Secrets to Keep

Cameron had observed Derek sitting on the West Balcony for 2.57 hours, but she still could not categorize his behavior. The West Balcony was a good place to observe activities at Firebase Foxtrot. The floor below was the intersection of all major hallways and the largest general assembly area on the base. But Derek didn't appear to be interested in anything occurring near him. For someone that was uncomfortable with absolute quiet, the West Balcony could be a good place to study because it was relatively isolated. But Derek had barely looked at the magazines he had brought with him. Perhaps he had refused to participate in John Connor's time travel project? That wasn't probable. Kyle Reese had been sent back already and Derek would do whatever was necessary to watch over his little brother. So why was he sitting there, arms propped on the lower guard rail, legs dangling over the side of the West Balcony, staring into nothing?

They hadn't really spoken since the Echo Park Skynet camp. When he saw her again for the first time he tried to shoot her. She had expected that, but not the dark fury she heard in his voice whenever he pronounced the word metal. When the reprogrammed B6129Q went on his rampage and she saved his life, he refused to engage her in conversation. He moved away before she could reach for him. And her biosystem had ached to touch him in the aftermath of that disaster. Her sensors had detected him trembling. That was so unusual in Derek. She wanted to reassure him that everything was safe. I won't ever let anything damage you. I will destroy Skynet to keep us together. John Connor told her not to say that to Derek. He said it would be bad for Derek's morale.

There was a point when John Connor sent her to bring him to the lab when she thought there was a glimmer of a change. For the first 0.27 seconds after he noticed she was standing by his bunk, there wasn't hostility in his eyes. It was pleasure almost the beginning of desire. Sometimes she wondered what would have happened if instead of taking him to Connor, she sat down on the bunk, pulled his hand inside her blouse, and said. "Make love to me."

The younger Amazons certainly advocated that approach. He's a man. Get naked and get in bed with him. He'll never even remember why you started fighting. It was interesting advice and she stored it in her records, but her calculations did not predict a high probability of success using that approach. He had slept beside her for weeks without attempting sex.

She had spent 1,288 hours calculating what she should say to him and had not yet charted an appropriate plan of action. The simplest explanation would be to say. "You complete my system. I cause you to function at maximum capacity. We should stay together, rather than exist apart." Nina said that would be too direct and men like Derek, did not respond well to machine logic.

There were other things she wanted to say to Derek. The program anomaly caused when they were together was the only perfect subroutine of her system. He was weaker than her physically, but in the anomaly the strength of his body supported her. His breath and heart beat powered her system. In those moments she was no longer an isolated entity, but part of a complete whole. Her system certainly craved the release of the anomaly. Only after her overloaded sensors had fired at once could she restore order in her programming. Some days she could only maintain optimal performance of her biosystem by replaying the records of their time together for her sensors. She did not want to continue existence without periodically experiencing the anomaly.

But it was dangerous to admit this, dangerous to her at least. The Resistance techs believed they had wiped out her memory when they reprogrammed her chip. Even they didn't know her programming existed beyond the chip. John Connor appeared to know this. At least some of his comments could be interpreted as references to a past she was no longer suppose to know existed. But, he hadn't shared this information with anyone else even his own inner council. Very strange behavior for the leader of the Resistance. Every time she scanned there were programming scrambles. The chains of data in her neuro-processor were woven into knots. However enough sensors remained functioning at maximum capacity for her to calculate that it would be far more dangerous for humans other than John Connor to discover her memory could not be erased.

The leader of the human resistance had proved as incalculatable to her as he did to his own council. He had already made statements that indicated he wanted to subject her to the time displacement equipment. She suspected the time displacement experiments were more pivotal to John Connor's military strategy than anyone realized except perhaps some of the Amazons. All things are intertwined to each other, Nina had said trying to explain the Great Cycle. If nothing else time displacement would explain Acevada's last words before she left Alpha and the unusual deference which with all the Amazons treated her. Two days ago, an Amazon soldier had asked her to hold a baby. Not out of need, the soldier said, but because she wanted to tell the baby about it later. There were thousands of valuable pieces of data around her. Somehow she had to discover how they fit.

. . . . . .

A shadow fell over Derek. He knew it was her without looking up.. The silhouette was too perfect. "You and I got nothing to say to each other."

"Why didn't you read my letter?"

He gazed up at her soft, warm eyes. She's a machine. She doesn't have feelings. But if he hadn't known that? Yeah, he would be apologizing. He would be begging her to accept his apology. And probably begging for something else too. There were isolated areas not too far from where they were, dark places, where privacy was assured. If only she had been merely a human collaborator, he could forgive her. Reform her. Love her. They could be in one of those dark closets now, pants around her ankles, but underneath his knees. He would show her how much he forgave her without having to use clumsy words. And if the closet was big enough, they could have some red hot make-up sex. No, it would be tender, slow baby-I-love-you-but-don't-ever-lie-to-me-again sex. He remembered how it felt making love with her on his lap. He loved it that way with her thighs pressed hard against him until the air was squeezed out between them and the heat scalded his skin. Her nipples would be directly in line with his mouth. He remembered the sounds she made when he sucked on her and wanted her like a junkie wanted a fix. Afterwards, he would take her back to his new quarters and tell his men nothing had changed. If he could forgive his wife, it was no one else's business. She would be nervous and afraid for awhile, same as when she first came to Alpha, but he would still be willing to fight every bastard that looked the wrong way at her.

Derek slammed down on his feelings fast. These fantasies were dangerous. They made him soft and weak. She was a machine. She had no purpose other than to kill his entire species. "Why do you care? They erased your memory?" He stood up. If he couldn't destroy her, at least he didn't have to spend time with her.

She did that annoying-as-hell head tilting. Okay, he had once thought it was cute. Now he just wanted to separate her head from her body.

"Everyone tells me things about our past. Commander Perry told me that when I was at Alpha, I was your wife. Major Acevada said we were always together."

He looked down at the floor below. Throwing her over the rail wouldn't damage her. Enough power would, but he didn't have a plasma rifle. There was a circuit box to the right of them, but it wouldn't be easy to jimmy one of those open without her noticing. Still the metal bitch looked distracted enough that inertia was on his side for the moment. "Did they also tell you, you were a lying bitch?"

"I apologized for deceiving you in my letter. Why didn't you read it?"

She sounded completely human and completely desperate, like human woman pleading to save her life in a machine work camp. The blade in his heart twisted deeper. He clamped his hands down on the circuit box behind him. He had to do something. If he didn't he would be lying to himself that she wasn't just a machine that she was something else, something that was capable of having feelings for him. Right now he didn't want to twist his arms behind his back to pry open a circuit box. He wanted to wrapped them around her, stroke her hair, and kiss those beautiful lips until that breathless anticipation which wiped out the fear, the world and all the machines took over them. His fingers located the main conduct wires. Maybe it would be enough if he could get the exposed wire directly against her metal chassis. "I was tired of your lies."

"I wasn't lying. If you had read my letter, you would know that. You would know everything about me."

Where those actually tears in her fake eyes? The machines had really advanced since the rubber faces. Rage burned inside him, not only toward the machine, but against that part of him, and it wasn't just the physical appendage anymore, that ached for her. "Why would you think I want to know anything about you? You're a machine. A thing. An it!"

"I'm your wife."

It was that same sad voice that brought out all the protective urges in him. In the Skynet camp, it had been the Siren call that nearly brought him to his death because he would have gladly died for a human Cameron. This thing in front of him now, it had to be destroyed before it destroyed him. Her hands were on his chest now. It felt so goddamn good, he almost forgot to breathe. He could feel the heat of her fingertips through his shirt.

"Kyle told me you loved me. He said the only time you seemed happy was with me."

"Don't say my brother's name," he snarled.

"He was my brother too!"

Those were the words that gave him the strength, not to push her away, but to cut her deep with the one knife they hadn't made him surrender. Hopefully to the metal skeleton, he prayed jamming the cable as deep as he could into her body. Her eyes went round, wider than the first night they had sex and her whole face was lite up by the power surge, but she didn't scream. The screaming was from the people that rushed in around them. Three guys tackled him. "She's metal, not human!" he tried to tell them, but it only earned him a kick that nearly caved in his ribs, and then he was pinned against the floor.

Someone shouted. "Get the fucking medics!"

He twisted his head in Cameron's direction.

She lurked up to a sitting position. Her eyes were glowing machine red. "I'm your wife!"