I couldn't hear anything. I couldn't tell if it was the explosion or something else but things passed in motion and not sound with something disconcerting about the loss. I somehow knew that John was yelling and as I felt the taste of him on my lips I remembered the fatal words in my head and what they meant: Protect John. I grabbed his hand to pull him behind me and going into the hall that was lit with gray sunlight or smoke. I couldn't tell. Sarah came from around the corner and she was yelling with her lips moving but no sound. Why couldn't I hear her? Why couldn't I hear anything? I could worry about it later though. I needed to protect John. She gestured for us to follow as we went past through rooms and down the hall before the front door opened and recoiling to hit her square in the face. A large man came barrelling around the side of it and I shoved John behind me and away while screaming at him to go. The man held a gun out to Sarah who lay crumbled on the floor and without thinking I tackled him. He fell back against the wall and my mind went blank as I tried to wrestle for the gun and with no other option if I couldn't get it. I had the surprise but that had been my only advantage and it was gone. He shoved me off of him and into the island where the side cracked into my spine and a shock of pain left me breathless. He fisted his hands through my hair and half lifted, half dragged me across the floor as someone else took Sarah and I could only see the blur of my hair as I struggled and kicked my legs out to get a grip. The stairs came up and underneath me and I was hitting each one as we went until I was thrown head first into one of the bed rooms and scrambling for something – anything – that could be used as a weapon. My arms were jerked behind me so my sweater fell over my shoulder and then bound so my wrists ached and burned and I could already feel blood drip down them. Sarah was thrown down beside me and I vaguely saw another shape on her other side. John. A man – the clerk I recognized – came forward and I remembered the force behind my hand as I threw his head down against the counter and vaguely thought: oh fuck. He slammed his hand into my face and I felt the side of it on fire as it started to bruise and a bitter taste of blood on my tongue. I spit so it leaked down my lips and on my chin as he hit me again and pushing me back to force his weight on me and his elbow at my throat. I could feel more then I could hear Sarah and John screaming and I tried to kick at him with my legs but his pressure was becoming harder and I was seeing black dots to cut out his face. Protect John. Whatever happens protect John. Whoever was listening – whoever could help – keep him safe. Not for them. But for me. Keep him safe. His weight came off of me all at once and I was gasping and panting on the floor as bloody spit ran down my neck on the angle and staining into the collar of my shirt. Hands pulled me back and I struggled against them before seeing Johns face above mine and clutching at me with a panic that hurt more then I knew how to bare. He reached away to cut at my ties and as soon as they were gone I buried my face into his shoulder and held him as he rocked me, his face in my hair and fingers scrambling at my back. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. We were pulled apart and Sarah was kneeling next to us, blood down her lip and sweeping my hair back from my face so I could see her fingers bloody. Blood. My blood. The door ripped open and we turned to see Cameron there, pieces ripped from her face and showing the metallic details underneath with a fire burning behind her and roaring in my ears. She had a gun in her hand and she raised it to point at us – not sure who to hit – and I had enough thought to shove John behind me before the fire exploded and she fell back with the crash. Sarah was grabbing us and shoving us up and to the window and the glass shattered against my side, the curtain tangling with my legs as we were out and through it and down the roof and on the ground so hard I hoped the fall had killed me and that soon I would be dead.

Tires screeched and roared as the van turned screaming down the street and I was thrown against the door to the fifth time and leaving a bloody handprint when I managed to hold myself back. Pain in my ribs was making my vision blur and my fingers were trembling every time I pulled them to see if the bleeding had stopped and panic meeting them when I found it hadn't.
"Are you alright?" Sarah threw this question at me with a glance and I nodded as she looked back and before she could take a second look. My leg was shaking as I pressed it into the floor of the van and loosened the weight as my breath tightened and tasted of blood. "John, are you alright?" He didn't answer, her eyes went back and forth from the road to him and I tried to feel concern that he was silent but the wheels hit another rut and I had to bite my tongue to keep from screaming.
"Would you answer me?!" Sarah screamed, grabbing his arm and between their grip I could see a car with its lights flashing and pulling to a stop.
"Sarah!" I yelled at her, reaching past for the wheel to turn it but she got there before as we spun and hit another car that was pulling out and the turn of it throwing me to the floor between the seats. Something heavy pressed into my sight and my vision faded into black dots that pulsed and dimmed as I tried to focus.
"Are you hurt? You're bleeding," Sarah was talking and I could barely hear her as I tried to get up and seeing the dark stain of my blood already against the seat. Fuck.
"I'm fine!" John yelled and I saw him look back to me and panic in his eyes before my vision faded again. "Amanda?"
"I'm fine," I insisted, biting my lip and straightening so my muscles in my legs screamed and contracted where they shouldn't go. Just stay conscious. That's all I'm asking just please stay conscious.
"We gotta go," a door opened and then slammed and I scrambled for the handle of the door to pull it but my fingers worked out of order and I couldn't get a grip. No. No, no, no please no. It opened for me and John was there with blood down his face and his leg twisted.
"Come on," he reached in to wrap his arms underneath mine and I cried out as he gathered me to him to set my feet on the ground before holding me when I gave out on the weight.
"Can you walk?" Sarah asked, at our side and looking over me with a growing confusion that I could be hurt and that the evidence of it was standing before her.
"Yes." No. I alternated with my weight between each leg with my left side screaming and the other threatening a loss of conscious. Left it was.
"Good, 'cause we gotta run," she took off on her apology and I winced as I tried to follow her lead, drops of blood coming off of my hip and my legs burning and melding so if I couldn't start then I wouldn't but that if I did I would never stop.

Pressure froze in my shoulder and I closed my eyes against the pain as I tasted copper thick on my tongue and swallowed it back. I took another step and tasted it again – stronger this time and tried not to think about the internal damage I most likely had and that even as I thought this I could be dying from it. But thinking it wouldn't stop it and worrying about it wouldn't make it better. It was easier thought then said though as I took another step and imagined myself simply collapsing dead in the street – a nobody with a fake name barely remembered and sooner forgotten.
"How are you doing?" John asked, whispering as people slowed down to stare at us as we limped past. A small girl was holding her mother's hand and sucking her thumb while she watched and I tried to smile at and reassure her that I was alright before remembering she'd probably forget about me the moment she looked away and have no idea that my survival might mean something for hers down the line in an untouchable future.
"Awesome," I gritted, another step making me feel like I was on the precipice of falling to pieces. And at this moment I wouldn't fight it and in the end might welcome it. It was unnerving what pain could do to your sense of survival.
"We should get off the streets," Sarah told us, clutching her arms and gritting her teeth with each step so the words came off fractured. "Find a safe place."

I choked back a laugh as I stepped through the threshold of the church and holding onto my dark irony of it as we walked past the intricately painted walls and low murmuring of speaking in one of the rooms ahead of us. John held back the beads of a doorway for me and I walked through into the main room where a neon cross stood at the front and center with an image of Jesus hanging from the middle. His arms were stretched above him with his head bowed and I could see the blood painted over his wrists and dripping to his neck. I stopped, transfixed for a moment with comparisons I didn't want to make before John nudged me forward and I made for the lines of chairs and dropped heavily into the one next to Sarah. I pulled my hand away from my side and found it still shaking and bloody with the fabric at my hip torn from how wet it was. I bit my lip to hold back crying out and peeled at the shreds of my shirt to see the shreds of skin underneath. This couldn't be how I died. It wouldn't be fair.
"Has there been an accident?" I lifted my head to see the priest kneeling on the chairs in front of us and looking back and forth over our bloody appearances. I almost laughed again at the stupidity of the question before deciding it was safe to say I was also suffering from a concussion. The lot of good it did though when there was nothing I could do about it. He said something else in Spanish and Sarah replied the same, shaking her head and taking shallow breaths as I was able to see the extent of her injury. Her arm was shaking as it held onto her shoulder and blood was torn through her middle that was making her wince as it creased with her sit. I looked over to John to check on him as well and he reached the distance between us to take my hand and gripping it tightly on my thigh. His knuckles were bloody and I ran my thumb back and forth over them and even as he winced he didn't let go.
"We need sanctuary," Sarah said, switching to English and looking to me and John like it was for our benefit. "Can I ask for that? Please? We need somewhere to hide. Now."
"Yes," he said quietly, his face sad at her pleading and looking us over again before he readied himself to stand. "Of course. Come with me." John slid his arm underneath mine and I stumbled as I got to my feet, still holding his other hand and no thought within me that could make me let go.

I pulled the flowered tea towel away from my hip and turned and folded it again to try and find a side of it that was dry. Blood leaked from it and onto the tile and I found that there wasn't one. I tossed it onto the table and heard it squelch as it landed and started to soak into the wound.
"Are you alright?" Sarah asked, leaning back against the wall and looking uncomfortable from standing still. Or maybe it was asking the question and the chance that I might give a committal answer in response.
"I'm great," I told her, the lie more honest then the truth would have been and toying with the edges of the cloth that was soaked through. Blood. My blood.
"What about you?" She jerked her head at John who was fiddling with the radio and the only non static from it coming in Spanish.
"You already asked me that," he told her, voice low and still turning the knobs so the static went back and forth before giving up in his efforts and tossing it across the surface. It echoed and clanged in front of me and some response I had – some unconscious reaction wanted to reach out, take it and fix it for him though I didn't know how or even if he wanted me too. And the uncertainty of that hurt.
"I'm asking you again," she said, trying to smile and shrug it off but going for the wrong shoulder and wincing as she moved it wrong. I reached out to touch the radio and fingered over the buttons while trying to figure out how it worked. I was supposed to lead armies and save mankind and here I was whining about a little blood and unable to fix a radio. I swallowed the bitterness of it and drew back my fingers in self defeat.
"I'm fine," John insisted, lips moving over his knuckles pressed to his chin and looking at something neither of us could see but playing back and forth over his eyes like a tape stuck on rewind.
"I think we need to talk about what happened back at the house," Sarah said after a moment, firm on the words in that she needed to ask them and pleading with him not to contradict.
"No, I don't," he said quickly, not even waiting her to finish before denying them with his eyes still locked on that same spot and whatever he was seeing there.
"Maybe I need to talk about it," she suggested, looking over to me and making me feel lost about what they were hinting at but weren't saying. Something that happened back at the house that I didn't see and that now they were uncertain to bring up.
"Maybe you do, but I don't, so let's not," he said, voice hard and softening it as he took note of it himself. He raised his eyes too her and splayed his fingers under his chin in an apologetic gesture. "Please."
"Then we need to talk about her," she sighed, resting her hands on the back of the chair and her fingers clenching and unclenching. "Whatever happened with the explosion, it's flipped a switch. She's reverted or something."
"She knows everything," John ceded and aware of how hopeless it sounded when he said it. How high the odds were stacked against us and how they wouldn't come down unless they crushed us when they did.
"I know," she said quietly, apologetic.
"Bank accounts. Contingency plans. Weapons stash," he listed it off and I thought of the months I had alone with her and the lessons that she taught me then. How everything I'd learned she had known first and how weak they felt when under the weight of if I made a move she'd know what it was and how to stop it.
"I know," Sarah repeated, still quiet, still apologetic.
"How we run, where we'll go. Who we've been, who we'll be. She's ... stronger and faster," his voice built and I could hear everything underneath it starting to crumble in how hard he was trying to keep his voice and firm on not letting it collapse.
"We have to kill her, John," Sarah burst with the revelation, voice just as hard but running deeper than his.
"I know!" He stood with the harsh acceptance and slammed a knife into the table so it stuck in the wood and stood on end. I flinched at the violence of it and the room went quiet as the knife trembled and the blood continued to seep from the cloth and slowly making its way across the table and reaching for my fingers.
"I know," he said again, this time his voice quiet. This time apologetic.

My hands were sweating and I nervously wiped them onto my jeans as they wore into a tear and made the cut underneath sting. John on instinct reached for instinct and in my own I entwined them, waiting and my heart beating faster as the seconds stretched. One, two ...
"Now," Sarah told him and he flipped the switch next to the opening and sparks burst from the end of the room by the cross followed by a crash of metal that was too familiar to be comfortable and making my skin crawl under its individual layers. Without dwelling on it we ran out from behind the beads to where I could see Cameron collapsed on the stone with the sparks still running out around her and fading as we got closer.
"Two minutes," Sarah reminded us, running ahead as John slid to his knees and instantly starting to work at digging out the chip.
"What are you doing?" The priest was back and approaching us in horror, at the fill in the blank pieces in front of him and not enough time for us to fill him in.
"You have to get out of here," I pulled myself from my half crouch and limping over to him with only the circumstances making me intimidating when I could barely stand. "It's not safe you have to go. Now!" He stumbled back from me and out of the doorway as I felt fresh blood dripping down my leg and the floor uneasy underneath my feet as I looked back to John who was continuing to fumble.
"70 seconds," Sarah reminded him, almost in panic as she wiped her hands on her jeans and the shade of them coming away dark with sweat as he tried to work back Cameron's hair and grunting as he tried to chip the dull knife into her scalp.
"The knife isn't sharp enough," he bit at the words so they were fragmented with panic and I found myself reciting "come on, come on" over and over in my thoughts with the confliction that this was Cameron we were trying to kill interrupting the lull in between.
"Well, push harder!" Sarah half yelled, holding her head steady as he continued to grunt and peel at it, her closed eyelids trembling in the violent action.
"How much time?" John asked again, anxiously licking his lips.
"55," Sarah whispered and I held back Cameron's hair so he could see it better and feeling sick at the bloodied synthetic skin and the metal pieces that were barely covered underneath.
"Oh, wait, I see it. I see it, I see it," he licked his lips again as the knife finally worked clear and he peeled back the skin to show the metal cap underneath with sparse pieces of hair bloody and stuck around the edges. "Screwdriver, screwdriver." I scrambled at the tile next to me where Sarah had dropped it and handed it to him as he tried to turn it into the opening with the two pieces out of shape and slipping from one another.
"35," Sarah warned.
"Oh, it's not the right size," John said, lip worried between his teeth as he fought with it anyway and the pounding of the words in my head: come on, come on ...
"20 seconds," Sarah said, my vision going red as I thought of what she'd do if she woke up and that none of us was in position to stop.
"Okay, okay," John said, cutting her short and fumbling for the knife. "The knife, the knife." He grunted as he slid it around the edge of the cap and trying to work it under and up. I could see the knife bending in the pressure and his hands shaking as he knew it wouldn't work but was giving it everything he got just in case. "Damn it!" The knife snapped and he threw the broken pieces to the floor where they clattered and broke.
"We can't do this," Sarah said, linking her arms under John to lift him as Cameron twitched and started to wake. "Come on!"
"She's waking up! She's waking up!" John pulled me as he ran and to my feet as I stumbled and panted with pain contracting in my middle and making me want to curl up in myself and scream and sob. I ignored it and ran around the chairs as one caught on my other hip but ignoring that as well as we broke through the hall and to the doorway.

Cars screeched and roared as we broke onto the street, Johns hand tightly in mine as we half dragged each other with Sarah on his other side desperately looking back and forth for anything we could use to escape or fight back. We ducked off down a back alley to see a man with his back to us at the end of it, beside him the rusted excuse of a van parked up against the fence. I knelt for a shard of glass that had fallen from a now empty window and clutched it in my hand as I jogged up beside him – slivers of pain working deeper under my skin with his step and holding it close enough on the nape of his neck that the skin went white and threatened blood.
"Keys," I hissed at him and he held his hand out so I could see them and that he was otherwise unarmed, Sarah reaching over to grab them and shoving the man off before he could take a good look at who had car jacked him.

The van roared down the street and across a corner as I wedged myself in between the two front seats and weighing the consequences of getting locked in a seat belt and potentially dying without one. Sarah glanced sharply behind her and out the back window before back to the road as another car almost intercepted us and making her spin almost out of control to avoid it. I gritted my teeth in pain as the fabric of the front seat ran ragged against my side and leaving a mark of blood that I had no doubt left in stains in half a dozen other places today as well. How much blood could you lose before you fell unconscious? Before you died. I tried to think of the number but my head was throbbing with the screaming of the tires and I found myself back and back to the thought of protecting John and the afterthought of keeping myself alive if possible. Cameron had told me that. Now Cameron wanted all of us dead and wasn't going to stop until she finished it. It wasn't fair. But life didn't work into what was fair and what wasn't. It was what you complained about and what you gritted your teeth and lived through. And this very clearly fell into the second. The tires screamed again as we spun and I lost my grip between the seats to fall back and wedged my arm into the rest to pull myself back up as we roared between graffiti covered back alleys and a wine bottle thrown at the windshield so the colour of it broke and looked like blood. I resisted my urge to lay curled up in a ball and forced myself up as we went through a tunnel and I could see faintly through the window the shape of Cameron standing in the middle and blocking the way. My throat caught and cut itself as I tried to take a breath – to process or think or do something but it went blank as Sarah turned, Cameron reached out an arm and it all spun and crashed around me.

Glass broke, metal seared and pain. There was pain and pain again and I was screaming with it and tasting blood. Too much blood. My blood. We stopped and slid and I kept my eyes closed so I wouldn't see – because I didn't want to see. We had crashed. Cameron had killed us. We were dead. Mankind was doomed. We had failed. My head was burning and every inch of me screaming as I lay there, a phantom touch at my fingers curling them back and around thin air. Reaching for something. Holding onto something. But what? What was there to hold onto but a million nameless faces that were screaming at me to get up? To move. To run. To live. That they depended on it. Depended on me. But I couldn't. I hurt and I was done. My fingers opened again and something twisted through them and cut – glass? Was it glass? No, it was wet. It was blood. My blood? Not John's. Please not Johns. Derek's. The name struck funny and I remembered the dripping of his blood as he held my hand and called out for me and the nickname I hadn't known echoing in my head with the screaming voices in between to get up. Manny. Get up. Manny. Get up. MANNY GET UP! I opened my eyes and gasped, blood raw on my tongue as I rolled and spit, glass crunching underneath me and through the window the shape of Cameron coming down into the gully with an uneven limp of someone who had been injured but didn't have the pain to go with it. I grunted and dragged myself to the front seat where John lay crumbled and desperately reached for his neck and his pulse. Please don't say he's dead. Please, please don't say he's dead.
"John," I coughed out the name and felt it – the flutter under my fingers and nearly cried out with the relief that was more painful than the hurt. He was alive. For now. "John!" He coughed harshly and gasped, fingers reaching out to me on instinct and I pressed them to my lips and pulled them away bloody so their grip smeared when he held tighter.
"Manda?" He choked and coughed again, turning his head to look at me and his eyes unfocused as blood dripped down his face.
"I'm fine," I said, swallowing the blood and bile I could taste and looking again out the window at Cameron who was closer then she was before. "We have to go."
"Mom. Mom!" He rolled to his other side to where Sarah lay and the panic came back to tear me up with that desperation that she was gone and we were on her own. I couldn't do it. Not without her. I wasn't strong enough. Not like her. Never like her. "Mom!" She groaned and turned to him, her eyes sad as she stared at him and tenderly reached out for his cheek. The blood smeared along his face as she touched him before fisting her hand in his shirt and trying to force him back.
"You have to go. The both of you. Go now," she glanced out the window before back to him, her fingers raw and bloody as she tried to push him away as he fought against just that.
"What?" John gasped, trying to stay as she fought for him to go and Cameron getting closer with every wasted second.
"We have to go," I said, sliding an arm around John to ease him back and Sarah's eyes going to me and freezing me, a look one I wasn't used to seeing and even if I had one not so easily identified: A Thank You.
"Go," she urged as John finally relented and crawling to the broken window and out onto the pavement. I worked my arms back and forth over the glass and metal as my skin ripped and bled before he could reach me and pull me out to his feet. "Go. Go. Go!" Sarah was screaming it after us as he took his bloody hand in mine and the two of us half limped, half ran up the ditch and out of sight.

Our footsteps echoed in the stone, uneven and out of step as we limped and ran, my side dripping feeble streams of blood like it was tired and just wanted to stop. Sarah's screaming came sudden and sharp so he fell to a stop and looked back desperately over his shoulder to where we had left her to die.
"We can't stop," I told him, hating the words, hating the weight and what came with them that we were alone, dying and defenceless and that we had to run and never stop or those voices would come back and scream at me again. He nodded and kept going, leaning heavy on his right leg as I favoured my left and my fingers crying out for him to let go but the rest of me begging that he wouldn't. I'd stop if he did. I'd die if he did.
"We need somewhere to hide," I told him, ducking into an abandoned garage with trucks lined up and empty with options wild of what to use them for. Drive away. Escape. She would follow. A weapon. It would give only two minutes. A way to destroy her piece by piece. We didn't have the time or material or even the strength to continue it an option.
"Come on," I dragged him with me to the truck nearest and fumbled at the door. It resisted and I pulled harder, leaving a smear of blood and wanting to scream and hit it as I realized it was locked and that I couldn't break in. Footsteps came inside the opening and I pulled John down beside me as they echoed and stopped and then echoed again. I looked around for a weapon for something – anything but my side was still bleeding and my head pounding and all I could hear was that voice to keep him alive and the face of the one who told it to me and who now wanted me dead. The footsteps came closer as we shrank back and she passed, head turning back and forth as she assessed and kept walking, that same limp there and that same unnatural element to it that she knew it was injured but didn't know the agony. I pulled around the front of the truck to take him with me and to the other one lined up, silently begging that it wasn't locked. That it was open and ready and that it would take us out of here somewhere safe and where we could rest and heal. I fell against the handle and sank to my knees, biting my lip to keep back a scream as pain recoiled so heavily I retched and panted, my vision fading in and out of focus and the threat of passing out heavy and welcoming. John lifted my head up and to him so he could kiss me and I dug my fingers into his neck to hold onto him and only pulling away when I couldn't breathe and holding on a moment longer even then. Stay alive. For John. I grabbed for the handle again and pulled, nearly crying as it opened and crawling in the front. John came in after me as the door slammed and we both froze at the click. Shit. He scrambled under the dashboard for the keys and I looked for a weapon, the stereotype of truck drivers carrying guns lost and making me angry that it wasn't true.
"Move," I told him as he came up empty and slid underneath the steering wheel to pull and work at the wires with the lessons boyfriend after boyfriend had told me about hotwiring cars and their pride when I got it right. "Come on, come on." The engine stuttered and then came to life and I spun up into the seat to find Cameron facing me out the window with a wrench in her hand and her arm pulled back.
"Get down!" John and I fell to the seat as it connected and smashed the glass, coming to a stop on top of me and just another bruise where I'd run out of skin. I sat up again, hands braced on the steering wheel when tires screeched and another truck came roaring through the plastic flaps of the opening with Sarah barely visible through the window. Cameron turned just as it hit and we recoiled back as the truck slammed into the front of ours and pinning her where the wheels still screamed. Steam billowed and thickened over the two and John was crawling out of the broken windshield onto the hood with a screwdriver in his hand and climbing on behind Cameron and already working at the chip.
"John. John? You can't do this. You don't know what you are about to do," she was saying, her voice flat and calm while the tires still spun and pinned her and the synthetic blood still scarred on her face.
"Yes, I do," John gritted through his teeth, digging back through her hair and working the screwdriver into her skull. "You were going to kill us."
"No, John. You can't do this. You're not doing the right thing. This is not the right thing, John. Things are good now. Things are fine now. I ran a test. Things are good now. I'm fixed now. You can trust me now. Everything's good now." It was like a recording, a script read of details given and the meaning lost when she coldly given.
"What are you waiting for?" Sarah screamed, hands white on the steering wheel as I jerked open the door and stumbled out, my legs bending wrong and seizing as I crawled up on the hood and to where John was still working and Cameron repeating her message and her head twitching with the pressure. The metal was hot and I flinched from it as I got closer and all at once it was over, Cameron quiet and the screeching stopped and the chip rested and in Johns trembling hand.

I stared at it, the chip and Johns shaking and it all came back in a shock that took me down and broke me. I pressed the back of my hand to my mouth as I choked on a sob and gasped around it, my heart hurting and my breathing uneven as I felt everything and its weight chipping and peeling at my skin until I was naked and then I was nothing. John slid on the hood and over to me, pulling me into his arms as I buried my face in his neck and sobbed. He whispered soothing noises in my ear as I clutched and clawed as his hair and the pulse on his neck as I felt the assurance over and over that he was safe and alive and not even hearing the voices because I was the one that cared and it didn't matter what they wanted. He was safe. He was here. And he was alive. And he was safe. With me. More tires came then and I looked over Johns shoulder as an ambulance pulled in through the flaps and the doors opened so I could see Charlie and then Derek. Derek froze and stepped back as he stared at me and I heard his name hard in my head as the voices went quiet but telling them before they went that he was not the one who should have made them go silent.

"That's quite an injury you got there," Charlie attempted, trying to make conversation and making it more uncomfortable as he touched on what he should have ignored. I rolled my head along the ambulance door to look at him, my arm rested up above me so he had a better reach of my side and clearing his throat to look away as he recognized it wasn't the right thing to say. I closed my eyes and leaned back as he continued his stitching and tried to piece apart the last few hours so that some of it made sense but too much of it running together and mad so it was all a blur and better that way when it was too painful another way.
"There. You're done," he pulled back and slid off his bloodied latex gloves to toss them into his pile of medical supplies and then holding up a roll of bandages and out for me to take. "I take it you want to take care of that yourself?" I took them from him and stood up, my shirt discarded and over my shoulder as I limped away from them and to a quiet space alone where I could unravel the bandage and then around my middle right after. Around and around and around ... I held it with one finger and kept it pinned as I went around again to cover it and loosening my fingers to the next layer before the process started again. On the fifth layer I took it as enough and wedged the safety pin through the edges to hold it shut and pressing lightly onto it, feeling into the hurt and the pain underneath.
"You alright?" I looked up to see Derek behind me and leaning against a rusted post, his arms crossed over his shoulders and trying to keep his eyes on my face as I became intensely aware that I was standing in just my bra.
"It's a stupid question," I told him, putting the rest of the bandage down and pulling open my shirt so I could tug it back on.
"I know. Thought I'd at least ask though," he said as he came closer and I tried to pull my shirt on one handed, one holding down the bandage and the other working my arms into the sleeves. "Here." He took the other side of my shirt to wrap it around me and then easing my arm in and holding it straight. I slowly turned to face him and he stared working at the buttons, fingers grazing over my stomach as he worked his way up before reaching my breasts and pulling back.
"Do you ...?" He gestured uncomfortably to them and I took up his unasked question to finish and aware that he was still and watching me as I did.
"How did you make out?" I wondered as I came to the last button and fiddling with it as an excuse to not meet his eyes. The collar was frayed and too soft under my fingers and I picked at the loose threads as they came with it and then another and another ...
"Chasing after you. Not too hard with the destruction you left," he was trying to joke but it came out too honest and we both knew it wasn't funny.
"It happens," I shrugged and looked up at him, his eyes and the definition of them coming down empty with no word to sum them up. Full. Haunted. Intelligent. Kind. Sad. Derek. They were his eyes and his name to define them. Derek.
"Yeah," he agreed, looking down to the concrete and this time almost laughing. "It happens."

The ambulance rocked with the running of the wheels and I closed my eyes as I leaned back against the seat and trying to find some safe place to crawl inside myself where it was quiet and it was empty and where I could hear my own thoughts not drowned out by others. Save John. Protect John. Run. Go. It doesn't count if no one's looking. Get up. Stay Still. Skynet. The Future. Machines. Nuclear War. Amanda Connor. I opened my eyes and stared at the flickering light that light up the back of the ambulance and the fuzzy texture that went around it. Amanda Connor. My name. His name. Our name. Our designation. Our title. Who we were and who we would one day be. Fighting the war and leading the army and saving mankind. Over and over my speech and over and over my determination to follow it and the things that interrupted it buried where I couldn't hear them. But I still could. They were still there. Just quiet. Just waiting. Waiting for that moment when I did stop and when it would all come rushing back. When I would be useful to no one and wanted by less. Weak. Unimportant. Forgivable. I let out my breath and felt my side contract with it. We all had our part to play. Our ghosts of the future playing out the moves we enforced and rewinding them as we chose that different path. I could have died today. We all could have. And what would that have done? Would someone else have lead the war or would we have been doomed as soon as the heart stopped ticking and the macabre sinking in? Did it work like that or did we have time? More moves to play and more seconds to waste? More versions of ourselves to send back and warn us and take up where we left off. I closed my eyes again and slammed my head back harder then I intended to shut it all up. I wanted peace. I wanted quiet. I wanted to sleep and never wake up. But like always it didn't matter what I wanted. Skynet. Machines. The Future. Nuclear War. Protect John Connor. Amanda Connor. Me. Not me.

"You know, I saw her do this with the last one," Charlie was saying, standing to the side and uncomfortable as Cameron lay silent and still in the abandoned car with Derek leaning over her and covering her in the thermite. He glanced at me and then back as I pledged myself to ignore and coming to terms that Cameron would be gone and that I should be fine with it before she was. Dead. Gone. Forgotten. An unmarked grave for an unknown name and a blank face. It was what we all were eventually. Graves that if we were lucky were remembered and forgotten if we were not. I shifted back against the car I was leaning on, suddenly comfortable and wishing we were done so I could escape the thought.
"John, chip," Derek called, hand out and leaning over Cameron's body as John slowly approached him and the chip still fiddled between his fingers. I walked out behind him, his bodyguard again and uncertain with the lines I'd crossed that came with it.
"The flare. Where is it?" He asked, head down and rocking the piece back and forth before putting it into her hands and between her fingers.
"Sarah?" Charlie asked, looking back to her and his face shadowed in the dim light.
"Yeah," she nodded and he reached into his bag to pull it out and slowly handing it over so his hesitation was obvious but almost hidden in perceived caution. John held it in his hands for a moment, looking back to Cameron and that at me with a question written and rewritten on his face and no words to put it to voice.
"I'm sorry," he quietly told me before he was reaching for the chip and all at once fixing it back into her scalp. I straightened as everyone else realized what he was doing and Derek made a violent move forward and John pulled out a gun to stop him.
"Back off!" Sarah told him, shoving Derek back and turning to face John with her face terrified and desperate. "John, she'll kill you."
"There's only one way to find out," he said, Cameron's eyes opening and her muscles one by one relaxing as everyone pulled back and she sat up. John levelled the gun to her face and I tightened my fingers into a fist as I remembered the blank look on her face as she moved to kill us and then the speech that she recited trying to convince us not to do the same.
"Are you here to kill me, John?" She asked, head tilted to that curious angle and the question in her voice even as it was in her words.
"Are you here to kill me?" He asked, taking back the question as she stared at him with her head still tilted and taking in the question.
"No," she said finally, the pressure in my hand not lessened with the assurance.
"Promise," he said, turning the gun and holding it out for her to take. I stepped forward and he held his arm out to keep me back as she turned the gun over in her hands with her fingers dangerously close to the trigger.
"Promise," she said, turning it away from him and directed to her and handing it back. He wrapped his fingers around it to hold onto it tightly before switching it to his other hand and reaching out for me with his empty one. I took his fingers in mine and for the first time in hours they weren't bloody. For the first time in hours they were still.

I lifted my head up to the neon sign and let the color of it etch and then burn into my eyes as somewhere private I mocked the blasphemy of the neon cross. The image of Jesus was still frozen and still with his head bowed and I tried to trace along the lines of his arms, the taut muscle of them held in pain and the tears I imagined on his face. I couldn't help drawing the comparison to John and wondered for a moment whether lightning would strike me at the thought. When it didn't I continued. Men born to die for mankind and living with the weight of that sacrifice on their shoulders. Did that make me Magdalene? I laughed bitterly at the idea of the "Whore" and how it would define to me with my history. Was it really so similar? Would it matter if it was or more so if it wasn't? I looked down at my hands and the cuts and bruises on the backs and fronts of them. I wasn't a martyr. I wasn't a saint. I was a child. A girl told to lead an army and a woman who would see it through. I let out my breath, letting it hurt and remind myself that I was flesh and blood. Human. One to be buried and not to be made into statues. Remembered and then forgotten. As people should be. I pulled myself up from the chair and walked into and down the hall when a shadow came around the corner and I stepped back. It was Derek.
"Sorry, didn't mean to scare you," he said, dropping a bag off from around his shoulder and then back up as he adjusted the weight.
"You didn't," I said, not sure what I felt of the thought that maybe it was God to strike me for my thoughts and then deciding I didn't care if he did if only to prove me wrong.
"Here," he said, holding something out to me that I couldn't see for the distance and dim light. "I think this is yours." I took it from him and held it up to the light and saw that it was the picture of me and Ally with the edges smudged and my face burned. Something terrible welled up inside me and I brought it closer to my chest so I could see the smile on her lips and eyes and something comforting in that it was a memory and thus couldn't be changed or touched.
"It took me a couple of hours but I knew it was important to you ...," he trailed off and I touched the lines of her face – memorizing the smile to them and how I remembered it when I couldn't match it on my own.
"Thank you," I looked up at him to smile but was struck by how still he had gone and what had caused him to go silent. My lips parted to ask and before I could breathe he was close and then too close and then his lips fast and hard on mine. I froze as he touched me, his hand on the back of my neck to pull me up against him and his name like a heartbeat in my lungs saying it over and over Derek, Derek, Derek ...But then he was gone, taken back with his thumb trembling over my lips and a sense of loss that made an ache crumble in my chest. He dropped his hand and walked around and past me, my heart still so loud I almost didn't notice Cameron staring and looking curious and that same name that wouldn't go quiet. Derek, Derek, Derek ...