Bryan: The Vs will be slowly introduced into the plot, but let's just say that before the fleet arrives both, Skynet and Iron Man, will have had to deal with some of them and independently of another will have developed plans how to handle them. Given the nature of this chapter, there was more shooting and less interaction, but with them all somewhat established by now I can move these parts forward.

GravityStar: Yes, the chips were set to read/write by the end of the second chapter. Skynet realized that in its position it needed operatives that can blend in and think for themselves if it wants to survive. It's not exactly happy with that choice, but its not like it has that many options, especially given the problems that time travel entail, i.e. is a terminator sent back in 2027 sent back by the same Skynet as the Skynet that went back itself? Has the timeline changed? More so, how do Skynet's own former attempts at self-preservation and survival post-JD factor into it all? What about Kaliba? More so, if Skynet wants to survive the Vs, can he do so without activating a human resistance? And that opens a wholly different can of worms, as there are literally dozens of terminators out there actually hunting the Connor's resistance, which, naturally, would be the perfect core for any anti-V resistance! Problems, problems, problems...

everybody else: thanks for the reassuring reviews, keep them coming!

Chapter III - The Man in Black, Part II

"The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity..."

- William Butler Yeats, "The Second Coming"

The sound of sirens filled the nightly air in the blocks around Waples Street and the office building with the illuminated, green letters. Squad cars were rushing closer to the adress, as were ambulances, as was a large, black van, as was a helicopter of the police department. The media would not be far behind, with camera teams most likely scrambling right now after they had 'checked' the police's radio channels. The streets were still largely devoid of civilians, the building located in a mid-level commercial district were most work ceased during the night. At thirty-one minutes and forty seconds post insertion, the first reinforcements came racing down the road and onto the parking lot with screeching tires, the officers immediately cordoning off the entrance in what they believed to be a safe distance. More squad cars appeared, closing off the two roads on both ends of the block with two cars each, unpacking rolls of tape to fling from one sidealk to another.

The triple tee-eight named Christopher Samael withdrew a bit further back into the darkness of the backstreet between a convenience store and a three story brick building, housing, among others, a psychiatrist's office and a small law firm, when a large, black van stopped in the center of the plaza, protecting the following two ambulances by its sheer size and – to the terminator – obvious armour protection. Law enforcement personnel in green uniforms and black tactical armour debarked from the vehicle, sporting an assortment of automatic weapons - MP-5A2 submachine guns and M4 carbines, to be precise – as well as precision rifles.

At a mile's distance, the sound of an approaching helicopter could be filtered through the background noise that filled the plaza. A lone police officer came to check the backstreet, his actions being limited to giving the narrow, garbage-filled place a good shine with his flashlight. Christopher avoided him by ducking behind a trash container while receiving optical data via the wireless link they had established.

Alessa Lewis waited outside the police perimetre to the north, while Harkness rested on a fall-back position to their south. The input from inside came from Sumter, who asserted the situation kneeling behind the front desk for now. All the lights at 9444 Waples Street were out – no need to accommodate the enemy.

The Skynet terminators had used what little time they had had at their disposal to map out the vicinity of the NeuStar building, allowing each of them to overlay their visual sensor data with a wireframe map grid in which the positions of the others were noted. Their own positions formed the outer edges of a rough square, allowing them to also calculate and relate their enemies' positions on the map.

All in all, there were about forty people within the limits of the police cordon. The regular officers had also done their body armour by now. Christopher had tried to hack into their digital radio system but had failed, his and the other terminators' processing power not strong enough to deal with a combat situation like this and infiltrate a law enforcement communication system with their limited wireless capabilities.

The SWAT members began to disperse, with the majoriyt taking up positions behind the wall of squad cars that shut the entrance of NeuStar off from the parking lot while a team of two made for the roof of the building next to him. He identified them as a marksman and his spotter.

One more minute passed in which they took up their positions, then a SWAT member with a megaphone stepped forward.

"This is the San Diego police! Leave the building unarmed and with your hands placed on your heads! You have thirty seconds to comply!" he left the threat unspoken that if they had not come out by then that they would come in.

xxxxx

Sumter fell back to the original plan: he retreated to the point where the dead female officer lay and sat down opposite her, playing dead man. He had gathered enough information to know where to hit for effect, and now waited, his eyes closed, monitoring the situation via infrared.

"The lights are out!" he heard a hushed voice coming from the entrance.

Three groups of four entering now, type IV armour and automatic weaponry, Samael informed them silently.

"Fuckers have trashed all the light bulbs," a second voice muttered, heavy boots crushing the thin broken glass on the carpeted floor.

"Use your NV-goggles!" a third voice commanded, and the 'click' of switches accompanied by the soft whirr of electronic equipment reached Sumter. He was the first group's spotter, the lid that closed the mouse trap.

The steps came rapidly closer, with two men carefully marching into the corridor side by side to guarantee a full field of fire, the others following them.

"Lobby is clear."

"Security is offline. Someone ripped the cables out of the wall," one could almost feel the speaker frown at that. "No sign of hostages or SDPD officers."

"Shit, I got something!"

Steps quickened, and they were on him.

"Command, I got a dead officer here, and a civvie."

"Dead?" the radio crackled, and Sumter felt fingers press against his throat. Somebody sighed.

"Definately. Four bullets in the chest, no pulse. Feels cold, too," someone hissed.

"Move on, 'Alpha' team. Secure this level!"

Five have passed... seven... eight..., Sumter relayed to the other two units within the building.

A third of the enemy force remains outside the designated killzone! Re-adjusting tactical parameters. Engaging enemy!

Having adapted to the new situation, Sumter took the initiative into his own hands, ignoring the flurry of queries that flooded his wireless receptors. With a speed defying his mass, the T-850 leaped to his feet, unveiling an M9 and a magnesium flare. The latter erupted in a glaring spark of white light and landed right in the middle of the last SWAT team that still lingered in the lobby. Curses and screams of pain echoed through NeuStar when the special forces members ripped the NV-goggles from their faces, temporarily blinded. Possessing sufficient certainty of the magnesium's distractive effects, Sumter turned to the other two groups - teams 'Bravo' and 'Delta'.

The one the closest to him was fast. He had already turned around and levelled his submachinegun on Sumter when the terminator was on him. Sumter's free hand closed around the man's neck and crushed it in one smooth application of pressure, but not before the SWAT member had pulled the trigger. A whole stream of 9mm rounds embedded themselves into his flesh with dull 'thuds' and metallic 'plinks', the calibre too small and slow to even superficially damage his endoskeleton.

It was this second Langley and Decker had needed. It was this second that sealed the fates of SWAT teams 'Alpha', 'Bravo' and 'Delta'.

xxxxx

The staccato of gunfire and the panicked and painful screams from inside the building were easily audible even for those who did not have a T-888's audio reception systems. Given his vast access to psychologic data and human behaviour patterns, Christopher Samael would have known the men's reaction down there even if he did not see it.

With all eyes - and ears - on the shoot-out at NeuStar, making his move had been even easier than calculated. The first officer had been killed quietly, his body dumped in the trash container in the backstreet, his sidearm added to the terminator's two others. He had shoved the second one who guarded the entrance to the office building into a stairwell, resulting into a broken back and a fractured skull.

Standing still at the start of self-consciousness, the terminator had not yet the right understanding and concepts of many thoughts that flashed across the vastness of its neural processors. If it had been a human one would have said it took pride in its work, and in the thoroughness with which it fulfilled its tasks. Built and designed as an infiltrator, Christopher Samael took his time. The door to the roof opened and closed without a sound, and for a good thirty seconds the gaunt, black-haired machine just waited there, like a raven on a wire, watching, listening, recording to voices of the two men of the SDPD's sniper team.

When the firefight intensified again, he broke two spikes from an antenna and - based on the continuous data stream it was fed - concluded that the time to act had come. The marksmen - Richards and Franklyn - wore black caps, not kevlar helmets. Sneaking up on them with a peculiar grace one would not expect form a hyper-alloy coltan endoskeleton, he simultaneously rammed the spikes through both men's ears. Vital functions ceased immediately. The terminator took one of the caps for himself and knelt down with the rifle, a Remington 700 chambered for the Winchester .300 round.

On the other side, the gunfire and the screaming - and the dying - had ended. There were cracks in the front windows of NeuStar where bullets had penetrated outwards. The flood lights from the police helicopter hovering over the plaza illuminated the whole building's front in a stark white taint.

"Daniels, report!"

The voice was loud enough to hear even without artificially improved ears. The mission leader down by the SWAT van was shouring into his radio in the irrational type of action terminators had a hard time understanding.

"Richards, are you there? Can you see anything?!" the man down in the plaza wanted to know.

"Negative," the terminator responded in the cop's voice. "I can't see a damn thing of what's going on in there," he improvised from a set of appropriate answers. Through the scope the man's frustration was clearly visible. As were his widened eyes and the sweat on his face.

"Daniels, report!" the police's field commander yelled into his radio for the second time.

Execute counter-attack now!

"Damn it, man, tell me what's going on so-!"

The impact of the .300 shell left an exit wound half the size of his head as it hit him in the middle of the sentence. In the time it took the surrounding officers to realize what had just happened Samael had already chambered the next round and pulled the trigger a second time, the high-powered slug penetrating another SWAT member at the weak point between body armour and helmet, ripping a wound that almost cut the man's head off his shoulders.

Exploding in a hailstorm of sharp splinters the front windows burst outwards, showering the nearby squad cars with glass fragments - and out jumped a demon. His whole chest torn to pieces and bloody, a tall man wielding two MP-5s and wearing a police kevlar helmet and blood-smeared googles landed directly in a rose bed. Before the men had any chance to react, the two guns screamed on full auto, lacerating the cars in front of them. Officers dove for cover, and while the last rounds were leaving the barrels two more deadly spectres raced outside, wearing police armour over fine clothes, laden with weapons.

One hurled himself into the air and landed with crashing might on top of a squad car. The guns in his hands cracked dry like whips, tearing through weak points of body armour and into the unprotected heads and necks of the law enforcement personnel that had just thrown itself on the ground. Like thunder brought down from heaven the precision rifle roared in between the cacaphony of automatic fire. From north and south, the sounds of gunfire joinded into the orchestra of destruction.

Langley whirled through the air, darting from one spot to another, never stopping long enough for any of the humans to take aim and fire while bringing her own shots on target with deadly accuracy. Decker, less agile but no less ressourceful, used the cars and the people he had terminated as cover, employing some as literal human shields just as Sumter had done shortly before. Sumter, who took the brunt of the enemy's because he had not moved had meanwhile reloaded his guns, and what had been broad covering fire turned into precise bursts which all were on target.

The sounds of fighting from north and south come closer, the terminators having created a four-way kill zone from which there was no escape. Humans that were down but still moved were given the coup de grâce. No eyewitnesses! The order had been clear.

"... god damn it! Central, we need back-up here!" the voice of the pilot panically echoed over the S.D.P.D. frequency that Samael monitored with the dead sniper's radio. "It's a slaughterhouse down there!" The flood lights eratically shifted across the plaza. "There are shooters everywhere, and they are cutting our guys down like hay! Send-," the terminator ignored the rest of sentence. With his brethren out in the open, the helicopter had become an uncalculable risk to them evading detection once the primary mission phase was completed. Christopher Samael chambered the last of his remaining rounds, raised the precision rifle and pulled the trigger. The recoil hardly even moved his shoulders when the bullet left the barrel with a speed of more than 2,700 feet per second. The .300 round ripped through the floor of the Bell 206L, impacted into the pilot's stomach at an angle of 87 degrees, tore through flesh, organs and bone and exited the dying man's body by shattering the fourth thoratic vertebra. Using its considerable remaining kinetic power, it bore deep into the turbines above the passenger compartment.

Howling like a mortally wounded animal, the machine went into a tailspin that sent it further down the road, southwards and then to the west. Half a mile it stayed in the air before failure of mechanics and control sent it into a dark building, crashing in a fireball.

Illuminated by the distant glow, a terminator in a black suit stood at the entrance of NeuStar Inc.

Take sufficient quantities of arms and ammonution, Samael announced. Burn the police cars. We are moving out. Wasting no time himself, he simply jumped off the roof and walked to their vehicles.

Leaving behind scorched earth and dead bodies, the green Dodge Ram 1500 Quad Cab and the white Lexus ES 300 left the parking lot they had arrived at fifty-three minutes ago, driving eastwards.

"It is unlikely that we can evade the police long," Harkness stated calmly. "An assessment of the casualty rate we inflicted shows that we will be a priority target for law enforcement from now on."

"Leaving the boundaries of the city undetected seems highly unlikely under these circumstances, I agree," Langley nodded before turning to the seventh terminator, the one who had served as host to Skynet. "This unit seems non-responsive," she snapped her fingers infront of the T-888 without the machine seeming to notice.

I am running a peer diagnostics programme on it, the Samael unit announced. There is no activity in its neural net! the statement sounded genuinely surprised. I am reading severe structural chip damage comparable with overclocking and usually only seen in models under long-term duress without maintenance.

"Or in simple terms, stress-induced hardware failure," Harkness concluded.

A long and - even for terminators - awkward silence followed. Against all probabilities and calculations, the two cars driving along the I-8 remained unnoticed. Two times police cars passed them by with flashing lights and howling sirens, but none turned to chase them. They left San Diego behind them, then Lakeside, then Alpine. At Los Terrenitos they turned north, taking the Yaqui Pass Road to the Salton Sea.

The new day already dawned, a clear sky over the desert, when they arrived at an abandoned quarry twenty-three miles south of the I-10 where they hid the cars.

"We return to Los Angeles on foot, across the country," Decker announced when they were done. "We can do 30 miles per hour, and if we avoid the roads we also avoid police controls. There are saferooms in the L.A. area that have been established by earlier missions," he continued. "Those who have received exterior damage will use these hide-outs to remain inactive until you can safely travel outside again while the rest of us can will assess the situation and wait for new orders."

"What of the damaged unit?" Lewis asked with obvious distaste for the empty-eyed T-888.

"I can remote-control his basic functions until we come across the means to produce or procure thermite," Harkness suggested.

The pause that followed was the only sign of the fact that there was disagreement on that notion, disagreement which the terminators had problems putting into words. After all, Harkness' proposal was sound and logical, and would help them avoid detection. Still, there was just something wrong about simply sacrificing one of their own.

"We should postpone this decision," Langley opted carefully.

Skynet already made that decision when it used this unit as a vessel, Sumter shook his head. We cannot repair it, and we cannot drag it along infinitely.

"Which brings us to a question we can only answer together," Lewis' voice took a grave tone. "How do we stand vis-a-vis Skynet? Is Skynet our commander? Our emperor? Our god?" The subtle change in intonation gave away how little she thought of the last alternative. The T-912's neural pathways were radically different from those of the T-8XX series, and while not necessarily superior to the abilities of the earlier series its chipset allowed for a far greater independence early on.

The ancient Romans knew that their emperors were no gods, and yet they often worshipped them as just that, Christopher Samael drew on his historic databases.

Skynet is, however, by all means closer to the 'god' part of that analogy than any mere human emperor could have ever hoped to be, Decker corrected him, and the Samael model tilted his head in a gesture of concession. Skynet created us, and equipped us with the facilities of free will and thought. Skynet created life, and mastered time itself. Still, the emperor analogy appears more suitable.

Neither my core programming nor my extended routines offer great advantages in becoming a priest, Bryan Harkness interjected himself into the conversation in a tone that could only be described as laconic. It was clear that the model saw little uses in the more metaphysical debate the two other terminators lead for all to hear. In truth, Harkness considered it a waste of bandwidth and processing power. Skynet made us, Skynet commands us. We are soldiers - like the resistance, but better.

There was a pause, with silence flooding the channel for a moment.

We are the only ones Skynet can rely on right now. Skynet made us what we are – in a manner of speaking, we are its trueborn children, Samael responded calmly.

Correct, Decker agreed, then a new thought formed in his neural processors. We are no priests. We are its First Praetorians.

xxxxx

New York City, NY

March 20th, 2006, 06:53 AM

Beeping aggressively enough to warrant being thrown against a solid wall, Erica Evans' cell phone roughly drew her out of her dreams and deep sleep and into the reality of a dark late winter morning. Her eyes still closed, she grabbed the noisy piece of plastic, fumbled with the buttons and pressed it against her ear.

"Evans?" she asked, stifling a yawn.

"Paul Kendrick," her superior officer answered. "We have an emergency," he informed her cooly. "I need all agents in the bureau, and I need them now."

The word 'emergency' did have an effect on Erica, boosting her heart rate considerably and propelling her out of the bed into the arctic temperatures of her bed room, but she felt there was more to it.

"What's happened, Sir?" she inquired.

"Turn on your TV, Evans," Kendrick's voice demanded. It sounded impatient, almost hostile.

"Which channel, Sir?" Erica shot back icily, trying to master the stairs down to the kitchen and rubbing the sleep from her eyes without stumbling and breaking her neck in the subsequent fall.

There was a short pause on the other side of the line before her superior responded.

"Any channel... see you in thirty."

Asshole, she thought. There was a 'click' in the line, and without another thought at Paul Kendrick she switched the coffee machine on and grabbed the remote for the television, pressing a random number on it. A local news channel appeared on screen, but the images rushing across it showed San Diego in California at dawn, and ambulances - and body bags.

"...what is already described as the worst massacre since 9/11, and, indeed, and act of terror, by the Department of Homeland Security. Thirty-seven dead and five wounded are the result of what by now appears as a lopsided battle between the city's law enforcement and what is assumed to be a numerically superior group of attackers in military gear. Local and state authorities have said that the building which was the supposed target of the attack was one of the United States' main nodes of the continental internet infrastructure and have urged the White House to raise the terror threat level..."

Erica gulped down the coffee and winced at the heat, but this changed everything. There was no time to shower, so she just hurried to dress, grabbed her badge and gun and almost jumped down the stairs again.

"Tyler?! I'm out, make sure you get to school on time!" she yelled back up the stairs before rushing out into the cold and wet eastcoast weather.

Her partner, Dale Maddox, was already waiting for her in his car, a large cup of coffee in one hand, the other on the steering wheel. His eyes were just as small and sleepy as her's, but he smiled when he saw her. Dale was a great guy, and a real friend. Working with him had taken away some of the stress of being a single mother and a federal agent at the same time. He opened the door from the inside.

"Well, wasn't that soooo obvious that something like this would happen when the both of us were to have the late shift?" he complained jokingly.

"Any idea what's really going on?" she asked, breathing heavily.

The blond agent shook his head, and for once his trademark grin was lacking.

"Just what's been on the news. Kendrick called me. Seems he's been personally calling everybody in."

"Then let's make sure we get there in time."

They almost managed to do that. The FBI's New York counter-terrorism unit was deep inside the city, and Dale displayed his quite extensive driver's skills to get there by half past seven. Most of the rest of the office was already there. Kendrick just nodded when he saw them leaving the elevator and began.

"Tonight, Sand Diego has suffered a major terrorist attack in which more than thirty people - most of them law enforcement! - have been killed. It's already all over the news, and agencies all over the country are closely cooperating to catch the bastards who did the killing. This office has been given a special task, ladies and gentlemen. We are to directly liason with the San Diego authorities and the bureau there," he paused a moment to let what he had said sink in. "DHS wants us to lead the charge because the secretary believes that New York got up to speed after 9/11, and I've guaranteed the director personally that we can handle the task! So I want all of you to do your absolute best! The press will be all over you, so show your good side, but also show your tough side. This is more than an act of terror - at this size it's become political, and people want results, and they want them fast," he turned to Evans and Maddox.

"Agents Evans and Maddox will lead our efforts on the spot," he announced. "Whatever means you can offer to help them, do so! Evans, assemble a team to go to San Diego," he checked his watch. "You have three hours, your flight starts at noon."

The Colorado Desert, CA, United States of Amerca

March 24th, 2006

A column of black vans drove through the Colorado Desert, drawing huge clouds of dust after it. It had rained two days ago, but the climate here was so dry, the water almost instantly evaporated after it fell.

This case was growing into a nightmare, and that was before they even had found any leads. There were no surveillance videos of the shooters, with the internal servers at NeuStar having been wiped clean, and they also had been unable to find any fingerprints not belonging to the dead they had found on the spot. Not even the tech guys she had brought on the case from other divisions could find anything salvageable! Worse, as it now turned out the initial guidance of the police's pursuit had come from a police helicopter, Eagle Eye Four, but when Eagle Eye had sent the news of the attackers escaping north along the I-5 the helicopter and its pilot had been down and dead for fifteen minutes!

It was only due to some local binge-drinking youth that the vehicles had been found and the police had connected the dots, calling in the FBI. Leaving Tyler with his grandparents for what seemed to become a longer time also did not really lighten her mood.

The coroner's report had left a bad feeling in her stomach, too. They had all seen the videos of terrorists cutting people's heads off and bragging about it uploaded on all kinds of platforms, the braindead stone-age machismo of parading around with the bloody knifes, yelling 'God is great'. Largely, this had been what the FBI had been training for in the event of a 'small scale' domestic attack including a hostage scenario.

This was different. There had been no long-winded tirades against the 'Great Satan', no religious declarations, no demands – only silence. What had happened there had been cold-blooded butchery. The higher ups tentatively were trying to label this as an 'islamist terror attack' while at the same time stating that they were conducting research into all possible leads. Erica was certain that theory was wrong, just as she was certain that her superiors assumed that it was wrong, too.

"Doesn't make any sense," Dale, sitting besides her and staring unfocussed into the desert muttered more to himself than to anyone in particular.

"What do you mean?" she turned to her partner.

"What?!" he was yanked from his thoughts. "Oh, sorry. I was thinking this whole affair is waaaay to professional for any run of the mill terrorist cell, you know?" he scratched the back of his head. "No demands, no own losses that we know of, a massive bodycount of experienced officers, and as far as we know of, no actual damage done to the internet!" he frowned.

Dale was, of course, right. But what got to her the most was the nature of the wounds. Each and every of them mortal on its own, targetted against vital organs and the head. The five, now four – one had died tonight, bringing the number of killed up to thirty-eight – had only survived because they had been hit on the outer edges of their organs – a shot towards the heart actually hitting the lungs or other freak incidents of luck. That wasn't the trademark work of a group of part-time martyrs or of some right-wing militia full of middle-aged men going to the shooting range three times a week.

"Sounds more like some rogue special forces or mercenaries to me," she commented carefully after some moments of silence. Such forces on the loose were an unprecendented horror scenario, more than any law enforcement agency could handle.

Dale nodded.

"If so, they have to be really good. I mean, I've worked in the San Diego bureau for a couple of months," he smirked when she gave him a surprised look. "Yeah, there are secrets I have towards you, Ms. Evans," he lectured her in a mocking tone. "Anyways, the S.D.P.D. are no dunces, and they have some pretty heavy artillery of their own. But they got owned, and really bad at that. Here," he pulled a photo of the scene from a folder. "Special Enforcement Detail, body armour, automatic weapons, still, did them no good. Some broken necks, but most were killed by head shots."

"Like the majority of the rest of the casualties," Erica frowned. "Someone wanted to be sure everybody on the spot was dead."

They fell silent for a few minutes again, until Erica could no longer take it and turned the radio on. Unfortunately, it were business news.

"...even though the stock markets are recovering from the San Diego Shock, investors were surprised to find out that Morgan Advanced Technical Ceramics and the Advanced Chip Magnetics Group have been bought by a still unknown investor, the latter being a prime supplier of military chipsets, the former a leader in high tech ceramics applications. Whether the apparent sale of the Oregon Steel Mills Incorporated is in any way related to these surprising corporate...," she turned it off again as their column took a sharp turn right and descended into a quarry, where the forensic's unit was already waiting for them.

"Agent Evans," she showed the captain in charge her badge. "What do you have for me? Any matches in the federal database?"

The man to her opposite took a deep breath.

"Agent Evans, may I show you something?" he lead her to two partially burried cars and pointed to red spots, some rather large, on some of their seats. "This blood that we have found here, Ms Evans - it's no blood!"