Author's Note: Jeez, I'm on a roll with these puppies! Anywho, enjoy! :D
Disclaimer: I own… pair of knock-off Ray-Ban aviators I got at a mall in DC. Not like I care that they're knock-offs – they're still aviators! Oh to the yeah! XD
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John's P.O.V.
After about five minutes of staying outside, John and Nik both headed back into Dyson's house. Truth be told, he would've rather just avoided the house altogether now, but at the moment, there were more important things to worry about, his and Nik's life being the biggest.
The interior of the house hadn't really changed since John had ran after Nik; the only addition to the scene was a zig-zagging line of bloody handprints that had been created by Dyson on the carpet in his attempt to sit up. John's stomach rolled slightly at the sight of the blood - Nik had pegged Dyson pretty damn good, not to say that he thought it was a good thing. He averted his gaze from the blood, and instead focused it on the terminator, who was currently instructing Dyson's wife to press her palm down on her husband's wound.
He walked over to stand beside the terminator, and looked down at Miles and his family.
Miles sucked in a nervous breath of air as he stared back at John and the terminator. "Who are you people?"
At that, John turned to Nik, and held one hand out, palm facing up. "Lemme see your swiss army knife for a sec, Nik," he ordered her calmly.
Nik nodded silently, and withdrew the knife from her jeans pocket. She then passed it to John, who briefly closed his hand around hers and the knife before taking it. He then flipped the blade up, and handed it off to the terminator. "Show them," was all he said. It was high time that the Dysons knew the identity and origins of the man in front of them, and this seemed like the only way to tell them.
As the terminator shrugged off his leather jacket, John walked over to Dyson's son, Danny. "Danny, I want you to come with me right now, okay?" he said to the little boy in a gentle voice. "Show me your room." He took Danny by the hand, and led him away from Nik, the terminator and the others as quickly as he could. This was something that he just didn't need to see right now; hell, seeing his own father shot was something that this poor kid didn't need to see. He shook his head, and sighed to himself as Danny pulled him to his bedroom, fear for his father now replaced with an excitement to show off his room and all his toys.
They made it into Danny's bedroom within three seconds, and John closed the door behind him as the worst of the hysteria began. He tried to block out the sound of the wife's whimpering and crying, not wishing to deal with anymore gut-wrenching horror than he had already.
A look of worry welled up on Danny's face. "What's happening to my mommy and daddy?"
John looked at the boy briefly; there was a genuine look of concern and fear etched into his face, the kind of look that came with the desire for an answer. Problem was, John didn't have the foggiest of how the hell he was going to explain the current state of things without either confusing or scaring the bejeezus out of the kid. Still, he tried his best to put it all into easy-to-understand terms.
"Okay, did you see that big man in the living room, Danny?"
Danny nodded.
"Have you ever had a secret that you could only tell to your mom or dad, but you couldn't tell it to anybody else, and they couldn't tell it to anybody else?"
Again, Danny nodded.
"Well, that's what's happening to your mom and dad right now - the big man's telling them a secret that he can't tell to anybody else, and your parents can't tell it to anybody else, either," John explained to Danny quietly.
Danny tilted his head to the side. "What happens if mommy and daddy tell somebody the secret?"
About fifty million different answers popped into John's head, and all of them had to do with Judgment Day and the war against the machines. We burn in fucking effigy, 95% of humanity gets erased from existence, we duke it out with machines for god knows how long, we live in fear every damn day...
He wanted nothing more than to give Danny the straight-up facts about what would happen if anybody else were to find out about the terminators and the war. But, the only thing to come out of his mouth as a coherent sentence was, "Then we're in big trouble, Danny. We're in VERY big trouble."
Just then, there was a soft knock on the door, followed by a creak as it opened, and Nik and Danny's mother walked in. The wife had a stoic, emotionless expression on her face, so as not to scare Danny, but from where he stood, John could see a traumatized, terrified gleam in her eyes. Jesus, John's thoughts sighed. Lady's had one helluva night.
She made her way over to Danny, scooped him up, then sat on the edge of his bed with him in her lap.
"Mommy?" Danny said softly. "Are you okay?"
"I'm okay, baby, I'm okay." His mother pressed a small kiss to his forehead, and breathed deeply.
At that, John felt a gentle tug on his arm. He turned his head slightly to look at Nik, who was nodding her head towards the hallway. "C'mon," she whispered to him.
The two stepped out into the hallway, closing the door to Danny's bedroom quietly behind them, and walked back to the living room.
"How'd it go?"
Nik gestured to the terminator, who was standing in the middle of the room, pulling a black glove onto his left hand. "See for yourself," she said with her lips pursed.
John glanced briefly at the terminator, then at Dyson, still sitting on the floor with a mixed look of fascination, disgust, and confusion on his face.
"So, now you know...about him."
Dyson swallowed, and nodded. "More than I asked for, but yes, I know about him," he panted. "God, I can't believe that my work leads to his creation. That's...my god, that's incredible."
Nik snorted. "Ha, you think that's incredible, wait 'til you hear about the other shit that comes from your work. You're gonna fucking LOVE that."
Sarah, who up until this point had been silently observing the scene in front of her, spoke up from the corner of the living room she was nestled in. "Better take care of that shoulder first 'fore you tell him what he oughta' know."
The terminator nodded. "She is correct. Dyson's shoulder must be treated first before we can tell him anything." He crouched down beside Dyson, and examined his shoulder. He then looked at the wife, who had re-emerged from Danny's room. "You - bring me a roll of gauze and anything to make a sling."
The wife nodded silently, and ran off to get the gauze and other materials. As for John, he stood with Nik, and watched the terminator treat Dyson's shoulder. He knew well enough that his and Nik's guardian didn't need any help patching up the injured man's shoulder; really, the most the two teens could do at the moment was to sit and wait patiently. So, that was what John and Nik did - they cleared out of the living room, headed for the dining room, took a seat, and waited.
o-o-o-o-o-o-o
Nik's P.O.V.
Eleven minutes - and three "Jesus, this hurts!" - later, Dyson's shoulder was gauzed and fixed up, and he, his wife, me, John, Sarah, and the terminator were all sitting around the dining room table, listening to the terminator fill Dyson in on what happens in the future. Truth be told, Dyson took the news pretty well; I was surprised the man wasn't twitching or shaking at how much damage he'd cause.
When the terminator wrapped up with giving him the rundown of Judgment Day and beyond, Dyson stared at the floor with a blank look on his face. "I feel like I'm gonna throw up," he said quietly.
"Yeah, welcome to our world," I muttered.
Dyson ignored my comment, and shook his head. "You're judging me on things I haven't even done yet..." He again shook his head. "How were we supposed to know?"
From the back of the room, Sarah scoffed. "Yeah, right. How were you supposed to know?" Her lips curled into a disgusted sneer as she glared at Dyson. "Fucking men like you built the hydrogen bomb. Men like you thought it up." Sarah shook her head, and hopped off the counter she'd been perching on. "You think you're so creative...you don't know what it's really like to create something, to create a life, to feel it growing inside you..."
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw John sigh, exasperation written all over his face. "Mom," he groaned, not in the mood to deal with his mom's ranting and bullshit.
"All you know how to create is death, and destruction-"
"Mom!"
Sarah froze mid-sentence, and looked at her son with a question mark on her face. I looked at her, and shrugged. "You were getting a bit...off-topic," I half-frowned.
John nodded in agreement. "Yeah, look - we need to be a little more constructive here, okay? We still have to stop this from happening, don't we?"
"But, I thought, aren't we changing things right now? Aren't we changing the way it goes?"
"At the moment, not really. All we've done so far is talk." I absent-mindedly started drumming my fingers on the table. "We've gotta do more than talk if we really wanna make a dent in this little change-up."
"That's right. There's no way I'm gonna finish that neuroprocessor...not now, I mean, forget it. I'll quit Cyberdyne tomorrow."
"That's not good enough," Sarah said bluntly. I had to agree with her - simply dumping the project and leaving the company wasn't going to cut it. Dyson was gonna have to go hardcore if he wanted to keep the world from being nuked to fucking kingdom come.
"No one must follow your work," the terminator added to Sarah's statement.
"Right. Alright, then, um...we have to destroy all the stuff at the lab. The files, the disk drives, everything here - everything. I don't care."
I half-smiled to myself. NOW the man was talking.
Dyson inhaled sharply all of a sudden, like he'd just remembered something important. "The chip," he said as he looked at me, John, and the terminator. "Do you know about the chip?"
"What chip?"
"They keep it in the vault at Cyberdyne," he explained. "Must be from the other one like you."
The terminator's eyes flashed briefly. "The CPU from the first terminator."
"Son-of-a-BITCH, I knew it!" Sarah cursed before sliding off the table and stalking to the window behind were we were sitting.
I looked at John, my mouth twitching to one side curiously. "Long-standing theory of hers?"
John sighed. "Yep. She thought the company that owned the computer factory covered up the bullshit with the first terminator and the thing's chip." He glanced at his mom pacing in front of the window like a caged tiger, and pressed his lips together briefly. "Turns out she was right."
I pursed my lips. "Doesn't surprise me," I shrugged, observing Sarah as she ranted about "those lying motherfuckers" and a ton of other incoherent crap.
Meanwhile, Dyson tried to explain to us why his company still had the chip. "It was scary stuff, radically advanced. I mean, it was smashed; it didn't work. But, it gave us ideas, took us in new directions, I mean, things we would've NEVER..." His speech slowed as the truth hit him. The chip was what would start it all - the invention of his microprocessor, Judgment Day, the war against the machines - every single damn thing imaginable. The look on Dyson's face as he realized that he'd based his machine off of an eraser-sized chip with VERY dangerous potential was one of horror. "All my work was based off it."
"It must be destroyed."
I tilted my chair back, and faked shooting a basketball. "And another thing in the junkpile." I licked my lips, and stared at the ceiling in thought. "So now what?"
Sarah shot me a pointed look. "We fucking wipe away everything, Nik, that's what."
Shit, she's honestly up for another round of sabotage? She's fucking lost her marbles.
"You're looking to bomb Cyberdyne, aren't you?" I sighed boredly, knowing that she was going to very passionately answer yes to that.
"Damn right, I am. I fucking refuse to wait around for the world to be blown up anymore. Cyberdyne is going down the fucking toilet." Sarah looked at Dyson with a steely glint in her eyes. "Can you get us in past security?"
Dyson looked a little taken aback by Sarah's question, but he nonetheless nodded. "I think so, yeah. When?"
His answer was a hard look from all of us, and the terminator rising to his feet slowly.
Dyson's face paled slightly. "Now?"
John and I nodded in unison. "Yes, now," we said.
"The sooner, the better," Sarah added. "Nik, John - you go with the terminator. I'm getting the station wagon and bringing it here. We'll load up weapons, and then we're outta here." To Dyson's wife she said, "Get everything in the office, throw it in a trashcan, and light it up."
"All of it?"
"All of it." Then, with that said, Sarah ran out of the house, and off to get the wagon.
As I watched Sarah dart out of the house, I let out a long sigh. "Bombing fucking Cyberdyne...this'll make for a great childhood memory," I muttered, my voice oozing sarcasm.
"Hey, at least you'll have childhood memories after tonight." John paused, scooted over next to me, and put an arm around my shoulders. "If this goes okay, we won't have to worry about getting torched by nukes."
"You have a point there." I rested my head in the curve of his neck, and closed my eyes. "I want it to be over, John. I just want it all to fucking be over."
"Me too, Nik." He took my left hand with his free one, and squeezed it gently. "Me too."
I kept my head on John's shoulder for a few more seconds, then I pulled away, and stood up. "C'mon, we oughta wait for your mom outside."
"Good idea." John stood up, and we went out to the front to wait for Sarah, who pulled up in the station wagon about seven seconds after we walked outside.
"Perfect timing," I mumbled to myself before jogging to the back of the wagon, opening the door, and proceeding to toss out everything I could get my hands on.
Once everything we had was out of the wagon, me, John and Sarah threw it in the back of the pickup truck. Then, we rounded the others up, squeezed into the car, and headed off in the direction of Cyberdyne.
As we rode through the silence of the night and down the inky-black roads and highways, I stared out the window on my right with a blank look on my face. For better or for worse, things were going to change tonight - I just hoped to god that they were gonna change for the better.
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WOO! WE'RE GETTING CLOSER TO THE ACTION! :D ENJOY THIS ONE, AND STAY TUNED FOR CHAPTER THIRTEEN!