"I'm sorry," Brad apologized as he removed his mask and stood to his feet. "You're going to have to leave. I can't risk you learning anything about my company's research if you're working for them."

"Hold on," Sarah interjected, raising a hand at the man. "What's the hell's going on? I'm not with anybody. I don't even understand what you're talking about. Who is the Kaliba Group?"

Brad looked sternly into Sarah's eyes. His submissive demeanor fading further with each passing second.

"Why are you here from L.A.?" he asked. "You didn't come all the way up here just for the fetish fest. You're after something... S-Something to do with my company..."

Sarah gave the apparently paranoid Curtis an odd look. "Why would you think that? Are you in some kind of trouble?"

Brad looked away for a moment and took a deep breath as he began to consider coming clean with the woman standing in front of him. After all, what harm would it do? If she really was working for them, she would already be privy to their schemes anyway. If she wasn't, hopefully she would understand his rationale for being overly cautious.

"I'll explain. Just let me get a towel real quick to wipe up this water."

Brad elaborated after returning, "Four months ago," he began as he pressed the towel into the carpet to soak up the spilled liquid, "my team and I were beginning to make breakthroughs in computational neuroscience. In essence, we wanted to create a human brain inside a computer."

"Go on."

"But we needed more money to complete the project. That's when representatives from another tech company I'd never heard of offered to fund us. Eden Technologies. I was naive. I accepted their offer, but of course there was a catch. The FBI showed up at my office and started asking questions. It turns out the money they gave us might have been laundered. Eden Technologies has been under investigation for a long time for involvement in illegal activity... Then I did some research on their parent company, The Kaliba Group. Guess what I found out about them?"

"What?"

"Not much, they cover their tracks pretty well."

Brad stood to his feet and walked back to the kitchen to toss the now wet towel into the sink. He then turned back to Sarah and continued, "That is, until I got a call from someone who claimed to be a former employee. Said he'd been involved in all kinds of shit, assassinations, blackmail, extortion, you name it. He said he was on the run from them after he'd quit their organization. He also told me if I didn't stop asking questions, I might be next on their hit list. So I stopped, but the research continued, and once it began showing reasonable progress, I got another call from someon at Eden. They wanted to buy out my company. When I refused, I started getting anonymous threats. I can't prove it's them of course, but I'm also not an idiot. They even stole a laptop out of my car last week."

"The Kaliba Group?" Sarah asked, knowing full well it was actually Derek who'd stolen the laptop, but she'd leave that part out for now. Looking at Curtis, she could tell this conversation was beginning to agitate him. Large beads of sweat were beginning to form on his forehead and his right arm seemed to be twitching.

"I'm sorry Sarah, but you need to go." Brad declared as he made his way over to the front door and placed his hand on the knob. "I can't be sure you're not with them. If this research gets into the wrong hands..."

"Listen to me, Curtis," Sarah interrupted as she grabbed the man's hand and prevented him from opening the door. "You're right about one thing. It's not a coincidence that we met tonight," Brad's eyes widened as he gazed into Sarah's cold stare. "I don't know who Kaliba is," Sarah continued, "but the stakes here are a lot higher than you think. There's a storm on the horizon, and you're about to get caught in the middle of it."

"W-Who are you?" Brad asked, trembling.

"Im one of the good guys. I'm going on faith that you are too. Now tell me how I can find some of these people who work for Kaliba."

"I-I don't know. The only people I know of are the ones over at Eden Technologies. They supposedly specialize in..."

"Artificially intelligent security systems," Sarah continued for him, already in the know thanks to the info John had already uncovered.

"How did you know that?"

"I've done my homework. That's how I found you."

"And where do you fit into all of this? Are you like a private investigator or something? Who are you working for?"

"You don't want to know, but thanks for the info. I guess I'll have to be paying Eden a visit soon," Sarah said as she grabbed her coat, opened the front door, and stepped back into the hallway. She then gave Brad's leash that was still hanging from his collar a quick tug. "Behave yourself," she warned. "I'll be in touch soon. Cross me and I'll make your worst nightmare look like a trip to Disneyland."

Brad watched, perplexed as Sarah put her coat back on and made her way back to the elevator.

As soon as she'd returned to the lobby, Sarah pulled out her cell to call Derek, who had to take his eyes off of one of table dancers to check his phone. Seeing Sarah's name on the caller ID, he stepped away to answser.

"Yeah?" he asked after exchanging security codes.

"I'm finished here, come get me," Sarah replied.

"Already? So, how hard did you have to hit him before he talked?" he asked back, grinning.

"Not as hard as I'm gonna hit you if you spent all your money on the strip club," Sarah warned, having noticed Derek give the club more than a cursory glance as they'd passed while en route to Sabertooth's.

"How did you know I was..."

"We need to talk."

"Just tell me where you are!"

Sarah politely asked the concierge for the building's address.

...

"So did you get your fill of tits and tassles?" Sarah asked as she climbed into the SUV.

"I might've if someone hadn't kept calling me every 5 minutes," Derek grumbled as he pulled away from Curtis' apartment complex.

"We're on a mission!" Sarah snapped back.

"I'm aware of that. So what'd you find out from this guy? Did you leave him in one piece?"

"Yeah. Find us a hotel," Sarah instructed as she shook her head. "I'm gonna need a shower after tonight, and I gotta get out of this damn outfit, then we can go over everything."

Derek pulled into the first hotel he'd seen and he and Sarah made their way to the front desk.

"And how are we this evening?" The clerk greeted them.

"Fine thanks," Sarah answered. "Can we get two rooms, please? Preferably adjacent."

"I'm sorry ma'am, but I'm afraid a lot of our rooms are undergoing renovation at this time. We only have one left."

"Perfect," Sarah muttered.

"You wanna try somewhere else?" Derek asked.

"No, we'll make due, as long as there are two beds."

"You're in luck, the clerk confirmed. Room 502 contains 2 queen-sized beds."

"We'll take it."

Once the pair entered the room, Sarah sat her suitcase on her bed and retrieved a fresh set of clothes. She also grabbed the research papers she'd brought that contained the intel they'd gathered on Eden Technologies and Brad's company, Kary Corp.

"Here, brush up while I take a quick shower," she said, handing the papers to Derek. "I'll explain more after I get out."

A little while later, Derek heard the bathroom door open and Sarah re-emerged, hair wet and dressed in a fresh tank top and sweatpants. He'd been sitting on his bed, skimming over the paperwork while some old black and white movie played on the TV atop the dresser.

"Alright turn that down," Sarah demanded. Derek complied and reached for the remote to mute the volume.

Satisfied she wouldn't have to talk over the movie, Sarah took a seat on her bed and went on to explain everything Brad had told her about his research and the anonymous threats he'd been getting that he'd assumed were coming from Eden and their shady parent company, The Kaliba Group.

"What if his research is going to become Skynet? There's obviously a reason Eden wants to get their hands on it," Sarah mused.

"We don't even know if he was telling you the truth."

"He seemed genuinely spooked to me. Whatever he's working on it can't be good. It needs to be destroyed."

"So we go in, destroy his research, then what? We go after Eden or Kaliba or whoever?"

Sarah bit her bottom lip as she turned to glance at the clock. It was nearly 3AM. "I'm not sure yet. We still have a lot of ground to cover with investigating all the names on our wall. Maybe some of the others are people that can help us, people that might know something."

Derek snorted. "Yeah but it doesn't seem like it's your style to ask too many questions before you go in guns blazin'."

Sarah's eyes narrowed.

"I know you're concerned about protecting the innocent," he continued, "but we're talking about the fate of the entire human race. Andy Goode may not have understood what he was building but..."

"I get it!" Sarah growled.

"I'm sorry," Derek responded sincerely, wanting to get point across but without angering the woman.

Sarah shook her head. "No, you're right, but... I don't know, I just need to sleep on it, we should go over it all tomorrow when we get back home."

Deciding they'd call it a day at that, Sarah and Derek took turns brushing their teeth, Sarah having made sure he'd packed his own toothbrush. The two then settled in and shut off the light, Derek silently cursing the room for having separate beds.

...

After having returned home the next evening, Sarah and Derek decided to go over everything once again and make a final decision on their next course of action.

John politely requested that his mother spare him the details of her kinky escapades of the previous evening, but preferred to be kept in the loop as far as the rest of the mission went. The three of them took seats at the dining table to discuss their plans.

"So what are you gonna do about Curtis?" John asked.

Sarah cast a stern glance over at her son that all but spoke the fact that Brad's life expectancy may be growing shorter by the minute.

"Come on, Mom!" the boy protested. "We don't even know if he's good or bad. The names on the wall don't tell us anything. What if we're supposed to be protecting this guy?"

"And I don't see how creating a human brain with a computer or whatever he's trying to do could benefit the resistance," Derek interjected. "It's gotta be something Skynet's going to use against us, probably to create better infiltration models."

"Speak of the devil," he added with an scowl at Cameron, who happened to be passing through the room mid-patrol.

"Do you know anything about this research Curtis is doing?" Sarah asked the cyborg.

"No," was Cameron's only response.

"Figures," Sarah scoffed. "Well, I'm with Derek. One way or another we have to stop his research from continuing."

"We should be investigating Eden Technologies first," John suggested. "Last night I tried to hack into their network, but their firewall isn't like anything I've ever seen before. Somehow they've managed to plug all their holes, but if someone could get inside the server room in their building, I could program a virus to give me remote access. It would just have to be uploaded there first."

Sarah took a breath and pondered her son's idea for a moment. "John, Eden Technologies isn't even anywhere on the wall," she countered.

"Mom, there has to be a reason they want Brad's research this bad. We need to know why first before you just take the guy out."

"Maybe you're right, but are you sure this virus of yours will work if I can get inside their office?"

"If you can upload it into their servers, there's a 99.9% chance I'll be able to get access. I can even program it to auto-install, so all you'd need to do is find a port to plug my flash drive into, I can walk you through it."

Sarah glanced over at Derek. "We could use the intel."

"Where did you say their office is located?" she asked, turning back to John.

John pulled up the address on his laptop. "Well, it's kinda in the middle of nowhere. About 140 miles from here, then down another 5 miles of dirt road, it looks like some kind of bunker from the satellite view. Weird place for a supposed tech business. They've gotta be up to something."

"I'll do some recon on it tomorrow," Sarah declared. "If it looks like getting in won't be too much of a problem I'll plant the virus. Hopefully we can find out something useful about who these people are, what they're working on, and for who..."

"We're still going to have to deal with Curtis eventually," Derek cut in.

"I'm aware of that," Sarah replied sternly.

"Well if you're heading out to Eden, I don't mind tagging along, if you want the backup," Derek offered.

"Fine," Sarah agreed. "We'll head out first thing tomorrow morning."

But unbeknownst to any of them, John's attempts to hack into Eden's servers had caught the attention of something that may prove to be the greatest threat they've had yet to face...

Ok, I know. Apologies to Cameron fans for another chapter where she's barely mentioned, but I hope the plot that's beginning to unfold is interesting enough to make up for it for now. Stay tuned, as Sarah said, there's a storm on the horizon...