2.
She has a computer class with him. She flips her hair once and turns around slightly to glimpse the boy she kissed the day before. His usual seat is empty. For the whole class, she feels its void pulling her in, drawing her in like a small center of gravity. She actively participates in not listening, and her thoughts are inevitably on him. With him. For no reason. She guesses this is what a crush must feel like. Her first crush. Here we go, she thinks.
He doesn't show up for the whole day, which is not entirely unusual for John Connor, the resident bad boy. But it becomes extremely unusual when she returns to her empty house, when she pours a glass of orange juice for herself and turns on the TV.
Death, death, death, missing, death.
Remarkably, she doesn't drop her glass. She calmly takes in the news and stares at the face on the screen she has been thinking about the whole day. She thinks about the grave she visits with her father, the busy military man who is never here, on every Sunday. She wonders what death is supposed to be like. If it could be colder than the air of her own home.
A month later, when the name John Connor is forgotten from everyone's mind, Kate still remembers his face, the trail of deaths he has left, and a single glistening moment in the basement.
He woke up from a hazy dream into a hazier reality, convinced everything had been a nightmare. That this reality was only a different version of the same dream that had haunted his entire life.
His eyes fluttered open, and the white florescence light almost blinded him as he breathed in cool, sterile air. For a second, he didn't know where he was. This was different, not one of the construction sites he'd slipped in some nights to sleep, not another underground homeless hideouts. This was--
Crystal Peak.
He sat up, a jolt of reality shattering through his entire body.
It wasn't a nightmare. What he had seen, what he had felt, Judgment Day -- they were not his nightmare. He shut his eyes again, burying his face into his palms. His hands were moving, so he guessed he was alive. He knew he was alive because the horror of everything flooded back into his memory, burning into his every bone.
Judgment Day.
So it had come to this.
The shock of it all had faded with the night's sleep, and only bitterness had survived. Round, round, round like a carousel whirling in its place, the future was spinning and spinning and never letting him go from its endless circle.
In silence, the question circled back and forth. Why? Why?
To live.
To live, Kate had answered him the night before.
Kate.
For a second, panic skipped a beat of his heart. When he found her sleeping on the sofa next to his, he began to breathe again.
Under the white, fluorescence light, her auburn hair quietly glittered.
He watched as peaceful serenity fleeted across her sleeping face. He picked up the thin grass-green blanket that had slipped onto the floor and fingered its texture. She'd tucked him under it overnight. He covered her with the blanket and wished her a pleasant dream.
To live.
He hoped that was a good enough answer.
And it was time to work.
He limped across the hall to the barracks farther into the compound. He slowly inspected every section, occasionally picking out a few items here and there that they needed immediately. He spent a little more time on the weapons barracks, checking over the explosives and the various assortments of war gadgets. This wouldn't be enough, he knew. There were all kinds of weapons that had been known thirty years ago displayed and stocked here, yet, against Skynet and its machines, they weren't enough. They were never enough.
He had things to do.
He returned and found her still on the sofa. He watched her again for a moment, then moved into the control room. He needed to check the security system of this compound and acertain how long this would last, if it could, against the future war.
The computers came alive with a whoosh, and one by one the monitors fizzed from the black abyss. For a sickening second, he wondered if this shelter's security system was in any way uplinked to the 'net, and ultimately, to Skynet. But it wasn't. It was an independent system, with separate control structures underneath. It was old, all right, but definitely effective, and probably the only computer system they had now which they could use without worrying about Skynet's intrusion.
Except for the weapons in the barracks, there was not much for the self-defense within and outside the perimeter of the shelter. Alarms upon unauthorized intrusions were pretty much it. He made a mental list of things to do and included fortifying the compound. There were only two entrances to this shelter from outside, and surveillance cameras were installed at every passage. One entrance had already been blocked with the explosion caused by... T-850. Uncle Bob. The unlikely father figure who had saved his life time and again. The machine that could end up killing him someday. Oh, the irony.
The other entrance was still operating, but not accessible from outside unless anyone trying to enter had the code. He flicked on the camera that was supposed to show the view of the complex from outside, wondering just exactly what he was expecting to see.
And there was nothing on the screen. Nothing at all except the snowcrash.
Of course.
The above world was dead.
He clenched his hand into a fist and unclenched it, testing against the paralyzing numbness. He was alive, only to be weighed down by the death.
To live.
To live?
If fate was going to saddle him with this 'savior of the mankind' crap, it could've at least made him unfeeling, not to hear every scream that he could've prevented. He had been trapped between choices that he couldn't change, struggled and struggled to get out of the game. Now, even the mere disguises of a choice had been taken away. Only the fleeting images and broken whispers of the people he couldn't save echoed through the empty walls.
Feeling sorry for yourself?
His mother's voice, as always, took an opportune moment to speak out. He imagined her face that had been rarely graced with a smile accompanying the question, admonishing him, teasing him, encouraging him, pushing him.
But his mother wasn't here. The Day had come, and she wasn't here. And the weight of the destined future smothered him, him alone.
The future is not set, you know that.
But it had been set all along. Judgment Day had been inevitable. He and his mother had stopped nothing. Then why do anything? If everything was set in stone, why do anything? He'd sit tight and still become the great military dickhead. He already knew what he'd become, what he'd do, who he'd meet, how he'd send his father to the known death. Now, in the courtesy of Uncle Bob the T-850, he knew when and how he was going to die. Destiny. Fate. If such things existed, why grieve?
That is enough whining. Get on your feet, solider!
But Mom, haven't I earned this moment, at least this? I'd lived without you, with nothing, and for this moment, I'd like to be weak. Let me be weak. Please. Just for a moment.
There was only silence.
He had been staring into the white and black dots dancing across the feeds from the surveillance cameras for about eternity when soft footsteps broke his reverie.
He turned around and met Kate's blue eyes staring into his across the control room. She was leaning against the doorframe, her arms wrapping around her body, quietly observing him.
He gathered himself, shaking off his dark thoughts and trying to think of something, anything, to say. He almost said 'Good morning', but stopped when he realized the statement was false in every way. It wasn't a morning, and by several definitions, there was supposed to be nothing good that could be found in their situation. "Hi," he tentatively offered instead, leaning back against the chair.
"Hi." Her soft voice echoed in the spacious hall.
There was a long silence as they tried to find words, to articulate.
A second later, he was smiling. She, too, broke into a small smile, and with it, the odd yet understandable awkwardness melted into the thin air.
"That's better," he said, and her smile spread little more broadly. Absently, he wished she'd smile more often.
She stepped into the room, going over to the side table where he'd put down the things he'd picked up from the stock barracks. Some clothes, food, towels and soaps. Little, important things. She picked up a set of clothes and came back moments later in an oversized T-shirt and sweat pants, looking slightly more alive, cleaner.
With a curious look, she inspected other items on the table, stopping when she saw two mugs he'd prepared while she was changing.
"It's coffee," he explained. "Hard to believe, isn't it? Actual food."
"Thank God," she murmured as she cupped one mug with her two hands. "I wouldn't last long without coffee."
Then it was a good thing they had plenty of it, he thought as he watched her going over to the next item on the table. She fingered its black metal surface, her expression suddenly shadowed.
He didn't want to do this yet, but there was no choice. "You know how to use it," he said questioningly, but he already knew the answer. He'd seen her using it, almost as comfortably as he did.
But this was different from the day before, when she'd used guns with a second's notice. That had been instinctive, reflective reactions for survival. This was premeditation, and with it came the reality check. This was really happening. From this day forth, there would never be a single day when they would be without a gun at their side, ready to use.
If the thought scared him, the one who'd been prepared for this every moment of his life, he couldn't begin to wonder how it would affect her.
"Kate," he said gently, a question unspoken.
She didn't answer right away. She took the handgun into her palm, weighing it, contemplating its trigger. Then with one defiant move, she took it in. "I'm afraid," she said finally. She slowly turned to him and looked him directly into his eyes. "Are you disappointed?"
In her? The question itself was unthinkable. "No," he said.
She met his eyes, searching for something, anything. She nodded, and he heard her silent thank-you.
"What are you working on?" she asked a moment later, looking over his shoulder into the computer screen and nursing the cup of coffee.
"The systems check. The security system has radiation detectors, and it seems like we're right in the middle of the blast radius. We need to make sure that the radiation isn't still in the atmosphere before we make any attempts of returning to the surface. It'd be a while before we can contact any survivors, but I figured we need to be prepared as early as possible."
She sat on the chair beside his, her expression somber. "What's going to happen?"
He had thought about this perhaps over a thousand times, drew hundreds of scenarios of what to do when it'd come to this day. Somehow, he still couldn't believe it had come to this point and this day, when he would have to actually plan the war against the machines.
"People don't know what was behind the attack yet. For a while, they'd believe it was Russians. The first thing is letting people know that it was Skynet, the machines, not another country that attacked us," the words were streaming out with every authority, with not an ounce of emotion, and he didn't recognize his own voice. "We need to create a new long-range communication that's not affected by Skynet. There're no central authorities of any kind left standing, and every news network available would be controlled by Skynet. Anyone trying to follow directions from the existing communication system would be following Skynet's orders, maybe even be put into camps to serve the machines and terminated. They would follow the orders, thinking it's the government's way of taking care of people in the nuclear aftermath, and we have to stop that from happening. And, Crystal Peak can't be our permanent base. This place is on the record, and Skynet is bound to hit the known shelters first once it begins to mobilize enough HKs."
Kate, who had been quietly listening, asked this time, "HKs?"
"HKs. Hunter-Killers. They would be skeleton versions of the T-850 you saw. Of course, it would take some time for Skynet to be able to manufacture them on a massive scale. But we need to set up a national grid, camps for people to hide before they're discovered by HKs ASAP. And we need to manufacture our own weapons against them. What we have here of course are not enough, and--"
Suddenly, her hand was on his arm. "It wasn't your fault."
He stopped, his streaming words suddenly muted.
"It wasn't your fault," Kate repeated. "I was there, I know you did everything you possibly could. Don't blame yourself for this."
There was too much understanding in her eyes. Since his mother, he'd had no one who could get him, and suddenly, now, within the claustrophobic bind of fate, Kate Brewster was offering him her understanding. This thing, being understood, was new to him, and he didn't know quite how to deal with it. "It wasn't?" he said, bitterness sipping out despite himself.
"You didn't make those bombs. All those things you didn't have a hand in have happened, and you can't be responsible for everyone's life. It is up to each of them, to each of us who led this to happen," her voice was soft yet stern, not allowing any objections. "It's not up to you to save everyone."
Oh, but it was. Suddenly he wanted to ask her where she'd been in the last forty-eight hours. It was up to him to save everyone. Because he was John Connor.
All because he was John Connor.
What was he? What was he, really? How did one measure his life up against so many lives, against the world? What would he be possibly worth all this? What was he?
He was John Connor, as T-850 had told him.
It was a joke. There was no way fighting this circular logic of the time paradox.
And as if she read his thoughts, she leaned closer to him, her hand gently covering his. "Don't try to live for us, for the people. You just need to be you. I think, in the end, that would be enough."
He stared at her hand, and at his. He wanted to believe it so much that it ached. "You don't know everything yet."
"Then I guess you need to tell me everything," she said.
He watched this woman, who reminded him so much of his mother, who had all the rights to break down at this moment yet didn't, who held her unwavering gaze on him. And he didn't know what to do. From the years of isolation, he no longer knew how to trust, how to open up.
What was he to her, anyway? What was she to him?
She wasn't supposed to be here. He had seen this day every moment of his life. Since he was 13, this was all that he'd seen. And she was the only thing he'd never seen coming.
But if things were really inevitable, the destiny already set in stone, in this predictable future, she was the only unpredictability he could look forward to. Maybe, maybe.
Something burned behind his eyes and his chest, telling him that he was alive. Living. Breathing. Feeling.
All this, to live the future.
It just might mean everything.