Thanks for the kind reviews.

Author's note: I do not own the characters, the space-time continuum, etc.

Summary: The story begins six years after the events of 219: Today Is the Day. Sarah ditched Derek and Cameron and kept John hidden in the lighthouse with Charley Dixon. She felt that Jesse's treason was Derek's and that Riley's murder was an omen. A storm gathers and in the eye of the storm stands a girl from the future, Cameron. Space and time have been stretched between John and her. She will travel with unexpected companions on an unexpected journey to find her way back.

CROSSING LINES

PART ONE
THE FOUR CORNERS

CHAPTER TWO (ADDENDUM)
THE RESCUE

Cameron crouched near a fallen tree. Time had hollowed out its trunk and its insides were now covered with a thick layer of green moss where various colonies of insects had made a new home. Derek's cabin was small but sturdy: it was made of thick planks with a little porch on the front furnished with a barbecue and two wrought-iron chairs.

The plan was sound: get in, get the dog, get out. And what if they had left some men behind? My hardware is designed to terminate humans, she had said, my software is designed to terminate humans. Derek was glad to hear it and she had wagered he should be.

She had ripped the padlock of a two-panel fence and they had eased the truck down a trail of wet ground, a dense forest of teal-colored fir trees on one side and the soft gargle of a rill on the other. Derek had parked the car in a clearing littered with green-and-yellow fallen needles, thirty feet shy from the rocky bank of the small river. He was still disabled by his stomach wound and had been left behind. He had showed her a nondescript patch of green on his cellphone and had pointed right in the middle of it.

"My cabin is here," he had said. "But we can't take the main south road. We would be in the open…"

"I don't care about being in the open."

"… and I booby-trapped this part of the road."

"Do I care about booby traps?"

"You should. That's Semtex wired to a metal detector."

Cameron had cocked an eyebrow and he had said that she shouldn't be looking at him with contempt because he had spent two years assembling mines for Connor's headquarters and that he was damn good at it and he might blow up her fake nose if she didn't want to follow the plan. But the plan was sound.

She had hopped on the boulders protruding from the stream bed and climbed up the gentle slope on the other side. Then she had walked half a mile between fir trees and eight-foot tall ferns and got to the west side of the cabin.

Cameron put her palm on ground and burrowed her fingers into the loose soil. She tilted her head to the side. She could feel it, the vibrations… a mole, thirty feet from her… the tiny claws of a squirrel digging into bark… deep down, ants excavating new galleries… the soft gush of the river stream against the weathered boulders… the rubber sole of steel-capped boots on wooden floorboards… there.

She rose slowly and walked toward the cabin, making her way up the porch: each step made a loud, high-pitched creak. Cameron stood in front of the door and waited. She could here a rustle behind the planks and safety pins being lifted off. The whispers came from both side of the door.

"Is that him?"

"Heck if I know, there's no spyhole on the door. Maybe it's a bear."

"No, it's him. The dog would freak out if it was a bear – not having the best spot on the food chain, I mean."

"Okay, okay. The second he goes in, you shoot him in the kneecaps. Then, we wrap him up pretty for the boss."

"Sounds like a done deal to me."

Cameron widened her stance and drew the Glocks from her waistband. She calculated the angles and pointed the suppressed barrels at each side of the door. They were about to discover their spot on the food chain when someone like her was on the prowl. She pressed the triggers simultaneously: two high-velocity rounds penetrated the planks in a hail of splinters… then a dull sound. She kicked down the wooden panel: two men were lying still in a pool of crimson blood on each side of the entrance. The bullets had avoided their body armors and ripped through their throats.

The room was small and dusty with a kitchenette on the side. A worn-out couch was facing a wide television screen propped on the floor. Empty boxes of Chinese takeout littered the coffee table. Ahead, a closed door probably led to the bathroom.

"Dog?" called out Cameron in the empty room. A muffled bark came in response. "Come out, dog." What came out, however, was far from her expectations.

Cameron ducked behind the couch when the door exploded, shredded into thousands of plywood chips. A man came out shouting foreign insults and firing his automatic rifle at random, turning the sparse furniture into smithereens. The man had his pants and boxers down to his ankles and his erratic movements made his penis wriggle into some kind of chaotic, double-pendulum motion. Strange.

Cameron leaped forward and unsheathed her sword in one swift movement: metal struck the air and the head of the man flew across the room, scattering the takeout boxes like so many bowling pins. Before his body collapsed from the sudden lack of central nervous system, she kicked him hard in the torso, tossing him back into the bathroom. The headless body ended its course on the toilet bowl where it sat limply, never to move again.

"It's okay, dog," called Cameron. "Bad people dead. You can come out, now."


Author's note: Pants and boxers down: defecation or masturbation? Have it your way… a potential happy ending for him.

This addendum was on Cameron's perspective, which I'll try develop further in the next chapters.