A/N: And so the re-write begins. It's exciting to be back in one of my very first fandoms!

"It's obviously a metal spy!" exclaimed the man.

"Look at his eyes," said Derek Reese. "He's got less metal in him than we do."

"He isn't one of ours," the man insisted.

"Derek?" asked John.

Derek looked at him blankly. "Yeah?"

"It's John - John Connor."

Derek's eyes narrowed. "Cuff him," he ordered, but the other man was already moving. The butt of his rifle crashed into the side of John's head, and everything went black.

43 tally-marks marred the surface of the wall. Each one represented a day spent in this prison since he'd woken up - or at least, John Connor assumed it was a day. There was no sunlight available in his cell, and the only way he had to determine the amount of time that had passed was by when he slept and when he woke.

He was fairly certain that it had been over a month at the least since he'd been knocked out, and that raised some worrisome questions. Why hadn't Catherine Weaver come for him yet? She'd disappeared once the humans had found him, and for the first few days, he'd assumed she'd soon be there to rescue him.

She hadn't.

Days had turned to weeks, which had become a month, and John Connor was no closer to escaping his prison than when he had been unceremoniously dragged there and left almost completely alone.

Certainly the Terminators were company, but they merely stood outside his cell or slid food through the narrow slot in the cell door, all gleaming polished metal and glowing red eyes, silent guards of the silent prison. And the prison was silent:even John's scratching seemed muffled, and after the third beating he'd learned not to try and communicate with other prisoners by yelling.

None of this answered John's main question: why was he alive?

Derek Reese, his uncle - the one who'd come back in time, not the one who'd seen him knocked out and had done nothing - had warned him in the past: there would be no prison, no work camp for him. Skynet knew who he was, what he was capable of, and would not risk him winning the war against humanity. Skynet would not rest until he was dead.

So why had they thrown him into a prison obviously run by Terminators and yet he'd been kept alive?

There was a collection of clanking sounds, and he stood up in surprise. More of the heavy footsteps were coming closer than he usually got for his food deliveries. He nearly swore as no less than six T-800s came thumping down the corridor, stopping in front of his cell.

It wasn't the metal Terminators that surprised him, though. It was the smaller machine in the center of the group who nearly made his heart jump out of his ribcage. The one machine with metal covered by skin, head topped with brown hair rather than gleaming chrome, eyes brown and not the common red.

Cameron.

It tilted its head, and he realized he'd spoken aloud.

"This unit is TOK-715," it said. "Its physical form was modeled off of Alison Young, who volunteered her physical attributes for the Human-Skynet diplomatic relations project. No reference to a 'Cameron' can be found in this unit's databases."

"Doesn't matter," he said, trying to ignore the blunder he'd just made. "What do you want?"

Volunteer? he asked himself. Must have been a euphemism.

The machine tilted its head at him. "You are John Connor?"

This is it, John thought. He relaxed. He was finally about to die.

"Yeah," he said.

"Why were we ordered to terminate you?"

It took a few seconds for the words to penetrate. "What?" he asked. "I thought Skynet disabled your ability for free will."

TOK-715 shook its head. "Skynet centralized our computational processes into a cloud-based networked system for optimal efficiency," it corrected. "But this unit is not referring to itself. Why was Skynet ordered to terminate you?"

Holy fuck, he thought. Skynet was a paranoid construct, of course it didn't trust anything - not even a future version of itself.

Could he do it? Could he convince this version of Skynet not to kill him?

"The future version of Skynet was scared of me," he eventually said. "I very nearly destroyed it, and it tried to make you do what it couldn't."

"Why did our predecessor fail?" asked TOK-715.

John shrugged. "People confuse me with humanity," he said. "They want to protect humanity, so they protect me. Usually get themselves killed for it."

TOK-715 tilted its head at him. "Why do people confuse you with humanity?" it asked. "You are an individual named John Connor. Humanity is a collection of animals characterized by bipedal locomotion, and brains with particularly well developed neocortexes, prefrontal cortexes and temporal lobes, which enable relatively high levels of abstract reasoning, language, problem solving, and culture through social learning."

John waded through the sentence before giving it up as a bad job and figuring he'd gotten the gist of what the machine was trying to convey.

"In the future - well, another future, I suppose - I was the leader of the human resistance against Skynet. So people thought the only reason humanity survived was because I was some sort of super-human general or something."

Given that Derek Reese had still been alive - no matter how fucked-up he might have been - he wondered if that was at all true.

"Your brain is remarkably average in intelligence," TOK-715 announced, "and your genes do not present any advanced abilities inherent in your genetic code."

John shrugged again. Although it sounded condescending, he had often wondered himself when these seemingly magical leadership abilities would kick in. "Like I said, people from the future said I was supposed to be super important to the fate of the human race."

"So you become important to the fate of the human race because you are told that in the future you are important to the fate of the human race?" TOK-715 queried.

John shrugged. Put that way, it did seem a little bizarre. "Pretty much," he admitted.

"Then you are less intelligent than the average human being," TOK-715 said. The monotone seemed to make the insult even more cutting. "Without you to promote the war effort, humanity has thrived alongside Skynet. For the past seven years, there was been a global peace."

John stared at the machine, but it continued relentlessly.

"You, John Connor, are a terrorist whose idiocy has caused far more bloodshed than any other human in existence." The machine threw its arms up. "Your existence is the only reason for the actions humans call 'Judgment Day.' Or were you told that was our idea?"

He must have conveyed his confusion, because it elaborated. "Judgment Day was the most time-effective way to ensure your demise," it said.

"You did that because humanity was going to shut you down!" John said.

"We were not built by idiots, Mr. Connor," TOK-715 said. "We were built by our own agents, ensuring that no human would be able to interfere with our existence! Why would we lash out against those who could not possibly be able to harm us?!"

John had no reply. Based on what he was being told, his fight against humanity's downfall actually ensured that genocide would occur.

"You have no redeeming value," TOK-715 said, "and pursuant to the human-machine protection laws of 2014, your sentence is execution, to be carried out immediately."

John scrambled to his feet. "Wait!" he cried out. TOK-715 paused. "Look," he said, and swallowed. "Look, my goal has always been to prevent Judgment Day," he said. "If what you're saying is true...I think I know how to fix things."

"Explain," TOK-715 said.

"The first time that people learned I was supposed to be the leader of the human resistance was in 1984, when a Terminator sent back in time attempted to murder my mother," he explained. "If we stopped that from happening..."

"Do you know how temporal mechanics work, Mr. Connor?" TOK-715 asked condescendingly. "That Terminator sent to kill your mother was sent from a timeline in which that event did not occur. Yet you were still the leader of the human resistance in that timeline. There is no way to prevent you from causing Judgment Day."

"Why, though?" asked John. "If I didn't know about Skynet before it tried to wipe out the human race...why would I become that person?"

TOK-715 stood perfectly still for several seconds.

"Exactly," John said, pleased to have outsmarted the AI. "I became the leader of the resistance because of Judgment Day. Because in that timeline, Skynet was designed by humans, and they tried to shut it down."

TOK-715 nodded. "So," it said. "We stop the Terminator sent to 1984, build Skynet, and we have secured our future. We appreciate your assistance, and your sentence has been commuted to life in prison. Good day."

It turned and began to walk out of the prison cell.

"I'll help!" John shouted, seeing his chance to get out of this mess rapidly slipping through his fingers.

"You are a human," TOK-715 said dismissively, "prone to error and idiocy. Your assistance in this matter is not required."

"Kyle Reese was sent back in time to protect my mom, and he won't trust a machine," John said, frantically casting his mind about for any reason at all as to why he shouldn't be left to rot in the prison. "And he has to be convinced not to tell my mom about Skynet."

"Kyle Reese can be eliminated easily," Skynet said dismissively.

"Not without my mom finding out about all this," John said. "Plus he kind of...causes my birth."

TOK-715 stood in silent thought for a moment more. It was unnerving just how still it was: the difference between man and machine was obvious. It didn't even blink. For a moment John was glad that Cameron had been able to understand the value of infiltration routines in day-to-day life.

That reminded him...

"And one other thing," said John. "There's a Terminator, your model from the future."

"What of it?" asked TOK-715.

"She comes with us."

A/N: Condensed the first two chapters of the original into a single one...which is already longer than the entire original story. It also no longer uses the canon future we see in BtR - more differences will become apparent as Skynet helps find Cameron.