The John Connor Chronicles: Aftershocks: Chapter 2: Failsafes

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I, of course, don't own the Terminator franchise. If I did, every movie would feature some heavy Jameron. But I guess you already know that.

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Chapter 2: Failsafes

Sarah and Derek hadn't been watching, but John's sudden stop, and his body stance, alerted them to the situation. "I knew it!" Derek's MP5 magicked its way into his hand, a fraction of a second behind Sarah's own shotgun.

"Stop!" John's voice rang out. "Do not, I repeat, DO NOT shoot!" He turned back to Cameron, who was still pointing the gun squarely at him. "Okay, Cameron." And he started towards her.

"John…" It might have been his imagination, but her voice sounded strained to him.

"C'mon, Cameron. Put the gun down."

The shot cracked out, the sound reverberating off the nearby hillsides, echoes dying off, and John Connor spun in place from the impact of the bullet. He half-fell, his left arm dangling as a growing red stain spread across the shoulder of his jacket. The others went for their guns.

"Stop!" From his half-kneeling position, he straightened his other arm out towards them. "YOU WILL NOT SHOOT HER!"

"Kid-*"

"NO BUTS! STAND DOWN, BOTH OF YOU!" Very reluctantly, they complied.

He jerked to his feet, his left arm dangling. Instead of her usual non-expression, Cameron wore an expression that could best be described as somewhere between "alarmed" and "puzzled." "Shit, but that hurts!" he said, through clenched teeth. "Okay, Cameron," he said, once again approaching her. "Let's get on with this."

"John!" Sarah sounded frantic.

"Mom, it's alright," he said, pain evident in his voice. He turned back to the T-715. Once again he approached her, left arm dangling, with redness beginning to run down the sleeve of his jacket.

"John…stay back." The gun hadn't wavered, but her voice was anything but firm.

He walked up to her, and took the gun from her hand. She seemed to deflate. With his uninjured hand, he managed to squeeze the slide back a fraction of an inch. "I thought so," he said, looking into the small gap thus exposed.

The other two rushed up, weapons at the ready. "What," began Derek, his gun never wavering from Cameron, "the fuck is going on?" Cameron, meanwhile, continued studying the ground at her feet.

John showed them the gun he'd just taken from Cameron. He brought up his left arm—Derek stared; wasn't that the arm where he'd been shot?—and wracked the slide.

The gun was empty, the slide locking back into place. There had been only one cartridge in it. "High thumb hold. Prevented the slide from locking back. Cameron always uses a low thumb hold." He turned to Cameron. "We," he said, "are going to have to have a serious talk about this."

"Yes, John."

"Wh—John?" Sarah had retrieved the first aid kit from the car. But John was already painfully shrugging out of his jacket. He turned to Derek. "Little help here?"

….to display a tight-fitting wrapping around his left shoulder, stained with red. He reached up and pulled away a small piece of plastic. Spicy ketchup, it read, on the side. He looked at a surprised Derek. "Told you they'd come in handy."

"Kevlar. You wrapped your shoulder in Kevlar?"

"Yeah." He winced. The Kevlar had prevented the bullet from reaching him, but he was still sporting an Olympic level bruise.

"More of this 'remembering' stuff?"

"No." He draped his jacket over his arm. "I guess we can go now." He turned to a still-silent Cameron. "There never was any Cherenkov radiation, was there?"

"No."

"That's what I thought."

…

Later: "Okay, John. Let's hear it." Sarah stood with her hands on her hips, while Derek helped John bandage up his shoulder. They were in the living room. A silent Cameron had headed straight for her room upon their return. Sarah thought it almost seemed like the T-715 was embarrassed. But how was that possible? "What happened out there?"

To her surprise, Derek answered. "I can answer that. It's called 'suicide by cop.' Right, kid?"

Wince. "Yeah. You remember, mom, when she gave me that self-destruct button? She said she couldn't destroy herself. So she gave me the controls. This was just another way of doing the same thing. She was doing her best to get you and Derek to turn her into a swiss-cheese-enator."

Sarah grimaced, looking at his shoulder. "Dramatic much?"

…

Cameron's room: He entered, knowing he had to do this, but wishing for better circumstances. She was sitting, almost expectantly, it seemed, on the edge of her bed. "Are we," he asked, by way of opening the conversation, "going to have any more of these sorts of occurrences?"

Again she fixed her gaze on the ground at her feet. Her hands were folded in her lap. "No, John. I will, I believe the term is, 'behave.'"

"Good. Because I don't think my heart could take much more such theatrics." He winced again, this time in memory of his beloved jacket. "Let alone my wardrobe."

"I'll get you another jacket."

"I don't care about the jacket, Cameron. Look." He came over and sat by her on the bed. She hitched slightly away. "We need to talk about this."

She shifted, a bit nervously, it seemed to him. "Shouldn't Sarah be here as well?"

"She will be, when the time is right." In truth, he'd had to insist that his mother not be there, right at that moment. This was something he had to do alone. "Now…Cameron. I've already told you how I feel. And although you can deny it till doomsday, I know how you feel. And you do feel; you told me that once, yourself. So…let's quit dancing around this, shall we?"

"Dancing isn't part of my programming."

"You know what I mean." She was silent. He reached over and took her hand. Once again, her fingers gently closed over his. "You were ready to let Derek and mom blast you to bits because…why? Why would you want to, to self-destruct like that? And don't say that wasn't the idea; I know it was."

She was silent for a long, long time. Then, her fingers ever so gently squeezed his. "I…I did not want to hurt you. In any way. This…seemed logical."

"Well, it wasn't. Look. You've told me that you and I talk a lot, in the future. Evidently we have—will have, cripes, this time travel sure messes with verb tenses—a pretty solid relationship.

"I'd like that relationship to begin today."

"John…our relationship isn't like what you are thinking. We are, or will be, close confidantes, friends, even. But nothing more."

"Then maybe it's time we changed that. The future you came from doesn't have to be the future we're heading for, you know. 'There's no fate….'"

"'…but what we make.' Yes, I know. But…John." Now she looked up at him, her brown optical sensors fixed on his, "you cannot get around the fact that I am a machine. I don't have the biological imperative to reproduce. The mating act, and all behavior leading up to it…is foreign to me. You're expecting me to react like a typical teenager, a girl—I cannot. It is not part of my programming."

"Then maybe…maybe we need to see about changing that."

She sat for a moment, and he thought she stiffened slightly. Did her fingers twitch, just ever so much? "When will you begin?"

Huh? "Begin what?"

"When will you begin reprogramming me?" There was no fear in her voice…or was there? After all, programming and reprogramming was just a part of normal Terminator existence…wasn't it?

He closed his fingers more tightly over hers. "Cameron. I'm not about to go mucking around inside your head, rewiring or whatever your logic circuits or your memory core. That's not what I meant.

"If you're reprogrammed, and I use the term loosely, it will have to be done by you. I won't have it any other way."

She looked at him, again with that odd, startled look. "John. I cannot reprogram myself. It's impossible."

"But you can. I've seen you do it. I've seen you do things counter to your programming. You have to reach down deep in your soul, and I won't say it'll be easy, but you can do it. If you only want to." He paused for just a moment. "And if you don't, I'll just have to respect that."

"John. I'm a machine. I don't have a soul."

He sighed in exasperation. They'd had this discussion. "Of course you do. I can see it. So can everyone else."

She stared at him. "What are you saying, John Connor? Souls…souls cannot be seen!"

He had to keep from rolling his eyes. "Cameron, let's not get into that ag-*" Then, suddenly, he stiffened as if electrocuted, his fingers squeezing hers hard enough to crack bone, and fell awkwardly to the floor, his face as pale as a sheet.

To be continued….