NOTES: This is a sequel to "Fuzzy Dice" and "The Killer I Created". I strongly recommend reading the previous stories first.

SUMMARY: John and Cameron have moved to an isolated and idyllic Northwest town so they can raise their daughter in peace and seclusion from the world. Then the killing starts happening. Sequel to "Fuzzy Dice" and "The Killer I Created".

DISCLAIMER: All characters herein are the property of someone other than me. No profit has been earned.


"Land of the Living"
Chapter 7
T.R. Samuels

Cameron crawled up the embankment of sodden ground, threading her way through the thickets of ferns, tall grasses and stinging nettles. Rocks jutted upwards just proud of the surface and there were hidden roots that liked to snag, stalling her progress until she silently untangled herself. Her clothes were a soiled mess, soaked through to her skin and flesh which beneath the layers of fabric were becoming bruised, stung and lacerated.

No matter how much it hurt, Cameron remained silent. Pain was a figment of the mind, and in Cameron's mind it was only a program designed to sense injury and as a trick to make her seem more human. A figment of a figment – but it still hurt.

She slowed to a miniscule crawl as she approached the rim of the slope, picking her moments to move when the wind picked up so as to drown whatever imperceptible sound she may be making. Stealth was not normally her forte, but like so many other things about her on this day of firsts, the complex creature that was Cameron Connor grew ever more sophisticated.

When she finally reached the top, very slowly and a millimetre at a time, she peered over the rim of grass and rocky outcropping to the wide clearing beyond.

She saw Sarah immediately.

Warmth filled her chest like an expanding balloon and she had to resist the urge to go to her.

Her daughter was sitting by a large rock more that five times her size nearly thirty yards away, using the jagged stone as a wind break against the stiff north-easterly breeze that chilled anything damp to the bone. Cameron switched her vision to infrared and saw her temperature was only just below normal, receding slightly in her extremities, but her heart rate and respiration were strong and steady. In her hands was a small fish of some kind, its belly cleaved open, its eyes and mouth gawking in a death grimace. Sarah was pulling pink flesh from inside and eating it.

Cameron looked around for the thing, but nothing else moved or radiated heat of any kind. She spent exactly a minute to be certain, scanning and rescanning in those 60 billion nanoseconds that to a terminator, whose kidnapped daughter lay only yards away, felt like an utter eternity.

She finished the last scan. There was nothing there except Sarah.

She switched back to visible light and was about to un-sling her assault rifle and climb over the rim when she froze, her body stiffening to the degree and mimicry of an inanimate object.

There was something there.

It was only an instant of movement, but she saw it. Something was sitting amidst the undergrowth. It was a bit beyond where Sarah sat, on the other side of the clearing. Something hiding and in wait. A gust of wind had moved a clump of ferns aside in the instant before it had twitched its snout and blinked.

If Cameron had been human, she would never have seen it. The infinitesimal motion more than fifty yards away was below the threshold of human visual perception, barely falling within her own ability to discriminate. She switched back to infrared and looked hard in its direction.

There was no heat signature from the creature.

She cycled through additional frequencies, applying filters to intensify colour contrast and increased the bandwidth of her visual processing.

Still she saw nothing.

She expanded deeper into the electromagnetic range, trying to detect the inescapable emanations of the creature's bioelectrical field.

Nothing.

Beyond the narrow range of visible light, the creature was completely invisible. How Derek had seen it the previous night was a mystery to her, but why she hadn't seen it and how it had taken her so unaware was now quantifiably obvious.

She switched back to normal vision and looked at it, seeing the creature so easily now she knew where it was. At night though it would be far more difficult, given its jet-black appearance and ability to move like the wind. No doubt that was the intention.

Something so large and powerful, yet so stealthy and in so specific a manner, defied the laws of natural evolution. Its very form, comprising oversized claws and a disproportionate skeleton beneath top-heavy musculature around the shoulders and thorax that turned the thing into a living battering ram – it defied the harmony and elegance of nature's Golden Ratio.

The creature could only be a product of artificial engineering.

But engineered by whom, and for what purpose? Was it really connected to the mercenaries and the goings-on in Redwood as John had so vehemently argued? Was there far more going on in town than she had cared to see or realise?

Was John as wrong as she'd thought?

Cameron sank back down behind the embankment and took stock of her situation.

She'd brought her tried and trusted M4A1 assault rifle with M203 grenade launcher attached to its belly – a lethal and effective combination in most situations – but it felt wildly inadequate now. In her haste to rescue Sarah it was quite possible that she had sabotaged herself by not bringing sufficient firepower to defeat the creature.

If she was going to succeed in killing it and bring her daughter home, she would have to make every shot count. Put anything where it would do the most damage. More than that, she would have to do something that most machines found next to impossible, but something her uniqueness made eminently easier:

Cameron would have to be creative.

####

Beyond the clearing and the entrance to its lair, the Cerberus watched Sarah from the shadows between the trees, blending like the shadow of a wraith amongst the scrub vegetation and what little darkness existed there. It was at its most vulnerable during the daylight. The Creator had ensured that it understood that, and it wouldn't move again from the vicinity of the lair until well after nightfall.

It had caught the fish for Sarah from the waters that flowed not too far from here, bending the rules of its conditioning to provide a meal for her. It had secretly gotten a thrill from it – the alien feelings of nakedness and vulnerability it had never felt before as it had stood in the bright light of day out in the open. Normally it would never have done that.

Light was exposure and danger. Darkness was a shield and sanctuary. That was what it had been taught to remember.

The Creator had been strict in his discipline, punishing disobedience with a blinding pain he could cause it at will. A mind-splitting, white-hot agony that made it want to claw its own eyes out and gouge the agonizing Splinter from its brain.

The Splinter was what carried the voice of the Creator to it. It was what told it what to do. What made the shard of timber that had been imbedded in its flesh seem like nothing by comparison. It was what whispered the words and commandments that it had to obey if it didn't want to be punished.

The Cerberus' first memories of life had been when it was still tiny and newly formed. It had been put in a tall room of concrete walls and a mirrored ceiling. There its conditioning began; with obedience training, needles and injections, beatings from men with carbon-fibre batons or the electric sting of the taser.

If it disobeyed it would be punished, gassed into unconsciousness if it dared to attempt escape, then punished even more. At night it didn't stop. Throughout its times for rest, a cruel mantra was played through the Splinter, directly into its brain in the voice of the Creator, no matter how hard it clutched at its ears:

'Obedience is life. Obedience is survival. Defiance will be punished, obedience will be rewarded.'

The process had been long and difficult for the Creator to sustain – but it had worked. Brutalisation had turned the Cerberus into both feral killer and subservient instrument. It grew to enjoy making things suffer, as it had been made to suffer. It had made it like to toy with its prey and taste the fear and terror before tearing them apart, finding the beautiful red ambrosia that flowed out of them like budding flowers, the smell of it like perfume.

Sarah had been its salvation.

She had shown it only kindness and affection and made it feel loved. Where violence filled its heart, Sarah undid it with tenderness. And the Cerberus loved her for it. One day she would cure it of its fury and bloodlust and free it from the Splinter and Creator.

Inside it could smell that she was the same. Abnormals and unnaturals. Wolves that moved amidst sheep. One in daylight, and the other darkness. They were a species of two and siblings in all things.

When the words of the Creator had commanded it to bring Sarah to him, the Cerberus was overjoyed. It had say-so to take her from the parody of a life she had with the humans and bring her where she belonged. With whom she belonged.

In time, Sarah would become the Creator. Sarah would banish the Splinter and take its forced obedience away. It would serve its former master no longer and be obedient only to her – its own kin and kind - the way it was meant to be.

The Cerberus suddenly turned its head and tipped its ears towards the other side of the clearing.

It had heard something. Something that did not belong in the forest. Certainly not near the sanctum of the lair. It sniffed the air but smelled nothing besides Sarah and the normal scents of the woods. But the Cerberus was up-wind from the direction the sound had come from, and nothing would carry to it here.

It shrank back into the forest like a liquid shadow, circling the clearing in silence as it began the hunt. The sound was its guide, the signal it would home in on to locate its prey until it could smell or see what it was hunting. It was a sound it had heard before. The last time was at the cabin in the forest from where it had rescued Sarah.

In seconds it was on the other side of the clearing and it put its paws either side a patch of ground on an embankment. It thrust its snout to the ground, smelling sweat and clothes fibres and particles of skin. It probed the grass with its nose and found bent-over blades and the imprint of where something had crawled across the ground and looked over the rim at the clearing.

Looked over and had seen. Seen Sarah. Seen the lair. Seen the Cerberus?

It snapped its head around and snarled as it heard the sound again, teeth the length of kitchen knives clicking against one another. The prey was still close.

Branches snapped like kindling and bark was skinned from trunks as the Cerberus hurtled between the trees, moving faster than anything could move, stopping to reacquire the sound between bursts of movement until finally it was upon it. The sound was coming from the ravine.

The Cerberus knew of the ravine. It had seen it many times in its exploration of the forest, but it had never felt compelled to go in there. The ravine was very tall, taller than the trees, but was also very narrow, carved centuries ago by a river that no longer existed and barely wider than the Cerberus' shoulders. It hadn't wanted to get stuck, and they'd been no need before for exploration. But there was now.

It approached the entrance with a caution that seemed almost laughable; as though a thing of such size and strength would fear anything. But it did. Something felt wrong about this. It was as though it had been led here by design. But that was impossible. The Cerberus was the hunter, not the hunted.

It gave a thunderous growl to unnerve whatever was in there, drew its arms together, and moved inside.

The smell hit it like a wall. The prey was ahead, barely a dozen strides away down the twisting passage. The prey was afraid as well, far more than the Cerberus. Its scent was of fear and its yowling came faster now and more desperate as it in turn smelt the Cerberus and realised what it was up against. It growled again, the guttural rumble echoing off the walls of earth and the prey's scent turned to terror.

The Cerberus' blood run hot and giddy. Soon it would taste flesh, and it couldn't wait any longer.

The creature barged down the narrow channel, shoulders thumping against earth as it breathed heavily. No need for stealth any longer – the prey had no escape. Its arm caught up in a cluster of exposed roots until it broke free, lumbering onwards, drunk now on the smell of fear. It turned a corner and its eyes fell upon its next victim.

Next to another root cluster of a giant fir tree was the Connor's Labrador. It barking and whined furiously, wailing as it fought with its leash, desperate to flee for its life. The Cerberus' jaws dripped with saliva, the dog's fear so thick it was tangible and the creatures' muscles tensed to strike.

Then it froze in its own terror.

Granules of soil trickled down the walls of the ravine from above it. The dog suddenly stopped barking. The creature's heart, an organ the size of a car engine, began hammering in its massive chest, sensing the unseen danger that loomed above it.

A gunshot crack and a whistle of supersonic air came down and severed the leash that tied the dog with a single bullet. The animal broke free, running off into the distance as fast as it could ambulate and never looked back.

The Cerberus stayed rooted in place.

Moments passed, still and in silence. Then, more slowly than it had ever done anything, the Cerberus turned its head up towards to the slit of daylight.

Cameron looked back.

Gymnastic legs kept her straddling the breadth of the dinky canyon twenty feet above, hanging in near mid-air. She had a look of cruel severity, one that invoked fear, and she was pointing her assault rifle at the creature's head.

There were no words or motion. Just a moment between adversaries, unspoilt by mewlings or brash wit. Those things were human.

Cameron squeezed the trigger and the darkness of the ravine lit up with the muzzle flashes of automatic gunfire.

The Cerberus roared in agony. Bone shattered and metal splintered, slicing into flesh and organs as scalding projectiles shredded into its back. It tried to back up the way it had came but its wild flaying against the pain made it smash into the ravine walls, its immense strength bringing down rocks and soil that trapped it in a quagmire of mud and blood.

A grenade squealed, exploded, and the walls of the narrow chasm slumped into collapse.

Cameron jumped clear from her killing perch, rolling away onto her back and slid away across the mud from the slumping landscape as the ground gave way to fill the void, throwing up jets of evacuating air and soil that drowned out the death knell of the creature. Trees groaned and toppled as the soil fell away, their roots dragging huge granite boulders and a thousand tons of earth as the Cerberus was buried beneath a tidal wave if histosol, dirt and the giant trunks of clunking, ancient timber.

Sarah jumped to her feet when she heard the distant gunfire and explosion, looking around for the protection of the Cerberus as she heard humanoid footfalls approaching at speed.

Fear filled her at the thought of the mercenaries and she readied herself to run.

Then all her fear went away.

Her heart filled with the warmth and unbearable joy only a child can feel at the sight of a parent and she held out her arms to her. Cameron scooped her up, never breaking stride as she drew her daughter close to her and marched onward back into the forest.

####

The backdoor of the Brewed Awakening heaved open and John and Derek marched out. Their paces quickened as they emerged from the restaurant kitchens into the daylight of the alleyway and beat a hasty retreat back to the jeep. Derek's eyes were everywhere, sweeping as many rooftops, windows, doorways, mail slots and rat-holes as he could lay his vision to in search of hidden enemies. John stared straight ahead, face grimmer than an Old Bailey judge and left the duty of lookout to Derek.

"What're we going to do now?" asked Derek.

John held out his palm as they walked and it took Derek a moment to realise he wanted the car keys. He dug them out of his pants pocket and handed them over.

"John! What are we gonna do?" He tried again.

"I don't know yet. I'm still thinking." There was no wavering or anxiety in his voice, but Derek knew he was at least as freaked as he was. They'd landed unawares smack-bang in terminator central, and whether John cared to voice it or not: Derek knew they were screwed.

"If they wanted to kill us they'd have done it already." John thought aloud. "In fact, they don't seem to even realise who we are."

Derek harrumphed. He didn't care about the townsfolk's selective amnesia. "Maybe they're screwing with us."

"Terminators don't do that." John shook his head as they slid up to the Liberty. "We're missing something…"

Derek ran out of patience for John's mental processes. "Who fucking cares?" He yelled. "Cameron had the right idea! Fuck this town! Let's go back to the cabin and pick up her trail. We link back up with her, rescue the kid, and then stick to the original plan to walk out of here through the mountains."

John glowered at him over the hood, half-ready to hop over the Liberty's baking bodywork and bitch slap the brain cells into Derek that God had deemed to leave out. "You want to go back in the woods with that thing rather than face the enemy-you-know?"

Derek shrugged, too close to the verge of outright panic to be scared of John's temper anymore. "It's either that, or Metalville!" Then his tongue outpaced his brain. "Besides… you were okay with leaving your daughter with the damn thing!"

John saw red. He slammed a fist on the hood and burnt holes into Derek. "Don't make me kick the shit out of you again, old man!"

Derek bristled visibly at the insult.

The wheel was coming off their reassembled alliance, but fear and words were making fools of them both. John could see it happening like a wobbling tyre, ready to ping its bolts and off-road them, but the weight of all that had happened and all that was still happening made the way back to cooperation and rational decision-making ever steeper.

Derek's instincts were to head for the hills – and in Redwood there were hills all around them. Forested mountains lay on the horizon in every clear direction and he would give anything to be on one of them now. Anywhere but here – the place where the stuff of his nightmares walked the streets like regular people, ate ice cream on swings and had lunch in restaurants, screwed and married his only nephew and made creepy little half-human children.

Every second he could feel the laser dot of a sniper rifle burning his forehead and the paranoia of constant surveillance.

If they lived to see sunset, he'd be very impressed.

"I'm sorry…" John suddenly raised his palms up in offered peace, his anger extinguishing beneath the greater weight of sagacity. "This isn't helping us. It's just making things worse."

Derek was never as shrewd or level-headed as his brother, and certainly not his nephew. He had to wrestle the anger down with more anger.

"FUCK IT!" He turned around and kicked a nearby garbage can as hard as he could, sending it and its vile contents flying. The sound of hollow metal hitting concrete and the wet smack of waste filled the alley.

John rubbed the back of his head and let Derek vent his fury. He knew he'd be better for it and be focused in a few minutes.

Fate didn't give them that much time.

"Problem here, gentlemen?"

The voice was a deep, booming baritone that sounded like a giant's war cry, sending both men whirling in unison in its direction. John felt his insides go cold.

Sheriff Bacchus stood in the alleyway just yards away from them. He had approached from the nearby street, somehow staying undetected, and one of his giant hands hooked a casual thumb behind his big leather belt as the other rested on the hilt of a holstered sidearm. He looked the two of them up and down from his six-foot vantage point, broad shoulders and flexed biceps granting him a poise and confidence that was as steady as a rock. His badge and gun felt almost superfluous.

"No officer. We were just leaving." John spoke respectfully, wary of Derek in his peripheral vision sliding for his own sidearm.

Bacchus looked over the rim of his sunglasses at the beaten trash can.

"I guess you boys had some issues to work out." He looked back to them with an effortless scorn. "Glad you took it outside, but that doesn't mean you can disturb the peace or cause criminal damage."

John had the wherewithal to look suitably chastised. Not a difficult task since it was clear by now that Bacchus had no more memory of him than Vladimir or Olga. The man had saved his life not twelve hours earlier, but he looked at him now the same way he did when they'd first met more than five years ago: like a city-dwelling outsider that was stinking up the place.

"Bacchus." John blurted out, deciding to seize the bull by the horns and get some answers. "Sheriff Angus Bacchus."

The sheriff stiffened and gave him a look. Bacchus hated his first name and he rue the day John had learnt it.

"We know one another, sir?"

John stepped between him and Derek as the resistance fighter stopped reaching for his weapon and gave the back of his nephew's head an uncertain look.

"We did know one another." He said the next part very carefully. "You arrested me once."

Bacchus didn't move for a moment. Then he slid his sunglasses to the end of his nose and took in John's features more clearly. "It must have been a long time ago. Weren't you wearing the right type of crash helmet for your pushbike?"

A snort of laughter came from Derek's direction and even Bacchus grinned at his own joke. John smiled thinly, but stayed calm and serious. His approach was already working – Bacchus no longer had his hand on his gun and was looking more at ease.

Past John and Bacchus, Derek turned his eyes to something at the far end of the alley and his smile vanished.

A pair of plain-clothed men were approaching them. Their demeanour looked too casual and unnatural and they moved parallel to one another up either side of the alley. Their eyes where on them and they had the distinctive swagger of ex-military about them that put the fetid smell of mercenary up Derek's nostrils.

"John…" he warned.

John had already seen them and knew he had to extricate them from the sheriff as quickly as possible.

"We're sorry for the disturbance, officer. We'll be on our way."

Bacchus felt his stomach rumble. He was on his way to lunch and he had no intention of his steak sandwich being delayed by lecturing these guys on their minor infraction. A quick warning would suffice:

"Steer clear of trouble when you're in Redwood, fellas. You'll find more than you can handle."

A few minutes later, when he and Derek were safely back in the Liberty and driving off down the street, John thought that truer words had never been spoken.

"So what are we going to do then?" Derek asked, more calm and rationally this time. "And don't give me the silent treatment or some bullshit Civil War analogy! Give it to me in plain English!"

John took a breath and kept looking ahead. He supposed he owed Derek as much as he'd asked for.

"The first thing we do is ditch the jeep. Then we break into Bacchus's house and wait for him to come home tonight. We capture him, take out his chip, plug it into the CPU adapter I've got stored in a shoebox in my attic and use the Cyberdyne-OS emulator I wrote on my old laptop to hack the encryption. Then we find out what's been going on in this town." He turned to look at him. "Satisfied?"

If it had been John's mother driving rather than his uncle, she'd have probably crashed the car. Derek just looked as though he'd gone onto autopilot.

Then a toothy grin cracked across his course jaw line.

"That'll do."

####

When Cameron found the ranger station atop of the granite hills of Chetwot Point, it was almost nightfall. The quaint log shack doubled as a service station for Redwood's radio mast that sprouted behind it from a half-buried pedestal of reinforced concrete in a latticework of cold grey steel, far beyond the ceiling of the forest canopy until its lofty summit dipped into radio waves. A dusty dirt track led away through the trees, joining at some point after many miles of its serpentine path with the one the Connors had used a day earlier to reach their hideaway cabin.

Cameron gave the shack and surrounding landscape an infrared scan – nothing there – but she was beginning to think that such precautions were becoming obsolete in the face of their new and radical enemy. The relatively level playing field they had been used to fighting with Skynet across the gulf of time was slipping, replaced with a dynamic and all too resourceful new nemesis that commanded legions of hired mercenaries, access to future technology and a creature unlike anything Cameron had ever encountered.

She held Sarah under one arm as she approached the front door to the shack and twisted its giant padlock like a faucet capstan, winding the loop of steel shank into a crisscrossing braid until it crumpled to malleable material. She entered and closed the door, taking in the rustic interior and its starkly modern contents with a cataloguing eye.

There was a tiny kitchenette at one end of the single room building, with a first aid station and laminate worktop. A few chairs and a table sat in the middle of the room, a wood burner in the corner and an old couch in front of it. The far end of the shack was dominated by a dozen sealed electrical panels, all mounted on the wall – obviously they were connected with the mast's operation.

Cameron went to the kitchenette and sat Sarah down on the worktop, slinging her backpack down and placing her assault rifle upright against the wall. She pulled back from her daughter, seeing dried tears on the little girl's face and a staring, vacant expression.

"Are you hurt?" Cameron asked softly, fingers brushing up and down her little arms.

Sarah shook her head slowly, looking as though she might burst into tears.

Cameron felt a surge of protectiveness and she cupped the girl's cheeks in her powerful hands, placing a delicate kiss on her forehead and giving her a reassuring smile.

She wet a clean cloth in the sink, using it to gently rub away the tears and dirt from her daughter's hands and face. When she was clean, Cameron opened the first aid box on the wall, taking a packet of antiseptic wipes and using them over everywhere she had just cleaned until Sarah's skin was pink and disinfected. In her backpack, she had brought a clean change of clothes and with Sarah's minimal input, she disrobed her from her ruined nightwear and pulled her into a woolly sweater lined with polar fleece and a pair of her favourite jeans. On her feet she slid thick woolly socks and put fleece mittens on her hands before crowning her with a fluffy tuque that tucked down over the tips of her ears.

"Are you dehydrated? Do you want something to eat?" The concern in her voice and the air of fret about her belied the taciturn manner in which the words were spoken.

Sarah was clearly upset, perhaps in shock even, but Cameron was uncertain as the nature of her sadness. She was safe and with her mother again. She was clean and warm and out of the clutches of mercenaries and monsters. She wished that John was here – he would know exactly what was wrong and what to do about it. John always knew what to do. Without him, Cameron would have to take a chance at an appropriate remedy: so she chose the most powerful she could think of.

"I love you." She vowed, taking Sarah's hands in hers and looked into her eyes. "I'm greatly relived that you haven't been physically harmed, but I understand that you may be hurt inside. I promise: I will never allow you to be taken like that again or be placed in danger. And it's alright if you want to cry."

Cameron rue her incompetence. Years of marriage and motherhood and she still hadn't mastered the basic ability to articulate her feelings or to speak with the eloquence and earnestness that John found so easy. Sarah and he had such an effortless rapport that was so knowing and intimate it seemed to border on telepathy. She felt like she was trying to do brain surgery with a shotgun. Her worst fear had always been that Sarah would think of her as cold and unemotional – worst of all that she didn't care for her or love her utterly. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Sarah was silent for a while before she looked up and said something that Cameron hadn't heard in years.

"Mommy…"

Cameron felt something that made her earlier surge of protectiveness fade to insignificance. It swelled up inside her chest like a balloon filled with burning helium, lifting her up and heating her and making her head swim with something that resembled the human symptoms of vertigo. It made her want to kill everything in the entire universe that dared looked at Sarah the wrong way.

She wrapped her arms around her as the girl crushed herself into her chest, more strongly than Cameron believed she was capable of. She smoothed her soft hair as she picked her up, bouncing and swaying her gently in her arms the way she used to do when she was baby and had woken fitfully in the night from some bad dream. After a few minutes, it put Sarah sound asleep and Cameron walked her around tirelessly for almost an hour, the time slipping by in comfortable silence and she didn't spare a single thought on anything except for her.

When they got home, she would ensure Sarah had new necessities and presents. Maybe they would go away for a while. Whatever Sarah wanted she could have - ice cream, giant cookies, new toys, less school, better clothing. A part of her recognised that she was feeling over-indulgent as a reaction to the fear of loosing her. Another part wished that none of this had ever happened and that the three of them were together again and all of this had just been a nightmare.

She pulled Sarah closer as she felt her little arms tighten behind her neck. She would have to put her down soon and maybe light some candles. She had seen a box of them in the kitchen and some folded linen on top of the cupboards that would serve adequately as a quilt.

She changed direction towards the kitchenette, satisfied that Sarah was in deep enough sleep so that she wouldn't disturb her as she made up a bed on the couch. Sunrise would be in seven-and-a-half hours and she wanted her fully rested by then.

After putting Sarah down and tucking her in, she went about securing the shack. There was no food in any of the cupboards, but she had snatched some candy bars from the cabin before she left. The only useful things she found were a stainless metal teapot and a box of matches – things less useful were hunting and wildlife magazines, an ancient pack of yellowed playing cards and most interestingly – a metal lockbox with the word 'DANGER' stencilled across its surface. She pressed her thumb against the steel keyhole and crumpled the cylinder lock.

Inside was a small card that looked like it had once been glued to the lid. On it was a table of bear species, listing the dosages of tranquiliser for each, depending on the approximate size of the animal. She lifted it up and underneath there were four florescent-tailed blow darts fixed firmly into polystyrene holsters, their needle-tips buried in corks. Across them were bright labels: 'USE EXTREME CARE' and 'OFFICIAL RANGER USE ONLY'.

The inference of their existence clicked instantly in Cameron's head and she put the box down and looked around for the most likely place to hide a weapon.

When she found it, she pulled out a chair and used it to mount the table, reaching up to her maximum extent to the beam of the exposed roof truss and pulled down a dust-covered air rifle. She stepped down and she released the bolt, blowing down the barrel and sending a puff of particulate out the end before re-cocking it and pulled the trigger. Air spat out with strength. Next to her assault rifle and grenade launcher combo, an air rifle seemed rather meek and useless, but she added it to her arsenal nonetheless.

She then turned her attention to the wood burner. Now she had matches she could start a fire. There was no firewood inside it or stored in the shack so she'd have to go out and collect some. It would be alright to leave Sarah for a few minutes, especially if it meant providing the warmth and comfort of a fire. She strode over to her makeshift armoury beneath the windowsill, sliding her hand around the assault rifle as she glanced through the glass.

The face of the Cerberus filled the window.

Cameron was skewered by giant, jet-black eyes that lanced into her with fury and bloodlust. Very slowly, she tried to lift the assault rifle.

A growl shook the glass panes of the window and the Cerberus bared its enormous teeth.

"Charlie…?"

Cameron whirled at the sound of Sarah's voice, seeing her daughter rub her eyes as she arose from beneath her quilt. The growling suddenly stopped, but by the time Cameron turned around, the Cerberus was gone.

She checked the rifle's magazine and re-cocked it. "Stay where you are, Sarah." She could still hear it outside, snapping twigs and underbrush, growling so loudly now that it sounded like prehistoric thunder and made the walls quake. The creature was circling the shack and there was no way out.

"You're not going to hurt him, are you?"

Cameron was trying to catch a glimpse of the creature through the window before she frowned and looked at her.

"Why shouldn't I hurt it?"

Sarah's face fell with horror, looking like she might cry.

"No!" She cried and bolted from the couch, pawing at her mother's legs until Cameron knelt down and they were eye-to-eye. "Please don't! It's not his fault! He doesn't have a choice! He was only trying to protect me!"

Cameron wasn't sure if this was some form of Stockholm syndrome or a post-traumatic reaction. Human psychological trauma was difficult to understand, but it didn't sound as though Sarah was suffering from either. In fact, what seemed to be causing her trembling hands and elevated heart rate was the fear of what she might do to this… 'Charlie'. A human parent might panic or at least take exception to that.

Cameron wasn't human. And she had some experience in what it was like to be mislabelled a monster.

"If the creature is controlled by our enemies, then it is endangering us, despite any benign intentions it might have."

Sarah quickly shook her head. "Just take out his chip. He won't be dangerous if we take out his chip. He can heal very quickly, but it's the chip that makes him dangerous."

Cameron considered it. "There's no way to get close to the creature for the amount of time necessary to perform the extraction."

Both of them went silent for long moments, mother and daughter trying to urge the other with their eyes and neither ready to concede their position.

Then both of them turned to the tranquiliser darts on the kitchen table.

"I have an idea." They said together.

####

Sheriff Bacchus turned his bright-yellow Challenger into his driveway and killed the growl of the engine. Home sweet home. He'd had a good day today. In fact, it almost felt too good.

Crime was down across the board. Best of all, the major's office and the press were off his back about the bear killings, which themselves seemed to have fizzled out. No doubt whatever man-eater had been in the vicinity had moved on. Aside from that issue, he couldn't remember the last time he'd dealt with anything really serious. His two biggest cases right now that demanded the lion's share of his time were a stolen buggy from the golfing range and some school kids going truant. The most challenging thing he'd done all day was send a pair of rowdy out-of-towners packing.

He reached to the passenger seat and undid the seatbelt from around a case of beer, lifting it easily with the strength of one hand and picked the piping hot pizza box out of the footwell. Pepperoni with triple cheese. Normally he'd spend the next few hours in the personal gym of his spare bedroom, but he'd honestly never felt fitter, and a quick set of two-hundred push-ups in his office earlier today confirmed he had a recovery heart rate shorter than when he was a teenager. It was on these days of circadian harmony that he treated himself.

Balancing his beer and pizza in one hand he shut the car door with his hip and dug his house keys from his pocket, stepping up the pale-yellow footpath and breathing the crisp night air before sliding them into the front door.

He froze in place like a statue and began to dither.

The beer case fell first, glass smashing within the cardboard carrier, their precious cargo pouring across the doorstep. The pizza box went more slowly, the sweating heat making it stick to his hand before Bacchus's eyes rolled backwards and he keeled over, landing headfirst against the opening door.

Derek grabbed hold of him and took his weight with both arms as John flicked off the wall socket and snatched the copper wire from the inside of the cylinder lock.

"Grab his legs!" Derek said desperately, overwhelmed by the man's sheer mass and colossal deadweight as he tried to keep from falling.

Between the two of them they managed to move him inside and to the living room where the chair they'd prepared sat waiting. They used a steel cable as binding from a winch they'd found in the garage. The grenade they placed in his lap came from the mercenaries on the road. Attached to its pin, Derek hand tied a length of thin metal wire that pulled taunt down between the sheriff's legs, under the chair seat, and was fixed to the leather strap of his belt. If he tried to stand or get out of the chair, the pin would be pulled out, and a lifetime of dedication and bodybuilding exercise would be for nothing.

John wished, and not for the first time, that Cameron was here with him. She could confirm what they needed to know just by touching him and scanning beneath the surface to detect whether it was bone or endoskeleton that lay underneath. Their most direct method would be less subtle – they'd have to remove flesh to either bone or metal to make the same determination.

"How could we be wrong?" Derek argued. "What else could they be except terminators? You saw Bacchus die yourself!"

"Actually, I didn't. He was still alive when I last saw him."

"Well the Kamarovs weren't alive when I last saw them and they're both up and around."

"That's not the point!" John snapped. "I'm only surmising that they're all terminators. They might be something else. Something we haven't seen yet. Replacing an entire town is impractical for Skynet. If who's behind this is who I think it is, then it makes even less sense."

Derek growled as he finished setting the grenade's trigger. "Eventually John, you'll have to enlighten us mere mortals on who exactly you think that is."

After they had finished they stood back and watched Bacchus gradually regain consciousness. At first it seemed like the slow awakening characteristic of a human being, then he suddenly jerk awake and pulled hard at his restraints. He stared around with huge open eyes, then down at his bindings, seeming to calm as he righted himself and looked at them in confusion.

"Wha… what the hell is this?"

John had tapped the button on his watch's stopwatch when Bacchus had jerked awake. He showed the results to Derek.

"One-hundred-twenty-four seconds. Pretty close."

Bacchus thought the look Derek turned on him looked like the one an executioner gave his clients. John's look was more judicial.

"You've got some pretty serious problems, sheriff." It was John who did the talking. "Your town's been taken over by a man who has an army of mercenaries at his command, the 'man-eater' in the woods is anything but a bear, and… you may not be feeling all yourself." He pulled over another chair and sat down in front of him. He nodded towards his crotch where the spherical explosive lay nestled. "That grenade is the least of your troubles, but if you stand up or struggle too hard: it's gonna ruin your day."

Bacchus looked to where Derek stood by the door, glaring at him with narrow eyes, like he wanted nothing more than to draw his gun and empty a magazine into him just to prove a point.

Bacchus bit back his defiant instincts but spoke with authority. "You're both under arrest for illegal entry, assault and unlawful imprisonment."

Derek showed his teeth in a chuckle. "Well gee-whiz sheriff, we'd hate to be on the wrong side of the law."

John leaned forward and spoke with earnest. "Don't you remember me?" It was clear that he didn't. "John Connor. We've known one another for over five years. I've been a thorn in your side for about the same amount of time. Yesterday you took a bullet to save my life after your entire station had been wiped out." He shook his head. If Bacchus didn't show some hint of recollection then they'd be left with a single recourse. "Do you honestly not remember?"

"My team and my station are both fine," he asserted. "The biggest thing that happened yesterday was finding a body at the construction site."

John ceased on the opportunity. "I know. I was there. You arrested me for contaminating the crime scene."

"No. I arrested a kid named Eli for contaminating the crime scene. I've only known you since lunchtime."

The events were the same, the memories different. More and more the likelihood that this was not the same Sheriff Bacchus began to solidify in John's mind. But how did a terminator replacement have such detailed information about an event that happened only yesterday? No matter how good a terminator's abilities might be – it couldn't have had access to such recent information. It was more like his memories had been rewritten.

"We have to be sure about you Bacchus. We have to know what's happened and if you're what my friend thinks you are." John tipped his head back at Derek as his uncle pulled a gun from his jacket. "Are you absolutely certain you don't remember me?"

For a moment, Bacchus seemed to actually consider it. Then he just gave a shrug.

"When we were invading Iraq, I got captured outside Karbala. They held me for two days and tortured me for details of our invasion plan." He had an odd little smile as he looked through John and Derek to the terrible experience he'd long made peace with. "I don't mind telling anyone that I was scared, but eventually the moment comes when you can't feel any more fear. It's not because you're brave: it's because you've reached the limit of what you're capable of feeling. You can't get any more scared. Nothing much frightens you after that." He looked from one to the other. "From the look of both of you, I think you both know what I'm talking about."

Bacchus straightened and set his jaw, looking as steadfast and immutable as Glacier Peak.

"I don't know you. Either of you." His words brimmed with finality. "Do whatever you have to and be on your way."

There wasn't anything left to discuss, and John's verdict finally aligned with Derek's.

"Pull his chip."

John stood and went behind him, wrapping his arm around Bacchus's neck, careful to avoid any biting action he might take as Derek drew a knife from his boot. He'd done this a couple of times, the way his brother had shown him. He knew the exact place and what pressure to use to slice across the flesh covering the skull and expose the CPU port. John gripped Bacchus tight, but the man never moved or made a sound as Derek cruelly cut into his flesh – exposing the glistening chrome metal beneath.

"You see."

Derek used the tip of the knife to remove the port cover and using his thumb and the knife blade as a pincer, he seized the base tab of the chip and pulled. The chip slid out with no effort and John felt the body tension drain out of Bacchus. He let go, circling around in front of him as Derek held the chip up to the light with grim fascination.

"You were right, Derek." John admitted as he dolefully removed the grenade from Bacchus's lap. "I should've listened to you."

His uncle heard the regret in his voice, but at no time did he consider this a victory. "It doesn't matter. We got what we came for." He pocketed the chip and wiped the blood off his knife with a kitchen cloth. "I don't think that we…"

Bacchus jerked awake and gasped for air like a diver breaking surface. John stumbled back and scrambled away on his backside. Derek dropped the knife and drew his gun.

"JOHN!" Bacchus yelled, feeling a searing pain from the wound on his head as he fought for breath. "John, what's happening to me?"

John stared, mouth agape. Derek tried to steady himself, easing off the trigger he almost squeezed. For a few moments neither of them said anything over the roar of rushing blood in their ears.

John was the first to speak. "Bacchus?"

The sheriff took deep breaths before struggling out a response. "Connor!"

"What the hell's going on?" Derek still had Bacchus in his sights, not sure anymore what it was he was aiming at. "If we just pulled his chip, why's he awake?"

John's mind raced, thinking of I-950 infiltrators or back-up CPUs. Then it all clicked together in his mind in a burst of sudden revelation.

"A hybrid…" He whispered. "He's a hybrid!" John got to his feet and looked at Bacchus like he was the finest of all oil paintings. "The town hasn't been replaced, they've been converted!" He reached into Derek's jacket and pulled out the chip. "This isn't a CPU, it's some sort of control implant. When we took it out it most have stopped suppressing his memories. Any memories that involved me."

"But why just block memories? Why not command them all to kill us?"

John shook his head. "Cameron told me these types of chips don't work that way. They can't take direct control, they can only influence. Blocking everyone's memories was a way to eliminate any allies I had in town that might shelter us." John smiled despite it all. "Damn-it, he's good!"

"Fuckin' who already, John?"

"You need to get out," Bacchus interrupted, sounding like he was short of a lung and his face shone with sweat. "They know you're here…"

John frowned. "How do you know?"

"The mercenaries can track us through our chips… when you took it out, the signal died… they'll know something's wrong and investigate."

Derek was already moving, darting out of the living room and collecting their gear together from the kitchen. John hesitated, not certain what to do about Bacchus. If he released him he was as much a fugitive as they were, but putting his chip back in to try and cover their tracks felt pretty callous.

"Looks like I'm going to end up owing you my life twice over."

Bacchus found the strength for a half-smile. "I knew you were trouble, Connor." His voice was not entirely devoid of mirth.

The house was plunged into darkness before John could respond.

The front door handle was blown off and a second later three black-clad mercenaries burst inside, armed and armoured to the nines.

Derek stuck his head out from the kitchen and shone his flashlight in the first one's face. The merc growled as the light blinded him beneath his night vision goggles and Derek shot him in the throat.

The hallway lit up with the strobe flashes of gunfire as Derek slammed a door that was promptly blown to smithereens.

The door from the living room opened and John shot the third mercenary through the side of the head.

The second turned and went to swing his rifle around. John dived straight into him, tackling him to the floor where a brutal struggle began.

Derek went to help but froze when three more mercenaries came rushing up Bacchus's driveway, two packing MP5s and the other one had an enormous carbine shotgun.

"GO!" John yelled as he and the mercenary grappled.

Derek froze-up. The mercenaries would be on them in seconds.

John punched the merc in the ribs and yelled at Derek, "They want me alive! They'll kill you on sight! Now fucking run!"

Derek made no mistake that John was giving him an order, and the soldier in him blindly obeyed. He seized his bag from the table, kicked the back door open and ran for his life into the blanket of night.

Inside, a mercenary grabbed John and pulled him off his comrade. John drove the back of his head into his nose and he was instantly released.

The other mercs tackled him around the waist together and they went down in a tangled mess of limbs as they beat him down to the floor, delivering a dozen brutal blows into John's chest and stomach until his struggling relented and they hauled him to his knees, a man on either arm ready to pop his shoulder sockets the moment he began resisting.

They held him there for nearly a minute before Lance came strolling in. "We got him," he spoke into his ear piece as the lighting was restored, "Bringing him in now."

He stepped closer until John had to look up to meet his gaze. Lance's smile was a white crescent.

"Missed you at the pig-house," he grinned and gestured around them, "Caught you in the sty."

The last thing John remembered was Lance's fist heading towards his face.

####

Moonlight pierced the forest darkness as the Cerberus came awake, its body wracked with the numb vestiges of anaesthesia and grogginess from the stomach-churning tranquiliser.

The woman that smelt of metal had surprised it. She had appeared out of the doorway and the windows of the shack when it tried to get close and fired florescent darts into its back and neck, places where it couldn't reach to remove them. After the third one punctured its carotid artery, it had sunk into blackness.

It couldn't smell Sarah anymore and sorrow filled its soul. The metal woman must have taken her and by now they were long gone.

It tried to heave itself onto its feet, swaying violently and knocking over a tree as it stumbled and fell back down.

"Raptor's-Nest, this is Raptor-One." A gruff voice growled from only a few feet away. "The thing's down. Looks like it's been sedated. What do you want us to do with it?"

The Cerberus turned its head from the soil and saw the group of heavily armed mercenaries converging on it. A helicopter flew overhead, shining a searchlight down through the trees as it circled the area.

The mercenary nodded as he pressed his finger to his earpiece. "Will do. Shouldn't be too difficult. Shut it down and we'll prep it for air-transport."

The Cerberus felt the fight drain out of it. Soon the command would come through the Splinter and it would have no choice but to obey. Somewhere in the distance it heard the heavy rotors of a Chinook approaching.

The mercenary approached, bold and unafraid. He squatted down next to its eyeball. "It's the fuckin' dog-meat factory for you, fido." He stood up, kicked dirt in its face and then drove the point of a steal toecap into its belly. The Cerberus didn't flinch. It barely even felt the blow through the layers muscle that encased its thorax and abdomen like subdermal armour. The greater torment would be the voice of its Creator, the one that it knew now that it could never and would never escape.

"Raptor's-Nest, Raptor-One. We're waiting on that shut-down order. This thing's still conscious."

Yes. It was still conscious. But why? The Creator's voice should have spoken by now, and the Splinter should have turned the world a blur until it was blackness. It lifted a giant paw and felt the side of its head, causing the mercenary to stumble back and raise his weapon. Its claw moved into the slit of flesh that had been opened, probing inwards and feeling that it was deep. As it felt it, the wound began to heal up, the last traces of tranquiliser metabolising from its system and returning all of its powers and faculties.

The Cerberus got up and loomed more fourteen-feet above the approaching mercenaries. The one that had driven its toe into its belly stepped backward and tripped over, landed helplessly on his back.

It looked down at him and twitched its head, drinking the man's fear. It slashed once with its paw and beheaded him.

Blood sprayed across tree trunks and the faces of the closest mercenaries and the wave of terror the Cerberus smelt filled its nose and veins like a popper rush. They all suddenly began moving, some breaking into panicked retreat as the braver ones took up firing positions. One fumbled for his radio but kept pressing the wrong button.

"Raptor's-Nest! Raptor's-Nest! We are in deep… AAHHHH!"

Screaming and gunfire echoed into the night as the Cerberus rushed forward and began tearing them to pieces.


Thought I'd given up, didn't you ;)

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