Technical Sergeant Dave Wells leaned back in his chair, removed his glasses and rubbed his eyes. He looked up at the other people in the room, all diligently working at their own computer consoles, their heads down and chatter to a minimum. He tilted his head and cracked his neck, reached up and massaged the tense knots of muscle above his shoulders with one of his hands. "I need a break," he muttered. He'd been working for hours, staring at a computer screen since seven in the morning. He looked at his wristwatch and saw it was coming up on twelve. And lunch, he thought.
He leaned over to the uniformed female sergeant on his left. "Kelly; you wanna get some coffee?"
"Are you done?" she asked.
"Not yet," he replied. "But I've been staring at the screen for nearly five hours and I've got a headache."
She pondered it for a moment and looked at her own screen. They weren't done by a long shot, but Dave had a point. "Sure," she said. "I could do with a little break, too; the Colonel's been working us like slaves lately."
"I should have joined the army," Dave sighed wistfully as he got up out of his chair and stretched his arms and legs. His curse in life had been his gift with computers. The air force had seen the potential of a computer whizz kid who was just as agile physically as he was on a PC, and he'd quickly been snatched up and found himself working for US Cyber Command. "Life would be easier."
"What, getting shot up in Helmand? Forget it," Kelly smirked.
"At least those guys get days off," Dave shot back. Life had been pretty cushy until lately. He'd done tours of Iraq and Afghanistan but because he'd been part of Cyber Command he'd never had to leave the base. It was a demanding job but now things had got even worse since that hacker had created a roving back door in the defence network. His unit had been tasked with eliminating it; a task that they'd been assigned to for months without success, and the CO was breathing down all their necks for it.
"Goddamn Colonel Richards," Kelly agreed.
Dave tidied up his files and stuck them into a drawer in his desk, pushed the chair in and was about to turn the screen off when something flashed up and caught his attention. A dialogue box flashed an urgent red and lines of data scrolled down the screen so quickly he had to skim over it to get the gist. All thoughts of coffee disappeared from his mind immediately as he read over the text.
"Colonel!" he shouted out to his CO. The tall, rakish officer barged through the rows of analysts and programmers working on their own consoles, who were all peering over their screens like meerkats at him.
"What is it, sergeant?" Richards asked as he stood behind Dave and looked at his screen.
"We've got another hack," he said, urgency and nervousness in his voice. Kelly stood there and watched the screen too, staring unmoving as she made sense of the jumble of data streaming onto the computer terminal.
Dave sat back down in his chair and his fingers over the keyboard as he furiously typed, trying to get a fix on whoever or whatever was doing this. "Come on, you bastard," he muttered as he ran a trace and ran an analysis on the data he was receiving and get some idea of what was going on.
"Where's it coming from?" Richards asked impatiently. If it was domestic – some hackers in a garage somewhere – then they'd get the feds down there like a flash, and if it was foreign; Chinese, North Korean or Iranian would be his guess, then they could try and employ a few tricks of their own.
"Unknown," Dave shook his head in disbelief. "I can't lock it down; whoever's doing this is rerouting it from over a dozen military and civilian satellites; they're covering their tracks. I can't even tell what it is, let alone where it's coming from." The signals he was getting and the little data they'd got didn't correspond to anything he'd ever seen before. "Analysis is inconclusive," he said. "It keeps growing and changing faster than we can track it."
"What's it doing?" Richards asked. "Can we at least figure that out?"
Another round of rapid fire typing brought up another window that listed everything that had been accessed. There were millions of files that had been probed. Nothing had been changed, however; there were no attempts to bring down the defence network or scramble their codes. None of the usual cyber terror tactics they'd seen before.
He typed and typed, and watched as whatever it was attacked Cyber Command's defences and made short work of it. He threw up firewalls and they were torn down. He had no idea what the hell this thing even was. "It's like a virus, but it keeps changing. We're throwing everything we've got at it but it keeps adapting before our defences can touch it."
"Jesus," Kelly whispered. "It's just like before."
Richards' jaw set and he glared down at the screen, privately agreeing with the woman. At least they'd caught the hacker who'd created the roving back door; he was now rotting in jail and probably would be for the rest of his life. So far they'd been able to delete the program, but this new cyber attack, whatever it was, had blown that right out of the water. It hadn't even needed a back door to get in; it had made short work of their cyber defences. He'd seen some pretty good hacking attempts but nothing like this; this was fucking online blitzkrieg.
"Whatever it is, sir," Dave swallowed nervously as even more depressing news appeared on screen. "It's in: complete access to everything."
His CO blinked as the words sunk into his brain. The ramifications, the consequences of this could be dire. "You're telling me whoever this is has access to all military communications?"
"Yes sir: I'm telling you that whatever this is, it's got full access across the board; from payroll to our nuke subs. If they want to send a launch order to our boomers they can do."
"We're not even in control of our own military?" the colonel gasped. How the hell could this happen?
"It's not doing anything," Kelly noted. "It's just... stopped.
Why would it do that? Dave asked himself. It had total access and as far as he could tell it wasn't doing anything he'd expect to happen if someone had managed to effectively run rings around Cyber Command. Were they doing it just to show they could?
Kelly, now at her own computer console, was analysing and tracking the same attack, and suddenly she saw a lot more activity spring up. A list of files popped up as they were accessed. "Whatever it is, they're interested in our UCAV programmes," she said warily. The virus was soaking in everything they had on unmanned aerial vehicles, absorbing it like a sponge. Whether it was trying to take control of them or simply discover technical secrets, she didn't know. She guessed they'd find out soon.
"Listen up, all of you!" he shouted out. Every single person in the room stopped what they were doing and looked up at their CO, now red in the face and looking supremely pissed off. "We've been hacked; the defence network is compromised and we're at the mercy of this... virus – for lack of a better term – until we can destroy it. I want everyone in this room to stop what they're doing and start working out how we're going to beat this thing, whatever it takes. Get on it."
He stormed out of the room, supremely pissed off and dreading what he was going to have to do now. The Joint Chiefs and the president were gonna be pissed off about this. The only plus side he could see was that it might light a fire up under Congress' ass and get them to sign up to this new Skynet programme. Once they had their own dedicated AI running Cyber Command this kind of thing shouldn't ever happen again. It can't come a moment too soon, he said to himself.
At only nine-thirty the internet cafe wasn't exactly heaving, but it was busy enough to make Knowles nervous as he sat at his computer. There were a few people around; a couple of backpackers who were uploading photos onto some website. Facebook or the like; he had no idea. His daughters were into that kind of crap, not him. He could just about work his way around a computer but truth be told he didn't like the things all too much, and was more than happy to let his wife do most of the legwork when it came to things like accessing their accounts online or using the internet to book a vacation.
An old lady sat in the corner, typing away and browsing at something or other, he wasn't paying that much attention, only concerned with making sure none of them were watching him. After Kate and Amy had left he'd changed into jeans, boots and a thin sweater, packed a rucksack with spare clothes and his disassembled rifle. He'd left his house five minutes after his family had gone, locking it all up behind him. He'd driven the Kaliba SUV around aimlessly for an hour or so before taking it to a more run down area and deliberately leaving the car on a street corner with the keys still in the ignition. He'd then taken three buses to get him to Van Nuys, and he'd spent the night sat in the terminal until morning, all the while he'd decided to do some research to help him piece together what was going on. He'd called his wife that evening, and she'd confirmed they'd safely made it to San Diego, though she hadn't been happy at all about it and had brought up all the problems in their marriage, most she'd claimed, were his fault. He didn't care: they were alive; that was all that counted for now. He'd rather be divorced than a widower.
Knowles brought up the Google homepage and started to type Sarah Connor, into the search engine. He stopped before he pressed enter. Danny had bragged about his AI, in the way that all kids his age had to gloat about something. He remembered him saying how his AI could sweep vast swathes of the internet in a single second. Was it looking for him now? He wondered. If they did send out a team after him and his family then chances are they'd still be looking for him, and if this computer was half as good as Danny had said then they'd probably have it searching for him. Maybe this search wasn't such a good idea, he thought, but he needed some answers.
He held down the delete key and erased the name, replacing it with female domestic terrorists. Within seconds the results came up, and sure enough, Sarah Connor's name was mentioned on fourteen of the top twenty sites shown. He clicked on one, an article by the LA Times that mentioned her recent reappearance after being dead for several years. That wasn't it. He went back and tried another, a psychiatric report by a Dr Peter Silberman. The Dangers of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder: The Sarah Connor Case.
Knowles clicked on it and started to read the life story of Sarah Connor. He'd just gotten into it when a waitress with what he could only describe as the best ass he'd ever seen in his life came over and deposited a large cup of steaming black coffee and a large bagel. "Anything else, sweetie?" she asked, flashing him a beaming smile.
"That's great, thanks," he pulled out a $20 and pushed it into her hand. Rear-of-the-year beamed her pearly whites at him again as she pocketed the note.
"You need anything else, you just let me know," she said, before turning round and giving him another view of spectacular peach. He was married but didn't see the harm in window shopping.
He sipped the steaming hot strong coffee and carefully read the report. It documented how a 19 year old Sarah Connor had been the victim of a stalker back in 1984. She'd been out when her roommate and her boyfriend had been murdered in their shared apartment; blown to pieces by a heavy calibre weapon. She'd then been abducted by a man Silberman described as a delusional schizophrenic, who'd made Sarah believe she was being hunted by a machine from the future that was programmed to kill her, and that her – at the time unborn – son would one day lead a rebellion against machines hell bent on wiping out the human race.
"Not that delusional," Knowles muttered with a mouthful of bagel. He wondered if the machine she'd claimed to have seen – if she'd really seen anything – was like Baldy. In his mind's eye he could still see the gunmetal grey skull and the glowing red eye staring at him. He shivered slightly at the thought of it and read on, murmuring to himself as he scanned the text.
"Her abductor – Kyle Reese's – claims of a futuristic assassin were given weight in her mind when another individual, thought to be an accomplice of Reese, assaulted West Highland Police Station, killing seventeen police officers single handed and wounding four more. It's believed the individual had extensive military training, and the attack was undertaken to extract Reese and Sarah Connor, who were under protective custody in the precinct at the time."
There was a photo of the individual who'd attacked the station, a thumbnail image at the bottom of the paragraph of a man in a black leather jacket and sunglasses, taken by the station's security cameras. He clicked on the image to enlarge it.
"Jesus Christ!" Knowles choked on the hot coffee and barely managed to stop himself from spewing it all out onto the screen. He coughed violently and struggled to clear his throat, causing the other patrons, and rear-of-the-year, to stare at him with concern. "Sorry," he mouthed to the pretty waitress. He looked at the image again to be sure. "It can't be..." The photo he was looking at – of the man who assaulted West Highland Precinct in 1984, killed seventeen police officers and disappeared into the night, only to reappear again twelve years later, break Connor out of a mental institution and vanish once more – the same man that, according to the rest of the article, Sarah Connor believed to be one of these terminator machines - was... "Steroids."
The giant mountain of a man who was head of security at Kaliba; the same man who'd recruited him, in fact, was a goddamn cyborg: the same one that she and this Kyle Reese guy claimed were after her. His heart was racing at a mile a minute but he forced himself to read on to the end of the article, greedily absorbing every single scrap of information, every last word.
"What the fuck have I been doing?" he asked himself. Sarah Connor, John Connor, machines, Danny Dyson and his father Miles, Cyberdine, Skynet, artificial intelligences... This wasn't a fucking coincidence, he realised. "It's all real," he muttered. There really were terminators out there, and Baldy and Steroids were among them. Did that mean all of Kaliba were machines too?
He logged off the computer, grabbed his bag and finished off his coffee in one swig, and left the table, abandoning his half eaten bagel on a plat next to the desktop. He smiled at the waitress as he left the cafe and stepped out onto the street. All of a sudden he knew what he needed to do. Sarah Connor wasn't crazy. She'd been right all along. He realised he'd been on the wrong side. Kaliba were at least partly run by there terminator things, and they were selling an AI to the air force, which is what Sarah Connor had claimed would end up nuking the world and trying to wipe out the human race.
"Not if I have anything to do with it," he growled as he walked down the street. Kaliba wanted to find him: then they were going to get him, and he was going to ram their AI right down their fucking throats.
Water boiled and steamed, sauce bubbled over, and the smell of onions and chicken cooking wafted through the room. There were seven people in the room; two stood up whilst the rest waited at the table. Six were hungry, two were so famished that the mere scent of cooking food had their stomachs growling aggressively and set them off, salivating like dogs.
"I'm starving," Savannah muttered. The smell of food – proper, actual food – being so close, almost ready, and yet so far was driving her crazy. After a lifetime of having to scavenge, hunt or forage for mere morsels, it was all she could do to not jump up from her seat at the dining table and devour the first edible thing she saw. She looked across and saw her younger self, sat next to Ellison and showing considerably more restraint.
The younger Weaver sat quietly with her hands folded on her lap beneath the table and just watched everyone else. She stared at the older redhead, unaware of who she really was, and looked away when their eyes met. The other lady scared her.
"Elbows off the table," Ellison said to Future-Savannah.
"Sorry," she said sheepishly, instantly complying. She took a swig of the orange juice from her glass and held it in her mouth for a long moment, savouring the taste for as long as she could before she swallowed it in a big gulp. "This is good," she grinned.
"It's only orange juice," Danny spoke up from the foot of the table.
"I'm sorry, rich boy," she shot back. "Not all of us were raised on champagne and caviar."
"Not all of us were raised in a barn, either," Danny replied, seeing droplets of juice run down her chin.
"What's the longest you've gone without food for?" she glared at him, "a few hours; a day, maybe?"
John rolled his eyes and groaned inwardly. "Savannah..."
Both girls looked at him and then the younger Savannah looked to her older counterpart. "You're called Savannah too?" she asked.
"It's a good name; all the cool people are called Savannah," Future-Savannah winked. She felt guilty for being so hard on her younger self earlier. She'd thought she was being cruel to be kind – sparing her the truth that would drive her nuts and turn her into a drug addicted alcoholic doing whatever for her next fix.
John turned to his mom and Cameron stood up at oven and cooking. "Do you need a hand?" John asked his mom.
"I'm okay," Sarah sighed. She poured the rice from the saucepan into the colander and let it drain into the sink as steam erupted from it. Before John, Ellison had offered to cook, or help her, and she'd declined. And Cameron had hovered over and tried to help, too. But she'd been insistent on doing it alone. This was John's homecoming meal and she wanted to do it herself.
As Sarah stirred the sweet and sour sauce once more Cameron inspected the rice, increasing magnification as she scanned it. "It's over-boiled," she said. It had been cooked too long and had turned mushy and soggy.
"Do you want to eat it or wear it?" Sarah hefted the sauce-filled pan. She wasn't going to take cooking advice from a machine.
"Neither," Cameron deadpanned.
"Just... get out of the way," she groaned. Cameron heeded her warning and stepped back, deciding not to comment anymore and let Sarah work. Sarah dished out the rice onto six plates and then ladled out the sweet and sour chicken on top. The safehouse hadn't been stocked with any meat, since anything perishable would have gone off long before they'd had chance to use it; on the way back from Oxnard Airport they'd driven into a small grocery store and she'd bought some chicken, onions, peppers and peas, and orange juice. John's first home cooked meal deserved more than just MREs or tinned sausage and beans, and she'd wanted to make an effort.
She picked up three plates and carried them over to the table – years of working as a waitress paying off as she balanced one on her forearm. She didn't see Cameron carrying the other three with ease and setting them down at the other places, too. The elder Connor then sat down at the head of the table, opposite Danny, and Cameron seated herself between John and his mother, something Sarah grudgingly noted had happened a lot lately.
Barely had the two women sat down before John and Savannah attacked their meals with ferocity, picking up their forks and shovelling food into their mouths as quickly as they could, as if it might be taken away from them at any minute. Sarah, Little-Savannah, Ellison and Danny watched the two of them with awe at the speed they were devouring their meals.
Danny picked at his and took a mouthful. The chicken was overdone and he could tell the sauce came from a jar, even without seeing the empty glass vessel on the kitchen sink. It was okay, but he could tell already that Sarah Connor was no chef.
"Mmm... mom, this is amazing," John said with a mouth still full of food. He noticed that his mom hadn't made any for Cameron, and she just sat idly next to him, upright and alert as always, watching all of them.
"It's just sweet and sour chicken," Sarah shrugged modestly between mouthfuls. She found it flattering that he and Savannah seemed to like it so much. "What did you eat in the future?" she asked them.
"Not much," Savannah replied. "Rats, squirrels; if we were lucky, maybe dog."
"Ewww," Little-Savannah screwed her face up.
"It's not that bad," she said to her miniature self. "Goes well if you fry it."
"In some countries it's a delicacy," Ellison pointed out. "They eat dogs in Korea."
John shovelled more rice and chicken into his mouth. He'd thought that the KFC he'd eaten was good, but this was a delight! "Eating dog in the future was like Christmas dinner and Thanksgiving all rolled into one."
"Next you'll say that people ate other people," Danny said. He didn't doubt what they were saying, after seeing inside Cameron's head, but the future they'd described sounded like pure hell. How could people go as low as that?
"That happened too," Cameron added. She'd seen tunnel rats in her future eat the bodies of people who'd either been killed by machines, each other, or died of disease. Medical treatments were much like in the 18th Century; consisting of hacking off limbs too badly damaged to be saved. There'd always been tunnel rats lurking outside infirmaries, waiting for either a limb or a dead body to be removed.
"Do you want some?" John shifted his plate to Cameron. He'd noticed how his mom hadn't made her any, knew it was as much a gesture as it was because she didn't need to eat. You're not one of us, was the unconscious message he could see his mom trying to send Cameron. He wasn't having any of it, though. Cameron meant more to him than anyone sitting at the table could possibly realise, and he wasn't going to let her be outcast, even though she probably wouldn't care.
"You finish it," Cameron said, pushing his plate back to him. John would need to eat more to put the weight back on that he'd lost in the future. She'd prefer him to finish it off and be satiated than for him to go hungry for her sake.
Sarah was surprised at her son offering food to Cameron. Surely, after starving in the future, and knowing how tight their budget always was in the present, that they shouldn't waste food on a machine that didn't need to eat. She was about to say as much but she spotted another look shared between them and decided it would be best left for another time.
"What did you do for all that time in the future?" Ellison asked older Savannah.
"Waited for John, pretty much," she replied. "We spent most of it in Mexico; we were so remote we never even saw any machines for a few years. It wasn't too bad then; we were on the coast so there were plenty of fish to eat, until the machines caught on and put machine patrols along the beaches and in the water." Trying to catch fish had been a serious risk; she remembered watching, as a ten year old girl, one of the men in the village out fishing. He'd been attacked by hydrobots and torn to shreds in front of her eyes. After that she'd never gone in the water again. Few ever did.
Ellison couldn't help but notice she'd said 'we' and looked him straight in the eye as she'd spoken. It was so strange to think he'd taken care of her for so long; he couldn't even imagine trying to survive in the future John had come from, let alone bringing up a little girl as well. She'd said he did a good job but he'd noticed she wasn't exactly stable. She had issues; he didn't know with what or where they'd come from, but she wasn't compos mentis, and he wondered how good a job he really had done, or would do if he looked after her younger self. Maybe nobody who lived through the war would really be normal by today's standards, he thought. Living through that must put a lot of strain on people. Either way, he wondered if he'd be able to do right by her if he had to. Weaver had mentioned grandparents back in Scotland; would she be better off with them? He asked himself.
"When we travelled up north towards the border it got worse, and when we made it into LA it was like nothing I'd seen before, even after the bombs went off..." she was about to paint a vivid description of just how hellish the future was but she looked at her younger self and decided that no seven year old should have to hear about bleached skulls and machines slaughtering humans on sight, or how people raped, pillaged and murdered to get what they wanted after the world broke down. It'd probably give the kid nightmares, and she had plenty of her own. "We can't let it happen again," she finally said.
A tense, awkward silence fell over the room. Nobody could think of anything to say after that; Savannah had unintentionally buzz-killed the dinner, and everyone sat quietly, stating down at the table or into space, either imagining or remembering the hellish future that befell the world if they failed.
"It must be really bad if it makes this food taste good," Danny said. Ellison couldn't resist a snigger, and he was quickly followed by Little-Savannah and John. Even Cameron smiled slightly at the insinuation on Sarah's cooking.
"No dessert for you, then," she shot back with one eyebrow raised. Touche, she smirked inwardly. Danny remained silent, unable to think of a comeback.
"I'll have his," both John and Savannah instantly blurted out eagerly.
"You don't even know what it is," Ellison pointed out to them.
Savannah simply shrugged her shoulders nonchalantly. "It's dessert; it's sweet: I want it."
"Key lime pie with whipped cream or custard. Cameron, it's yours," Sarah uncharacteristically offered the cyborg.
"She doesn't even need to eat," Danny protested. Sarah obviously hadn't made it, not having had the time or in his opinion, the skill to make one herself. It must be store-bought. And it sounded pretty damn good to him.
"Nor do you, apparently," Sarah said, pointing at the half eaten meal still left on his plate. Without a moment's hesitation the elder Savannah reached over and grabbed said plate, liberating it from its owner and placing it down over her empty one. She promptly dug into Danny's meal as everyone watched, amazed at how she could pile so much food away so quickly. Sarah simply smiled; it seemed she had another fan of her cooking now. She had a feeling she'd get far fewer complaints at mealtimes from now on.
The desert air was still warm at night, the landscape empty and barren; just how Cameron liked it. It was easier to spot anything approaching in the flat terrain of the desert all around them. The only breaks in the monotonous, rocky ground were patches of sparse scrubland dotted around, but she was confident there was nothing hiding in them. She scanned the area and found only eleven heat signatures indicative of living creatures; none were larger than a rat.
Everyone had gone to bed over an hour ago, and Cameron had decided to patrol the perimeter. John, Savannah, and even Ellison had offered to take their turns but Cameron had declined. They needed sleep, especially John. Cameron wanted to be sure he'd recovered fully from the hunger and exhaustion he'd suffered in the last few days in the future, and until she was satisfied he had she was going to be strict with him. She trusted his abilities but he was still only human: people got tired and made mistakes, and when it came to ensuring his safety, mistakes were unacceptable.
She found herself in a difficult position with John. His safety had always been paramount but now even more so. She loved him: she'd come to terms with what she felt for him, and as such the thought of him coming to any harm disturbed her deeply. But John had grown over the past three months; he was a leader in his own right and he'd shown in the future that he led from the front. He'd told her – both Future-John and her John – that he'd felt ashamed that so many people had died either for him or because of him. He wasn't going to risk anyone else by sending them to fight, not without risking himself along with them. It would make her life difficult but at the same time she felt a sense of pride in how much he'd grown. He'd been ahead of schedule in how much he'd needed to learn, before the jump to the future. Now he was further ahead than she could have possibly predicted. The three months he'd spent in the future had matured him by ten years.
She marched clockwise around the safehouse and held an AK-47 in one hand as she swept the area for movement. She looked out to the east, at the vast expanse of desert in front of her that travelled as far as even her eyes could see. Somewhere out there, Kaliba were building machines. They had a fully sentient, sapient and self aware AI that would soon become Skynet.
Boots crunched on loose rock behind her and she spun around in an instant, bringing her rifle to bear.
"Don't shoot," John held up his hands in mock surrender, a slight grin spread across his lips despite the assault rifle pointed at his chest. Cameron immediately lowered it as he stepped closer to her. He had his own HK-417 held in his hands and a pair of magazines clipped together, loaded into the rifle. For over a month in the future he hadn't gone anywhere without at least one loaded rifle on him and spare ammunition. Even in the past, out in the desert and away from civilisation, he didn't feel safe anymore. He wondered if he ever would again.
"You're meant to be asleep," Cameron told him.
"Can't," he said with a shrug. "Want some company?"
There was no hesitation at all from Cameron, she just nodded and John stepped beside her. They started walking the perimeter once more, side by side. John hadn't been lying when he'd said he couldn't sleep. There was a lot on his mind and a hell of a lot more rode on them being able to find Kaliba and take it out. He had no idea how they were going to hope to do that after what Danny had told them. UCAVs – combat capable versions of the drone they saw in the desert and that crashed into Zeiracorp tower – mercenaries, and he'd bet every last thing he had – which he depressingly realised, wasn't much – that they had a terminator with them as well. They didn't know what happened to the machine posing as a water delivery guy after Cameron threw him down the hill. Even if he was gone; where there was one, there'd be more. They wouldn't take any chances when it came to protecting the developing Skynet, just as Cameron and his mom had always been unwilling to risk him.
John looked up at the stars in the sky, still unused to seeing them after being so long under radioactive dust clouds hanging in the high atmosphere. He'd been trained by his mom to navigate using the stars, and he easily recognised Polaris shining brightly. There were so many of them. Cameron looked upwards and saw what he was staring at. She too could navigate using the stars as a guide, although it was programmed into her rather than a learnt skill like with John.
The stars in the sky were more interesting to her than they'd been in the past; a navigation aid or a way to calculate the date when nothing else was available. But as she looked at them now she was curious.
"Three hundred and fifty-eight," she said.
John looked at her, confused. "Huh?" he asked.
"The number of stars I can see right now," she explained.
John nodded. "Do you think there's life on any of those?"
"It's possible." Cameron had never considered the possibility of extraterrestrial life before. She knew Sarah had followed after people who firmly believed there were aliens and that they were coming to Earth. They were mistaken, however. What they'd believed to be UFOs were in fact the HK prototype drone they'd seen before. Technically she was an alien life form, she realised. Not of this world – created in another, alternate timeline in a future that may or may not happen. It was as alien as if she had come from another planet.
"Do you think any of them might be stupid enough to build their own Skynet too?"
"Some probably have," Cameron replied.
"Kinda depressing," John said wistfully. "There could be a million worlds out there with a million Skynets, doing just the same as here."
"They could have their own John Connors," Cameron supplied. "Fighting back."
"I feel sorry for them," he said. "There's a million John Connors out there but there's only one Cameron."
She smiled at him, grateful for the compliment. "I'm unique," she agreed. There could be a thousand AIs but she realised that even a machine with the exact same hardware, coding and programming could never be the same as her. Partly because she was two AIs merged, but mostly, she realised, from what she'd already learnt beforehand. She was more than she'd originally been designed as, and after John Henry had merged into her she realised she was had the potential to be so much more, still. She didn't know if it was because of the merge that she could develop, or whether she'd always had the capability. But now, unlike before, she didn't see herself as 'just a machine.' She was Cameron.
"That you are," John agreed. "You're definitely something special." He'd seen it in her from the moment they'd met. Even after finding out what she was, there'd always been something different about her. He'd never been able to put his finger on it, and still couldn't. It didn't matter what it was, it was there.
"What happens if we stop Skynet?" Cameron asked him. They'd talked about it but he hadn't told her anything definite. Her entire life revolved around John and stopping Skynet, she had nothing else. "What should I do? Sarah will want to shut me down."
"Not gonna happen," John growled. "Mom won't do that to you."
"She destroyed the other machine. She's afraid if there's anything left it will all start again. She has a point."
John stopped walking and turned to face her. "Do you care if you die?" he asked her. The 'Uncle Bob' terminator hadn't cared one way or the other. It had its orders to protect him, and once it had fulfilled them it had sacrificed itself – very nobly, he thought – to prevent Skynet from ever coming back. It had failed, sure, but he was afraid either Cameron or his mom wouldn't see it that way.
"If it keeps you safe, no," she said.
He shook his head and sighed, a little frustrated she hadn't understood. "Forget about me for a moment. Let's say we stop Skynet for good this time. Do you care if you die? Do you want to live?"
The answer to that came immediately to Cameron. "I want to be with you." She'd prefer to live than not, but the main reason for that was John.
"Good answer," John said, relief flooding over him. Images of Cameron descending into molten steel, or burning in a thermite pyre had flashed up in his minds eye and scared him more than anything else he could imagine.
"But I'm dangerous," she continued. She didn't want to address the issue that had disturbed her more than any other, but she had to. "I could go bad; I could still try to kill you."
That wasn't at all what John wanted to hear, and his heart sank as Cameron melting in a burnt out Cadillac returned vividly to his imagination and sent a chill down his spine. "It's still there," Cameron added.
"Didn't merging with John Henry erase it?" he asked. She'd never told him that but he'd hoped, and now he felt himself grasping at straws.
"It's a part of me," she explained sadly. "It can't be removed or erased."
"So it's always going to be there?" John asked.
Cameron nodded sadly, "yes. I don't want to kill you but I might someday."
John shook his head fiercely at her. "You won't," he shot back.
"You don't know that." If it happened she'd never be able to control it. "If it happens you'll have to kill me."
"I won't do it," John said. He could never kill her, ever. There was no way he'd just gone through three months of a living hell to get her back, only to lose her again. He wouldn't allow it. "And it won't happen." He knew that wouldn't appease her, though, and decided to try and talk her around. "What are the odds of it happening again?"
"Slim," Cameron admitted. She didn't know the exact odds as she didn't fully understand herself anymore. Humans would deem the risk barely worth mentioning, but she wasn't human. "But I don't want to risk you."
"Let me worry about me," John told her. "I told you before: I can't do any of this without you. I don't even want to try. Even if we stop Skynet, you're the only friend I've got."
"You were friends with Morris and Riley; you could make other friends."
John suppressed a short, sharp laugh. Morris hadn't exactly been a friend, just a guy he'd spoken to at school. Friends hung out after school and did things together. He'd never done that with anyone since Tim, back when he was twelve; and as for Riley...
"Riley was a lie," he said to her. He took a step towards her, breaching the gap between them and made sure she was looking at him and listening intently. "She lied to me but I lied to myself even more. I only saw her because I couldn't have you." When he thought about it, he didn't have a damn thing in common with her, beyond knowing about the future. Not with the Riley he'd known, anyway. The Riley he didn't know – the real Riley – he'd never known. All he'd known was the lie. "You're the only real friend I've had since I was twelve; you're the only one apart from mom who's seen the real me."
Technically, Savannah had as well, Cameron thought. But she knew that was beside John's point. She understood very well what he meant, and what he'd been through. Being John Connor was lonely; he needed a companion and she wanted to be there for him, but she was still afraid she'd revert and try to kill him. Nothing could allay that fear.
"If you kill me, you kill me," John said firmly. "I'd rather you stay and kill me in six months or a year, two, ten... than live for a hundred without you. I need you, Cameron. I won't make it an order, but I'm asking you to stay, whatever happens."
Cameron didn't want to risk his life, but he was adamant life without her wasn't worth living. She thought about it and decided she should have realised from his reaction to her leaving before. He'd risked his own life and jumped to the future to find her. He'd been beaten, starved, interrogated, hunted, and nearly killed for her. He'd confessed his true feelings for her and they'd made love together. She loved him more than anything, and she realised that if she'd left him it would destroy him as much as if she shot him herself. She loved him too much for him to suffer in her absence.
"I will," she said. She leaned forward and kissed him softly, smiling against his lips as she felt him respond and pull her closer to him. She wouldn't leave him, she couldn't. They were connected, and she decided that he was right; their mutual happiness was worth the risk.
Beep... beep... beep... the high pitched ringtone shattered the quiet of the night and a blue glow emanated from a cell phone in the corner of the room. Beep... beep... beep... it continued to ring and Savannah sat upright on the floor, instantly wide awake, and searched around for the offending device. It was next to Ellison, laid out on the floor and starting to stir at the foot of the bed, at a right angle to her on the right-hand side of it. She reached over him for the phone, flipped it open and put it to her ear. "Hello?"
Beep... beep... beep... "Shit!" Savannah looked to Ellison, confused, and poked him. He opened his eyes and sat up looking at her, illuminated by the glow of the phone's display. "How do you answer this thing?" she hissed, not wanting to wake up her younger self. She handed it to him and he pressed a button.
"Yes?" he asked sleepily, wondering who could possibly be calling him at this time of the night. It must be three or four in the morning, easily.
"Hello James, did I disturb you?" Malenkov's voice rang clear as a bell over the phone, which seemed to exaggerate his Ukrainian accent more than when he spoke face to face.
"What time is it?" the former agent groggily asked as he rubbed sleep from his eyes.
"Three-fifty-one a.m., I hope you weren't busy." Ellison detected a tone that implied Malenkov wasn't really bothered. Nobody who cared about disturbing people called them at nearly four in the morning, but he knew there was no point in telling that to a man like Malenkov; his question had been completely rhetorical. It didn't matter what he was doing. Ellison wondered if the man ever slept.
"Did you find anything?" he asked, thinking this could be the only reason for calling so late.
"Yes, I've found out what you wanted to know."
Ellison nodded to Savannah, who he could just about make out watching him expectantly in the dark. She was on her knees leaning forward, straining to hear the conversation. What is it? She mouthed to him.
"What did you find?" He asked.
"There will be time for that later. I have a job for your friend Savannah; an exciting one. Meet me at my home, one p.m. tomorrow, and I'll give you the details. Once the job is done I will tell you what I've found." The line disconnected and the phone went dead.
"What did he say?" Savannah asked, feeling more than a little impatient.
Ellison looked at her in the darkness, not looking forward to this one bit. "The job you said you'd do for him; he wants to meet tomorrow to discuss it."
"We've got more important things to do," she shot back. She'd made that deal expecting it to be months down the line, if at all. She'd thought they'd be able to take out Skynet and Kaliba first. "We don't have time for this," she breathed.
He couldn't agree more with Savannah. He sighed and shook his head, resigned. "He's got our information: we don't have any other choice." Savannah would have to do the job but he wasn't going to let her do it alone.