John was the only one that watched the TV these days. More like he did nothing else since Riley was murdered. He had always had depressive tendencies, and the whole situation obviously hadn't helped in the slightest.
This evening though, he was about to forget about everything. Gran General John Connor leader of humanity, Terminators, Riley, and even his convoluted feelings for his protector. The girl who wasn't really a girl.
"… with the police and special tactics teams being decimated like this, we expect the army to arrive in force soon enough…" The newscaster screamed in the TV, her voice muffled by screaming and explosions.
The carton of milk unceremoniously hit the floor, and John's jaw didn't follow just because it was attached to his head. He furiously fumbled with the remote trying to go back to the channel that had shown the news. The teenager had been just channel surfing when he bumped on that crazy newscast.
All of a sudden, the control wasn't in his hands anymore. Without him noticing, his brunette protector had moved from her room and into the living room in an instant, after hearing the news from all the way over there.
In her calm and expert hands, the channel was back immediately.
"… barely tuning on this newscast. About an hour ago, according to witnesses, a woman standing about ten feet tall appeared out of thin air…"
The TV went off, cutting the newscaster off.
Flabbergasted, John looked up to Cameron. "Why did you turn it off?"
In her typical stoic manner, that still somehow told him he was a moron for not seeing the obvious; the cyborg tilted her head and gave him a hard stare.
"We have to scout. Immediately. Call your mother and Derek; tell them to rendezvous with us."
With that attitude that indicated the finality of her argument, Cameron moved towards the door, and grabbing the keys for the SUV, she went outside.
John was still in a daze at the whole thing. Thank God, he had her there, so he just had to bother with his soldier training kicking in just enough to get him to follow.
.
.
.
About an hour later the Connor gang regrouped, and made their way downtown. As a backup measure, they left Derek's truck on the way there, in case everything went south and they needed to change vehicles. It had to be Derek's truck the one left behind, since he didn't want it going into the heat of things. That would at least prolong the inevitable for a while.
When they arrived downtown expecting army posts and having to do some kind of stealth approach in order to reckon the place, they received a very unpleasant surprise.
Derek's heart sank to his feet, and the rest of the humans weren't doing any better. Only Cameron remained straight-faced at the sight that greeted them. Then again, god only knew what went inside her head; she was a natural born poker player.
Downtown appeared to be the very focus of God's wrath. The Dies Irae had taken place that very day, in that very place. Some buildings were now mountains of rubble and others were about to become one. Fires adorned the whole landscape. The whole thing reminded Derek and Cameron way too much of the post Judgment day future.
There was general chaos, and indeed army presence, but they were too busy recovering from whatever had happened to bother with the group of four people making their way into the fray.
"Are we sure we even want to be here," the future leader of humankind asked.
"We need to at least know what the hell we are going against." His uncle replied, while nervously looking up to the building's windows.
"Establishing the nature of the enemy provides us with the opportunity to plan ahead." His protector added.
John couldn't help but notice that all the while his mother had remained silent. Actually since they first saw the destruction, her face had turned into a sad kind of blank.
Derek crossed a street and went into what was left of the lower floors of a building.
After a few minutes, he reappeared and signaled for the rest of them to follow.
Once they joined him, he produced a military radio.
"Now we can also hear in."
"Where did you get it?" John asked.
"You don't even want to know," Derek replied with a grim face. "Just know that the owner will not be needing it."
Derek started tuning the radio to find the current channel the military was using, when all of a sudden a thundering voice resounded from an adjacent street.
"Humans! You will desist from any further attacks! So far, I have limited myself to countering with your own weapons! That will change shall the aggressions continue!"
The Connor gang moved to the wall of the building that could give them an angle of view towards the source of the voice.
Two blocks away, they saw a very tall and slim figure crossing the street. Immediately, Derek pulled a pair of binoculars out of his jacket, and started reporting.
"It's about ten feet tall, seems female, and her right arm looks like some kind of weapon. Short hair in a bob cut, and it's wearing some leathery black clothing."
He then passed the binoculars to Sarah, whom after taking a couple seconds to look passed them to John.
"Do you recognize it?" Derek asked looking at Cameron.
"No. If it is a Terminator, it's something that didn't even exist in experimental stages when I was created."
"What do you mean if?" Derek angrily asked between clenched teeth.
John saw fit to cut in, since his uncle was too blinded by his prejudice against the metal.
"Look at it. Who would let that, infiltrate their base?"
Derek looked at his nephew, and then back at Cameron. He clicked his tongue and then went back to tuning the radio.
Against his better judgment, John couldn't help but feel immense curiosity. He stood up and avoiding his mother's grasp, he aimed his steps towards the street.
"John!" his mother hissed.
"We need to know what we are facing, and besides I'm not going alone." While he finished speaking, John signaled with his hand at the brunette that was already walking towards him.
Still, Sarah wouldn't let her son go alone, so she also stood up and pulled hard on Derek's sleeve.
They walked the two blocks that separated them from their target, and stopped at the corner. By then, Derek was in point again, so he took a peek. Seeing that the woman, or whatever it was, had already walked another block ahead, he signaled for the rest to follow. They took cover behind a car that was partially buried in rubble.
They had barely set themselves for cover, when the radio sparked to life.
"The raptors are inbound, I repeat raptors inbound. Tanks will provide distraction."
"it's about to get really hot," Derek announced, and a deep frown marked his forehead. "We should stop trying to peek, if we are really staying here for intel, let the tin can report."
Cameron merely looked at him for a second, her face impassive as always, and then she returned to analyze the stranger. It bothered her that whatever they were going to be forced to fight against in the near future was so utterly unknown.
If moving away from there passed through any of the humans minds, now it was too late. The sudden booms of tank fire filled the air. There was no turning back now.
Since their cyborg was in charge of reporting her sightings to them, the three humans were looking intently at her, so they didn't miss a single second of the most surprising thing any of them had ever seem. Actually taking into account the situation, it was the most horrific thing they had ever seen.
Cameron's eyes opened in surprise, almost bugging out of her head, and her jaw dropped –slightly, but dropped nonetheless.
"What the hell is happening?" A very angry Derek was the first to ask.
"Don't yell Reese!" Sarah Scolded.
John merely sat there and stared at Cameron waiting for the answer. He didn't see her as a person, but he knew she was different; and if she was this surprised, then it would be only natural to wait for her to collect her thoughts.
The still aghast faced cyborg turned to look at her family. "She is deflecting the tank shells away with her bare hand."
"WHAT?" The surprised reply came in unison.
The three humans turned around and raised a little in order to peek from above the debris. As if they were in some kind of telepathic sync, they all were thinking that Cameron had finally lost it, but the fact that she was a machine, and thus had no imagination, forced them to verify what she had said.
Now the full Connor gang stood in awe at the sight. There it was, the whatever it was; slapping tank shells away, with her free and very bare left hand.
"No Terminator can ever hope to do that." Derek said.
"Indeed." Cameron added.
They silently watched the spectacle before them. The tall woman –who by now they knew for sure wasn't human or even Terminator- not only slapped tank shells away, she also easily dodged them.
"Enough!" The woman yelled in a loud voice, which even given her size should be impossible to produce. "I see now that you will only answer to being overpowered! I shall gladly demonstrate that your attacks are meaningless, and as such we should instead be having dialogue!"
The members of the Connor gang all turned and looked at each other.
"She wants to be diplomatic," Cameron deadpanned, as if she had said the most natural of things. "We should approach her." Her statement elicited scared looks from her companions.
They all turned back to see what would happen after the mysterious woman's threat.
The woman turned on her flank with her legs slightly parted and raised her right arm, the one that looked like a weapon.
Said apparent weapon looked like an elongated box with some protuberances coming out from the top back of it.
The box split ever so slightly along its midline and started producing small arcs of electricity. An instant later, something like a beam left the weapon. It was so thin and harmless, but one fact startled every onlooker; the tall woman's arm shot up after the beam, and her body recoiled back. It was as if the weapon had some kind of massive kickback.
The next instant, a huge cloud of dust rose in front of the woman, and it disappeared just as quickly, leaving every witness with a horrific sight to behold. Part of the buildings, and the whole street in front of her had just vanished into thin air. It was as if someone had used one of those tunnel drills in front of the woman, instantly putting a hole of about 30 feet in diameter, into everything as far as the eye could see.
John, Sarah, Derek, and even Cameron, didn't register in their brains the message from the radio, since they were staring at what had just unfolded in front of them.
"Raptors, open fire…"
The missiles flew through the street in which the Connor gang was taking cover. Luckily for them the missiles would never detonate close to them.
Surely, the mysterious woman also possessed inhuman hearing, as she had turned to look in the direction that the missiles were launched from, long before they had been indeed launched.
When the trails of smoke became apparent to the humans eyes, the woman jumped with sight blurring speed, and all the way up there, she caught one of the missiles with her free hand. Just like that, as if it required no effort, she turned the missile in midair and forced it to hit another one. The huge explosion of what obviously was some high yield explosive, caught the other missiles, and the sky became ablaze for moments. Dense clouds of black smoke hovered over the buildings right afterwards.
Now that they had seen this final display from the mysterious woman, the Connor gang was all too eager to get the hell out of dodge. Sure that the noise from the jets would cover for them, they just ran across the street to go back to that first building where they first took cover.
Hiding immediately after arriving into the building, they all remained in the utmost silence.
Derek signaled at Cameron with his hand, and then nodded in the direction of their previous location.
The cyborg stared hard at him for about two seconds before moving. She understood why she was the one that should look, but she also knew that Derek's reason to ask wasn't entirely backed up by logic; he considered her existence to be of less value.
As soon as Cameron poked her head out of the wall, a hand came unto her neck and lifted her with ease.
Cameron struggled, and fought for freedom, hitting the vice gripping arm that caught her. She grasped at the length to locate some weakness. It was all in vain, there was none –at least that she could identify, the woman's composition felt entirely alien to her. Her movements, her hits, they weren't causing the way taller woman to even flinch.
The stranger started turning Cameron sideways in an analyzing fashion. The Terminator felt helpless, as Alison Young had felt when they studied her. This thing whatever it was, it had horrible eyes of black that looked like those of the demonic creatures she had seen in late TV movies, and she was gazing at her as if she was some kind of thing.
Cameron knew what she had to do. All was lost, and at least for now, the creature was apparently mesmerized with her.
"John! Run, I've been captured!"
"You are not human," the tall female said matter of factly. "You are not silicon life, exterminator, or safeguard either. What are you then?"
The slender Terminator turned to the woman to answer, but her words were cut short by the sound of bullets. She watched in fear that didn't quite reach her facial features, how John, the focus of her entire life discharged a pistol against something that had just made short work of the army.
Right after John, Derek and Sarah darted out of the building, and proceeded to position themselves between him and the stranger. They opened fire too, but pistols were less than useless against the creature. None of them had seen anything like it; skin-jobs could be damaged, liquid metals showed the damage at least for an instant, and endos at least flinched a little. This thing simply took the barrage of bullets like a morning breeze.
"You people are different," the tall woman declared.
Hearing that and recalling what she had heard the female thing say before, Cameron saw a small window of opportunity.
"Yes, perhaps we could dialogue?"
"No, I can't trust you yet," the taller woman replied. If Cameron had a heart, it would've sunk.
The tall female carefully lowered the petite brunette to the ground, and pointed her weapon arm at her.
"I believe you know how this works," she said, making her point by shaking the weapon at Cameron. "If you care for the human as you seem to, you will remain here unmoving."
With that, the strange woman made her way to John. She walked past Sarah and Derek without the minimal consideration. Upon reaching the leader to be, she dropped to one knee, and set her face really close to him.
John made a point of not moving. He bravely stood his ground, knowing there wasn't much else he could do anyway. They had all seen what this thing was capable of. Still, when her black eyes stared piercingly into his, he couldn't help but to look somewhere else. Thus, he saw Cameron back there, obeying the woman's instruction, and his mother and uncle keeping said woman trained in their sights. Everyone was doing their best and bravest right there. Upon that realization, he decided to return the stranger's stare.
The woman suddenly stood up, and her face showed something akin to realization.
"This is why they protect you. There is something about you, genetically, and beyond. You are special, unique."
She then turned to look at Cameron, and then back at him.
"You put yourself in danger for someone not your kin, and she does the same."
John felt a chill when the woman suddenly caressed his hair.
"My name is Sanakan, level six safeguard of the Megastructure and the Netsphere, in service of the Governing…" Her voice trailed off. She looked up and around, while making one last attempt to uplink. Nothing.
Tossed into this strange and primitive land, with no means of return, and stripped of purpose, Sanakan made her mind.
"This is a very violent place, and your guardians are inadequate, I will take you with me."
The tall woman reached to grasp the small male's arm, but it recoiled instantly.
"What are you talking about? I'm not going with you." He defiantly stated.
"Your mind has understanding and logic; I see no point in repeating myself. My argument is final. Your apparent value to this world and even the future is not something to be left adrift."
The youngling looked at her incredulously. "Why would you protect me anyway?"
"It is my duty."
"Are you some kind of enforcer in your place of origin?" The petite humanoid machine asked from the back, she had cautiously closed the distance towards them.
"Yes," Sanakan simply replied, without even turning. "Now we leave."
With blurring speed, she reached for the younger male once again, this time succeeding in getting a hold of him. He struggled uselessly in her grasp, and the other two humans moved in front of her and aimed their weapons at her head.
"Wait!" the brunette yelled from behind her. "Don't take him away, please."
Sanakan was ready to ignore them all, but she considered the slight chance of that one providing a sound argument. She owed them that much. Even if she had the jurisdiction to carry her new self-appointed task without regards to them, she was still interfering in others affairs.
The taller woman turned towards the humanoid construct.
She in response took this as a sign to talk.
"Don't take him away from me, please…"
There was a long pause. Not long after she spoke, the humans in the group all focused on the non-human.
"From you?" the older man asked incredulously.
The pause dragged on, and Sanakan ran out of patience, she turned to leave but was stopped by a hand grasping her leg.
The female humanoid construct looked up at her with eyes that could only be seen as pleading.
"Don't take him away from me. Because I love him, and he loves me."
"What?" The older man yelled making a scowl. The older woman just stared at the youngling male.
Sanakan merely stood there considering for a couple of seconds. She understood the concept of what was being said, but it was a faraway thing. In her brain, she related it to activities long forgotten. Coupling. Bonding. Mating. Things that had been rendered unnecessary thousands of years ago in her place of origin.
"I do not fully comprehend the concept you present." Sanakan stated coldly. "But I do understand it makes a very valid argument." She finished speaking and released the young boy.
She turned to the brunette and dropped to one knee in front of her.
"What a fascinating contraption you are," Sanakan said, caressing the side of the non-human girl's face.
"So, we can leave then?" The older woman asked.
"Yes," Sanakan replied, and immediately all the humans let out a sigh of relief, not knowing that she wasn't done talking.
"We shall go now before the enemy forces regroup."
"Wait, we?" the older woman asked in surprise. "What exactly do you mean by we?"
Sanakan scowled very lightly while turning to look at the woman. "We, means this group here."
"Including you?" the woman asked again, already getting on Sanakan's nerves.
"Yes, if I am not to take my charge away from you, then obviously, I will be joining your group."
"What?"
Sanakan had had enough; she turned towards the older human female, kneeled in front of her and harshly grabbed the back of her head, forcing her to stare into her eyes.
"Ah, I see now." The safeguard stated.
"I have placed your offspring under my custody." She added, pointing over at the younger male, and then standing up again.
Her charge's mother opened her mouth once again, but was cut off before speaking by the fascinating contraption putting a hand on her shoulder. She then moved forward with the youngling in tow by the hand. The non-human girl's comprehension level and silent nature were starting to grow more in Sanakan than any of the humans were.
"I am Cameron," the brunette declared, introducing herself. "Come this way, we have a vehicle."
Sanakan started walking behind Cameron, and after a couple seconds of surprised staring, the other two humans followed.
"Our charge is named John," Cameron said softly. "His mother is Sarah, and the man is his uncle, Derek."
The safeguard merely gave her a look and continued walking through the rubble littered streets.
As they walked away, Cameron heard the military radio. They were regrouping to execute a big operation and had placed downtown in a complete lockdown. For the first time in her entire existence, she felt nothing in respect to that. She even marveled at the fact that she didn't feel anything negative in respect to Skynet or anything to come. Immediately, she knew the reason for that was their new ally, who appeared to be just as interested in protecting John as she was.
Wherever, whenever she had come from, she was some sort of law enforcement officer, powerful as nothing ever even contemplated by Skynet, and understood the value of John's life.
For the first time in her existence, Cameron also understood the human expression of a bright tomorrow.
Indeed the future looked a lot less grim now.
-END-