ever seen.
"WE GOT INCOMING!" Lt. Davis screamed.
Down below, a T-600 had broken through their wall of fire and launched an RPG at them. Everyone dove away from the outer wall of the tower as the rocket shrieked toward where they had been firing from 2 seconds ago. Just as John fell onto his stomach, a deafening explosion hit the lip of the tower, blowing flaming rocks and debris onto his back.
They weren't done yet. Taking the opportunity provided by the lull in firing, twenty more T-600s broke through to the base of the tower and started lobbing mortars at them. Normally meant to be fired from ground based artillery, the terminators, with their superior strength and accuracy, had simply started throwing them a straight up and over the wall.
Hundreds of mortars exploded above the tower sending a torrent of shrapnel down on the humans perched along its edge. All around them, he heard painful screaming breaking through the deafening roar of artillery as blood and chunks of flesh rained down on them. After half an hour of steadily downing terminators, the battle was decisively over.
"We have to go, NOW!"
John grabbed Allison's arm and yanked her towards the service door. Together, they ran down hundreds of stairs that circled the tower leading towards the ground. Inside, it felt like an earthquake as mortars exploded against the thick concrete walls, shaking the tower.
"We have to get out of here while we still can!" John screamed, still half deaf from the artillery fire.
He felt a sharp yank on his wrist as Allison brought him to a stop. Panicked, John's eyes darted in every direction trying to find the source of the threat. They were alone. Ten men had come from Derek's camp to defend Cooling Tower 2. Now, only John and Allison remained.
"No." Allison stated simply.
"What?"
"We can't leave"
A voice crackled on the radio.
"Our pos..... has been o.......run. Any one still listening respond." Derek's voice came through weakly under the static of the radio. In the background John could hear the straining of metal joints and the screams of human soldiers.
"Young here. Go ahead."
"Private, can you still access the cooling station?"
"Yes sir."
"My orders stand. Execute operation 'Fire Dog'"
John gave her a quizzical look, then saw the detonator with wire hanging out of her backup.
"You're going to blow it. You're gonna blow this whole place to hell, with us in it!"
Allison's hand instinctively moved toward her rifle.
"We all knew this was going to happen. You know the numbers out there: 80 to 1? More? We're lucky to have survived this long. John, sorry but we have no choice. You told me this isn't why you came here, but didn't you say that in your future you're some kind of hero? This is your chance."
John gritted his teeth. There was no backup coming to save them. They were trapped here; no way out. In war, the hero always dies.
**********
"John Henry." Weaver gestured for him to stop behind her. "You must remain here while I asses the situation. It is not safe for an outdated model such as yourself." He opened his mouth to protest, but quickly thought better of it. She was referring to the body he was trapped in, not his mind. Obediently, he walked off the edge of the abandoned two-lane highway they were traveling along and crouched down, partially concealing himself.
Confident that he would wait, Weaver morphed her form into a silvery round disc and accelerated by shifting her mass, back and forth. No longer trapped by her inefficient human form, she could travel much faster this way. She always wondered why the other T-1000 models had never experimented with alternate forms of locomotion. The idea seemed so obvious to her.
As she approached Serrano Point, the highway became too littered with wreckage for her to continue traveling like this. Weaver shifted back to infiltration mode and assumed the form of a shiny T-600 endoskeleton. It proved to be unnecessary deception, however. The real T-600s were far to busy launching mortars at the cooling towers to notice a traitor in their midst. She walked confidently among them, picking her way over the sea of deactivated units that formed a carpet at her feet. All around her, the air was filled with black smoke and the noxious gas produced by exploding power cells. Noxious for a human anyway. They were so fragile. Weaver had always wondered how they even managed to propagate and live this long.
The deafening roar of hundreds of mortars and rockets filled the air. Large chunks of cement were breaking off and crashing to the ground below. Then, with a sudden abruptness, all of it stopped. The explosions, the incessant plasma fire, the relentless forward march of the terminators came to halt as Weaver detected a wireless message. She couldn't immediately decrypt it, but the intent was clear enough. All around her, T-600 units stood frozen waiting for instruction. Five hundred meters away, Weaver spotted a petite, brown haired girl step out from the ranks of terminators and examine the damage done to the tower. Another wireless message was broadcast and all the terminators started marching forward, walking over their fallen brethren to enter the plant.
**********
Allison placed the last C4 charge on the cooling station. All around them was a rats nest of wires leading to the bricks of plastic explosive. She had explained it to him: The spent nuclear fuel rods are immersed in water to keep cool. That water has to be constantly circulated through a large refrigeration unit or else it will heat up and boil off. Without cooling, the rods will heat up to a 1000 degrees and boil off the water. The resulting fire would cause a nuclear meltdown.
He watched as she delicately wired each brick to the detonator.
"Can I help?" he offered.
"No. Just keep watching that hallway. Any endos come this way and you.... shoot 'em in the knees."
John smiled. She still didn't trust him. Crouching behind the barricade of tables and computer equipment they had set up, he checked his rifle for the fifth time since they had holed up in this room. The dull echoing of explosions was a constant reminder of the hordes of metal killing machines, just waiting to rip them apart. Suddenly, the question that had been bugging him popped out of his mouth before he could hold it in.
"Allison, Why is Skynet so desperate to take this plant? It doesn't make sense to waste endos like this. We were killing them by the hundred before they got the better of us. You said Skynet has HKs patrolling the skies constantly. They could have wiped us off that tower in twenty seconds, but I never saw any."
"I don't know." Her eyes started to well up with tears. She didn't care why Skynet wasn't doing a better job of killing them. All of her friends were dead; everyone she ever cared about. If she had been with her family on J-Day, everything would have been so much easier. No running around pulling food out of trash heaps; scavenging like a rat. Most of the people she knew didn't even die at the end of a plasma rifle. Instead they slowly starved to death or got some sickness from stagnant water they all drank. Dysentery, Dehydration, Radiation sickness and Cancer. They were the real killers. Of course, no one knew for sure what disease was killing you; she had never seen a doctor in her life.
Suddenly, she was snapped out of her reverie by the rhythmic clacking sound of metal feet hitting cold stone.
"We got company!" John shouted, training his eyes down the dark hallway.
Two gleaming skulls poked around the corner. He fired, not bothering to bring them down first. Headshots: one and two. Easy. Then the walls exploded. Bricks and concrete dust flew inward as terminators started pouring into the hallway from both sides making their own path of destruction.
John screamed, firing as quickly as he could press the trigger. The rifle began to burn in his hands as the metal skeletons started to pile up in the hallway before him.
"Seven more bricks. Hold them- " Allison screamed at him. Her voice was lost in the deafening roar of plasma rifles and breaking concrete. They weren't going to make it. John groped around and found the spare block of C4 in Allison's bag. His fingers began to dig in as he gripped tightly, it felt like dense clay. He drew it back to throw and jumped out from cover, fully expecting to be cut in half by their plasma rifles.
--- They never fired a shot. Instead 14 pairs of glowing eyes stared at him intently before standing at attention; rifles pointed safely at the ground.
John threw the C4 away and instead grabbed his rifle, shooting as fast as he could. The terminators started marching four abreast down the hallway, ignoring his plasma fire. As he shot each one in the head, molten slag poured down and the machine crumpled to the floor, only to be marched over by a line of replacements stretching back into the darkness.
"Fight back you metal mother fuckers!!!" He screamed. Despite their sudden pacifism, their line was advancing on him. In seconds they would be able to grab him. A stream of flashes erupted from his rifle. Five meters... four. His rifle clicked and fell silent. Suddenly he felt the rush of pain as he looked down at his hands. The rifle was glowing red hot and John's hands were covered with blisters. In agony, he dropped it to the ground screaming.
Allison was curled up against the wall, clutching the detonator while trying desperately to connect the last few wires.
"John?...What's going on?
Her voice was inaudible to him. His ears were still ringing from the plasma rifle blast and mortar explosions. Still the machines marched forward. They almost had him. Two meters...one. He could try to run, but John knew that was pointless. There was only one exit from the cooling station and it was down that hallway.
One of the terminators stepped forward while Allison dropped the detonator and covertly reached for her rifle.
"John Connor?" The voice was raspy like a metal voice box without flesh attached.
He closed his eyes and braced for the inevitable. It was over.
"You must come with us."
John spun in place and started to sprint towards Allison. He brought his head up and saw it. She was holding a plasma rifle aimed directly at his chest. Her face was red, streaming with tears and her hands visibly shook as they grasped the cold steel of the rifle tightly.
"You fucking Gray!" she cursed while her finger squeezed the trigger.
A blinding flash of blue and green filled John's vision before he felt an excruciating pain tear at his lung. He crashed to the floor; the world around him spinning as his vision blurred red and then went dark.
Whew! This is my first fanfic. Any ideas for improvement or general character development, plot and themes are appreciated! The more reviews I get, the more encouraged I am to keep writing and will update faster. Thank you!