A/N: This story is being published under my Pheonixzero penname. I'm reworking my other stories on my Nomad79 name to lessen the confusion and too many stories with the same characters.
War of Kings is a story where John failed to stop Judgment Day and Allison Young lost the man she jumped back in time to protect. Now in 2027 the younger Allison, after finding the journal written by her older self reveals the truths that she will need to succeed to her older self failed. A ghost from the past haunts John and Cameron during the fight against Skynet and threatens to destroy everything they hold dear.
2027
"We can go through here," Allison Young cheerfully said, pointing at the barren field with barbed wire fencing running across both sides. She was glad to be home after a harrowing recon mission into the ruins of downtown Los Angeles to find much needed supplies.
Her squad was ambushed by a patrol of T-888s and she fled into the ruins, only to run into a group of crazed scavengers that almost raped her if not for the sudden appearance of the person that saved her. He only called himself 'Thomas' and didn't remember his last name or even if he had one. It took nearly a week to get back to the base taking routes to avoid the patrols of metal and scrounge for food. To pass the boring time Allison tried to get to know her rescuer better, but he always remained silent or would change the subject. After nearly pestering him to death for two days straight, Thomas seemed to open up to her a little.
"What does this mean?" the voice of her rescuer, Thomas, asked as they both stopped at a metal sign spray painted with warnings. His blue-eyes took in the bleak landscape surrounding the abandoned missile silo that Allison called home.
Allison looked at him and rolled her brown-eyes. "This is us," she explained pointing at the crudely drawn picture of human DNA. "The mines are magnetic. We can follow the route marked here to get past them."
Thomas stared at the makeshift map for several seconds with a confused expression on his face. "It still doesn't make any sense."
"Come on lets go," Allison smiled taking hold of his gloved hand. "I'm starving," she let go and headed though a hole cut out in the fence.
Thomas watched Allison take a certain path in the minefield. She obviously had done this many times before and moved with a ballet like grace, he swallowed nervously and decided to follow the same route. In silence they passed by open rusting metal hatches revealing the long abandoned concrete silos that once held live nuclear weapons. Now they were empty concrete tubes filled with dark shadows that made him shiver and not just from the cold wind. A feeling that made him feel as if someone walked over his grave.
He glanced around at the collection of rusting buildings of the Launch Control Center and could imagine the panic that the military personal felt when the nukes launched by themselves. Without any orders from Washington, communications with command cutoff as Skynet became sentient, declaring war on the world. The chaos that ensued when over three billion innocent people died in just mere seconds when the artificial intelligence tried to play God.
He was so lost in his thoughts about the machines, when the heel of his combat boot struck a buried mine and didn't notice the disturbance.
"Come on, Thomas!" Allison yelled over her shoulder. She was ready to get back inside the base and get something hot to eat. "I'm starving!"
Before Thomas could say anything the improvised jaw like clamps of the mine burst through the loosely packed dirt, clamping around his left leg. Allison whirled at the sound and stared at him with a horrified look on her face, watching as he tried to struggle free from the trap.
"Thomas!" Allison yelled out as the mine exploded in a flash of blinding and deafening noise, cart wheeling him into the air.
A flurry of images swam flooded into Thomas's noise as lights flashed by overhead, the shadowy outlines of two people looking over him slowly came into view as the voices whispered in the back of his mind.
"The Lord is my Sheppard. I shall not want," part of a prayer he used to recite going to church with his parents as a little boy before they were killed. Murdered by a man with red glowing eyes.
"I came across time for you…I love you.," the voice of a girl with long auburn hair, brown-eyes, and flawless porcelain skin like those old fashioned dolls. "There was this picture of you I found buried in a shallow grave and this journal. You looked like the way you do now. So sad. So hurt."
Thomas Haden's blue-eyes snapped open, and for one terrifying moment he had no idea where he was. His breathing came out in harsh painful gasps as the fading memories of the dream-a nightmare- of another time and another place that should not exist. What ever happened had sent his heart racing as his surroundings slowly came into focus and saw that Allison was worriedly looking at him, talking with another girl in a Resistance uniform that strangely looked liked her. A sharp spiking pain suddenly bisects across his brain, forcing him to shut his eyes closed a ghostly voice begins to whisper out to him. Echoes of conversations that should not have taken place, but he felt like he had experienced them before. Allison called out to him in concern.
"Thomas?" Allison Young adjusted the sight of the telescope and placed her eye to eyepiece watching the small streaks of light flashing across the night sky. "Take a look at this."
Allison wore tight fitting jeans and a green striped shirt under a black leather jacket. Long waves of auburn hair fell over her shoulders and framed a thin face that had had seen the horrors of war in the future. The jacket was needed as a cool night breeze was blowing down from the mountains and a the telescope was on the deck that wrapped around the rental house they had for the weekend. The faint stains of classical music floated out of the open door and onto the deck. A fire blazed in the large inside, the smoke lazily curling out of the chimney above their heads.
Thomas Haden put his chilled mug full of beer on the railing and took his place beside Allison. He bent over looking into the rubber eyepiece. He was a solidly built man of average height, about five-ten, with broad shoulders. He wore jeans and a black t-shirt. He didn't even seem to notice the breeze.
"Amazing," Thomas marveled at the sight of the meteor shower. "That's a pretty cool sight."
"It's pretty up here," Allison told her him as he walked away from the telescope and towards her. "Too bad in the future…it's nothing but ash."
"And we will save it," Thomas promised, stepping behind her and wrapped both of his arms around her, feeling the leather crinkle. "I'm glad we came out here, Allie."
"So am I," she smiled.
There was just the sound of the breeze flowing through the trees for the next several moments.
"I'm cold," Allison said shivering and looking at the beckoning fireplace. "Ready to go in?"
"Yeah," Thomas said following his wife inside and pulling the curtain shut.
Allison slowly walked over to the roaring fireplace as Thomas stood behind her, beginning to lightly kiss the back of her neck. She closes her eyes in pleasure as his hands begin to explore the curves of her body.
"Make love to me, Thomas." Allison moans out in pleasure feeling the electric like tingles of his kisses on the soft skin of her neck. She turns to face him staring at him with brown-eyes full of passion as he pulls off her shirt and watches with widened blue-eyes as she reaches behind her back, undoing her bra and exposing her breasts.
She takes hold of his hand and places it to her chest so Thomas can feel her heartbeat.
"Can you feel that?" she asks him as the flames of the fire high light her nude porcelain skin. "Can you feel my heart beating…"
"Yes," Thomas says amazed by her beauty as he always was.
"It's something that the machines can never do. They can't learn to love, to feel, to experience life and they can't return those feelings…" she looks up at him with eyes full of passion. "Kiss me."
Thomas shakes his head making the throbbing pain worse as a wave of nausea sweeps through him. He struggled against the people carrying him through the underground tunnel, screaming out in pain. Breathing heavily as more of the chaotic images flash through his troubled mind like a raging waterfall. He grimaces out in pain as the echo of another lifetime calls out to him…one that should not exist.
"Thomas!" Allison shouts out, trying to keep his attention focused on her. "Look at me! You'll be okay."
"What happened?" the girl that looked so much like Allison stoically asked as the people carrying him finally placed his body on a beat up medical gurney.
"He stepped on a landmine," Allison hurriedly explained, taking hold of Thomas's hand.
"Start an IV and keep it open," the other girl said, she looked down at him with vacant brown-eyes placing two fingers to his neck, feeling for a pulse. "What's his name?" she asked looking up at Allison.
"Thomas," she quickly replied. "Will he be okay, Cameron?"
Cameron glanced down at Thomas's left leg and a hardened expression crossed her face. "Is that a prosthetic limb?"
"What?" Allison asked and looked in the direction of Cameron's gaze. "Oh my God!" she yelped out in shock clamping a hand over her mouth.
Cameron tilted her head and ripped open Thomas's bloodstained shirt. The look on her face changed from being stone faced to curiosity as she glanced towards another soldier with short brown hair, cut close to his scalp and battle hardened green-eyes.
"John?"
The soldier named John quietly stalked forward and stared at Thomas with hate filled eyes for a moment. Then he smashed the stock of the M40 Carbine into Thomas's face and immediately hit him again with flat end of it. Thomas's head fell back against the gurney and he could not move anymore.
Another voice whispered out of the shadows before he fell unconscious. A striking face of a statuesque woman with long honey blond hair, flawless pale skin, and crystal clear blue-eyes. She was bathed in a halo of radiant light leaning over him. She placed a small heart shaped locket into the palm of his hand, gingerly closing his fingers over it.
The blond haired woman reached out with her hand. Her long thin fingers brushed against his cheek.
"This is this beginning of something new. Something wonderful,"she said in a sweet seductive tone. Then the blonde leaned forward and passionately kissed Thomas.
John walked around Thomas and reached into his bloodied shirt pocket. He pulled out a faded heart shaped gold pendant attached to a necklace and stared at it mournfully for a few seconds. He flicked open the little clasp. Inside was a torn faded picture of a man in his early twenties, short dirty blond hair, and vibrant blue-eyes. His arms were wrapped around a girl about nineteen. She long flowing waves of auburn hair falling past her shoulders, brown-eyes lovingly looked in the direction of her boyfriend.
John remembered the day out in Griffith Park. They all went out celebrate Allie's birthday and the defeat of Skynet or so they believed. Three months later Judgment Day happened and everything they worked so hard to save unraveled before their eyes.
He closed the pendant and shoved it into his jacket pocket. John looked up into the questioning gaze of Allison.
"Is it him?" she asked. Her eyes glistened with tears staring down at the unconscious Thomas. "John? Please. I need you to tell me. Is that him?"
"No," John finally said. "That thing isn't Thomas. Just some metal wearing his face." He walked past her and turned before heading down the side tunnel. "It used you to get access to the base. Skynet knew about the journal and sent a machine made to look like him to kill us all."
"He's not the enemy," Allison argued feeling angry at John. "You know that."
John stared at Allison with a haunted gaze. "I don't know what to believe anymore more." He turned towards Cameron. "Chain that thing up in one of the silos. I wanna talk to it myself."
"Yes. John," Cameron stoically complied, reaching down and slinging the body of Thomas over one shoulder.
"Cameron! Wait," Allison protested as the TOK-715 turned to look at her with a vacant stare. She took a couple of steps back away from the machine.
"What Allison?" the female Terminator coldly asked.
"What's going to happen to him?" She finally stammered out.
"Dissembled," came Cameron's reply. "This unit is a threat to John."
"But he-" Allison tried to get out but Cameron turned and walked down the tunnel towards the silo set up for prisoner interrogations. She let out a troubled breath, slumping against the cold stone wall and running her hands through her long hair.
John Connor was about to make a mistake and if he ever read the journal himself. Her future self left a message in the form of a letter that only Allison was able to read and the things she needed to know if she ever encountered Thomas. The letter also asked for forgiveness for failing the mission and letting him die.
She had to stop John from killing Thomas.
TERMINATOR
THE WAR OF KINGS
Chapter One: When Atlas Slipped
Angel's Point Lighthouse
April 21, 2012 (One year after Judgment Day)
JOHN CONNOR, the very exhausted and lonely leader of the fledging Resistance, stood barefoot in the wash of the waves on the sandy beach looking out at the dim horizon as the first rays of dawn chased away the darkness of night. The coldness of the ocean water between his exposed toes sent mild cold shocks through him as he contemplated the events of last eventful year. The traumatic choices he was forced to make during the months were not easy as the consequences of those decisions bore heavily on his tormented soul. In the fight to stop the creation of Skynet, John lost all of those close to him except one that would always be by his side as the future unfolded. Everyone else he cared about was killed as they failed to stop Judgment Day and more than half of the earth was eradicated in nuclear fire.
Tears stream down from depressed emerald eyes as the names and memories of those who sacrificed themselves so John could full fill the destiny that awaited play across his shattered mind. Balling his fists in righteous anger directed in the horizon at the slowly growing presence of the machine empire that ripped away his life. Destroyed all he cared for as a desperate final attempt to stop the machines utterly failed and they unleashed their vindictive fury on the unsuspecting human race.
Now the future of the human race was uncertain as the survivors filtered their way from destroyed cities and towns to this small point of untouched land to lay the foundations of the Resistance. The old white towering lighthouse now served as a literal beacon of hope in the eternal darkness to come for the remains of humanity. We failed, John thinks feeling the hot tears sting his eyes while staring out at the lazy waves of the Pacific Ocean. I failed…after everything, we did to stop Skynet. It all just came apart after we thought we had won. I should have seen this coming…
"John?" a soft feminine voice calls out bringing Connor out of his dark musings. "It's time…"
"I know," He says letting out a deep sigh turning to face the woman who had remained by his side as the bombs fell on that fateful one year ago today. "Let's go, Cameron."
Cameron Phillips sadly smiles at John taking his hand feeling the roughness of his warm flesh as she gazed into his eyes. "Are you sure you want to do this alone?"
John takes one more glance at the horizon as the sun finally pokes through the dark clouds casting brilliant beams of light that reflect off the surface of the turbulent water. Mournful thoughts go to those who had given their lives to make sure he would live to lead the Resistance, and to the soldier who took the fatal blow directed at a mortally wounded John rubs the bridge of his nose turning away from the view of the ocean and gazing out at the motley collection of vehicles and hastily set up tents of the survivors. More people were trickling in everyday as word spread throughout the nuclear blasted landscape that there was hope amongst the wreckage of a once great civilization.
Cameron noticed John's thoughts as a slight breeze whips her long dark hair about.
"Go ahead, John," she said giving his hand a tight squeeze as he leaned in and lightly kisses her. "I'll be here waiting for you."
"I know," John silently said picking up his boots and slowly walks towards the path leading up the cliff overlooking the peacefulness of the ocean.
He spends the next few minutes in deep silence trudging up the cold stone path as the view of a simple wooden cross comes into view. A tall ancient oak tree stood like a lone sentinel over the single grave as a slight breeze ruffled the thick branches. One year ago, John had helped Allison bury the body of Thomas. She stood there alone staring down at the mound of dirt with tear streaked brown-eyes.
He stopped in front of the wrought iron gate and placed his hands on the cold metal. He watched Allison reach into her jacket pocket and remove a small heart shaped locket. She held the small pendant up in the shade of the oak tree, opening the clasp and gazing at the picture of Thomas and her in each other's arms.
"Hey," Allison said looking down at Thomas's grave. "It's been a hell of year since you've been gone." She looked up at the letters of his name scratched into the wood. "Our little girl just had her first birthday. It was funny, Cameron tried to make Em a birthday cake and left it in the oven way too long. She burnt it!"
Allison glanced back down at the pendant tracing the outline of picture. Tears splashed onto the scratched plastic cover as she stared at the image of her and Thomas taken in just the few months before Judgment Day. "You should've been there, honey," she continued. "You would've been so proud of her."
A slight breeze blew through the lonely as she knelt down by the grave hanging the locket on the cross. Allison places a shaking hand on the rough wood feeling the soul wrenching sobs beginning to break forth as she cries for her dead lover. Tears stream down her face as placing a fist to her mouth biting into the flesh of the finger, drawing blood.
"I'm so sorry," Allison cries out as the tears fall onto the dry dirt of the grave. "I'm sorry…we failed. I failed," she buries her head in her arms crying aloud as the torment of losing Thomas. I am so sorry. Allison thought, feeling the soul crushing sadness haunting her. I promise you, baby…I'll fix everything.
For several long intense moments, Allison remained silent, staring at the lone grave of a man who knew nothing of the machines or the war. He was truly innocent. Not important to the Resistance or a threat to Skynet, but still worth coming across time to protect the one person she inexplicably loved. You will live….I promise. She sadly thinks as she gets up and brushes herself off.
Allison opened the battered backpack she brought with her and pulled out a small ammunition box with the letters of her name scratched into the metal. Inside was a journal that she had written in ever since her jump back in time to protect Thomas. She wrote in it everyday, detailing her memories and experiences. She carefully set the box on the ground beside the grave and removed a trowel, and with fresh tears streaking through the dried ones, dug a hole, a few inches deep.
Allison carefully placed the metal box into the shallow hole and tossed the first spade of dirt on top of it.
"Everyday, I loved you, Thomas…and I will always love you," She sobbed out after she finished burying the box. "Even in the future."
Allison took one last longing look at the heart shaped locket hanging on Thomas's cross swaying slightly in the blowing wind before standing up on her aching feet. John walked forward and gently took her into a supportive embrace, allowing her to cry for several moments.
She finally pulled away and took a minute to compose herself. "Thank you, John."
"Are you going to be alright?" He asked. "You and Emily?"
Allison nodded her head, sniffling, and wiping away some of the tears. "Yeah, it's for the best. This place is out in the middle of nowhere and I can raise Emily."
"You can come with us," John offered. "Cameron knows of a military base that survived and a bunch of us are heading that way."
"I can't interfere with this new future," Allison sadly said. "We need to let things unfold as they should be. It's the only way. My younger self has to find the journal and maybe she'll have a chance to fix all the mistakes. Succeed where I failed."
TO BE CONTINUED: