Further Up and Further In
by noiseforyoureyes

disclaimer: It all goes back to James Cameron.

summary: John, Allison, and the Reeses infiltrate a Skynet workcamp, while Sarah invites Kaliba to her doorstep.

(Set two weeks after "Born to Run".)

"Connor?"

John woke to a gunmetal-gray sky.

"Connor."

Kyle's voice cut through the low ringing deep in his ears. It was always odd to hear his name – his real name – coming from another's lips so freely. Half-starting at the sound of it, John locked eyes with his father.

But no anvil dropped, no heads turned to look at him, and most incredibly of all, no distant Skynet entity heard nor cared. Here, John Connor was as harmless a name as John Baum had once been, with an important difference: it was his. And after so many years of holding it close and private, he couldn't quite escape the effect it had spoken aloud – it was this shock, more than anything, that brought him back to himself.

"John." Kyle's face hovered over him, creased with worry. He was so much more expressive than Derek. There were things still behind his eyes that most people had let die away under the weight of war. Shaking John's shoulders gently, he uncapped his water canteen and held it up. "Drink?"

John shook his head. He was thirsty, but not dying of thirst: his mother had taught him the distinction.

"You got nailed pretty good by that last blast," Kyle said, turning the canteen over in his hands; he didn't drink any, either.

John kept waiting for the rest of it: for the rebuke about putting himself in danger and taking a risk. But it never came. His mother wasn't here; he was the only one left to echo her warnings. This dawned on him fresh each day.

"Did they get out?" he asked Kyle, throat chalky. Coughing, he watched a cloud of dust billow out in front of him.

Kyle dropped his head and shook it.

A sick wave of frustration rippled through John, yet oddly, no despair. Even in the face of failure, despair could never quite find a foothold in him. Anger did, certainly, and a healthy dose of fear. But something yet made him feel the burn of hope. Often, he felt like someone else's blood must be powering him, keeping his heart and mind alive with an ulterior intent. No matter how much had changed, it whispered that he mattered still. As he clutched the sharp bits of rock scattered around him, knuckles white, he knew this was part of it: he had to make everyone believe that it all still mattered. Even when human beings got branded with a barcode and chained to the floor like so many sacks of meat. Even when Skynet stole their faces and memories to make the killing of their loved ones easier.

John shuddered as he stared into the distance, making out the hazy form of the workcamp building a good three miles away. Inside were dozens of people that wouldn't be freed.

Skin wasn't winning this war. Not yet.

"We'd better book it," Kyle said suddenly. "Skynet doesn't have many patrols this far out, but that's because it's the middle of godforsaken nowhere. Not someplace we want to be with just the two of us." Wrapping an arm under and around John's shoulders, he gently helped him stand. John's legs were steadier than he expected. He felt reckless and frightened and still drunk on the adrenaline of being here, walking the scorched, mythic landscape he'd tried to picture for himself so many times before.

"It's just us?" he asked.

"Yep. Retreat happened pretty quick – bad fallout around here. No one wants to stay longer than they have to." He misinterpreted the dazed look on John's face. "Don't worry, they left us a jeep. Let's just hope it still runs."

His father's voice was comforting, even when saying bleak things. John liked the sound of it. He'd imagined this too, so many times before – just being with his father. No matter how heavy his thoughts of the future had become, the hope of at least knowing Kyle Reese, someday, was the first thought he'd clung to whenever things got really bad. And even when they weren't so bad – when the worst thing on his mind was the way his mother looked. The weight of Derek's eyes. And Cameron's vacant, knowing stare.

But it somehow wasn't enough. John grimaced, briefly heartsick: she should be here, too. She deserved Kyle more than him. The more time he spent with his father, the more John understood his mother.

He felt close to both of them, even now.

"Let's go," Kyle urged. "C'mon." Aiming for the jeep in the distance, they stumbled their way over ashy concrete and metal, into the sunset that wasn't a sunset anymore.

Sarah Connor looked into the sun of a clear blue sky and wondered how long it would take her to go blind. The desert moved through her in heat and dust, as if she did not exist. She tried to imagine John wandering this same patch of earth, somewhere close – the time was different, but the battleground always the same. She wondered about that. What made this place so special? It was a backwards city, more concerned with its own dirty underbelly than anything else, and yet it all began and ended here. A revolving door, to and from the future, dumped souls and metal from across time: here, Los Angeles. No matter how much changed. She supposed there might be other places in the world Skynet sent their minions, other places bearing crowds where important names might be hiding.

But no name was more important than John Connor's.

And maybe, Sarah mused, that's what made it this place over any other. John had grown up here. His birth – and life – had set the scene. He was the hinge. Always.

A phone buzzed at her hip. Not her phone – that was still confiscated somewhere in an L.A. prison – but one that Ellison had given her and made her promise to keep. After all, they couldn't very well ignore each other, much as Sarah might wish that were possible. This was war, and they were the only ones left still fighting on this side of it. It'd be foolish to stay out of touch. Especially upon the discovery that Ellison had such a wealth of information to share – many months' worth of what it was like to speak and interact with Weaver's so-called anti-Skynet. They had plenty to catch up on, when the time came.

That time wasn't now.

Grinding her boot idly in the dirt, Sarah took her eyes from the sun. The desert looked darker then, almost gray, assisting her imagination as she tried to picture what the horizon might look like in just a few years.

The phone buzzed again, but she didn't answer.

It'd been two weeks since John had left. That was how she measured time, now. Had there ever been another way? Her life had always been divided into two sections: before John, and with John. Now the inevitable third was emerging: after John.

She wondered if the pain of those two words would ever stop being so fresh.

The night it had happened, Ellison had been the one to break the trance, asking where she might be safe. The predictable reply – no one is ever safe – had died somewhere on its way to her lips.

Eventually, fighting all the voices telling her not to, she let Ellison take her back to the desert safehouse. She supposed it was still his influence. The ghost that never left her mind – the one voice that contradicted all the rest. Let him help. And something else, too; a need to burn bridges. She no longer wanted the truck they'd arrived in. Besides the fact that the police would've tagged it by now, it had suddenly become an irrevocable part of the past – a part of the time before John left – and she wanted to leave it there.

She was stranding herself, but it was necessary; her gut told her this, even as her reason, cold and proud, tried to argue otherwise. She was tired of pretending to be one of them.

"Why didn't you go?" Ellison had asked, after a long, dusty drive that felt like a dream. His silence had been respectful on the way over, but Sarah could tell his questions were having an increasing amount of trouble staying down.

Interesting, how this was the first one he voiced.

She didn't answer at first. Leaning forward tensely, her hand on the car door handle, she gave a brief shrug and looked down, biting her lip. Ellison's face was too open.

"It was time." Once the words were out, she realized they were enough.

He'd nodded, his expression resigned, but no less curious. He made her promise that she would call if she needed anything. Let him help.

He had nothing, this James Ellison. He'd lost it all somewhere behind him, when his road converged with hers. And she had nothing to offer him.

Thanking him quietly, she'd shut the door, and walked away without looking back.

John ate with the Reese boys, and nobody asked why.

He'd hesitated to stay too close at first, worried that people would start asking questions – he would've asked, were he in their shoes – but their quiet acceptance continued, and gradually, John began to relax into it. Neither Kyle nor Derek seemed to be bothered by his odd familiarity with them. They probably expected he'd heard some crazy story or another about them through a wide-eyed tunnel rat. But John liked to think there was something else, more natural and unvoiced, that made them take him in as their shadow.

They didn't ask where he'd come from, so uncommonly clean and fresh-faced, with no rags of his own to clothe himself with. He'd seen loners picked up by the squad in the short time he'd been here: skittish, taking to the dark whenever they heard a sound. It was no wonder he'd been pegged as metal by the first person who'd laid eyes on him.

But Derek had known. With just a careful glance and a few easy words, he'd ended any suspicion right then and there. John's own sense of time still overlapped, blurring reason with experience, and he sometimes looked at Derek wondering if the impossible was true – that his uncle knew, on some level so far down that it never reached the surface, exactly who John was.

Of course, the leap of logic required to make all the pieces fit would never come. There wouldn't be another day like the one in the park. It was too far out of the range of this Derek's experience. Still, that almost didn't matter. John clung to the thin strands of belonging he had found; they drew him forward through the long days, so that the harshness of life here shrugged off him like dead skin every night.

"Hey," came Kyle's voice, and John suddenly saw the food in front of him again: a few thin strings of tough meat lying alongside some unidentifiable gruel compound. His vision sharpened and he looked up, noticing how full the hall was now. Scanning the faces, he realized that nobody he knew was missing, no one was out fighting. Which could only mean that the most recent mission had failed; yet another a new approach was in the midst of discussion. This seemed to happen every few days. No matter how carefully executed the next Resistance plan was, the machines always ground it into dust and blew it in their faces. Back to square one, every time.

"There she is."

"What?" John turned, disoriented, to look at his father – who was waving at someone, a slight figure that strode towards them. John followed his line of sight like it was a live wire.

Allison sat down across the table from them.

Immediately John looked away, feeling his stomach flip. He dropped his head, trying to appear preoccupied by his dinner – but nobody was ever preoccupied by the food here, and so the charade fell painfully flat.

"Hello." Her voice was clear and gentle. She smiled; John felt it even though he refused to look. It's not her, he had to remind himself, stupidly, again and again. He knew it wasn't, could feel the difference in her presence – and yet still, he had to fight the urge to bolt from the table.

Everyone else, of course, grossly misinterpreted the situation.

"Allison! Welcome. You know John here, yes?" Kyle was enjoying himself.

"Of course," she said. "The boy-metal James almost shot down."

"That's right."

There was a silence, and John realized they were all expecting him to say something. He looked up and caught Allison's eyes. They were expectant – almost impatient looking. Too much in them.

He couldn't hold her gaze. "Hey," he said, in a pathetic attempt at nonchalance.

She looked at him curiously, then to Kyle, and finally to Derek. As if a switch had been flipped, the smile vanished from her face, and she bent in close to them, with steely intent. "When are you going back?"

Derek dropped his fork, surprised to find her addressing him. "Back where?"

She looked frustrated, but only just. "The camps."

"It was a bust, Allison. You know that." Kyle narrowed his eyes, all amusement dropped, now.

"I can get us in." She held her chin up, certain. And now John couldn't help but look.

"Yeah, but can you get us out?" Derek asked. "It's no good. We don't have the the transports anymore; the metal blew 'em all to hell."

"Then we'll use one of theirs."

Kyle's baffled expression turned incredulous, and Derek sat up straighter. His eyes were hard on Allison. "Is there a reason you have this death wish?"

"My mother's in there."

John froze at this. But Derek's expression was still stubborn. "Yeah. So's everyone's mother. And brother, and sister."

"If it's just us, we can do it," she said, undeterred. "I know where they keep their main transport."

Kyle's eyebrows raised. "You've been out scouting? By yourself?"

A pause. "Yes."

"Damn." He shook his head. "Allison..."

"It doesn't matter," Derek said brusquely. "It'll be rigged with a signal. Skynet's eyes and ears all over. If we approach it, they'll know. If we pulse it, they'll know."

Allison withdrew for a moment, hiding behind her thick curtain of dark hair. When she faced them again, her eyes were still set and fierce. She made to stand. "I'll find a way."

John didn't want to say the words, because they would damn him. But he was thinking of too many things: of his own mother in Pescadero, and in prison. Of Cameron having a mother. Having a life, being a person, and Skynet taking that all for itself. Was it because of this? Because of him? Was he closing yet another loop by even speaking to her – ensuring her eventual death and recreation?

The implications made him feel faint, as if he were chained to a heavy weight underwater and losing the last of his air. But the words came out anyway, just as Allison turned from the table. They sounded weak to his own ears, appropriately failing to convey the tremendous gravity behind them.

"What if we reprogram it?"

Allison paused and glanced down at him, quizzical. Derek and Kyle looked bewildered. No one spoke at first, just stared at John as if awaiting some explanation for the madness.

"The transport, I mean." Have to start somewhere. He swallowed; his voice sounded loud in the sudden quiet.

Finally, Derek voiced the obvious question: "And how in the hell would we go about doing that?"

John felt his skin crawl with the familiar heat of attention, suspicion, and expectation. For two whole weeks, he'd lived without these things. But he knew that kind of freedom ultimately belonged to everyone else. Never to him.

"I... was pretty good with computers. Before." He shrugged. "Kind of liked to hack, hotwire and stuff." The assembled faces stared at him.

"John," Kyle finally said. "You'd have to be better than good to pull this off."

Uncomfortable, John shrugged. "Machines all work the same way, right?" He looked up at Allison without meaning to.

When no one said anything, he ventured again: "No one's ever tried it before?"

Kyle was the one to finally speak. "We've... scrapped parts from busted metal that's offline... but touching a live one hasn't done much for techs other than getting them dead."

"You have any idea how you might accomplish this, Connor, or do you plan on just making it up as you go along?" asked Derek, no small trace of skepticism in his voice.

A small idea, John thought. But mostly just making it up.

The face he turned to them was as impassive as he could manage. "If you can spare a comm, I should be able to use it to throw the transport's signal."

"How?"

"I'll show you."

Sarah couldn't sleep in the same room with it.

This was a good thing. Sarah didn't want to sleep. The worst of the grief had long since washed over her, leaving no more than a solemn silence somewhere deep. She'd spent one night – just one – crying until it felt like her soul had heaved out through her mouth: for yet another Reese in the ground, for Charley, for Andy, for every damn person that'd gotten in the way. But most of all for John. Oh, God, John. She'd felt herself pouring out onto nothing.

Then it had finished, fully stranding her. And all that was left was the fight.

So when Ellison had offered to help drag the bodybag into the back room, Sarah had refused. Keep it here. She was glad to have it close: it kept her awake and thinking, away from dreams and night-haunts.

But the overwhelming urge to burn it assaulted her at least once a night. After staring too long at the form in the chair, so innocently draped with an old knitted Mexican blanket, she would stand and walk to the kitchen, boots thudding mechanically, and open the cabinet door. Her hands would rest on the thermite that lay stacked deep inside, and her breath would come short. This time, she'd think, this time. It would take a great deal of resolve to talk herself down in that moment. But every time, the part of her that raged would listen to the part that plotted.

Let them burn with their own.

It would be only a few more sleepless nights until Kaliba came. Sarah was certain.

Odd, how untouchable she felt, when death trailed her now more than ever. The cancer that might or might not be eating away at her insides seemed entirely irrelevant in the face of what had happened, and what was coming. With John now gone, the old recklessness that she'd so carefully controlled for years was surfacing again. Sitting at the computer and sending out inquiries was no longer something that made her sick with fear. Sticking her neck out to tempt Skynet into cutting it off became strangely gratifying, because John wasn't here. And Kaliba didn't know. Skynet didn't know. It was liberating. The bridges had already begun to burn. Let them come to her, this time. She had something they wanted. And they had blood for her hands.

Sarah looked over at the chair where it sat, trying to picture the half-ruined face staring sightlessly underneath the fabric into forever. Metal soul gone. John gone, after it. Sarah could almost hear the machine's disapproval of the plan she was now formulating in the dead hours. Not an effective strategy, she'd say.

Or would the machine understand, in its own way? Might it want this, too?

John was always so certain about Cameron. Never doubting her loyalty, even when Cameron doubted it herself. Sarah remembered the insistence in the little-girl voice, the vacant doe-eyes staring at her intently that one night in the church:don't let him bring me back.

Perhaps this, then, was their truce. She would put the Tin Miss to rest for good, leave no body for her to come back to. But she would also let the burning mean something.

Cameron had always been so curious about meaning, and the things humans did to find it. A broken pencil and a piece of paper were as close as she'd come in response to human complications like death and burial. On the verge of understanding, but never quite reaching the threshold.

Maybe this will make sense to you, Sarah thought at the figure in the dark. It was the closest she'd ever come to sentiment for the machine that had cost her everything.

Then she stood and walked back to the kitchen. This time, she took the thermite out – every last bit of it – and began methodically stacking it next to Cameron's shell.

John turned the dismantled comm over in his hands. His eyes scanned each wire and connection, looking for the flaw that must exist. The technology was familiar – from his own time – expertly strung together by the techs of the young Resistance. He recognized bits of modems, cell phones, computer chips, even police radios. Judgment Day really had been close.

But the flaw was hidden from his eyes; he couldn't work it to the surface. It all looked too perfect, and testing it was out of the question. He shook his head. Forced to believe in his own iconic self – the grim irony didn't escape him. It never did.

His fingers trembled a bit, thinking of the implications if this didn't work. He was playing with all of their lives – but especially his own. This plan ensured that he'd be at more risk than he'd ever been in his life, and his mother's voice never left his ears. You're too important.

He countered it with his own. Too important to be caught sitting around while Skynet is winning.

Just as he was about to close the chassis and resign the whole thing to fate, a voice whispered his name in the dark – John.

Snapping his head up, he cast wildly about for a moment, then saw Allison's face at the base of the tunnel.

Her brow wrinkled in apology. "Sorry."

Letting out a breath, John straightened. His heart skipped in his chest, a wretched traitor. "No, no. I'm fine." God, she scared the hell out of him. How could he explain why? No wonder he looked like a kid with a dumb crush.

Again, he was grateful for the tentative smile that crossed her face, and the all too human way she clambered up the rock to his position outside the sleeping quarters. It made things easier. She was just a girl.

Just the girl. The one you're willing to risk your life and the whole wide-end myth of John Connor for.

"So, you're sure about this?" she asked, gesturing toward the comm.

Glancing back down at the half-closed chassis, John shrugged, and finished snapping the pieces back into place. "Sure as I can be."

"Without being metal." She smiled again, crouching down next to him. This girl smiled a lot. He wondered how much Kyle and Derek had told her about him, damn them both.

"Yeah, well, apparently I look it," he said, following the lighter thread of the conversation.

"James'll shoot at anything in the tunnels that actually stands up straight," she said. "Most rats don't. Must be why Derek took you in."

John felt suddenly sheepish. "I was an idiot running around half-naked. In Kyle's jacket."

Cocking her head, Allison watched him closely. Silence stretched for a moment, but she didn't let it linger. "So. You realize that if we pull this off, it'll be the biggest middle finger we've ever given to Skynet. Messing with their mainline signal? Gonna bring down heat on all of us, you know."

"And you're okay with that?" John asked, truly wondering.

She nodded, face set again in that astonishingly grim determination she'd shown last night. "We'll make it worth it."

John made himself look at her – really look at her – fighting the usual reactionary drop of his gaze. He noticed the scar that ran down her left cheek, and traced it with his eyes. It cut much deeper than he'd realized.

She was watching him watch her, and wore no smile now.

"How..." He winced at his own intrusion, apologetic. "How'd you get it?"

Allison lowered her eyes, and reached a hand up to feel the side of her face. "I don't remember."

A knock at the door jolted Sarah out of her thoughts. Her hand immediately slipped over the trigger of the shotgun that lay slung across her lap.

"Sarah?"

Ellison's voice. She closed her eyes and let out a breath. Not Kaliba.

Or...

Gently slinging the gun strap over her shoulder, Sarah stood and crossed the few feet to the door. Nothing covered the peephole; Ellison stood there in plain daylight. There was still the chance that it wasn't him, of course – and even if the odds were in her favor for once, Sarah couldn't quite break the habit of her suspicion. So she flipped open the phone he'd given her and pressed the speed-dial.

A faint ringing came from the other side of the door, and she saw Ellison glance down and fumble in his pocket for the corresponding phone.

Good enough.

Throwing back two deadbolts and a chain, Sarah opened the door.

Ellison's face wore the usual thinly veiled melancholy, but he was dressed more casually than Sarah was used to, and looked almost lost standing there in front of her.

Foregoing her usual show of hesitation, she swung the door wider and stepped back, wordlessly inviting him in.

Ellison entered, keeping a respectful distance between himself and Sarah. "I know I shouldn't be shocked that you're not answering your phone," he said, "But I wanted to... be sure."

Sarah stood to the side, gun lowered. She nodded. "I'm still here. Still alive."

Ellison took in his surroundings more fully then, his eyes running over the stacks of weaponry and thermite, noting the laptop – lid open, running – and finally resting on the misshapen blanket-draped lump that sat in one of the chairs.

"What are you doing, Sarah? Can you tell me that much?"

She shrugged, and gestured toward the computer. "Nothing complicated."

Uncertain, Ellison walked over to the desk, scanning the screen and drinking in its contents. After a moment, he stared over the laptop at her. Stared hard. "You're bringing them here."

She nodded again. "I am."

He sighed, leaning heavily on the desk. He was weary. She could relate. "Do you have a plan for when they get here? Or am I asking the wrong question?"

She shook her head, a wry smile hiding at the corners of her mouth. "It's forming." Then the smile faded, and she raised her head, the defiance building in her. "I told him I'd stop it. And I'm the only thing left to distract them, aren't I? So I'd better be one hell of a distraction."

Ellison just watched her, and the look on his face was, for once, unreadable. "They don't know he's gone, do they?"

She nodded.

He sighed into the silence. "What can I do?"

Sarah slid her finger back over the shotgun's trigger. "You can open the door."

The transport was block-like and bulky, a heap of welded metal that somehow ran like a dream when you wanted to collect a couple dozen human bodies for a Skynet workcamp. John just hoped it would work half as well to get them out.

It was eerily quiet as they pulled themselves up into the steering compartment. Every scrape and thud of their boots made them feel horribly exposed. Allison showed him where everything was wired; John couldn't help being a bit dumbfounded when she didn't punch through the metal hull herself, leaving its innards open for his perusal. She merely handed him a blowtorch and set to work with her own. He shook his head to clear it.

His mind worked quickly as he fumbled with the wiring, trying to assess the defaults in record time. Everything he recognized, he reconfigured, and anything that had to do with broadcasting or visuals he ripped out. The hope was that they'd be driving blind. Very blind.

He didn't know how long the thrown signal would hold out. Skynet would soon enough have performed a routine scan at the location indicated by his fake transmission, thinking it was the workcamp. Then, the hell that would rain down upon them would be mighty.

Derek's pulse rifle, along with an extra grenade, had taken out the triple-eight standing guard near the transport – it lay on the ground, staring up into the gray sky, oblivious to the flesh and blood now infiltrating its ward. It would be a mere two minutes before the machine rebooted, and then John and Allison would have something much more serious to contend with. Always two minutes: John wondered briefly why Skynet, with all their advancement, hadn't found a way to whittle the reboot time down to a single minute, or a matter of seconds.

He stopped his furious work for a millisecond to survey the outcome, running his fingers over the wires, checking each connection. By this point, he was working more off instinct than anything specific.

"We good?" Allison asked.

"I think so."

"Good enough for me," she said, and slammed on the ignition.

They were moving. John glanced down at the comm, which he'd wired with an extra screen that stuck out sideways at an odd angle. It tracked their position relative to the radius of the EMP blast that Derek was about to let burn upon John's command.

Command. Odd word to use. It was too direct and obvious: he wasn't sure he liked it. What the hell was he doing, anyway?

Something. I'm doing something. We need this.

And it was true. The Resistance needed this victory more than he, or even Allison did.

The side-screen turned a faint, LCD-green, indicating they were finally out of range. John glanced up at Allison; she looked about as scared as he felt.

Fear can be a good thing. On a bad day, it'll keep you alive.

He pressed the input on the comm, and flung himself off the cliff. "Derek. Now."

Almost immediately, they felt a low rumble; Derek must've been more than ready. But the transport kept running. The quick engine death he and Allison had been morbidly anticipating didn't come. They'd done it - calculated the range just right. John looked back, the workcamp about a mile behind them now.

Allison smashed the brakes, and the bulky transport slid to an unceremonial stop. Wrenching the steering around, she hauled the vehicle a full hundred-eighty degrees, slower than either of them would've liked – but necessary to keep all four wheels on the ground. As soon as they were facing the opposite direction again, she let the metal trap have full speed, the workcamp back on their direct horizon.

Neither spoke.

John thought of the coltan warehouse, and the way he'd felt then – every nerve alive, his future self trapped in there with him, watching him.

It'd been just a shadow of this.

As they neared the camp's perimeter again, John heard gunfire, and for a moment forgot to breathe. But the only thing that fell was an offline trip-eight standing dead by one of the gates, cut off from Skynet by the EMP; it sank like a ton of bricks under Derek's fire, warping the fence behind it with its weight.

Kyle bounded over the wreckage, making a beeline for the camp's side door.

Allison's eyes were fixed on Kyle. John read a singular motive all over her face: her mother. She stopped the transport by the mutilated fence and scrambled to get out – grabbing a hefty pulse rifle that was clearly a bit difficult for her to lift. But once it was slung over her shoulder, she seemed competent enough.

Sharing a look with John, her expression softened.

The last thing he expected was for her to reach across the cramped space and give him a quick, stifling hug. He didn't respond as she embraced him, paralyzed by the shock of it. "Thank you," she whispered.

Before he could think to formulate a reply, she turned to follow Kyle into the heart of the camp.

John waited. He had no real sense of the passage of time; he just knew that the LCD hadn't changed and prisoners were still stumbling out of the building at odd intervals, Kyle and Allison supporting most of them. Men and women, but no children: it seemed Skynet hadn't yet stooped to that level of cruelty.

Derek kept a nervous watch while John helped escort the dazed people into the back of the transport, but no threats had come calling – yet. Each time Allison came back, John locked eyes with her, and each time she shook her head, very slightly. No sign of her mother.

As she and Kyle went for another round, John looked restlessly from the downed trip-eight to his commscreen. Still offline. This was getting much too comfortable.

Derek walked over after awhile, lugging a rifle and strapped with a good number of explosives – a force in his own right, should any metal be unlucky enough to come within his range. But the expression he turned to John was one of uncertainty. "You get the feeling this signal of yours is working a little too well?" he asked.

John nodded. "Yeah. Just a bit."

Derek chewed the inside of his lip, his gaze lowering to the comm in John's hands.

And then it happened. The device gave a soft blip, and the metal on the fence began to twitch and move.

"Derek..."

His uncle twisted around and saw the trip-eight rise, red eyes glowing again, looking hungry more than angry.

Derek unloaded the entire charge of his pulse rifle into the machine's body – stunning it, but only just. "Get out, John. Get the hell out!" Then, barking into his own comm: "Everybody out!"

Another round of prisoners was just exiting – four this time – making the rescue total close to a dozen. Allison's whole body language had changed; she helped a middle-aged woman scramble up the hill as fast as she could manage, desperation pulling her movements. The woman looked disoriented, and probably injured. Badly. Without thinking, John ran over to help.

It's her leg, Allison whispered, and John shoved all his weight underneath the woman's left shoulder, trying to help relieve the pressure as they crossed the remaining distance. Gradually, the pain stopped masking her face so much, and as they reached the back of the transport John saw the woman's kindly eyes turn to him.

"What's your name?" she asked, as he helped her up into the murky depths.

"John," he said.

She smiled weakly. "Thank you, John."

But the words only made his spine tingle. Don't thank me. You don't know who I am.

Allison gave her mother a fierce hug, but a brief one. Her eyes were wet as she turned away, but she brushed the moisture aside impatiently and stepped down to join John. Together, they pulled the heavy door into place.

But before they could hook it closed, Kyle slid into view, waving his hands wildly. "Stop! Leave it open!" Fury was not something John was used to seeing in his father, but it was all over his face now, hitting the rest of them like a wave.

Then, inexplicably, he started running back towards the camp building.

"Kyle!" John thought he heard his own voice echoed in Derek's. He raced to the front of the transport and grabbed the first gun his hands landed on, groping blindly over the high seat. Allison was right behind him. "John–"

"Drive it around the perimeter once. Just once," he said forcefully, and to her credit, Allison didn't hesitate: she hopped up into the front compartment and made straight for the steering.

John ran.

He heard Derek yelling – in the distance, in the comm – but didn't listen enough to make out words.

Leaping over the busted fence, John followed his father's footsteps, making for the twisted wooden door with its broken deadbolt. As he stumbled inside, his vision plunged into darkness, and he paused, trying to make out the blurred figures surrounding him.

"Kyle?"

He heard the clanking of chains on wood. "Help us."

The door slammed shut behind him, and John whirled to face the new arrival, heart in his throat.

"It's me, John." Derek's voice was low.

Neither spoke as they dug the chains out from the splintering wood, using the supply of tough knives they'd brought with them. Only a few people were left that could stand; the others lay on the ground slack-jawed, unseeing. Not dead, but hardly alive, either. John looked over at Derek as he worked, stealing a glance at his uncle's forearm - but there was no barcode etched in black there, and Derek's eyes didn't reflect the caged terror of a prisoner stepping back in time. Derek hadn't known a place like this for himself. At least, not yet.

When the job was done, Derek turned to John, and in the half-light his face looked harsh, almost frightening. "Get them out." He handed John his pulse rifle.

"What about–"

"I'll get Kyle. Get them out of here, John." And he pushed the rifle into John's hands, making for a stairwell John hadn't noticed before – one that led down into some kind of basement.

John hesitated for a moment – but only a moment – before his mind snapped back into place. He felt the three prisoners watching him expectantly, and began to usher them out of the side door. "All right, come on. We've got one chance, we've gotta nail this. Let's go."

One by one, they made their way out into the scorched mid-day landscape, which never looked too different from the nightscape, truth be told. A gusty wind blew against them from the west. John saw glowing eyes in the distance and stared at the charge on Derek's rifle. Red. He had just enough, but he couldn't waste it. The timing was going to be everything.

He shoved his comm device into the hands of one of the prisoners – a young woman with sharp eyes and a short mess of colorless hair. "Watch the green dot, relative to our position here." Quickly, he indicated their location on the screen's map. "Tell me when it's about to line up."

She nodded, saying nothing. Simply trusting.

Two endos advanced, taking their time. They were weaponless. John's finger trembled on the trigger. He wondered why they didn't rip him apart where he stood. Did Skynet get cocky?

He wanted nothing more than to pull it, but he had to wait. If only this were the rifle from the vault, he thought in vain – the one his mom had used to blow Cromartie to hell and back. Conveniently, it appeared the Resistance hadn't developed that kind of firepower yet.

As if hitting an invisible wall, the endos suddenly stopped, and twisted around to reverse their position.

"It's... it's almost there," said the woman, and John heard the rumble of the transport before he saw it. The machines, however, had sensed it fully, and started taking increasingly quick strides in the vehicle's direction.

John did the last thing in the world he would've ever imagined himself doing, and ran after them. A blinding blast of light screamed from the end of his rifle and hit the back of the nearest endo. It toppled. John didn't loosen his grip on the trigger, swinging the pulse around to the second machine. But the charge was running out of juice already, and this machine merely slowed a bit under the blast's weakened impact, turning back around to march towards him. Good. Squash the pest.

"Go! Sideline it, run!" he urged the people behind him. The transport skidded to a halt a dozen or so yards away.

John kept the rifle aimed at the oncoming machine, though it was useless now, whirring as it started its next charge cycle. He chanced a look back: still no Derek or Kyle. Gritting his teeth, John moved sideways along the edge of the perimeter, hoping the draw the endo away from the door. Crazy. Risky. What are you doing, John Connor?

Then a roaring sound grew, and he saw the massive transport making a cut straight toward the unfortunate terminator.

He skidded out of the way and ducked behind a nearby rock as the screeching clash of metal-on-metal filled his senses. Dust rose and obscured his vision, muting the sounds all around him. He gripped the back of his neck with his hands and squeezed his burning eyes shut tight.

It was awhile before the debris stopped crumbling. Silence draped the area, save for a pair of faint, crunching footsteps. They weren't as measured – nor as heavy – as a machine's, so John chanced a peek over the rock.

Allison appeared above him in the misty blue light, offering her hand. Come with me if you want to live. She didn't say the words, but he heard them, anyway.

Gratefully, he grabbed her hand and pulled himself up. He wanted to say something other than "thanks," but that was the only word that came out, and there wasn't time for more.

Together, they made a quick dash for the transport.

"Derek and Kyle–" John started breathlessly.

"–they're in," she panted. "We picked them up on the other side. C'mon, let's get out of here."

Shocked, John followed her up onto the seat in a daze. The basement must have led somewhere – to some unseen exit. But what had been down there? What had painted that look of fury on Kyle's face, and that harrowing fierceness on Derek's?

Maybe his uncle did know something more about the camps. Maybe his experince with them had been entirely different. Maybe Kyle was the one who'd been subjected to one; John had never thought to look for his tattoo, on the few occasions that his arms escaped his jacket.

The transport lurched; Allison was making sure they barreled out of there at full speed. John took in great lungfuls of oxygen to steady himself, but the weight of all that had happened wouldn't sink in. His mind spun endless new tangents like a spider, and he was exhausted trying to keep up with all of them. Adrenaline kept his heart beating uncomfortably hard, and his muscles felt taut and pained.

They drove in silence. No pursuing gunfire followed them. John kept waiting for the drone of an HK to rise above the low roar of the transport's engines, and he could tell Allison was, too. She looked nervous as she drove, chancing occasional glances back and to the side – so unlike Cameron, who would've stared dead ahead with her arms straight, unperturbed by what might be behind her or in front of her.

It was then that John saw his comm light up on the seat between them – Allison must've retrieved it from the woman. But there was no familiar map glinting on its face; instead, a series of digits raced across the screen, overriding everything else. Narrowing his eyes, John picked it up.

01001010 01001111 01001000 01001110 00100000 01000011 01001111 01001110 01001110 01001111 01010010 00111111

His mind feverishly translated the binary.

JOHN CONNOR?

He dropped the comm as if it was a hot coal. Allison glanced over. "John?"

Despite his efforts to stop it, he heard her in Cameron's voice, and heard the binary in Cameron's voice; it felt like a hand had reached out from the digital ether and wrapped itself around the very vein of his identity. He tried desperately to keep his grip on reality. How?

"What is it? Are we being followed?" asked Allison, and her fearful tone – so very un-Cameron-like – brought his senses back into focus.

"No." The word stuck to his throat. He ran a hand through his hair and stared at the screen. "Um, just – just a glitch, I think."

The next knock that came at the door wasn't Ellison's.

Sarah's hand twitched over the shotgun; she stood to the side of the door, and took a deep breath. Half-covered in a heavy lead tarp, she felt wrapped in shadow, and in the weight of her own impending actions.

As always, they were here for her son.

She'd used all of John's logins and codes these past two weeks, so much that Kaliba had no doubt sensed the trap and avoided it. This had given her valuable time.

But Skynet could only ignore the name John Connor for so long. And at last, the bridges would finish burning.

She nodded at Ellison, who crouched on the left side of the door. At her gesture, he stood, admirably straight-backed, and peered through the hole at their visitor. Exhaling slowly, he looked at Sarah, and there was no weariness in his gaze, for once.

He opened the door.

Sarah's angle was too sharp for her to get a clear view of who stood at the threshold, but the voice that addressed Ellison was a woman's. "Good day, sir. I'm looking for someone."

"Not me, I hope?" said Ellison, the picture of calm.

"A Mrs. Connor. Is she in?"

This was unexpected, but made sense. Sarah supposed she'd been a thorn in their side long enough that the spot was starting to get infected. Might as well take her out, too.

"I don't believe so. I'm sorry."

"That's unfortunate," came the voice, impressively cheerful. "I'm afraid she has something of mine. Perhaps we could come in and take a look around for it?"

We. There must be another with her – perhaps several others. And no doubt, they had a court order or some sort of writ to wave around, just for added affect. Sarah was surprised they hadn't pulled out the guns already; Ellison's body armor was going to waste so far.

"Of course." Graciously, Ellison let the woman in. She was followed by a rather slight brown-haired man in a suit, and another, much more imposing one that towered above everyone else.

"You'll excuse me for a moment," said Ellison, but it seemed they hardly heard him.

For seated in the chair dead ahead of them, fully exposed, was Cameron's shell. Her head still hung limply to one side, like a broken doll's. All eyes were fixed on the cyborg. No one saw Ellison disappear into the dimness of the next room, or Sarah throw the tarp more fully over herself and race for a glassless window on the east end of the house. The men's heads might have turned, hearing departing footsteps on the wood.

But the woman took a step forward, and the thermite ignited.

What does this accomplish, Sarah? How much damage does this really do? asked the ghost.

Not much, she conceded.

So why are you doing it?

Is it really that hard to figure out?

No. But I wonder if you even have yourself figured out.

Sarah watched the desert pass by her in a blur. She moved through like a force, as if she was the reality and it was the illusion. Her conscious mind told her she was in a car – that Ellison was driving it, and that they were both alive. But her soul inhabited a different place, and the only thing there with her was a ghost. And no matter where she hid her eyes, he found them.

What now? Where will you go?

I don't know. To find Danny Dyson. Maybe.

You're a fugitive.

And what are you?

Kyle's face softened into a sad smile. I'm the one that won't leave you.

John sat on his cot in the cold sleeping quarters, alone during the onset of night. He felt almost greedy being here, stealing moments to himself, while out in the halls people celebrated the first successful workcamp rescue in the Resistance's short history. But he needed the solitude; he craved it now as much as he ever had back home. It kept him sane.

And at this particular moment, he was in desperate need of all the sanity he had left.

Already, he was the new genius kid hero, come from nowhere to outwit the machines. The Reeses were already heroes, of course, and enjoying plenty attention of their own. But Kyle's haunted eyes, now drained of their mad anger, had disturbed John as they left the transport, and the grateful glances Allison and her mother kept throwing him made him feel like a liar.

So he'd slipped out into the tunnels, the comm burning a hole in his jacket pocket.

His fingers hovered over the keys as he sat. He could reply, if he wanted to. The screen still blared his own name at him, calling him out. Asking him who he was.

What a question.

He'd tried all his life to keep his present separate from his future – it was the only way he'd kept the madness at bay for years – but this. It was an intersection; he felt it. It was his past finding him and his future coming to meet him. His choice here could change it all. Open up a new line, a new future that nobody could predict.

Who would he be, then? What would his name mean to people? What did it mean now?

No one saw him throw the comm to the concrete and crush it under his booted foot.

No one save John Connor.