A/N: I know the original dialogue isn't word for word, and that I'm changing some details in certain scenes from the movie, but what fun is an AU story without changing some things up? Anyway, here's the next chapter.
Chapter Five: A Mental Breakout
*Eric's POV*
John was sitting on the hood of a vehicle that had been parked, and he seemed to have gotten over the shock of Todd and Janelle's deaths for the most part. I decided to bring out the expandable baton I had forgotten about until that moment and practice with it for a few minutes, in case someone besides the liquid metal decided to get in our way, while the Terminator stood guard, scanning the vicinity. By the time I decided that I had enough practice and put it away, John asked me, "You ever use one of those before?"
"Nope, I always got by with my fists whenever I had to put a stop to infighting within the resistance's ranks. You used to always call me a peacekeeper among the humans because I believed that we were all fighting the same enemy, and that we shouldn't fight each other. I know it sounds weird talking in past tense about things that technically haven't happened yet, but time works in strange ways when you think about it."
John replied, "With everything that's happened today, I'm willing to believe it."
I had a feeling that it wouldn't be easy for John to talk about it, but I decided to ask, "What happened between you and your mother?" He didn't seem to mind.
"It's a long story, but I'll try to keep it short before I get to the chase. You see, we spent a lot of time in Nicaragua and places like that. For a while there, she was with this crazy ex Green Beret guy, running guns, then there were some other guys. She'd shack up with anybody she could learn from so she can teach me to be this, 'great military leader.' Then she gets busted, and suddenly it's like, 'Sorry, kid, your mom's a psycho, didn't you know?' It's like they were telling me everything I was brought up to believe was complete bullshit, and I hated them for that. But everything she said really was true. She knew, and nobody believed her, and I doubted her myself."
I had a gut feeling what John was about to say next. He hopped off the hood, "Listen guys, we gotta get her out of there." But the Terminator replied, "Negative. The T-1000's highest probability of success now will be to copy Sarah Connor and wait for you to make contact with her."
Knowing the liquid metal will just kill Sarah, I objected, "You do understand what you're saying, right? This is John Connor's mother we're talking about here! She may be a fighter, but she won't stand a chance against that thing! We can't just leave her there!"
Alarm suddenly took hold of John, "What are you talking about? What's gonna happen to her?"
It finally said, "Typically, the subject being copied is terminated."
John's eyes went wide, "Shit! Why didn't you tell me!? We gotta go right now!" It grabbed the arm of John's jacket, "Negative, she's not a mission priority."
"Fuck you! She's a priority to me!" John said, trying to break loose of the cyborg's grip. I found myself grabbing its jacket and I gave it a piece of my mind also, "Listen to me, tin can! I didn't come all this way with you just to separate my friend from his mother permanently, so let him go now!" It didn't budge. I wanted to take my shotgun out and shoot it in its head, but I knew I'd only make the situation much worse if I did.
John added to his own objection against the 101, "What the fuck is your problem!? Damn it!" He started screaming for help, but the machine simply said, "This does not help our mission." It definitely didn't because his screaming drew the attention of two guys nearby, and John finally said, "Let me go!" It finally did, and John fell to the ground.
"Why the hell did you do that!?"
"Because you told me to."
John's anger quickly went away, "What?" He stood back up with a smirk on his fact this time. "You have to do what I say, huh?"
"That's one of my mission parameters."
"Prove it. Stand on one foot." It actually did, and I found myself chuckling a bit.
"Yes! Cool, my own Terminator!"
The two guys had come over to where we were, and one of them asked John, "You ok, kid?"
"Take a hike, bozo," John said. Maybe it was because he realized he had a Terminator in his command, and was feeling cocky and invincible as a result, but I wished he hadn't have said that.
The other guy said, "Man, let's get out of here," But the first guy wasn't having it, and said to John, "Fuck you, you little dipshit!"
"Dipshit?" He whispered to the machine to put its leg down and looked back to the guy, "Did you call moi a dipshit? Grab this guy, I can't believe he called me a dipshit." The cyborg grabbed the guy by his hair and he was screaming. I could only imagine the pain of being held off the ground only by the hair. "Now who's the dipshit, jock douchebag?" The other guy got the machine to let go, but got his hand broken in the process.
Then the machine pulled out its pistol and cocked it, and my eyes widened at what was happening, it was about to shoot this guy. John and I both intervened, "No!" we managed to push its arm out of the way before the gun went off. We had saved this person's life. John shouted at the 101, "Put the gun down, now!" It did, and he told the guys, "Get out of here!" They took off without hesitation.
John had picked up the pistol and I looked at it and asked, "Why did you do that?"
John added, "Geez, you were gonna kill that guy!"
It simply replied, "Of course, I'm a Terminator." So this thing does remember its original programming… All the more reason for me to be wary of it.
John then said, "Listen to me very carefully, ok? You're not a Terminator anymore, alright? You got that? You can't just go around killing people!"
"Why?" This machine didn't understand the value of human life, and I didn't expect it to learn that anytime soon.
"What do you mean why? Because you can't!"
"Why?"
I decided to give it my own answer, "Let me put it this way for now: If you start shooting people, our mission will get extremely harder. Because we'll have the cops hunting us, and we'll just be leaving an easy trail for the T-1000 to follow. Do you understand that?"
"Affirmative."
John sighed, "Ok. Now that we cleared that up, I'm gonna go get my mom, and I order you to help me." He handed the pistol back to it, and turned to me, "Will you help me too?"
I didn't hesitate to answer, "I was in from the get-go." We set off to Pescadero. When we arrived, John had us stop just before we got to the gate.
The machine asked, "Why do we stop now?" John answered.
"Now you gotta promise me, you're not gonna kill anyone, right?"
"Right."
"You swear?"
"What?"
"Just put up your hand and say you swear you won't kill anyone."
It put up its hand and repeated, "I swear I will not kill anyone."
I added, "I'll handle the guard when we get up there."
"Alright, let's go." John said. We pulled up to the gate. I walked up as the security guard came out of his booth. He seemed to be an older-looking guy. He proceeded to tell us about the weekly visiting hours, and I replied as I held both hands out where he could see them, "Listen, sir, it's a dire emergency. Someone's going to try to kill a patient that's here." The guard said, "I'm sorry, but I can't let any visitors in, and besides, there's enough security here to keep intruders out, and I'll notify everyone else in the building."
So much for the easy approach. "I'm sorry, pal, but it's for your own good," I thought, as I gave the guard a quick distraction to make him look away, then I quickly flicked out my self-defense baton and struck him hard in the legs to make him fall onto his knees and then an equally hard strike to the head. I had managed to knock this guy out in only two strikes, and I was surprised at myself.
John, who had been watching, asked, "Is he dead?" I knelt down to check the guard's pulse, and he still had one. I replied, "Nope, just out cold. He'll be feeling those two hits in the morning though." I dragged the guard back into the booth, and hit the button to open the gate. I went ahead and took the guy's spare magazines for extra ammo. I got back onto my bike and we rode into the basement level parking. By the time we parked, the facility's alarms started going off, and I knew it wasn't because of us.
The cyborg said, "Someone must be attempting to escape the facility." We were boarding the elevator when I replied, "My money's on Sarah," thinking that if it really was her, it'd make our breakout mission easier. John added, "I wouldn't put it past her." The elevator was going up to the floor that Sarah would be on, and my thoughts were racing on how I was about to get the honor of meeting Sarah herself, but I stayed focused.
We had reached the floor, and when the door opened, the Terminator took point. "Wait here," it said as it walked out, and when it looked to the left, it seemed to focus on something, and I could only believe that it had found the one trying to escape. Whoever it was, however, started screaming, and John recognized the voice right away and ran out. "Mom, wait! Mom!" It was indeed Sarah. I followed and we turned the corner to see that Sarah was being apprehended by the staff of the place.
I could hear her screaming, "No" repeatedly. "Help her!" John said, and the Terminator replied, "Wait here," as it motioned him to stay behind, and I followed alongside the machine, readying my expandable baton as we approached them.
"I'll go left, you take right."
"Affirmative."
I could hear Sarah also say, "He'll kill us all," knowing she was referring to the Terminator. I was starting to wish I had taken point instead, but I was sure I could help calm her down. We approached them and the cyborg grabbed one and hurled him into the barred windows, and I struck another down with my baton, and a third one tried to take it from me, but I head-butted him and punched him hard in the stomach until he fell. A female security guard tried to hit the machine in the face, but it wasn't stunned at all as it grabbed her face and shoved her away and it threw away its sunglasses. I put away my baton.
All that was left was a guy in a suit that tried to give her some kind of shot, but he seemed to be in complete shock by what he had just witnessed, so we left him alone. I could tell that Sarah was confused herself as she sat on the floor, seeing that the cyborg, with the exact facial features of the one that tried to kill her before, had just helped her. She then remembered that it had help too and looked up at me also.
I looked back. Sarah Connor, the woman who gave birth to my commanding officer, who I also considered a close friend. The woman who fought tooth and nail to survive and teach him all she could. However, she seemed to have been on the verge of being completely broken by this place. I could only imagine the hell she's been through during her stay here.
John suddenly ran to her side, "Mom, are you ok?" She was still in shock and didn't hear him. "Mom!" She finally looked at him for a moment and then looked back to me and the cyborg. I extended my hand to her and she focused on me remembering what John of the future told me to say to her, "Sarah Connor, come with me if you want to live."
"It's ok, Mom, they're here to help," John said to her, "it's ok." Sarah then reached and grabbed my hand and I helped her onto her feet. Her eyes seemed to be wide from what I said. She finally spoke, "Those words… Who are you?" Her reaction was clear enough for me to realize that Kyle had said those same words to her when they first met.
I answered, "I'm a friend who's here to help you and John." I then saw the T-1000 was down the hall standing behind a barred door, "We got company." She turned around to see what it was, and the liquid metal phased through the door with ease. The Terminator aimed its shotgun, "Go!" We took off as it ran interference for the three of us. We boarded the elevator, and the 101 barely made it in. The liquid metal opened the doors with its hands that had formed into prying tools, but I put a round from my own shotgun in its face, making it loose grip on the doors as they closed, and the elevator started going down. "Not today, liquid tin can!"
Sarah, completely spooked by what she just saw, asked, "What the fuck is that thing!? What the fuck is going on!?" I responded to her, "We'll explain later, right now we have to focus on getting out of here!" Few seconds later, we heard a bang, and then a big blade started stabbing through the ceiling. The 101 and I kept shooting through the ceiling, and Sarah grabbed the 101's pistol and started shooting as well, but she got sliced on the back of her right shoulder in the process.
The elevator opened and we came out, and a police car had just shown up, and Sarah aimed at the driver out, firing a shot at the windshield for further intimidation. "Out of the car! Right now!" The cop came out, and the 101 hurled him into a column, the force of the impact knocking him unconscious. At least the T-1000 won't bother with him since he wouldn't pose as an obstacle. The 101 commandeered the driver seat and we took off in reverse as the liquid metal started chasing us.
We opened fire on it, trying to slow it down so we could get away. Sure enough, we managed to escape Pescadero, but the T-1000 had latched onto the back of the car, and it had smashed through the back windshield trying to get to John, but I managed to shoot another round at it before it hit John, and the 101 finished off the 1000's grip on the car, making it tumble and roll on the ground before getting up and running after us again, but the car was too fast for it and it gave up. I saw John reach out and knock off a piece of the liquid metal that was still stuck to the trunk. "Smart idea," I said, "For all we know, that thing would have been able to use that chunk to track us."
We got as far away from Pescadero as we could.
