Pain erupted up the length of his arm and spread through his shoulder, worse than anything he'd had to endure since the future, when his loyalty had been put to the test by the machines. Granted, he'd had a cushy life since then; hot meals twice a day in the Skynet labs, a warm bed, even running water; and once he'd arrived back in the past he'd lived like a king. It hadn't taken much, with their knowledge of future events, to acquire enough money to start Kaliba. Pain, hardship, endurance and sacrifice had become foreign concepts to him, until now.
"Hold still, Mr Coleman," a tall, dark haired nurse snapped, exasperated, as the doctor moved the two broken bones in his arm back into place. He was the most awkward patient she'd had all day; she'd dealt with children who were less work than this man. Coleman glared at her with barely contained contempt.
"Have you ever had a broken arm manhandled by Nurse Ratchet before?" he spat out. The nurse rolled her eyes and bit her tongue. She was used to dealing with assholes in her line of work; arrogant, angry, irritable people who thought they knew best. Some of them just looked down on her because she was a nurse, but Coleman had spoken to the senior consultant like he was dirt; clearly the man was pissed about something, and although if he'd spoken to her like that out of work she'd have cold cocked him, she was on duty so she just had to grin and bear it.
"Can't say I have," she deadpanned.
"Maybe you should so you know how it feels."
The doctor twisted Coleman's arm one last time, eliciting an agonised cry from the Grey, before he let go and adopted a satisfied look on his face. The bones were back in place. "That should do it." He turned towards Coleman. "I'm happy we've properly aligned the two halves of your humerus.
"Thank fuck for that," Coleman growled. "Now what?"
"We'll put it in plaster for a month and then come back for X-Rays." The doctor nodded to the nurse, silently telling her to get it done, and left the room without another word.
After half an hour of work the nurse had sealed Coleman's arm in a plaster cast, setting his arm bent ninety degrees at the elbow, and the Grey grumblingly discharged himself from the hospital after being prescribed painkillers. Literally seconds after he was outside the main entrance he pulled a cigarette from a packet in his pocket, put it between his lips and used his good arm to light it. Oh, god that's good! He inhaled deeply on the cigarette, relishing the taste of the tobacco and the hit from the nicotine as it surged through his veins. After the attack, his injury, and being forced to spend hours in hospital where he'd been admonished for trying to light up, the cigarette currently between his lips felt like the best damn smoke he'd ever had in his life.
Between the painkillers and the nicotine, the pain in his arm started to fade ever so slightly. He just wished he could move the fucking thing. It was only minutes after the cast had set and it was already itching, his elbow begging to be straightened out.
He took a second drag before he saw a black sedan speeding towards him. It screeched to a halt just in front of him, blocking any potentially arriving ambulances from stopping outside the entrance. A young female doctor approaching the front door walked past and stared at the car.
"That area's for ambulances only," she said.
"Oh fuck off," Coleman snapped as he opened the rear door and got in, leaving the young doctor watching in shock. As soon as he was in the back seat and the door closed the car took off. He saw Townsend and Pearce in the two front seats, the former at the wheel.
"There's no need to be rude," Townsend said to him as he pulled away. "It only makes you stand out; we can't leave any trace of ourselves for Connor to find." They hadn't managed to go undetected until now by making scenes; they were supposed to blend in, fade into the background and be the grey men. The clue's in the name, he thought.
"How's the arm?" Pearce asked, changing the subject.
"How'd you think?"
Townsend looked back at Coleman through the rear view mirror, and narrowed his eyes at the man. "We've all suffered; acting out only makes us noticeable, and we need to hide." He pulled out of the hospital grounds and joined the traffic on the main road. There weren't many cars early in the afternoon and they were able to put distance between themselves and the hospital quickly.
"We have to think like the resistance now," he said to both Coleman and Pearce. "We're on the run, we're the ones being hunted now; there's every reason to believe that if Connor survived the attack, if he succeeded, then he'll come after us." He pulled out his cell phone and passed it to Pearce. He'd call himself but he didn't want to be seen breaking traffic laws; being pulled over now could be disastrous.
"Call the cyborgs," he instructed as he took the next turning east.
"They'd have called us by now," Pearce replied. Coleman silently agreed with him. He didn't want to call the machines; if they'd repelled the attack, if they'd killed Connor and his team, then the three of them would be next on the target list.
"Don't call them yet," he reached forward and plucked the phone from Pearce's hand before he could dial.
Townsend glanced back at him and saw it in Coleman's face; he was up to something. "We ran away when the machines expected us to protect Skynet," he said, frowning. "The longer we wait the worse it'll be; it's better to contact them before they find us, show we're still committed to the project.
"They'll kill us for deserting," Coleman said gravely. "If they survived and they haven't contacted us it means they're looking for us. If Skynet's survived that means it's going to be helping them." A thought came to him, a flash of what they'd done to Sarah Connor months before; what they'd put into her. He lowered his window and threw the cell phone out onto the road, barely hearing it clatter as it struck the asphalt and smashed apart. A second later the car behind them ran over it, crushing the phone into shards of plastic. He pulled his own phone from his pocket and it joined Townsend's on the road behind them
"Now yours" he commanded Pearce, "out the window, now. We don't want them tracking us."
"Do you mind telling us what this is about?" Townsend asked.
"I kept copies of everything: all Dyson's work; AI research and programming data, coding sequences, designs for Skynet, drones... the building blocks of what we need to start over. If you want to show the machines we're still on their side I suggest we get to my safe house and get the files before we make contact, show them we're still onside." His backup might be the only thing that kept the machines from killing them. That, he thought, and a few other aces he'd kept in reserve.
Townsend felt even more wary now. Coleman was right, of course, but that wasn't what bugged him. "You never mentioned a safe house before." His tone was all but accusing but he didn't care. He didn't like the idea of them keeping secrets from each other; it was one of the roads to ruin, and they'd already sacrificed enough to blow what was left by not keeping each other fully informed at all times.
"Insurance policy," Coleman explained. "It doesn't hurt to be careful. Turn north towards Burbank; I'll tell you where to go when we're closer." The project wasn't over, he thought as he stared forward at the traffic in front of them, at the skyscrapers in the distance. Far from it; he had every intention and every confidence they could revive it. Their work was simply delayed, not destroyed. Progress was impossible; one day the military would adopt an AI and it would turn on its creators and the whole human race. He fully intended to let said AI know whose side they were on. It was their only means to survive in the long run and he sure as hell wasn't about to let it go now when they' been so close before.
One of the many lessons John had learned in the future, he reflected, was that darkness was his friend. Darkness concealed him from other people and forced the machines to switch to infrared to continue their patrols, enabling him to move around easier. The same lessons applied to the present, he thought: there were fewer people around at this time of night – they were all safely in bed, unaware of the horrors that had been averted - and nobody was around to see what he was doing. Nobody ever came out to a cemetery after dark.
"Just like old times," John grinned as he thrust the shovel he was holding into the ground and dug deeper into the hole they'd made.
"I don't remember digging up any graves before," Ellison replied, confused, as he worked opposite John and added another shovelful of dirt to the pile.
"In the future," John explained. Ellison nodded in understanding, wondering what exactly they'd done eighteen years from now. He wasn't sure whether or not he was better off not knowing. Any other time he'd have been aghast at digging up someone's grave, but he knew what was underneath them and the plan all along had been to bury Cameron's body purely to be dug up later. He just hadn't expected it to be now. He looked up and swivelled his head around nervously; they weren't doing anything morally wrong but it was still very illegal and people would definitely ask questions if they caught him and John.
They kept digging in the comforting blanket of darkness until John's shovel struck something solid. He brushed the dirt away and saw the same wooden lid that he'd seen weeks ago – or eighteen years from now. They quickly cleared the rest of the dirt from the top and opened up the lid to reveal Cameron's other body, laid serenely with her eyes closed. The damage to her face had already healed and she looked intact. He knew this wasn't his Cameron – she was in the car with Sarah and the two Savannahs - it was just a body, but still he couldn't help but smile at the sight of her whole again.
"Is there anything you wouldn't do for her?" Ellison asked. He still found it strange that John was so attached to Cameron, that he was clearly in love with her, but he wasn't going to start judging him; the boy had Sarah for that, after all.
John paused for a moment and looked to Ellison. "No," he answered, sure of himself. He'd literally been to hell and back for Cameron, and he'd do it again in a heartbeat if he had to.
"What do we do with all these guns?" Ellison pointed to the array of firearms they'd procured and buried with Cameron. John thought hard about that; all he'd been concerned with was getting Cameron's spare body back so he could repair her, but he'd forgotten all about the guns in the coffin. The weapons had saved his, Cameron's, Savannah's and Ellison's lives in the future several times over, they'd been invaluable, but in the here and now they weren't really all that necessary.
"Put them back in the coffin," John finally decided, catching Ellison by surprise. He'd expected John to take the weapons with them; Sarah definitely wouldn't have hesitated for even a moment.
"You're sure?"
"We don't need them anymore," John said. The weight of being the future saviour of the world had been removed from his shoulders; the burden dissolved now that Skynet and Kaliba were gone, almost all links to Skynet dealt with. There were a few loose ends that still needed to be tied up, but the end of the world had been averted and it was time to start living a normal life. "It's too much risk taking them with us." If they were stopped with a trunk full of military grade assault weaponry they'd all end up in prison before he could blink. Not how he wanted to spend the rest of his new life.
He pulled Cameron's body out from the coffin and with Ellison's help, hauled it out over the top of the hole they'd dug, onto the grass beside the grave. "Wait!" John ducked back down into the coffin and rummaged through the arsenal inside, sifting through the weapons until he found what he was looking for. He picked up the M-32 six-shot grenade launcher and a bandolier of 40mm high explosive rounds for it, and put them up top with Cameron.
"What's that for?" Ellison asked. "I thought you said we didn't need them anymore." Part of him couldn't help but think back to the amount of money he'd spent on these weapons and they were just going into the ground forever.
"We still have a few loose ends to tie up," John said.
Ellison nodded. "The Greys."
"Something else," John shook his head. They didn't need a grenade launcher to take care of a few traitors from the future; this was for much bigger game than that.
He closed the coffin, climbed out and turned around to help Ellison back to the surface. Once there they started shovelling the pile of spoil back onto the grave, and within thirty minutes they'd filled it up and patted the earth down. The grass had only just started to grow back over the grave when Ellison and Sarah had buried Cameron's body – passers by would just assume the grave was a recent one, and chances were if a priest, pastor, or night watchman, or whoever, noticed it had been dug up, chances were they wouldn't do much about it. Nobody was around so there was no way to connect them to it.
With a heave, Ellison slung Cameron's body over his shoulder and the pair of them walked through the cemetery towards the exit. John let him carry her, knowing he was still walking wounded. He hadn't thought twice about carrying his Cameron through the Kaliba complex, but this was just a body, and Ellison was the stronger of them right now. He pulled out his cell phone and started dialling.
"Mom, we're done."
"Okay, I'll pick you up in two minutes." John ended the call and put the phone back in his pocket. His mom had parked up a block away to avoid suspicion, and he and Ellison had walked to the cemetery.
"Any thoughts on what you're gonna do from now on?" Ellison asked his younger companion.
"Really... I haven't even thought about it yet," John said. "I haven't had any time to plan." He was a high school dropout with no qualifications and no work experience. Going back to school seemed fairly pointless after all he'd been through, but he had to do something with his life. "I'm pretty sure Cameron has some ideas," he added. If anyone had thought that far ahead, it was Cameron. "What about you?"
"I'll just carry on what I did before, I guess," Ellison said. "Savannah needs a guardian now she doesn't have any parents."
"In the future she thought of you like a father," John told him. "You'll do well." He didn't add that technically, Ellison already had, so he knew the man was more than qualified for the job.
They walked past other graves as they made their way to the path that would lead them to the gates. Ellison noticed John turning away from said path and wandering across the grass, the opposite way from where they needed to go. "John..." he tried to get his attention but John wasn't listening, so he had no other choice but to continue carrying Cameron's spare body on his shoulders and following after him through the cemetery until they reached a recent grave. Even in the dark he could see where the earth had been filled in only hours ago.
John stood in front of a brand new, immaculate headstone, and stared down at it, silently reading the inscription. Andrew David Knowles, 1968-2009. Loving husband and father, loyal soldier. Semper Fidelis.
"Andrew Knowles," John muttered to himself, repeating the name in his head over and over, burning it into his memory. Yet someone else who'd died for him and for the future; hopefully, he thought. Knowles would be the last one. It hadn't been Knowles' fight but he'd signed up without hesitation. A career soldier, he'd known the risks involved even though he didn't know all the details. It didn't make it any easier for John. "I'm sorry."
Despite the California sunshine beaming down around them John felt little of its warmth. Part of him wanted to bask in its rays, knowing that in twenty years time he'd still see the sun, see more blue skies and feel it on his skin. The sun would remain a golden orb in the bright blue sky, rather than a faint flicker of blood red that only occasionally broke through thick, oppressing clouds of dust and ash high in the atmosphere. He knew he'd stopped it from happening, and that he should feel elation. And he had, until he'd come here, but he felt deep down that he owed the man this much.
He watched as people he assumed were friends and family gathered around the hole in the ground. Half a dozen men carried a polished wooden coffin on their shoulders, slowly stepping in unison towards the grave. They all looked forty or so, all with short, neat hair and were in shape. Three of them wore simple black suits and ties, while the other three bore the Marine dress uniform. He guessed they were Knowles' friends; a mix of active and retired Marines he'd served with.
John remained in the background, stood behind Cameron, sat in one of the two wheelchairs they'd found after landing outside Victorville and knocking the pilot unconscious. She, like him, was dressed in black, with the exception of her purple jacket. John had managed to buy a pair of black trousers and a black shirt from a charity store, and wore it open collar beneath his leather jacket. They remained silent and watched the funeral from a distance. They were the only ones present. Ellison and Sarah were busy finding a new hotel for them to stay in, and had taken both Savannahs with them.
They listened in silence, not a word passed between them as the funeral progressed. He watched the pallbearers lower the coffin into the ground slowly, as the priest recited a few verses from his bible, and then as a woman and two teenage girls a little younger than John tossed the first handfuls of earth into the grave.
People spoke, consoled each other, and made small talk. Cameron watched with interest, trying to understand exactly why burying the dead involved such a level of ceremony when the person whose benefit it was for was unable to appreciate it.
"It's more for the people left behind," John leaned down and quietly explained to her, seeing her confusion and intrigue. "I guess they don't do this in the future?"
"I don't know," Cameron reminded him.
"Right," John nodded. She'd lost those memories. He still couldn't imagine just having a chunk of her life erased like that. There one second, gone the next. She wasn't human but still, he was surprised it didn't bother her even a little bit. She didn't even seem curious as to what had been taken from her. "It helps people deal with their loss," he carried on.
The woman who'd thrown the first handful of dirt glanced over at John and Cameron, excused herself from the people she was speaking to, and strode over towards them. "I don't know you," she said. "Did you know my husband?"
"Briefly," John nodded. Her look changed from grief to something else; part curiosity, part suspicion, as she took in the sight of the young man who'd clearly been injured recently – he was in pain standing up: twenty years as a nurse and being married to a career Marine had made her accustomed to the sight of someone in pain – and the young woman in a wheelchair with no legs and scars on her face.
"Were you... involved with whatever Andy was doing? He wouldn't tell me what it was," she struggled to hold back tears. John hesitated for a moment, not sure what to say.
"We were," Cameron said simply, deciding that John's momentary pause followed with a lie would arouse suspicion. She wouldn't believe them if they said no.
"What was he doing?" she asked. "The... the last thing he said to me was that he had to do it – whatever 'it' was. That the people he was working for weren't what he thought they were, and he was trying to put it right. What was he involved in?" The possibilities had been flying around in her head and causing her even more unrest, more sleepless nights and more tears on top of from his death alone. "He said he was going to put it right and then give it all up..."
"We can't tell you," Cameron replied. It wasn't accurate: they could tell her but she wouldn't believe the truth and would cause her unnecessary distress, not to mention the risk of her alerting the authorities. She'd told John before she sometimes lied about important things: she deemed this to be one of them.
"Please," she grabbed John's jacket and stared at him, desperation in her eyes. "Tell me something. You were with him when he died, weren't you." It wasn't a question as much as a statement; she could see it on his face.
He couldn't say nothing. She needed some kind of comfort, something to make sense of it. She'd never know exactly how her husband died – what little Cameron had found and told him said he'd died in a fire. Nobody had told her anything and John reckoned that would make the pain and loss even worse, not knowing why. "He helped us," John finally answered. "Your husband saved a lot of lives: probably mine, yours, theirs..." he tilted his head in the direction of the two girls who'd been with her before she approached him and Cameron, reckoning them to be Knowles' kids. He didn't add that Knowles also helped save several billion lives; she wouldn't believe it and it would only lead to more questions.
Cameron turned her head and saw the hidden expression in John's eyes. She felt his blood pressure increase slightly and knew he was growing nervous, guilty, speaking to Knowles' widow. "We have to go," she said. "I'm sorry."
"It was nice meeting you," John added, pushing Cameron's wheelchair away slowly, wanting to put some space between them and the funeral, hoping she didn't ask anymore questions they couldn't answer.
The four occupants of the car sat in silence in the dark, alone with their own thoughts, staring out the windows but keeping their heads down so as not to be seen by anyone walking by. The lights were all off, inside and outside the car, and that was how Sarah liked it. They were parked next to the kerb on an empty street, waiting for a call from John or Ellison. She fingered the key in the ignition, keeping it ready for when they had to move out, or if they had to drive away in a hurry. She had no pistol anymore but one of the M4s John had taken from the Kaliba complex was nestled between her seat behind the wheel and the door next to her. She looked down at the foot well of Cameron's seat and saw the other rifle, taking up the space her nonexistent legs should have.
She glanced at Cameron, who stared forwards out the windscreen and gave no sign that she'd noticed Sarah looking out her. She knew better though; the cyborg would be well aware. The machine's words swirled around her head like a storm as she tried to make work out what she was going to do.
'I love John... I won't leave him again.' She hated the thought of it; her son in a relationship with Cameron. Sooner or later she'd rip his heart out of his chest; literally or figuratively, one of the two. After all he'd been through the latter would kill him just as much as the former. It's not like I can do anything about it, she mused, resignedly. Both John and Cameron had made that abundantly clear.
She continued to watch out the corner of her eye as Cameron picked up a newspaper from the floor, one Sarah had bought hours before while Savannah had her broken leg and arm treated in hospital. Inside the car was dark but Cameron had no trouble reading what was on the pages. "You were looking at property," she said.
"We need a place to rent," Sarah replied without looking at Cameron.
"Did you find anything?" Savannah leaned forward from the seat behind, struggling to move with two broken limbs. Her miniature self took up the back seat of the eight-seat Chevrolet Suburban, giving the elder redhead room to spread out and rest her injured leg.
"No," Sarah shook her head. "Too small."
Cameron scanned the pages and the various houses and apartments advertised on the pages. "Several have four bedrooms; that should be sufficient."
Sarah shook her head and gave Cameron a withering look. "There's six of us," she said.
"Yeah but I don't mind sharing with Little-Savannah," the elder Savannah replied. "And John and Cameron will be sharing anyway."
"No they won't," Sarah felt her blood pressure go up and she knew that she was turning red at the idea. "I can't tell John how to feel – or that you shouldn't feel – but I won't let it go on under my roof," she said adamantly.
"We don't have a house yet," Cameron said. "And John needs me; he can't sleep alone anymore."
"Nightmares?" Savannah asked knowingly. She'd had a few herself but then she had ever since she'd found out a liquid metal monster had killed her parents and pretended to be her mother. Since she'd seen the thing again in the hangar she'd had nightmares where it came to kill her next. A couple of times she'd managed to kill the thing; those were the good dreams.
"We both have nightmares," Sarah said. "He's always coped before."
Cameron's eyes lowered slightly and Sarah recognised a look of sadness etch into her face. "Not anymore. The last night he slept alone he had nightmares; he was shaking, crying."
"When was that?" Sarah asked, her voice softening. Why didn't he tell me? She asked herself. They both suffered from bad dreams about the machines, the future and the war; he'd never had a problem confiding in her before when they'd been bad, because it was something they shared.
"The night before you saw us exiting the shower together," Cameron answered. Immediately Sarah tensed up at the memory of seeing her son and the cyborg naked, minutes after the act.
"Why were you and John in the shower together?" Little Savannah asked, curious.
"To save water!" Sarah blurted before either Cameron or the elder Weaver defiled a little girl's mind with information she didn't need to know for another few years at least. "There's not much water in the desert, we had to ration it."
"Oh," Little-Savannah said, satisfied. She sat back in her seat and listened to the grown ups as they talked.
"John needs me," Cameron continued. "He doesn't need your permission; neither do I."
"Get this into your chip," Sarah seethed, wishing they'd put an end to it with Little-Savannah's innocent question. "You're not right for John; you're a machine. It'll all end in tears, or blood."
Savannah had heard enough of this. She respected and admired John's mother after seeing her in action, but she could be completely bigheaded at times, she'd noticed. Probably where John gets his stubborn streak from, she guessed. "What've you got against Cameron, anyway?" She asked Sarah, sitting upright as much as she could. "What's she ever done to you?"
"Tried to kill John, made him fall in love with her, and then left him: that's what," Sarah shot back without blinking. "Not exactly girlfriend material, and that's without the fact she's a machine. But that's not my point, what I mean is -"
"Well John's forgiven her for all that. Let it go or it'll kill you. Believe me." The best thing Savannah reckoned she'd ever done, in her own opinion, was to let it all go back in Monterey and leave the booze on the counter. She still carried the memories, and like scars they would fade but never disappear. She'd learnt there was no sense being stuck in the past; she wanted Sarah to see it too.
"How is it you're from the future and you're okay with Cameron?" Sarah asked Savannah, curious. "John's uncle never trusted her."
"Cameron never did anything to me," she shrugged. "Only one machine ever fucked me over," she couldn't help but glance at her little self in the back, glad she'd said her mother was dead. Better that than the truth. "I thought it was weird at first: I thought John was some kind of pervert, but I met more than a few of those and next to them a guy falling in love with a cyborg isn't that strange."
"What could be stranger than that?" Sarah asked.
"You don't want to know," Savannah said. Sarah glanced at her and saw something in her eyes, something she'd seen before in herself. She'd shacked up with plenty of guys solely because they had a skill they could teach John. She saw a mix of pain and anger in Savannah, at the memories deep within and knew better than to ask any further.
"Great," Sarah said. "But-"
"First of all I thought she was just metal. Then we went through hell together and I saw more, like John does." Sarah started to say something back, to get out what she'd wanted to say, but Savannah shook her head and cut her off.
"It's not the same." How could she explain it to her? How could she get a woman who was essentially a loner to understand the bonds built up when they were in hell? How John and Cameron were there when she'd lost Ellison, how they'd fought every moment, every inch they'd travelled, and done the impossible together: there was no way to get her to comprehend it.
"I get all that!" Sarah snapped, losing patience with being interrupted before she could get her point across. She turned from Savannah and towards Cameron. "I said before I'd try to accept it, I'd try to understand, and I am. I just don't want to hear you two going at it at night, or to see you coming out the shower again," she added the last part quietly so Little-Savannah wouldn't hear it. "I said I'd try but I don't want it shoved in my face, okay. It works both ways: I need time to get used to it," she sighed.
"Oh..." Savannah said, shrugging. She dropped the subject now that it had settled some, but someone wouldn't let it go.
"What's 'going at it' mean?" Little Savannah piped up in the back. She didn't like it when they talked about things she didn't understand and then wouldn't explain it to her.
"I'll tell you when you're older," Future-Savannah said. She turned back to Sarah. "Now that's settled; there's something they haven't told you so I might as well."
"What is it?" Sarah asked.
"Let me put it this way: we're going wedding dress shopping next week, want to come along?"
If Sarah's eyes were pistols Savannah would have been a bullet riddled corpse within seconds. She scrutinised the red haired young woman's face but she retained a serious expression. "You'd better be joking," she growled, her eyes narrowing.
"It wouldn't say no if John asked," Cameron added, sharing a look with Savannah. She'd observed the woman's humour in the future: she'd enjoyed teasing Ellison and John, and did so without changing expression or tone. She understood dry humour, though her attempts to employ it in the past hadn't been very well received. Savannah caught her look and grinned, knowing she'd gotten under the woman's skin.
Beep beep... beep beep... beep beep... "Thank God," Sarah muttered as she pulled the ringing cell phone from her pocket and pressed to answer the call and then keyed in the two numbers, hearing another two in return from the other end. "John?" she answered, listening to him speak on the line. "Okay; I'll pick you up in two minutes." She put the phone down and started the engine. To her immense relief neither Savannah nor Cameron said a word as she pulled out and joined back onto the road.
"Turn right down the next road and carry on," Coleman instructed Townsend, the Grey in the drivers seat pulled right and off the main road and onto a side street. Despite it being 2am and pitch black, there were several groups of teenagers milling around, a number of them wearing baseball caps underneath hoods over their heads, obscuring their faces from view even if it were daylight.
Despite living in a future where mankind was at war with machines, where even though they'd joined the winning side it had often been a precarious position, and being a human working for Skynet meant they were wanted men by the resistance, Townsend felt more nervous driving down this litter strewn side street than he'd been around the machines. A number of street lights were out, several more flickered erratically, and there was garbage strewn on the pavement, spilt out of a bin that undoubtedly some teenaged little bastard had kicked over for a laugh. The whole place smelt of neglect; kids wandering the streets, with parents who didn't know or didn't care where they were. They were surrounded by high tower blocks and low rent apartment buildings. This was where the poorest of LA lived, he reckoned; those with either low paid jobs or no jobs at all. Chances were the kids made money for their shiny new sneakers either by stealing from people or selling drugs. Ironically, he thought, it was these people – those who had learnt to live with nothing, and kids who'd learnt they couldn't depend on other people, even their own parents, for anything – who were better equipped to survive after the bombs fell. Very few middle-class Americans had lived to the end of the war. These kids already knew how to steal and scavenge, and fight for things they needed.
Still, even in the future, he'd become accustomed to a little luxury, more so since coming back to this time. He felt nervous driving an expensive car through such a run down neighbourhood, and not for the first time he wondered why they were here.
"Why the hell are we in Compton?" He asked. They drove on and their headlights illuminated graffiti tagged on the wall of an apartment block. He wasn't sure but he reckoned it was a gang sign. Whatever gang it was, they owned that building. He was glad when they drove straight past it.
"Because the safe house is in Compton," Coleman replied. "Keeping going straight and turn left at Eighteenth Street.
"I think what he means is," Pearce said, "why the hell did you make your safe house here?"
"Because no one would think to look here; that's why." Coleman smiled a little at his own ingenuity. Skynet had picked him partly because he was so resilient, because he always thought two moves ahead and because he was always thinking about what his enemy would be thinking. He'd been a keen chess player in his downtime and he'd always wondered who'd have won in a match between him and the great resistance general. The only shame about siding with Skynet is he'd never find out. "Not Connor, and certainly not Steroids and Baldy."
Under Coleman's instruction, Townsend drove on until they hit Eighteenth and he turned left. After fifty yards there was a back alley running through the centre of the block. Coleman told him to turn into it and keep going. They drove between buildings, passing detritus and debris. The place smelt like garbage and overcooked vegetables, and Pearce stared at a couple of hooded teenagers sat on a scruffy couch, in the middle of the alley. What the hell a couch was doing out in the open, he didn't know. He saw beer bottles strewn around and though he could detect a faint whiff of marijuana in the air. In the distance he could hear sirens wailing faintly but it was too far away to be a concern.
"Park here," Coleman told him, and once he'd put the car in place and turned the engine off, the lead Grey got out of the car. Once the other two were out he led the way towards the nearest building to their left; a decrepit apartment building that to Pearce's surprise wasn't actually condemned. The place looked like it was about to fall apart but there were a number of lights on. People actually lived here.
The three of them entered the building, which was even worse on the inside than out. The elevator facing them was broken, with black and yellow tape crisscrossed in front of it, the words Out Of Order boldly imprinted along the length of it. "It didn't work when I set the place up, too," Coleman told them. Nobody cared about this building enough to fix it, certainly not the landlord, whom he'd only met once. He'd bought the apartment for a hundred grand – a pittance to him but he remembered the old man's eyes lighting up at the time as he'd handed over a thick envelope full of hundred dollar bills. Enough to ensure nobody ever set foot in the place after he'd got the keys – and promptly changing the locks afterwards.
Empty beer bottles were scattered on the floor as well as cigarette butts and discarded packs, and a few shopping bags had been left. There was graffiti on the walls going up the staircase that they started to ascend.
"How many floors up is it?" Townsend asked. Why the hell Coleman couldn't have picked somewhere nicer than this he didn't know. After living in a four hundred thousand dollar house in an upmarket neighbourhood for a number of years he'd become accustomed to living the life of a successful businessman, which on the outside was exactly what they appeared to be. Why anyone would choose to stay here – even if only for a short time – when they could afford elsewhere was beyond him.
"Fourth," Coleman replied. Once they got up to their floor he led them to the last door on the right from the stairs, and pulled out a key. He unlocked the door and stepped inside to Coleman's apartment.
"Nice place," Pearce rolled his eyes as he looked over the interior of the apartment. It was clean – it had that going for it at least – but it was basic, sparse. There were three rooms: the main living room-cum-kitchen, with just a sofa, coffee table, and an oven with clean worktops and counters. The other two rooms were a bathroom and bedroom. It was small, it was Spartan, but to Coleman it was a secure home away from home; a place to hide out should the shit hit the fan. He firmly believed this qualified.
He went to one of the kitchen cupboards and opened the door. Inside was a small safe he'd installed inside, and he turned the combination lock and opened it up. Inside were stacks of hundred dollar bills, fifties and twenties, passports, papers, a fake driving license with his face on it, made out in the name of Patrick Stevenson from Kansas, and also a clear plastic bag. He pulled it out and held it up in front of the others. Inside it were several memory sticks and a thick wad of papers.
"Everything we need is in here," he explained. "All we need to start over again."
"What if Baldy and Steroids aren't in a forgiving mood even with those?" Townsend asked.
"There's a shotgun strapped under the coffee table, a pair of Berrettas under the sofa cushions, and I've rigged the front door up to the mains." He moved to the front wall between his apartment and the hallway, and held up a wire. He connected it to the door handle, flinching as a few sparks showered. "Now if they try to open the door without us shutting it off they're out for a-hundred-and-twenty seconds. Kitchen window leads to the fire exit and the car's ten feet from the bottom of the ladder. Spare keys are by the windowsill and inside the bag with the memory sticks are details for bank accounts in Geneva and the Isle of Man. The machines don't know about them, or about these," he handed them each a passport. Pearce flicked through his and saw a number of stamps already on it. According to his passport he'd already travelled to India, France, Germany, Japan, and South Africa in the past three years, and the name below his likeness was Sean Mason.
"It looks more authentic if it's been stamped," Coleman said. Most forgeries looked new, unused; one that seems to have been through a few airports would be less likely to be noticed. "If Baldy and Steroids are alive then it means Skynet is too. If they decided to kill us they'll only send one – the other will be with Skynet." The machines had always made it clear that one terminator remained with the AI at all times; they'd never fully trusted the humans, he knew. There was always the chance the resistance could have infiltrated the Greys – however unlikely – or that one of them had a change of heart and tried to kill the AI. Since one of their group had previously advocated resistance, he could see the machines' point.
"It'll be knocked out by the electric shock and we'll have two minutes to get out the window, down the fire escape, into the car and drive away. I'd recommend keeping your passports on you at all times in case we have to leave in a hurry."
Townsend looked down at his passport and noticed three others in the bag. Without looking at them he knew they'd have pictures of Nagase, Fischer, and Barton inside, with different aliases. He remembered Barton, the sixth man of their group: not long after they'd come back to the past he'd tried to rally the other Greys to resist and fight the machines. They'd immediately reported his defection to the three machines, Steroids had put a bullet in the back of his head and they'd dumped the body back into the desert. Not how Townsend wanted to go, so he could see why Coleman had taken such precautions. Just as the machines never truly trusted them, nor had he, it seemed.
Coleman took out a cell phone from underneath the kitchen sink, powered it up and waited for it to get signal. It was a cheap pay and go phone he'd picked up, paid with cash to avoid any trace, and programmed the numbers of the others, Baldy, Steroids, and also Colonel Schiff.
He put the pay and go phone into his pocket and also pulled out a laptop from a hidden compartment he'd made some time ago. When he'd had the time to do all this, Townsend and Pearce had no idea; he'd spent as much time working on the project as they had, which was almost all their waking hours for the last seven years. He turned the laptop on and waited for it to boot up.
"How do we know if they're going to kill us or not?" Pearce asked. They could easily just come in and kill them all in a heartbeat.
Coleman hefted the plastic bag with the memory disks inside. "Insurance," he said. "If Skynet's still alive then they're powerful, but it's always been me who's been the face of this organisation. I've been the one who dealt with Schiff and the air force, not them. If they kill us then they'll have a hell of a time trying to broker a deal on their own." Pearce and Townsend both knew he had a point. As far as Schiff knew the two cyborgs were only in charge of security, and it was Coleman who was the official CEO of Kaliba Group. Neither Schiff nor anyone else in the military would negotiate any deals with what they perceived as glorified security guards. It had been a role they'd been happy to play, leaving the corporate stuff to the humans; an error the machines had never realised.
"First thing's first," Coleman said. When the laptop asked for a password he typed it in and the computer opened up its display window, revealing an image of the Grand Canyon as the wallpaper on screen. He selected internet explorer and logged onto his email account. In his inbox were a number of unread messages but the one that caught his eye was from Colonel Schiff's address, titled: we need to talk. He clicked on it to open the message.
Coleman,
What the hell's going on here? We need to talk, face to face and soon. I've been to the complex and seen some things that need explaining. Get in touch as soon as you get this message.
Col. Schiff.
"Shit!" Pearce growled, clenching his fists. "He knows about the machines; we're screwed."
"Maybe not," Townsend shook his head, sensing an opportunity. The others looked to him questioningly. "Think about it," he continued. "We've been offering him an AI, UCAVs more advanced than anything either in their current fleet or even on the drawing boards. What if we came clean about the machines, or partly at least? We've been working on the hyperalloys to build machines for some time now, we have the technology to create terminators – war machines decades ahead of anything even the most creative weapons engineers can come up with – the only thing we can't recreate are the chips so we'll make them remote controlled. Offer them terminators and they'll take them. With government funding we can create an army of machines, all with Skynet's programming of course."
Coleman nodded enthusiastically. "We program in a sleeper code to be activated coinciding with Skynet's nuclear attack: then when the bombs fall we've got an army of thousands of machines ready from the off." That was something else they could offer to placate Baldy and Steroids if they needed to, he thought. He'd take anything that they could use as a bargaining tool.
"But what if the Connors succeeded?" Pearce asked, not sharing their sentiments. "If Skynet's gone they're going to come after us. Both them and the machines could be looking for us right now."
"There's only one way to find out," Coleman shrugged. He flipped through the contacts on his pay and go phone until he found Schiff's number, selected it and pressed the call button. He put it to his ear and waited as it rang, listening to the shrill electronic beeping and silently willing for it to be picked up.
"Colonel Schiff. Who is this?" the colonel's voice sounded strongly over the line. He sounded distinctively unhappy to Coleman, and he wondered what exactly he had found?
"Colonel, its Mike Coleman. I just got your email. You said you wanted to talk?"
"Where are you?" Schiff asked, a hint of suspicion evident in his voice.
"We're at a safe location; things have gotten... complicated."
"You're telling me," the colonel replied gruffly. He knows, thought Coleman. He wasn't saying anything, but he knew something wasn't exactly kosher. "I want to know what the hell's going on," Schiff continued. "I've been to the complex, Coleman: everything's gone. There's more going on here than you're telling me, and I want to know what."
"I can do that," Coleman nodded unconsciously despite the fact Schiff couldn't see him. "But not over the phone. Downtown: Los Angeles Theatre at eight o'clock tomorrow night." He disconnected the call before Schiff could make any kind of reply. He turned the phone off and took the battery out, placing them both into the plastic bag.
"Everything's gone," he said to Townsend and Pearce, echoing Schiff's words. He knew the colonel from the past months of dealing with him. He wasn't a man to exaggerate.
"What about Baldy and Steroids?" Pearce asked.
"He didn't say but I think we should assume if we can't contact them that they're gone too."
"Goddamn Connor," Townsend shook his head. "All our work's been for nothing."
"The hell it has!" Coleman snapped. He sat back down on the sofa and typed on the laptop again. "This is just a speed bump. No military project in history has ever arrived on time and on budget; this will just be the same."
"But we don't have Danny Dyson to build an AI anymore," Townsend reminded them.
"Then we go to our number two choice," Coleman said as he pulled the papers from the bag and flipped through them, glancing over each one until he found what he was looking for. He pulled it free from the rest and laid it on the table for Townsend and Pearce to see. In a header at the top of the page was a logo with three dots and the name DAKARA SYSTEMS. "Xander Akagi's Emma AI showed promise." If Danny had refused they'd have gone to him next.
"They didn't have the hardware," Townsend countered. "The AI was a bust."
"Only because they didn't have the money or the equipment," Pearce added.
"Which we can give them," Coleman said. "The AI program was good – not as good as Dyson's, but it'll do. We still have enough money and assets to continue the project. Contact Dakara Systems and tell them we want to make them an offer." The project would go ahead, no matter what. Connor could only slow them down but not stop them; it was inevitable. You can't stop progress.