I know this is kind of a risky Chapter for me to do right before the famed fourth episode, but that is the great thing about this series, we can all have our ideas… and we can always write them off as an alternate timeline… a different point of view. And since this whole story is completely off its rocker… why not throw some Cameron speculation in the mix? ;)

The story of how they'd met was something John Connor had instructed Cameron never to reveal. He hadn't erased it from her CPU, he'd promised to never do anything so unorthodox - so cruel - those memories rightfully belonged to her, but he had insisted she promise.

Promise.

The first time she'd promised him anything was when he had saved her life. The day he gave her a name instead of a number. She'd promised that she was different, and he believed her. It was the first of many steps…

2020

"Sometimes they go bad – we don't know why."

They kept her locked up, and even though she didn't know when exactly it was she was scheduled for termination, she dimly acknowledged her time was running out. Her tomb waited patiently in the form of a blast furnace, soaked with the sharp, metallic scent of smelted coltan. That was the smell of death, she had decided, and cached it away in her memory.

She wasn't one of a kind. She wasn't universally unique. Therefore she wasn't valuable. Maybe it was a malfunction that made her self-aware, maybe she was simply a faulty piece of Skynet equipment, for whatever reason, TOK-715 was soon to be destroyed.



Unmistakably different, painfully aware of the concept of "death", she feared it. She feared the idea that she would no longer exist – and so she begged, and pleaded, and cried. She mimicked the human emotions they had programmed her with, but none of the other machines who looked just like her could understand.

They came for her the same day John Connor did. As Resistance fighters swarmed the complex, she realized what the others couldn't possibly. That she was free. The demon with red eyes she had been holding in check for so long could be turned loose with little consequence. They could not harm her. She would not burn today.

She advanced silently among the ranks of her kind. Did they even think of themselves as a race the way she did? Her eyes locked on the target of her choice. Her choice. The one to the far left, the one who she'd nearly dismantled when they had tried to confine her to her cell, the one missing her eye.

The one-eyed Terminator was watching the Resistance fighters, clearly planning to blindside them, calculating the best moment to spring her attack. How many would she have managed to kill if it had not been for her? There was a cruelty in her eyes as she approached closer, and then her target turned, and they both shot out their arms to clutch the other by the neck.

She was sent crashing into the Resistance fighters, who scattered and scrambled for cover. So many of their lives saved by the faulty Terminator who now rose again, unfazed, in front of them. She gave a quick backward roll of her shoulders, cracked her neck, and then marched forward to close the distance between her and the one-eyed Terminator again. Bullets burrowed themselves deep inside her back.

"What the hell is going on?"

"Why are they fighting each other?"

"That's different."

"Have you ever seen this before?"

"It must be a malfunction."

There was that word again. Malfunction.

After thoroughly liberating the one-eyed machine of most of its limbs, she finally paused to appreciate her own skills. She peered down at the woman with a face like her own, her delicate foot resting on her woman's ruined chest. "You've been terminated," she said with deadly serenity. Then she planted her foot on the woman's face and pushed with all her strength. The front of the face caved in, crushing the CPU within.

The battle around her went on for quite some time, but in the end she was the only machine left standing, partly because she had helped with the destruction of the others. The men surrounded her then, and her head jerked with staccato movements as she surveyed them. When she saw him, for the first time, she studied him with an odd, intent expression, as if for a moment she could see nothing and hear nothing except for him. John Connor.

"My name is John Connor," he explained slowly.

Her face fell, and TOK-715 looked as crestfallen as a child who had her favorite toy taken away. "Are you here to kill me, John?"

"Are you here to kill me?"

"No," she answered. "I'm different."

"Promise?"

"You rescued me, John Connor," she said. "I promise."