Kissing Cousins
-Saturday, August 2nd, 2008-
From the inside of a black Nissan 370Z, John looks up at the two story house, one of at least twenty such examples on this street. "Are you sure that this is the right one?" he asks skeptically.
"Yes," she answers without looking up from her Mini SA58- a modernized 7.62x51mm carbine built on an FN FAL receiver.
He smiles faintly as he looks over at her. "You're probably the only person who's ever worn designer clothing to a firefight by choice."
She turns her eyes on him. "You're wearing a $1200 jacket."
"It's not my money," he says with a grin.
"It's not mine either," she deadpans, smiling brightly when it makes him laugh.
A ground floor window explodes as gunfire and shouting comes from within the home. "Shit!," he yells, closing his hand around his HK416. "It's here!"
By the time he climbs out of the car and reaches the path to the front entrance of the house, Cameron has already smashed down the door.
He curses his slow and weak human body as he watches her disappear into the building, and listens to her open fire on an unseen enemy.
When he finally reaches the doorway, he finds the bullet riddled body of a man only a couple of years older than he is. Obviously, the target of the gunfire and the source of the shouting they heard.
Cutting a wide circle around a corner, he sees Cameron embedded in the remains of an obliterated grand piano, and fires his diminutive 5.56mm rounds into the cranium of her T-888 attacker.
The tungsten core M995 rounds make narrow and shallow holes, but are unable to penetrate deeply enough into the machine's armored endoskull to reach any of its electronics, let alone its chip.
As the machine whirls around, Cameron fires the last few rounds from her OSA 58 into the back of its neck.
The T-888 collapses to the floor, its arms and legs twitching as they receive broken, error ridden commands, which its CPU has based on fragmented information transmitted to it through its damaged spinal connection.
Cameron's voice is uneven, changing randomly in pitch and volume. "I'm shutting down." She looks at the fallen T-888. "Go. I'm more advanced; I'll reboot first," she assures him.
Trusting her, he sprints up the stairs in search of his objective. Spotting only one closed door, he kicks it in, and steps through with his carbine raised.
As he scans the master bedroom, he sees movement out of the corner of his eye, and uses the metal Picatinny rails on the foregrip of his rifle to deflect a blow from a baseball bat, then pushes the receiver against his assailant's chest, pinning the young woman to the wall. "What's your name?!" he demands. "Are you Claire?!" She knees him in the groin, but after a fraction of a second overwhelmed with pain, he regains full control of himself.
He kicks the inside of her left leg, causing it to give out, dropping her onto her knees, then kneels in front of her, pressing his rifle hard against her throat, leaving her too busy fighting suffocation to fight him.
Sobbing and gasping for air, she starts trying to choke out the combination to their safe.
"Some very bad people have mistaken your daughter for someone else," he growls, not at all coming across as friendly. "I'm here to stop them."
He pulls his rifle from her struggling hands, and takes several steps back. "Come with me if you want Allison to live." The girl's mother stares up at him in terror as she clutches her throat and catches her breath. She's wasting time, and there isn't any to waste. "Right now! Now, now, now! Get the fuck on your feet!" She winces at every word, but forces herself to stand unsteadily, for fear of what he'll do if she doesn't.
"Who's that?!" she screams, as the closed door to the nursery swings open.
He looks up expecting Cameron, but the damaged triple-eight is what he sees. The machine's programming has adapted to the damage sooner than predicted, restoring much of its functionality.
"No!" is all that comes out as he releases his rifle, letting it hang from its sling, and throws his arms around the young mother, trying to shield her with his body, while forcing her toward the other door.
The machine unleashes a torrent of .45 ACP hollow points from its MAC-10 at the two humans.
John feels several rounds slam into his right side, and nearly falls over from the sudden pain.
He gives her a hard shove toward the doorway, then turns to face the machine and its empty machine pistol, only to be struck hard, and knocked to the floor.
As he dazedly lifts himself onto his hands and knees, he becomes aware that he no longer has his weapon only a split second before hearing it discharge.
Cameron is standing over him, firing his rifle into the triple-eight's throat, further damaging its already compromised circuitry, leaving it barely abot to stand in place.
With John still stunned from her chassis impacting him at high speed, she roughly flips him onto his back, rifling through his clothing until she finds another STANAG magazine.
After calmly loading the weapon, she walks over to the machine and kicks it into the middle of the next room, toppling the cradle, and spilling plush animals across the floor.
Without a word, she places her right foot on the twitching, nearly unresponsive machine's face, and turns its head to expose its CPU port, then fires a burst into it, obliterating the chip beneath.
Satisfied that the machine is dead, she frowns down at her boot. The superheated gas exiting through holes in the weapon's flash suppressor has scorched the leather, ruining her footwear.
She walks back over to her charge, and carefully helps him onto his feet.
"Are you all right?" John asks concernedly, while clutching his side.
"My shirt and boots are ruined." A sense of failure and helplessness comes over her as she notices the blood soaking into his right pantleg. "You've been shot."
"Yeah," he groans, "but I'm fine." He feels her hand slide under his Kevlar vest, and grits his teeth as she probes the shallow wounds with her fingers. He grabs the sides of his vest and pulls, separating the Velcro holding its two halves together, and pushes the front half into her chest. "Just check this!"
Having trouble breathing with the amount of pain that he's in, he staggers toward the doorway, ignoring the thud made by the rear half of the vest falling from beneath his ruined jacket, and looks out into the hallway. His throat tightens at the sight of Claire's prostrate body, and her eyes staring lifelessly at the ceiling.
"None of the bullets went through," Cameron says almost cheerfully as she arrives behind him. Realizing what he's looking at, she sets her hand on his shoulder, and lowers her voice. "I'm sorry. I miscal-"
"This isn't your fault," he says quickly. "It's mine. None of this would have happened in the future." He takes his hand from his wounded side and looks at the blood on it. "I've gotten weak. And I've started following again."
He shakes his head at his failures. It seems like he's screwed up more in one day than during the years he spent in the future.
No one would have died if they had used force to move the entire family somewhere safe, then worried about the machine.
Maybe Allison would still have parents if he hadn't sat in the car, joking about how he and Cameron were dressed, and Allison would certainly have a mother if he had destroyed the T-888 when he had the chance.
Cameron doesn't know what to say to him right now, but he understands that, and doesn't mistake her confused silence for indifference. "I'll go get her," she says softly.
"Don't bother," he tells her as she starts toward the nursery. Wiping the blood from his hand onto his pants, he turns to see her staring at him with a faint look of worry. "She's not in there." He walks over to the closet and pulls open the door, allowing Cameron to hear muffled cries.
She watches as he moves clothing and blankets, and the cries become louder until he slowly stands and turns around with Allison cradled in his arms.
Cameron doesn't like John being with other people, and she doesn't like him smiling at them the way that he's smiling at Allison, but this is different somehow.
Even though this Allison is here right now, she feels no more threatened by her than the one she killed, or the one John left behind in the future.
"She's so tiny," he whispers, despite Allison's screaming and bawling.
Using Allison's dimensions, Cameron calculates her current mass. "She's 7.275 pounds. That's healthy for eleven days old," she explains.
After a moment passes and he merely stares in awe at the baby girl, Cameron puts her arm around his shoulders and gently guides him toward the door.
-Wednesday, August 6th, 2008-
Waking after a well-earned night's rest, John smiles sleepily at the quiet hiss of fabric on skin nearby. "Mm, I should've woken sooner."
The bed bounces as Cameron drops herself into a sitting position on it. "I don't like this."
"Not again," he groans.
"I look ridiculous."
"You look beautiful," he assures her.
"John?" He groans in acknowledgment. "Your eyes are still closed."
"My eyes are still tired. We can't all be cyborgs." He grits his teeth against an unexpected cramp in his calf. "Unfortunately..."
"Are you all right?" she asks worriedly. As he nods and cracks open his eyes, the sight of her turns his smile into a grin. "I look funny," she concludes.
Her chocolate locks spill from her shoulders onto her front as she looks down at her turquoise blouse, and the sharp outward bulge over her midsection.
"You don't look funny," he says with a warm smile. When she looks at him without meeting his eyes, his smile fades, and he turns away from her, hiding the scars from a world that he hadn't been ready to see. "We need to get some pictures of you like this."
She leans over the crib next to the bed, looking down at the blue eyed baby girl, whose bald head is covered by a knitted hat. "She's going to know that I'm not her mother." Her fingers poke the heavy latex abdomen beneath her maternity clothing. "This prosthesis doesn't change anything."
He sits up and slides over to her side, smiling at their 'daughter'. "Kids trust adults to tell them the truth. If we tell her that we're her parents, then she'll believe us, no matter what happens."
She looks at him sadly. "You don't like it when I lie to you. Even when you know it's the right thing to do."
"That's different."
"Yes... because now you're in my position."
His thoughts of curiosity, smiling eyes, and first words suddenly shift to ones of confusion, hateful glares, and angry screams. "Do you think that lying to her is the wrong decision?"
Her protracted silence serves to feed his growing self-doubt. "No," she says at last. "Someday, she'll figure out what I am," she warns.
He smiles at her as she carefully checks the bandages on his right side. "You're right, but knowing that you're a cyborg doesn't mean that she has to know you didn't give birth to her."
She frowns as she looks from him to Allison. "Unless she's stupid, she'll know that machines don't have internal organs."
"Trust me," he says, "evidence and common sense won't matter... she'll choose to believe what her mother and father have told her." He kisses Cameron's cheek, making her smile faintly. "That's the real difference between man and machine: we can be dumb whenever we so choose." He looks down his nose snootily at her, brightening her smile more with his compliment than his humor.
"Will this make you happy?" she asks quietly.
His own smile vanishes. "You make me happy," he says sincerely, then looks down at the sleeping baby girl. "Would you just be tolerating her?" His eyes meet hers, studying her closely for any outward sign of deception. "Be honest. Don't wait until she's calling us mommy and daddy to say that you don't want her."
Cameron looks thoughtfully at the newest addition to their already complicated lives. "She is tiny," she states. Clearly confused, she turns to John, then continues slowly and uncertainly. "Someone... should protect her."
"Someone like you?" he asks nervously, trying not to sound hopeful.
She watches him for a moment, as though it were the first mention of her playing the role of Allison's mother. "No, not 'someone like me'." He's only been caring for the little girl for four days, but John's stomach drops at the thought of losing her. "There aren't any others like me," she says.
Her head tilts subtly as she watches him start gasping for air, but her perplexity falls by the wayside when his arms wrap tightly around her and his lips gently touch her forehead.
"You'll make a great mom," he whispers in her ear.
Pulling back, she holds him away from herself and looks at him suspiciously. "How do you know?"
Smiling lovingly, he brushes her hair from her face. "Because you have the answers to more questions than she could ever ask, you're infinitely patient, and even more importantly..." With her hands holding him back, he lunges, planting a kiss on the tip of her nose. "...you don't sleep."
Her brow furrows. "Those things will make me a good mother?"
He glances briefly at Allison. "Well... they're things that every parent would envy. And who knows," he says with a shrug, "with you looking over my shoulder all the time, I might turn out to be a halfway decent dad." She turns away from him, convinced that he's using humor to conceal his doubts about her. "Cameron, look at me," he says softly, bringing her eyes back to his. "No, I mean look at me." He holds his arms out to his sides. "I shouldn't be alive, but you keep protecting me, patching me up, making me happy. That's all you, Cameron." She smiles at him, enjoying more of his praise. "Can you feel as strongly for her as you do for me?"
As she considers that her boots had meant more to her than the entire Young family, it dawns on her that after four days of Allison burping and spitting up onto her shirts, she feels as attached to her as she had her boots. "I don't know," she says honestly. "But... I want to try."
John carefully lifts Allison into his arms, and holds her near Cameron. Although he knows how cruel it would be for Allison to be raised by a mother who doesn't really love her, he doesn't want to give her up. "Okay," he whispers. Looking up, he's surprised to see Cameron smiling faintly as she watches Allison fidget in her sleep.
"This will bring us closer together," she states.
"Yeah... Yeah, she will."
"Then this is good," she says quietly. Leaning over Allison, she kisses him softly. After a long moment, she breaks their kiss and rests her head on his shoulder, smiling down at their daughter. "I like this."
He beams at the sight of Cameron's smile reflected on the bedroom window, and wishes not for the first time that he had her eidetic memory. "Everything's perfect," he whispers.
"What will your mother say?"
"I don't know... but we have eight months to figure out how to handle that." Looking at Allison, he pictures his mother inside ZeiraCorp, alone in the damaged building after his departure. "When I pick her up in a minivan full of Huggies and teddy bears... maybe she'll just be relieved that I'm back."
"That doesn't sound like your mother," Cameron points out.
He chuckles. "You're right, it doesn't." His eyes find their reflection on the window pane, and the profundity of that snapshot of a loving couple and their daughter becomes clear to him.
He's not looking at the perfect family, he's looking at his perfect family.
That father is John Connor, the once and future leader of mankind.
That mother is his protector, and the cyborg he loves, based on the future appearance of the baby girl in his arms.
Allison- their Allison -is the past self of the young woman whom he'd met in the future, and went on to share a short-lived romantic relationship with.
As twisted as it all is, it's no less perfect, and without their warped history, this moment would never have been possible.
"That doesn't sound like my mom," he says suddenly. "But... seeing us like this? Being told that she's part of it?" He looks at Allison, cradled in his arms. "That this is her granddaughter? We're going to make her happier than she's been in... in a very long time."
Allison stretches her arms and legs when she finally wakes, only to relax contentedly into John's warm embrace, as a bottle of formula, prepared before either human awoke, is brought to her lips by Cameron.