Sorry for the long delay, guys! My holiday was great but it took its toll! Anyway, I hope it's worth the wait.
Despite the headphones, the helicopter's engines and the whirring of the blades above still rang harshly in Colonel Schiff's ears, making conversation almost impossible without the radios like the one attached to his headset. Even with them it was a job to hear anything, but he'd spent so much time flying in choppers that he'd become used to it. He looked to the team of SFs sat inside the Black Hawk to either side of him; a dozen were sat in this chopper, all heavily armed, and another two twelve-man squads were being flown in an identical pair of Black Hawks to either side of the one he was in. Four F/A-22 Raptors were flying escort to protect against the UCAVs tearing the asses out of each other in the sky, just in case any of them decided to turn on them.
"ETA to target is twenty minutes," the pilot announced through the headset radio from the cockpit up front.
Twenty minutes too long, Schiff thought unhappily. He needed to find out what the hell was going on down there. He tapped the lieutenant commanding the platoon on the shoulder to get his attention. "Twenty minutes!" he shouted to be heard above the din of the engines. "As soon as we land proceed immediately through the front entrance, down a long corridor, and wait for my orders."
"What about hostiles, sir?" the lieutenant asked.
"Unknown at the moment, son," he said to the young officer, perhaps only in his mid-twenties. "There's bound to be some but there's also a large number of civilian workers down there as well, so don't fire unless you're fired on first; if you do have to engage be extremely careful about what you shoot. There's also valuable computer equipment we need to preserve at all costs."
"What the hell's down there, Colonel?" an olive-skinned sergeant with a grenade launcher attached under the barrel of his rifle asked, watching him curiously.
"The future," he said cryptically, deciding the soldiers present needed to know something in order not to shoot up the place and accidentally hit the AI if it turned out into a full scale fight. They didn't even know who was down there or what was attacking Kaliba's complex; he'd tried to call Coleman but the man hadn't answered his cell and nor had anyone on the end of the other phone numbers for the main desk. They'd been out of contact for a while now and he wanted to find out what the hell was going on. Whoever was launching this attack, he was going to find them and nail them to the fucking wall, upside down.
"Nearly there," John grunted, wincing in pain as he started towards the flight of stairs leading them to the ground floor. His broken coccyx and bruised pelvis – also diagnosed by Cameron – sent splitting pain up his backside and his hips with every step he took, made worse by the load he was carrying on his back, though he never once acknowledged the fact.
"I can crawl if you like," Cameron offered behind him, leaning on his shoulders and holding her arms wrapped loosely around his neck as he carried her piggyback. She tried to squeeze what was left of her legs into his sides to help him take her weight better.
"You're not that heavy," he shook his head as he gingerly lifted himself and Cameron up the first step, leaning forward to take her weight and holding onto the handrail. If he were uninjured he reckoned he could easily carry her; she really didn't weigh very much – no more than if she were human – but even if she was he'd find it in him to keep going. She'd been hurt this badly protecting him, there was no way he was going to make her crawl. "Besides," he added, "sometimes it's nice to have help, right?"
It was, she conceded silently, but he'd missed her point. "But you're injured; I'm making it worse." John's injuries were very minor compared to Savannah's and his mother's, but she still didn't want to exacerbate them further.
"I'll be fine," he grimaced, taking another step up. It had seemed easy enough to ignore the pain when they were fighting the machines and killing Skynet, but now the crisis had been averted his broken ass came back with a vengeance. Finally they made it up the staircase and back up to the corridor.
"John!" Sarah sat on the floor, leaning against a wall and clutching a saturated red wound dressing to her stomach. Savannah lay prone a few feet away, her injured leg in a makeshift splint and an improvised sling on her broken arm. Both warrior women looked pathetically invalid, immobile and helpless on the ground. Ellison knelt over Sarah whilst Little-Savannah sat next to her future self.
"Did you do it?" Savannah asked, watching John with Cameron on his back; neither of their faces gave much away.
"Skynet's dead," John replied, nodding slowly. Cameron let go from his neck and dropped off his back onto the floor with a bump.
"It's all gone?" Sarah asked, feeling a surge of something she hadn't felt in years: hope.
"The computer's still down there but Cameron erased the AI," he explained.
"It's an empty shell, just a computer now," Cameron added.
"Are you sure?" she looked suspiciously at Cameron. She didn't think the cyborg would out and out lie about it, but things did go wrong with her, she made mistakes, and when it came to the fate of billions at stake, even the tiniest nagging doubt was enough to make her question Cameron.
"I'm sure." Cameron knew Sarah didn't trust her; it didn't matter. John did, that counted.
"I think the next question is: what now?" Ellison added. "How do we get out of here?"
Sarah knew that would be hard; they were in the middle of a mountain range and only three of them could even walk. She was still bleeding from her stomach wound and although Ellison had put a drip into her, it wouldn't last forever. She looked to John, knowing she had to get him out of here even if nobody else made it. Not because of his destined role to beat the machines – he'd already done that – but because he was her son, and she could die happy knowing he survived. "You take John and Savannah," she pointed to the younger one, "and make your way out."
"What about you?" John asked. "And Cameron, Savannah... I'm not leaving anyone here."
"No one knows we're here," Savannah grunted through the pain searing in her arm and leg. "Nobody's coming for us." She'd already accepted she wasn't going to make it out of this one.
"You're wrong," Cameron said suddenly. Now there was no Skynet to contend with she had full, unchallenged control over the entire facility – the defence net and indeed the entire worldwide web if she chose to – and she detected a number of aircraft inbound towards them. She dug deeper and saw that three Black Hawks and a flight of Raptor fighters had been deployed and were en route towards them.
Five pairs of eyes stared at her, wanting to know what she meant. John knelt down next to her. "Who's coming?" he asked nervously.
"Cops or feds?" Sarah asked.
"Air Force," Cameron said. "They'll be here in fifteen minutes."
"Shit!" Savannah and Sarah simultaneously growled through clenched teeth.
"What's wrong?" Little-Savannah asked, looking nervously at her older self. "I thought soldiers were good guys."
"They'll start it all up again," Sarah spat out angrily. "They'll take the computers, the data, and the machines, and it'll happen all over."
"No it won't," John growled. No fucking way had they gone through all this just to find out they'd only delayed it again. He'd always been told there was no fate but what they made and he was determined to make sure Skynet never reared its ugly digital face ever again. He stood up from Cameron and turned to Ellison – the only one left still standing besides he and Little-Savannah. "We're going outside," he told the older man before looking to the younger Weaver. "Look after the others, okay," he said, smiling down at her.
"What are you doing?" Cameron asked him. She didn't know what he was planning. He turned to her and they shared a look between them, one that Cameron recognised all too well in John; he had an idea and he was going to follow through with it no matter what. "What can I do to help?" she asked. Being disabled was a new, unpleasant experience for her and for the first time in her recorded memory she felt useless. She couldn't protect John anymore without any legs.
"You've got full access to everything on Skynet, right?"
"Yes."
"Delete everything you can find related to Skynet and military AI projects," he told her. "Don't leave any trace for them to find."
"They might have paper copies," Sarah said.
"We can't do anything about them," Savannah added. "So why worry?"
"They won't be able to recreate Skynet from a few file folders," John replied. "Hopefully they'll just abandon the project."
That wasn't enough to satisfy Sarah, however. She looked at him quizzically, wondering if he really knew what these people were like. "And if they don't?" she asked.
"Then I happen," Cameron said without a moment's hesitation, not bothering to elaborate further.
"Ellison, with me," John repeated. "We'll be back." The pair of them took off at a jogging pace through the corridor and John grimaced with every step but the pain of the broken bone in his backside only spurred him on to move faster. They had minutes before the air force arrived; they had to remove every trace of Skynet and the terminators by then.
The two of them made their way through the empty, now silent complex, their footsteps echoing all around them as the sound bounced off the walls. Ellison found the sensation creepy; apart from breaking into Zeiracorp he'd never been in a building this large and this vacant.
Within a minute of leaving the others they reached the front entrance and without slowing for a moment John shoved aside the glass front doors and barged outside. The bodies of the mercenaries they'd fought were still dotted around, as were their weapons. He inspected one of the dead defenders, looking at the weapon rather than the man, and found an HK-G36; not what he was after.
"What're we doing out here?" Ellison asked him.
"Take a weapon," John told him. "Make sure it's got a grenade launcher, and get as many grenades as you can find." An inspection of a second body revealed exactly what he was looking for; an M4A1 with an underslung M203. A quick check revealed there was a 40mm explosive round chambered and ready to fire, and when he searched the body he found two more of the black and gold projectiles, and pocketed them in his webbing pouch. Rummaging through other corpses revealed two more grenades, bringing his total up to five. "Find anything?" he asked Ellison.
"Yeah," he lifted up an identical rifle to John's. "Only two rounds for it, though."
"Seven rounds: it'll have to be enough," John murmured. He took off back into the building, Ellison following a moment later, and the pair of them headed back the way they'd came, through the corridors and towards the hangar.
"It's done," Cameron told him as he approached. "I've deleted all Kaliba's files and everything in the defence network related to Skynet and other AI projects."
"Good work," he smiled at her, earning a small flash of her pearly whites and a softening of her remaining eye in return. "That fire's not going to get rid of the Triple-Eight, is it?" he asked, remembering what she'd told him about the coltan component of their hyper alloy that allowed them to tolerate heats that would burn almost anything else into ashes.
"No," Cameron confirmed to him. It would take much more intense heat than the fire in the hangar to melt down their endoskeletons.
"Didn't think so," he hefted the rifle and moved into the burning hangar. The entire room was filled with a raging conflagration that was rapidly consuming everything. He pulled his shirt up over his mouth and nose and almost immediately his eyes started to water from the billowing smoke clouds that spread through the large space. Ellison started to cough as he sucked in a mouthful of foul, acrid, carbon-filled air.
"There," he pointed to a pair of bodies on the ground, only a few metres away. He stepped further into the hangar and almost immediately started to sweat from the sheer glowing heat of the fires. He couldn't even see the outlines of the jeep or helicopter, and the shattered remnants of the UCAV were just barely visible beyond the wall of red hot fire. On the ground were the bodies of Knowles and Baldy; the latter looking like he'd been through the shredder. John could see the patches of bare metal beneath the gaping wounds in his organic covering, and one of the machine's hands was clearly fused to its chest from the sheer heat of the thermite grenade when it had tried to pull the incendiary out.
"Power cell's probably melted into slag," he told Ellison. He stepped up right to Baldy until the tips of his boots touched the large, dead hulk of the machine, and then he back stepped several paces, counting each step as he retreated from the terminator. He reached thirty and hoped that was enough. He shouldered the weapon at Baldy and aimed straight at the machine's head. "Fire in the hole," he said calmly as he pulled the trigger.
The round shot out with a hollow thump and a fraction of a second later smashed into Baldy's head, booming loudly even above the roaring inferno. Ellison copied his example and fired a round of his own into the machine's chest, creating a second explosion and a cloud of smoke and debris. Before the sound of the explosion had even died down John marched over to Baldy and knelt down to inspect the damage they'd done. Baldy's armoured chest had already been severely compromised by previous grenade shots in the fight and the weight of the fire they'd put into him, plus the damage from the thermite grenade. Now his entire thoracic region was a twisted, shattered wreck of torn metal and wires; his innards completely open to display.
The head, too, had been largely obliterated and the chip was plainly visible. He reached into the cranium, pulled what was left of the chip out, dropped it on the floor and crushed it under the sole of his boot. The rest wasn't so important as long as the chip was gone, he figured. His mom had overreacted when it came to burning the machines down; nobody was going to recreate Skynet from just a hand.
"That's enough," he told Ellison, his voice muffled by his shirt over his mouth. What was left of Baldy was completely open and exposed now. The fire would take care of all the delicate inner workings and only a metal shell would remain. Without another word he turned away and made for the exit.
The two of them entered the corridor and saw the others still laid prone on the floor. "How long?" John asked Cameron.
"Ten minutes," she replied.
"Not long," Ellison said nervously. How were they going to escape the air force when only three of them could even walk? And if they did he had no clue how they'd get out of the mountain range. If they were all a hundred percent they could risk trying to hike through the mountains, though he wouldn't rate their chances much. As they were, though, he saw no way out.
"Long enough," John said, breaking into a run down the stairs, ignoring the splitting pain in his backside as he entered the basement level, descended into the subbasement and headed straight for the vault. Steroids' decapitated body was still where they'd left it after Cameron had torn his head off; the cybernetic spinal column trailed from the bottom of his neck and lay on the floor, curled slightly at one end. John placed the head onto Steroids' chest, backed away to a safe distance and reloaded the launcher. He fired a grenade, immediately reloaded, and launched another, as Ellison opened up with his last round. The triple explosion rocked the ground and battered the downed machine. The head was cracked down the middle and the already battered breastplate had shattered completely.
John tossed Ellison another round and two more grenades hammered into the mechanical corpse, splitting the terminator in half at the waist and shattering one side of the skull. "Destroy the chip and drag what's left of the machine under the blast door by the stairs, he told Ellison as he pulled out another grenade and loaded it. He stepped into the vault and faced the black computer, the empty shell of Skynet behind the thick sheet of bulletproof glass. Let's see how it stands up to this, he raised the weapon again and launched his last grenade; the blast shattered the display case and shredded through the computer casing, tearing plastic, metal and wires apart in an eruption of smoke, flame and shrapnel, leaving nothing but broken pieces as the remnants of the once mighty AI that threatened to destroy the world. Nothing was going to rise out of these ashes, he thought solemnly. Satisfied there was nothing left for the air force or anyone else to recover, he stepped out of the vault and closed the door behind him. A series of clicks sounded through the thick entrance as the vault automatically sealed itself.
Ellison and Steroids were gone, so he jogged painfully back up through the subbasement, to the level above, and found Ellison placing the smashed remains of Steroids directly beneath the blast door. He helped the older man place it into position and together they ascended the staircase to the ground floor, coming up again to see Cameron, Sarah, and the two Savannahs, still exactly where they'd been before.
"Did you get rid of them?" Savannah asked. Having lived in the future she had no desire to see it happen again, and any trace of the machines had to be eliminated to keep that from happening.
"Pretty much," Ellison replied.
"Close the blast door," John told Cameron. "I've put what's left of the Eight-Hundred right underneath; the door should crush it into tinfoil." Cameron did as he said, pleased at his thoroughness, and initiated the blast door controls. She watched through the CCTV images from cameras mounted in the subterranean corridor as the thick, heavy door descended from the ceiling and quickly pressed on the remains of Steroids. Even its thick hyper alloyed combat chassis was no match for a pressurised blast door weighing close to twenty tonnes in weight, and its sheer mass did exactly as John had predicted and crushed the endoskeleton as easily as a man would a sheet of paper in his hand, flattening the machine beneath it as the door sealed shut. Cameron erased all the security protocols that could open the blast door and disabled their automated controls. The only way anyone would get through now would be to cut through, which she thought was very unlikely to happen, given they were designed to withstand a nuclear blast.
"There's nothing left," Cameron said finally. She'd destroyed every single online trace of Skynet, Kaliba, and the Greys from both the facility's mainframe and from the defence net.
"That's it?" Savannah asked. "It's over?"
"It's over," John nodded, a smile growing on his face as a weight was taken off his shoulders. It was over. Skynet was gone, forever this time. The world would carry on spinning just like it always had. There would be no nuclear fires, no bleached skulls, no armies of machines stalking across the landscape, hunting people down to extinction. They were free.
"Not quite," Sarah broke the mood. "There's still other machines out there."
"It's likely," Cameron conceded. "And the Greys who escaped."
"Then we'll take care of those, too," Savannah said confidently. She was feeling John's elation despite two broken limbs and no painkillers, and she was adamant nothing would take that away. They'd stopped it; anything else now was just cleanup work.
John saw the blood soaking his mother's clothes and seeping down her side to the floor, and couldn't help but feel a cold sensation eat away at his relief from moments ago. They'd made it but she was still badly hurt and bleeding. The dressing Ellison had put over the wound was coated dark red and completely saturated. None of them were medics at all; he knew basic first aid but nothing approaching treating gunshot wounds. He doubted Ellison knew more than he did, either, and Savannah – even if she wasn't wounded – well, her specialty was more putting bullets into things than taking them out. That left one; luckily, that one was the person he'd grown to trust more than anyone else in the world, even more than his own mother.
"Can you do anything?" he asked Cameron, who turned to face Ellison.
"Are there forceps and sutures in the medical pack?" she asked him. Ellison tipped the medical supplies he'd taken out onto the floor and found what she'd asked for. She manoeuvred herself using her hands until she was sat over Sarah, and brushed her long, burnt hair back past her shoulders so it wouldn't get in the way, pulled off the dressing and inspected the wound.
"Bitch!" Sarah hissed in pain as Cameron prodded the wound and pulled one end to the side with the forceps so she could look inside.
"The bullet's lodged against a vein above your stomach and there's a tear in the blood vessel. I need to remove it."
"Can you do it?" Ellison asked her. "Do you know how to do it?" He had nothing against Cameron but she was a terminator; he couldn't imagine a killing machine being an expert at saving lives.
Cameron picked up a scalpel and forceps and still stared at the wound. "I have files." She didn't know where they'd come from – she assumed Skynet – but she had no memory of it so she wasn't sure. "But there's a problem."
"What problem?" Sarah looked up at her, her eyes widening, as did John's at the word 'problem' in relation to his mother's treatment.
Cameron knew the others would be uncertain about it, but she had to tell them. "I have the required tools," in a way. Sutures weren't as good as actual thread but it was all she had and it would suffice. "I can remove the bullet and close the vein-"
"But?" Savannah interrupted.
"But there's no anaesthesia or morphine." Sarah gulped nervously and winced in anticipation of the pain that would be coming her way. She remembered giving birth to John in the middle of the jungle without anything but a bottle of dark rum, and she'd been shot, beaten and cut on plenty of times since then; she was accustomed to pain, though it didn't make it any easier.
"Do it," Sarah nodded at her. "Make it quick."
Without any further hesitation Cameron set to work. She took the scalpel and cut into the bullet wound to widen it and give her enough room. Pain surged through every nerve as Sarah felt the blade slicing into her stomach muscles, cutting deep into her flesh; it felt like she was being torn apart, it was ten times worse than when she'd given birth. At least then it'd been worth it in the end when she'd held a crying, screaming John in her arms. All she'd get this time was a bullet as a souvenir. She screwed her eyes closed and grimaced, barely able to breathe from the agony. John rushed to her side and grabbed her by the shoulders, holding her steady so she didn't move and make things worse.
"It's okay, mom," he whispered. He held his hand out for her to take and she instantly squeezed as hard as she could. Savannah winced in sympathy; Her Ellison had had to cut into her a few times to take shrapnel out when she'd been hit before. It never got any easier and morphine in the future had been nonexistent. All she'd had at the time was a scrunched up towel to bite on.
Sarah opened her eyes and looked straight at Cameron, unable to help but feel some animosity to what was yet another machine cutting into her. "Say something," she urged.
"What?" Cameron asked, confused, as she put the scalpel down and probed inside the wound with a pair of long stainless steel tweezers. What was she supposed to say?
"Anything...just keep my mind off the pain."
A look of understanding came over Cameron's face as she realised what Sarah wanted. Talking would distract Sarah from the pain, and since she was a machine she could talk without it compromising her work. It came to her attention that this was one of the few times Sarah ever invited her to engage in conversation, and she decided to take advantage of that as she quickly chose what topic to discuss; something they hadn't yet resolved but needed to.
"I love John," she said as she probed deeper and felt the instrument she was holding touch against metal. She'd found the bullet. It hadn't ricocheted and was lodged in place just above her stomach. She opened the forceps further which sent a new wave of pain tearing through Sarah's stomach as she gripped the bullet and slowly started to pull it back through the wound.
"He loves me too," she continued.
"You can't love him," Sarah snapped. She really didn't want to hear this. "Machines can't feel love."
"I do," Cameron responded immediately, not skipping a beat.
"Because you're programmed to," Sarah shouted out. Cameron ignored her for a few seconds as she completely removed the bullet and dropped it on the floor. She thought it unlikely Sarah would ever understand her.
John shook his head at his mother's claim, knowing she was wrong. If he'd ever needed proof that she really loved him, this was it. "She doesn't have any programming anymore, Mom; Skynet erased it. Everything before she came back to 1999 is gone."
"I love John," she repeated as she picked up the suture needle and gripped it with the forceps, using them to extend her reach. "I won't ever leave him." She inserted the forceps back in and from memory and touch alone she started to suture the tear in Sarah's vein. "You need to accept that."
"Forget it," Sarah grunted as she felt the sharp needle pushing through her. She'd heard more than enough of this. "I think I like the pain better."
"As you wish," Cameron looked back down at the wound, breaking eye contact with Sarah, and continued working in silence, ignoring the grimaces on Sarah's face as the pain visibly grew worse. Sarah's opinion of her didn't matter; she was aware that the woman disapproved but she would never try to separate her and John. That was sufficient for Cameron.
Savannah watched Sarah wince, grimace and grunt with the pain as Cameron performed her impromptu surgery, and she found herself growing more and more impressed with the woman. She hadn't thought all that much of Sarah after she'd gone back; sure she was tough but she was clearly a control freak. But seeing her in action against the machines, watching her now and noting that Sarah never once cried out, she just grit her teeth and dealt with it, she developed a respect for her. No wonder John and Ellison had gone on about her so much. First of all she'd thought John was just a pampered kid out of his depth; when she'd first met him she hadn't been the least bit impressed, but in the time they'd spent in the future she'd grown to see what others saw in him. Now, watching Sarah, she could see where he'd got it all from.
"It's done," Cameron said as she finished the last suture on the outside of Sarah's gut, leaving a bloody red line an inch and a half long with black thread crossing it. She placed a clean dressing over it and wrapped bandages around Sarah's abdomen. "You'll need antibiotics," she added.
Sarah looked down at the dressing and breathed deeply, slowly, as the pain started to subside from sheer agony at being sliced up to the sharp throbbing she'd known before when she'd been shot in the past. She had to admit, Cameron had done a remarkable job. "Thanks," she said, looking the brunette in the eye for a split second before leaning back and letting her head rest against the ground.
"You're welcome," Cameron replied. Movement in the outside security cameras caught her attention. She saw a trio of Black Hawk helicopters outside, starting to descend towards the plateau. "Helicopters are landing outside," she told them. "They'll be here in a little over a minute."
"Fuck!" Savannah cursed under her breath. Her younger self stared at her disapprovingly.
"You shouldn't swear," she admonished her elder iteration. "It's not nice."
"Neither will the army guys be when they realise we just killed their billion dollar AI," the future redhead replied. "What're we gonna do?"
"You run," Sarah told John.
John stared at her in horror at what she'd just said. After everything he'd been through, everything he'd done, didn't she know he didn't leave behind the people he cared about? There was no way, no fucking way, that he was going to leave her and Savannah behind to be thrown into jail or some military prison, and he'd die before he let them get hold of Cameron.
"John Connor: you run!" she shouted. "If they get their hands on Cameron it could all start up again; they'll tear her apart to find out how she works and then they'll use what they learn to make another AI, to make robot soldiers." She decided to use what Cameron had just said about her and John to her advantage. "You love her, right?"
He couldn't help but look down at Cameron at those words, and he trembled slightly as he imagined her strapped to a table, being taken apart piece by piece by engineers and scientists. He wouldn't let it happen. "You know I do."
"Then get her out of here," Sarah ordered, knowing it would be the last time she ever gave her son a command. She didn't like Cameron but at the same time she was an ally; she wouldn't wish what amounted to vivisection on anyone, even her. And as John had said, he loved her; she wouldn't see her son go through the same pain and anguish again, nor would she see him spend the rest of his life in prison for doing the right thing. "You and Ellison take Cameron and Savannah, and you run."
"What about you?" John and Ellison both asked at once.
"Leave us," the elder Savannah said. "We're not getting out of here."
For a moment John froze, stricken with indecision. He couldn't just leave his mom or Savannah out here, to be tossed into some hole where they wouldn't even see daylight, or worse, end up in the electric chair or with needles in their arms. He knew he had to, though; if they stayed they'd all be taken in; only two of them were in any condition to fight and who knew how many soldiers were aboard those helicopters? If he stayed Cameron would be lost forever, he'd never see her again and he'd never be able to see his mom; if they got away there was always a chance they could break her out.
"Go!" Sarah snapped at him.
"We're going," he said back to her. "We'll come back for you." He picked up Cameron and hoisted her onto his back. She held her arms over his shoulders and around his neck, the same as when he'd carried her out of the basement level, and he kept his weapon raised. Ellison grabbed Little-Savannah's hand and the four of them moved along the corridor, leaving the two badly wounded women behind. Sarah turned to Savannah, knowing they'd be arrested within minutes. "No matter what, don't mention Cameron," she told her. "If they know there's another terminator out there they won't stop until they find her."
"My lips are sealed," Savannah promised. Unlike Sarah she had an extra reason to say nothing: she actually liked Cameron, and she wasn't going to give up a friend, ever.
The four of them took a number of turns, not looking to go out the front entrance because the soldiers would come from there. They could already hear the whirring of the blades as the Black Hawks gently touched down on the plateau. "Upstairs," Cameron told them. "There's a fire exit on the south facing wall." They kept low, trying to stay below the windowsills to avoid being seen by the armed soldiers who were filing out of the aircraft and forming a defensive picket between the Kaliba complex and the helicopters.
"Left door at the end of this passage," Cameron instructed them. John went in first and emerged into an empty room. At the far end was a door marked Fire Exit, just like Cameron had said, and it was on the opposite side of the building from where the helicopters were. Nobody should see them escaping. Cameron disabled the fire alarm systems so there would be no blaring klaxon when they opened the door.
Ellison opened the door to reveal the rocky ground around the complex and the scenic mountain terrain all around them. "I'll go first," he told them, "then lower Savannah down to me." He got onto the ladder and climbed down to where it ended, several feet above the ground. Not much of a drop really, but from above it looked it. Bend your knees, he reminded himself. He let go of the rungs and dropped down to the ground, his knees buckled and he rolled to the side to deflect the impact from the fall. He didn't feel anything snap, twist or pop, so he reckoned he was fine. He stood up and reached out as John led Savannah to the ladder.
"I don't want to," she said nervously. It was windy up here and as she looked down it felt like the ground was so far away. She didn't like heights.
"Mr Ellison's going to catch you," he said softly to her. "I promise." He heard stamping boots on the floor echoing through the corridors and hallways and knew they didn't have much time.
Savannah looked to John and then back at the ground, still uncomfortable and afraid, but she saw Ellison with his arms stretched out. He'd taken care of her since mommy had gone, and she trusted him. She nodded to John. "Okay," she said quietly, reluctantly.
"Okay," John said to her, helping her to turn around so she could climb down the ladder. "Just keep going until you get to the bottom and then let go. Mr Ellison will catch you." Savannah did as he said, hesitantly climbing down the ladder rung by rung until she could go no further. She looked down again at Ellison – his arms only three or four feet away in reality, but to her it looked a lot further. She closed her eyes and let go, squealing slightly in shock as she dropped through the air, landing with a thump in Ellison's arms.
"You can open your eyes," he said softly to her as he lowered her down to the ground.
"Thanks," she said politely, looking up at him and inserting her hand into his once again.
"Your turn," John said to Cameron, lowering her off his back to the ground. He reached down to help her get to the ladder but instead she just crawled forward and dropped straight off the edge, landing face first onto the ground.
"Are you okay?" Savannah asked her as she pushed herself up with her hands.
"I'm fine."
"Cameron's built pretty tough," Ellison told the young girl. "She can take pretty much anything."
John quickly climbed down and dropped onto the ground. He got back up to his feet and picked up Cameron once again. He knew she didn't like him having to carry her with his injury but he really didn't mind; a broken coccyx would heal up in time.
"What now?" Ellison asked John. "Where do we go from here?" He didn't see any easy path down the mountain and they didn't have the time or space to check it out. What he did see were a lot of large, jagged rock formations, boulders, and crevices. "We could hide until they're gone then find a way down."
The suggestion went straight in one of John's ears and out the other. He heard the whirling blades from the other side of the complex and knew the soldiers were already inside. It wouldn't be long, maybe a minute or two, until they found his mom and Savannah, prone, injured, and helpless to resist. He couldn't get the droning sound of the engines or the helicopter blades out of his head, and suddenly it came to him.
"Head for the slope there," he pointed to the edge of the plateau, where the rock started to slope downwards; a nearly perfect hiding place. He stared at the building, in the direction of the helicopters on the other side. "I've got a better idea."
The moment the Black Hawk touched the ground Schiff opened the door and stepped outside onto the rocky ground. He'd seen the billowing clouds of black smoke from the air, but now up close he could see how badly the hangar behind the complex was on fire; there wouldn't be much left worth salvaging from it by now from the view he'd gotten in the helicopter. He'd tried to call Coleman's cell phone God-only-knew how many times since they'd spotted the UCAV battle over the mountains, but he hadn't answered. "Where the fuck are you?" he muttered under his breath. This whole multibillion dollar research, development and acquisition project was his responsibility; it had all been going so smoothly but now it was belly up and getting worse by the minute.
"What happened here?" a corporal stared out at the plateau, seeing the dead bodies strewn across the open ground. The walls of the building facing them were pockmarked with bullet holes and were blackened from explosions. A number of windows had been shattered, and a dead man in combat fatigues half-hung out the window, his rifle still strapped to him and dangling out, the weapon turning in the wind.
"What is this place?" another airman asked, staring at the scene of devastation before them. The airmen dispersed into squads, then fire teams, and took up defensive positions on the rocky ground, most flattening themselves and lying prone, facing the building.
"I count nine dead," the lieutenant leading the platoon said, crouched next to Schiff. "Who the hell did this?"
"I don't know who," Schiff replied. "But I know why: there's something in there that's invaluable to the air force, and someone else wants it."
"The Russians?" someone pondered aloud. The thought had crossed Schiff's mind a couple of times but it didn't add up. This wasn't military property and barely anyone even knew about it. Not even the President was aware of its location, so the Russians definitely shouldn't have a clue. If it wasn't them then that left only some form of highly equipped and trained terrorist group, or foreign commandos, though who exactly as the million dollar question.
"Only one way to find out," he grumbled. "Move out!" First Squad ran forwards, Schiff with them, whilst Second and Third provided cover and continually watched the windows, roof, and the surrounding area for any signs of snipers hidden. Once First Squad made it, Second and Third followed up respectively, covering each other's approach to the entrance. The entire platoon filed through the doors and into the large lobby.
"First Squad with me; Second: take upstairs and Third Squad take the east wing of the ground floor. Report any activity whatsoever, and be very careful about engaging." Schiff led First Squad through the west wing of the building, through the R&D labs, computer labs, and past the security office.
"We've got evidence of a fire fight on the second floor, sir: there's a body upstairs, been shot, and there's bullet holes all around an elevator door opposite the room. Window's been shot out."
"Let me know if you find anything else," Schiff said to the squad commander. "Third Squad: what's your status?"
"Sir, we just found about two dozen civvies; holed up in the east wing of the building. They say they were attacked by armed terrorists: several identified the leader as a John Connor."
The words John Connor stopped him in midstride and the SF behind almost bumped into him. That can't be right, Schiff thought. "Repeat that last part, airman."
"John Connor, sir: the kid from the news – Sarah Connor's son."
"I know who he is," he shot back, more harshly than he'd meant to. What the hell was going on here? "Okay: secure the east section of the complex and escort the civvies outside to the choppers. Once the whole complex is secure we'll come out and I'll speak to them. Out."
"John and Sarah Connor," Schiff repeated to himself. All along he'd been convinced it had to be the Russians, or the Chinese, or someone else who wanted their hands on the new tech, not some wacko luddites who wanted to bury it. How the hell had they done all this, though? They must have had help from someone, surely. No lone hacker could take control of the defence net like that, or hijack an entire squadron of UCAVs.
"Sir! We've got something up here!" Schiff ran to where the point man was shouting, up ahead in the corridor not far from the hangar's rear entrance. Two women were on the ground, one he recognised straight away, given how her face had been plastered all over the news lately. The airmen closest held their weapons trained on both women, though one look at the pair of them told him they weren't any threat.
"Stand down," he ordered his men and knelt down closer to the dark haired woman. "Sarah Connor," he smiled humourlessly down at the older woman. "We were just talking about you."
Sarah stared at him but didn't move. "Good things I hope," she replied, sarcasm in her voice. She took one look at the officer: everything about him screamed military intelligence, and she knew instantly that telling John to take Cameron away had been the right move. She just hoped they'd gotten far enough away that they wouldn't be found.
Schiff ignored her comment and looked towards Savannah. "I don't believe I know you; your name is..."
"My name's piss off," Savannah spat in contempt.
Ignoring her, Schiff turned to a pair of his airmen in First Squad. "Go check out the hangar," he ordered.
"I wouldn't if I were you," Sarah propped herself up on her elbows, wincing as the bullet lodged in her gut pressed into something tender inside. "It's on fire."
"We saw that," Schiff replied. "You came here to blow everything up and destroy our AI, I take it?"
"We succeeded," Savannah grinned triumphantly.
"Do you have any idea how much trouble you're in?" Schiff snapped at the pair of them. "Your ridiculous anti machine agenda's just cost us a multibillion dollar defence project and killed nearly a dozen people. We have witnesses outside who put your son as leading an attack on this facility. And where is he, anyway?" Schiff looked around. There was no way just these two women could inflict this kind of damage on their own or leave a heavily armed and likely highly trained security team dead in their wake. They had to have had help.
She didn't even hesitate in her reply. "He's dead," she told him flatly. "He was in the hangar when the drone crashed."
"Here's what I'm going to do," Schiff said to both Sarah and Savannah. "We're going to fly back to base and we'll interview you there before detaining you somewhere more secure."
"I take it by 'somewhere more secure' you mean..."
"Guantanamo Bay," Schiff finished Sarah's question. "You are terrorists, you did just kill a dozen or so men, terrify innocent people working here, and destroy billions of dollars worth of equipment vital to national security. Let's face it, Miss Connor: you're a threat to this country."
Savannah opened her mouth to make a reply but Sarah shot her a look that stopped her before she'd gotten out a single syllable. "Don't bother," she advised the younger woman. "Doesn't matter what we say; nothing will change his mind." She knew what would happen now; forget the civilian courts or federal prisons, they'd ship the pair of them straight to Guantanamo. No trial, no jury, just solitary confinement in a small cell for the rest of their lives.
"What have you done with Michael Coleman?" he asked.
"Who the hell's that?" Savannah looked completely confused, she'd never heard that name before in her life.
"Bastard who tortured me and Savannah," she explained. "He jumped out the window when John broke in." She looked Schiff straight in the eye. "The people you've been dealing with were working with your Skynet AI to bring about the end of the world, in exchange for it sparing their lives when the end came. Not that you'd believe any of this, of course," she looked away from him, knowing there wasn't anything left to discuss.
Schiff looked down at the pair of them and mulled over what she'd said about machines. The heat from the hangar caught his attention and he knew they'd have to vacate the building soon before the fire spread to the rest of the building; the fire suppression systems Coleman's AI was supposed to be in control of clearly wasn't working, so he reckoned Sarah was right about having destroyed it. Still; why had a UCAV crashed into the place? These machines she mentioned piqued his curiosity.
"Piper, Daniels," he addressed two of his airmen. "Go check out the hangar; see if there's anything... weird... in there."
"Weird, sir?" Airman Piper cocked an eyebrow, not having the slightest clue what he was talking about.
"Colonel: the hangar's about to burn down any second."
"You'd better hurry then," he said simply. The two men broke away and headed into the hangar, opening the door Cameron had punched through near the bottom and releasing a cloud of smoke into the corridor.
Seconds went past, then a minute, and still nothing. Sarah found it hard to believe this colonel would send his men into an inferno to check for... she didn't know what. She assumed he was checking out her story and looking for any trace of evidence she was telling the truth. "You won't find anything," Savannah said curtly, voicing what Sarah kept to herself.
Another thirty seconds passed before the doors opened again and the two airmen came out, coughing and spluttering, their uniforms singed in several places. They dragged a large, smouldering metal object behind them. Both Sarah and Savannah instantly turned their heads towards them and saw the smashed apart, burnt and scorched torso of Baldy; his skin had melted away completely and the delicate cybernetic innards of the terminator had been devastated by the fire. One of the arms had separated from the shoulder, all that was left of it was a wrist fused to the chest. The other arm remained but was battered and twisted; all its fingers were intact, however.
All the airmen gasped at the sight of what was clearly a humanoid body. "What the hell is that thing?" one of them muttered. Schiff stared at it unblinkingly for several seconds then looked back to Sarah. Machines, robots: metal men that looked human. The Skynet project was a bust now; no other programmers had developed an AI anything close to what Kaliba's had been. They'd been facsimiles at best, like comparing cheap hamburger to prime fillet steak. But maybe it wasn't a total loss; maybe, he thought, he could still salvage something from all this.
"You weren't alone," he said to Sarah. "We know that so you can stop pretending. Your son led an attack against this place, with the help of twenty-two hijacked UCAVs providing air cover: There's no human alive that could hack the defence net and remote pilot a squadron like that, so I'm willing to bet you had one of these machines on your side. I'll do you a deal, Sarah, believe me when I tell you this is the best offer you'll ever get: tell me where this other... terminator, was it... is, and I'll let you go."
"That's it?" Sarah asked, staring intently at him. She couldn't believe the crap she was hearing spouting out of his mouth. "You'll let us go, just like that?"
"Hardly anyone knows about this place: this little incident's not going to make the evening news. I was thinking maybe you were never here."
"Go to hell," Savannah voiced exactly what Sarah was thinking before she had the chance.
If Schiff was offended or surprised by her answer, he didn't let on. He'd expected them to answer along those lines; terrorist or not, they both clearly believed in what they were spouting. He'd hoped, however, that they might've taken the bait. He'd been sincere in his promise he'd let them go; let the civvies worry about them, he thought. Getting his hands on one of these machines – a fully functioning AI in a humanoid body – was worth far more to national security than arresting a couple of luddites. Besides, with her face plastered all over the national news it wasn't like she'd really get that far. Oh well...
"In that case we'll carry on this discussion elsewhere... Move them out."
The squad of SFs put Sarah and Savannah onto a stretcher each and quickly exited the building, moving across the rocky plateau, past the bodies of mercenaries haphazardly strewn around in the wake of the Connors' bloody attack. They reached the nearest Black Hawk and one of the airmen slid open the door. The second it was open Schiff found himself staring down the barrels of two rifles and a pistol. He looked up from the muzzles to the people wielding them. A black man in his late thirties who was holding another assault rifle at the back of the pilot's head; a teenager who, he'd guess from the eyes, was Sarah's son John; and a girl who looked slightly older. His eyes widened and he gasped in shock at the sight of her as he took in her features, more alarmed than he was when he'd first seen the guns pointed at him. Her face was devastated; a third of it ripped away to reveal a metal skull underneath. One of her eyes was missing and in its place was a shattered orb. He could see her legs; they ended at the knees and trailed jagged metal and a few strips of wire. She stared blankly at him with her one remaining eye.
"You're the robot," he gasped, incredulous. He didn't know what to say. The other airmen had also been completely taken aback by the sight of her that they were momentarily stunned. John took advantage of that split second and thrust the barrel of his M4 forward until the tip was pressed against Schiff's chin.
"Cybernetic organism," Cameron corrected the colonel, who wasn't the only one in shock. Sarah stared at her son and Cameron in disbelief.
"You were supposed to run," she scolded, forgetting all about the pain she was in, incensed with her son for his idiocy. A moment later she turned her angry stare at Ellison, still keeping the pilot in check. "Why didn't you make sure he went?" she asked. They'd worked together for weeks now, side by side, and she'd thought he'd be smart enough to do as she said.
"He wouldn't budge," Ellison said simply. His answer failed to satisfy her, though, and she turned her attention to Cameron. She caught Sarah's glare and knew his mother was about to blame her for not ensuring John escaped but she'd already predicted it would happen and was prepared for her outburst.
"It was safer this way," she said before Sarah could say a word to her.
"Safer than what?" Sarah demanded.
"Safer than breaking you and Savannah out of prison," she replied instantly. She'd supported John's plan because it was a good one. It was less risk than trying to hike out of a mountain range and she knew John well enough to know he wouldn't accept Sarah's and Savannah's incarceration.
Savannah watched the two of them and suppressed an amused smile; she knew very well from the future that John didn't leave people he loved behind and she hadn't believed for a second John would abandon them even on his mother's orders. John clearly wore the pants in the Connor family now.
"Load my mom and Savannah into the helicopter and step away," John ordered the SFs, ignoring his mom's outburst and never taking his eyes off of Schiff for a moment. The airmen reacted immediately and raised their own weapons at the interior of the Black Hawk.
"Listen son," Schiff started, hoping maybe the kid would be more compliant than his stubborn mother. "That machine's invaluable, I just want to study it."
"She has a name!" John barked angrily and lowered the barrel so it pointed at Schiff's throat. "Her name's Cameron and you're not taking her. Load them into the helicopter and step back." Schiff and the airmen hesitated for a second and John went off like a rocket. "NOW!" he fired a shot just past the colonel's head, so close he felt the round cut through the air by his ear and sent bells ringing inside his skull.
The SFs immediately made to fire but Schiff stuck his hand out to stop them. "No!" he shouted, louder than he'd intended with his eardrums playing havoc from the shot so close to his head. "Hold your fire: I want them alive."
"To study me," Cameron said accusingly, narrowing her one remaining eye as it glowed angrily at Schiff. "You want to take me away. You'll imprison them and dismantle me to study and reverse engineer my technology. I won't let you," she leaned forward, resting her hand on John's shoulder to steady herself, and locked her eye with Schiff's. She pointed up at the ceiling and flicked her gaze upward.
Schiff craned his head back, wondering what she was trying to tell him. He didn't see anything at all.
"Sir!" one of the SFs cried out in alarm and tapped him on the shoulder. Schiff snapped his attention to the airman, who was pointing up into the air. He stepped over towards the young man and a cold, terrified chill ran down his spine. Hovering in the air, half a mile away, were three Dragonflies; the remains of Skynet's air squadron. They hung menacingly, barely making a sound, but they were still brimming with missiles pointed squarely at the other helicopters. He had no idea where the hell the Raptors providing air cover were; they weren't in sight and seeing as they hadn't shot these UCAVs down that was a bad sign.
"Where the hell are..."
"The pilots all ejected safely," Cameron told him. Schiff turned his attention back to Cameron again and saw the subtle hint of satisfaction on the machine's face. She had him by the balls and she damn well knew it.
"You're controlling them," he realised. It was doing just what Skynet had been designed to do.
"Check mate," she said with a sly smirk.
A multibillion dollar AI program gone, a brand new generation of UCAVs wiped out or under her control, twenty-two more current aircraft hijacked and destroyed, and now four Raptors shot down – Billions of dollars lost under my watch. "Do you have any idea the damage you've done?" he asked, anger rising in his voice. His career was over, the AI project was a bust – Congress would never approve any more investment now, not when they were tightening their belts.
Cameron made her remaining eye glow bright blue and she noted how he gulped nervously as she did so. He was angry but he was also afraid. "I can do a lot more," she replied threateningly.
The glowing blue of her eye and the evil stare she shot at him had the intended effect. This can't be happening, Schiff groaned inwardly. He had another AI only inches away from him, practically in the palm of his hand – this one from the fucking future – and he was being denied the chance to study it. "Let them go," he sighed, not believing what he was about to do. Not that he had a choice, he realised. He'd been completely outclassed.
"Sir?" one of the SFs asked uncertainly, still holding his rifle pointed at John's head.
"Put your weapons down," Schiff ordered them. "And load the two stretchers into the helicopter." He looked up at John and Cameron, not bothering to hide the anger growing in him that he'd lost the find of the century. The SFs loaded Sarah and Savannah onto the floor of the Black Hawk's cabin and stepped back.
"You okay mom?" he asked, never taking his eyes off Schiff.
"Never better," she answered drily. She reached up and grabbed him by his shirt, pulling him down closer to her. "Next time you run."
John didn't listen to a word of it; he'd heard it in the past so many times and ignored it, surely, he thought, she'd have learned by now. "Whatever," he shrugged, sitting back in his seat and leaning against Cameron, resting his head against hers. He wasn't going to make that promise.
"Take off," Ellison told the pilot, still holding his gun. He leaned forward and looked down over the co pilot's seat, where Little Savannah sat silently. "Are you alright?" he asked her.
"Yes."
"Buckle up," he said softly to her. She fastened the seatbelt buckles tightly and looked forward out of the cockpit, out to the vast mountain range beyond. She could only see the highest mountaintops and the sky as the cockpit controls were too high up.
The pilot pulled back on the yoke and the Black Hawk rose into the air, ascending out of reach of Schiff, and very soon out of weapons range. John looked down out the window and saw the airmen growing smaller and smaller as they flew up, and he imagined, with a smug, satisfied grin, Schiff shouting and screaming down below. His career would be over, but it was better that than the end of the world.
"Won't they follow us wherever we go?" Ellison asked, suddenly not feeling so confident about their getaway anymore. "They can track us on radar."
"I'm scrambling it," Cameron said. "They won't find us."
"Where exactly is it you want to go?" the pilot asked nervously. John thought about it for a long moment. Long term, he had no idea where they would go. Even Cameron couldn't erase them completely from all records; they'd still be fugitives, possibly forever.
"Fly west for now," he instructed. In the short term they needed somewhere in range of the Black Hawk; somewhere they could hide, rest and recover, before they decided what to do from now on. He knew LA like the back of his hand; so that's where we'll go, he said to himself. For now, at least. He'd never thought of LA as home, nor was anywhere he'd ever been for that matter. They still had a few things that needed to be done though, and then they'd work on what to do with the rest of their lives.