The mountain cave was dark and still, a vacuum preserving each object inside the metal and stone room long lost and forgotten.

BOOM!

An explosion shook the room with activity for the first time in more than fifteen years. The caved in entrance was now open and the equipment of the once air tight room creaked loudly, ancient electrical equipment snapping and exploding in the rush of new air that didn't agree with the lost tech.

"Aw crap … goddamn it, Derek!"

"I told you I was going to blow something up before this was over!"

Passing through the thick cloud of sediment and dust, beams of flashlights gleamed into the room. Suddenly four people appeared through the lingering cloud. Three males and a female, one of the males wore a double breasted coat of beaten mahogany leather, while the two others had uniformed overcoats. The girl wore tight jeans and a purple leather motorcycle jacket. She carried no protective gear for her face or her head of long tresses of glossy ringlets.

"It's clear, John …" Cameron said walking fearlessly into the room. She was followed on the heels was a tall older man. His sharp, inhuman emerald eyes marred by a facial scar flicked around the room before he pushed down the scarf wrapped around his nose and mouth.

"Spread out … see what you can find, but don't touch anything!" He called to the two Reese brothers. Both men nodded and walked past him. John reached out and grabbed Derek. "I mean it!" He looked his unassuming and unknowing uncle in the eye.

Derek shrugged the older man's grip off. "I get it!" He snapped and continued forward.

John sighed and looked around the room they had found. It was a command bunker of some sort, pre-Judgment day from the look of it. There were old computers and electrical equipment that might have fried long before the bombs fell.

"So this is where they were?" He said out loud with deep sorrow heavy on mind, body, and soul. The cyborg turned to make sure none of the Reese Boys were near before she took the older man's hand gently.

"We don't have to do this …" She said sympathetically.

John smiled gratefully and squeezed the girl's cybernetic hand. "No … I got to know." He shook his head. Cameron nodded.

CRACK!

"Damn it, Kyle!"

The lights flickered and hummed on. Several bulbs burst with brittle pops after decades of long neglect were met with the unfamiliar surge of electricity.

"I swear to god it's like both of you are trained apes … without training!" John shouted over at them.

Kyle pointed to Derek, to which he received a fist into the arm.

John just shook his head and turned to Cameron only to find that she had moved on to the middle of the room.

"April 11, 2011, I couldn't believe how stupid we were, it seemed like this place was the perfect point to begin the war, abandoned, out of the way, forgotten. But old, too old …"

John and the Reese Boys turned to find Cameron standing near a long ice encrusted rectangular box on the floor. Leaning against it was a decayed body with long thin blond hair and fatigues with the name Bedell stitched to the chest. In Cameron's hand was an age preserved leather journal.

"It knew were we were hiding here, two warheads hit the mountain bunker. Connor thought it was futile, we were deep, safe … but no one was ever safe. Savannah was jump roping, humming about trousers, the next thing we know there is a cave in and she is nothing but entrails under rubble."

Cameron stopped to meet John's eyes but he lowered his head in respect, while Derek and Kyle couldn't help but look at the rubble they blasted through ignorantly. With a crunch she flipped the page neatly.

"April 16, 2011, He keeps looking at the entrance, Connor and I know what he's thinking and we don't like it. We're trapped and we can't get out … He prays out loud, he doesn't answer us when we call. The girl's death was the last straw for him. We both know that we need to conserve air and he's using too much. Neither of us know how to do what we need to. But we never had to do anything. One night when we were asleep, Ellison ate Connor's pistol in the back room. Now there is only two of us."

Cameron paused again and looked to John, this time the man clenched his jaw and turned to Derek and painfully motioned him to a back room. When he came back with a nod, John sighed sadly. Meanwhile Kyle approached the frost encased long box connected to a generator.

"April 21, 2011, We can't get out … there's no way through the vents, we can preserve power for the equipment for decades if need be, but not for air. The environmental controls are as dead as we are. I maybe going nuts but I am a self–aware man. Connor knows more than I do about the machines, about the future, and war, I'm just a stupid kid."

Cameron paused and turned the page.

"I have no regrets in what I've done." She closed the book.

There was a silence that overcame the room as John had a feeling he knew what happened as Cameron observed the blood spatter on the back of the journal.

"My God!"

Kyle's voice was loud and mesmerized as it echoed and bounced through the tomb. John turned around to find his future father using his coat sleeve to clear away frost encrusted glass. All at once everyone congregated around the plexus glass box and looked inside.

"She's alive, John …" Cameron's stoic eyes grew wide.

John nodded watching Kyle who was entranced by what he saw.

Sarah Connor was naked with her eyes closed as she lay motionless in a green frozen liquid.

Author's Notes

I probably posted this before at some point and took it down.

Just a small story I wrote about four or five years ago for a contest. Found it on the archive, touched it up and reposted it. Influences were Lord of the Rings and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.

Expect a lot of these one-shots in the future. I need to start clearing out Archives. You wouldn't believe all the TSCC R&D stuff I have on here for stories that never got posted.

Try six years worth of TSCC Fanfiction.