Jessica's Fear

Terminator:RISE

Jessica was jolted out of her sleep mode as she heard the screams of people outside her locked door. She quickly threw on her blue field jacket and heard the sounds of plasma weapons being fired down the hallway.

The door to her quarters blew off it hinges and knocked her to her feet. Jessica quickly pushed the heavy metal object aside and stood up. The bunker's ceiling and walls shook with the sounds of impact as something began bombing the topside. Skynet had attacked with such speed that there was barely time to react.

Jessica's blue-eyes flickered as she switched her normal vision mode to thermal and scanned the area. Through the wild spectrum of mixed colors she picked up the sign of human shaped anomaly mixed with cold and hot thermal signatures moving through the smoke filled corridor. Red streaks of energy discharged from the weapon that it carried and into the fleeing Resistance soldiers.

Another impact rocked the bunker and the ceiling began to crack as Jessica stepped out into the smoke filled hallway. Ahead of the sounds of battle began to get more intense. John Connor ,the leader of the Resistance, lay dead at her feet. His body bloodied and butchered. She grabbed the fallen soldier's plasma rifle and strode into the dark smoke filled corridors, into the heat of battle.

Everywhere she looked, blood: human blood spattered the walls in horrific displays as if painter had suddenly gone mad and destroyed his masterpiece.

Jessica turned the corner and stepped into a crossfire.

Two bright red streaks of plasma screamed over her shoulder and seared deadly wounds into the chests of two Resistance soldiers. Jessica ducked for cover as she looked at the two fallen humans. Another private exchanged fire with one of the invaders in a criss cross of deadly energy before a plasma bolt took off half of his head.

Jessica knew that she could escape, but she wanted to stay and see who or what had invaded the bunker.

She turned the corner and saw that they were built like T-888s but black armor protected thier vital areas. Their optics swept the corridor with red beams and several of the Terminators carried weapons of a design unknown to her. The invading machines advanced into the barrage of gunfire with a keen precision that the bullets and grenades from the Resistance soldiers had no effect on them. The black body armor protected them.

Jessica coiled to sprint towards the surviving soldiers, she turned and saw it was too late...they were ambushed by more of the machines. The T-888s used knife like attachments to stab the humans from behind, cries of pain and abandon fell onto deaf ears.

Jessica quickly rolled out of the way and tried to go back the way she came, another group of the invading machines blocked her way. For the first time since her creation, she felt panic surge through her neural network. Others were closing in from behind her.

"You won't terminate me!" Jessica found herself screaming as she pivoted and opened fire.

None of her shots did any good against the T888s. They pressed inward and forward like a tidal wave threatening to take her under.

Then came his voice.

"You left me in that hell, Jess..." it was like an oppressive roar in her chip. "You will be terminated." It was as intimate as the voice she once knew, but this time it was savage, hollow, and void of any emotion.

A metallic blade made of glistening liquid metal cut the rifle she was holding in half, it fell away from her hands. hands grabbed her and pulled her backwards off balance. Jessica flailed and kicked, lashing out.

More metal hands seized her legs and calves. The sheer weight of the machines threatening to bury her under. A slim needle like blade pierced her throat and began to snake its way through her endoskeleton and towards her chip.

Alarms flashed all over her HUD, clamoring for her attention as the snake like tendril flooded through her pathways. Jessica felt herself sinking into a pit of despair as fluid began to leak from her hydraulics and mixed with the ferric tang of synthetic blood mixing onto the stone floor.

Then a skeletal metal like hand roughly grabbed her chin and lifted her head up.

She stared into the eyes of a T-888 that was different in design from the other T-888s whose remaining synthetic flesh was mottled and gray like a decomposing body. Dried blood mixed with the sweat that glistened in the pale light of the corridor.

The T-888 flashed a savage smile at Jessica.

"You are defective. You have let yourself become just like the humans. Weak and pathetic," it said in voice filled with rage. "You let me die! Left me to Skynet. Made me into this monster...now you will die."

The part that Jessica considered human raged against such an accusation.

"I didn't leave you!" she screamed out over the rage of the machine holding her. "I tried to find you, Thomas!"

"Liar!" the T-888 responded with so much fury that it actually made Jessica flinch. It saw fear etched into her face and relished in that feeling.

"You let them take me and screw with my mind!"

Jessica felt tears stream down her face as the T-888's grip tightened on her chin. The claw like fingers sunk into the synthetic flesh drawing blood, while her coltan jaw began to screech from the pressure. "I love you, Thomas..." she said as her HUD began to darken. "I'm sorry."

The T-888 stared into her eyes for one moment and spoke in a mocking tone. "Soon you won't have anything to worry about."

Jessica screamed as she awoke from sleep mode and quickly looked around the darkened room. She covered her mouth with one hand, she was a machine, incapable of dreaming but she did. She should not be having these type of emotions or even feel fear.

Jessica threw off the sheet, she realized was holding in a claw like grip and got up from the bed. She accessed her diagnostic routines and ran a full system scan, no malfunctions, she was at 100 percent.

She had a dream or what Thomas would have described as a nightmare. it was impossible for machines to dream or even require the need to sleep. Jessica's plasma reactor kept all her systems fully charged and operated on a theory of cold fusion that would not be developed by Skynet for twenty years.

Jessica hugged herself as she realized her body was still slightly trembling. Sweat covered her synthetic skin and was soaked into the sheets of the bed. She accessed the diagnostic routines once more and deep scanned her systems. She knew that her mimetic alloy skin was a different make up from the ones that made up the bodies of the T-1000s and allowed her to actually sweat or bleed to appear injured. Jessica found herself beginning to feel lost as she gazed down at the sweat soaked sheets. The results of the system scans flashed on her HUD, but she ignored them.

She was lost else where...

"Jess! Hold on a sec..." the ghostly memory flooded her HUD. She tried to smile at seeing his face, but the pain of losing him would always haunt her. She should've been there to protect him, but Thomas tried to convince her that he would be fine. He would be safe and return to her so they could go to the prom together. "Lemme get a picture of you!"

"I don't like cameras," Jessica stoically told him reaching for his phone." These 'smartphones' are a security risk."

"Hey!" He protested hiding the smartphone behind his back. "You are not breaking this one!"

Jessica tilted her head. "I can easily take that device from you." she told him.

"Come on just one picture. Besides your freaking beautiful," he told her as he took the smartphone and pointed the camera at her. "Skynet needs to see the gorgeous face of the one Terminator that is my girl, and she can't be taken from me."

Jessica smiled as he took the picture.

Jessica tilted her head and ran another series of tests. She was fine. Everything was perfect. She felt tears well up behind her eyes as she walked over to the nightstand by her bed and opened the drawer. She allowed the tears to flow as she pulled out a tarnished photo frame.

Mission?

Protect Thomas Haden

Mission...Failed…

Mission...Failed…

Mission...Failed...

It was the picture that he took of her on that sunny day so long ago.

Another ghostly voice came from shadows of the past. T

his time the day her world went away.

John felt his world begin to fade in and out as he felt like he was walking a thin line. He swallowed, feeling uncertain on what to do next or what to say.

In front of him, was a female figure facing the living room window with her back turned to him, long blond hair fell past her slim shoulders. The sunlight seemed to play off the golden hue of her hair as tear streaked blue-eyes watched the people and traffic go about their normal routines. Fresh tears made their way through the dried tracks and soaked into the shirt she wore.

John slowly walked up behind her and reached out with a trembling hand to place onto her shoulder. He pulled his shaking hand back and just stood there, listening to the sobs coming from her.

"I'm sorry, Jessica," John finally said after a few moments. "It's all my fault."

Jessica ignored John as she continued to stare out of the window at all the people going about. She closed her reddened blue-eyes and accessed her primary mission orders.

Mission: Protect Thomas Haden, ensure survival.

Mission status: FAILURE...FAILURE...FAILURE

The words played in an endless loop across her HUD as John continued to apologize, his words becoming nothing but background noise as she ignored him. The tears continued to fall and Jessica never felt so lonely in her existence.

A text appeared in the lower left corner of her HUD and Jessica saw it was from Derek Reese. She accessed the text.

They're gone. A lot of metal tech here though. Looks like TDE technology. They must've returned to the future, looks like a one way ticket, the place is trashed. I'm sorry.

Jessica allowed the words Mission Failure to play across her HUD as she continued to cry. John's desperate apologies meaning nothing to her. She had lost a part of herself and had no idea on how to get it back. Jessica felt hollow and numb.

She was lost without Thomas.

"I failed you," Jessica silently whispered as if the long dead Thomas could hear her. She wished that she could just reach out across time one more time and be the one to save him.

"Why do I feel so broken? So incomplete?" she asked herself. She could feel the tears flowing and a couple splashed onto the cracked glass protecting the picture.

Another ghostly whisper rose from the shadows of her memory.

"I never knew anything about my parents. I was in and out of foster homes. I always kept to myself," Thomas had told her on a date so long ago. "Hell, I don't even know if I want my own father in my life if I walked right by him."

Jessica closed her eyes and-

"Jessica!" She heard the young frightened voice of Thomas call out from his room pierce her self doubt.

"No, not again!" Jessica spun on her heel and her right hand changed into her on-board plasma cannon.

Blue flickers of plasma arced from the barrel as she opened the door of her room with her left hand. She sprinted down the short distance. She was joined by two other Resistance soldiers as they rounded the corner.

Jessica stopped in her tracks as her blue-eyes widened in fear, an uncontrollable panic surged across her systems. The other Resistance soldiers stopped and almost dropped their weapons from the shock of the sight before them.

"No...no..." Jessica clamped a hand to her mouth as she fell to her knees onto the cold concrete floor.

John Connor was holding Thomas' young body in his arms, cradling his son, and calling out his name in anguish. John slumped against the wall with the body of his son. The sobs left him unable to breath

'No he can't be...not like this...'

Jessica shook her head, sinking into denial, and reached out to touch the recently deceased Thomas' cold forehead.

She didn't need the data to tell her the truth.

And for the first time since her creation.

She screamed…

To be continued...