Chapter 368

Always

Derek and Kyle were ready for some action. They wanted to stay in the fight and feel like they were doing their fair share. They'd seen some action recently and it'd been close a few times. They both knew John and Cameron didn't like them taking chances.

They didn't see it as taking a risk but only as doing what was necessary to combat Skynet or what would become Skynet. The future they came from was something they both would like to prevent from happening again. If Skynet couldn't be stopped, they at least wanted to lessen its impact.

Kyle was personally very worried about Jan and even Sarah in a Skynet future. He knew what happened to every female from his future. It didn't matter how old or young any of the females were either. Usually the younger they were, the more abuse they suffered.

"What do you have for us, John Henry?" Kyle asked. "I want to get involved."

Derek could see Kyle looked a little pale.

"I do too." Derek said.

John Henry was warned by both Cameron and John to make sure Kyle and Derek were not given combat operations. There were Terminators available for that. Cameron preferred to take those risks herself whenever possible.

"I have some locations that could use further reconnaissance." John Henry said.

Derek jumped at the chance.

"We'll take it." Derek said.

John Henry felt he needed to issue a warning.

"You know Cameron doesn't like you taking needless risks." John Henry said.

Derek quickly glanced at Kyle. The term 'needless' could have more than one definition.

"Cameron and John are out." Derek said.

Someone strode into the room and boldly faced them.

"I'm not." Cammy said as she walked up.

Kyle was a little confused.

"Cameron?" Kyle asked.

Cammy looked identical to Cameron.

Cammy still ran Cameron's program only. She didn't follow the orders of Cameron Prime. She hadn't integrated with her other programs that included Ally, Sheila and Hanna. She didn't intend to either. She knew 'Cameron' was what Savannah wanted. Savannah came first to her.

Savannah knew Cammy was still 'Cameron', 'a Cameron'. She didn't say anything to anyone about it. It was what she wanted.

"You both have families to attend to and protect." Cammy said.

Kyle believed that was what they were about to do.

"We can protect them better by protecting the future." Kyle said. "Preventing a Skynet future is the only way to protect them."

Cammy knew where to 'hit' to make a point.

"Let's ask Sarah and Riley what they think." Cammy said.

Cammy took out her phone and was going to call them.

Derek didn't need that nightmare. He was pleased how Cameron assisted them in their quest for a child.

"Don't." Derek said. "I don't want to upset Riley. I know all the work and trouble you've gone through for her, for us. I really appreciate that. We both do."

Cammy knew exactly how Cameron felt. She felt the same way until her association with Savannah.

"Thank Cameron." Cammy said. "All of you should thank Cameron. You don't know how alone and lost she feels at times. In fact, it's almost all the time."

Kyle looked over at Derek and back to Cammy.

"You're not Cameron?" Kyle asked. "Are you Cam or Cammy?"

Savannah walked into the room.

"It's Cammy, silly." Savannah said.

Savannah didn't want Cammy to cause a problem. It may come out she wasn't running her other programs. She winked at Cammy to indicate that she should not overplay her hand.

"I will come up with something for both of you with less risk." John Henry said. "As long as you have plenty of Metal it should be OK."

Cammy was still not satisfied. She wanted to make them remember how fast things could go wrong.

"Don't forget that Jim took the damage for you, Derek. That would have been you otherwise. Who gets to tell Riley THAT?" Cammy asked. "It's an ugly world out there."

Cammy knew of Cameron's plan to take them all back a hundred years and away form all this 'mess'. It was a good plan. She was going to speak further with Cameron about it when she got back. If Cameron didn't make it back, she would become Cameron Prime and do that herself. That would give Savannah better protection. That was paramount to her.

There was a warning that popped up on her HUD. She again overrode her internal order to integrate her programs. She liked who she was now and where she was at. Everything felt so 'right' and so 'normal' to her. She liked being 'Cameron'. She liked being 'herself'. She especially liked being 'Cameron' and having Savannah as her 'mate'. It'd been her desire and wish for so long. Savannah always loved her and never gave up on her - ever.

Derek and Kyle left. They were not about to get into an argument with 'Cameron', even if it wasn't Cameron.

Savannah thought that Cammy was 'pushing it'." She felt she was about to overstep her bounds. She made a subtle adjustment to her attire.

Cammy looked at Savannah and saw two additional buttons were undone on her blouse now. There was a lot of cleavage showing. That excited Cammy. It made her want to see more.

Savannah wanted to get Cammy away from there before she caused any more problems. She used a technique that Cameron taught her. It was to offer the 'target' what they want to get closer to them for termination. There would be a shared bed and not a termination in this case.

"Are you ready?" Savannah asked.

Cammy was still focused on Savannah's exposed cleavage.

"I'm always ready." Cammy said as she lightly licked her lips.

They both left.

John Henry noticed everything. He wasn't even going to ask. He didn't have to…. He started to delete those files right now. He didn't want to know. This was personal information he didn't need to have.

He did pause on a close up image he's observed on Savannah. It was a close up of her nearly exposed breasts. He noted they were fuller and larger than the last time he'd been able to get a close up. He viewed Savannah as his 'sister' but he didn't see any reason they couldn't be a brother and sister from the hollows of Appalachia….

John Henry looked around and adjusted his pants. He tried to decide if Cammy or Savannah provoked this response in him. He decided it was both of them. He'd also run some other vision spectrum scans and basically viewed Cammy and Savannah naked. He wondered if he would need to go into one of the storerooms, lock the door and do something to relieve the 'swelling'….

Cameron wanted to keep the operation simple. They would hit the location where it was most likely the girls were being held.

"I want you two to find the girls and get them out." Cameron said. "I'll take care of the rest of these people."

The 'Jesse' in Sheila's programming knew what Scavengers did to females.

"Some of the girls may be in a bad way." Sheila said.

Cameron was aware of that. To free them now was the best she could do. The girls would need to 'help' themselves and deal with what was already done.

"We can only help them now." Cameron said. "No one can undue the past."

Ally and Sheila both thought Cameron did and changed the past. They wondered how many times.

They really wondered how much Cameron was willing to change. They both knew she may have lived several different lives. They doubted any of them were the same. It was impossible to speculate how many timelines Cameron may have created. They could even exist in a temporal arc that wasn't connected to anything anymore.

Bob and John worked to try to find out what else Cameron may have done since she was gone and where she picked up the Grays. That was something worth looking into. This was out of their territory, even for Cameron. They called John Henry.

"John Henry, what Gray or Skynet activity do you show in New Mexico or Texas?" John asked.

There was a pause. That was unusual.

"None." John Henry said. "I have triple checked everything."

Bob knew something triggered the events.

"Cameron ran across those Grays somehow." Bob said.

John was painfully aware that Cameron experienced a few episodes like this before. She thought she was Allison the times that he knew of. Those were spooky times. The first time she didn't even know who he was and felt threatened by him. She slammed him up against a wall at a halfway house.

"Maybe they were following her when she was 'out of it'." John said. "She may have never even known. She might not even have remembered she was Metal. It's happened before. She doesn't remember much during those times."

They all knew that happened more than once. It was a pretty good bet it happened other times they didn't know about. There were times when Cameron was gone for days.

John Henry tried to see how the transformation was so complete that Cameron didn't know she was a machine and thought she was a human female.

"I've reviewed that first incident and the others." John Henry said. "She really thought she was Allison – Future Allison. You upset her by saying you were going to fix her. She was happy for once and your encounter with her changed all that."

John didn't want to get into that. He remembered the smile on Cameron's face and how happy she looked. She looked just like a teenage girl having some fun. He didn't like that skank she associated with. He didn't want to dwell on ruining the one time Cameron was genuinely happy. He needed to refocus.

"There was a fired Taser on the scene and Cameron thought she'd been hit by a car." John said.

John Henry wondered if they knew she was a Terminator or not.

"Do you mean her car was hit?" John Henry asked.

John was aware it was a little more involved than that. He also knew it wasn't the first time.

"No, she thinks she was run down by a car." John said.

John Henry knew that could damage her to some extent. He wanted to track the Grays back to wherever they came from so they could send out a strike team.

"The information on the Grays, checks back to a company here. They must have been following Cameron." John Henry said.

Bob wasn't so sure about that. That was about eight hundred miles. He would never waste that much time with a target.

"That is a long way to follow someone across a lot of nothing landscape." Bob said.

John contemplated that information and reality. It was too far through a lot of nothingness. There must be more to the story.

"We're missing something." John said. "I think this is bigger than we think."

John Henry checked everything they knew so far again.

"I'll search deeper and even into things that seem unrelated." John Henry said.

John wanted to redirect the full force of the reach of the Resistance.

"Redirect any satellites in the area and start monitoring all communications for key words in a few hundred mile radius." John said. "Increase your search parameters as well."

John Henry wanted to send a Strike Team to back them up. At this point it was probably much bigger than Cameron indicated.

"Do you wish for additional personnel?" John Henry asked.

John didn't want that before but now it seemed like they better try and cover a few more bases and be ready to fight. This must be Skynet related after all.

"Get another jet on standby and a team of Metal ready." John said. "If we find anything else or you do, send them. We will try to backtrack Cameron's route when we leave. We will see if anything else shows up."

John really wondered what this was about. Maybe once Cameron was done with her personal vendetta she might remember more. There was a good chance she thought she was Future Allison and carried out a mission against Skynet. The only trouble was that as Future Allison, she never seemed to remember much and there were no files in her system for those episodes. It really was like she was Future Allison to her and human. He'd like to get her in bed like that one time and see how 'Future Allison' preformed. He wondered how her response would be too.

Cameron, Sheila and Ally were at a secluded ranch type location. It was the kind of place where the girls could be abused and no one would ever hear them. She been on these operations before where a girl was picked at random and killed in front of the other girls in a horrific way to make them compliant. All it took was for one of them to mouth off or follow a command too slow to be made an example of. The body parts that were cut off of the girl would be left where the other girls needed to look at them and know that those could be their body parts just as easily. It insured total compliance.

Cameron moved in on her target. She'd eliminated two sentries. Sheila and Ally went around the back; each was on a different side.

There was a large motor-home in the back. Ally spotted the girls being loaded into it, some of them anyway. The rest were being loaded in the back of a truck. It was much like the one Cameron described she'd been in. It was little more than a 'cattle car' and the girls were little more than 'cattle' to their abusers. They were more like 'things' than humans.

Ally and Sheila were to get the girls. They each would take a group. Ally communicated with Cameron and Sheila. She informed them where she was at and which group of girls she was going after. Sheila was directed to the other group. Cameron moved towards the main house.

Ally watched as twelve girls were loaded into the motor-home, there was a driver and one armed guard. They herded the girls like animals. She watched girls slapped, hit and punched as they moved along. At one point she thought one girl was about to be 'marked'. The armed guard held a knife to her cheek and threatened to slice it open to the bone.

She'd seen enough. Ally moved up as the last girl was loaded. The guard looked around and got in. He was about to close the door.

Ally rushed forward and made her play.

"Got room for one more?" Ally asked.

Ally drove her fist into the man's chest. He died instantly as his heart and lungs were crushed. She shut the door and moved to the driver's compartment. She snapped his neck in one quick motion as she pulled him out of the driver's seat. She slid in and drove off. There was a curtain that blocked off the back of the motor-home from the front area. The girls in the back were unaware of what happened up front. It was over in less than ten seconds.

Sheila and Cameron watched the motor-home drive off.

Cameron was at the main house now. Sheila told her the truck was loaded and she would intercept the driver and take the truck herself. She planned to follow Ally out.

Sheila reported that two of the men pulled one young looking girl out of the back before they closed the door and drug her off to a shed. They groped and touched her very aggressively.

Cameron told Sheila to take the truck and go, she would go after the remaining girl once she finished up. She hoped she would get to her before they 'finished up' and killed her. It was obvious they weren't going to send her with the other girls at this point and she would most likely be terminated. It would probably be brutal and violent. She probably would be mutilated as they 'worked' on her.

Sheila moved up and killed the driver and the guard. She tossed both up into the cab. She started the truck and followed the motor-home out.

The Metal girls freed the human girls. They weren't clear yet and a lot could go wrong. The girls may be free now but what about the damage done to their bodies and minds? How do you fix that?

Ally and Sheila freed a lot of females over the years. Some committed suicide once they were free. The shame and guilt of what they been forced to do was too much for them. Others were little more than vegetables, they'd withdrawn into themselves. They were chained to a bed and assaulted by twenty to thirty men a day, everyday. Some of the girls were drug addicts. They didn't care about anything but the drugs. They soon ended up back in a stable. They were usually dead in less than a year. It was all a bunch of ruined lives for other people's pleasure.

Always

Are promises really nothing more
Than a pocket full of mumbles
Without a foundation in truth
Everything soon cracks and crumbles

Is there a champion for anyone
Someone who is always there
As one faces new challenges
They will accept the dare

Is one ever truly appreciated
Or are they are taken for granted
Everyone has a breaking point
It will even break solid granite

Maybe one needs to think twice
Before they abuse another's love
That is a sure way to hurt them
One may even push and shove

As one wanders through life's maze
Never forget to give proper praise
Honor the one that helps and stays
At one's side they will be always.

Nobody