Disclaimer – I don't own anything.
The Machine
One: His Leader's Machine
The rules that dictate human behavior are… Cameron struggles to find the correct word in her extensive vocabulary…strange? baffling? illogical? Derek sat across the room from her, not speaking, with an expression the machine recognized as hatred. He hated her, she knew a little of the reason, but she didn't understand why he couldn't let it go, as John said. She was different, not the same one who had hurt him, had hurt John. She wanted John to tell him about computers. How they could be wiped clean, and it was like having a brand new computer. She was like that – she was Cameron, with a brand new operating system, built by John for good. I am not skynet's, I am John's.
"I have patrolled the perimeter. There are no threats present, it is safe to sleep." She said this because it was nearing 4am and still he sat there, hours after John and Sarah had both retired. He needed a certain amount of deep sleep to function correctly and he seemed resistant to acquire it.
"There is no safety with machines." Derek states. He turns his attention to his 9mm, tracing his war worn fingers along its edges. Cameron correctly assesses that the gun brings him comfort.
"I" She stops, well aware that if she went bad once before it could happen again. "I trust you."
"You what?" Derek stared at her incredulously.
"If I become unsafe I trust you to take care of John; to protect him. Sara would hesitate, she knows John would hurt if I" She wanted to say die, but knew Derek did not like animal states of being attributed to her. "had to be disabled."
"I'd gladly do that now if I thought I could get away with it." He tells her, hatred shaping his words and features sharply.
"Yes." Cameron replies simply. She doesn't want to have the conversation turn to why, so she returns to the open thesaurus in her lap.
"Metals." Derek mutters as he leaves the room.
Derek sat on the edge of his bed, the gun still in his lax hand. The metal thing unnerved him. The fact that John needed it hurt. The fact that Sara allowed the metal such access pissed him off. He wondered what its presence here meant for the human it resembled in the future. The small soldier he knew, the one John loved, would it change her future? At this point in time, the human the metal was modeled after had yet to be born. He could end it here; prevent Cameron from ever being created. Yet he couldn't, as much as he hated the thing, every version seemed intertwined with his nephew.
The human had been Connor's companion. They kept it quiet, but anyone who was close to John knew. Not even the Reese boys got as close to Connor as the girl. When she was lost to them he functioned with such machine-like single mindedness it still sent chills down his spine to think of it. It happened to the best of them, going to auto-pilot after losing ones hope. It was a devastating thing to see happen to your leader.
During his imprisonment Derek had been one of the first to see Skynet's latest infiltrator technology in the form of Cameron, pre-flesh. When he escaped and found his way to Connor in search of answers he learned the following; the machine had indeed found Connor but he had only been fooled for a moment, before taking it down with a gun, a knife, and a screw driver. Connor sat and watched the machine with its chip in his hands for hours, before giving the order for it to be reprogrammed and put to work. Those in his camp were perturbed, but Connor's authority was never questioned.
Now both were here: a young Connor and an increasingly perceptive machine. He knew that both he and the machine knew more than they could tell John, and he hated having that in common.
