Chapter Four
The blade of Derek's trusted Stanley knife glinted in the light of the bed-side lamp John had switched on for additional illumination. A screwdriver and a pair of pliers from the toolbox he had asked his uncle to fetch him were lying on the mattress next to the cyborg girl's still form, while John knelt over her and paused as he held the knife to her head. He shuddered and took a deep breath, remembering the last time he'd extracted her chip. Cameron's pleading still echoed in his head.
"She'll be okay, John. You've done this before" Sarah reminded him reassuringly, sensing his trepidation as she saw him hesitate.
"I know, Mom" he slowly gazed up into the concerned face of his mother and offered her a grateful smile, words he had heard a long time ago replaying in his mind.
It's okay, John. It's not the first time we've done this…
The sharp blade cut into her scalp with considerable ease. It was as if Cameron was guiding him, telling him exactly where to start the incision, and how far to cut the semi-circle as she had done the first time. He slowly and methodically worked his way through the thin layer of her human-like, yet artificial skin and flesh. After what seemed like ages, John finally removed the knife and flapped back the bloody, sticky piece of scalp, revealing her endoskeleton skull and the cover to her chip-port.
"At least this one's the right size" John muttered to himself, inserting the tip of the screwdriver into the cover's slot. To his surprise, it opened fairly easily this time, without the quiet hiss he remembered and was actually expecting to hear.
"I think you were right, Mom" he said, after he had carefully laid the cap on the pillow beside Cameron's head.
Derek sidled over to Sarah as nonchalantly a possible.
"Sarah" he whispered into her ear, not wanting John to overhear. "What if she … well, goes on the blink again?"
With a serious expression, he jerked his head towards the door. Sarah considered him for a moment, guiltily regarding the cyborg and her son, and then nodded.
I'm sorry, John…
Derek quietly left the room just as John reached for the pliers.
"A half-turn counter-clockwise" John murmured, before he delicately and with utmost care gripped Cameron's chip with the nose of the pliers, turned it and pulled. His hand shaking slightly, he slowly extracted the chip from its socket and held it up in front of him. Taking it from the pliers and laying it almost reverently in his hand, he couldn't help thinking that he was now holding Cameron's life in his hands. Her whole existence, in this single chip. It made him feel physically sick, imagining what it would imply, should the chip be broken.
She'd be gone forever…
Shuddering and trying to rid himself of these nightmarish thoughts, John cautiously rose to his feet and carried Cameron's chip over to her desk. He switched on the light and sat down on the swivel chair she hardly ever used to examine the remarkable piece of engineering.
He had always wondered why humans weren't equipped with a backup heart, it being the most vital of organs; now he wondered why terminators didn't have some sort of backup system for their chip.
Quite remiss of Skynet, actually…
After a few minutes of having scrutinized the intricate circuitry, barely visible to the human eye, and having paid special attention to the contact pins on one end, John carefully placed the chip on the desk and got up from the chair.
"Well?" a tense Sarah inquired expectantly. "Was there any condensation?"
John walked over to his mother and sighed "Not that I could detect. But it would have evaporated by now again, anyway, I guess. I cleaned the contact pins to make sure, though."
"What?" Sarah exclaimed, looking at her son incredulously. "You can't do that! I mean, can you do that? Is that possible without doing any damage?"
John let out a mirthless snort of laughter "Why shouldn't it be? It's only a chip, after all. Even though it's the most sophisticated one on earth, it's not that much different from tackling my laptop, when it boils down to it."
Sarah responded with an astonished gasp. She hadn't expected her son to speak of his cyborg in such a purely technical, mechanical manner. And it must have shown on her face, for she found John grinning at her.
"What, d'you think I've forgotten that she's a machine?" he chuckled. "I'll never forget that, Mom. It's just that I don't mind that she is."
Following his mother's dumbfounded stare at a small spray can standing on the desk next to the chip, he added "And yeah, I used electrical contact cleaner on her."
Sarah shook her head in disbelief as John returned to his position on the bed with a pen light he had taken from the toolbox. Bending over Cameron's head, he shone the thin streak of light into her port, trying to see if he could detect any damage in the terete opening. Or anything that looked remotely out of place, for he had never seen the inside of a terminator's port before. He'd had access on other occasions, of course, but he hadn't had the time to look at Cameron's port last time and he hadn't bothered to look at Uncle Bob's or Cromartie's, nor any of the other Triple Eights' they'd disabled along the way.
In the light of the torch, he thought he could see a small indentation or crack in the wall of the shining silver cylinder right at the bottom where the chip-socket was.
"Hmm, I think there's some damage down there, but it's buried pretty deep. I can't see right to the bottom and I don't really know if it's supposed to look like that or not" he muttered.
A sudden idea struck him and he glanced around the room in search of his uncle. Frowning at his absence, he asked "Where's Derek?"
Sarah lowered her gaze to the floor. "He's … gone for backup" she simply said.
"Meaning pizzas" John surmised grinning, before he switched off the torch and placed it next to the port cap on the pillow. He got up and swiftly strode over to the door. As he opened it, a pile of weapons greeted him on the landing. Derek looked like he had stepped out of one of those dreadful horror movies, in which the serial killer mangles odious televisual teenagers, whirling with knives and guns.
"Err, just checking 'em, giving 'em a polish and so on" his uncle mumbled sheepishly from behind his arsenal, fumbling awkwardly with the enormous machine gun in his arms and not quite meeting his nephew's eye.
John considered him suspiciously "U-huh. Looks like it."
He had nearly forgotten what he had wanted to ask his uncle, what with the multitude of guns, mini canons, ammunition and something that disconcertingly resembled a flame thrower towering between him and Derek.
Gesturing at the pile and looking his uncle directly in the eye, he stated quietly "That's because of Cameron, isn't it?"
"What? No, err, I'm just rearranging…"
Oh, what's the point…
Derek lowered his Kalashnikov and his faithful pistol, unstrapped the mini cannon from his shoulder and put down the box of thermite and flares he was carrying before he uneasily addressed his nephew.
"John, look. It's just a precaution. I mean, you never know, perhaps her shutting down tripped a switch again…"
He broke off at the look on his nephew's face. It was an expression of … understanding. Derek didn't know what to think, he had been counting on being shouted at and having to listen to John's usual tirade of how totally different the cyborg was and how they didn't understand her at all.
But this time John merely smiled before he calmly said "I know you've had to live with the machines all your life, and that you've seen them kill people you cared about. Heck, one of them even killed my father! But that wasn't Cameron. She's not like them."
He took his gaze away from a speechless Derek and turned to face Cameron's room.
"I can understand that you'll never trust them, Derek. You don't have to trust her, but you can trust me. That's all I'm asking."
Derek was taken aback if not to say shocked. His nephew had frankly admitted hat he was okay with him being suspicious of the cyborg's every move. But it hurt him that John seemed to have questioned his loyalty towards him. Every good soldier trusts his general and in turn needs his general to be able to rely on this trust. He hastily went about setting a few things straight.
"I always trusted you, John" he said with a slight huff before adding with utmost conviction "I told you I would die for John Connor. That hasn't changed."
John turned and smiled awkwardly at his uncle "Thanks."
Swallowing the lump that had threatened to rise in his throat, John suddenly remembered why he had actually gone to look for his uncle in the first place.
"By the way, would you lend me that awesome endoscopic camera you got for your car the other day?"
"Sure. I'll get it" Derek said gruffly, quite relieved at being able to get away from the situation for a few minutes. He nodded to John and left for the garden shed where he kept anything to do with his car, the garage usually being occupied with the metal's Jeep and as such out of bounds to him in his view.
…
"John, it's nearly eleven o'clock and you haven't eaten a thing since the afternoon, are you sure you don't want a pizza?" Sarah asked her son, her mobile phone ready to make a call to the pizza delivery service. Derek had announced that three pizzas would be sufficient for him, judging by the way his stomach was rumbling. And Sarah still wanted to try the Christmas special she had read about in the morning.
Looking up from his laptop he had just set up together with Derek's gooseneck camera, John shook his head. "No thanks, Mom. I've got to get this done, I couldn't eat anything before I haven't finished."
Meaning he would not stop working before he hadn't brought Cameron back. Sarah knew her son that well. She decided she'd order a pizza for him all the same, Derek wouldn't see it go to waste it if John didn't eat it, that was for sure.
I think I'll get him that broccoli and cheese one. That sounds good…
Derek had left after he had brought John the camera, informing them that he intended to tend to his SUV's wing mirror while they waited for the pizza boy. He hoped he would be able to tape the shattered glass back together, if only perfunctory, at least.
After having placed her order with the pizza service, Sarah's mind wandered to Derek while her son made the final adjustments to the camera, testing it on the neck of Derek's empty beer bottle which he had left standing on the desk. It impressed her how Derek Reese had always had John's best interests at heart. He had probably known it all along that his nephew would not approve of his precautions concerning the cyborg, but he'd still gone along with it all the same. Sarah hoped John hadn't flipped his lid at him.
"John, about Derek" she said uncomfortably. "You know that he only wanted you safe, don't you?"
John looked up from the inside view of a beer bottle on his laptop's screen "Yeah, I know that, Mom. We settled the matter."
Leaving his mother to work out for herself what he meant by that, he got to his feet and carried both laptop and camera, which were connected by a long cable, over to the bed.
John was mesmerized by the sight of Cameron lying there. Her skin shimmered like mother o' pearl in the bed-side lamp's light. She had never looked more beautiful, he realized, as he set up the computer on the bed-side table.
I'll need your help with this later, Cam…
He took hold of the camera and carefully inserted it into Cameron's port, gradually lowering it and making sure all the way that it didn't touch the sides of the cylinder, until the laptop's screen showed the indentation he presumed might be a crack in the wall of her port.
Having shifted the lens almost imperceptibly from side to side so as to catch various angles of what now actually did resemble a minute fissure, John finally withdrew it from Cameron's head and placed it next to the laptop. He closed the image recording programme and powered down the machine, shutting its lid with a click.
John reached for the torch on the pillow, switched it on and shone it one last time into Cameron's port in order to reassure himself that everything was fine and dry. Sighing nervously, he switched off the torch, plonked it next to the computer and stood up.
"That's it. I hope you were right, Mom" John said tensely before he headed back to the desk, picked up Cameron's chip and returned to the bed.
Sarah watched on apprehensively as her son bent over the machine, the chip in his hand.
"There's something you should know, John" she quietly spoke to the back of his head.
"What's that, Mom?" he asked, pausing from what he was doing and turning to face her.
Sarah looked away uneasily and started to walk around the room.
"After you brought her back … she asked me to do something for her."
John waited expectantly for his mother to carry on, his eyes following her as she paced up and down.
"She told me not to let you bring her back, should she ever go bad again."
Sarah stopped right in front of her son and held his gaze.
"Are you sure about what you're doing, John?"
"Yeah, I'm sure, Mom. She's not gone bad again, she's broken. And I can fix her."
John turned back to Cameron, hesitated for a while, and then carefully inserted her chip into its socket.
…
A brilliant blue glow surrounded the chip as John withdrew his hand and picked up the port cover off the pillow. He fitted the cap into place, reached for the screwdriver and tightened it, hoping against hope that he had done the right thing.
I don't know what I'll do if—…
Something akin to terror took hold of John, causing him to shudder. It dawned on him that even terminators were not immortal, in their own mechanical sort of way, and that Cameron was actually quite as vulnerable as he was. He decided he needed to become more vigilant, less reckless and that he would heed to his family's words in the matter of safety along the path destiny had laid out in front of him, so as to take a weight of Cameron's shoulders. She would fulfil her mission to protect him, even if it resulted in her own termination. Always.
And that was something John was never going to allow to happen.
"120 seconds" he remarked, flapping the piece of scalp back down and pressing it gently in its place. He then pulled back a little, dumped the screwdriver next to the torch and busied himself with stroking Cameron's cheek and tucking a few errant strands of hair behind her ear.
Sarah was counting the seconds. John was waiting for the telltale signs of Cameron rebooting, the familiar jerk of her head, and he was not about to shun away from her this time.
60 seconds. Sarah wished the doorbell would ring so she'd have an excuse to leave. On the other hand, she was not prepared to leave her son alone with the machine, just in case.
30 seconds. John was still stroking her hair out of her face.
10 seconds. Sarah found herself wringing her hands in anticipation and forced herself to let her arms drop to her sides. John had bent over Cameron wanting to be the first thing that she saw.
5 seconds. The day's events flashed before John's eyes on fast forward and his stomach started to churn. Sarah clenched her fists so tightly her fingernails dug deeply into her palms.
1 second.
Cameron's head jerked.
Sarah released the breath she had been holding for about half a minute. John was so relieved, he merely smiled serenely down at Cameron, patiently waiting for her to finish rebooting.
Another minute passed. And another. John looked up at his mother, panic etched on his face.
"She's not coming round. I must have done something wrong" he cried in dismay.
Feeling a terrible sense of guilt, Sarah watched as her son began to caress the machine's head over the spot where her chip was.
"I'm sorry, John. I thought that's what it was. I didn't want to … harm her" she forced out in a constricted tone.
Either John hadn't heard his mother or had chosen to ignore her, for he had taken Cameron's hand into his and was tenderly stroking her palm with his thumb once more. He seemed to be whispering things to the cyborg Sarah was not able to hear.
After having watched her son and the machine for another few minutes, her guilt almost eating her up, Sarah approached him and rested a hand lightly on his shoulder.
"John" she said hoarsely. "It's over."
His mother's words hadn't registered with him. He remained in his position on the bed next to Cameron, pulling the blanket back up halfway over her, apparently wanting to keep her safe from the cold.
Let me raise you up. Please…
"John!"
Sarah's raised voice and her hand shaking his shoulder brought John out of his dazed-like state.
"What!" he exclaimed blinking, gazing up at his mother.
She glanced down at her son for a long time, leaving her hand resting on his shoulder. It tore at her heart to see him like this. She could sense his utter devastation and her brain worked furiously, just to say something, anything, to boost her son's morale and to ease her own guilty conscience, even if she didn't believe it herself.
"We'll try something else, John. I'm sure we'll think of—"
"NO!"
John lunged forward and grasped Cameron firmly by the shoulders.
"No! I know that's what's wrong with her, I just know it!" he cried, starting to shake her, the blanket slipping off of her.
The cyborg's body remained limp as John continued to shake her
"You've never backed away from anything before!" he screamed at her. "Now fight! FIGHT!"
He pulled back and slapped both sides of her face again and again, her head lolling from side to side.
"FIGHT!"
Sarah had stepped back, taken by surprise at her son's unexpected outburst, only to witness the door suddenly bursting open and a stack of packed, steaming pizzas making its way into the room, Derek's voice coming out from somewhere behind it.
"They made a mistake. Look!" he cried joyfully, as he placed the stack on the desk, a wide grin on his face.
Sarah put a finger to her lips and Derek quirked an eyebrow. It was only then that he noticed that the machine was still lying on the bed and John was leaning over her, shaking her again, albeit very gently this time, before he stopped and resumed his stroking of her hair.
Derek's grin instantly faded and they both watched on in awe, as they heard the future saviour of mankind spill his heart out to the lifeless cyborg.
"You said you'd never leave me" John whispered hoarsely. "You said you'd never let anything happen to me. I need you, Cameron, I can't go on without you. I can't face the future alone."
He cupped her cheeks in his hands and bent down over her, his eyes brimming with tears.
"Please come back. I know it wasn't easy and I've been a jerk and pushed you away, but I've fixed that. I'm good now."
He took his hands away from her face and looked into her unblinking eyes, his breath coming out in short gasps.
"I love you! Please! I love you, Cameron, and you love me!"
He bowed his head, placing it into his hands as his body started to shake.
"John?"
Thin, slender arms enveloped a sobbing John Connor and gently eased him down onto the mattress next to her, resting his head upon her shoulder.
"It's okay, John. It's okay. I'm here."
…