Thanks for reviewing this work. It's a fine propellant for writing more.

To capuGino: thanks a lot for the support. I'm glad you appreciated the global humor of the story. I never set foot in an English-speaking country, hence the odd prose.

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 FIVE
IN WHICH THE BLACK QUEEN ANSWERS

Cameron heard the characteristic sound of a phone being crushed and she did the same with hers, discarding the plastic remnants on the table. It was the rule: to destroy the phones; hence the second rule: to have spares. She strapped her Wakizashi sword between her shoulder blades and sashayed from her sentry position at the window to the king size bed and the lump of human meat sprawled on it like a washed-up starfish. She threw a set of fresh garments on Derek Reese's face and said that they needed to go, to what the man responded with a furious flapping of arms and something like duck and itch. Nonetheless he began to don the boxers and pants, albeit unsteadily. He was hoarse and confused from the sudden arousal.

"Woo-dat-on-daphone?" he vocalized like a trained ape.

"Sarah Connor," answered Cameron.

He snorted but made no comment. Derek finished dressing quickly with a colorful shirt populated with exotic birds, which he tucked neatly in the waistband of his jeans.

"My dog is deficient," he stated dubiously, lacing up his boots.

"How so?" Cameron had widened her stance to maintain balance: Cano was bumping into her, making zigzags between her legs.

"He's supposed to warn me," continued Derek.

"From what?"

"Your kind. But look at that, he just wants to get jiggy with every limb you got hanging. Should have neutered him."

Cameron tilted her head to the side, trying to keep track with the furry shape fussing happily around her, and she agreed that the dog might be deficient. She thought of a future where men would not castrate dogs but rather kill the pups and cook them along with the placenta for proteins and nutrients; Skynet had redefined harshly what survival meant.

They left the room and its blueish, carpeted walls. Outside, the vending machine still stood precariously under the porch, an unlucky, violated witness of their halt at the motel. Cano bolted between the parked cars and disappeared from view. The sky was a light shade of gray and filaments of clouds were drifting lazily in the high atmosphere and Derek grabbed a cigarette from his chest pocket. He crumpled the butt under his heel when he was done and threw it in the gutter, then he whistled: the high-pitch sound echoed softly in the motel's inner courtyard and Cano came back with a huge, metallic hubcap clenched between his teeth. Derek told him to let it go and he tried to pull it from his maw without much success. The dog circumvented his master and dropped the piece of shiny metal at Cameron's feet. She accepted the tribute, crouching to caress the soft fur behind his pointy ears and for a split-second, she felt she was somewhere else, kneeling in gravel, underground. A lone bulb would hang shakily from the concrete ceiling and cast flickering lights and shadows on her thin hands. She was petting the fluff on her bitch's neck and a distorted voice filled the tunnel… Cameron blinked and she was back at the motel. She would remember strange things, sometimes. What disturbed her the most was that she didn't know if the memory was hers.

"And you should not encourage him," was grumbling Derek, oblivious to her change in demeanor. "You can't imagine the mountain of crap he brought back from the woods. Rabbits and squirrels and birds and this one time, a goddamn beaver. The thing was bigger than him."

"It's a gift," said Cameron, glancing up at Derek. "I don't get many of those."

"Have it your way."

Cameron set down the hubcap solemnly on the truck's backseats and came to sit behind the wheel. Soon enough, they were eastbound on the turnpike. A red sun was emerging from the horizon and it revealed the light shade of electric blue lying behind Cameron's doe eyes. She was pushing the truck's engine to its limit and the barren landscape had coalesced into a hundred-and-twenty-miles-per-hour blur.

"What did she want?" asked Derek from the passenger's seat. He had come out of another drooling, shallow sleep. Cano was making dream noises on the backseats, brooding the hubcap.

"To meet," answered Cameron.

"To meet and do what?"

"She says she has news on the jumpers."

"You sure it was her?"

"White queen takes pawn and black queen takes knight," she said matter-of-factly.

"Doesn't make no sense."

"I didn't invent the code."

"Who did?"

"John," said Cameron and she closed her eyes. She didn't need them anyway. She was looking for something else. She focused her perception on electromagnetic waves. If you were human, it would be a weird thing to say. Cameron was not human. To her, it was like ripples in a pond and it was like a web, woven strand by strand and unwoven thread by thread, over and over. Some strands were pink and sharp and some threads were flat and silent. Some were just two-dimensional shapes, others were a dissonant rattle.

She ignored Derek's hand trying to seize control of the steering wheel and she ignored his laments on the prospect of dying next to a glorified inanimate doll. She overtook an eighteen-wheeler blindly and pulled back to avoid a sedan propelled on the opposite lane and Derek cursed the god of monotheists. Then, Cameron felt it. On the other side of the flat hill. It distorted radio waves like a boulder would split a torrent apart. She stepped hard on the brakes and brought the Dodge Ram to a more tranquil, legit speed… they crossed paths with a police cruiser a few seconds later. Cameron put half a mile between them and the white-and-blue vehicle and floored the throttle again, nearly doubling the speed limit. She did that on and off for three hours, avoiding all patrols. She couldn't do much about satellites, though, but they probably nursed little interest in their earthly wanderings. Cameron stifled the urge to blend into the earth's magnetic field, which was always so slow and soothing, like a shallow rill softly gargling around your ears. Derek's bemoaning drifted to her and the words began to take comprehensible shapes.

"What?" she asked.

He sighed. "I said three times: are you dead and where are we gonna meet Connor."

"The Four Corners."

"The four corners of what?"

"The only place in America where four states meet. Colorado, Utah, Arizona and New Mexico. It's a monument. And no, I'm not dead."

"What's so important out there?"

"Nothing. It's just a nice place to meet."

"Fair enough. Can we take a break now?"

"Is that your mammalian thing?"

"Yes. And the gauze is soiled. It's starting to smell, I think."

Cameron opened her eyes and the world became bright pain when the light spectrum bumped into the warm backwash of the telluric magnetism. Derek was slumped in the cushioned seat. He was a bit pale and had purple shadows under his eyes. The bruise her collar bone had left on his cheekbone was still spreading, taking unnatural colors. She steered the truck and let it lose its speed naturally on the curved exit. The land was sandy and dry and flat hills were uniformly covered with brown grass and thorny bushes.

"Look," he said, pointing at a weathered, green sign. "We're in the Mojave National Preserve. Kyle and I made a trip there when we were children… not much to see, just rocks and sand. Then Connor sent me back for some seek and destroy."

Cameron nodded. "Skynet will build a labor camp, here."

"Guess we can blend in, then. That's the right place for a human and a machine," he said grimly.

"Yes. And I have my feather-earrings." She gracefully swayed her head sideways to rustle the big, rainbow-colored feathers resting on her shoulders. "I got them at a Native American arts and craft fair. It's tight, right?"

"You're a bit odd."

"What bit?"

"Huh… all of them bits, woman."

"Thanks."

"This was no compliment."

"Oh. Thank you for explaining."

"Eyes on the road."


James Ellison kept his eyes on the road and his bleeding feet. He couldn't do much more than that. He walked along the shade cast by the houses and pedestrians would stop and stare at him. He was on the verge of collapsing but he kept on going. The clothes he had found were torn and he had to drink stagnant water from the storm and he felt the diarrhea coming. He was old and weak but he endured, clutching on his faith and his memories. It's a test, he told himself, and I'm worthy. His head and arms were wobbling to their own flaccid rhythm as he staggered down Bellehaven Avenue and he repeated the words like a mantra. Find the Connors. Survive. The house with the salamander on the wall.

The heat was unbearable and his vision became blurry and James fell on his knees. A rugged hand came to rest on his shoulder and he blurted out in the blinding light, "What day is it?" But the man didn't answer. James whispered his mantra as he felt darkness clutch him. "The house with the salamander. The Connors must survive."


Cameron and Derek stopped at Barstow, County of San Bernardino, California. The place looked like all the places that stood on the side of Road 66: white, ocher and yellow buildings sprouting at random from a thin coat of sand and the sandy rock beneath. They refilled the gas tank and drove slowly down Main Street.

"I think my men and I camped there for a night," said Derek Reese. He tapped the window and pointed at a vintage-looking store: the One Groove. "The place still had some record players. We plugged one of them to the generator in the truck and listened to Marvin Gaye and – fuck!" Derek collapsed beneath the window when they drove past a lone police cruiser.

"Don't worry," said Cameron. "We have a common vehicle with a common paintwork. And I changed the plates."

"You did, huh?"

"Yes. I had a spare."

"Well, it's my face I'm worried about and we don't have a spare for that, do we?"

"You haven't come up on the news channels or the precincts' database."

"Is that so?"

"It is so. I checked last night, on the computer. I also changed your teeth," she added, glancing at him.

He sat back upright and probed his jaw tentatively. "Wot?"

"Your dental identification. One of the killers from the club was a former Seal. You were of same stature and I swapped your records with his."

"Some Seal?" chuckled Derek. "Got beheaded by a ninety-pound girl." Then he breathed out slowly, pensive. "So, let me get this straight," he said. "They got six dead bodies, three of them decapitated, all of them charred or just piles of ashes, either killed with unregistered guns or a freaking sword. And I'm one of those bodies, now."

She nodded curtly, making her hair and feathers move gently. "Yes," she said, "and it's not a freaking sword. It's a Wakizashi blade. A traditional Japanese sword. Did you cover your tracks for the cabin?"

"It's not even registered. I gave a false address for the gig at the King Jack's."

"Then as far as the police is concerned you will soon be tossed into a mass grave without any next of kin to shed a tear over your charcoal remains."

"Sounds like good news, somehow."

Cameron made a turn right and parked the Dodge Ram between two smaller sedans, facing the front window of a diner (this one was not a Denny's, it was a Holly's.) She keyed off the ignition and swiveled in her seat to retrieve something in the backseats: a red pouch with a white cross on it. Derek unbuttoned his shirt and tensed up when Cameron removed the gauze; he insulted her when she applied a foamy disinfectant on the flesh wound. The compartment of the Dodge Ram was spacious enough that wrapping the new dressing around his body didn't require too much proximity between them, which he seemed to be at odds with, but still, he complained about the feather-earrings tickling him at some point.

"So, how does that work, exactly?" he asked.

"What do you mean?" asked Cameron, overlapping the strips of bandage; she began to knot the two ends together and Derek winced.

"I mean the cops, the road. You shut your eyes and you can tell where is the next patrol."

"I don't see the way you do."

"You don't say. It's like, what, a mindfulness shamanic trance or echolocation?"

"I'm not a bat. I can feel electromagnetic waves though. Cops have a telltale, they're all linked via the same radio frequency. They form a web. The cruisers are tangled knots and between each knot, there is a strained rope. It tells me where they are."

"I don't get it."

"It's like a shamanic trance. I'm done."

Derek dropped the subject and buttoned up his Hawaiian shirt. Cameron left her sword hidden beneath her seat when they exited the car.

"Look at that dog," said Derek, "all he does is sleeping. Did you slip him some pills or something?"

"No," she lied. "He's deficient, remember?"

"And they say dogs grow like their masters."

Cano left the car clumsily but soon enough, he was back to his natural self, marking his territory on several rims and releasing the full content of his bladder against a streetlamp. Cameron had given him a home-made brew of soporific compounds so he would like her and mostly, keep quiet. She had done the same with Reese when she had removed the bullet from his stomach; still, the man was diametrically opposed to the concept of quietness. And for the liking-her part, she was not really expecting it.

The atmosphere was heavy and dry and the tarmac radiated heat so they entered the air-conditioned diner hastily. It was the middle of the day and the place was crowded, which they didn't mind: hiding in plain sight was a habit, if not a creed. Derek had to leave Cano leashed to a rail under the shade of a porch and they sat at a booth against the front window where both dog and master could see each other. The waitress came to take their orders.

"You know," he said when the woman departed, "we had a bitch that looked just like him back in 2027. She was a fine scout. And when I saw him in the kennel, I thought that he might be her grandfather or something."

"It's very unlikely the bitch is related to Cano," said Cameron. She would pronounce the dog's name wrong and it sounded like canoe.

"It's stupid, right?" mused Derek, staring blankly at his dog through the window. "Still clinging onto the past."

They remained in contemplative silence for a few minutes before Cameron said, "I'm no Nancy Drew."

He turned back toward her. "Come again?"

"I looked it up: she's a detective. I'm no Nancy Drew. I couldn't track down the jumpers."

"Well, you found the men that wanted to kill me, looks like fruitful investigation to me. Got something on'em?"

"Not much, old contracts and sham addresses."

"Mercenaries?"

"Maybe."

"What a random happenstance, huh?" he asked in mock bewilderment.

Cameron shook her small, feather-ornamented head. "Not random. They knew you would be at the King Jack's. In this time."

"What about you?" he continued. "Radio silence for six years and you show up in the nick of time."

"Random happenstance."

Derek snorted and chuckled. "You couldn't play poker to save your life, girl. You have a tell when you lie. John told me about it a long time ago and I get it now."

Cameron parted her lips slightly and the waitress came back to their booth with a large tray. She set down Derek's dish, which was red meat with fries and a Dr Pepper's can, and she gave Cameron a tall tumbler of fresh water, which she drank in one big, inhuman gulp, spilling a quarter of it on her black attire.

"That much swallowing was unnerving to see," stated Derek, chewing on his rare steak.

"It's for my back. I need to heal."

"Will it scar?"

"Not much. It will be over in a few days."

He nodded in a way that might have meant good or I don't really care. He ate his meal in silence until Cameron closed her eyes and stood still and he complained about her posing as a glorified doll, again.

Then, it happened between two heartbeats. For humans, it would be a split-second or so; for Cameron, it was a small eternity. Derek's heart made the first thump when blood gushed through his arteries and veins… the place was swarming with noisy humans, chewing, laughing and talking. In this hurly-burly, some were young, others were old, and most of them were in-between. The coffee maker gargled and the frying table sizzled and outside the diner, Cano was breathing loudly, his tongue hung loose to cool down his furry body. On Main Street, tires scratched the hot tarmac with a rasping sound and beyond that stood tall buildings, their foundations making hollow creaks against the dusty wind. And standing on the roof of a tenement… something. Something metal. Something still and not breathing.

In Cameron's opinion, human weapons were flawed. Well, you could still argue for pros; for instance, a bullet could travel at three times the speed of sound, which rendered dodging said bullet a particularly complex endeavor: it always arrived before you could hear the discharge. However and if you were paying close attention, you could hear the safety pin being lifted off and the bones in the fingers cracking as they pressed the trigger. And Cameron heard it. Derek's heart made the second thump and Cameron dove to the ground, taking him with her when the front window and the leatherette seat exploded in a hail of red fabric, white foam and plywood. The second bullet turned their table into thousands of splinters and chaos ensued. The world became noise and the customers moved in one wave of screaming flesh, ducking behind the furnishings. A bullet caught a lone woman in the head: it vanished from reality in a gush of blood and skull fragments.

"What's happening?" shouted Derek over the mayhem and the shrieks of fear. Bursts of gunfire came in response and mowed down patrons at random.

"Time to go," said Cameron

They crawled over the tiled floor and behind the counter. Another burst splattered blood and innards on the walls and Cameron crouched on Derek's back and buried his head under her arms to prevent him from being squashed by the human stampede that followed. They sprang to their feet and took an erratic path through the kitchen and toward the diner's back entrance. They bolted through the kitchen's exit and into the dazzling light. The panicked crowd dispersed like a flock of crows in the back parking lot and the valley echoed the deafening sound of the rifle like the low rumble of thunder. Cameron and Derek went around the diner with their backs to the concrete wall until they reached the corner and got a line of sight on the tenement across Main Street. People were running hectically to their cars or to random places to avoid the hail of bullets. Some were cradling wounded infants in their arms. Cameron saw the madman with the seven-foot tall rifle in one hand, a Uzi in the other, standing on the edge of the tenement's rooftop, then leaping into the air. The sixty feet drop made him land heavily on his feet, cracking the asphalt under impact.

"Metal," hissed Derek. "Do you know him?"

Cameron shook her head and the unknown cyborg strolled across Main Street with his huge rifle wedged against his shoulder. He was struck and sent sprawling on the tarmac by a sedan and Cameron and Derek took their chance to run toward their truck.

"Fuck!" uttered Derek. "Where's Cano?" The rail where they had left the dog and the front window above it were gone into shards.

Cameron tossed him the car keys. "I'll find him. Make a turn and meet me in the back," she ordered then hopped into the ravaged insides of the diner.

She dodged patrons staggering in the bloody remnants of the room and stepped over mauled bodies, some missing limbs, others having only limbs remaining. She jumped on the counter to take an encompassing look at the diner… and all went black when she heard the discharge and the armor-piercing round struck her in the back. She went flying above the counter to crash into the tiled wall.


The voices were coming at random. Is that him? James felt a shiver run through his body and something throbbing in his arm. Shadows were fussing and talking and merging together. Can I touch him? No, Savannah, not now. His throat filled up with liquid and he turned his head to vomit something brown on a parquet floor. A sharp light was shoved into his eyes.

"You're gonna be fine, James," shouted a man over him. "Leave him be for a sec, 'kay?"

"The drawing. Sarah Connor," he murmured through parched lips. "The Connors must survive."

Everything was so bright. A face came into focus and James remembered a man, thirty years ago, throwing the Holy Bible in a grave. It was all he knew before the world became void and silence.


Cameron felt white noise and she blinked to see a blurred world tainted in red. She was being dragged by the wrist over the floor and into the kitchen, bumping into the greasy furnishings. Her spine had been hit and she couldn't move. She was hauled over something mushy and a second later she was back on the hot tarmac under the blinding sun.

"Shit!" shouted a man.

Derek Reese appeared above her. He lifted her and stuffed her roughly onto the backseats of the truck. Glass was shattered and the truck's body was riddled with rounds when Derek threw himself back into the driver's seat and floored the throttle. The truck raced forward and the door slammed itself shut when he swerved sharply to avoid a motorbike. The rear windshield exploded and buried Cameron under thousands of gleaming shards. Derek ducked behind the wheel and shouted "fuckfuckfuck!" and he hurtled the truck blindly into a nondescript street. Cameron could only feel the car accelerating furiously on the asphalt then making a sharp turn on a dusty road.

"You okay?" yelled Derek over the roar of the engine, checking her in the rear view mirror. "Shit! He's gaining on us!"

He veered into the flat and barren land and drove at high speed for ten minutes, crushing bushes and making random turns on the bumpy terrain until he stepped hard on the brakes just behind a rocky embankment. Cameron's body was shoved harshly on the carpeted floor by the rapid change in speed, then the door was opened and her face came crashing in the sand when she was dragged out of the compartment by the ankles. Her tank top was ripped by calloused hands and she felt something twisting and tweezing in her lower back.

The thrum of an engine approached and Derek swore an unknown spectrum of insults including circumvent and neural and bitch, then something cold was removed from her back and Cameron gasped when her body arched backward. She felt the collateral system in her spine slowly regaining control. The flank of the truck was riddled with short bursts and Derek ducked and rolled under its frame for safety. Cameron crawled to the driver's side and grasped the handle of her sword from under the seat before she was snatched from the ground by the nape of her neck and hauled roughly over the gas tank of a motorcycle. The ground became blurry again with the acceleration but she managed to thrust her elbow into the gas tank, stopping the bike dead in its tracks in a gush of boiling gasoline, sending them crashing and rolling in the sand.

They both got up, facing each other in the cloud of dust that was slowly drifting away. Cameron didn't know the machine, but he was two heads taller, two Camerons larger and his right foot lacked a boot… she could barely stand on her own feet, right now. The hand of the machine sprang forward and hit her in the armpit when she tried to unsheathe her sword and his large foot struck her midsection. She flew backward with the sword and he was on her in less than a second, pinning her to the ground with one hand. The machine took a switchblade from his jeans and shoved it in her skull, just above her CPU bay. Cameron tried to stretch her arm and fingers; she could almost touch the handle of the sword. She felt the flap of skin being removed and the metal cap popped out of its socket. She felt the end coming… and Cano came sprinting and leaped on the machine's arm in a hail of bared teeth. The sudden impact sent the cyborg sideways and Cameron took her only chance to roll on her belly and grip the sword's handle.

She unsheathed the blade in one furious motion, turning over on her back, and a head came flying across the air, ending its course rolling inside a thorny bush. Cano was still unleashing his wrath on the beheaded machine, dragging it and tearing large chunks of flesh with his angry maw.

Cameron lay still, panting and staring blankly at the sun. Something wet and slimy investigated her ears and tires squealed next to her. Derek's head appeared iridescent between her and the zenith sun and his face came slowly into focus when he began to lift her by the armpits into a sitting position.

"I can move," she said with an electronic-tinted voice.

"Fuck…" He dropped and sat heavily on the ground and wiped the perspiration from his face. "What was that?"

"I don't know. Triple-eight. Foe." Then, "I'm sorry. You said no decapitation."

"I'll let this one pass." He picked up and put the sword on his lap, puffing from the exertion. "Shit, what is that made of?"

"Solid tungsten."

"I thought you were down, earlier," he said. "I found Cano in the back of the diner but he just ran back into the goddamn kitchen."

She turned weary eyes to him. "He was the one dragging me?"

"Yes."

"And he saved me from the cyborg again."

"Did he? I couldn't see, you guys got too far on the bike and the dog just kept chasing."

Cano came back to them dragging the severed head of the machine by a torn ear. He dropped the head next to them as an offering and sat dutifully next to it.

Cameron made a faint smile. "He's not so deficient at chasing metal after all." Then she placed a soft hand on Derek cheek. "The master is not so deficient, too. Thank you."

He shrugged off the hand. "So we're square now."

She cocked the eyebrow. "You still owe me one," she said. "Kaliba's warehouse. Six years ago."

"I had it under control."

"You were tied to a chair for interrogation…"

"Full control."

"… then termination."

"And you were afraid I'd spill my guts."

"No guts to be spilled. Sarah had given false coordinates: 33-42-31 north. The desert."

He nodded ruefully. "She ditched me."

"Sarah ditched us."

"What do you mean?"

"We haven't met in six years."

Derek chuckled. "Well, this is gonna be fun."

"I doubt it. I got thermite in the truck's bed."

"I saw the can." He got up wearily. "Let's melt this fucker to the ground quickly. We gotta make the rendezvous."

"Burn the body." She scratched gently Cano's ears. "We keep the head."


When James woke up again, he was alone. No, not really. A tiny hand was resting on his chest. He turned toward freckles, puffy eyes and red hair.

"Savannah?" he croaked. She noticed him and her eyes became wide and she left in a hurry.

She came back with two men. One was young and a few inches taller than the other, a man in his late forties. He was checking his pulse on the side of his neck and James recognized the rugged hands. It was Charley Dixon.

"You okay, James?" he asked. "It's fine, you're fine." He grabbed his hand gently. "Don't scratch that, it's just saline. You were severely dehydrated."

"I need to get up…"

They got him in a sitting position and he threw up some murky liquid in a bucket they had prepared. He was sitting on wooden table and he winced at the light coming from the window. The two men were holding him by the shoulders and Savannah was nervously twisting her fingers at the far end of the table. A new shape came into focus: a blond girl.

"Where is Sarah Connor?" asked James.

"Away," said the young man. He already had the rough face of his future-self, minus the scars. John Connor.

"I have a message," rasped James. "For her."

"How did you find us?"

"He told me. I'm the only one to know. I swear."

He asked for a sheet of paper and a pen and they fetched the stuff for him. His hands were trembling but he began to draw, anyway. He had imprinted the picture in his mind and he was afraid it might vanish into thin air if he didn't put it down on the sheet of paper right now. John and Charley were still holding him by the shoulders and the paper was on his lap. James drew a big square and he tried to put, as neatly as possible, seven horizontal lines and seven vertical lines within it, evenly spaced to form a 64-tile square. Then, on each corner of the square, he drew two pieces, one black, one white. When he was done, he gave the sheet of paper to John with a shaky hand and he was lain back on the table.

The young leader looked at the drawing, puzzled. "What does it mean?"

"I don't know," said James. "I was told to give you that."

"Is that a riddle?"

"He said it was a code."

"What is this, John?" asked Charley.

John took back the paper and paced back and forth, staring intently at the drawing. "Looks like an eight queens problem, it's a mathematical thing… that's how you place queens on a board so they don't attack each other. It's just a riddle."

"No…" murmured the blond girl. She took the drawing from John's hands. "That's the Four Corners."

"What do you mean?"

Her eyes were wide and she was stuttering. "The Four Corners. It's an engraving."

"Explain yourself," hissed John.

"I saw that when I was… I don't know, twelve, maybe thirteen years old. It's on Sarah's tomb," she said. "It's a shrine, it's a pilgrimage for us. We all do it. We come to see her tomb and that thing's engraved on it. It's called the Four Corners." She tapped her finger on the drawing. "That's all I know."

"White and black queens meeting at the Four Corners," whispered John. "Does it mean anything to us?"

Charley Dixon sighed. "I think it does, son. I'm sorry."

"What are you talking about? Where is my mother?"

Charley took a cellular from his back-pocket and flipped it open. "Rook checks king," he said.


Author's note: A bit of Cameron's vantage point and perception.

Coming up next: Chapter Six: In Which the Queens Meet at the Four Corners (last installment of Part One.)