Persephone Chapter 3: Hades, a terminator: sarah connor chronicles fanfic

Disclaimer: I do not own the intellectual property related to the Terminator franchise. This work of fiction is not intended as a profitable venture.

Persephone:

Hades

When he looked upon her, the lord solemn of all dead things knew passion.

At the sight of her beauty, he was lost to her.

There are scant few humans left in this world.

Only a few thousand worldwide survived Judgment Day, as the survivors came to call it. Of those an unknown number were killed in the following months, until the first press on SkyNet's forces had completed a census of all those who had survived in the dark-skied wastelands.

At the first recorded census of the survivors, there were 20,562 living human beings in the whole North American continent.

Of those, 6,280 had been successfully terminated with no incident when the first traces of resistance were encountered.

He was an unknown. There are no records of his capture by an HK aerial assault craft of one of the tank-like T-1 units that were employed as SkyNet's workhorses at the time. Nor was there any indication of how he entered the facility, despite the fact that omnipotent surveillance was a fact of the matter in the building's construction.

In fact, all of the sensor records from the entire sectorat the time of his one-man assault on the camp had been lost, despite their being streamed to SkyNet's central memory within seconds of its beginning. An unknown method of viral transmission is suspected but unconfirmed, pending analysis on unusual activity in the infrared, ultraviolet and gamma wave frequencies minutes before the commencement of operations.

Until he raided the facility there was no record, anywhere within the whole of SkyNet's memory of a human being destroying one of its robotic minions. He is to date, the only one to do so without the use of armor piercing rounds, explosives, or plasma weaponry. The investigation on how, exactly, he hacked into the automated turret systems of the building using a Pre-Judgment Day handheld game device, as shown in the memories of a late arriving HK which was promptly shot down, is being extrapolated without success, more than a decade later.

He freed 340 living human beings still to be exterminated from within the west coast central human processing station and lead them to disappear before significant reinforcements could arrive.

From this first exodus the resistance began.

Many of the weapons they armed themselves with were neither those commercially produced before the nuclear epoch, which were of limited effectiveness except in larger calibers, nor capture from the machines. Where they were manufactured and how are still unknowns that trouble the elements of SkyNet dedicated to intelligence gathering and interpretation soon afterwards.

The only certainty they found of him was his name and face. From those it was possible to extrapolate his identity, though the process took until nearly the end of the war to complete, in parallel process to the then theoritical time travel matrix that made the information valuable in the first place.

However, the machine intelligence found the lack of preparation that lead to the procurement of this information suspect. It was uncharacteristic of the subject to have left in tact that particular bank of cameras that overlooked the pens where the stock was kept during inactivity where he was so methodical about the others. More so, to state his name in front of them when prompted by a survivor.

The name that was given would become rallying cry and clarion call to those who remained of human kind. Tales of his wisdom, skill, and strength would become the inspiration to a generation of heroes in the coming conflict. His strategies were, for lack of a better word, perfect. He was matching wits against the single most powerful consciousness in earth's history. And winning.

When that starving, pestilent scarecrow of a man asked the one who just became his own personal messiah his name, the reply was simple, delivered with a jaunty grin that was half smirk but that had enough kindness to share with this world of damned souls...

"John," he said, "John Conner"

She knew him on sight. All terminators did. He, among all the race of man was their primary target.

Like most still alive, his face was prematurely aged, and scared more than a little. Still, you could see that he was handsome once (or so her interaction AI advised), and there was compassion in his eyes that belied his stern continence and granite jaw line. He could have been anywhere from 30 to 55, though he was, in all truth, more vital than most in their twenties after the bombs fell.

Her first impulse was to close range with him and rip out his esophagus in her clenched fist. He would drown in his own blood.

After some near calculations, she decided to wait until she had gathered more information. If she could gain his confidence, she would have the keys to the kingdom, the whole of the resistance would be hers for the taking. Still, it was tempting to end him then and there, and leave the serpent's decapitated body to its flailing.

For now, as always, she would wait and learn. It was her purpose. She had been in this warren for weeks, and her imitation skills were improving all the time. No one suspected her, and why would they? The hulking mass approach to infiltration abandoned, the terminators of the 700 series were a quantum leap in all directions for the purposes of integration.

She even fooled the dogs, though they never actual warmed to her.

She listened as Conner spoke to the bearded patriarch of the caves about getting some personnel. Their losses were mounting, as always, and apparently they had some teenagers of an age to be useful. He was wondering whom the group, who grew mushrooms in the subterranean cool, could spare.

His bodyguards, four toughs with those unaccountable plasma rifles hung on their shoulders by cords, where stationed around the room looking for metal.

The elder hmmed and hawed, reluctant to let a member of his extended family go off to die. Then he remembered about the new girl. Came in from the wastes some days past dehydrated and raving (a masterful coordination of physical and behavioral simulation), but she was smart as a whip and strong enough, come to that.

The leader of men looked slightly offended that only one recruit was in the offing, but let it go. Family was important now, and pushing for more would only loose the old man's goodwill. He was as shrewd as she had been lead to believe. He asked which one of the girls she was, as there were a few, and males besides, hence his annoyance at his host's stinginess.

When he saw her, past the old man's gestures, he froze for an instant. He approched her where she was leaning her back against the poured concrete wall in the gathering hall, and asked her name. His eyes were roving over her in a manner that spoke of a good deal more than a commander sizing up a recruit. Though whether his darting gaze was lecherous or looking for something else was hard for her to determine, inexperienced as she still was with human lust.

In the instant of hesitance she observed him though, and his tension was unusual. He seemed to anticipate...something. What, exactly was beyond her and her small failure disquieted her like nothing she had ever experienced. Every 700 series terminator was unique in appearance and thus she was not possibly discovered, even on the unlikely chance he knew of the fairer gender of machines.

And there was some sort of passion behind his eyes; even she could see the way it burned as he looked at her. But...

But it didn't look, to her carefully calibrated eyes, like he wanted her sexually. Indeed, for all the attention he paid to her feminine components she may as well have been his own daughter, being checked for hurts after a bad accident and found to be miraculously whole.

Still, on some level he wanted her. She could tell. And she would get close to him. She would learn everything he knew, or near enough that it made on difference, and she would kill him and all those who followed him. It was her purpose.

"Cameron," she said, "Cameron Phillips"

They were walking now, the five men and her. Conner looks like the other would rather they not be here she agreed, for a multitude of reason involving either death or seduction, though not either exclusively. Why he seems to find the four nameless, armed men around them a hindrance as they guarded his life is a mystery from her, but one fruitless to pursue.

Out in the rubble and the wastes under a permanent overcast that never lets in more than a sickly gray light, they moved to John's command center, the stronghold that held all human hope. The bodyguards are never far off, not altogether, though at any time one or another may go off to scout ahead. She saw no reason for the timing of these outings, nor the directions in which they rove. All in all they seemed paranoid to her, but then that is there assignment. It is to be expected that they be slightly neurotic if they do their jobs well, after all, they only need to fail for an instant to doom their entire race.

After hours in valleys that were unremarkable to her eyes, and even slightly more heavily patrolled than many of their neighbors if her files were still up to date, they came to a pile of debris. Careful not to disturb it too much, the nearest brute worked some mechanism woven into the refuse and lifted up a section of the mound on a hinge of basketwork in steel and aluminum. Impressed, despite herself at the ingenuity and artistry that allowed them to hide among their enemies, she let her face show it.

Conner, always the quiet one, just gently set his hand on her shoulder and guided her inside.

The guards were already at ready to shred some metal behind the iron door beyond the antechamber when they opened it, and their three mongrel dogs sniffed at her in interest. The hearty, vicious things were some of the only animals to survive the holocaust, breeding with coyotes and eating whatever they could find. It was a certainty that these beasts had ancestors that feasted on the dead of man, and not long ago by their looks. In the end the beasts decided she passed muster, though they didn't like the newcomer by any standards. And the dogs let her past as well.

Moving inside the anthill busy complex to its lowest level within the bedrock, such as it was, that held up the land once called California. There, in the depths, by a gray blue fey glow that may have been chemical or may have been a dying circuit that exuded from the square office ceiling lights overhead, they came to another door. It was an industrial run-off with clapboard and tarnished brass. There was nothing to recommend it as anything important save for its location. It was at the very terminus of the hallway, the only door on the entire bottom level.

In a den like this, where metal could come down on you at any time and escape was always a needful consideration, a door was a rarity. True enough that some took the risk they proposed as the price for privacy, but most just learnt to ignore the sundry physical realities of their fellow human beings or accept them. In most cases these days a child will be a dozen yards from the conception of their younger siblings, and without a real threshold to buffet the noise. Few had the idiotic scruples to insist upon being private, save only a few who needed the quiet to do their work.

Like the general still guiding her into the depths gently by her shoulder.

She made herself pensive, afraid of this imposing man and what he may do to herself in the depths where no one was watching. Her pulse was racing, though it was an illusion brought on by the pump in her chest that helped to hide her nature. All at her AI's consul. A young girl, an authoritative older man, and a private office spoke to her imitation soul of the need for caution.

Inside she rejoiced. If he took her as his lover, she would learn everything she needed, in time. And if not even an instant in that room, his room, was worth her life. Literally if need be, to secure the information she gathered for her mother.

Inside, the room was spartan, in every sense of the word worth pursuing. The cot lay in the dust on the floor, and held just enough covers and stuffing to let a man aged to soon sleep with his aching bones. The walls were lined with maps, both hand drawn and force printed from the minds of machines onto the homespun rag-paper they used. They were interesting, and she took a moment to back up her visual memory. The desk was large but plain and bare in a way that somehow suggested the man who sat behind it had stayed there until there was nothing left to do, and then set out to find the rest of it.

All in all she was impressed. Her second mind, her human mind saw the room and read it like a book, like the pictograms behind her eyes.

This was not a man interested in comforts or esteem. Nor one who worried about status one whit. He led because he was the only one to do it. Not a thinking being on the planet worth the title doubted that fact. And he did it with the bare minimum he needed because any more than that was, to put it bluntly, wasteful and pointless. This was a man to lead the surviving dregs of his race.

In his austerity there was majesty, the human part of her saw it. Maybe it even took a little wonder at it. This man, the leader of all the others, was as efficient, as functional as a machine was, as she her self. Looking at him with new eyes, as he sat in the decrepit put serviceable chair behind his desk, she saw the economy of every motion he made. There had never been any significant doubt that this was the John Conner who had begun the jihad against the machines, now there was none at all. This was a man not to be trifled with.

"Well Cameron," he said as he opened a drawer and pulled out as small radio, "let's get you sworn in and settled, and we'll get to placing you in a unit tomorrow."

He had a small, fatherly smile on his face until he pressed down the talk button in the device and spoke into it. Then habit hardened his face into a commander's stony visage despite that there was no one to observer but her.

"Bishop? I have a new recruit for you to swear in. Get to my office ASAP. And bring your bible."

"Right away, General. I'm on my way." The tinny reply came promptly, with a bit more urgency than she would have anticipated. Just how hard up for manpower were they?

After a minute of silence that neither of the rooms occupants found uncomfortable, both being as stoic in nature as was possible while maintaining a personal ego (or the pretence of one), a small, drawn man with a primitive projectile rifle slung behind his shoulder and a large leather-bound book with a gold cross enlayed into the cover. On closer inspection, she could see a thin white collar holding the neck of his dust-gray shirt closed, if one were to discount the old bloodstains in the otherwise bleach-white strip of rigid fabric.

"Lt. Bishop here is our resident religious authority." Conner's gruff voice broke the silence to explain the man's arrival to her. "He is, along with his standard combat duties, the Chaplin of the Christian congregation, such as it is. What you are looking at now, ms. Phillips, is one of the last Christian bibles on the west coast, and most certainly the oldest."

He motioned the nervous man over and took the tomb from him. Walking around to the front of his desk, he hefted it's weight considering. He held the heavy load of it in the flat of his left hand and raised his right.

"Cameron Philips, place your right hand upon this bible, and raise your left."

She was quick to assume the pose, but for some reason feedback from her Personality AI was causing her organic components to react. Their stress reactions were appropriate to the situation, but it troubled her that her auto-diagnostics could not determine the exact stimulus that incited the glitch. That was something to examine later; it would not do to not understand the reasons for her actions, it could endanger her mission. The fact that she had reacted to the situation without conscious effort was another issue, but one she dismissed as merely her programming becoming more adept at processing stimulus and the correct reactions.

"Repeat after me: I, Cameron Philips,"

"I, Cameron Philips,"

"Do hereby swear,"

"To protect humanity in any way I am able,"

"And oppose the will of SkyNet, our enemy, until it is destroyed."

"There is no cost too great,"

"No force can stop me,"

"From completing my mission."

He brought his eyes to meet hers now, where before he had looked off into infinity as if looking at some greater future to which they forswore themselves. His softened gaze searched hers, for what she did not know. His gaze was vulnerable then, but he quickly concealed the weakness by returning to his full height, where before he was leaning into her slightly to make eye contact. Whatever he was looking for from her, she did not believe her found it. The next line was delivered quietly, with a hint of what she though may have been sorrow.

"There is no fate but what we make."

She was about to repeat this last phrase when a massive shock arced into her endoskeleton from the gold cross set into the tooled leather of the bible. The voltage was enough to engage the grounding safeguards in her CPU, and she lost consciousness.

"Bishop, pop her chip. I'm going to handle the repurposing myself."

And unable to bear her absence, the king of all the treasures of the depths stole the maiden from her mother's keeping.

The dread lord abducted her, and took the virgin goddess to be his queen in the underworld for all time.

A/N) Long one this time. I spent more time then I planned establishing Future John as a character, but I fell it was effort well spent. The recruitment idea I had was adapted from a scenario where Cameron was picked up inside the camps during a rescue mission, but I felt that having her a little more experienced with people and putting John in the driver's seat would be more in keeping with the overall story I was trying to tell. The Oath was something off the top of my head, my idea of John giving in to sentimentality just enough to want to check if there was anything of the girl he knew in the machine she was.

As always, starved for comments and eternally grateful for good feedback.