Chapter 3

Charles sat in amazement as he watched the production of Faust. Everything was perfect: the scenery, the costumes, but most of all the singing. The voices rang throughout the hall and put him in a trance.

He was put in such a trance he hardly noticed the bolts of lightning that started appearing from the middle of the theatre. He only took notice of something going wrong when people started jumping out of their seats and running away from the area the bolts were appearing. The bolts started firing in all directions. A couple hit the gas lamps and a few small fires started.

Everyone knew the small fires would soon turn into large fires. The entire audience tried to leave en mass, but succeeded in doing nothing more than jamming the exits. Charles and his wife tried to push their way out of the aisle, but achieved no success. Charles noticed the bolts had stopped. When he looked back from where they had been coming, he saw a naked man kneeling in the middle of an empty spot.

The terminator slowly stood as he was activated. The information he had been given told him Christine Daae would be in the performance this night. He looked at the stage and saw no females at the moment. This would mean she was offstage and he would have to find her.

He leaped in the direction of the stage and made it the long distance in one jump. While he was in the air he noticed his arrival had caused the place to catch on fire. He initially saw it as a positive because it meant Christine might die in the fire and he wouldn't even have to kill her himself.

He landed on the stage and grabbed the nearest actor. He gripped the man and held him up off his feet. "Where is Christine Daae?" he asked.

"I have no idea who that is," the actor replied as he looked down at him.

"She is the actress playing the lead in Cleopatra tonight," the terminator said to him.

"We aren't doing any show called Cleopatra," the actor replied. The terminator was squeezing his neck hard and he was having trouble speaking. "This is a production of Faust."

Since the actor was proving so unhelpful the terminator crushed his neck and threw him to the floor. Something was not right. He looked at the scenery that was onstage. The information in his databases told him Cleopatra should be about an Egyptian, but there was nothing Egyptian about the sets that were surrounding him. The terminator knew he was going to have to do some investigating to figure out what was happening.

Charles and his wife made it out of the theatre and into the lobby as the fire consumed the entire building around them. Now that they were free of the seating, they had some room to move around. Everyone was moving frantically in all directions as no one could remember where the nearest exits were. In all the commotion Charles and his wife both were pushed to the ground.

Charles struggled to stand as he was being pushed in all directions. When he finally stood he looked around for his wife, but couldn't find her. He frantically called her name, but he couldn't even hear his own voice in all the commotion. As he looked at the flames consuming the roof he knew he didn't have much time to get out. He didn't think there was any way he would actually be able to find his wife so he made his way out onto the streets. He started circling the theatre looking for his wife.

The humans had all run out of the theatre, so the terminator had the entire back stage to himself. He took an old costume out of wardrobe and put it on. He was going to need clothes if he was to avoid attracting attention. Unlike the humans, he was able to ignore the flames and heat around him. He saw little danger from the fire, as he was thinking like a robot instead of like a human.

He had just finished dressing when a heavy beam swung down and brushed along the side of his face. The beam brushed along him so hard it tore the skin off of one side of his face. He touched it and could feel nothing but his metal skeleton. He realized the huge mistake he had made and ran for a back door. With his skin torn off it was going to be hard for him to move among the humans unnoticed.

The terminator found a back door and went outside to find himself in an alley full of others who had escaped that same way. It was night out and the first thing he did was look to the stars to try and find what year it was. From his analysis of the sky he had been sent back almost twenty years too early. Somehow the computer had made a horrid miscalculation.

The humans in the alley started gathering around him. "Are you okay, buddy?" one of them asked.

"It looks like you suffered quite an injury there?" another said.

"Something tore off your skin to the bone," a female voice said. He felt a hand on his metal skeleton. A scream followed the touch. "What is that?" she screamed.

The terminator knew the humans gathered around him could not be allowed to tell others about what they had seen. He moved quick and attacked each human gathered around him. He concentrated first on immobilizing them so they couldn't run away. When they were all rendered immobile he went about breaking their necks and finishing them. He then threw the bodies back into the opera house through the door he had just come out of. He hoped the fire would burn them and no one would be suspicious how so many humans had died by having their necks snapped. The terminator grabbed a nearby burlap sack and cut two eye holes out of it. He then placed it over his head and walked out of the alley.

Charles Daae spent the entire night running around the opera house. He looked through every crowd gathered outside, trying to find his wife. He asked anyone who would listen to him whether or not they had seen someone who matched the description he gave them of his wife. He got nothing but 'no' for answers.

For most of the night, he held out hope his wife would turn up somewhere. He asked any rescue worker if they had seen someone matching his wife's description. He didn't receive an affirmative answer from any of them. As the night passed and the sun rose, he held out hope his wife had to be somewhere, alive and safe.

The fire was out by the time the sun rose. The rescue workers started bringing out the bodies of the dead and laying them on the sidewalk in front of the opera house. Lines of people surrounded the steps leading to the theatre as they waited to see if the bodies of their loved ones were among those brought out by the workers.

One of the first bodies carried out was that of a woman wearing a dress which looked like the one Mrs. Daae had been wearing. It was charred and burned, but the dress was definitely similar. Charles stood unmoving as the body was laid on the ground. He was now able to get a good look at the woman's face and could see it was definitely that of his wife. He couldn't believe she was dead. He pushed through the crowd and ran to the body, thinking a close-up look would prove wrong his initial identification. When he saw her up close, it only confirmed that it was his wife. He grabbed a hold of her hand, hoping he might be able to feel some faint sign of life, but there was none. He cried over her body as he brought her hand up to touch his face.

The terminator walked all over the city of Paris as it analyzed its situation and what its next move should be. He started listing all the facts he knew. He had been sent back in time to kill Christine Daae, the mother of John Connor, as she was performing in a show at the opera house. He had arrived too early, though. He had no information on this woman outside of the fact that as an adult she was an opera singer. While she was alive in the present day, the terminator had no idea as to her location. Her last name was Swedish, meaning she was likely not living anywhere close to Paris at the moment.

The most logical thing to do would be to wait for her to come to Paris as an opera singer. The one hole in that plan at the moment was the fact the opera house had been destroyed. He had inadvertently altered time when he arrived. With no opera house, Christine would never come to Paris to sing.

The terminator analyzed all the options before him. He reached the conclusion he was going to have to reset the time line. He had to make sure the opera house was rebuilt. He didn't know how he was going to do it, but he had to find a way. If he could correct the time line and put it back on track he could make sure that Christine would come to sing, and then he could kill her.

The terminator was well equipped to handle the task at hand. Skynet had programmed him with all the databases he himself possessed. He had also programmed him to be able to learn. All the other terminators operated off of read-only instructions. By being able to learn he could learn to mimic humans and blend in better. He was going to need all these skills if he was going to put himself in a position to kill Christine Daae years down the road.

Charles Daae was given a ride home in a police coach. He was so despondent over the death of his wife they wanted to take him home personally to make sure he didn't run out and try to jump off a bridge and join his wife in heaven. He assured the police during the ride they had no worry of him committing suicide as he had a young daughter who was depending on him. The entire ride home he could think of nothing else other than how he was going to break the news to her that her mother was dead.

When they reached the Valerius mansion the police let him walk in himself as they were convinced he was no danger to himself. They were out of sight by the time he reached the door. When he entered he was immediately greeted by the professor and his wife.

"Oh dear heavens, thank God you're safe," Mrs. Valerius said as she embraced him. "When we woke this morning our maid told us you had not returned last night. We sent her out and she returned to tell us about the opera house fire. We feared the worst." The old wife released her embrace and stepped back. She seemed to notice for the first time that Charles was alone.

"Oh God, don't tell me Mrs. Daae. . ." she was unable to finish as she saw Charles shaking his head. She broke down crying as she realized what he meant.

The professor started wiping away tears from his eyes as well. Charles had never seen him emotional before, so this was a big deal. "We will get through this," he told Charles as he put a hand on his shoulder.

"Is Christine still sleeping?" he asked them.

"She's awake, but she has been in her room the whole time," Mrs. Valerius informed him. The maid told her she would bring her breakfast in bed. We wanted to keep her in there so she wouldn't get out and inadvertently find out about the fire."

"I should go and tell her what happened," Charles said as he ran off and up to his daughter's bedroom. When he opened the door she beamed with excitement. She tried to get up, but stopped when she almost knocked over the tray that was on her lap. Charles walked over to her and helped her put the tray on the nightstand next to her bed.

"Why didn't you come and see me last night, father?" Christine asked him. She didn't sound sad or disappointed he had neglected her. She was just so happy to see him at the moment she couldn't help but sound perfectly cheery as she talked to him. "The maid told me the two of you came in and went right to bed."

Charles sighed and waited a moment as he prepared himself for what he would have to say to his daughter. "What is it?" Christine asked as she picked up on the fact something was not quite right.

"The maid told you a lie when she said your mother and I had come home and gone straight to bed," he told his daughter.

"Why would she do that?" Christine asked, the indignity was apparent in her voice.

"She was just trying to protect you from some horrible news, sweetie," he said to her. He had to fight back tears as he talked to her.

His daughter noticed he was crying and started crying herself as a result of it. "What happened, father?" she asked him in a cracking voice.

"There was a horrible tragedy at the opera house last night," he began. "A fire broke out during the performance right in the middle of the theater. The whole theatre was engulfed quickly and chaos broke out. Your mother and I were separated and while I made it out, she did not. She died in the fire, sweetie. I failed her and I failed you."

Christine completely broke down crying and buried her face in her father's chest. He wrapped his arms around her and tried to comfort her, but her sobs kept coming uncontrollably. "I'm never going to see her again," the girl yelled.

"One day in heaven, yes, but not here on Earth," Charles said to his daughter. "Your mother will always be with us. I have always believed that the angels of heaven can communicate with us through music. We can communicate with them the same way. I think if we sing, your mother might be able to hear us."

Charles got his emotions under control and started singing in his normally beautiful voice. He had been thinking about the intense love he had for his wife and this led him to sing the song Liebstod from the opera Tristan and Isolde. While Christine didn't understand what he was singing, she could feel the emotion behind it and she started to feel calm. Her crying died down and she just concentrated on listening to her father's heavenly voice.

The terminator happened to be walking outside the window of Christine's room as her father started singing. He could hear the man singing clearly from where he was and stopped to listen to everything. The robot was touched by the man's singing even though he had no idea why. Hearing the man's voice reminded him humans did not have qualities that were all bad. He listened to the entire song, recording the man's voice to his memory. When he didn't hear anything more he continued on his way.