DISCLAIMER: I don't own anything, including the oxygen used to fuel the fingers that typed this. FOX is my lord and master, its will be done.
PAIRING: Camerah, of course!
RATING: Some violence, adult-ish themes.
FEEDBACK: If you take the time read this, please take the time to let me know.
She Who Dares Wins, by A.P. Stacey.
Chapter I
The top of the dresser which fitted snugly into the corner of the room was covered in unfamiliar scratches, rings and gouges. Hot cups left on the soft wood; nails accidentally dragged across the varnish; perfumes or brushes pulled across the table instead of picked up cleanly. A three-pane mirror was fixed to the dresser, thin cracks spreading out from the bolts fixing the glass to the wooden spars – where too many rough hands had pushed and pulled the mirrors every morning.
A simple desk stretched out in front of a bay window hidden by thick, purple curtains which had been hung years before. The tabletop was empty, save for a single green duffel bag which had spilled its contents in a line of clothes, stretching across the carpeted floor to the bed dominating the small room. Above the headboard a small painting hung in a silver frame, depicting a generic countryside scene of rolling, green hills rising up over stretching meadows of red poppies and yellow daffodils.
Sarah's nostrils flared as she buried her face into the pink pillow, the faint smell of a flowery fabric softener spreading a small smile across her face as she dragged her bare feet across the soft mattress, enjoying the feeling as she pulled the warm, comfortable duvet over her bare shoulders. Rolling over onto her back her eyes rolled around the room, taking in the dresser she hadn't used, the curtains she hadn't hung and the desk she had never sat at.
The small bag of clothes spilling out over the desk and floor, as well as the cache of weapons and ammunition hidden in the basement were her only possessions to survive from 2662 South Sycamore Street – their average middle-America suburban home, complete with white picket fence, that had been ransacked and then burnt to a blackened, twisted frame. Not simply by another Terminator on another mission of no-good, but by Skynet itself having travelled back to the present in the formidable shell of a T-X.
A formidable, liquid-metal covered machine that had murdered her former fiancée, Charley Dixon and countless others. A Terminator so relentless and powerful it had forced Sarah to form the most unlikely of alliances with the T-888 known as Cromartie, even then requiring a good slice of luck to defeat and cast into a pool of molten slag; to boil away the evil until all that remained was a glimmering pool of silver, floating atop a bubbling cauldron of yellow and orange.
Cast back to the burning hell from whence it came.
Even the first night spent in an unfamiliar house, in a bed she had never made herself under covers she'd never personally washed, could not make the raven-haired woman feel uneasy. Even the raw exhaustion of the final battle against Skynet itself – as well as the lingering effects of the injuries inflicted by said T-X – could not suppress the odd feeling of contentment that stretched up from Sarah's wiggling toes towards the smile on her lips.
The new-found peace that had replaced the raging, swirling maelstrom of self-doubt, fear and stress which had occupied her for most of the darkest hours of the morning, every morning, for as long as she could remember was undoubtedly hope. From the bottom of Pandora's - or Cyberdyne's – box it had sprung, chasing nightmarish shining endoskeletons and supercomputers bent on extermination. Willing to comfort the pathetic remains of the Human Race in the future when all was lost, and willing to comfort the handful of mere mortals in the present who might know something of the coming Apocalypse.
They had faced Skynet itself; not simply another Terminator, or Terminators with their own esoteric missions and objectives, but the power behind every gleaming metal monster. They had faced the singular thing responsible for the end of the world, and they had destroyed it. The fact it was a mere copy – a duplication of the source code, was irrelevant to Sarah. The mere achievement promised the slightest chance of a future – any future – for her son, who in turn was the only chance for the Human Race itself.
Thanks to living tissue over a metal endoskeleton, Terminators bled and the older woman felt great comfort in knowing they had given Skynet a bloody nose and a lot to think about.
Sarah ran a hand through her sleep-tussled hair, her eyes fixing on the door from the bedroom to the hallway now closed for the first time in years; comfortable enough in herself to accept the isolation it brought and joining the rest of the species in the simple act.
Defeating Skynet was not the sole reason for the peace that had settled her spirit and soul for the first time in as long as she could remember. That honour was shared by one of the very agents designed by the supercomputer to bring about their doom, reprogrammed and no longer emulating, but replicating emotions and behaviour. A Terminator that Sarah know knew as being a T-2000, a prototype that was as unique as any person on Earth was compared to another.
A Tin Miss that Sarah knew intimately as Cameron.
The nightmares that filled every rare hour of fidgeting sleep, filled with maniacal grinning metal which tore her loved ones to shreds, or gunned them down in a hail of bullets and bright plasma pulses, had been replaced. The screams of the dying and the mushroom clouds of nuclear detonations, wiping billions of lives from the face of the Earth were substituted. Instead of Armageddon, Sarah's sleep was spent dreaming and reliving the urgent exploration of Cameron, the recollection burned to her retinas so even with her eyes shut tightly, she still felt her fingers nimbly unbuttoning jeans, sliding fabric upwards to reveal the swell of the Terminator's breasts.
Frantic and urgent lovemaking in the dusty, stale surroundings of a second-storey control room overlooking an abandoned metalworks. The heaving of two chests pressing together, soft lips grazing against supple flesh and each other as they made contact and broke away repeatedly. Lithe fingertips mingling and grasping slightly larger, callused hands as hips below worked together and away in perfect rhythm.
Sarah shook her head slightly as she felt her own skin flush red with the excitement of it all. Her smile spread outwards and she threw the heavy duvet away, swinging her legs over the edge of the bed and squeezing into the gap between the desk and the wall. Pushing away the thick curtains with her hand, she gazed out and above to the thousand twinkling points of light surrounding the pale Moon - a bright white dot in the sky lit by the light stolen from the invisible Sun.
A suburban street she had never seen before this morning stretched away to either side, every house lining the other side still - almost sleeping themselves save the light from the street lamps reflecting in their windows, cars parked in their driveways like silent guardians of the front doors beyond. The occasional chirrup of a bird woken by a gust of wind or a hunger for worms was the only sound, occasionally joined by the crunching of tyres on tarmac as a car out of sight trundled by, their headlights sweeping across the grass of the front garden.
Leaving the peaceful scene behind, Sarah slipped out into the hallway, her eyes travelling across the photographs of people she'd never met interspersed with stitched mosaics and wallpaper. She vaguely recognised a portrait of a man, garbed in a smart business suit and steel rimmed glasses as being the father of the family whose home the Connors' had rented, while they were relocating to Australia for six months. The reason for their move had been mentioned, though the future death of billions and the prospect of thermonuclear war often left little room to remember the finer details of life.
Glancing away from the wall towards John's bedroom, her ears picked up on the loud snoring before her eyes fixed on her son through the open bedroom door, a leg and an arm spread awkwardly out of the bed, mouth tipped wide open. His short fringe billowed up and down with every loud breath out, fingers unconsciously scratching at his nose as he slept. Sarah resisted the urge to roll her eyes as she spotted the two laptops – suspiciously brand new in appearance – stacked at the foot of the bed in an otherwise totally empty room, save the pile of clothes dumped messily in the corner.
She stopped before the door slightly ajar which led to Derek's new room. She hesitated, less willing to violate the troubled man's privacy than watch her own son snore loudly. Her sense of family more powerful than anything she might regret seeing Sarah eased her head into the room, her eyes settling on Derek who was not asleep in the bed, but sitting up against the wall beneath the window. A duvet wrapped around his shoulders, he grasped a half-empty glass bottle limply in an open hand, the amber liquid inside clearly identifying it as Scotch. A pistol in his other grip glinted from the street light outside.
Sighing softly, she eased back into the hallway. Sarah supposed war would never leave Derek, in his dreams or in his waking moments. He had sacrificed everything to defeat Skynet, including any hope for a time where he would not need to sleep with a gun in his hand or a bottle to his lips. Running a hand against the varnished banister she made her way downstairs, feeling the thunder of her heart in her chest as she scanned the hallway for the final member of their group.
Sarah and Cameron had been reunited with John and Derek for only a few days, though in the short time it had taken the pair to drive to the middle of nowhere to offload their unlikely ally in the shape of Cromartie, and return to the coastal lighthouse that had doubled as a safe house, both had decided against retelling their misadventure against Skynet. Although Sarah could see signs that maturity, compassion, intelligence and the smallest edge of ruthlessness were combining in her son to create the future leader of the Free Earth Forces, he was not that man yet.
She felt no compunction to put additional stress on his young shoulders with the revelation that Skynet itself had returned to track him. Derek had only a tenuous connection to reality, this reality, left – a single string of sanity which kept his head upon his shoulders and Sarah was acutely aware that any major twist in a future that the veteran had already fought for, might see it snap. The consequences for them all could be devastating.
There was only the slightest flaw – other than the lack of the truth – in keeping their titanic battle with the T-X as anything but a misadventure with Cromartie, or any other T-888.
The blossoming relationship between herself and Cameron.
The issue was not a question of whether Sarah still felt the same – despite the fact that she felt more peaceful with herself than at any stage in the years before, she had still laid awake in bed, longing to have just the company of the lithe girl at her side. Longing for nimble fingertips with impossible strength to lay across her stomach and thigh, to graze the Terminator's temple, cheek and lips with her own and lose herself in bright blue eyes.
With the logistics of emergency house-finding, and the simply circumstances of their fight against the future it had been impossible for Sarah to find the time to be alone with Cameron – not in the least because her son, unable to voice his concerns as an independent teenager, had needed the closeness of his mother to reassure him following their absence. Alongside Derek's need for a thorough (though not entirely truthful) debriefing it had been an exhausting few days.
Sarah blinked as she stopped in front of the refrigerator, her thoughts having occupied her totally as her feet continued on. Shivering slightly at the feel of the cold tiles against her bare feet, she shuffled across to the doorway between the kitchen and the living room, peering around the arch into the darkness of the empty room. Padding back the way she came, holding her breath as her ears strained to hear any evidence of anyone downstairs, a frown creased her forehead.
Where had her Tin Miss gotten to?
Cameron pushed the heavy front door open only far enough to slip her slight frame through the gap, pressing black fingerless gloves up against the frosted glass and pushing it closed with the click of the locking bolt sliding into place, and the gentle thump of the deadbolt reinforcing. Her HUD effortlessly saw through the frosting out into the quiet street as she kept her gaze on the porch for several seconds, attention moving to a white cat gracefully leaping down from the guttering of the house, opposite to the roadside.
Satisfied there was nothing more than the cat to disturb the peace of the still night, the Terminator glanced down and patted the dark red stains splashed across the thighs of her faded grey jeans. Scrutinising the palms of her gloves to make sure they were dry enough not to make an unsightly mess on their latest home, Cameron turned on the flat soles of her scuffed black boots and almost stepped drove her forehead into Sarah's chin.
"Not very stealthy," The older woman scoffed, folding her arms across her chest and leaning back against the archway which led into the kitchen. "You can see a cat at fifty paces, but not a person right behind you – are you sure infiltration is your speciality?"
Sarah narrowed her eyes as she struggled to see much of the Terminator in the filtered street light beyond the girl's outline, the slightest hint of brown tangles falling about slight shoulders and the slightest streak of red across the collar of her purple leather jacket. As she stepped forward Cameron moved backwards against the wall and stepped aside, as if to pass the older woman.
"I was securing the perimeter," Cameron clipped in reply, much to the dissatisfaction of Sarah. The older woman stepped across from the archway and trapped the girl in the front hallway, the crunching of tarmac under tyres outside and the accompanying flash of a passing car's headlights illuminating Cameron's face for the briefest few seconds.
Slithers of a silver skull glinted back in trenches of gouged flesh at the passing car, a shimmering grey contrasting starkly with the pale flesh surrounding. Dried, flaking blood painted narrow borders around each wound on the temple, the left cheek and underneath the jawbone on the right side of the Terminator's face. A trickle of blood was caught by the light midway from the lips to the crest of the chin, on a sloping path down to the neck. Cameron moved to turn her face away but the revelation had been made.
Sarah was across the short distance between the two in a single stride, hands rising to gently cup Cameron's face between careful fingers as her eyes narrowed in concern and the hint of fear. "What happened?" She whispered harshly, using the fabric of her dressing gown's sleeve to dab at the weeping wounds on the Terminator's face. Instinctively without the slightest pause, she moved her hands to hold Cameron's head gingerly at the temple, tipping it forward slightly to plant a gentle kiss on the pale forehead.
Cameron's HUD faded to blackness as her eyes rolled closed, her Chip pausing in all the activity of running a sentient machine to experience the fullest moment of the soft lips as they grazed against the flesh above the metal. In recent weeks the prototype T-2000 had learned to replicate many emotions uniquely, having experienced what could only be described as irritation with the domestic situation which had evolved after their reunion with Derek and John. Allowing for the time a mother spent with her son following a separation, Cameron had felt once more on the outside, looking in.
A few days ago she would have expected nothing more; a few days ago she would have spent the majority of her time not taken up with conversation or company cleaning weaponry, or patrolling the home or simply standing, watching the world turn and pass her by.
A few days ago she had not experienced love – the purest and most impossible emotion to emulate truthfully, the most Human aspect of Humanity itself and something that should have been totally beyond the remit of a machine. A few days ago she had not felt Sarah's lips on her own, and the raven-haired woman deep inside her.
Until a few days ago, she had not been alive.
"Cameron?" A concerned voice whispered, breaking through the confused thoughts dominating her runtime and prompting her eyes to open again. "I was at the harbour," She replied finally to the question already several minutes old. "I engaged a T-888 in combat."
"I won," She added hastily at the concern that seemed to double in the gentle eyes fixed on her own. Sarah suppressed the urge to smile, instead focused on the painful cuts and gouges that littered the beautiful girl's features. Dabbing at the wound on the girl's temple a final time, she lowered her fingers to take Cameron by the hand, leading her through the archway into the kitchen. Flicking on the small strip light mounted over the sink, Sarah's eyes winced momentarily as she adjusted to the harsh white light, the darkness around the window looking out onto the side of the house next door receding.
Snatching a bottle of medicinal disinfectant and a roll of adhesive bandages from the biscuit tin pressed into service as a first aid box, she twisted the top off and sniffed at the dark brown liquid, her face twisting into a frown at the smell. "Why were you down there, Tin Miss? Know something we don't?"
"Skynet destroyed all of the intelligence gathered by the resistance," Cameron reiterated, ignoring the sting of the antiseptic as it made contact with the raw, bloodied flesh. "We don't have any leads any more. We don't have names, or places or dates – I wanted to find something that would help us."
Sarah's eyes narrowed in suspicion as she dabbed another handful of gauze against the upturned bottle, squeezing out the excess. Having enjoyed the uninterrupted sleep which came with the satisfaction – however short-lived – of sending Skynet back from the metal hell from whence it came, she hadn't noticed Cameron coming or going. The fact disturbed her more than a little.
Sarah leaned against the counter, the feeling of contentedness fading rapidly to be replaced by a welling torrent of anger. "You went down to the docks alone without telling me where you were going, without letting anybody know where you were going. You went looking for trouble and instead of reporting back so we could discuss doing something about it, you went in yourself. Is that about the lay of it?"
Cameron cocked her head to the side, the exposed metal of her endoskeleton beneath flashing under the kitchen light. "I won." She repeated.
Sarah slammed the bottle down against the counter with enough force that it would surely have shattered, had it been made of glass and not plastic. The stench of the antiseptic wafted up through the kitchen as it spilled out to pool on the worktop, the older woman fixing a dangerous stare on the Terminator. "You weren't designed to fight other machines," She whispered harshly, making no suggestion that her statement was a question. "You do it because sometimes, there's no other option. Well this time girlie, there was every option other than to go ploughing in. What if you'd come back with more than a few scratches? What if you hadn't come back at all?"
Cameron shook her head, hands hanging limply by her side. "I would not have endangered the mission or John."
"This isn't about John or the fucking mission!" Sarah spat, her voice raising above the whisper so that she cut herself off abruptly, worried her anger would bring Derek or her son downstairs and make a frustrating situation worse. "This is about something happening to you, something I can't stop. Maybe what happened between us doesn't mean anything to you. Is that it?"
Sarah placed a hand under Cameron's jaw and jerked the Terminator's head around, so that bright blue eyes focused on an equally powerful gaze. "Do I mean anything to you?"
Powerful fingers wrapped around Sarah's outstretched wrist, pulling her hand away in a vice-like grip that the older woman did not even try to fight against, lest she break a bone in the futile attempt. Sarah's eyes followed her own hand as it was slowly pulled downwards and pushed between the open halves of the Terminator's purple leather jacket, her palm pressing down just above and between the swell of Cameron's breasts which rose up underneath a simple black tank top. Sarah pushed her fingertips down, tracing the shimmering glitter laid in a spiral on top of the fabric of the top.
"Do you feel anything?" Cameron asked quietly.
Sarah could feel the thundering of her own heart in her chest, as it threatened to break free of the ribs which seemed to strain just to hold it in place. The sound of her own blood as it thundered through veins and arteries threatened to rise to a deafening crescendo and she had no doubt as to how it all looked, the flesh of her hand pressed against Cameron's breast flushing scarlet. Sarah licked her lips nervously, suddenly finding her throat dry and raspy.
Suppressing the urge to shiver as a small, but surprisingly warm hand slide between the folds of her dressing gown, Sarah closed her eyes as she felt Cameron's palm press gently against her chest directly over her hard-working heart. "The Tinman did not have a heart," The machine-girl whispered. "When they banged on his chest there was an echo – the Scarecrow thought it was beautiful."
Cameron's eyes rolled closed as she absorbed the intimacy. "My breast plate is rigid; I don't have an echo but I am like the Tinman because I don't have a heart. He didn't need one to feel, I don't need a heart to feel ..."
Bright eyes opened and fixed on Sarah's, betraying uncertainty. Her Chip worked as quickly as its operations-per-minute allowed, collating data, forming hypotheses and discarding conclusions in a desperate attempt to catalogue the feelings which flowed from metal to flesh and back again. Sensing her confusion, Sarah's lips spread in a wide smile, the hand she pressed against Cameron slowly moving back, to wrap around the nimble fingers hidden in the folds of her own dressing gown.
"I don't know what you feel here," Sarah whispered as their fingertips mingled and moved across, to tap against Cameron's breast gently before moving up to rest against the Terminator's temple. "I know you don't know what you're feeling up here either. I know your Chip is busy working through graphs and statistical analysis and equations that would need an extra-long whiteboard to write but you're learning that not everything can be analysed like that. You're breaking every rule, bridging two worlds Cameron ..."
Sarah took the hand clasped in her own and planted a light kiss on the knuckles, "My Tin Miss has a heart," She soothed. "It's just not in her chest."
Cameron opened her mouth to reply, but closed it again answering with the slightest nod instead. She felt Sarah squeeze her hand tenderly, before watching her stand and wipe away the spilt antiseptic on the worktop with a cloth from the sink. Stretching a roll of bandages out, the older woman appropriated a pair of scissors from the drawer and turned back to face the Terminator.
"Let's put you back together, girlie."
Derek rolled over until his back was pressed against the floor, his eyes fluttering open to squint at the bright light streaming through the thin curtains flapping against the window frame. He coughed loudly, pain wracking his body as he felt his eyes water in reaction to the tremendous thundering against his temple, passing around to cross his forehead. Stifling the urge to groan his nostrils flared as he tried to suck in a lungful of oxygen, finding his nose utterly blocked and a tight muscle tension creeping down his neck and back.
He sat up and struggled to keep his bearings as his vision swam, inner ear totally at odds with the rest of his system. Shaking his head vigorously he felt raking coughs reverberate through his throat, folding his arms across his chest as he swallowed saliva that had become thick, and bitter in his mouth. Using an unsteady hand on the windowsill Derek pulled himself up to his feet, the headache pounding his consciousness forcing him to close his eyes for a moment.
Stumbling forwards, he snatched the bottle of scotch from the floor and looked at it through narrowed eyes, roughly unscrewing the top and bringing the neck of the bottle up to his nose. Trying to breathe through the blockage Derek could no more catch a whiff of the powerful spirit than he could catch a molecule of oxygen, roughly setting the Scotch down on the windowsill and making his careful way to the bathroom and the mirror mounted above the sink.
Puffy, inflamed skin drew crescent shapes underneath his bloodshot eyes as he ran a hand through his hair, liberally splashing cold water up from the sink to his face and enjoying the momentarily cooling. Cupping his hands up around his mouth he coughed loudly, swallowing the rising bile in his throat with a grimace and fumbling for the cabinet mounted to the wall beside him, for the medication inside that wasn't his own.
Scooping out the ibuprofen, paracetamol, cold and flu treatment and anything else that might look helpful, he quickly narrowed the half dozen flimsy boxes down, to a handful of pills of varying colour and size. Filling the other palm with water from the whistling tap, he downed them all in a single motion. Smacking his lips together and scratching at the stubble covering his chin, Derek ignored the feverish shivers that were threatening to run freely down his spine.
He needed a drink.
John's nose was a finely tuned piece of olfactory machinery, his eyes rolling open only a few seconds after his nostrils had flared to drink deep the waft of pancakes, which had coiled lazily upstairs and through his open door. He sniffed the air a few more times even as his conscious mind caught up with his senses, his hands groping for the shirt crumpled and abandoned on the floor. Roughly pulling it over his head, John scratched at his back and head as he padded into the hall, licking his lips in anticipation as he headed downstairs.
Eyes still half-closed as he traipsed into the kitchen, he almost collapsed into one of the wooden chairs surrounding the compact dining table. John mumbled a vague good morning to his mother at the stove with her back to him, and the ever-present Terminator – killer turned protector – perched on the edge of her seat, palms resting on her thighs, utterly still, as if she had been carved from a great piece of marble, not simply sitting.
Cameron's head cocked to the side towards her future reprogrammer and "saviour", her lips spreading in a warm smile. "Good morning John; did you dream?"
Taken aback by the warmth of the smile, the teenager shook his head with the slightest chuckle. Cameron's merging of Terminator characteristics with random human mannerisms was a mixing pot which never failed to surprise, although a small part of him, somewhere deep inside, found it deeply disturbing at just how beautiful a smile a mechanical assassin could show off. "I don't dream much. Most people my age dream of future robots and saving the world in their dreams … I live that while I'm awake, so maybe my brain takes time off when it gets dark."
"I don't sleep," She replied in a way that almost seemed forlornly to John, "But thank you for explaining."
The teenager nodded and mumbled something as his attention was pulled away to the fluffy, light yellow circles appearing in front of him on the tabletop. Taking the briefest moment to breathe in the warm, buttery scent John snatched up a fork and impaled two pancakes triumphantly, dragging them back to his plate and squirting entirely too much maple syrup over them, the plate and the table cloth.
Sarah rolled her eyes as she leaned over her son, ignoring the chomping and slapping of his lips as he demolished the food so quickly, she doubted any of the batter had time to touch his taste buds before it had arrived in his stomach. She set a plate down in front of Cameron, regarding the Terminator with a warm smile which was lost by the teenager engorging himself to the left and the shuffling form of Derek taking a seat to the right. Dragging the last of the pancakes onto a fresh plate with a fork she set them down in front of the grizzled, unshaven veteran, realising he hadn't cast a single venomous or wary glance at Cameron for fully thirty seconds.
"You feeling okay?" The raven-haired woman asked as she retrieved the steaming mug of black coffee from the counter and held it up to her nose with both hands, drinking the bitter aroma deeply.
Derek stabbed at the pancakes with the fork, pushing them around the plate and breaking them into smaller parts but never making any attempt to actually eat them. "I'm fine," He grunted, blinking several times as his eyes threatened to water him to blindness. Sarah cast a glance over at her son in time to see the last scrap of batter disappear from his plate, then to Cameron who had methodically eaten half of the single pancake on her plate. What she saw around her assured Sarah her cooking – this time – was not at fault. Her forehead creasing in a frown, she could see Derek stifling a cough, and doing his best to avoid sniffing through an obviously blocked nose.
Sipping the coffee and enjoying the bitterness and strength as it washed over her palette, Sarah leaned back against the kitchen counter and pretended for the briefest moment, that the scene in front of her, near-domestic bliss, was a regular occurrence four or five times a week - not the peaceful eye of a deadly metal storm that would undoubtedly pass over them once more, as soon as it had gathered its strength and wits again. Her eyes crossed to watch Cameron push a fluffy clump of batter between her soft lips, the Terminator's bright eyes travelling up from the plate to match the stare.
Sipping from the mug, Sarah nodded her head slightly. "Obviously with Cromartie destroying all the resistance intelligence we had," She began, attracting the table's attention, seamlessly telling the little white lie as to who had "really" burnt their former home to the ground. "We've got nothing specific to follow-up on, but Cameron found something down by the docks that might be interesting. Skynet interesting."
"It's a warehouse," The Terminator added, returning her hands to her knees. "Rented by a company called New Ararabee Heavy Lifting. Their corporate headquarters are in Sunnyvale, California."
John frowned, missing the narrowing of his mother's eyes at the mention of the location in California, settling back into his chair and scratching at the side of his head. "Never heard of them," He shrugged, stifling the urge to yawn as he filled the glass by his plate with orange juice.
"They're a transport logistics company that was once a part of Cyberdyne Systems," Cameron clarified, finally gaining the full attention of John and Derek at the mention of a name that become synonymous with Judgement Day, and the end of the world. They were bought by a computer research and development company called ZeiraCorp, along with a number of Cyberdyne assets, six months ago and are in the process of shipping equipment between office and manufacturing sites."
John nodded, the orange juice forgotten. "I'll try and get hold of their shipping manifests, see if there's anything on-line about just what they're moving around. Who're ZeiraCorp? Something we should be worried about?"
"Anyone dealing with computers is something we should worry about," Derek added gruffly, barely suppressing the powerful urge to cough as he blinked several times to clear his sight. Sarah finished the dregs of the coffee growing cold in her mug, and shrugged her shoulders slightly at the comment; knowing while it was accurate, they'd spend their entire lives – pre-apocalypse and post-atomic horror – chasing shadows if they hunted every single IT-related company in North America alone.
"The link with Cyberdyne is reason enough," Sarah clarified, bringing the discussion back to its focus. "Cameron thinks they're due to receive another shipment tomorrow morning, so if John can find anything remotely interesting in the manifests, we'll head out there and see what comes our way."
John nodded, returning his attention to the orange juice whilst Derek pushed his chair from the table, and disappeared through the archway to the hall. Making sure her son's attention was firmly placed on pouring the juice, Sarah threw the smallest wink at the Terminator sat opposite. Cameron's head cocked to the side, her forehead slightly creased in confusion before returning the wink in an obvious, poor copy of the original – complete with exaggerated facial tic and blink.
The raven-haired woman resisted the urge to chuckle as she collected the plates from the table, gathering them noisily into the sink. Her mind drifted back to Cameron's response when Sarah had asked how the Tin Miss felt after their hurried, passionate, urgent lovemaking, before the brutal battle with Skynet that had almost taken the older woman's life and along with it the possible future of Mankind.
"Almost Human," Cameron had replied.
Her head tipped down towards the plates soaking in the hot, soapy water - hiding her face and a smile at just how appropriate the phrase was. On the path towards the merging of Cameron's machine and new-found humanity, the Tin Miss had only just started out on a very long, very winding Yellow Brick Road of her own.
Cameron pushed the last of the domed rounds - each marked with a thick red band running around their bodies - into the breech of the shotgun and brought the two halves of the divided barrel back together with a loud click. Feeling the weight of the weapon in her hands for a moment, she carefully placed it on the small table set against the wall of the hallway, beside the telephone receiver. Reaching up to the row of hooks bolted opposite she snatched her purple leather jacket from its resting place, pulling it over her exposed shoulders.
Black fingerless gloves that extended up to her elbows slipped through the sleeves, blue eyes lowering to adjust the metal-studded belt that circled the dark grey combat trousers held tight against her slight waist. Cameron held her arms out and regarded herself, nodding in satisfaction.
"You look good," Sarah offered as she slipped through the archway from the kitchen, slamming a magazine into her favoured pistol and cocking the chamber with a free hand. Truth be told the older woman would have said that, and meant it, had the Terminator been wearing a refuse bag from head to toe; the obvious curves of the girl's body particularly easy to follow given her usual taste for clothes that hugged and hung loose in precisely the right way.
Pulling her own jacket from the hook and over her shoulders, Sarah felt blue eyes on her back and turned to return the gaze, becoming ever more keenly aware of the slightest hint of warmth – the slightest spark beyond the mechanical that seemed reserved for the raven-haired woman alone and no-one else. "I like your hair," The Terminator complimented in a genuinely truthful, if slightly weak attempt. Sarah chuckled as she tightened the band pulling her locks back in a ponytail, pushing the pistol into the waistband of her jeans.
"Flattery will get you everywhere," She teased, doubly enjoying the confusion that marred Cameron's face.
Derek resisted the urge to lean against the wall of the kitchen, struggling to suck in enough oxygen through a dry mouth as his head lolled to the side, grimacing at the pain which seemed to radiate from every muscle and tendon in his back as well as the bones they were attached to. Groping for the pistol on the worktop he slipped inside the folds of his thick green overcoat, running a hand through hair slick with sweat and stifling a cough that rattled through his lungs and chest. He shook his head as if trying to banish the sickness from his body.
John hopped down the stairs, missing the last few steps as he ducked into the kitchen and grabbed an apple from the silver bowl on the dining table, taking a bite as he glanced over the pistol held in his free hand and looked up towards the man who had only recently been promoted from stranger to uncle. "You okay?"
"You eat too much fruit," Derek replied with a forced smile that hid the pain he felt thumping in his head. "Couldn't move for the stuff in your workshop. Couldn't move for much else really – you're not the cleanest commander."
John caught the wistful sigh at the end of the veteran's words and felt more able to appreciate the difficulty of a man who had spent his entire life in battle, fighting a brutal war against an implacable and calculating foe, only to find himself unceremoniously dumped years before it had even started; only to find himself dumped in amongst those he didn't trust, those he did and those he would rather put a bullet to.
The pair moved into the hallway, completing the group.
"You're ill," Cameron said simply, her eyes fixed on Derek as he rubbed at his own. Her HUD was more than capable of picking out any one of a number of obvious symptoms including increased heart rate, erratic breathing, temperature bordering on the feverish, excessive perspiration and dilated pupils. Her primary function might have been murder, but the Terminator was more than capable of playing doctor.
Derek scoffed, waving her away with the vaguest of gestures. "I'm fine," He grumbled, swallowing back the bile which threatened to rise up from his throat.
Without warning she brought the muzzle of the shotgun up to bare, much to the horror of John whose eyes drifted up from the apple he was enjoying to the gun painted vaguely in his direction. Sarah had her arm across immediately to try to force the shotgun in a different direction, her toned arms still no match for the metal actuators underneath Cameron's pale flesh.
Without hesitation instinct instantly took control of Derek's hands, banishing their slight shaking and clearing his vision and mind with a single purpose. In a fluid movement he brought his pistol out from the folds of his jacket and took aim, his eyes narrowing as he centred the muzzle's aim on the Terminator's forehead. Anger clouded his features and his jaw set tight against the teeth above.
Cameron stepped forward with her aim now totally trained on the veteran of the future resistance, blue eyes cold and reflective so that if Derek were not so focused on his own life he might have seen his own face in their shining depths. Her voice was a cold monotone, reserved for the ones and zeroes which made up the most basic aspects of her programming and in Derek's eyes, what separated her from him. "You will be terminated."
Derek's finger instantly snaked inside the trigger guard and squeezed, his aim sure and his legs slightly bent at the knee to absorb the pistol's recoil.
A dull click resonated more loudly than usual in the hallway, taking advantage of the fact that no-one dared breathe who was capable of the act. When there was no muzzle flash, no snap of propellant igniting and no screech of metal breaking through skin to strike metal and ricochet, three sets of eyes centred the bright blue pair. "You have not loaded your weapon," Cameron clipped helpfully.
"You'll get us all killed," She added more slowly, with a warmer inflection. "There is chicken soup in the cupboard above the sink, and several sachets of hot lemon drink. You should mix the sachets with boiling water and drink regularly to rehydrate yourself."
John's mouth, which had until then remained agape, twisted into a smile. The sound of his rich laughter spun the situation from a tense stand-off to a farce, the teenager having to support himself with his hands on his thighs as he doubled over. He slapped the wall, his eyes beginning to water. Derek lowered his weapon while somehow resisting the urge to check the grip and confirm what he already knew was true, his face an unreadable mask.
Sarah's shoulders slumped as she let the wall take her weight, wiping at the thin sheen of sweat that had prickled her forehead. In the span of a few moments she had gone from tense but focused on the mission at hand, to pensive at the stand-off, then terrified as she watched Cameron appear to choose that moment over all others to reset – to return to her core directive or otherwise kill each of them where they stood.
Hearing her son's rich laughter echo through the hallway, she came to realise no evil was afoot, that what she had seen was the bizarre mixture of a machine's cold logic partially melted by the warmth of human abstractness, and flexibility to situations. The manner she had chosen being nonetheless totally inappropriate, somehow Sarah knew that had it been herself or John in that position, there would have been no negotiation by the barrel of a gun.
Wordlessly Derek dropped the useless weapon onto the telephone table, pulling his overcoat from his shoulders and hanging it against the hook on the opposite wall. Scratching at the back of his neck he turned and disappeared into the kitchen, the noise of cupboard doors banging open and thudding closed with more force than strictly necessary filtering through.
"He's got the flu," Cameron clarified as she lowered the shotgun and pulled the front door open. "He needs plenty of bed rest."
The piers stretched into the ocean like splayed fingers from a palm, bundles of grimy, rusting piping and steel tresses running underneath and over each mammoth concrete spar. Dozens of crane jibs hung lazily over each pier, swaying slightly in the high winds, load chains clinking and clanking as the occasional forklift motored past their bases ferrying crates and boxes. Arranged in rows of three, immense warehouses that had once seen better days – sporting cracked, filthy windows and rotting timbers – stretched backwards from the ocean towards the bustling city.
Sarah felt her stomach twist slightly, as she glanced down through the gaps in the steel plating and wooden planks which constituted the floor of the dock she stood on. Shifting blue sloshed lazily for as far as her eyes could see down and across, making it seem as if the entire facility rested on the sea itself, rather than stretching out from any firm grip on the land – making it seem as if the entire dock might simply float away at any given moment.
The slight grimace on the face of her son made it obvious he felt the same, as they followed Cameron's quick walk between a foul-smelling pile of rotting netting coiled into a heap and an untidy pile of crab cages. The older woman spared a moment for the meshing of the harbour between the old ways of fishing and the modern era of fossil fuels, global transport and logistics, and maritime construction.
"This warehouse is rented by ZeiraCorp," Cameron gestured towards a stained wooden door beginning to rot along its top and bottom edges in the corrosive salt of the sea air, a rusting steel plate bolted to its front. "The Sun will be up soon; we shouldn't be here when it does."
Sarah and John both nodded as the Terminator took a hold of the padlock in a single hand and tore it – along with its locking arm and the plate mounting it to the door – free with the slightest squeak of twisting metal. Leaning down and lifting the lid on a number of empty storage bins resting against the side of the warehouse, she dropped the shattered lock inside and hit it from view.
Cameron's HUD instantly adjusted to the bright light filling the warehouse from powerful spotlights mounted in the rafters of the ceiling, far quicker than the two pairs of human eyes, which allowed her to see the figures standing at the far end of the building before they saw Cameron, the girl pulling Sarah and John behind a stack of crates with an irresistible tug of force. The older woman lost her footing at the sudden movement and would have fallen hard to the floor, but for the deceptively strong arms which cushioned her fall effortlessly.
Sarah glanced up at the beautiful face a few inches from her own, marvelling at the ability of the lithe Terminator to accelerate her heart to a hammering pace, and dry her throat almost instantly. Conscious of the raised eyebrow from her son, and their presence in a possible enemy-held warehouse, she reluctantly broke the embrace and carefully peered around the edge of the crate.
The four walls were stacked to a dozen feet outwards by large shipping crates which themselves were piled three or four times her own body in height, the middle of the warehouse clear apart from a single shipping container. Once painted a bright orange, it had been dulled by a life spent on the decks of who knew how many merchant ships plying their trade across the face of the Earth, rusted by salt water and salt air.
Three figures, too far away to be described as much more than men in grey jumpsuits and matching flat-peaked caps, milled around the container. Sarah pursed her lips, weighing up their options. "Are they human?"
Cameron's eyes narrowed as her HUD delved underneath the men's' skin, to find crimson in their veins and more importantly, bone without a trace of metal beyond what appeared to be an old shrapnel wound in the shoulder of one of the faceless three. Satisfied they were not Terminators in any way, shape or form Cameron decided the options had been weighed and stepped out from cover, walking methodically towards the centre of the warehouse.
"I take it they're human," John whispered sarcastically as he checked his pistol and glanced at his mother. Sarah rolled her eyes as she watched the retreating form of the small Terminator, feeling sweat begin to make the grip of her weapon slick. Gesturing with her head the pair slipped between the narrow gap where the crates had not quite been left flush against the warehouse wall, making their own way forwards. With her back flush against the wall, Sarah could not see the container or its guards but could heard the shouts of the men as they presumably caught sight of Cameron.
"Who the hell are you!" One of the men shouted, as he stepped forward to intercept Cameron as she closed on the container in the centre of the chamber. He was some six feet and more in height but with a portly frame, so that the belt around his waist pushed his stomach upwards and over. The slightest hint of grey tarnished the cropped brown of his scalp, wrinkles around his narrowing eyes and worry lines carved into his forehead hinting at his advancing years.
The tall stranger opened his mouth again but found the words on the tip of his tongue lost, as his eyes settled on the powerful blue stare that seemed to drill straight through his face and continue on behind. He raised a hand to bar her way, even as Cameron slowed to stop directly in front of him. "You shouldn't be in here--"
His words became garbled in a strangled cry, as an impossibly powerful grip in an otherwise petite-looking hand took a hold of his chest by the overalls , lifting the heavy man from his feet and abruptly flinging him over the young girl's head. He crashed through the top of a crate fully ten feet away, his body disappearing from sight in splinters of shattered wood and a billowing cloud of whatever the crate had once held.
Cameron took a step backwards to steady herself as a hail of bullets raked her chest, tearing the fabric of her top apart, gouging the flesh away in splashes of red, but finding absolutely no way through the dense metal now shining and glinting underneath the warehouse's powerful lights. Several bangs rang out as bullets answered bullets, the Terminator turning her head to watch Sarah lean out from the cover of the crates by the wall and lay down covering fire.
The shorter of the two remaining men, who had pulled the machine gun from a small box on the floor as Cameron had disposed of his colleague, threw himself down – narrowly avoiding the lead which punched holes in the crate he had shielded with his own body a moment before. Rolling to the left he brought the smoking muzzle of his weapon to bare towards Sarah and let rip; a hail of bullets gouging concrete from the wall of the warehouse and then shattering wood as his aim swept along.
"It's one of them!" He shouted to his last remaining comrade who had disappeared from immediate sight. He growled in frustration as the roar of the gun faded to a dull click-click-lick of a spent magazine. No sooner had he pulled the case from the breech and slammed a fresh magazine into place, than the thin shadow of Cameron cast itself over his features, his eyes widening in horror. He squeezed the trigger in panic, his aim wild and poor gouging a chunk of clothing and skin from her left shoulder before punching round after round up into the ceiling.
Cameron delivered the instep of her boot into the stranger's hand, eliciting a cry of pain as the bones cracked on impact and his fingers released the machine gun in spasm. Stepping forward the Terminator used the side of her foot to send the weapon skidding across the smooth concrete floor, far out of the groaning man's hope of reaching. Reaching down she closed a fingerless glove about his throat and with a single motion hauled him up to his feet and then off them – dangling the stranger in the air, his body jerking and fidgeting in pain.
Sarah cautiously stepped out from the remains of the crate that had acted as her cover, before it had been sheared in half by the raking machine gun fire. Ignoring the divots gouged into the concrete beside her, she swept the immediate area to the right of the container. Creeping forward – her eyes following her aim – Sarah caught the darkness of the twilight sky out beyond an open door, previously hidden behind the shipping container. It seemed as if the third man had managed to give the them the slip.
Having seen precisely the same as his mother, John shoved his pistol into the waistband of his trousers and darted out from the cover towards the container. Sarah threw a hand out to stop him, fingers curling against the fabric of his shoulder and slipping away as she reacted a moment too late. He had gotten no further forward than a few steps, when his eyes glanced up to see the third stranger step out from the crates on the far side so that he stood facing John, with Cameron and her struggling prisoner between.
The third man snatched up the machine gun kicked away earlier, and took his aim.
Cameron reacted in the few moments it took for the missing stranger to arm himself and plant his feet to fire, casting the struggling body at the end of her arm away to the floor several feet away, with the thud of ribs breaking against concrete. She stepped to present her front to the gunman even as the muzzle previously pointed at John flared; round after round tearing from the barrel and striking through her flesh to bounce against her endoskeleton.
Sarah did not miss the chance and darted from cover, making up the ground to her son and taking a firm hold of the scruff of his sweatshirt, dragging the stunned teenager back and around the corner of the shipping container. The howling of the machine gun still reverberating through the warehouse she placed both hands on his face and pulled it round to face hers. "Are you okay? Are you hurt? Are you hit?"
"I'm fine mom," He grumbled, embarrassment now mixing with fear and causing him to avert his eyes from hers. "Go help her."
Sarah nodded, patting him on the shoulder and saving the lecture for another time. Pressing her back against the rear of the shipping container and using the noise of the machine gun to hide her approach, she stalked along the wall so as to come behind the third worker and catch him by surprise. Checking her pistol Sarah bided her time, waiting for the magazine of a weapon designed to cut down platoons of men but struggling to stop a single Terminator to empty. When a familiar click-click-lick replaced the roar, she stepped around the corner.
She brought her pistol up to bare, even as her eyes caught the spent machine gun falling to the floor. With a move that seemed more suitable for a military man than warehouse dogsbody, the third worker swung a rifle into his hands from its position slung over his back. Fully half as long again as the weapon just discarded, the rifle was an all-black affair bristling with a silver-finish muzzle which spread open like a pair of menacing jaws. The majority of the midsection of the gun was composed of a spinning cylinder, which was quickly increasing in turning speed. A small glass capsule sat atop the strange weapon's body – bolted to the rest of the rifle by a metal cage, filled with a bubbling, bright yellow liquid.
Recollection filled Sarah followed quickly by fear, as the older woman realised that this was not the first she had seen such a weapon. Not only had she seen it before but Sarah had also felt it in her hands, using its devastating energy to tear Cromartie – flesh and endoskeleton alike – limb from limb in a bank vault in down town Los Angeles, at the beginning of the latest chapter of their fight against Skynet.
She had no time to think, only to act. Her finger snaked inside the trigger guard and squeezed down, the flash of the muzzle and the bang of the bullet delivered into the temple of the worker, who did not even see his killer emerge from the shadows. Perhaps acting out of some involuntary spasm, or out of a last gasp act of maliciousness his own finger pulled the trigger of the isotope weapon before the charging process was complete.
A terrific arc of coruscating lightning leapt from the discharge point of the weapon, bending and contorting in anything but a straight line. It seared through the air and smashed against Cameron, who in the entire process of Sarah's discovery and action, had only managed to take a single step forward towards the man now lying dead at the older woman's feet. The Terminator was lifted from the ground, arms held outwards stiffly as she was blasted backwards to smash against, and through, the faded orange metal of the shipping container.
Sarah was at the smoking, shattered hole so quickly that the residual tendrils of energy from the blast were still licking around the wound in the shipping container, prickling her exposed flesh. An acrid cloud of thick smoke obscured everything inside, stinging her eyes and making it impossible to see or breathe. Coughing loudly, she waved her hands in front of the hole as the cloud slowly dissipated.
Cameron lay on a bed of shattered computer consoles, their sensitive electronic innards vomited out from their casings by the force of the impact and scattered about the floor of the container. Her arms and legs were splayed outwards but not bent at their joints, making her resemble a doll posed haphazardly. Stepping over the sharp, serrated remains of the thin wall now blown open, Sarah stooped to her knees and placed her hands gently on the girl's shoulders.
"Cameron?" She whispered harshly, desperately. Shaking with more force the Terminator's head lolled forwards and backwards with a sickening looseness, blue eyes open, but glassy and vacant – staring into nothingness. Running a hand through Cameron's brown locks and pushing them clear of her features, her fingers moved up to cup the delicate face and the cuts which had marred its beauty. "Cameron?" She pleaded.
A thunderous rumble rose from absolute silence, snapping Sarah's head around to gaze at her surroundings. The entire container was filled with computer equipment beyond the older woman's understanding – banks of sophisticated-looking junctions and control systems interspersed with the occasional status monitor. A round, silver-coloured pad divided into eight sections sat directly above her head, a matching emitter beneath their feet with thick, armoured cabling connecting both to the equipment surrounding.
A handful of the monitors leapt to life, displaying nothing but a background of blue before exchanging the colour for scrolling numbers and code which might as well have been gibberish for all Sarah could understand of them. A single point of blue light on each of the eight segments above and below flickered on, flashing intermittently before stabilising and bathing the pair in a cobalt glow.
Stumbling into view, John poked his head through the ruined wall, his eyes widening. "This doesn't look like it belongs here."
The briefest flash of lightning leapt from the emitter above Sarah's head to the pad below, forcing her son and herself to close their eyes or be blinded. A second and third tendril followed, as the computer screens that had until that moment remained off burst to life displaying calculations and system diagnostic warnings. The rumble which seemed to shake the entire shipping container grew in intensity, until Sarah wore she could feel her bones themselves vibrating in rhythm.
"I think we should get out of here," John added urgently as he extended an arm for his mother to take. A series of flashes which consumed everything in blue turning to white saw the teenager stagger backwards, rubbing his eyes and struggling to restore his vision. Starting from the computer screens furthest away to the ones closest to the rupture in the container wall, a series of green icons appeared – a tick accompanied by a stylised ZeiraCorp symbol.
The rumble grew in volume until Sarah clamped her hands over her ears, wincing at the terrible din.
Lost in the general din and brightness around, Cameron's eyes flashed with a blue glow of their own, her head cocking to the side as if instantly appraising the situation. Levering herself out of the wreckage of the equipment she had destroyed in her landing, the Terminator leaned out of the hole in the wall and thrust the hilt of her palm into John's chest – the teenager sprawling backwards and skidding along the concrete floor, coughing loudly as he gasped for breath.
No sooner had he collapsed to the floor than the outline of the shipping container blurred from the rest of the warehouse, its dimensions and structure threatening to dissipate in coruscating waves of barely contained power. A high-pitched whine joined the rumble and the deafening cacophony reached fever-pitch; crushing the senses and numbing the body. With a colossal flash light which forced John to turn his head away and throw a hand over his face, the apocalyptic show of light ended.
Conscious of the silence that had returned to the warehouse and forgetting the pain in his chest monetarily, the teenager scrambled to his feet. Bent over at the waist, he glanced up to see the shipping container as quiet and still as before they had even laid eyes upon it – minus the bodies variously dead or close to it scattered around its faded orange walls.
Of his mother and a Terminator turned protector, there was no sign save the smoke rising from the scorched emitter pads.
(To be continued ...)