Author's Note: Apologies for such an unexpectedly long hiatus.
As always, comments and constructive criticism are always appreciated. Enjoy!
Sarah pulled up to the house, resisting the urge to simply lay on the horn to rouse John and Derek. She didn't need to draw attention them anymore than was necessary.
A cursed followed her pained flinch as she released the seat belt, shouldering open her car door. Her legs barely held, the adrenalin in her body long since dissipated to leave only exhaustion in its wake. It took what remained of her personal resources to make it up the few steps to the door, spots flashing behind her eyes from the effort. Any kind of motor control near gone, Sarah simply took aim at the general vicinity of the doorbell and shouldered into it, holding down until she was certain the others had woken. A ruffling of the curtain at the door -she would talk to John about his lack of stealth later- and the door opened, her son's eyes wide with worry.
Lean arms wrapped around her body as her legs failed completely, her weight held fast by the wiry strength of her son. "Derek! Help!"
888
Sarah came to reluctantly, swollen eyes blinking against the harsh light that streamed into her bedroom. She tested sitting up -found her body wanted nothing to do with the movement- and settled back against the pillows.
Her gaze shifted to her broken wrist, now free of duct tape and broken broom handles to be replaced with a slightly less haphazard splint. Sarah didn't dare look for something to see her reflection. Her nose, eyes and sinuses felt on verge of exploding from the pressure. She probably looked about as good as she felt.
Dry lips worked to call out for the others, her throat parched to the point of uselessness. Thankfully, John made his way into the room before she decided to attempt something truly foolish, like standing.
"You're up!"
"Relatively speaking." She sipped greedily at the glass of water John offered. "How long?"
"Two days. You've been awake a couple of times but it wasn't for more than a few minutes."
She vaguely recalled his gentle voice coaxing her back to sleep at some point. "Cameron?"
"In her room. I... don't know what to do, Mom. We found her chip in your pocket, is she... was she compromised?"
"No," Sarah shook her head, regretting the motion instantly as a wave of nausea crashed over her. "I had to leave her behind, I couldn't risk the chip."
"She took a lot of superficial damage but she should have been mobile." John's confusion was evident in his voice.
"I don't know what's wrong. There was an explosion and she went down. She just didn't...reboot."
"Her chip looks okay." He pulled it from his pocket, holding it up in the sunlight for Sarah to see. "No corrosion, the circuits all look good. The explosion might have short circuited something internally, I'll see what I can do. You need some more rest, Charlie said you nearly died of sun stroke."
"I've been asleep for two days."
"With the way you look, you could use another week. Don't make me give you another one of these." John held up an orange pill bottle and Sarah vaguely recalled being force fed at some point. She didn't think the experience had been all that pleasant.
"Wake me up when you've figured out how to fix Cameron."
"Deal."
888
When Sarah was finally able to stay awake for more than five minutes at a time, she was chagrined to realize that she had been in and out of consciousness for the better part of five days. Her second splint had been replaced by a fibreglass cast at some point, the memory of the entire process muddled by her drug induced fugue.
Forcing away the lingering wariness, Sarah slipped from beneath the covers, bandaged feet hitting the hardwood. The cool floor was welcome relief, easing the swelling in toes that felt twice their normal size. Six shaky steps got her to the doorway, another three had her across the hall. Using the wall for support, Sarah continued until her hands met the door to Cameron's room.
She entered quietly to find Cameron propped up against her headboard, favoured aviator sunglasses settled on her nose. The large shades concealed her damaged eye but did little to hide the extensive trauma to her face. Sarah's eyes followed the computer cord leading from the base of Cameron's neck to John's laptop computer. His headphones were, muted music filtering out as he typed away diligently, cursing lowly at some mistake.
Sarah sank into the chair opposite him, settling against the uncomfortable wood back with a grunt that broke John from his work.
He was surprised to find her there, eyes widening as they went from the door to her and back again. She really needed to speak to him about environmental awareness. She added it to her mental list before turning to Cameron, her unspoken question clear. John pulled his headphones from his ears, letting them rest around his neck as he spoke.
"I put her chip in three days ago, she hasn't really moved since. She twitched at start-up but nothing since."
"Do we know why?"
"Yes and no. I know what's going on. I don't know why it's happening."
"John, I'm too tired for riddles."
"Well, there's nothing wrong with her physically."
Sarah quirked an eyebrow, if Cameron's damage was 'nothing' she was curious what was needed to classify it as 'something'.
"The damage from the explosion is fairly superficial. Her internal machinations weren't damaged all that much. I had to replace a piston in her wrist and repair a misaligned vertebrae. It's her chip that's the issue. She shut down during the explosion and rebooted but her system diagnostic keeps looping back on itself. That's why she's not moving. Her circuits are active, they're conducting repairs." John pointed to the healing edges of Cameron's burn as proof that she was functioning on some level. "But she's still unresponsive."
"Why is it looping?"
"I don't know. Like I said, the chip doesn't seem damaged. Was there anything nuclear when you set off the bombs?"
"God, I hope not. I don't remember seeing anything."
"Did the Triple Eight get caught in the blast?"
"Yeah, it did." Sarah's mind went back to Cameron and the Triple Eight, battling for dominance no more than fifty feet from ground zero.
John turned his computer toward her, pointing to a schematic. The split screen showcased a Triple Eight design on the left, a more detailed rendering of the main power core offset to the right.
"The Triple Eights are at least partially powered by a plutonium cell. It's pretty dilute d but if Cameron was near him when the bombs went off and his core was damaged, it might have created and EMP."
"You're telling me Cameron shut down because of an electromagnetic pulse?"
"It's the only thing I can think of that would send her chip down like that and force the system into a logging diagnostic."
"Explain."
"Cameron's chip has protection against EMPs but at extreme close range, it might have gotten through. The chip would have protected itself, probably sacrificing all but the most basic of programming. Things like experiences, secondary missions, local knowledge, would have all been wiped out as the circuits shut down to protect itself."
"Oh, God." Oh, no. "Cameron's...gone?"
"That's just it, she should be." John pointed to a programming chart that provided the laymans breakdown of the reboot procedure, dependent upon cause of the initial shut down. "But I don't think so. If Cameron's personality had been wiped, the chip would have booted with its baseline programming."
"And she would have killed me."
"Yeah. I don't know how she did it but Cameron managed to protect her secondary line of programming. Trouble is, the chip doesn't recognize it at this point and it's still trying to wipe it out and reboot clean. Sometimes the chip gets further along the reboot line, sometimes Cameron holds it off longer, like they're learning from each other."
"Are you telling me that Cameron's base programming is fighting her for control of her chip?"
"Pretty much. Every time the chip tries to delete... her, she shuts it down. The chip reboots and starts the diagnostic over."
"Is there any way to bypass that? Make the chip boot to Cameron's personality rather than to the base programming?" She recalled him attempting to explain something of the sort when he had picked up a virus on his computer.
"That what I'm trying to do, I'm not getting much of anywhere."
"Is Cameron aware, at all?"
"Somewhat, look." A quick flick of keys and he had tapped into some kind of audio feed. "See the spikes? That's me talking. Her chip is registering external stimuli, I'm just not sure what's being processed." Sitting back in his chair, he pinched at the bridge of his nose. The dark circles under his eyes spoke all she needed to know about him.
"Go to bed," she stated, her tone leaving him no room to argue. "You've tried your best and the last thing we need is you messing around in Cameron's brain making a mistake."
"But..."
She raised her arm, pointing to the door. With his typical disgruntled sigh, he left his computer on the chair and headed for the door.
"I've put alarms on the system, if the chip hits a certain point of the recovery process, we'll know in time to, well in time..."
"To stop her," Sarah finished. "If that chip reboots, she won't be Cameron anymore, John. That's something we have to be ready for." His curt nod showed it was a thought that had weighed heavily on his mind. He left her to herself, his footfalls leading to his bedroom.
Sarah watched the computer as it filtered the nonsense that was Cameron's code stream across the screen. A stutter, a pause then a full stop before the code went blank. Sixty seconds later the code flickered to life once more. She watched the exchange -for how long she didn't know- caught rapt by the mechanical logic of it all. It was akin to watching a heart rate monitor, the gentle blips and spikes serving as proof that the person attached was fighting the good fight. Even if that person was a machine.
But Cameron wasn't just a machine. She had proven it time and again. Her burgeoning emotions had changed her, made her.. more. Sarah was certain of it. She was equally certain those emotions were what kept Cameron fighting her erasure. She had feelings, needs. A desire for life.
Cameron's attachment to the life she had created was strong enough that she was actively fighting her most basic, deep seated part of her nature for control. Sarah knew what that was like, What it was to fight everything you were to become what you wanted to be. What you needed to be. It was difficult and scary and so much easier if...
"You're not alone," Sarah said, hand taking Cameron's, surprised as always that the artificially manufactured flesh was warm and natural to the touch. "I know you can hear me, I know you can understand me, so listen. You're not alone, Cameron. I'm here. You can fight this, I know you can, because of who you are. That's what being human is about. Fighting for life, for love. So I'm asking you, fight for me now. Please."
Cameron didn't respond. Sarah hadn't expected her to but she couldn't deny the sharp pang of disappointment that came quickly on the heels of the realization that there was no change.
"Sarah."
She turned to the doorway where Charlie stood beside Derek, both men looking at her as though she were a bug under a microscope. She finally understood when she followed their line of sight to her hand, wrapped firmly around Cameron's. With a final squeeze -that she would have sworn she felt returned- Sarah released her grip.
"I need to take a look at your bandages."
"We need to talk."
Both men spoke as one, taking a moment to glare at one another before jumping in to speak again.
"She needs to rest not..."
"She needs to know what's going on."
The argument was as much an assault to her ears as the explosion and Sarah held up a hand to silence them. "I'll meet you both in the kitchen, we can do the bandages while you get me up to speed." Her words were meant as a dismissal and she was grateful that they were taken as such. The men turned on their heels, clomping noisily down the hall.
Sarah pushed herself out of the chair, leaning over to inspect Cameron's ravaged face. The sheen of the metal skeleton wasn't nearly as off putting as Sarah thought it should have been. Maybe it was because she knew that metal, that strength, was the reason she was still breathing.
"I didn't haul my ass across the desert and double back to pick your half ton ass out of the sand just so you could give up on me because of some computer glitch. Fight, Cameron. You hear me? Fight."
Remembering the earnest and wondrous expression on Cameron's face,just before they had begun their attack, Sarah couldn't help but lean forward, pressing her lips softly to Cameron's.
"Kiss for luck," she whispered, brushing her hand over Cameron's check before straightening and heading for the kitchen.
888
Sarah sat at the kitchen table, presenting her arm to Charlie who promptly began to take her blood pressure.
"Let's have it," she said, eyes on Derek.
"We rigged the bunker, pulled out the M-21 round and disposed of it. No trouble. When the metal heads open it up the explosion will take out anything within a city block."
"Sounds like a good week's worth of work. What's the problem?"
"The problem is we've cut the head off this thing but the body isn't dead yet."
Derek slid a folder across the table, ignoring Charlie's aggrieved sigh as Sarah reached out to flip it open. There was their laser guy, staring placidly back at her from his employee profile shot.
"We assumed he had come up with his research on his own. He didn't, he was being funded by a company called Atlanta Corp."
Sarah flipped through the papers, keen eyes scanning for anything out of the ordinary. "That's not unusual, being funded."
"No, but the company is. On the surface they're researching precision lasers for medical use, tumour reduction, micro surgery, eye surgery. Turns out they're also a subsidiary of a larger corporation that specializes in advanced robotics. They've been filtering results back and the tech has been showing up in things like targeting systems. We dug pretty deep and we think we've found a black ops division that's been working on an AI platform. Andy Goode's name popped up on their farm team."
Derek stared at her, waiting for her to connect the dots. It wasn't hard. The moment he said robotics she knew exactly where the conversation would lead.
"Skynet." They funded the research for the M-21s. "Wonderful." Derek's unwavering stare unnerved her. "What aren't you telling me?"
"Nexus, the parent company, is in the running for a military contract. Automated armoured personal carriers, mechanized infantry, the works."
"Shit. If they get access to that kind of money and networking, they'll be no stopping it. We have to shut down that contract."
Derek nodded his agreement.
"How long do we have?"
"Bidding starts in two weeks. Contract is awarded the week after."
"Three weeks to save the world," Charlie chimed in. "No pressure."
Sarah sat at Cameron's side, reports and building schematics spread across the terminator's legs. She had started out in her own room, reports stacked high, John's music filtering through her vents. Her thoughts had been undeniably drawn to the machine and after twenty minutes of staring at the same page, Sarah had given up, collected her things and plopped down next to Cameron.
It was… comforting to be in Cameron's room, if only to be able to watch the monitor John had rigged up. She could now identify the base program from Cameron and every so often found herself sucked into watching the computer battle play out. The base program always started out the same, trying to boot to the deepest routed programming, Cameron would fight it until she couldn't then shut herself down to try again.
Sarah had initially thought it to be some sort of race, whichever piece of Cameron got to a certain boot point first, won. As she watched Cameron's code -eyes long trained to spot the tiniest of oddities- she learned it wasn't the case. The base part of the chip always booted the same but the flickering differences from Cameron's end showed she was constantly trying a new tactic. Her base programming would respond, counteracting until Cameron failed.
Cameron would force the chip to reboot and the process would start over. It was as though Cameron were playing chess with her own brain, attempting different tactics to defeat an opponent who checked her moves as quickly as she made them. The game had been going on for the better part of three days now, Cameron's physical features near healed, save for the worst of the burns around her eyes.
Giving the screen a final look, Sarah turned her attention back to the building schematic. Breaking into Nexus wasn't going to be pretty. As the head of the monster –the tendrils reaching far beyond what Sarah could see- it was the easiest place to hit. Whatever damage they did would filter down, hopefully enough to put a stop to Skynet's plans.
Delicate inquiring into some of their most expensive contacts confirmed that Nexus' AI platform -while still in its infancy- was a viable attempt at creating computer life. They needed to destroy it and any research that would allow the men responsible to recreate it.
While she worked on the entry plan, John kept himself busy researching Nexus and developing a virus that would wipe out theirs systems. If they could make it look like the AI had somehow caused the meltdown -proving it to be unreliable- so much the better.
"Hey."
Sarah looked up, eyes finding her son who looked more than pleased with himself.
"What's up?"
"I've been looking into Nexus, trying to figure out who the heavy hitters are."
She nodded, she had put him on the assignment. So far he had turned up very little, the owners and share holders of the company clouded in a somewhat murky pond of subsidiaries, front corporations and false identification.
"I've found the head researcher at the Nexus labs, he sits on the board. If we can get to him, maybe we can make him talk."
Sarah pursed her lips, that meant exposing them a little more than she was comfortable with. Still, couldn't hurt to look, how much trouble could one lab geek be, anyway?
John handed her the folder. Sarah flipped it open, eyes landing on the familiar face of a square jawed man who muscles strained his lab coat to the point of near bursting the seam. Yeah, that about figured.
"Is it just me," John asked, "or does he look kind of like the Governor?"
It was never easy.
888
"You're telling me that a Triple Eight is running the AI division of Nexus?" Derek asked, pacing to and fro across the living room as he rubbed at what had developed into an eleven o'clock shadow. A razor! It wasn't a hard concept!
"It makes sense, what better way to keep track of how things are going. If it is Skynet, he can help it along, if it's not…"
"Skynet removes the competition, great. I'm feeling better already. Now what?"
"We continue as planned," Sarah said. "It doesn't change anything. We still need to bring Nexus down, now more than ever."
"That place is a fortress and its guard dog took Cameron out without much fuss. How the hell are we going to get in?"
"I'm hearing a lot of problems but no solutions, we're not getting anywhere by bitching. Let's just find a way to do this without getting us all killed."
Seeming to sense she was at the end of her somewhat limited patience, Derek shut up. Satisfied that he knew his place, she stood.
"Where are you going? I thought we were working on battle plans."
"To check on Cameron." Not that the machine needed checking, alarms would go off if things went bad. It just... made her feel better.
Derek's mirthless chuckle echoed through the living room. "You don't get it, do you? Cameron is gone, she's fried. Her program is going to overwrite her and then you're going to have one pissed off piece of metal on your hands."
Sarah didn't look directly at John but from the corner of her eye, she saw his head drop. Derek's words had hit home.
"The best thing any of us can do right now is rip that chip out of her head and melt it down with the rest of her before she wakes up and snaps our necks."
"You go anywhere near her…" John stood, fists balled, lean body coiled and ready to strike.
"You'll do what, John?"
"I'll kill you," Sarah broke in, words calm, tone leaving no room for misinterpretation as she stepped in front of her son. Derek stared her down, testing her will as he moved forward, stubbled chin jutted out in challenge.
"You'd kill me, over a machine," he sniffed, "whose side are you on?"
"Mine. Cameron is the best chance we have of getting past the Triple Eight and bringing down Nexus. Potentially bringing down Skynet. I won't let you take that opportunity away. Whatever your issue are, deal with it somewhere else. So long as you're under my roof, on my team, you'll play by my rules."
He sniffed again. "You sure you even know what game you're playing?" With that, he shouldered past her, the door slamming behind him. She let out a relieved sigh, turning when John squeezed her good wrist.
"Thanks, Mom."
"He's right, you know." Sarah said, her words grudging. "Cameron can't keep this up forever. Sooner or later one of them will lose, trouble won't even begin to cover it if Cameron gets wiped."
"I know." His nod showed his mind had strayed into similar territory. "I just, I couldn't let him kill her without giving her a chance to fight."
"She's had five days, John. Two more. We give her a week, if she hasn't sorted it out, we have to shut her down. I can't be worried about her turning on us while we try to deal with Nexus."
"I'll find a way to help her." John's determined look showed he would be doing little else.
"Do what you can, John." She squeezed his shoulder and headed for Cameron's room, taking her seat in the leather recliner John had dragged in when she had first started her vigil. "Two days, Girlie. You hear me? You've got two days to get your shit together."
She reached out for the machine, the feel of Cameron's hand in hers now familiar after five days by her bedside.
"Please, Cameron. Don't make John do this. Don't make me do this." Losing a friend was one thing. Killing a friend… "I need you to come back to me, Cameron. That's an order."
Her eyes went to the screen, monitor going dark before the beep of a reboot sounded and Cameron's game began again.
888
Two hours later, eyes nearly crossed from scouring the schematics, Sarah sat back. If she saw one more blueprint, she was liable to scream. She stood, stretching her back as much as her bruised ribs allowed and walked over to Crackers. The little mouse sniffed at her as he always did and she offered him one of his treats. An attempt to interact with the rodent outside its cage had led to the unfortunate circumstance of John trying to lure him out of her cast.
She had continued to feed Crackers but left the actual handling to John. Her son didn't seem to actually care for the animal, his care more a desire for everything to be as Cameron left it rather than any real affection for the animal itself.
"You're kinda cute but you get into a lot of trouble. Don't you?"
Treat complete, Crackers lost interest in her, returning to his wheel to continue on his never ending journey. Sarah caught her reflection in the TV as she headed back for the chair, frowning at the well developed raccoon eyes that had followed quickly on the heels of her swelling nose. The swelling had mostly subsided but an ill timed sneeze had left her seeing stars. Grabbing the remote to Cameron's TV, Sarah settled back in the chair flipping idly through the channels for something that wasn't 'reality', Law and Order or a CSI. Honestly, hadn't any of these producers heard of a sitcom? She paused on one channel, lips curling up at the program. Perfect.
"Hey, Cam, check it out," Sarah gently nudged the machine with her foot. "Nutcracker. Make you a deal, you wake up and I'll make the popcorn."
No response. She sighed, thumbing up the volume as she watched the dancers prance across the stage, lithe bodies twisting in ways Sarah could barely conceive of.
She lost herself in the ballet, barely registering when she reached out for Cameron's hand, determined to see the young woman through to the end. Sleep came swift and unexpected, pulling her down into the black.
When she woke -TV blaring some odd looking, hyper active man hocking a vegetable chopper- Sarah searched for what had pulled her from her dreams. A voice? A breeze? Eyes widened as the pressure tightened around her fingers. A squeeze.
Sarah checked the computer, Cameron's line of code dominating the screen.
"Cameron!" She locked their fingers, squeezing tight to show her companion she wasn't alone. Sleepy eyes, miles behind a suddenly alert brain, searched the monitor for some kind of change. There! Cameron's code had managed a longer run, she had accessed some kind of gross motor control.
"That's it, Cameron. Keep trying." Sarah cursed as the base programming managing to rout whatever Cameron tried next, forcing the sequence to stutter, stop, then shut down altogether. It was okay, Sarah knew it was. The chip would boot the same way it always did and Cameron would test her way around each blockade until she made it through.
Sure in that knowledge, hand closed tightly around that of the machine, Sarah fell back to sleep.
888
"Mom! Mom!"
The persistent shoves threw her out of her dream -the first pleasant one in months- and Sarah fought down the urge to bark at her son for such an abrupt awakening.
"What is it?"
"Look!" They turned to the screen, Cameron's code clearly dominating that of the chip. "She's almost there, she's going to make it."
"Did you…"
"Not me. I was still working on a way to get the chip to boot to Cameron and bypass the rest. This isn't me, this is her. She's found a way around."
"Good. Great. Okay," she contained her excitement, not eager to show her son just how worried she had been. "Any idea how much longer?"
"An hour, maybe less."
"All right, get back to work on that virus. We have less than a week before bidding starts." She chose to ignore his slightly crestfallen look. "Now, John. Cameron's fighting her battle, we can't forget ours. She'll be fine."
It was, in fact, over an hour before Cameron regained enough control to respond to rudimentary commands and two hours beyond that before she would open her eyes.
It was a decidedly mechanical recovery. Where most would blink and slowly waken, Cameron was simply there. Eyes open, alert and immediately searching.
"You did it." Without concern, without thought, Sarah leaned forward, brushing her lips to Cameron's forehead. "Welcome back."
There was no mistaking the smile on the porcelain face, dark eyes shining with a life, an intensity that Sarah hadn't seen before.
"I heard you. I…" Cameron paused, seeming to search her brain, "…got my shit together."
Sarah chuckled, finally feeling as though she could breathe for the first time in a week. "Yes, you did, Girlie. Yes, you did." Their protector was back. Whole. They had denied Skynet this one, small victory. It felt good.
"Sarah?"
"Hmm?"
"Can we get a Slap Chop?"