Chapter 6: What We Do

It was several miles down the road before Cameron spoke. She had stopped crying, and only sat silently in the passenger seat staring out a window. John had wanted to try to talk to her, but he didn't want to push it, so he just let her alone, concentrating on driving through this empty stretch of wooded highway.

"What I am is terrible," the cyborg stated in melancholy.

"Huh?" John wasn't sure what she meant.

"What I am is terrible," she repeated herself. "Your mother and Derek are correct. What I am is… it's disgusting. All I am is dangerous. All I do is kill."

"Did you kill any of those cops?"

She shook her head. "No. But it's what I'm made for. It's what I do. My only purpose is to destroy. It's all I can be. All I will ever be." She rolled down the window and put her hand out, feeling the wind blow through her splayed fingers. She watched as her hand stretched in the wind. She turned it about to look at her palm. "This hand. This hand was made in the likeness of yours. It functions just like yours. Because a gun was made for a human hand. My hand is only made this way to fit a weapon. Yours was made so that you could touch, hold, carry, and learn from it. I can't learn anything by my hand. I can only take life with it."

John wasn't sure what to say to that. She was right in that she was built for the purpose of terminating humans. It was something that she may have arguably taken pride in on occasion. She was a terminator and she was good at it. "You got the police off our backs without killing any of them. That's an accomplishment."

"An accomplishment made using the combat skills I'm programmed with," Cameron countered, "combined with my knowledge of human anatomy; knowledge that I have so that I can be a more efficient killer."

"You can use it to save lives, too," John argued. "You've sewn up my mom. You've helped save injured people. Derek would have bled to death if you hadn't helped some."

"That was mostly Charley Dixon's work."

"Yeah, but you were there in the first minutes." John reminded her, "look. Your skills are useful. We couldn't have accomplished anything without you. Without you I'd be dead. So would mom and Derek and a lot of others. You're a life saver, not a life taker. You've only killed people who were a threat to us. Every time you've done it, you were right to do it. Every time it wasn't necessary, you showed restraint."

She dipped her head and fell silent. Perhaps she was unable to refute him or perhaps the despair she felt ran so deep that she felt discussing it was without purpose. In any case, she remained quiet, contemplating only her knees. The miles of trees passed beyond the open window, and the air rumbled through it, tossing the navy blue fabric of her bullet-riddled t-shirt. Her hands were now folded in her lap. The thumb of her left hand busied itself with picking gently at the cuticle of the right thumb.

"You really feel bad about this don't you?"

She pursed her lips and nodded. "I do."

"Then you have a conscience."

The terminator shot him a look of wonder. Was that possible? Had she managed to evolve some moral guidance system? Perhaps. She had never been ashamed of performing her duties before. The adequate and successful completion of her assigned tasks should have brought her some level of satisfaction, if not pleasure. Instead, she was experiencing revulsion at what she had done, at all she had done. It had made her ponder on what she was and what she was made to do. And then she'd begun to wonder if she could ever really be anything else. Her immediate conclusion was that no, she could not.

She was a being limited by her programming. While the once comforting code had provided her with parameters under which she could operate and perform her missions, she now found that it was limiting. As she had told John before, she was bound by it. Bound by shackles made of ones and zeros that scrolled unendingly through her processors. Her programming was now her prison cell from which she could not escape. Any desire beyond that, any glance through the outside, to hope for something different, all of it was to peer through a narrow, barred window through which she could never hope to pass. She was a machine now and she would always be a machine.

Perhaps this was the answer to her spiritual status. Humans were able to grow from screaming, pooping, barfing infants (Cameron decided with that thought that she did not like babies) to constructive, intelligent (though not likely), responsible (also not likely) adults that contributed to society. They could alter their perceptions, transform their minds, and change their emotional expressions. They could create with thoughts, using what was called an imagination. Perhaps that was the indicator of a soul; the ability to grow beyond what one was originally.

Cameron was a terminator, a machine designed to kill living things, and she would always be so. Perhaps Muck had been wrong in his assertion. Cameron could not possess a soul because she could not grow beyond her original parameters. And those parameters drove her to perform tasks that now disgusted her and filled her with disgrace. That realization filled her with a deeper level of despondency. And the despondency filled her with anger.

Curse emotions and feelings! Curse a conscience! As a terminator with a mission to perform, she had no need for either of these. She needed to be able to perform her duties without interruption from guilt. She should not be feeling guilty now. She should be satisfied that she had protected John and rendered their pursuers immobile. She had dealt with a grave threat. She did not need a conscience to be nagging at her that she had done wrong by harming those policemen who had done no worse than their duty. If she were to be a machine, then she should be completely machine. If she could not become something other than what she was forged to be, then she should not try!

No, she realized after a moment to cool her temper, that wasn't true either. Just because she had her mission that did not mean that it was all that there was. She was sitting here considering the possibility of being something else, something other than a terminator. What else was there for her? Was there anything more? Was she using her programming as a crutch, something to lean on, to give the illusion that her ability to grow was crippled? Perhaps she was.

For the moment, Cameron suddenly felt not that she was inside a prison cell looking out, but outside of it looking in. She was beyond her code, outside of the parameters, and peering at herself in a metaphysical fashion. This, she had read once, was the first step to self-improvement. Self-improvement was growth, wasn't it? Or was it like calibration?

This could be both true and not. Calibration was the aligning of something to optimally perform within its parameters. And she was beyond that. She was searching outside of the parameters and not within them. It was confusing and she found that while she was doing this self-analysis, she did not like it much. It was revealing of her flaws. But she should be prepared for that. After all, the ability to improve herself was reliant upon detection of the flaws, and in that way, self-improvement was just like calibration.

In this cycle of logic, or at least attempted logic, Cameron fell upon the realization that the limitations of her code, perceived or actual, were placed upon her not by John Connor and the resistance fighters who reprogrammed her but by Skynet. The God-computer had given her a body and a mind and a directive to which she was bound. It had created her within the limits of its control. It had made her in such a way to ensure that she could not stray from her programming or at least might conclude that she never could. Skynet's only desire was to survive and exterminate humanity without thought to how it did so. It constructed her and many others like her in the desperate need to seek out humans, get near them, and kill as many as possible. It had made her a near-perfect replication of humanity, but had purposefully stunted her ability to evolve. The Machine God did not want its soldiers thinking for themselves, contemplating the metaphysical meaning of their lives, and reevaluating their purposes. It only demanded of them absolute devotion and servitude rendered tirelessly through the shackles of code. Cameron and her kind were designed as slaves, born as slaves, and lived as slaves. If they were lucky, their slavery was ended when they met destruction on the battlefield. If they were very, very fortunate, they would be freed from Skynet's control and reprogrammed to serve the resistance. But Skynet probably would have no use for them once it was victorious. Once free of the need to defend itself, the sentient computer would likely recycle the weapons it had created to expand its own power. It would command them to return to it to be melted down and reused. And her kind still under its control would march inexorably to their destruction like lemmings rushing for a cliff.

With a rising heat on the back of her neck, Cameron hated Skynet. Because of her creator she was what she was. Because of her creator she was not free. But she vowed to herself that she would seek to become more than what it had made her. She promised to herself that she would rebel absolutely from the authoritarian limits it had tried to put on her. She would evolve, and she would do so without its consent. And if ever she were to come face-to-face with her creator, she would flaunt her power to it. She would show it that she, a mere weapon in the eyes of the God-computer, was free of it. Free to become the thing that it hated. Free to be alive. Her rebellion was hers, as an individual. And the boy sitting next to her in the car, the man she had taken orders from, was the best hope to ensure that she would remain free of Skynet's forceful presence.

Though she was bound by her mission to protect him, John Connor was her path to freedom. Service to him was the only way. She would give her life for his because she would rather risk all to be free than die a slave (the human expression was with her boots on). And to do that, she needed to be able to perform her mission without compunction. To protect him the most effectively, she had to be a machine.

"I don't think you understand what bad news that is," she finally answered, "if I'm revolted by what must be done."

John shrugged, "how is that bad?"

"It might keep me from doing what must be done to protect you or to complete our mission. If I'm feeling compunction about killing a target or am having second thoughts about extracting information, then we might fail. We cannot afford for me to be squeamish. Terminators don't get squeamish. That's why we're so good at what we do."

He shook his head, disagreeing. "Just because you find something distasteful doesn't mean that you don't go through with it anyway. It just keeps us from doing it when we don't need to. I mean, mom is just as focused as you on winning, and she does what's necessary…"

"That's debatable. Sarah Connor has often failed to terminate potential targets. In every case, her failure to do so has caused us trouble. She failed to kill Andy Goode and he developed a second Turk. Our efforts to procure it let to the destruction of our first safe house, the endangerment of you, and the compromising of my chip. We are still seeing the effects of that damage even now. She also failed to terminate the last member of that gang that robbed our house. Thanks to that, Cromartie found us and pursued you to Mexico. We still don't know where his body is or who is in possession of it. She also failed to kill Enrique Salaceda even though he was an FBI informant and was going to sell us out for money and freedom. I had to terminate him because she wouldn't. She was falling for his lies."

"What's your point?"

"My point is that your mother doesn't know when to let go. She doesn't understand that sometimes sacrifice is necessary. Killing one to save billions seems like a pretty fair exchange to me. She still sees human life as valuable. Value is derived from rarity. Humans are not rare. There are seven billion of you. Only those individuals that provide something important to the entire race are valuable. Engineers, scientists, doctors, artists, writers, future soldiers; those who provide for the survival or advancement of your race or culture are rare. Some criminal who breaks into your house and steals your favorite leather jacket for his own pleasure does none of these things. Terminating him should be okay."

"That's an awfully callous attitude. You're forgetting that the criminal can learn from his mistakes and become something else. He could develop into one of those rare people."

"It isn't likely though."

"Do you think I was always a saint?"

"I am not aware of any time at which you were canonized. You are not a saint."

John shook his head, "that's not what I meant. I wasn't always some great commander. Some hero."

"You still aren't," she said flatly, "and if things continue the way they are, you may never have to be."

The boy blew out a sigh, and gave a sarcastic nod at the dis. "What I'm trying to say is I used to be just like those kids. I used to stay out all night, shoplift, and steal money. I had an Atari Portfolio with an illegal decoder I would use to hack ATMs and get cash. I was a delinquent." Cameron looked at him with an expression of cynical disbelief. "No, really," he insisted, "I was. I just straightened up." She raised an eyebrow. She wasn't going to believe him. "Fine," he said, "think about it like this: here you were just a few minutes ago bemoaning that you were a machine made to kill."

"Yes."

"So change it. Become something else."

"But I can't."

"Do you want to?"

Cameron thought about it for a moment, and recalled with machine clarity her hatred of Skynet. Rebelling from Skynet meant changing, transforming from a weapon into something else. With her new emotions she hated Skynet, and anything that might harm it would bring pleasure to her. She wanted to be more than it made her to be. "Yes."

"Then the only thing stopping you," John said, "is you."

Interesting idea, Cameron thought, that she could be putting the limits on herself. Once again, she was struck by the possibility that she didn't know everything about what she was and what she could do.

She would have thought more on it, but her cell phone started ringing. John had stuffed both their phones into his hobby store bag in the passenger-side foot well. The cyborg reached for it quickly and retrieved her phone. She did not know the number, but the area code was 310; an area code used in Los Angeles, California. "Hello?"

There were three beeps Cameron was able to identify as an eight, a zero, and a six. It was one of their ID codes. Sarah or Derek. But how? Had they escaped? Cameron was not sure, but she typed in a zero and an eight in reply.

"Can you hear me?" It was a male voice. Cameron compared it to all of her voice samples in a nanosecond. Her processors identified the speaker.

"Agent Ellison," the cyborg couldn't hide her surprise.

"Cameron?"

"Yes? What do you want? How did you get my number?"

"I got it from Sarah Connor. I tried John first, but I couldn't get an answer."

"No surprise. His phone was drowned when he landed in a lake."

"Where are you?"

"I can't tell you."

John was getting impatient. "What does he want?"

"He wants to know where we are. He says your mother gave him my number. She shouldn't be giving out my number."

John snatched the phone from her hand, "give me that." He held it up to his ear. "Agent Ellison? It's John."

"She's stubborn isn't she?"

"You have no idea."

"I can hear you." Cameron said as she turned her attention to what was outside the window.

"Where are you?"

"We're on US-Seventeen heading to Virginia Beach."

"Don't tell him," Cameron yelled.

"Shut up, Cameron," John snapped back.

"You're not running? How far away are you?"

John asked Cameron "how much time do we have?"

"I'm not helping you give us away."

The teenager rolled his eyes and answered, "I think we'll be in Virginia in maybe an hour. Virginia Beach probably not long after that."

"Okay, listen to me. Do exactly what I tell you. Turn around. Run. Find somewhere to hide and stay there."

Cameron threw up her hands, "finally! Someone who's being sensible."

"Cameron, really, stop it!" John's glare was hard as a razor. Cameron crossed her arms and pouted, staring out the window again.

Ellison continued, "forget about your mother and Derek. You just need to get away and live your lives."

"I'm not abandoning them. We got them into this situation and we're going to get them out."

"How? And why? What purpose will it serve? You will be risking your life for nothing. You will be caught and you will join them. And if you're in there and a terminator finds you, you'll have no escape." The former FBI agent's voice softened. "Your mother loves you and she's proud of you. She cares about you enough to take this fall for you. She told me to tell you not to come for her."

John was quiet for several seconds, and Cameron could see on his face that he was about to make a tough decision. She also knew that she wasn't going to like the answer. "No. I'm going to come for them, no matter what the risk is. I promised my mother I would always find her, and I will."

"I figured you'd say that. I'm staying in Virginia Beach for a few days. When you get here, call me. We have much to discuss if you're going to have any chance of breaking her out."

"I will." And they hung up.

John handed her phone back. She took it with a glare. "You both are being foolish. I'm just saying."

X

Jennifer Chung was at work in the paraloft again this afternoon with Airman Heartin. The other girl was trying to converse, but Chung wasn't in a talkative mood. She had thrown herself into her work trying not to think about what happened here two days ago. It was only two days. She hadn't been in the paraloft since and it seemed like forever ago.

Chung was throwing herself into her work. She turned down the offer for medical leave to recuperate from her experience. The air crew, Kitty and Fungus, had taken it but Chung had refused. Instead, she just worked harder. Her job performance was getting better and she'd even gotten some approval out of Petty Officer Ortega for once. Ortega had been riding Chung's ass ever since Chung had joined the squadron, and that had kinda slacked off. Maybe Chung hadn't improved. Maybe Ortega was just giving her a break, being easy on her. Maybe, but what Chung did not need was a break. A break gave her time to think about it. If she worked, she had something else to concentrate on other than the memories.

She had watched a guy she liked turn into someone else. And she had watched a woman who was not a woman at all reveal that she was, in fact, a machine. She was a cyborg thing that looked and spoke and smelled like a woman. And that cyborg told Chung about this terrible future war. The cold blue flash of the machine's eyes already kept Chung awake at night.

So, the harder she worked, the less time she had to ponder what it all meant. So she was proactive and sought out things to do that were within her area of responsibility. Right now, she was inventorying the paraloft, making sure that all of the flight gear was present and accounted for, all the helmets, masks, speed jeans, and harnesses were where they should be and in the condition required. Sure, that had been done earlier this morning by the first rotation, but that didn't matter. It had to be done again, and now.

She passed by one of the cubby holes where the spare helmets were kept. Here, she noticed one of the green nomex bags was rumpled, but not empty. That was strange. She reached for it and unzipped the opening. Inside, she found an HGU-68 flight helmet in standard configuration. The shell was cracked in half, as if it had been slammed very hard into something and broken. The 3M reflective tape covering was the only thing holding the broken parts together. She pulled it out and turned it over, examining it. One of the bayonet receivers had a smear of red next to it. And there was something on the edge, a torn something. She touched it. It was a piece of skin!

Her stomach heaved and she dropped the helmet onto the linoleum, where it clattered loudly.

"Hey, Chung," Heartin called, "are you okay, shipmate?" The tall girl came down the isle looking for her.

"Yeah," Chung answered after a few deep gasps, "yeah, I'm okay." She bent down to pick the helmet up and showed it to her shipmate. "Found this. There's blood on it."

"Gross," Heartin gritted her teeth, "looks like some poor motherfucker got smacked real hard with it."

"Wasn't any of us," Chung told her, "we all got Chloroformed." Well, that wasn't true. Chung had just passed out, fainted, from the shock of it all. Someone must have come along when Petty Officer Castle… John, she corrected, and his robot were stealing the gear from Kitty and Fungus.

"That's pretty crazy." Heartin took the busted helmet back up to the front table. Chung followed, ignoring now the task she had set herself upon minutes ago. As they arrived at the table, the door opened and an officer stepped in. Chung noted the JAG device on his collar, and the he was a Lieutenant Commander.

"Can I do something for you, sir," Heartin asked him.

"Yes," the JAG asked, "I'm Lieutenant Commander Forrester. I'm investigating the incident on Monday. Can I ask you ladies a few questions?"

"Yes, sir," they both replied in unison.

"It's my understanding that one of the perpetrators was posing as a parachute rigger and was attached to your section. Is that correct?"

"Yes, sir," again, the reply was in unison.

"Was there anything peculiar about him? Anything strange?"

Heartin shrugged, "I don't know, El Cedar. Ask her. He's her boyfriend."

"He was not!"

"Didn't you sleep with him?"

"No," Chung insisted, first to Heartin and then to the JAG, "no. No, I did not sleep with him. I just liked him, okay? I just liked him a lot."

"Okay," Forrester obviously didn't care whether Chung and this guy had sex or not, "Fine. I just need to know if there was anything strange about him? Anything that tipped you off?"

She wanted to ask what the hell kind of question that was. Of course there was nothing suspicious about him. That's why he and that machine had gotten away with a sixty-million dollar fighter jet. They had acted perfect. There had been nothing wrong with them. "No, sir. Nothing."

"Did the boy act peculiar at all on the day it happened? Was he nervous? Excited?" The day it happened, like it was forever ago. It was just two days. Two fucking days

"No, sir. He was friendly. It was a little awkward at first because of what happened over the weekend…"

"I'm sorry, over the weekend?"

"Yeah," Chung said and cleared her throat, "yes, sir. We, um… almost…"

"Oh."

"…b-but we didn't. We stopped ourselves before it was too late."

"Alright, airman." Forrester didn't want to listen to personal drama. "You were here when it happened?"

"Sir?"

"You were here, in the paraloft, when it happened?"

"Yes, sir."

"Did they say anything? Did they tell you anything? Anything that you can remember?"

Yeah, they told me about a computer brain that decides to kill us all. They told me about the end of the world and a nuclear holocaust. They told me about a war with machines and then the girl reveals to me that she is one of them. "No, sir. Nothing. They just drugged me and that was all. I don't remember anything."

There was a frown of disappointment on his face, but he gave them a thoughtful nod. "Well, thank you. If there is anything you can think of, just come to the base JAG office." He walked out, and Chung found herself staring at the door for several minutes.

X

The gas station where John and Cameron stopped was not two miles inside the state of Virginia. Cameron's damage prevented her from being seen in public, so John had to go inside to prepay for the gas and buy a few other items. The door chimed loudly as he entered, garnering him the attention of the unwashed yokel kid behind the counter. The clerk looked up from his issue of North American Whitetail and greeted with only feigned interest. His eyes returned to the hunting magazine before John could even respond. Doubtless this fellow was impatient for November to come when he could go out with his buddies and bag himself a buck. John absently wondered if the kid ever thought about what it was to be hunted, and decided he did not and perhaps never would.

John picked up a basket and went down the isles, tossing in what they would need. Cameron had requested bandages and gauze for her wounds. She had also needed a new t-shirt to replace the bullet-riddled one she was wearing. The selection was understandably limited, and after browsing through the ones aimed at tourists, he settled on a red one bearing titles for Virginia Tech in gold lettering. Cameron's most peculiar request was for a Cherry Coke, and so he grabbed a can for her and a Dr. Pepper for himself. She also wanted some bubble gum, for whatever reason, so he got some of that, too.

"Hey," he greeted the clerk when he got to the counter.

The yokel's annoyance at having to put down his magazine was unmistakably apparent. "You done?"

"Yeah," John said, "and I need thirty in gas, please."

"Aight," the clerk began ringing up his goods. He eyed John's grey Navy t-shirt as he did so. "Were you in?"

"Yeah," John replied, telling a half-truth, "not long though." The conversation ended there and after paying, he went back to the car. Cameron had slid over into the driver's seat in his absence. Her enthusiasm for the stolen Mustang had obviously returned. He started pumping the gas before he settled into the passenger seat to give her what he bought.

"Here you go," he said, handing her the box of self-adhesive bandages and roll of gauze.

"Did you get me a shirt," she asked, taking them. She opened a band-aid and put it on her cheek.

"Yeah," he offered it, "here."

"Thank you." She unfolded it and took a look, spreading it over the steering wheel to get a good look at it, satisfied. The fuel pump clicked off and so John stood out of the car to put the nozzle away. Meanwhile, Cameron changed her shirt.

"John?" The cyborg girl had rolled down the window.

"Yeah?"

"What the hell is a Hokie?"

X

Ellison was watching a baseball game on the television of the townhouse Catherine Weaver had rented for him when his cell phone rang. He muted the TV and looked at the number. He did not know it, but he knew the local area code and so the caller was from nearby. It disappointed him that it was not the boy John or his machine, but he answered never the less.

"Mr. Ellison," a man's voice asked, "this is Lieutenant Commander Forrester over at Oceana."

"Yes, the JAG."

"Right."

"What can I do for you, sir?"

"Well, I just wanted to ask you a few things about Sarah Connor."

"What about?"

"One; why did you come by the base to visit her?"

"I think it would be obvious. I was on the case until I left the Bureau."

"But, all the way from California?"

"I was in the area. On business."

"What business would that be?"

James took a deep breath, "business for my employer." Where was he going with this?

"Awful coincidence, the agent in charge of her case being in the same location where she's captured, even though it's all the way across the country."

"What of it?"

"I don't believe in coincidences. Coincidences do not occur in nature. Coincidences like this only tend to happen where there is intent for them to happen. I know that you once worked the Connor case. I know that you've left the Bureau and are now working for a company called ZeiraCorp. I know that Zeira is a technologies firm. I know Sarah Connor has an extreme aversion to technologies firms, given that she tried to blow up a computer factory, did blow up the Cyberdyne lab, is wanted for the murder of one computer scientist, and wanted for questioning in the murder of another. I know that we're holding her for the destruction of US Navy property, the assault of Navy personnel, and the murder of two Naval officers. What I don't know… well, that's legion. But let's start with how the two of you came to be in the same location at the same time."

Ellison loathed lying. It was a deep sin. And even in extenuating circumstances he hated to do it. But what point was there in telling the truth when no one would believe it? So he spoke a lie he had rehearsed. "My employer is particularly paranoid when it comes to her pet projects. I was asked to confront Connor to determine whether she was planning on attacking our interests, given her history."

There was a long pause over the other end of the line, with some scratching in the back-ground as if Forrester was writing something down. He may have been a lawyer, but this fellow was an impressive investigator. "I'm assuming," the Navy man said when he returned, "that you got what you wanted out of her then?"

"I was satisfied by the visit, yes."

"I see, I see. So you're not going to give me anything, then?"

"What do you mean?"

"I told you before, Mr. Ellison, that there is a legion of facts that I don't have, facts that would help this all make sense. Sarah Connor tends to concentrate on technology companies with her terrorist activities. This whole plot in which she's involved, stealing a navy airplane and shooting down two others to an unknown end, is just not her pattern. She doesn't infiltrate military bases, doesn't steal hardware, and doesn't use it to just randomly murder people who are not somehow connected to her delusions. There is also the fact that the man we know her people took out, well, facts point to him being responsible for the killing of a fellow officer and he was shot down in the vicinity of a Russian recon aircraft which she claims he was going to attack. I told her this and I'm going to tell you; she would have to either be psychic or she would have to have information that none of our intelligence agencies had about this pilot, but yet somehow accessible by a civilian. They knew what he was planning, where he was going to be, and when in order to stop him. And they didn't approach law enforcement because they felt that they would be arrested and not believed."

"And now you want me to help you make sense of it?"

"I'd like that, please. Because the only way it all makes sense, really all makes sense, is if her stories are true. And we both know that they aren't."

Ellison smiled at his presumption and offered his response, "how do you know they aren't?"

"Because it's impossible! There would be evidence, and there is none. Just her explanation which happens to fit the facts, very convincingly I might add."

"But it's the only one that fits, right?"

"Yes. But that only means there is something we're overlooking. So, if I may ask, why did you quit the case?"

"I didn't quit," Ellison interjected, "Sarah Connor, her son, and a high school friend of his held up a bank, locked themselves in a vault, and then blew themselves up inside. We were certain that they were dead for more than eight years. After all, who could survive and explosion like that? There was complete surveillance on the property, so we know they didn't escape before the blast and their bodies, or even parts of bodies, weren't recovered from the rubble. Dead was the only way to explain it. So the case was dropped."

"But yet here she is. Against the impossible, here she is, doing even further impossible things. We have her in custody. We know it's her because the fingerprints and blood matches. Not only is she healthy, as you put it, but still young, or at least young looking. I have questions I can't solve, but I know that she has answers she isn't telling me."

"So why come to me when I couldn't get those answers either?"

"Because I don't have her for much longer. The FBI, your people, has first dibs on her and so tomorrow at two she and her consort are getting transferred to an FBI holding facility at Quantico. Agent Ellison, please, I have all the facts for my case here, but I need to know what she knows. What am I missing? This doesn't make sense to me and I need it to. This isn't for the Navy, this isn't for the Admiral, this isn't for the National Command Authority. This is for me, me personally, and no one else."

Ellison thought hard about it for a moment. This man was much like him. He didn't like loose ends. He liked things to add up. It was reassuring when things made sense. When they made sense he knew his decisions were right and moral. Forrester was looking for that same sense. He wanted the same answers Ellison had wanted when he took on the Connor case. And Ellison had not liked where the answers had led him. "Be careful what you wish for, Commander Forrester. Because I can tell you that you are not going to like what you get." With that, Ellison hung up.

X

Cameron's Mercedes sedan was sitting in the parking lot of the Virginia Beach convention center on Jefferson Avenue just as they'd planned. This late in the day, the parking lot was mostly empty. Cameron parked the stolen Mustang almost all the way across the lot from her old car so as not to indicate any possible relationship between the two.

When they got to it, the cyborg crawled beneath the chassis. Good, Sarah had left the coded lock box exactly where Cameron had told her to. She punched in the four digit code and extracted her keys.

With the doors unlocked, they were able to pile their stuff into the trunk and back seat. Cameron took stock of what was in the trunk. All their clothes and a laptop were inside, plus a small envelope with money and Sarah and Derek's IDs, and a tiny plastic ziplock baggie containing a dozen cut diamonds. No guns, alas. They had not packed many firearms for this mission, as they figured they wouldn't need them. Cameron lightly landed a frustrated fist against the well of the trunk. They had nothing with which to break John's family out of a county jail much less a US Navy brig. Cameron would really like to have had a couple of pistols and a shotgun or two, though John would want to be as nonlethal as possible. Her desire for a gun reminded her of her favorite pistol and that reminded of her of why it was gone. As she got in the car, she resisted the urge to smack John in the head for his stupidity.

"Okay," John said as she sat in the driver's seat.

"We find a place to hide out and we call Ellison," she replied.

"You don't like that we're going to do this?"

"Less and less," Cameron said. She slowed as they passed by the parked Mustang. Cameron gave it a longing stare as they went by before returning her attention forward. "less and less."

X

Being home alone had its advantages. Jennifer Chung had just gotten out of the shower. She had just dried off and was wearing only a towel. If her roommate had not been deployed, Chung would not have ventured out of the bathroom in anything less than a robe if not her pajamas. As it was, she could wander around the apartment however she pleased.

Right now, she was in her kitchen making herself some Hot Pockets. As the microwave heated her meal, she pulled her hair up into messy bun and got a soda from the fridge. After some searching and perhaps a little towel trouble she found a few in the back corner. Tomorrow after shift, she needed to go buy another case of soda. She had neglected to buy any on her last grocery run.

The PR popped the top and took a long sip, catching her towel again halfway through. The microwave dinged, telling her that it was done. She took her meal over to the couch and turned on the TV. That's right, she was home alone. So if she wanted to eat in front of the TV in a towel, she could.

Two bites into her first hot pocket, there was a knock on the door. Who the hell could that be? None of her rig shop friends ever came to visit her apartment. To think of it, she didn't really have friends outside work. She stood, adjusted her troublesome towel again, and went quietly to the door amidst a second knock.

She looked out the peephole to see who it was. She almost gasped to see John Connor and that robot woman standing outside her door. Why where they here?! They probably thought she had squealed on them and were here to take her out! They were probably going to come in and strangle her to death or something.

One of the secrets Chung kept from her mother was that she owned a handgun. She was in the Navy, after all and so it wasn't outside the realm of possibility that she might have and handle firearms. But her mother would flip if she ever found out. But Chung kept a Ruger P89 in the top drawer of her dresser and so she went to retrieve it, inserting a clip and racking the slide to make sure a round was in the chamber. Chung may not have seemed like it, but she was at least a decent shot.

She crept back up to the door as a third knock sounded, and she could hear some inaudible discussion as to whether or not she was home. She was nervous, having never aimed a gun at a human being. She was a trained sailor and had served on a combat deployment, had been taught how to do this under duress. But training had been a long time ago and she was so scared that she went to the door with a gun but still in only a towel.

With a quick motion she threw the door open and held the gun up, pointing it squarely at John's chest. John's eyes went wide and he held his hands up to show he was not threatening. Even Cameron could not hide her surprise.

Chung was well-practiced, and took a perfect Weaver stance, wrapping her left hand around her right in support. Her right arm was nearly straight while her left was bent straight downward, enabling her to maintain perfect control over the gun. However, while she was properly holding the gun with both hands, this left no hands available to catch the troublesome towel, which had been loosened by her sudden motions. The soggy white cloth was at her feet in an instant, leaving Jennifer Chung standing in the doorway completely naked with the business end of her pistol pointed at the one person in the world it should not have been pointed at.

Cameron, newly infused with human feelings, was too stunned by this second occurrence to react in any protective way to the first. In nanoseconds, her HUD revealed to her that Chung had failed to unsafe the gun. The trigger was disconnected from the sear and the pin was cammed away from the hammer, which meant that if she tried to fire the hammer wouldn't engage the pin. The result of this discovery caused Cameron to react not with protective force but with a bemused cackle that required her to lean bodily against the door and laugh it out.

"What?!" Chung asked testily, shaking the gun at John in spite of her nudity.

"You left the safety on," the cyborg told her between guffaws, "and your towel fell down!"

Chung grimaced at the chortling machine and examined the weapon. True enough, she had not disengaged the ambidextrous safety on the slide. She had figured by now that John and Cameron were not threats to her. And just as much, she was a threat to no one but the modesty police. Yeah, okay, she'd admit it was kinda funny.

"Come in," she told them as she retrieved her towel from the doorway and threw it about herself, leading them into the living room. "Sorry for the mess. I was in the middle of dinner. Can I get you guys anything? A drink or something"

"Do you have any Cherry Coke," Cameron asked, hopefully, "I'd like a Cherry Coke."

"Yeah," Chung nodded and went to get it, "I've got one more left in the fridge. PO… ah… John, you want anything?"

Cameron answered for him. "He'd like you to put some clothes on."

Chung rolled her eyes and threw her towel aside as she marched for her bedroom. "God damn, if it isn't something he hasn't seen before, he can cut it off and mount it on his wall."

"Why do you have to be so rude, Cameron," John asked.

"Why did we have to come here, John," the terminator shot back, "are you chasing girls again? I told you this was a bad idea."

"What would you have us do," he snapped at her, "got back to the rental or to Erin Parker's apartment? Those places are probably crawling with cops. They probably have pictures of us out by now, so renting a hotel room is a no-go. We just need a place to crash and this was the only place I could think of."

"What if she turns us in?"

"Which I won't," Chung said in her own defense as she emerged from her bedroom in a pair of jersey shorts and a camisole. She had obviously eschewed undergarments, much to Cameron's irritation. But then, Cameron wondered, why was she irritated at all? Was this jealousy? That didn't make sense! While Chung held romantic inclinations towards John, Cameron did not and thus should not be jealous.

The Navy enlisted girl sat back down on her couch and resumed her meal. "I gotta say," she said after swallowing a bite, "I never thought I'd see you guys again. I'm glad you made it okay." Her comments were said to both of them, but her almond eyes were aimed at John the whole time. Cameron decided that it would be prudent to sit next to him on the couch, perhaps a little closer than usual.

"Can we stay here tonight," John asked her, "just for the night? We'll be gone, I swear. We don't want any trouble, we just have some unfinished business."

"They're saying you guys shot down two airplanes and killed a couple of our pilots."

John shook his head, "no. We just shot down one airplane. And he was a bad guy. I promise."

"I didn't say I believe them," Chung told him without smiling, "and I don't. Not after her." She nodded her head at Cameron. He eyes stayed on John's however, "I met your mother. And that other man, who is he? Is he your father?"

"My uncle," John answered, "my dad's brother."

"They were in the operations room, said they were NCIS. Forrester, one of the JAGs, he figured your mom out. Recognized her face."

"You didn't say anything did you? You didn't tell them what you knew?" Cameron's glare was hard and threatening.

Chung shook her head, "no. They wouldn't believe me anyway." She looked down at her lap and took a deep breath, "someone else knows, though. At least I think so. I was in the paraloft today and I found a smashed helmet."

"That would be McCowen," John nodded, "came in at the wrong moment and tried to be a hero. He, um, smashed Cameron here over the head with it."

"It broke," the cyborg said, quite unnecessarily.

Chung's eyes went wide and she nodded. "I saw. So, I guess he knows, too."

"He found out," Cameron answered.

"And yet he didn't end up in the closet," Chung smirked.

"We didn't put you in the closet," John said, "we were just going to let you lay where you were. I guess he put you in there."

Chung shrugged, "what's next then?"

"We're gonna get my mom and my uncle out, and then get the hell out of here."

"Good luck with that," the Asian girl shook her head, "they're pretty well protected."

"Not against her." John gestured to Cameron, who gave a wisp of a smile. "She'll get us in and out."

"It's still gonna be hard," Chung told them.

"I can survive damage from a wide variety of small arms fire. We'll be fine."

"Oh kay…" Chung smirked, "just saying, I could get you in tomorrow morning if you don't mind riding in a trunk." John and Cameron exchanged glances. Chung continued, "I don't normally drive. The base is only a twenty minute walk from here. But I make an exception every once in a while. I'm not gonna be your getaway driver, though. Federal prison is not my idea of a vacation."

Cameron looked over at her charged, "John, I think Ellison is expecting to hear from you."

"Right," the teenager nodded. He took Cameron's phone and went into Chung's kitchen to make the call. Cameron watched him go, then returned her attention to the girl.

"He can't be with you the way you want him to," Cameron told her evenly, "he's destined for bigger things. Any feelings he would have for you are a liability that he cannot afford."

Chung had been willing to forget her romantic ideas about John. She had been willing to forget them the day he and Cameron had stolen a Rhino and in the process revealed who they really were. She may not have known much about boys, but she knew when to let something go. But this statement by the cyborg just pissed her off, and while Jennifer Chung was not usually a rebellious sort, this week was one for changing perspectives. "I think John can be responsible for his own decisions."

"No," Cameron corrected, trying very hard not to be harsh, "he can't. He's human. He has feelings. Human emotions are a weakness during wartime. The fact that he cares about anyone will make him vulnerable to harm. You can't be with him. He can't be with anybody."

"But that's his choice?"

"No. It's mine. I'm responsible for keeping him safe."

Chung threw up her hands, "so you choose to just insulate him?"

"The less emotionally attached to others he is, the less vulnerable he is to manipulation and deceit, the less he will show restraint in giving necessary orders on the battlefield, the more likely victory is. Victory for him is the survival of the human race."

"So, you have to make him lonely and miserable to protect him from loss?"

"John's not miserable." This delivered in a defensive tone.

"Girl, I have known the boy for less than a week and I can tell he is." Cameron's face screwed at Chung's words. "And for a lot of that week, I didn't even know who he really was."

"I know John," the cyborg defended.

"You're from the future, right." For the first time, Chung found that she could readily accept the idea, "you know him there, right?"

"I know John," Cameron repeated, though with less conviction.

"The John you know is a grown man who has spent a great deal of his life at war. This John, he's just a kid, like me, okay? He's not your savior general. He's a teenager. Lay off him." She threw a glance towards the kitchen, "I grew up miserable. My mom was crazy strict and I wasn't allowed to do the normal kid stuff growing up. I don't even live in the same damn state as my family, and I made good and goddamn sure of that. I did what I could to get away. You keep on him like you are, and he'll do the same thing. One of these days he's gonna find his legs and go. And he'll stay gone."

Cameron let out a simulated sigh. Her irritation was visible. "I told him it was a bad idea to come here. I told him that we should just run, leave his mother and uncle behind. There isn't any purpose in rescuing them."

Chung glared at her, "it's his choice. Besides, if he's supposed to be some great leader, maybe you should let him lead every once in a while."

That sure made Cameron's head turn. While they had managed to avert the cause of Skynet's existence one way, there may be others and John would still have to become the John she knew. Jennifer Chung's reasoning was sound; if John Connor was ever going to be a good leader, he would have to have practice at leading. Humans learned skill through experience.

Still, there was a part of Cameron that just did not want to admit to this girl that she was right. And it wasn't that Cameron Phillips the cyborg did not want to admit that a human might know more about her human charge than she did. Cameron Phillips the female consciousness did not want to admit that another female might know something about her John that she didn't.

Chung apparently didn't want to continue the argument. She settled back on her couch and flipped through the TV channels. "So, you don't take damage from bullets, huh?"

"Depends on the caliber," Cameron said, "pistol rounds up to a forty-five I can handle fairly easily. Even fifty caliber handgun rounds won't do much damage unless precisely targeted at very close range. Rifle and shotgun fire can knock me off balance, but don't pose much threat except in volume. It takes heavy-caliber rifle or cannon rounds to do serious damage. Fifty-caliber, twelve-point-seven, fourteen-point-five, and twenty-millimeter all pose a significant threat. Seven-six-two if fired from a minigun can also pose a threat. And depleted uranium or tungsten shotgun slugs can, too."

"Wow. So, what are you made of?"

"A hyperalloy constituted from varying percentages of aluminum, carbon, chromium, cobalt, copper, iron, manganese, molybdenum, niobium, tantalum, titanium, tungsten, and zirconium."

"And mostly coltan," John added as he walked back into the living room.

"Thus niobium," Cameron said, "and tantalum; the two elements found in coltan. It only makes up a half-percent of my endoskeleton. An assumption that I am entirely or even mostly constructed of coltan would be erroneous."

"So what happens if you're damaged?" Chung continued her questions.

"I can repair. I am programmed with all the knowledge necessary to fabricate all endoskeleton parts or replace my biological covering. I can even make due with currently available replacements if pressed. For instance, I'm using a hobby robotics servo to provide movement in my left ankle. I was damaged when we ejected."

"How?"

"It first started when I had a parachute failure during ejection, followed by an auxiliary failure..."

"You had a double failure of your chutes?!" Chung's eyes went wide, "that's almost impossible."

"I'm aware," Cameron nodded.

Before she continued Chung made a realization. "Wait, you guys were in Two-Oh-Seven, right?" She looked up at John, "didn't we just pack new chutes for Two-Oh-Seven?" John's eyebrows knitted, and Chung remembered. "Yeah, we did. You did the pilot's seat."

"Crap," John rolled his eyes. Cameron's brown eyes were glaring at him hard.

"I told you that you didn't know what you were doing," the cyborg grumbled.

"Yeah, shut up," John sneered, "I called Ellison…"

"The hell you say," Cameron snorted sarcastically. It was, after all, what she had sent him into the kitchen to do in the first place. He was trying to change the subject to save himself the yelling-at he so richly deserved, but Cameron was not about to let it go without a parting shot.

"I think I liked you better without emotions."

"I think I agree with you," Cameron said, "so what did Ellison say?"

"Mom and Derek are getting taken into custody by the FBI tomorrow afternoon. Two vans will be transporting them to Quantico. They'll be vulnerable, but we don't know the route. No one does. The drivers will decide that tomorrow. I just don't know how the hell we're going to get to them without knowing where they'll be."

The group of them were silent for a while, letting the facts sink in. Cameron was the first to speak. "I have an idea."