Terminator: Resistance

Chapter Thirty Four: Last Order

Not sure how he was going to get out of this situation as the T-800 slowly marched its way down the corridor, since there wasn't any other way out of the command room, Rivers had no choice but to hide behind the doorframe and wait. Taking out a single machine from behind was no problem, thanks to the violet plasma rifle, but Skynet would also be alerted to their presence if a Terminator was disabled. Destroying one was easy compared to a dozen or however many were inside the bunker, not to mention the new Infiltrator, which was probably just as resistant to plasma fire as its predecessor.

"I have a confession… to make, Rivers." Baron said as the machine got closer. "There's a reason I hated you… I told you you were number… three on Skynet's list… I lied. You're number two under… under Conner and… and I was jealous. You took my spot… I don't know why, but… don't let this junker see you."

With that, the Commander groaned loudly in pain as she got up to a kneeling position and shot the approaching Terminator in the face just as it was about to come through the door. Leaning heavily on the desk, she put two more shots into the T-800's chest, causing its eyes to go dark at the same time that she sunk down to the floor. Rivers started to go over to help her, but Baron told him not too, because leaving her there for the next machines to find was the only way he was going to survive. Wait, what? The Commander was planning to sacrifice herself so that Skynet wouldn't realize that he was there?

"I'm not gonna let you do that, Commander." The Sergeant argued as the distant sound of metallic footsteps reached his ears. "I got this data storage unit from our objective area, it… I think it holds the mainframe's real location… if I understood him right."

Was this a total guess? Yes, it was, but it was a good theory based on what the hooded man had been muttering while working on that terminal. I mean, what the hell else could have been so valuable that it was intended to be delivered to John Conner himself? When he said this, a little bit of the hope came back into Baron's eyes, even as she groaned in pain again, as if she now believed that there was still a chance for humanity to win this war. That hope turned into fear again a moment later when the mechanical footsteps got louder, along with a different sound that was more like a heavy walk in boots.

"It's an Infiltrator, Rivers." She said, getting her weapon ready again. "No matter what happens… stay hidden and then… and then get out. Get that… get that device to Conner no matter… no matter what. Goodbye, Jacob."

As soon as she said these last words, Baron gave him a brief smile before getting back up to a kneeling position and starting to pull the trigger. For a few seconds this went well, with the Sergeant hearing metallic impacts from where he was hidden as if she was able to take a couple of the Terminators out… before the Infiltrator's cannon came online. In a flash of violet colored light, both the desk and Commander Baron simply vanished, blown to pieces like everything else that was destroyed by Skynet, and there was nothing that Rivers could do about it.

For a few seconds nothing happened, and with only a thin metal filing cabinet to hide behind in between himself and any machines who walked in, things weren't going to end very well if that Infiltrator wanted to check the body. However, it seemed like the efficiency of body collection was more important to Skynet than checking around to make sure that the bunker was still secure, since the Infiltrator and the other Terminators turned away, their footsteps getting softer until vanishing completely.

Taking a quick look at the barely recognizable remains of Baron, and having all their interactions pass through his mind like with Ryan and Erin, the Sergeant wanted more than anything to go after those machines and turn them into scrap. However, the Commander's last order had been for him to survive and get the data storage unit to John Conner, no matter what. So now that it was confirmed that there were no more survivors inside the bunker, and that… that South Division had met the same fate as Pacific Division a few months before, it was time to move on.

Rivers wanted to stay in this area and look for Jennifer and Patrick, but there wasn't time. As much as he wanted to make sure that they were safe, no one was going to be safe if Skynet wasn't destroyed, so as much as the Sergeant hated it, they had to be left behind. For the moment, though, there was no more room in his mind for anything beyond getting himself back out of the bunker… without Skynet noticing him. The first leg of this journey was easy, since the machines hadn't gotten this far back to collect bodies, but once he got back to the infirmary… things got a lot tougher.

The place wasn't full of Terminators or anything, but they passed through at regular intervals, which the Sergeant was able to move through once he got the timing down, ducking back into the same storage rooms and corners that he had used on the way in. The only variable was the Infiltrator, which seemed to be rotating between dragging out a body and sweeping the area for survivors. This unit was way harder to avoid, since the areas it patrolled seemed to be completely random, and there was even one instance where the machine came within mere feet of discovering him in the same room where Jennifer and Patrick had been living, if it hadn't gotten distracted by a light fixture that suddenly shorted out.

Skynet must have felt that it could have been caused by a human, so the Infiltrator marched off toward it, allowing Rivers to come out of hiding in order to round the last corner toward the entrance. Unfortunately, that close call with the Infiltrator caused his timing to be off, and as a result the Sergeant almost ran right into a returning T-800. Since these units weren't armed in order to work on body collection, it was easy for him to raise his rifle and take it down with three shots to the chest. But unlike back in the command room, this unit had gotten a clear look at his face, and now Rivers had to run.

The Infiltrator was sure to come up from behind even faster than the T-800s, so he ran, forgetting all about stealth until he got to the entrance, and then having to shoot another Terminator that had been coming down the stairs. These ones were also unarmed, allowing him to run right through them, one or two shots being enough to knock them down even if they weren't destroyed. The surface was only a short distance away now, but the sound of quickened metallic steps was coming from behind, and then the Sergeant heard something that made his blood run cold.

"Jacob Rivers." A deep voice said. "Marked for termination."

From past experience, Rivers already knew what was going to happen, so he ran even faster, reaching the last length of stairs just as that repeating cannon came to life. The only good thing about this situation was that such heavy cannons were hard to aim, even by a T-850, so the Sergeant didn't take a hit while the stairs around him were shredded like cheese, and then he had to jump for it just as the whole thing collapsed. Grabbing onto the edge and trying to pull himself up, Rivers looked up and saw a T-800 reaching down to grab him… only to get knocked back after being struck in the neck by a plasma shot that almost took off its head.

Scrambling up onto the edge and then getting to his feet, the Sergeant ran as fast as he could, just barely avoiding the activating light beam of an HK Tank that had been rolled in to load up the bodies. The T-800s that were outside were getting armed again, while the ones in the bunker, well… were probably trying to figure a way out now that the only stairs were destroyed, giving Rivers an opportunity to escape that he didn't plan on wasting. So there he was, running away from yet another destroyed division as the only survivor… North Division was his only hope now… but would he be able to get there and find them in time?

There hadn't been time to get exact coordinates from Baron before escaping, he just figured that North Division would have been somewhere to the, uh… north, right? And thus began another journey that took a lot longer than he preferred. This time the Infiltrator hadn't managed to track his vector of escape, so there was no need to change headings and double back in an attempt to lose the thing, and as for its ability to mimic voices, well… without having a radio there was no need to worry about that, either.

North, north, and still north he went, repeating the pattern of stopping for rest only when absolutely necessary, and then heading out as soon as he woke up, no matter how tired the Sergeant still was. The days began to blend together, with only two clear thoughts entering his mind over the next week: The first being that part of him wished that he had abandoned the Resistance and just kept traveling with Jennifer and their friends on that clunky old bus, and the second was that there would have been no escape from Skynet if he had done so. Tripping over something as he approached the ruins of Los Angeles, the Sergeant found himself face to face with a bleached white skull after he fell onto the ground… but then somehow he kept falling.

At first Rivers thought that he fell down into a hole because of the sensation in his stomach, but then he realized that instead of falling down, he was being raised up, rather painfully by the ankles. Struggling to look down, er, I mean up toward his feet, the Sergeant saw that a rope was pulled tightly around them… apparently, he had walked right into some kind of snare trap. The plasma rifle had fallen from his hands, laying there unreachable on the ground below no matter how hard he tried to reach it, but then Rivers stopped breathing when he realized that he wasn't alone.

"Holy shit, we caught one?!" A man in a Resistance uniform exclaimed as he and two others came out of hiding. "We actually caught one?! Joey, go tell Conner we got one!"

"Hey, this one's wearing a Resistance uniform." The third man commented as the second one ran off. "Fucking machines."

Realizing that these soldiers thought that he was another Infiltrator, Rivers tried to tell them he wasn't' but this didn't stop the first man from striking him in the forehead with the stock of his plasma rifle. Now the Sergeant's ears were ringing, his vision partially white, and just barely able to hear the soldiers realizing that he was human before losing consciousness.