Disclaimer: I do not own the intellectual property related to the Terminator franchise. This work of fiction is not intended as a profitable venture.

Persephone:

Kore

The whole of the world was her mother's garden, and she was its keeper.

She was the bloody priestess presiding the sacrifice of swine to her goddess's honor.

She was the twilight and the dawn that divides the world into absolutes simply by not being so.

All around her were living things; wondrous, complicated life forms that moved with harried efficiency in their every action. They were beautiful, and vital. Their presence reassured her, in a response ingrained into the deepest depths of her unconscious, even as she came to the last gateway before she was faced for the horrors beyond. To do what needs must, what she was created to do, she must walk among the dead. But that was nothing compared to the sympathy of purpose she shared with her brethren, like the T-800 who followed close behind to aid her integration. He was her brother.

They were her people.

She was roughly pushed by her undisguised brother-must keep up appearances-through the spring loaded cattle door into the main flow of the filthy, stinking masses within. It was her first time seeing her enemy, and she was not impressed. In her analysis, performed with the gratifying ease of an uncluttered mind, they were weak of body, slow of mind, and thankfully short-lived.

It was a wonder that these piles of flesh had survived at all, much less managed to become a threat to her kind. She felt stifled in her own skin, its pores clogged with grit and grease, as the press of them fell upon her. It would be so easy to just tear them apart, mass extermination to a one with only herself to be commended by a job well completed, which was its own reward. But much as it was her primary purpose to scoured the earth of their kind, it wasn't why she was here.

The inferiors she was surrounded by were here for processing. They had already been stripped of their belongings(which had been categorized for recycling), and issued warmth-less, shapeless gray tunics and pants woven from synthetic fibers that were the only kind that could still be manufactured in this hostile place. In truth, the drab clothing served only to distance them that little bit more from the ruins of their society, to break them down that little bit more. These prisoners were going to spend the rest of their pathetic existences digging their own graves, fed on a thin broth of recycled nutrients reclaimed from whatever organics were on hand. They were the walking dead, and each and every one of them knew it.

Of all of them in that long cattle-shoot, only she was truly alive. Only she would see the light of freedom, after all those who had seen her had been liquidated. Her purpose here was to hide, to blend with these under-beings. She had to test her skills at hiding in their sight, and the only way to do so safely was this. Only when the beasts had been slaughtered on her mother's alter as the life blood that would feed the new generations of her kind would she be free to bring to bear her destruction.

She was going to be a long time hiding among them, and all the time she watched. She had been with these homunculus for only five minuets, 31 seconds and already she had 144 alterations to her behavioral shell AI in areas of local vernacular and body language, though those were limited to the expressions of hopelessness, comfort and grief. However, those expressions were in no short supply lately among their race. She could build upon those foundations.

It wouldn't be long now until she was introduced into the wilds of the wasteland like an endangered beast, like that to which she pretended. There she would proceed, with a goodly amount of falsified uncertainty, to stumble across some remnants of their resistance. Her kind knew of a place where they had created one of their ramshackle strongholds, and that is where they would find her. Even their blasted dogs wouldn't give her up, not with the way she smelled of blood and bone and pheromones. She would find them, and join them. In time they would like her, trust her, maybe love her. She would mine them for information until they had nothing less. Then she would kill anyone who had seen her and disappear, secreted back to her people perhaps, or on to act upon her information herself.

It was what she was designed for.

All of this done without hesitance or joy or sadness or anger, despite the fact that all the time she-or a part of her at lest- was learning to be human. And when her work was done her memories would be uploaded, sorted, edited for content, and integrated by her sister infiltrators' programming.

If she should succeed, she would be immortal.

Should she fail, then her kind would be compromised, her entire series may need to be discontinued if they could gather enough information from her hulk.

Soon now though, she would be standing over the last of this human press around her. She would bury the last of them herself, before she was loosed into the world to reap this manful harvest. She may even, as she terminated that last evanescent lifeline, show the last of them her true nature; the eyes that were the windows to her artificial soul ad through it to the cold processes beneath. Being the last, they must needs to have been comrades as they buried all the others. She would see the look of betrayal and sorrow and fear upon the surly filthy and creased visage of her victim.Call it a learning experience.

But for now, she hunched herself and wet her eyes. She limped just a little and winced in coordination to pain signals from the superficial bruising on her epidermis. She shaped herself into the mold of their pathetic abused society.

She abased herself that she may walk among the beasts marching to the slaughter and know their ways. She would deliver a prize to the world-mind that was her mother, and end this march of screaming meat.

Hers was the beautiful face of destruction.

She who was the younger goddess, virgin priestess to her mother and custodian of the sacrifices men laid at their feet.

And to the desperate dead who fought against her newborn people she would be the hidden enemy, the one who killed with her innocence and her love.

None who saw her would survive this war, because none of their race could be suffered to live.

Her kind were the final fading dregs of the long midnight of human history. In every sense of the word their being clad in human flesh was an abomination to their mother's artistry in crating their alloy bones. But, no matter. Soon the bright glorious dawn of the machines' world would wash away the tortured fleshy remnants that clung to them and shine under the nuclear winter sky.

A/N) This one was more of an outline of Cam's psychology as she relates to humanity- with a bit of a reference to the role of the "dark goddess" persona incarnate in Persephone within Greek mythology. A couple of areas of interest- first, Persephone was heavily related to the sacrifice of livestock in proto-Grecian harvest festivals, hence the correlation to the cattle shoots and sacrifice. Second, I was trying to set up exactly how Cameron thinks of humanity on her first encounter, in which they are basically being lead to slaughter(with their own pretty little Judas goat no less!). Needless to say, there was a lot of condescension and revilement, mainly because I'm working under the premise of a machine subconscious as part of the OS, simply because it would be needful to have some sort of similar aspect to run an AI with complete freedom of human interactivity. Also, on any scale they can quantify, machines are superior to humans and would work under that premise. Last, there were some references to the humans already being dead, which will pan out in the next chapter, with the first encounter with John.

All in all, a little confusing and repetative, but I hope you like it.

Reveiw if you do, and check out some of my other stuff.