Detour-
Prologue-
Derek's left arm is bent at an odd angle and his younger brother is coughing painfully, blood dripping down his chin, staining the unrelenting cement floor. Allison is curled up in a ball at his side, pulling halfheartedly at the manacle fastened around her emaciated wrist in a way that's horrifyingly reminiscent of the dog that used to follow her everywhere. He doesn't think Jesse's here. He hopes she isn't.
Derek should have known it would come to this.
He stares unseeingly at the ceiling, listening to the groans and pleas of the people around him, nearly a hundred strong, refugees and soldiers alike. Men, women, and even a few children crowded into a little, gray, putrid, room in their little, gray, putrid world. They are like rats. No different than any other day then.
Derek lets out a snort of sardonic laughter.
He should have known better than to hope for anything more than basic survival. He should have realized that striving to defeat Skynet once and for all was nothing more than a fool's errand. He should have known...
He should have known that they were all going to die.
But then John Connor had come, completely out of nowhere, and in the six months Derek had known him, he had made Derek truly believe that things could be better. It wasn't a sudden realization, especially because the nature of Connor's appearance made him seem suspicious. He had asked a lot of stupid questions at first and had stared at Allison a lot, causing Kyle to worry that he would try and assault the youngest member of their group. They reluctantly let him join their numbers, forcing him to swear that he would do what they told him, no questions asked. This agreement soon became unnecessary and later downright ironic as adding Connor to their group became the best decision they ever made. He may have been young and completely uninformed about the reality of their situation, but it soon became clear that Connor was more than just another orphaned kid. He knew how to shoot, how to survive in the most desolate of areas, and how to avoid detection when necessary. But most importantly, he could strategize, come up with a plan of attack in seconds, evaluate a potentially deadly situation instantly, and knew when to back off. Soon not a single decision was made without his input and eventually, Connor was the one giving them orders.
Suddenly it didn't matter that he said strange things sometimes, that even after months he had a hard time looking Allison in the eye, that he was constantly referring to their group as the "Resistance," enough to make Derek think he had been a fan of the Star Wars movies if he hadn't known that Connor was much too young to have even seen them in the first place, much less remember them. It didn't matter that he was nearly half Derek's age, that he avoided questions about his past, except once, when he spoke wistfully about his "tough as nuclear nails" mother.
Connor taught them the most effective ways to kill the metal bastards that had terrorized them for so long. He asked other groups of survivors to join them, speaking passionately about striking back at Skynet, about taking back their lives. The other groups, formerly their rivals in nearly everything, were suspicious of his motives, but eventually they were won over as well. Their numbers increased twenty-fold in the first three months. He turned the underground tunnels of Los Angeles into a series of bases instead of a place they used only to sleep and had them dig more. He organized people into groups, some to look for other survivors, some to sift through trash to look for anything useful, most to look for food. He gathered together anyone with a background in engineering to fix twenty year old vehicles and eventually airplanes, build weapons, construct Skynet-proof radios, and after their victory at Seranno Point, to bring electricity and heat to each underground bunker. John Connor brought order to the pathetic masses that were the human race, at least the ones in the Western Hemisphere and Australia after they liberated a nuclear sub, and Derek knew he had plans to eventually spread the fight across to the other side of the world as well.
They were a bunch of mindless rabble, barely better than animals and John Connor turned them into an army. If he could unite half the world in six months, Derek thought at the time, what couldn't he do? There is a reason that people call him "the General" though never to his face, because for some odd reason, Connor hates the title.
Three months in and everyone Derek knew would give their life for John Connor. He is their savior, their messiah, and Derek believes in him more than the god his parents taught him about in childhood, oh, so long ago. John Connor was going to defeat Skynet. John Connor was going to save them all. For the first time in years the future doesn't seem completely bleak, and Derek began to imagine a world without Skynet, a world without metal, a world where he and Kyle could live free of constant fear.
It is ridiculous, of course, because then Skynet finally takes them seriously and strikes hard. They launched two simultaneous attacks and took the entirety of both Kansas and Hammerhead Bunkers, their two main bases, prisoner.
Even that could be surmountable, except for the fact that John Connor was also taken prisoner. And now they, the Resistance as everyone now calls it, both inside and outside of Skynet's large, ever-expanding network of control, wait to be tortured for information and put to death.
He knows now that putting all his trust in a seventeen year old kid was a mistake. He knows now that allowing himself to hope was a foolish delusion. Because Derek Reese is going to die for John Connor now, and it won't mean a damned thing. And that hurts more than anything, more than the thought of his own mortality, because, let's face it, he's been prepared to die for years now. Or at least he thinks it hurts the most, but that changes when Connor is dragged back into the room, their prison, by a Terminator in human form, body in tatters.
A moan of horror rises from the prisoners as the Terminator shackles Connor's bloody, tortured body to a spot on the far wall, away from the rest of them. His face is a bloody mess from what Derek can see, puncture wounds winding down both arms, like the ruined landscape they've had to make their lives upon for so many years. He's hunched over, curled up slightly, an automatic, human response to a force that does not tire, does not empathize, and absolutely does not stop. He looks so small.
And suddenly, he sees Connor as he truly is, just a kid, an extraordinary kid, but a kid nonetheless. A poor, idealistic kid who is going to die. For them. And for the first time since they surrendered, he feels rage overtake him and chase away the despair.
"Son of a bitch!" he snarls at the machine, whose inhuman knuckles are covered in Connor's blood, whose hands broke Connor's bones, mutilated him without hesitation or fear of reprisal. "I'll fucking kill you, you piece of metal shit!"
The machine turns to look at him emotionlessly, a harsh, jagged, empty look, as he struggles furiously against the chains. Its face, the face of a handsome-looking Asian male in his late twenties only furthering to incense him.
"Derek," Kyle gasps from the ground next to him, coughing warm flecks of blood onto Derek's curled fists. "Derek, don't..."
But the machine does not try and silence him, and moves towards the door and exits the room, its task completed.
"Oh, God," Allison says hoarsely, her shoulder-length, dirty hair swaying as she pushes herself into a seated position so she can see him. "Oh, God, oh, god, oh, god."
"Connor!" Derek hears Perry shout, from all the way at the back of the room. "Shit, Connor!"
John Connor does not respond, and Derek feels the bottom drop out of his stomach. He's alive. He has to be, right? They wouldn't have brought him back if he was dead, would they? They wouldn't kill him, because despite him being the leader, there are still plenty of other Resistance fighters all over the Western Hemisphere, a few in Australia, and a couple other spread around small Pacific islands. Unless...panic begins to flare up to level Derek hasn't felt since Judgment Day, unless Connor had broken. Unless he had told them where they were. Everyone breaks eventually, Connor had always said, but some part of Derek had always held him to a higher standard.
Even though he's one of the nearest people to the door, he's still too far away to tell for sure... He doesn't think Connor's breathing.
He lets his head fall to the cold, stone floor in defeat.
"Connor," people whisper around him. "John Connor!"
"Fuck," he gasps, fingernails biting into his arm close, but not too close to the black barcode burned into his skin. "Connor..."
It this it? he questions numbly, body sinking its way slowly, but surely down to the floor. He hears sobbing from several different places in the room and the cold feeling in his gut spreads further. He thought he was prepared for this possibility before, but he wasn't. He turns instinctively as his younger brother starts coughing again and grasps his shoulder with as much strength as he can muster.
"Kyle," he chokes, despite everything, still wanting to protect him as much as possible. "Kyle, please, don't you dare lea-"
The door crashes open.
Derek whirls around and then freezes. Stares. He turns to look at Allison, whose face is a picture of horror.
"No," Derek gasps, hand still clutching Kyle's shoulder. "No..."
This was their plan, he sees. They figured out how to copy the most well-known members of the Resistance-
Allison lets out a whimper, more tears sliding down her cheeks. "Oh," she sobs, "oh, oh, oh, oh, oh-"
It's a copy, a perfect copy of Allison Young. Its expression is blank, and its posture stiff, the only indication that it is a machine. It surveys the room robotically, but stops when its gaze reaches John Conner.
This is the end. Even if the Resistance could last a month without John Connor...it's over. If they made a copy of Allison, they can make a copy of Connor and then with one final strike they will ruin the best and only chance for the survival of the human race. Derek sags further to the floor as Allison mouths wordlessly, her hands shaking as if ice-water had just been poured over her.
He assumes the machine has come for Allison, to study her movements, her mannerisms, to better infiltrate their remaining bases, but the machine keeps staring at Connor.
Before Derek can do anything, say anything, think anything, the door opens again and the machine that had brought Connor in just seconds ago is back.
"What are you doing here?" it says in its mechanical voice. "Who are you?"
The Not-Allison does not move for nearly five seconds before turning slowly to look at the other machine, a flat expression on its familiar face.
"Who are you?" the Terminator repeats, raising its automatic.
The Not-Allison reaches behind itself and pulls out a handgun from the waistband of its pants. It looks over toward them, him, looks him straight in the eye, aims its gun and fires once.
It takes him approximately two seconds to realize that he has not been shot and he looks down to see that his chains have been severed. He gapes up at it as it fires five more times, severing the manacles of five more people around him, including Kyle and Allison.
"Out of the way," the Not-Allison says simply and a second later Derek finds out why, because then she is dropping the gun and taking a barrage of bullets in the chest from the Terminator. The bullets do not seem to effect her in the least bit and she barrels forward within seconds and shoves the Terminator straight at him. He barely drags Kyle out of the way and Allison is forced to roll quickly to the side to avoid being hit by the machine. The Not-Allison is on it a second later, fists pummeling it, causing vibrations to fill the entire room with a look of intense concentration on her face.
It shoves her against the wall and they grapple for a few seconds before she takes a knife out from a holster attached to her leg and stabs in in the eye. It jerks back reflexively and she pushes it over and pulls out the knife in one movement. In the next she jambs it into the back of its head and carves. The Terminator jerks to a standstill and then goes limp.
She removes the knife and stands. The entire room watches as she takes the steps towards Connor, slumped up against the wall on the opposing side of the room. She crouches down in front of him and touches his bloody face, stroking his bangs out of his eyes in a tender gesture that makes Derek sick.
"John," she says, voice soft and not at all like Allison's. "John, it's time to go."
She calls him by his first name, John, and it's wrong. No one calls him John. It's either Connor, John Connor, or even the General. Never just John. It sounds wrong on her filthy metal lips, even if she does look like Allison.
Derek's too far away to be sure, but he thinks he sees Connor move.
"John," she says in a louder voice, with something that might be described as urgency if she were not a machine, tapping the right side of his face lightly. "Wake up, John."
Connor's eyes flicker open.
Derek breaks his horrified silence to gasp, in half relief and half fear. What is the machine doing?
"Get away from him, you Terminator bitch!" Sayles roars from several meters away, rattling his chains pointlessly.
The Not-Allison turns her head to survey him carefully. Idiot, Derek thinks as she eyes him, a look of contemplation on her-its face. Sayles never knew when to keep his mouth shut and this time it might be the end of him.
"Leave him alone!" an elderly woman shrieks from next to Kyle, her wrinkled, arthritic hands shaking, a maniac look on her face.
Angry hisses erupt, coupled with the sounds of chains clanking, almost immediately after that as the Resistance futilely attempts to protect their leader.
It's the end. They failed to protect the one person that could have saved them, but they will fight to their last breath so that he doesn't have to die alone. In that moment, Derek knows that they will go down, all of them will go down rather than give up on John Connor.
"Alright," Derek snarls, grasping at the broken manacle still attached to his wrist.
He pushes himself into a crouching position, watching with a strange sense of satisfaction as the world spins around him for a few seconds before cold, hard, reality sets in again. He looks down at his younger brother and they make eye contact-one last time his mind supplies- and then he's turning towards the Not-Allison, feeling freer than he has since that fateful day a lifetime ago when he stood in the yard playing catch with Kyle and suddenly the whole world was on fire.
"Let's finish this," he snarls, trying to find the strength to get to his feet, blood, adrenaline, and the angry buzzing of his fellow soldiers reverberating in his ears.
But the machine does not respond to his threats, but instead turns away from him and back to Connor as their leader gives a series awful, painful-sounding coughs.
The angry voices in the large room quiet immediately as Connor shifts and coughs again.
"C...ron..." he gasps, a broken word or phrase that Derek does not understand.
Next to him, Allison gives a loud gasp. He turns to look at her in confusion, and he sees understanding beginning to dawn on her tear-streaked face. But before he can ask her exactly what she knows, the machine is speaking again.
"We've got to go, John," it says, her hand still on Connor's battered face.
She reaches up and breaks the chains holding him to the wall. Connor falls forward and she catches him. He lets out a low groan, muffled slightly by her shoulder. Fear courses through Derek like ice and he scrambles fruitlessly to get to his feet before she crushes their only hope into tiny little piec-
The machine picks him up carefully, like one would hold a precious vase. She cradles him like a baby, holding him as if he weren't technically larger than her and turns to look, again, straight at Derek. She walks towards him, and he's frozen, he can't move at all from his half-crouching, half-kneeling position, not even for John Connor. He looks up at her in dread as she bears down on him, stepping over the dead Terminator, pausing directly over its metal fingers and-
She kicks over the ring of keys directly into his hands.
"Derek Reese," she says calmly, Connor's blood dripping on her hands and down onto the floor. "Come with me if you want to live."
A/N: Terminator fic! Oh, god, what have I done...
Anyway, just going to put it out here now: I have no idea where I'm going with this story. If you've read any of my stuff before, you'll know that I suck at updating in a timely fashion and since I don't know what I'm doing with this story, it's probably going to be even worse. So...yeah...
As you can probably tell, this is my particular take on what happens after John jumps forward into the lovely apocalyptic world of 2029. I realize this is not even close to being an original idea, so I'm going to try to focus on characterization more than the actual plot, because there are tons of fics out there that do a wonderful job at telling the story of how John forms the Resistance and defeats Skynet in a virtual season three-esque way.
So, I hope you enjoyed the prologue and hopefully Chapter One will be out (vaguely) soon! Please review and tell me what you think, or if you have any ideas or criticism!