Episode 109 - Man in the Bubble, Part Two
* A note: I've decided to write the numbers as numbers for the machines' series and models from now on, just you know.
Darkness, light, a constant shifting. Then focus. The interrogation room again, and the series 850 model 101 sitting across the table from Derek. Files were scattered across the cold aluminum. The machine coldly stared at him, not moving, not speaking, nothing. Then Derek noticed that his hands were not shackled and that there was a small, hexagonally cut sliver of metal on the table.
He reached for it and took it in his hands.
"What is it?" Derek looked up when he heard the machine speak.
"Coltan... Tantalum-Niobium, but we call it Coltan."
"What is John Connor using it for?"
"What do you know about it?"
"We know of its strength and maleability. We haven't reached a melting point yet in any of our metallurgical tests."
"It's just under Tungsten's..."
"Why are you giving this up now?"
"Because I know you'll kill me."
"You claim not to know why John Connor is using it but you know almost everything about it."
"No, not really... I just know what I've heard during the..."
The terminator noticed that he'd stopped talking and tilted his head to the right. He got out of his chair and walked over beside Reese. "Continue what you were saying. Now. Where did you learn about this metal? What happened then?"
Derek knew why it had gotten up. It would rip him out of the chair and beat him until it had received its information. "You may kill me, but my comrades will still live. If I tell you, you'll kill them all."
"What can you tell me?"
"Only the name of the project. Perfect Metal."
"What is its purpose?"
"I can't tell you."
"Wrong."
"No! It's not that I wont... It's that I can't. I don't know anything about the project. John wouldn't tell me!" Reese broke down and slumped away from his chair and down to the floor. He was curling up and nearly breaking under the stress.
Derek was suddenly back in the present and in the living room of the house. John and Cameron had been busy for hours hacking the CPU of the "guard dog" that Cameron had disposed of. He remebered being chased by the T-888 earlier in the day, and the whole fight at Andrew Karlan's apartment. They successfully avoided it by using a public place... The pier.
It was almost six at night, and Cameron and John could be heard from the kitchen, both giggling. Derek wondered how Cameron was doing that. Had she really developed that much? Then the clacking of a keyboard. More giggling.
It was inconsistent and hectic, and soon Derek grew bored and decided that a check of the perimeter was in order. He pulled out his gun, popped the slide, and filed out the door, gun at the ready. A silver car approached from down the street and Derek hid inside of a shed in the yard. With a spotting scope, he caught a good glimpse of the driver.
It was the T-888, his brown bang hanging loosely over the areas of the skin damaged by gun fire. Why now? Why did it have to be now? The machine had stopped the car and was scanning the street, while at the same time Derek promptly text messaged John to warn him.
Not too long after John received Derek's message, Cameron came through the front door, walked over to the machine's car, and ripped the door off. The other metal had his gun out, pumping bullets into Cameron's torso. She grabbed him and pulled him out of the car, slamming his face into the pavement.
While Cameron was fairing well, the other machine soon gained an advantage and had her pinned on the ground, slamming his fists heavily into her face. Using some force application, Cameron was quickly able to take the both of them back into a standing position, and she continually pushed the machine back until she was able to throw it down a huge hill on the other side of the street. She then pushed its car down the same hill, convinced this would deter him for some time.
Derek was angry, though. He was outside of the shed and standing beside Cameron. "Now it knows where we live!"
"So?"
"So, you're not always here, you're not always with John. If we'd stayed hidden, it would have moved on. You're so thoughtless!"
"Not likely." She looked at the truck, which was clearly visible in the middle of the driveway. Derek had become speechless. "Am I still so thoughtless?"
"Yeah, what if it comes back?"
"I'll handle it." She simply strode off to be back with John in the kitchen, using the computer to dig up secrets from the CPU.
Derek's memories then focused on a time somewhat after the interrogation, after John had liberated him. Serrano Point again... The same time as the last time he'd remembered the place. He stared at John as he listened to the horrifying words that they had Time Displacement Equipment there. He was absolutely mortified. "How can you have something so dangerous here, John?"
"We need it. Derek, listen to me... Our Perfect Metal plan has failed, now Skynet's using it against us... In present and past. In the past, I need you."
"What is Perfect Metal? You still haven't told me! And isn't she good enough?"
"It's not just that..."
"Then, what is it, John? Tell me, what good am I to you in the past if you had her?" Derek's eyes searched John's motionless face in vain, looking for something there that might indicate that he cares.
"Listen to what I'm about to tell you, and tell it to no one. This has to stay between you and me, got that?" Derek nodded. "You asked me why Kyle was so important to me, and you assumed it was only friendship. It's more than that. Kyle is my father."
The dead-panned revelation stunned Derek, and he almost fell, but he stood strong still. "What? Kyle's your... Then, that means?"
"Yes. You're my uncle."
"How? He's so much younger than you..."
"I have to send him back to nineteen eighty-four, to protect my mother. There, he fathers me."
"You'll let Kyle use that... That thing?"
"Derek, you have to go back, to two-thousand eleven. There's only one way that Perfect Metal will work. You'll need to create a stockpile, of Coltan mostly, but other necessary parts, and a lot of them come from endos. Do you remember Andrew Karlan?"
"Yes... He died."
"No, that's just what you were told. I sent him back, for you, for me. Find him, he can help you, but bring me, in the past, to him."
"How am I supposed to help make this project work if I don't even know what its purpose is?" Derek beat the table, but John did not jump or move. "What does it do? What is it?"
John sighed as he was hesitant to tell anyone other than the staff about the project. "You know I can't tell you." Derek started to walk away, so John tried to stop him. "Please, do this for me, for Kyle, for humanity..."
"Where is it?"
John walked forward and handed Derek a plastic cardkey. "Use it in the elevator, it should take you to the deepest sublevel. Cameron is there, she'll brief you."
Derek was in the present again, this time on the couch as he listened still to John and Cameron as they hacked the chip well past one A.M. Derek walked into the kitchen to see Cameron holding John as he slept in her arms. She motioned for him to be quiet, so he whispered, "Take him to bed."
"I don't want to wake him."
"He can handle it. He's a soldier." Cameron listened to what Derek said and scooped John into her arms. She carefully navigated around the hall as to not bump John's head on any of the walls and slid him under the sheets on his bed. She smiled as she saw that he was warm and comfortable. She pulled a chair up to watch him as he slept, ignoring the fact that he absolutely despised that. For the entire remainder of the night she watched him to make sure he was safe, but then she heard gunshots from outside, which woke John. They both rushed outside to the sight of two machines shooting each other on the street.
John looked at Cameron and asked, "They're machines?"
"Yes." The one in the right hand side of their point of view dropped its handgun when it was empty and morphed its arm into a blade, stabbing the other one through the chest. It then used its free arm to stab a power transformer, ending the other machine's existence.
John just stared in awe. "Who are you?" In a split second, what looked like a man to John, Cameron, and Derek turned into a woman, a familiar one. Catherine Weaver.
"I have been in the process of tracking this machine for quite a while now. I know it was looking for you." She had withdrawn her arms and was closer to the trio. "Have you been careful?"
"Yeah, why?"
"It shouldn't have found you, at least not this easily."
"Do you know when it arrived?"
"Yesterday, at eleven P.M. It materialized in the Zeira Corp parking garage." She smiled and headed to a silver car. "It would be a good idea to see John Henry. He has something to discuss with you."
And so they all travelled to Zeira Corp, and were in John Henry's basement area. "Hello, everyone."
"Yeah..." John seemed kind of apathetic about this entie visit. "What is it?"
"I've kept fairly decent track of all machine arrivals, and I find it interesting that they have increased greatly in number over the past month."
"How... How do you keep track of something like that?"
Weaver stepped into the conversation, "Let's just say that John Henry has his ways and leave it at that, shall we?"
John Henry switched the projector screen view to show a black man with three built white males in suits around him. "They're all machines. Daniel Dyson has protection from them."
John was clearly dissapointed at this new revelation. "Great, it's going to be even harder to get anywhere near him now, but we have to talk to him."
A solution suddenly snapped into Derek's head and he decided to share it out loud, "Well, it's a fairly simple tactical strategy, in that all we have to do is seperate the security from what they're protecting. Though, we kind of have to tailor it to this specific instance..."
Cameron smirked and replied, "Right, it won't be easy suppressing three machines."
An odd smile flashed across Catherine's face. "Not for just you, but if I were to come along..."
John stopped her in mid-thought, "Wait, how are we even going to seperate them?"
John Henry answered that question for him, "Daniel Dyson has been doing quite a bit of business lately, probably idea trading, to advance his software design. He's a big fan of the moving meeting technique. Two of the machines drive an escort vehicle, and one rides with him in the following vehicle, which has a human driver."
"So what we need to do is hit the escort with something big?" John stopped and though for a second before continuing, "This could draw a lot of attention."
It was Catherine who responded to that, "You also forget that my company has a lot of money."
"Alright, but what's big enough?"
"We'll use one of the company's armored transport trucks. Cameron and I will be driving that. You'll have a van."
"Yeah, but what about that machine that's still in the car with Dyson?" John was not excited about this mission, even though he knew the importance of getting to Dyson. He sat down in front of John Henry at the table and looked down at his feet. "This could end badly. We all know it."
John felt a hand on his shoulder, and when he looked, he saw it was Cameron's. "Derek won't let anything happen. It's one machine, right?"
Derek again faded back into his memories. He was again in the room, with Connor. "Sir?"
"Derek, you're going to need to protect me when you go back, you do understand that?"
"Yeah, and I'll be prepared to do whatever it takes."
"You also have to make sure I'm strong enough to fight on my own, should I ever need to."
"I know, sir." He paused for a second. "You will be."
"Good, I trust you. Make sure that trust isn't misplaced." Derek nodded and left the room, heading toward the elevator. He tried not to look at anyone, fearing it may be the last time he saw anyone of them. He stepped inside and scanned the card. There was a beep and the left descended. It may have been ten floors or more before it stopped.
The room was dark except for the light being emmited from the massive electrical orb at the center of the room. Cameron was there, entirely nude. "It's best this way. Your clothes don't got through, anyway."
"Okay." Derek got the hint and disrobed himself. Cameron beckoned him over to a control terminal.
"I'm going first, but to a different time. After I've gone through, press the down arrow key, then enter to select the time you're to go to." Derek nodded in agreement. "Good."
He then simply watched her stride very slowly and mechanically into the sphere, and when she came into contact with it, there was only a bright flash and then it was as before she went through. He performed as instructed and changed the date, at which the devices in the room moved and the sphere briefly dissappeared, only to come back again almost instantly. "Here goes nothing..."
A bright flash and Derek was back in the present. The realization came to him that he needed to try to let go of John's hand as much as possible, but still be close enough to reach out and catch him, if need be. He knew this mission would be a real life chance to practice this.
Afterall, John had to be ready for worse. Much, much worse.
* Well, here it is. The latest part of my series, and it's been a few months coming. I'm really sorry for the delay, but I've had the most horrible writer's block, and I didn't really know where to go with this story. And what's worse is that pretty much any Terminator kind of depresses me since the cancellation of the show, so I had to really push myself to finish this episode. But, here it is... I'd intended the flashback scenes to end here, this being a Derek-centric two parter, but you never know, you know? They may have a place in later installments. But, I thought they'd pretty much have to end with him going back in time... Though there may be more of the interrogation scenes with Arnie. Look forward to it, and as always, review to share your thoughts on this episode.
