**Author's note** Don't spear me!!! I'm so very sorry for such a short chapter, but you guys will NOT be complaining after the next few chapters. This is just one of those set-up chapters before some filler! XD Okay, yeah seriously I'm sorry for how short it is. It was either make this one really short and not have very good inbetween stuff after what they were finally able to agree on what to do, or jump straight into the fire…which is probably what several of you would just prefer, but I have to squeeze a much-needed part into the next chapter. And this was the best way to do it. So don't murder me just yet!

And I can't remember if I've mentioned this before, but in the future, I will explain how Derek and Jesse could possibly have a child. It will be in a short-short story inbetween the first and second story arcs. Now that I think of it, I probably have mentioned this… Oh well! You just get to be reminded about it! XD

Enjoy!

--Carissa 3

P.S. Oh, you all probably will have noticed that I've changed my Pen name…for personal reasons. Instead of being Reese.9193, I am now Tulowitzki-girl91 XD Those of you who are baseball fans will catch why.

Chapter 12

"You're sure what you saw was really a tin head?" Derek asked Alex. He was standing over Alex, almost staring the poor guy down. I was sitting on one of the hotel beds with Alex, and Sarah and John were sitting across from us. Cameron, being the metal "watchdog," was standing at the window next to the door.

Alex glared up at Derek. "Of course I'm sure. How else can I not be sure if I saw a two inch diameter wire coming straight out of the back of this guy's head? He was hooked up to an entire room bigger than this full of servers, like he was some super computer."

"Did he seem dangerous?" Sarah asked before Derek could interrogate Alex any further.

Alex shook his head. "Not really, no. It was like he had the IQ of…Rainman, but the maturity of an eight-year-old." Derek and I exchanged extremely confused glances, but John and Sarah seemed to know what he was talking about. "I don't know if it'll help at all, but I got a picture of him on my phone," Alex said, pulling his cell phone out of his back pocket.

Sarah took the phone and after a couple minutes her expression changed. It was still unreadable, but that didn't mean it was a good sign. She handed the phone to John, and he ran his free hand through his hair. "It's Cromartie…or at least Cromartie's body."

"Cromartie?" I asked, obviously out of the loop.

"A triple-eight that was after John," Sarah explained briefly. "How did Catherine get his body?"

"How do you think? Ellison," John said through nearly clenched teeth. He gave me a brief glance that he'd explain everything to me later.

After grabbing the phone to see for himself, Derek cursed under his breath and began pacing. "We need to get in there and do something about this."

"We can't," Alex said shaking his head soberly.

Derek flashed Alex an incredulous look. "What do you mean we can't? This is a serious issue, we can't just sit around twiddling our thumbs!"

Alex clenched his jaw. I could see he and Derek weren't exactly going to get along very well. "I wasn't exactly finished. What I meant was that we can't see him right now. Not so soon after I've seen him. If Catherine really is what you suspect she is, don't you think it'll raise some kind of red flag?"

"We still need to take care of it. And sooner would be a hell of a lot better than later," Derek protested. "If whatever Catherine is messing with in this…thing is Skynet, then J-day is a whole lot closer that anyone wants."

After a shiver ran down my spine and an awkward silence followed, I cleared my throat. "Alex does have a point, though. If we want to be able to cripple Skynet, or even destroy it, we'll need to wait a few days. I don't like it any more than anyone else here, but do we really want to lose the opportunity? Derek, I can't believe I'm actually saying this, but if we jump without thinking, this could be pulled right out from under our feet."

Derek grumbled under his breath for a minute before finally surrendering. "Fine. But we still have to move fast. Catherine might know that her little 'project' is compromised."

It had been at least ten days since Sierra had nearly pinpointed John Connor's whereabouts. If it hadn't been for that single missed shot, Mackenzie Reese would be dead, and so would everyone else associated with her. And that meant John Connor was included in that list.

After scouring Los Angeles thoroughly, Sierra started searching the surrounding areas. Finally, she caught them. And she didn't even have to look too far. A black Dodge Ram pickup had license plates that matched those she had seen days earlier was parked in Alex Payne's driveway. Sierra had found her target again. But now was not the time to strike. Everyone was not together. She had to be strategic. If she killed now, those involved would scatter and she would lose her lead on another important target…a target that actually had a chance of destroying Skynet. It had to be stopped.

Currently, Sierra was crouched outside of the Connor's hotel room, listening to every single word being spoken about their current predicament. In three days time, Sierra would strike… Not here, but at Zeira Corporations. She would be Skynet's savior. She would be the single machine to wipe out the Resistance before it even began.